Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[Blackjack]

Best way to quit is not to start.

Come on Lizzie, that's a little unreasonable

 

[Stearmen]

The More Thing Change

[video=youtube;q1iraQlG-Ck]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1iraQlG-Ck[/video]

 

[AtomicEraTom]

This makes me sad. There's always been a lot of racism in Milwaukee and my family has seen it first hand. Fear of being attacked for any reason (in this case, race) chases folks out of the city and your left with a mess. It's really a shame.

Want to see racism? In Chicago we've had what they are calling "flash mobs" groups of black youths that pick a spot to meet to attack white people. Of course the news media won't touch these incidents unless they're so blatant like the Milwaukee State Fair this last summer where 200 young black men blocked off the streets, jumped fences and just started beating on people. When it happened on Oak Street beach last summer, they said they closed the beach because "it was too hot" (what???) I was there, they closed it because about 50 young blacks were throwing frozen bottles of water at anyone who wasn't black. look it up on youtube, the videos are all there...

Because this thread is bringing me down, I thought I'd bring this happy clip back to the last page

[video=youtube;U9NGB9c8rCA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9NGB9c8rCA[/video]

 

[Deco-Doll-1928]

Because this thread is bringing me down, I thought I'd bring this happy clip back to the last page

You're video reminds me of the story of Pandora's Box. After all the evils were unleashed on the world, what was left in the box was a glimmer of hope.

 

[PoohBang]

You're video reminds me of the story of Pandora's Box. After all the evils were unleashed on the world, what was left in the box was a glimmer of hope.

if Lawrence Welk doing Celery Stalks at Midnight is our glimmer of hope, I say we're done.

 

[Captain Neon]

Helpful in the sense that the real phobia is more "we take care of our own" as opposed to "we're against anything different"

I grew up just out side a small town in Minnesota, but my parents did not grow up near the same small town. Before moving to this small town at 6, I had lived in a completely different state. I spoke with a slightly different accent and used some different idioms than my classmates. I never fit in. Since my younger brother was very athletic, I can't help but wonder if he was adopted, he was accepted by his peers. After 30 years, my parents are now integrated in to the community and accepted.

A few years ago, my wife (who grew up in Albany NY), and I moved in to a small town in northern Missouri. This town is so rural that the nearest Wal*Mart is a 1/2 hour drive away, and the nearest Burger King is an hour drive away. Having unwittingly taken a night shift position where my priors had never lasted a year, no one expected me to stay long, and also working night shift in a town that rolled up the sidewalks at 8 PM, I did not have the opportunity to plug in to any of the social structure of the town. After living there for 24 months, and exceeding all reasonable expectations, I completed the task for which I was really hired for (getting the local cannery GFSI certified twice), and was relieved of my duties. We have since moved to Topeka KS.

Our empty house has been on the market for over a year. The local contractor who owns several rental properties made us a low-ball offer on the house that we couldn't have accepted had we wanted to, less than we still owe on the house with out available cash to make up the significant difference. A few months later the local lawyer's nephew made us an offer for what we still owe on the house if we agreed to throw in a few things: patio furniture, deep freeze, and emergency generator. We emptied out the house the weekend before closing was supposed to take place, and placed every thing in to storage. Closing was delayed multiple times over the course of an other two months, until finally the buyer withdrew his offer. We ended up getting a few dollars of the earnest money.

At this point, we can't even get any one to rent the place from us, much less buy it. The real estate agent hasn't even shown the house to any one since June 2011. I, honestly, believe that the local contractor that we refused the initial sale has intimdated every one in this small town not to buy our house and since the real estate agent has a full catalogue of houses similar in cost to ours he doesn't care.

We are giving thought to just giving up the house to the bancque. The cost of utilities, storage, and our rent for our tiny apartment is less than renting a much larger house where we can keep, use, and enjoy the things that we currently have in storage.

The contractor will end up getting the property from the bancque at auction for probably less than his offer to us. He actually owns most of the block where our house is situated. He's built two brand new houses on the block and is renting them out at a loss just so that no one rents from us. In a larger community, one man would not have enough power to keep an entire community from buying a single house. He also wouldn't put so much effort in to such a petty issue.

After this whole situation, I will probably never move to an other community of less than 30K again. I hope I never have to move again, but thought Trenton MO would be the last move we would ever have to make again. We have plans to buy the 1936 airplane bungalow on a contract for deed, that we will start moving in to in February, after renting for a year.

 

[Blackjack]

Back to which era is preferable, this SAYS IT ALL...hahaha

[video=youtube;GJjUVIIYptE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJjUVIIYptE&feature=player_embedded[/video]

 

[AtomicEraTom]

He will always be my favorite. People mock his uptight persona, and his bubbly Champagne music; but you cannot deny the talent that his band had. He also managed to stay on television from 1955-1982. After he was cancelled during the 'rural purge' in 1971, he went on to have a hugely successful syndication run. His re-runs have been on PBS since 1987.

if Lawrence Welk doing Celery Stalks at Midnight is our glimmer of hope, I say we're done.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

My main complaint about Lawrence Welk is that his style is a bit too sugary sweet for my taste. Now very early Lawrence Welk is another story.

Lawrence Welk's Novelty Orchestra

Doin' The New Lowdown (1928)

Spiked Beer (1928)

 

[Retro_GI_Jane]

He will always be my favorite. People mock his uptight persona, and his bubbly Champagne music; but you cannot deny the talent that his band had. He also managed to stay on television from 1955-1982. After he was cancelled during the 'rural purge' in 1971, he went on to have a hugely successful syndication run. His re-runs have been on PBS since 1987.

Pretty sure he's still having a successful run even after his death, including his theatre in Branson.

I do know that I've rubbed off on my husband when he stops me in the bathroom mirror while I'm setting my hair and tells me that he misses watching Lawrence on tv. (We've made the decision to disconnect from the tv/cable a few months ago.)

And yes, while people might diss Welk, his show is a reflection of a bygone era...you can even see it when they show shots of the older audience waltzing in the aisles. Ballroom dancing is a forgotten talent, replaced by the grinding and gyrating to hip hop in some sweaty club and poked fun by the "reality stars" of Hollywood for ratings and a notch in their downward spiraling careers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Welk did what he did very well. People in the modern era, raised with a rock/blues sensibility, generally have no experience all with the European musette orchestras of the '20s or the hotel dance bands of the '30s, so they find Welk's music incomprehensible. But he came out of the musette tradition, and very successfully combined that with an Americanized style of dance music -- and then went on to combine *that* with the sort of show band/stage band presentation that had been very popular in theatres.

Welk gets a lot of grief from the hipper-than-thou crowd, but he wasn't a jazz musician, made no pretense of playing jazz, and there's no reason on earth other than a narrow-minded tunnel-vision view of music why he should be condemned for not playing jazz. He played what he played, he entertained a lot of people, and made a good living at it for a very long time. A lot of the self-proclaimed musical cognoscenti should be so talented.

That's another thing the modern era suffers from -- a smug conviction that any pre-baby-boomer popular culture was puerile, and thus beneath its respect. Nertz to that.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

People in the modern era, raised with a rock/blues sensibility, generally have no experience all with the European musette orchestras of the '20s or the hotel dance bands of the '30s, so they find Welk's music incomprehensible. But he came out of the musette tradition, and very successfully combined that with an Americanized style of dance music -- and then went on to combine *that* with the sort of show band/stage band presentation that had been very popular in theatres.

Personally, I think rock is the worst thing that ever happened to music.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

God bless you, Lizzie. You always have the words to say it just right.

Welk did what he did very well. People in the modern era, raised with a rock/blues sensibility, generally have no experience all with the European musette orchestras of the '20s or the hotel dance bands of the '30s, so they find Welk's music incomprehensible. But he came out of the musette tradition, and very successfully combined that with an Americanized style of dance music -- and then went on to combine *that* with the sort of show band/stage band presentation that had been very popular in theatres.

Welk gets a lot of grief from the hipper-than-thou crowd, but he wasn't a jazz musician, made no pretense of playing jazz, and there's no reason on earth other than a narrow-minded tunnel-vision view of music why he should be condemned for not playing jazz. He played what he played, he entertained a lot of people, and made a good living at it for a very long time. A lot of the self-proclaimed musical cognoscenti should be so talented.

That's another thing the modern era suffers from -- a smug conviction that any pre-baby-boomer popular culture was puerile, and thus beneath its respect. Nertz to that.

I know it's sugary sweet. That's what I like about Welk's music. Sometimes it's nice to just listen to something all bubbly and upbeat. When I'm in the worst of moods, I put on one of my Lawrence Welk Vinyls and it always manages to cheer me up.

My favorite when I'm feeling down, is also my ringtone on my cell phone:
[video=youtube;Jaosn-LkOjw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jaosn-LkOjw[/video]

My main complaint about Lawrence Welk is that his style is a bit too sugary sweet for my taste. Now very early Lawrence Welk is another story.

Lawrence Welk's Novelty Orchestra

Doin' The New Lowdown (1928)

Spiked Beer (1928)

 

[PoohBang]

who's putting down LW for not playing jazz? Did I miss something? and why all the heavy name calling there?

LW was the reason that kids that only got PBS in the 70's went outside and played.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

.
In short, Mr. Welk was / is / will eternally be cool for a good chunk of good folks, so he doesn't especially belong in this thread about uncoolness.


Guy Lombardo, anyone?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Guy Lombardo was Louis Armstrong's all-time favorite bandleader, and when he had his own orchestra in the thirties, he consciously modeled it on the Lombardo sound.

Nuf 'ced.

 

[Atticus Finch]

I'll bet this thread could go on forever listing the reasons why life was better in the golden era than now...and why life is better now than in the golden era.

I have to admit, though, I've been surprised by some of the things I've learned here. Here are a few of the things I didn't know...

I didn't know that schools are now more segregated than ever. I attended a segregated public school until 1966, when I was in the sixth grade. That school, and all other public schools around here, now appear to be integrated. Our general statutes sure say they should be.

I knew that racism is still alive, but I didn't know that one had to go the Southern States or California to see it. I've traveled a bit and I've seen it in other places, too. I’m even old enough to remember the bussing riots that occurred in the northeast (read: Boston) back when the public schools there were finally being desegregated…in the late seventies and early eighties.

I didn't know that crime was more prevalent now than in past years. I guess it depends on which past years one is using as a bench mark, but I thought the US crime rate was still decreasing…like it has been for decades.

I already knew that homicide was a leading cause of death among young black males...and I knew that more than one third of young black makes are under some sort of court supervision…but I always believed that the great majority of crime is intraracial. I think that may have been true in the golden era, too.

I didn’t know that the fifties and sixties was a better time to live than now. I wish that somebody had told me that, back in the fifties and sixties. I would have had even more fun than I did.

AF

 

[LizzieMaine]

I didn't know that schools are now more segregated than ever. I attended a segregated public school until 1966, when I was in the sixth grade. That school, and all other public schools around here, now appear to be integrated. Our general statutes sure say they should be.

Read it and weep.

I didn't know that crime was more prevalent now than in past years. I guess it depends on which past years one is using as a bench mark, but I thought the US crime rate was still decreasing…like it has been for decades.

Come up here and live. We're in desperate need of good prosecutors just now -- read up on bath salts first, though.

I didn’t know that the fifties and sixties was a better time to live than now. I wish that somebody had told me that, back in the fifties and sixties. I would have had even more fun than I did.

Some may think that, but I don't think any such thing. What I think is that now is nowhere near the level of advancement and enlightenment it's often presented to be, even in comparison with the past. And I think people today too often condemn the past simply because they're afraid of facing the evils of the present -- if you can look at the past and say, "well, at least we don't do THAT anymore," it's so much easier to rationalize and overlook the evils going on right outside your front door. If statutory segregation was abolished in the sixties, we don't have to worry about de facto segregation today, right? If "intraracial" crime has always happened, well, que sera sera, right? It's "their" problem, and let "them" solve it. Until we get to the point where we think of these things as American problems, not the problems of this group or that group, then all the progress we want to point to is just a drop in the pail.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Guy Lombardo was Louis Armstrong's all-time favorite bandleader, and when he had his own orchestra in the thirties, he consciously modeled it on the Lombardo sound.

Nuf 'ced.

True. My only qualm with Lombardo is his (incredibly lucrative) business association with Robert Moses, the villain of "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York". A small qualm, but still.

 

[HodgePodge]

.
Guy Lombardo, anyone?

Born here in London. Scarcely remembered though. All there is left is a bridge "named" after him. A few years ago there was some kind of squabble between the estate and the city about a tiny museum near the park (Wonderland Gardens) where Lombardo played many a New Year's Eve. The Dance Hall burned down, the museum closed, time marches on. :S