You still can't beat those fab foursomes who gave us the sounds of the 60s!

THE 1960s was the 20th century's most important decade in the annals of culture and social change.

- Fred Hughes - Historian and author

While successive eras have brought about their own changes, there's no doubt the sounds of the 60s continue to influence and drive the direction of today's popular culture and counterculture.

Sixties music gave voice to the silent masses, unlocking the formerly accepted shackles of stifled expression. It was the golden age, a time of opportunity, a time when the spirits of art, of music and literature, were released. To be part of it, all you needed was a guitar and a drumkit.

Music in its various forms, exploded in the 1960s, aroused simultaneously from the suppressed streets of the working-classes and the sleepy tree-lined avenues of suburbia. There wasn't a town in the country that wasn't involved in the collective bang and boom that shaped the nation's musical songbook. Regional accents roared from the Mersey, the Tyne, the Thames, and the Trent, finding homes in the sedate dignity of municipal halls, in backrooms of pubs and workingmen's clubs, and improvised nightclubs.