"These are the best days of our lives. That's a terrible thing to know."

Pirate Radio (formerly known as The Boat the Rocked) is, for Boomers like me, a look back at those days which in many ways possibly were the best days of our lives. The film is set in 1966 when rock music was coming into its own. Rock wasn't allowed on British radio, however. So entrepreneurs set up radio stations on ships anchored offshore that broadcast the music to an eager audience.

The film portrays the government trying to find a way to shut down the stations. As station owner Quinton remarks, "Governments loathe people being free." This sets up the story to be a celebration of the mythology of the sixties. All of the things that we have come to see as the highlights of that time are reflected in the story: the anti-establishment sentiment, searching for freedom of expression and its byproduct, the search for sexual freedom, and the sense of everything being important—especially the music. This is a look back through rose-colored granny glasses. (Yes, we really did wear such things. Worse, we thought they were cool.)

The film relies on rather broad caricatures. The governmental minister who targets the stations is extremely conservative and proper. (Ironically, he is said to be a loose parody of Tony Benn, a very liberal British politician.) The DJs are also fairly common stereotypes of rock and roll radio types. Plus, there is the wayward boy kicked out of school for misbehaving who is getting a new kind of education onboard.

The film is great fun. I know it dates me to say that the music and the clothes bring back wonderful memories. It all looks so amusing at this distance looking back. That makes the quote about "the best days of our lives" a bit poignant. I don't know if those were the best days of my life—we manage to blot out much of the turmoil of the past. But certainly in retrospect it seems like those were indeed good days.

The second part of that quote is where the more important issue arises. To know that things will not be so good ever again is not just a "terrible thing to know," it is an opening to despair. Perhaps one of the things about that time that was both one of the blessings of those days as well as one of the problems was the sense of living for the moment. It seemed that everything mattered a bit more because we were living in times that we believed would change the world. We thought our music would change the world. We thought our ideas would change the world. We thought our politics would change the world. And, you know, we were right. What we failed to take into account is that generations before us also changed the world, and the generations that are following us are changing the world as well.

The Psalmist wrote: This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. The perhaps mythical joie de vivre of the sixties that is reflected in Pirate Radio does, I think, capture that biblical view. It is a view that can make all our days the best days of our lives. And that would not be not a terrible thing to know.