Am I The Only Dinosaur Here?

[Winston Carter]

I'm probably in the same age range as you. I graduated high school in 1969. I've read that people tend to "bond" with the music and cultural artifacts of their impressionable years. I'm a little damaged, in that I not only enjoy the music of the late 60s and early 70s, particularly that of the "British invasion" and the San Francisco sound of that time, but I also find listening to modern "adult contemporary" (read: electronic instrumental) highly enjoyable.

There's another side to the story of that time, though. I just finished watching Ken Burns's 10-episode saga, "The Vietnam War." I remember how divisive that war was. Images of executions, naked children burned by napalm, dead students at Kent State contrast the "Summer of Love" and Woodstock. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. Robert F. Kennedy, all dead at the hands of assassins. Much of the turmoil of that time inspired the music: For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield), Ohio (Crosy, Stills & Nash), and music inspired the turmoil (terrorist underground group the Weathermen took their name from Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues). The two factions of that era defined many of us.

Now, we're in our sixties and seventies. We've seen a lot over the last fifty years: Man landing on the moon. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The invention of electronic musical instruments (Moog was ahead of his time). And, of course, cell phones and the Internet. We are now the old-timers and for better or worse, the younger generation is taking over.

The rock music of the 60's and early 70's was the best. Then it spilled over into country with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, etc. and that was the best times for them. Music hasn't got any better since then. Some say that it was the drugs that inspired their thoughts.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was a youngster at about the same time, and simply loathed the period. I listened to hot jazz 78s in the 1970s, took my drivers test in a Flivver, and had an Orthophonic Victrola in my college dormitory room. Played some C melody sax and tenor banjo as well as a little uke. I spent my life running away from the music, clothes, cars and all pop culture of that period. Occasionally a 70s or 80s song will evoke a pleasant memory, but only occasionally. For me, 1978 can be better evoked by early Duke Ellington, or 1980 by Gene Goldkette or Sam Lanin, for that was the music that I was listening to at that time. The 1970s were the days of riding a struggle buggy coupé up the college hill in reverse, just as the early 80s bring to mind a massive apple green Paige-Detroit Eight which had jump seats but couldn't pass a filling station...I

I don't imagine there were too many people my age who looked forward to staying up late Saturday night to listen to "Joe Franklin's Memory Lane" on WOR, but that was me in that period. There were certain records that old Joe would play a lot that evoke the period for me even today -- whenever I hear Larry Clinton and Bea Wain's 1938 recording of "True Confession" I'm a teenager again. I didn't know anything from rock music, and still don't, but I knew what I liked. "Martin Paints, my friends...." And then there was "The Harley Show, Music Out of Baltimore" on WBAL, and Hazen Schumacher's "Jazz Revisited" on NPR, and William B. Williams on WNEW, and on and on and on. The last gasp of when it was still easy to find good music on the radio.

That said, there was some very fine television in the 1970s, most of which was written by people with deep roots in the Era. "All in the Family," "Barney Miller," "Sanford and Son," and "The Bob Newhart Show" were all a cut above the jiggly crap served up for the Clearasil set, and I never missed them. And when I see an episode or two today on one of those high-number cable channels I'm just as impressed with the quality of the writing and acting as I was when I was fourteen. Some of it continues to inform my own writing style today.

One of my very favorite TV shows in 1970 was called "Happy Days." Not the dumb "Richie and Fonzie in the Fifties" show of a few years later, but an hour-long variety show on CBS hosted by Louis Nye, featuring as many surviving 1930s performers as they could fit in the studio. I haven't seen a full episode since it originally aired, and I imagine if I did find one I'd be embarrassed at how much puerile and forced "nostalgia" it featured, but when I was a kid it was the first real exposure I had to some of the greatest musical performers of the Era -- Goodman, Basie and Ellington were all featured, vigorous and in person, and I knew right there that I was listening to the real stuff. There were a few years in the early seventies when the 1930s were "cool" again, and I was right there in the right place at the right time to soak it all up. That's "the seventies" to me, not maxi-dresses and mattress-cover suits.

 

[Fading Fast]

...William B. Williams on WNEW....

Wow, that sparked a memory, we had William B. Williams and "The Make Believe Ballroom" on all the time in the '70s.

It's funny, but a lot of the music WBW was playing in the '70s was "newer" then than classic rock is now.

And in my bifurcated youth split between my Dad / Grandmother's Golden Era world and the "outside" contemporary world, Dan Ingram (said as one word by him) - a pretty big NYC popular music radio DJ from WABC 77AM - just past away last month.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

You know you're getting old when;

for better or worse, the younger generation is taking over.

Whadaya mean wrong thread !

 

[Coalchak]

Stuck in the 60s and 70s blues, eh? Eternal adolescence in the age of the new and the Now.
I dig.
Grew up in the 70s - 80s. But my town was a bit backwards, musically speaking. In 1982, we picked our prom song by vote. At least four Beatles songs on the ballot.
So we wound up with “Yesterday” as the prom tune. Really. Kinda depressing lyrics for a prom song.
I have read a convincing article that in fashion and music, we as a culture are stuck in the 90s. Corporate Casualism. Jeans, cargo shorts, T-shirts, ball caps with logos, sneakers or Vans still remain popular fashion. 18 years and only the slogans on the hoodies or T-shirts have changed.
So stuck in the 60s and 70s is not so bad. Times of change and revolutions! Helter Skelter! Pink Floyd. But bad coffee.
The weed is better now, too!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[HudsonHawk]

I think the best baseball uniforms were the 60s. Couldn’t stand the 70s clown suits. The 90s were good too, until they devolved into the pajama look. I like the trend of blousing the pants these days, but loathe white shoes.

 

[Musher]

I recently bought a DVD of the Monkees first season of their tv show. I love the mod shirts they wear on the show. I was 11 in 1966 when the show came out. So no, you are not the only one.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the best baseball uniforms were the 60s. Couldn’t stand the 70s clown suits. The 90s were good too, until they devolved into the pajama look. I like the trend of blousing the pants these days, but loathe white shoes.

I strongly approve of Red Sox infielder Brock Holt's pants -- they aren't clowny, but they aren't skin-tight ultra-tailored, either. If he wore them about two inches longer, and bloused, they'd be perfect.

Oh, and they also need to get rid of those dumb all-red socks and bring back the correct blue-and-white striped tops.

Yeah, Tony has the right idea. Be like Tony.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Oh, and they also need to get rid of those dumb all-red socks and bring back the correct blue-and-white striped tops.

More stirrup, less sock.

 

[St. Louis]

I'm a dinosaur for decades that happened before I was born: the 1930s and 1940s. I cannot force myself to enjoy or even feign an interest in modern music, fashions, or (most) technology. Thank goodness for computers, though.

 

[belfastboy]

On the contrary, society now is much more open as a result of the pioneering efforts you mentioned. Much of what people say, do, and act today is stuff that other folks wouldn't put up with for a second 40 years ago. Today, it seems that anything goes.

As a baby boomer immersed in the 1960's I carry much guilt for the damage my cohort of that generation wrought in the culture.. That today "anything goes" is def not a plus and certainly not a thing of which I am proud to have play a part.

 

[Coalchak]

Is it possible to be nostalgic for decades that occurred before you were born?
A time of Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five bringing Jazz into its adulthood? Of proud scofflaws crowding into mobster clubs for bootleg booze and beautiful music as long as they remembered the password and payed the cover charge?
Or a time when big business and banks laid a poison egg full of other people’s money away. When Wall St. ruined the economy and gambled the jobs of our forefathers away? When soup lines and welfare
When a true party of the people took on the rich and reformed the system for the benefit of the majority of the people and their unions? When our nation united against fascist aggression and toppled the dictators in WWII?
Afterword, when a booming economy raised wages and living conditions for rich and poor? When unity and optimism created a new kind of shared prosperity? When men wore wide lapels, Fedoras wide and tall, wide shoulders padded to help them carry the world forward? BOLD!
All the way, eventually to the Moon? To” ‘scuze me while I kiss the sky!”
Why not?
Why me?
Why not you?
Then prosperity shifted. Tilted like a pinball machine set up on half-capsized yacht. Tilted in favor of the rich again as people forgot what the Great Depression was and when.
In that way, my nostalgia makes sense.
As we the people once again,
Lost our memory and then,
Became slaves and peasants again.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't have a problem with the social changes of the 1960s. Many of them were long overdue. And many of the others were an inevitable consequence of the nation's embrace of the military-industrial complex in the post WWII era. We stood on the top of the mountain in 1945 and looked into the promised land -- and then decided that the crypto-fascists knew best.

That was the wind we sowed. The 1960s were the whirlwind we reaped.

I have no use at all for the drug culture of the time -- I stand with Stokley Carmichael and Malcolm X on that point, both of whom denounced mind-altering drugs as counterrevolutionary, and I think the decades since have proven them right. But I refuse to point fingers at "flea bitten hippies" as being the origin of that culture, not when the notorious Dr. Leary, a bona-fide member of the so-called "Greatest Generation," was a Harvard researcher funded by corporate and military interests, and not when the Nazi-riddled CIA was deeply involved in psychedelic research during the 1950s. That's not conspiracy-mongering, those are facts.

 

[MisterCairo]

I recently bought a DVD of the Monkees first season of their tv show. I love the mod shirts they wear on the show. I was 11 in 1966 when the show came out. So no, you are not the only one.

What's a DVD?

Kidding aside, as a kid (early 70s), my friend Billy and I used to do the "Monkees walk" together, that bit where the four of them were arms over shoulders, walking one leg in front of their neighbour, on a beach if I recall.

That show, along with Gilligan's Island, is one we are looking to rent to show to our girls.

Good times...

 

[Zombie_61]

 

[scottyrocks]

No wonder they went extinct.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I know a lot of old-lady smokers with faces just like that.

 

[belfastboy]

I don't have a problem with the social changes of the 1960s. Many of them were long overdue. And many of the others were an inevitable consequence of the nation's embrace of the military-industrial complex in the post WWII era. We stood on the top of the mountain in 1945 and looked into the promised land -- and then decided that the crypto-fascists knew best.

That was the wind we sowed. The 1960s were the whirlwind we reaped.

I have no use at all for the drug culture of the time -- I stand with Stokley Carmichael and Malcolm X on that point, both of whom denounced mind-altering drugs as counterrevolutionary, and I think the decades since have proven them right. But I refuse to point fingers at "flea bitten hippies" as being the origin of that culture, not when the notorious Dr. Leary, a bona-fide member of the so-called "Greatest Generation," was a Harvard researcher funded by corporate and military interests, and not when the Nazi-riddled CIA was deeply involved in psychedelic research during the 1950s. That's not conspiracy-mongering, those are facts.

A hilarious scene in Ken Kesey's documentary of "The Electric Acid....." was when the bus finally arrived at Leary's compound in NY State. A busload of freaks in the midst of an acid high arrive to a roomful of tweed wearing, pipe smoking east coast intellectuals. It was as if each had just landed on Mars. Two solitudes.

 

[Zombie_61]

I know a lot of old-lady smokers with faces just like that.

And almost all of them have that gravelly "older Sylvia Sidney/Brenda Vaccaro/Suzanne Pleshette" voice. A friend and I refer to them as "smoker moms".

 

[fashion frank]

Well I know they were ruff time’s, but hooked on the 30’s and 40’s ! You name it I like it ,the cars, the clothes , the music but I have to admit it’s nice to like it from the convenience of 2018 as I sit here with my tablet and writing this however I’d trade it all for that era . I got the car ,got the clothes,got the house and I think what I like about it most is that at least people had some sembeince of “ class “ , I saw a women show up for court the other day in shorts and flip flops ! This move strikes a cord with me I’d love to do that ! All the Best Fashion Frank