Just for Fun on a Friday. Not very stripclub related.
AbbieNormal
Maryland
Forgive the more general nature of this post, but we have a wide demographic here and I thought I'd post something for fun. A friend and I have a theory that decades are not always 10 years long, and don't always happen from say 1960 to 1970. Various decades can different starting and ending points for things like music, politics, fashion, movies and cars. I have a few examples of what I think are starting and ending points, or icons of a decade in various fields. Feel free to correct me or add your own.
Politics
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The 50's began with the election of Eisenhower in 1952 and ended with Kennedy's election in 1960.
The 60's ended with Nixon's resignation in 1974.
The 70's ended with Reagan's election in 1980.
The 80's ended with the Republican takeover of congress in 1994.
The 90's ended September 11, 2001.
Music
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The 50's began with Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" in 1954 and ended when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan February 9, 1964.
The 60's ended the summer of 1969 with the dual events of Woodstock and the recording of Abbey Road.
The 70's began January 12, 1969 with the release of "Led Zeppelin".
Fashion
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The 50's it's the poodle skirt for women and the leather jacket and jeans (ala Brando) for men.
Characterized in the 70's by the leisure suit.
The 80's by punk and Michael Jackson's zipper covered jacket.
Politics
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The 50's began with the election of Eisenhower in 1952 and ended with Kennedy's election in 1960.
The 60's ended with Nixon's resignation in 1974.
The 70's ended with Reagan's election in 1980.
The 80's ended with the Republican takeover of congress in 1994.
The 90's ended September 11, 2001.
Music
----------------------
The 50's began with Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" in 1954 and ended when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan February 9, 1964.
The 60's ended the summer of 1969 with the dual events of Woodstock and the recording of Abbey Road.
The 70's began January 12, 1969 with the release of "Led Zeppelin".
Fashion
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The 50's it's the poodle skirt for women and the leather jacket and jeans (ala Brando) for men.
Characterized in the 70's by the leisure suit.
The 80's by punk and Michael Jackson's zipper covered jacket.
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37 comments
I agree with your earlier assessment of Count Basie's band, too. Anybody who digs old, bluesy rock 'n' roll like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and early Rolling Stones should be able to enjoy Basie's pre-war recordings from the word go. Those cats rocked like a motherfucker. (Pardon me if I appeared to fall into the obnoxious boomer habit of justifying older styles by saying they "made Rock possible". I didn't mean it that way at all.)
FONDL, I envy you for your memories. A lot of those are musicians I could have seen if I'd appreciated them like I do now, even Duke Ellington. It's too bad your regrets make you sad when you hear jazz. I knocked around in a few rock bands as a kid, but I never liked the grind of being in band. And I can't say I had any talent to regret squandering, except maybe as a dancer.
Oh, and I know and like The Coasters, but my all-time fave harmony group is the Ink Spots.
I also can empathise about some of the old favorites taking you back through sad / rough times. It is the same way for me. Music has always been such a big part of my life. I can't remember a day when I didn't have something playing. God how it marks the time and the corisponding events in my life... Oh well - oh hell.
Parodyman, I'm not one-dimensional either, I enjoy all kinds of music as long as it's well done. In fact I rarely listen to jazz anymore and am not familiar with the more recent stars, for two reasons. First, my wife doesn't like jazz. But more important, listening to jazz makes me sad because there's a part of me that will always wish I had chosen that path when I got to the big fork in the road. I know I was born with a very rare talent and to just let it go, I'll always wonder what might have been.
This thread has brought back some memories that I thought I'd forgotten. Like seeing Duke Ellington and Billy Eckstine at the old Valley Forge Music Fair. Like seeing Ella and Oscar peterson there years later. Like seeing Fats Domino, a huge favorite of mine, in the early 50s along with a bunch of other rock stars of that era including I think Buddy Holly although I was never a fan of his. In fact even as a kid I always preferred black R&B to white R&R which I thought was mostly crap until Elvis came along. I still think most of the white stuff is crap. (My wife says I must have a grandparent I haven't told her about.)
Sorry to go on about race and I hope no one is offended, but race and music are tightly intertwined for me. I'm sure most of you have no idea what things were like before the mid-60s but it was very different. When I was in college we had a black guitar player for awhile who was a close friend of mine. One night we were driving back to Penn State from a gig at Lehigh University and we stopped in a club in Harrisburg for a drink (none of us were 21 but nobody cared in those days.) The black guy wouldn't get out of the car, saying he didn't feel like a drink, while the rest of us went in. It wasn't until years later that I realized he was afraid they wouldn't serve him because he was black and he didn't want to embarass the rest of us. I used to play at jam sessions at his fraternity on Saturday afternoons - there were probably 300 people there and I was the only white guy and I loved it, there was so much rhythm and energy in the room, it's hard to describe. Later when I was in the navy I used to hang out in a black club in Newport that always had great R&B bands from Boston and Providence. Usually a Hammond organ, tenor sax, drums, and male singer, with a couple of female singers backing him up. Some of the best music I've ever heard. I even sat in once. I can't imagine doing somethng like that today. How times change. Jazz bands were probably the first area of our society that was integrated. It breaks my heart to hear what passes for music in the black community today.
Chitown makes a good point about Watergate being the beginning of the 70's. I still think of the 60's being bracketed by Kennedy and Nixon, so I keep the Nixon presidency in the 60's. Worth some thought though...
The 90's starting with Clinton is something I've argued about with friends, but I still think all the politics we remember started with the clash between Clinton and Gingrich, so I think we need both in power before the politics of the 90's fully metasticizes.
As for punk, I just recall that in the late 70's and early 80's a lot of friends insisted on the "importance" of some really bad music because of the "authenticity". The bands and fans all started their revolutionary poses and played and went to their anti-nuke rallies, showted a lot about the establishment. Meanwhile I liked bands like The Talking Heads and The Police, who were part of the same type of back to basics move the punks were but certainly weren't punk bands, but were far better musicians and wrote a lot better songs. They and others of the era have survived a lot better.
Confining my analysis to decades in which I have actually lived, I would say that
The 60s started with Kennedy's assassination (remember, this was a man who ran on the basis that the US was "UNDERmilitarized, and governed on the basis of tax cuts);
From a political point of view, the 70s started with Watergate. From an economic point of view, the 70s, with their spirit of pessimism and defeatism, started with hyperinflation and the Arab oil embargo, both about 1973.
From a political point of view, the 80s started with the ascent of Ronaldus Magnus and the expulsion of six leading liberals from the Senate. From an economic point of view, the 80s started with the bull market that immediately followed the "tough medicine" recession of 1882.
The nineties started with Bill Clinton.
The current decade started on 9/11.
I agree with you, jazz should be heard live in a small smoke-filled club. I had an apartment in Manhattan at one time and lived close to both the Five Spot and the Blue Note and hung out in both regularly. I heard many top groups there including favorites Art Blakey and Zoot Simms. The only favorite group I missed was Max Roach-Clifford Brown probably because Brown died so young. The best jazz trumpet ever.
I also lived not far from Hershey PA when I was young and in those days they had big bands all summer long and I used to go every weekend. My favorite was Stan Kenton who I probably saw 8 or 10 times. His lead alto, Lenny Neihaus, was just wonderful, and I loved their arrangements which, with the possible exception of Count Basie (who I saw a couple of times also but not at Hershey - they only booked white bands), are the best ever for a big band. "Sorrento" with Vido Musso on Tenor, wow!
I started out on clarinet and picked up tenor sax in high school, which is why Benny Goodman and Coleman Hawkins were such favorites. I eventually switched to keyboards when the sax went out of style. At one point I thought of making music a career but I saw too many musicians better than me who never went anywhere. It's a tough way to make a living.
Sure, I've heard Coleman Hawkins, but it's hard nowadays to appreciate the impact he had in his time. Probably because the saxophone style he originated became so widely adopted that it sounds like the only natural way to play. Frankly, my ear for even identifying individual players is pretty poor, let alone appreciating what makes some of them special.
FONDL, did you say you were a professional musician? What instrument, and what kind of engagements, if you don't mind telling?
Years later my partents called and asked if my wife and I wanted to go see a free outdoor concer ot the Beeny Goodman band. Of course no one expected the man himself to be there, he had been retired for many years. But he did live in the area so just maybe ... Second set starts and out he comes onto the stage and we're sitting on the lawn about 20 feet away, hardly anyone is there. He played nonstop for nearly 4 hours. It may have been the last concert he ever played.
I used to go to top jazz clubs all the time - Bluenote Cafe, Village Vanguard, and a couple others who's names I've forgotten, and I've seen nearly all the jazz greats. But nothing comes close to those two times. My two all-time idols playing private concerts just for me.
Punk died a quick, merciful death because, of course, it was a dead end. As with most styles, however, I find punk's pure expression a lot less interesting in the long run than the hybrids that grew out of it. Obviously, the UK and NYC post-punk styles, and all the descendants that touch on vertually everything still being done. It's become a cliche to say it, but I hear as much of the punk spirit today in some platinum selling rap, R&B and pop as in any indie label screamos with distorted guitars.
Maybe we could discuss kitty styles, like in the 60's unseen, in the 70's a full bush, the 80's trimmed, the 90's partially shaved and trimmed to the landing strip, and in the 00's shaved completely.
I favor a view, not too different from yours, that each decade is culturally split roughly in the middle. Especially since the 60s, each decade has had two distinct characters, neither of which can represent the whole 10 years. Were the 60's the time when everything was trim and NEAT? (60-64: skinny ties, pageboys, girl groups, beat groups in matching suits, Brillo boxes) Or when it all got SWIRLY? (65-69: mods then hippies, paisley, bell bottoms, psychedelia)
Sometimes, the first half carries on from the previous decade, popularizing underground and subcultural trends. Then the second half finds its identity, often in reaction to the first half and the previous decade. A sort of dialectic of zeitgeists occurs, sometimes with the reaction occurring in the first half. As often as not, the latter half matches up better with the first half of the following decade. Late 70's disco & punk carries into early 80s new wave synth pop & MTV more than it coheres with early 70s down to earth, back to nature, harvest gold and avocado green.
So, any arbitrary 10-year span makes as much sense as a true decade, and a 5-year unit holds together even better. There's also the 20-year cycle, where the culture of the decade before last predictably gets revived on schedule. It all began with the 50s rock 'n' roll revival of the 70s, and continues to this day with across-the-board 80s revival already losing steam to make way for a 90s revival.
Then there's the theory of a 7-Year Cycle in pop music, which goes:
1956: Elvis
1963: Beatles
1970: Beatles break-up (or ??, I forget)
1977: Punk, Saturday Night Fever
1984: ??, I forget (a year late to be Michael Jackson)
1991: Grunge
1998: Teen Pop
2005: who knows??
I believe this was first advanced after grunge broke, and traced back to '63 & '56. Like virtually all such explanations, it conveniently fits patterns to "important" mileposts after the fact, ignoring bigger trends, the most obvious being the biggest music trend of the past 30 year, rap. It's like conspiracy theories or biblical prophesy claims. And, needless to say, none of this ever has much to do with the way anybody who's not on TV or in magazines actually lives and dresses. But, hey, it's all just for fun and wasting time on a Saturday morning.
The funniest comment I heard from the no weathermen tv stations there was "warning, do not talk to mainlanders about wind chill factors here in Hawaii." It was in the single digits back home and my teacher said she really felt sorry for me when she heard Oahu had record cold at 54 degrees.
My older brother had the joy of witnessing the first and major eruption back in 1980.
I believe it was also in the 80's I got to see a tornado form nearby Cape Kennedy from the tour bus. I wish I remember which shuttle was getting prepared to launch. I was thinking it might have blown up.
In the 1990's I saw a freak storm in southern Florida in July make in rain all day and turn what should have been a hot day to a cold day with temps in the 50's.
I once lived in NC and only went to the outer banks once or twice. The first time I went, a storm appeared and flooded everything which made my father not a very happy camper since all the hotels were packed and prices went up.
In college I once had a dustdevil form around me while I was walking back to my dorm. It was only about 5 or 6 feet in diameter and I was in the exact center and it moved with me for about 10 to 30 seconds until I reached the area next to the building. I didn't care for all the dust I ran into though when I walked out of it.
In the 80's when I was in highschool, I once had a tornado fly right over my head above our house and knock down some huge pines at roof level. That wasn't funny.
As a little kid, I remember something strange my mother told me. Just think of the things you might imagine if your mother told you she keeps track of the age of the anti-christ because he was born the same year as you. I suppose if I told enough stories and had something strange happen, someone might get spooked and that would be amusing. I don't know, maybe getting told something like that as a little kid makes me remember every single little strange thing.
At least I haven't seen any glowing red light bulbs or doors opening by themselves lately.
I'd also throw in two other music periods during which first Motown and later old-time rock-and-roll reigned supreme, although I'm not sure when those would begin and end. Otherwise I think what you have is a pretty good reconstruction of the major eras since WWII.
Just an opinion, not that I've thought about it a lot.
As for the music, that was my era, and I'm sorry to say a lot of it really sucked. Some stands the test of time, some still is nostalgic, most just sucked. We could get into the other genres of the time, new wave, ska, etc, but overall punk died a quick, early, and well deserved death in my opinion.