hippies

Malvina Reynold's What Have They Done to the Rain?' complained of radioactive fallout which all detested. Pete Seeger's anti-war song Where Have All the Flowers Gone?' was a favourite song for both pacifists and troops in Vietnam. Bob Dylan also made folk music with protest themes against government oppression and war. But he was different. He had wild long hair and resembled rather a poor dropout. His songs were very powerful and it was hard to be neutral about them. The Times They Are a- Changing' was perhaps the first song to touch the generation gap and it established him as a popular protest singer of the sixties. But in 1965 at Newport Jazz Festival, Dylan became more than just folk singer. He introduced a fusion of his own called folk-rock'. .
             FASHION.
             Counter-culture's influence on fashion was great. It became to change radically even before the hippies and other such groups appeared. Rudi Gernreich's topless bathing suit for women was introduced in 1964. A few gallant models wore this curious garment of knitted trunks suspended from a cord around a neck. .
             Discotheques, nightclubs featuring recorded music, were starting up and they inspired customers with writhing go-go' girls who demonstrated the new dance routines. Some of them went topless and soon others followed. So-called Topless Bowling was opened in Los Angeles where customers could order their cocktail, which was served by half-nude waitress. .
             Some performers went even far and bottomlessness was added. Rudi Gernreich raised his skirts three inches above the knee and introduced the no-bra bra', a wispy creation appropriate to the new designs. In London things had already gone further. Skirts were so short that they were called mini-skirts. Bikinis were now seen on American beaches in sizable numbers. .
             The most interesting about these changes was that was no longer dictated from above, by Parisian designers and other authorities.