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'The Dark Side Of The Moon' by Pink Floyd, released in 1973, apparently boosted the moral of the American soldiers in Vietnam so much that it kept many of them going through the war. It is also one of the biggest selling albums of all time, it entered the American charts at No.1 and stayed in the American Top 100 for over 1,000 weeks (that's over 20 years). Can anyone think of any other albums that really affected things, people, a generation, or whatever?

I would subscribe to another contributors thoughts by stating that music may have influenced but change is a big word.

America still lost that war but if it managed to keep morale up then it was influenced.

Thing is why stop there, a lot of music had the same effect and became part of the culture that coloured that period...particularly the black soldiers who were listening to Motown and Atlantic artists like Stevie Wonder, Edwin Starr and many more.

In fact I think all music did back then was maybe provide comfort as it never even stopped the war from happening in the first place

Thats what i call change on a radical level.

Maybe the drug culture had more of an effect than music where the war was concerned.

Too many love songs paved the way for the likes of punk, rap and rock as anti- establishment

Not much, if any music is setting the world alight anymore

Don Maclean's 'American Pie' is a song that encapsulates a generation of Americans (and British music acts) too: their thoughts, attitudes, and some of the down-sides which occured as part of that cultural revolution of the 1960's. Each line in that song refers to something significant.

'E2 E4' by Manuel Gottsching.

Max.

You may be right with this Vietnam thing but this is the first tim I have ever heard it mentioned.

I did two tours in that country, the first was as an instructor with 8 RAR and the second was from Sep '72 to May '73 as a military guard at the Australian Embassy in Saigon and I never heard this song until I relocated to the UK in 1975. If it was only released in 1973 then most of the American servicemen it was ment to inspire had by then either then been shipped back home or were being kept out of the hard fighting.

I played this track again today, and believe me mate, neither the song or Kabul wages would have kept me in that shit hole of a country for one day longer than I had to.

'Maybe the drug culture had more of an effect than music where the war was concerned'

Pictures of bodybags were arguably the tipping point where people started to wonder whether or not it was worthwhile and if the US was really 'winning' like they were being told they were. Much the same today except one has to remember that people were conscripted in Vietnam. In Iraq and Afghanistan death is an occupational hazard and it's an occupation people have chosen. In vietnam that choice was taken away from many and particularly from the poor.

welkrm, thats very interesting. You have certainly experienced a lot of things most people never will - and gone to places many will never go to (although often in dangerous circumstances). What I said about the Pink Floyd album I have heard several times over the years. It is not just the title track that had that effect on the GI's but the whole album apparently. If you listen to it end to end it is a strengthening, ego boosting, confidence raising, demon defeating work - in an 'ordinary man against the world' kind of way. One or two songs look at life from the point of view of someone losing their mind but most of it is a sort of glass-half-full view, rather than glass-half-empty. Seen as one concept, the album is overall a positive thing and is a booster - the couple of introspective songs, if seen as part of a wider work, still overall have a positive vibe to them. The album is a masterpiece and was such a mammoth seller that EMI apparently had entire plants making nothing but copies of it for years and years.

Ideas change the world. Music communicates ideas.