Pete and Royce Resurface

The 1970s were painful years for Athenians. Seven years of military dictatorship,  beginning in 1967, brought uncertainty into the homes of all who had fought for three decades against the deep political division whose roots grew in the soil of Axis occupation and the Greek Resistance. It was a bitter time of cultural suppression and appeals to patriotism, rural simplicity, and secret torture clearinghouses. These kinds of parochial and inward looking cultural values have been argued as the doctrinaire stance of a prime minister with rural roots, a form of reactionary traditionalism, or an antidote to the Truman Doctrine and its kudzu vine of cultural imperialism. Strangely inconsistent lists of prohibited songs, films, and books—both foreign and domestic—were drawn up. Radio stations played martial music day and night. Yet while some artists found themselves censored or forced to play only folk styles, others, even Stones- and Cream-inspired blues-rock bands, somehow managed to play stadiums. [Read more]