"There's definitely been a numbing," says Banhart. "Without a doubt there's been a feeling of being reduced to a tick -- a tick that's being flicked off by what we feel is this gargantuan beast that we stand no chance against. If that's the mentality then there won't be any change."
The last significant burst of political energy in US rock occurred in the autumn of 2004, when tens of thousands of people in swing states came to hear REM, Springsteen and Pearl Jam on the Vote For Change tour in the run-up to the presidential election. That the shows merely demonstrated the political impotence of those American idols was a major setback.
Earle, who angered rightwing Americans with his 2002 song John Walker's Blues, about the so-called American Taliban, says: "So many people were involved in the Vote For Change movement and we're trying to keep them, because we're experienced, we've had our hearts broken already. But it's hard to keep them when they've put in so much effort and taken so much shit and failed." Kramer agrees: "I think there's a hardness and a cynicism in the air," he says. "And anyway, this guy's only got two more years. His time is over, so everyone's just staying at home and licking their wounds."
The second crucial distinction to be made between the anti-war movements of 1966 and 2006 is, of course, the draft itself, something that Kramer experienced first-hand. "I don't think most people really care that much about the war," he argues. "This war does not touch people in their hearts, in their stomachs. Vietnam did touch people where they lived, because it touched every young man in America. It was mandatory, it was the law of the land, and it touched you."
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