“NEVER has one decade been so chameleon-like as it wove its way from American pop to British beat at the beginning of the decade, to psychedelic pop and acid rock as 1969 ended, choking on its own marijuana smoke.”Thus the Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music on am era that gave us so many landmark groups and styles of music. The ‘beat’ scene was big; today’s photograph shows the Roadrunners, a group from Falkirk, one of 13 bands seeking to win the 1964 National Beat Group Contest in London, where the prizes included £5,000 and a recording contract. Back in Glasgow. boxing promoter Peter Keenan said he intended launching an all-Scotland beat group contest. The aim, reported the Evening Times, was to find a group that would “out-beat the boys from Merseyside.” He had taken a lease on Paisley ice rink, where semi-pro groups would play, six nights a week. “I think there is an awful lot of undiscovered talent in Scotland, talent that can top anything that comes from the Liverpool area,” he said. The winners’ prize would be a trip to the States, with a possible coast-to-coast tour of Scottish clubs, and probably a TV appearance. Not everyone liked the new-fangled pop sound, though. An agitated reader wrote to the paper to say he feared being brainwashed into becoming a Beatles fan. After all, he cautioned, Hitler had converted millions of rational people to his way of thinking, against their will.
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