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I was shocked the other day to read that Neil Young, one of my favorite protest sort-of folk singers for the past 40 years, no longer believes that music can change the world.

Young, under the extremely clever pseudonym Bernard Shakey, directed a movie about the 2006 Freedom of Speech tour by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Shakey ... er, I mean Young. During his introduction at the Berlin film festival, Young commented: "I think the world today is a different place, and that it's time for science and physics and spirituality to make a difference in this world and to try to save the planet. If we didn't do that, it would just feel like a bunch of old hippies up there saying what they thought -- and who cares?"

Who indeed? Young seems to have survived to the ripe old age of 62 with at least partial brain function remaining, in spite of having been a musician in the '60s and '70s, if you get my pharmaceutical drift.

And that brings me to the actual subject of this column, which is politics. Actually, it's politics and music.

I suppose that I started paying attention to politics because of the Cuban missile crisis. That was going on when I was in the second grade, and I clearly remember two things. The first was a map of the United States shown on the evening news (Huntley and Brinkley, as I recall) with concentric circles representing how long it would take a nuclear missile to reach different parts of the country. I was in Zone 2 -- 10 minutes to live! The second was the image of President Kennedy. That image of what a president is supposed to look like became further cemented into my psyche later when he was assassinated. On my older sister's 45 phonograph, the source of my musical education at the time, Lesley Gore wept out "Judy's Turn to Cry."

By the fifth and sixth grades the British had invaded the United States in the form of The Beatles, Rolling Stones and about a million other bands. It was not your parents' music, as our parents incessantly reminded us. President Johnson was slowly starting to sink into the mire of Vietnam, which would be his historic legacy in spite of the civil rights and domestic policies he set in motion. Mick Jagger wailed out "Paint it Black."

In 1968 the world exploded and two Democrats ran for president: Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. But Mike, you say, Nixon was a Republican, to which I say "Bah, humbug!" You tell me what Republican would institute price controls on the economy. Protesters rioted at the Chicago Democratic convention to the strains of Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild," and the Democratic party started a leftward migration that made possible the future success of such notable reactionaries as Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh.

By the 1972 election, I had almost grown into draft age, which gave me a significant interest in who would win the presidential election (my lottery number was 10). Don McLean sang "American Pie," which turns out was not about pie at all, but music. Three Dog Night sang "Black and White," which was about exactly what it sounds like, and Eric Clapton pined over "Layla," a song for his true love who just happened to be married to one of his musical friends, George Harrison.

Politically, Nixon the republicrat had not figured out how to extricate us from 'Nam, and his opponent, George McGovern, was preaching get out at all costs, the day after the election, no matter what happens. In addition, McGovern was tagged as the "amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot" candidate. George Wallace, an ultraconservative Southern governor, was making progress with disaffected conservatives.

Does any of this sound familiar? It's almost as if you could just replace the candidate names and have almost the same situation politically as we had 35 years ago. Have we learned nothing in that time?

Maybe Young's statement about music's changing the world bears some thought, even for nonhippies. Did music change the world or did music change with the world? Perhaps it's all in how you see the world. As for me, I have come to realize the timeless truth of a stanza of "The Boxer," added to the '60s hit by gerontologically challenged Paul Simon for his 2003 I Can't Believe We are Still Singing the Same Songs tour with an equally aging Art Garfunkel, who should not be able to hit those notes at this stage in life.

The years are rolling by now, they are rocking even me

I am older than I once was but younger than I'll be

And that's not unusual

No it isn't strange

After changes upon changes things are more or less the same

After changes things are more or less the same

Michael Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Montgomery County.