GlamourFilter: Opening Night at La Scala. Pictures from
La Scala's opening nights, dating through the fifties and sixties. (Main story
here, slideshow
here, those links in Italian, but easy enough to figure out for non-speakers.) Pictures of Callas, Toscanini, Princess Grace, Dick and Liz, and many more, all looking impossibly fab and glamourous. (
Via the always informative and entertaining
Opera Chic.)
posted by Capt. Renault
on Dec 13, 2012 -
10 comments
Whicker's World was a BBC documentary series that ran from 1959 to 1988, presented by Alan Whicker. In 1967, Whicker traveled to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco to examine the phenomenon of hippies.
Part One introduces us to The Love Generation.
Part Two reveals that The Grateful Dead smoked marijuana.
Part Three features freak-out dance performances and a hippy not on LSD. In
Part Four, a woman in a hammock leads to teeny boppers violating the fuzz and the natural antagonism between the hippies and police.
Part Five is on LSD.
Part Six has many self-indulgent hippies.
[more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet
on Apr 21, 2012 -
25 comments
Bands often don't seem to be able to play on stage the way they did on their album; and we accept that for a lot of reasons having to do with the conditions, the production facilities and the sheer number of takes that were probably involved. But for a whole generation of hit music, there was often a more basic reason:
it wasn't them playing on the album in the first place.
For nearly a decade, if you were an L.A. producer and you wanted to record a hit single, you'd call in The Wrecking Crew. Members of The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and The Mamas and the Papas would step aside as The Wrecking Crew laid down the instrumental tracks. Then, the members of the main band would come back to add the vocals on top.
The above link goes to the OPB radio story I listened to this morning, with an embedded player.
Official site for the book.
posted by George_Spiggott
on Apr 2, 2012 -
64 comments
My purpose here has been to inquire into mediated understandings of Hindley, and to question how popular texts delineate between the deeds of a human being and the way those deeds are culturally inscribed. The task is neither conclusive nor complete, for monsters are illusive. There is always some part of them that evades both enunciation and comprehension.
posted by Trurl
on Oct 30, 2011 -
15 comments
The Meaning of Box 722. Letters to Senator
Paul Douglas of Illinois in reaction to the 1966 civil rights bill, particularly the federal ban on racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. At the time, Chicago was the most segregated city in the north, with boundaries enforced by mob violence. By
Rick Perlstein, author of
Nixonland.
When I started researching NIXONLAND I knew the congressional elections of 1966 would form a crucial part of the narrative. They'd never really been examined in-depth before, but by my reckoning they were the crucial hinge that formed the ideological alignment we live in now. Via Brad DeLong.
posted by russilwvong
on Jun 5, 2008 -
15 comments
Legendary artist Alton Kelley created a graphic style that rocked the world beginning in the psychedelic sixties. His
concert posters, logo designs, LP album covers, and fine art have forevermore defined that time.
Kelley passed away peacefully at home on Sunday, June 1, 2008 of complications from a long illness.
posted by terrapin
on Jun 2, 2008 -
18 comments
On May 14th, 1967, the new British pop group The Pink Floyd makes one of their first ever TV appearances. Despite a stellar performance of the song Astronomy Domine, the pretentious host of the show, Hans Keller, has nothing good to say about the band. During the
interview (youtube, performance comes first, interview starts about 5:50 in.
transcript here.), he chastises the band for their "continuous repetition", "terribly loud" volume, and their "proportionately a bit boring" sound.
However, it seems that all Hans' show will ever be remembered for is
this single interview. Pink Floyd, on the other hand.. Well, we all know what happened to
them. Syd Barrett, on the other hand,
was not so lucky.
posted by Afroblanco
on May 29, 2006 -
67 comments
All hail the King of Fuh Since 1965, Stephen "Brute Force" Friedland has been a professional blower of minds. He began his musical career
penning the first existential/psychedelic girl group record, graduated to tapeworms and sat-upon sandwiches, then was personally signed by
George Harrison as an
Apple artist with the sly and ultimately unreleasable "King of Fuh." (Turn it inside out. There, you see.
MP3.)
But oddball songs of love and linguistic quirkiness are just the tip of Brutie's iceberg. In 1969, he swam half way across the Bering Strait in a symbolic plea to warm up the cold war. He does deliciously absurd stand-up prop comedy interspersed with song. And his
eyebrows are a work of art in their own right. So all hail the Fuh King, who has never compromised his deliriously batty vision, and at this point assuredly never will.
posted by Scram
on Nov 20, 2005 -
8 comments
Interview of R Crumb, 60's legendary twisted cartoonist creator of
Fritz the Cat and
Snoid.
This is no
conservative man. Of Serena Williams he foams: "This butt is just bionic. It's beyond anything. It's unbelievable. Imagine having access to that?" He has a foot fetish, an obsession with piggybacking and delights in drawing outlandish
pornographic cartoons. {more links at bottom of page}
Related discussion/links
here
[All FPP links are SFW but some links from above sites are guaranteed NSFW]
posted by peacay
on Mar 7, 2005 -
29 comments
Professor Irwin Corey, the world's foremost expert on EVERYTHING, has quite a good
website. Special highlight for lit geeks: the
text of his acceptance speech on behalf of Thomas Pynchon when
Gravity's Rainbow received a National Book Award citation, and an
audio extract thereof.
posted by PinkStainlessTail
on Nov 28, 2004 -
4 comments
Civil rights, local style. Take a look at
Mollie Huston Lee's great collection of
as-it-happened coverage of the Feb 1960 lunch counter sit-ins in Raleigh, NC. Plenty of clippings about other heated
local events, too. The details make the era come alive -
boycott flyers,
harumphing white editors, speculation that protests might
"fizzle out, panty-raid style," armed Native Americans threatening to
"wipe out" the local KKK, the
program from the conference that birthed SNCC [pdf], early reactions to
desegregation and
much more. Gotta love those revealing
little
details.
posted by mediareport
on Jan 21, 2003 -
4 comments
