Hating the Beatles

In 2012, the Beatles are a given. The Baby Boomers were their first fans, and kids today eventually discover them (not by virtue of having to dig particularly deep) and they become fans too. I've had arguments with teenagers over what album a Beatles or Stones song was on, which is a fruitless exercise on their part, as I've been listening to that album for nigh on 50 years, and they bought some compilation or a couple of downloads and read something on Wikipedia and think they're experts. No, you're not. I also had this exchange once with a high school student, when a Beatles song came up on my iPod mix over the car stereo. "I like the Beatles," he said. "What albums do you have?" I was taken aback by this. "All of them," I responded. Like, which one wouldn't I have? I mean, they broke up in 1969; by now I've been able to scrimp and save to get them all. Sometimes you forget what it's like to be a working stiff.

When the Beatles first arrived, they were not a given. Rock and roll had been around, of course, and was regarded by the establishment as a necessary evil. It was for kids, it made money, and if you wanted to, you could ignore it. Rock was an offshoot of 50s culture; The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause predated the debut of Elvis on network television. Mainstream culture could sneer at rock if it wanted, but it wasn't the main threat: it was teenagers, period, that were an upsetting phenomenon. It was the other way around in the 60s, where the popular culture became an offshoot of rock, and that all began with the Beatles. Their breakthrough marked a new music, an invigoration of rock via that music, a new look and style, and worse, it came from another country. Popular music was threatened by rock in the 50s; in the 60s, rock became popular music. And that was that.

The Beatles weren't alone in making this happen, but they were at the forefront. Their popularity was ridiculous, and the idea of Beatlemania, and teenaged girls going hysterical at concerts, must have been a little scary to the popular performers of the time, who had no one of any age going even mildly hysterical. In their days, folks like Sinatra had their hysterical followers, but at least they shut up during the performances of what it was they were hysterical about. Not the Beatle maniacs. They just never shut up until the Beatles finally gave up performing live. Who could blame them?

As the Beatles led their cultural upheaval, there was reaction. And if you think I'm exaggerating the extent of their upheaval, measure it by the extent of the reaction. From the mainstream to the depths, from Dean Martin to Homer & Jethro, the threat was clear, and the return fire fairly immediate.



I have nothing against Homer & Jethro, but please, guys, can't we just coexist?

The A.V. Club has put together The Beatles Just Got To Go?: 18 anti-Beatles songs, a roundup of reactionist music, mostly from the time, but a few a little later. I disagree with their interpretation of the Barbarians, but then again, Moulty, the one-handed drummer, was another story altogether. The collection just shows that the Beatles really meant change for a lot of people who didn't want that particular change.
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Quick take - Lego gender

I've written about this in the past, in regard to Lego's latest attempt to bring in girls. Now Boing Boing points to a new site with some descriptive facts.
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How One Drove Across the Country

Imagine a turquoise 1956 Chevy Bel Air hardtop with the proud new owners up front, their adorable son in the back, heading from the suburbs of New York across the country to Salt Lake City (and thence to Las Vegas and Anaheim). The trip, if you don't kill yourself but it you do get up every morning at the crack of dawn (I can remember my parents pulling me out of the motel cot before the sun had risen—yes, dear reader, I was that adorable son), takes about five days. So you load up the back seat with just about every portable entertainment that you can dig up to keep the adorable son entertained, and you're successful for at least a few hours on the first day, but let me tell you, even now my eyes tear over with boredom just reminiscing about it. The prairie, which in 1955 stretched roughly from Hoboken to Hollywood and Vine, was one damned nothing after another. Occasionally you would catch sight of Laura Ingalls Wilder collecting cow pies to cook the family dinner, but that was about it. The most memorable part of the trip was getting stung by a bee, since we drove with the windows open (no air conditioning back then) and the wildlife was free to visit at will. As you drove along you prayed for something interesting to look at, which is why roadside attractions sprung up in the first place. It wasn't that you really wanted to visit the Living Dinosaur Museum or the Home of the Giant Corn Cob or Great Big Hole in the Ground, because you knew that it wasn't worth a stop and it would just slow you down, but at least you got to look at the signs telling you "Only 50 Miles to the Great Big Hole in the Ground," or "Only 20 Miles to the Great Big Hole in the Ground," or "Turn back! You missed the Great Big Hole in the Ground."

And then there were the Burma-Shave signs.

Jimmie said a naughty word
Jimmie's mother overheard
Soapsuds? No!
He preferred
Burma-Shave

Some of the signs were actually about Burma-Shave (a brushless shaving cream).

All these years
Your skin has dried
Why not moisten
Up your hide
Burma-Shave

Some were advisory in a general sense.

You can beat
A mile a minute
But there ain't
No future in it
Burma-Shave

What kind is this?

The midnight ride
Of Paul for beer
Led to a warmer
Hemisphere
Burma-Shave

As the adorable son in the back seat, it took me a while to realize that the Burma-Shave part wasn't supposed to rhyme. I couldn't figure out why it was there at all, but then again, I was a kid. The signs were taken down (except for some recreations) in 1963 when the company was bought by Philip Morris, whose lawyers advised them to discontinue. Those same lawyers didn't advise them to discontinue selling cigarettes?

Get all the signs and a little backstory at The Motion-Graphic Ads Of Burma-Shave: 1927-1963.

[Via Salon]
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Retronaut

I've lately become quite a follower of the site Retronaut. It's collections of old materials about random things that bring you up short because, without a lot of explanation, you can see exactly how things were, and more often than not, how people expected them to be.

For instance, Tips for Single Women, 1938 includes such important dicta as "Don't sit in awkward positions" and "Don't be familiar with the headwaiter talking about the fun you had with someone else another time." Absolutely. These are definitely things I personally look for single women not to do, at least not regularly. The Invisible Mother is just... weird. Back in the 19th century, before iPhones had a built-in flash, you had to sit still for the photographer. If you wanted a baby picture, mother would cover herself up in a rug or something to hold the baby still. I guess a picture of mother and child would have been just too normal or something.

One recent post I liked was on Pepsi Ads, 1950s. It all looks like Mad Men dressed to the nines, except they're all grasping their bottles of Pepsi. You have to think that, at least in some of these cases, a nice glass of champagne might be more appropriate, or a martini or a Manhattan or whatever people drank back then when they were wearing evening gowns, but no, it's a bottle of Pepsi, as often as not without even a glass to drink it from. Some of them are less formal, though, as you scroll through, and they still look like creatures from Mars. The 1950s? How'd they ever make it to the 1960s? And no wonder everybody started wearing jeans and letting their hair grow: they just couldn't keep up all the work to look so damned formal all the time. But then again, there's probably similarly bizarre Pepsi ads for the 1960s somewhere.

This is a fun site, worth checking out.
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C. G. P. Grey

I have no idea who this person is. But then there's this:



That's just one video from the collection at Grey's Blog. Grey has a channel on YouTube you can follow, to watch these as they come out. Some of them seem rather timely (daylight saving's time explained, leap year, death to pennies), so catching them as they arrive could make you the local expert on whatever the subject is, provided you don't give away the source.

Napoleon wasn't short? Damn!

[Via Open Culture]
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Freemasons: The original geeks

The building of cathedrals, for a while, was the epitome of tech. We can look at some of the old classics today and still have our breath taken away by the scope and spiritual majesty of these buildings. But they weren't easy to build, and only a handful of people knew how. Cathedrals were built by the Church, but not by local members of the religion. The Church had to find the people who had the knowledge, the ones who called themselves the free masons, to do the job. And the free masons, recognizing in one another kindred spirits, started hanging out together to share ideas and skills.

But then something happened that changed Masonry completely, and (I believe) did eventually turn it into an occult conspiracy. Upper–class men who weren’t trained masons wanted to join Scotland’s Masonic lodges. They were refused at first, but were later accepted under the provision that they paid double the dues of working masons... This new membership policy gradually detached Masonry from its engineering roots, and within a couple of generations, more Masons were wealthy gentlemen than actual builders.

That's from Flashback: Masonic Conspiracy Revealed! a really good article on a) cathedrals and b) secret societies.
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Fan fiction

So I'm reading this article about fan fiction, and they reference fanfiction.net, and I go there, and, well, there's a lot of fan fiction out there. Let me put it this way: if someone wrote something that got published, ever, regardless of how popular, then somebody else has probably added on to it. Plays, movies, TV, you name it. Some you could imagine would inevitably happen, for instance, 28,283 Star Wars pieces. But 26 for Fiddler on the Roof? 424 for The Good Wife? (But only 30 for The Andy Griffith Show? What's wrong with these Mayberry fans?)

All this bumbling around in make-believe venues can't be good.

But, apparently, it is. These folks, mostly young, presumably, are creating what are called paracosms, and in doing so, are setting themselves up nicely for a rich and productive adult life. This is from Wired:

Paracosms are the fantasy worlds that many dreamy, imaginative kids like to invent when they’re young. Some of history’s most creative adults had engaged in “worldplay” as children. ... MacArthur fellows were twice as likely as “normal” nongeniuses to have done so. Some fields were particularly rife with worldplayers: Fully 46 percent of the recipients polled in the social sciences had created paracosms in their youth.

A full and rich life of the imagination would seem to be a good thing. Read the article, Clive Thompson on the Importance of Fan Fiction, then explore a bit on the fan fiction website. You'll be surprised at what you see. And I'll bet you anything you read a bunch of them.

And maybe you'll even write one!
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The real history of the blues

We have this vision of the old Delta bluesman, some poor guy just getting by, moaning the blues that reflect the horrors of his life. But the truth might be a lot different. This is what B.B. King wrote: “It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy. As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion.”

The thing is, the performer, including the old Delta blues folk, was recognized as special. They probably did better than their farming kin, for one thing. And they were probably pretty good:

The bluesman traveled and performed alone or with a single companion. Audiences expected him to perform everything from traditional European social dances to blues and ragtime. He had to be able to provide enough rhythmic propulsion to move a dance floor one night and enough sensitivity to accompany storytelling ballads the next morning while busking on the street corner. A number of bluesmen even doubled as journeyman preachers, a topic pointedly addressed in Son House’s “Preachin’ Blues.” To survive, a bluesman had to be versatile, mobile, and cheap. And so did his instrument.

And what was that versatile, mobile and cheap instrument? The banjo had been the original instrument of choice, but it was eventually replaced by the steel string guitar, as sold by Sears, Roebuck! As Sears innovated, so did the performers, until the blues morphed into what we know today. Sears, in its way, is the source of the blues.

Delta Dawn, by Chris Kjorness, is essential reading for music fans.
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What, me worry?

Mad magazine is now 60 years old? Older than either the Stones or the Beach Boys?

It's probably hard to understand the significance and impact of Mad back in the day. When it first came out, it was mostly parodies of comics, irreverent and funny but not terribly important. But slowly and steadily kids took it to heart (as did a few adults), and by the 60s the magazine was parodying just about everything, still irreverent and funny, at a time when everything seemed to be ripe for parody. They took no sides (although whoever you were, you assumed they were with you); they would lambaste your favorite film or book or whatever with just as much glee as they would lambaste your least favorites. You could rely on the usual gang of idiots to do their job month after month, and they were, honestly, one of the few aboveground presses doing what they were doing. They were up front about it. And meanwhile, they were ostensibly for kids? There are those who say that the whole 60s thing was brought on, in part, by the attitude adjustments of youth as persuaded by Mad, and although they certainly weren't alone in this, they were definitely in it. It had to be the most subversive legitimate magazine of all time.

Topless Robot has collected The 30 Nerdiest Mad Magazine Covers. Maybe, maybe not. But as a snapshot of how iconic Alfred E. Neuman is, as he takes on other icons, it's right on.

Mad isn't what it used to be in influence. But if you happen to pick one up, you'll see that it is still irreverent and funny. What more do you want, anyhow?
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Malcolm X

There's certainly a lot that has been said about Malcolm X, while he was alive and after his death, not the least of which is The Autobiography of Malcolm X, ghost-written by Alex Haley. But when was the last time you actually saw Malcolm X? This video from 1963 [via Dangerous Minds] is a reminder of, as the article says, his personal grace under pressure. More, it's an artifact of a time not terribly long ago that in some ways seems so close, and in other ways so far. The issues of race in America have not been resolved, even though America is a radically different country from what it was 50 years ago. Watch this for a snapshot of that time, and for a gestalt of Malcolm's personality. It's startling.


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Quick take - Comic book advertising heroes

Like, for instance, Captain Tootsie, the hero who gets his strength from Tootsie Rolls. Poor guy. I mean, Captain Tootsie?

10 Strangest Advertising Superheroes of the 1940s
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Got Klout?

You learn something new every day. Like there's such a thing as a Klout score. You have one whether you know it or not, and most likely, it's down in the basement somewhere. It's a measurement of how well you are known, collected using social media. You're a zero? Probably, unless you Tweet a lot, which will give you at least a couple of points. Justin Bieber is 100. Then again, he has 18 million Twitter followers. I can't even come up with 18 million people that aren't following me! And not only is your Klout a number floating in air (and a mighty suspect one at that), the higher your number is, the more likely you'll start actually acquiring benefits, like room upgrades at casinos and discounts at retail stores.

I gotta get my number up!

Throughout our lives, we are tagged with scores, some of them far more crucial to our well-being than anything [Klout CEO Joe] Fernandez has handed out. Credit scores are maddeningly opaque and can be used against us in infinitely more harmful ways than a Klout score ever could. Our health records are used by huge organizations to segment and sift us behind closed doors. And yet there is something uniquely infuriating about the Klout score. “They’re calculating a Q score for everybody, and it turns out there’s a lot of emotion tied up in that,” [Rutgers adjunct marketing professor Mark] Schaefer says. And the fact that Klout users’ status is so explicitly linked to material gain makes it an even more freighted situation, he says. “This is the intersection of self-loathing with brand opportunity.”

Seth Stevenson explains it all at Wired: What Your Klout Score Really Means. Great. Something else to worry about.
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What's an audience to do?

There is a growing tension in the performing arts between desperately wanting an audience and bemoaning its behaviour. Symphony orchestras, regional theatres, ballet and opera companies across North America are feeling stiff competition to lure ticket buyers who they believe are increasingly distracted by interactive entertainment and social media. But when those sought-after new audiences do show up, they don’t always behave the way that venerable institutions and veteran audiences expect.

So writes Kate Taylor for The Globe and Mail. And what she's saying does not apply solely to Canada. It seems like forever since we could go to the movies with the expectation that people would quietly watch the movie. Since when they watch movies at home they chat their way through them, come and go to and from the kitchen a half dozen times, Google the cast members that look sort of familiar on their iPad, and generally act as if the movie isn't on in the first place, they figure they can do the same when they're sitting in front of you at the Cineplex. But no, I didn't come today to hear your opinion on the movie, at regular intervals, when you're actually bothering to watch it and not getting up, again, for another ten gallon tub of popcorn. And are your kids really playing with their Gameboys during this whole thing? Why did I decide to go to the movies, when I could have waited a couple of months and watched it in blessed peace?

And that's recorded entertainment. How about live entertainment? Apparently, that's even worse. There are real performers up there, trying to do their thing, and here you are, wondering if you're in one of the tweet seats. And because live entertainment is, as a general rule, expensive, there have indeed developed a slew of general rules of behavior that you, noob that you are, may not know about, or if you do, may not wish to follow.

It's a jungle out there at the old philharmonic.

Venues that want to bring in new, younger audiences to replace the fossils that have previously been occupying the seats, and keeping their mouths shut as they have done so, don't have any easy answers yet. Taylor's article, Quiet in the audience, please, puts it all in perspective.

So what are you? The stolid establishment? Or the nouveau tweeter?
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Quick take - End of civilization as we know it

Shame on you, America: 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' Gets 3 More Seasons.
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Music Man Murray

Last week was Record Store Day, a tip of the hat to a dying way of life. It's not so much that people don't buy records anymore as stores don't sell them. Companies don't manufacture them. Most people don't really care about them. Having lived through LPs and then cassettes and then CDs and now mp3s, Grinwout's has collected and recollected over and over again, leaving some behind, taking on new tastes and ideas in the next iteration. Lately we've been falling into movie soundtracks, starting from Yo-Yo Ma's Ennio Morricone album and just growing out of there. Some people, however, don't simply get into the music they're into, or move from music to music. They are collectors. And the mark of a true collector is completeness. Otherwise there's no point in collecting.

Music Man Murray's collection is complete. Or at least it's large. A two-story exhibition space of half a million records. Plus an off-site warehouse. This man has been collecting for years.

The collector is both conqueror and liberator. Of any given specific set of like objects, Murray tells me, “You have to have everything.” That is the mark of the true collector: you must possess a private Manifest Destiny, a fetish driven by rivalry, competition. The problem is that Music Man Murray’s rivals just aren’t coming anymore. There aren’t the same obsessive people out there working hard to track down, say, every last acetate copy of Hedda Hopper’s radio program “Hollywood Magazine” (which, incidentally, Murray pulled for me from a pile near his desk). As Murray says, they just stopped coming. So the flicker in his eyes snaps on and off, like a pilot light not finding gas.

Unpacking Music Man Murray: My visit with one of L.A.'s last great record collectors, is a piece by C.P. Heiser in the LA Review of Books. It's a piece on this one man, and on a certain kind of person we don't see much anymore, but at the same time, it's about collectors in general. They are among us. This is how they think.

The documentary should speak for itself:

Happy Birthday, Person Who Doesn't Exist!

A complete calendar of the birthdays of fictional characters? One can never for a moment doubt the usefulness of the internet. The folks at Flavorwire.com have done the heavy lifting of this one. This week, we'll be celebrating the birthday of Willis from Different Strokes, Monica from Friends and, today, Jin Kazama from Tekken (and yes, I have no idea who that is either). Want to know who shares your special day? Exclusive Infographics: Fictional Character Birthday Calendars. [Via Mental Floss.]
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The worst travelogue ever

Thank you, Dangerous Minds, for digging this one up. Apparently it's quite rare: It was screened before The Life of Brian, but only in theaters in Great Britain and Australia, where boring, groan-worthy travelogues were still being routinely shown prior to feature films. (More details are on the DM site.) I started watching it thinking it was just a bad travelogue, and then you start getting into it, and it gets really bad, and then... Watch it.

The wonders of the world

World's Fairs existed (and still exist) to exhibit our best products, to demonstrate the inventions that could change the future, and to bring disparate people together to learn about one another. At a fair today, that might mean that up-and-coming nations display their wares and tell the visitors how great it would be for them to move some of their corporations there, for mutual benefit. At fairs in the past, that might have meant that rounding up a group of natives from some undeveloped country and moving them lock, stock and yurt onto the fairgrounds so that the civilized world could gawk at them.

Ota Benga was one of these people. He and other members of his pygmy tribe were exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904 (the one of "Meet Me in St. Louis" fame). After that, he ended up at the Bronx Zoo—on display:

[Zoo director William Temple] Hornaday had his zookeepers urge Benga to play with the orangutan in its enclosure. Crowds gathered to watch. Next the zookeepers convinced Benga to use his bow and arrow to shoot targets, along with the occasional squirrel or rat. They also scattered some stray bones around the enclosure to foster the idea of Benga being a savage. Finally, they cajoled Benga into rushing the bars of the orangutan’s cage, and baring his sharp teeth at the patrons. Kids were terrified. Some adults were too, though more of them were just plain curious about Benga. “Is that a man?” one visitor asked.

This is a story of the times more than the individuals involved, but it reminds us that the times were anything but sensitive to otherness or the ubiquity of humanity: In 1906, the Bronx Zoo Put a Black Man on Display in the Monkey House.

Full-scale version of the Starship Enterprise

Imagine a real life-sized version of the Enterprise. Where would you put it? Las Vegas, of course. Farfetched? Not at all. It almost happened.

The “big idea” was building the ship itself at full-scale. That was the main attraction. That being said, we also knew we would have to have some kind of “show” on board. So, conceptually, it was to be a “tour” of the ship, with all of the key rooms, chambers, decks, and corridors that we knew from the movie. There was to be the dining area for the ship’s crew (where you could dine in Star Fleet comfort), and other special features. There were also one or two interesting ride elements that we were considering including a high-speed travelator that would whisk you from deck to deck.

I had no idea that this was ever in the works. The Goddard Group designs all sorts of amusement attractions around the world. Rides, parades, museums, casinos, the whole gamut. Gary Goddard, the founder, previously worked at Landmark Entertainment Group, where he was responsible for Star Trek: The Experience, among others. He's responsible for the quote above. Get the whole story at the Goddard blog.

Via BoingBoing.

The Toy Fair

Illustrator/blogger Lisa Hanawalt and her boyfriend masquerade as chia seed employees to visit the Toy Fair at NYC's Javits Center, which is sort of an architectural Death Valley, without all the fun spots. It's the perfect place for a manufacturers' or any kind of sales convention. The toy show, of course, is absolutely limited to the trade—no kids running around here, thank you very much, despite what they happen to be offering. This is serious business, and Hanawalt is the perfect guide:

Do you remember your favorite toys as a child? And maybe you wondered why adults didn't seem as enchanted with your toys as you were? I used to swear I'd never lose interest in my figurines and dolls, I feared it would mean losing my entire sense of self. But of course I grew older and started leaving those beloved things behind. I can pick up a Breyer horse, admire the smooth plastic and artful details, but … that's it. I'm not going to sit on the floor with it for hours, making it talk to other toys, acting out my latest conflicts and fantasies, forming pretend relationships. I wish I could enjoy toys on that level again.

Sigh...

Breyer horses are at the show. And Legos. And this poor guy below selling bobble heads. Take the trip: The Toy Fair (via).