Musical Mondays- What Do The Scorpions and World Peace Have in Common?

Yep, I’m back!  Sorry to fall off the planet, but it happens, especially in summer.  Soooooo, how’s it going?  We are all good.  Went to Lake Almanor,  I’ve been finishing the copy editing on “The Dragon in the Garden”, reworking “Spells of a Mortal’s Weaving” and doing research for the next book I’ll be starting this fall.  It’s been busy, busy, but in a happy way.  Still, one can only keep so many plates spinning at once, which is why the blog fell to the wayside temporarily.  Time to rectify that today!
Oh yes, and for my birthday in June my wonderful, wonderful boy took me to Las Vegas to see the Scorpions with openers, Tesla.  This makes a nice transition to this week’s Musical Monday…
I am choosing a Scorpions song, and it is not my favorite Scorpions song.  Heck, it doesn’t even make my top twenty (see below).  However,  while I watched their concert in Las Vegas, Winds of Change made the set list.  The performance caused me to reflect on who and where I was when this song came out in 1990.
I was twenty-one and finishing up my degrees at UC Davis.  The Berlin Wall had come down the year before.  I had not yet started dating the man who I would marry and have a family with.  It was a year where I was in between boyfriends and having a grand time with my friends.  It was a time in my life when I was confident that humanity was moving forward, eventually, we would solve the world’s problems.  As Germans, the fall of The Wall and the opening of East Germany were especially close to the Scorpions’ hearts.  Klaus Meine penned this song after watching the amazing events of the late eighties.  Winds of Change may sound sappy and simplistic in today’s world of liberal versus conservatism invective and suspicion, the “Axis of Evil” poised to strike and, of course, the looming threat of terrorism, but it was evocative of a very real current of hope capturing the general mindset of the Western World for a couple of precious years.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RjJKxsamQ]
It seems innocent to the extreme, but we were  hopeful in 1990.  Glasnost  opened up the Eastern Bloc countries.  The nuclear threat that had hung over our collective heads all my life was gone.  There were peace talks being scheduled in the Middle East which would later lead to the Madrid Conference and then the momentous strides made at the Oslo Accords.  True, the first Gulf War began in August, but we saw ourselves as rescuing Kuwait.  We didn’t know where that little rescue mission would end up taking us.  Student protests in China were attracting world-wide attention.  There was pressure on the Chinese government to open up and grant its citizens more liberties.  Nelson Mandela walked out into the sun after twenty-seven years in prison and the end of Apartheid beckoned as de Klerk and Mandela began the negotiation process to bring about peaceful elections.  Even the Protestants and Catholics were talking about turning in their guns in Northern Ireland.
It seemed like a big case of peace was breaking out.
Of course, in a matter of a couple of years, many of our strides forward as a species would be undone.  New threats weigh us down today, new suspicions and distortions separate sides and a fresh generation of oppressors control the majority of the world’s access, wealth and information.
Yet, I still believe that we can solve the world’s problems.  Winds of change, my friends, winds of change for us all.
That’s how I roll, baby.

1.)  We’ll Burn The Sky

2.) No One Like You

3.) Coast to Coast

4.) Make it Real

5.) Holiday

6.) The Zoo

7.) Blackout

8.) Rock You Like a Hurricane

9.) Coming Home

10.) In Trance

11.) Loving You Sunday Morning

12.) Bad Boys Running Wild

13.) You Give Me All I Need

14.) He’s A Woman, She’s A Man

15.) Big City Nights (Live Version)

16.) Don’t Make No Promises (Your Body Can’t Keep)

17.) When Passion Rules The Game

18.) Still Loving You

19.) China White

20.) Life’s Like a River

Enjoy!