David Porter » Entries tagged with "1960s"
Musicians of the 1960s: 21st Century Relevance and Respect
Many of those singer-songwriters, performers who used talents to launch careers four decades ago, can still speak with weighty voices to today’s youngsters. Jack Madani’s Pop and Rock Music in the 60s: A Brief History gave a concise account of the main artists, the movers and shakers who led up to the explosion of 60s’ music. Starting with the roots of rock and roll, before the decade began, right up to the early 70s, when the dream began to unravel. Many stars who shone, particularly in the late 60s, are no longer around for whatever reason. Their brightness has dimmed. Death took Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and John Lennon, for example. Who knows what they would have achieved musically if they had lived? Others are still doing gig circuits, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Street Art Either Vandalizes or Livens Up the Locality
Guerilla art, graffiti, flash-mobbing, tagging, defacing buildings are judgment terms describing both the phenomena and just how high temperatures can get. Street art encompasses live, temporary performance theatre at one extreme, and semi-permanent drawings, cartoons, captions, slogans on walls, canal banks, buses and trains, at the other. It may be argued that posters on lampposts and hoardings are equally part of the total urban street environment, the street furniture that makes up what people accept as public streets. Video installations and laser projections on landmark buildings, such as the Berlin Festival of Lights 2008/2009, can also be part of what is termed contemporary street art. In the main, however, people understand it is the unapproved appearance of something that may be funny, shocking, sarcastic, clever, compelling, ugly or disfiguring, according to viewpoint … Read entire article »
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Why Hair, the Tribal Rock Musical, Just Keeps on Grooving
After a 2009 US hit run, Hair in 2010 is rocking London’s West End. This revival says a lot about both cultural history and political performance. The New York Times called it: “Thrilling! Intense, unadulterated joy”. The UK’s Daily Mail said, “Enough mega wattage to light up London”. How can a 1967 hippie-fest be a hit on both sides of the Atlantic in the hard-bitten, austere early years of the 21st century? Hair: the Tribal Love-Rock Musical is about The Summer of Love (1966, USA, 1967, UK) and a hippie community of both sexes and all races protesting about drafting into the US army, singing songs that chimed with the spirit of a new era, the dawning of the age of Aquarius, with flowers in the hair and much Eastern religion thrown … Read entire article »
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The Merseybeat Sound and Poetry Rocked the 1960s
Liverpool, on the banks of the Mersey, made an artistic contribution to the 1960s’ ethos, unmatched by any other UK city. It’s still the home of culture. Over 200 miles from UK capital, London, Liverpool was relatively isolated as it grew into what was known as The Port of a Thousand Ships, with vital industrial and commercial lifeblood supporting a huge labour force of rich cultural diversity. From across the waters US influence was enormous, especially in music. As the 1960s got under way, new technologies plus youngsters’ changing attitudes to cultural values, authority, drugs, entertainment, self-expression and equal rights caught on. Liverpool had a distinctiveness that set it apart. There was a buzzing nightlife and a vibrant club and music scene. The Beatles The … Read entire article »
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60s’ Pirate Radio Revolutionised British Popular Broadcasting
Ship-based pirate radio was so successful in the Swinging Sixties, it forced the BBC to create Radio 1 & Parliament to legalise commercial radio in Britain. Offshore radio was part of the burgeoning 50s/60s pop industry. It satisfied a thirst for music from increasingly affluent, independent teenagers, who wanted to buy singles and albums, and carry music around as transistor radios caught on. The BBC provided a mere hour a week for new music on the Light Programme, but only from established artists; record companies tightly controlled music performance. Teenagers relied on Radio Luxembourg, only available at night and often crackly. From 1960 they had Radio Veronica, a ship off Holland that provided pop music with Dutch DJs. Radio Caroline, 199 in the Medium … Read entire article »
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Myths and Truths About the 1960s
1960s: Peering Through the Rosy-Tinted Mists of Time at Iconic Decade. They say if you remember the 60s, you weren’t there. But that’s just one untruth about a decade that is cited as inspirational or source of all problems by many today. How one views the 1960s, particularly in the UK, is both a philosophical thing and where people stand on the political divide. Many political, industrial, banking, education, media leaders are of an age to remember their youth fondly or recall their parents’ affection for those heady days. People who lived through the 1960s and many younger people today, think well of the fashions, the tolerance, social reform/transformation, new liberal ideas, “sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll” and England winning the football World Cup. Terms also associated with that decade (roughly 1964 … Read entire article »
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Psychedelia: The Hippie Art Legacy
All the Rage in the 1960s, It Was Both Mind-Expanding and Delusional Psychedelia, loved by hippies as an explanation and by detractors as a term of abuse, came to be a catch-all descriptor for hippie ’60s culture. Psychedelic came from Greek words meaning psyche, or soul and to manifest. This became mind-expanding, or a way of saying ‘find yourself’, without ever having to fully explain. Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out US Professor, writer, futurist and advocate of the therapeutic, spiritual and emotional benefits of LSD, Timothy O’Leary, coined the phrase, ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out’, which epitomised the drugs culture in the mid to late ’60s. It was often an excuse for non-conformist behaviour, which became known as the counter-culture. A psychedelic (hallucinatory) experience is … Read entire article »
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101