I Hate the Sixties

(Is there ANYONE who thinks it did? In 2004??)

This programme is too funnie

"We had one chance of a unified society. And we blew it."

Switched it off when they began laying into the Abortion Act. I don't imagine they went on to ask Hitchens his views on the legalisation of gay sex either - the mask would be seen to slip a bit too far for BBC4.

(x-post)

Aaronovitch deserves to have that fkin goat-EE plucked out painfully by a drunk, blind three year old with tweezers.

I assume it was Peter and not Christopher Hitchens on the one tonight?

x-post!!!

He's a dead ringer for Jeremy Beadle these days.

Mark Lawson is likeable, with a very smooth, authoritative and reasonable delivery but is capable of coming out with the biggest load of BS of them all

He seems to have a compulsion to make spurious links between two cultural art forms, getting each slightly wrong in the process

I love the sixties, so I'll read this (comes out this week):

http://perseuspromos.com/images/covers/medium/9780465013586.jpg

I've already read three or four the-year-that-changed-everything books. If you're stuck for a book idea, just throw every year from 1946 on into a hat, pick one out, and start gathering evidence that that was the year that changed everything.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OxyUpXPgL._SL500_.jpg

i wonder if i can guess any of the 82 songs only based on the cover info.

1. Trouble every day - Mothers of Invention

Fugs, Velvet Underground, Henry Flynt, they're all in there.

haha i would've been dead wrong then.

guess any of the 82 songs

Moon River
The Impossible Dream
Climb Every Mountain
It's My Party (And I'll Cry If I Want To)
Blowin' In the Wind
Dock of the Bay

... purely sing-along stuff. Not sure if they wanted to pay the royalties on The Beatles' songs, though.

Can't find the full table of contents, but here are a few (with their corresponding page number):

Introduction
7
Chelsea Morning
22
Dont Think Twice Its All Right
35
Fire And Rain
48
Give Peace A Chance
64
Here Comes The Sun 82
82
Am A Rock 101
101
Its Not Unusual
119
Michelle
162
My Sweet Lady
177
Piece of My Heart
191
Stoned Soul Picnic
204
Sugar Sugar
218
Superstar
236
Watermelon Man
254
With A Little Help From My Friends
268

Lay LadyLay
132

MacArthur Park

Michelle
162
My Sweet Lady
177
Piece of My Heart
191
Stoned Soul Picnic
204
Sugar Sugar
218
Superstar
236
Watermelon Man
254
With A Little Help From My Friends
268

Lay LadyLay
132
MacArthur Park
146

Looks about right. I spot one from the '70s (thought there were two, but never knew that "Superstar" was originally a Delaney & Bonnie b-side from Dec. '69). Not sure whether "Sugar Sugar" gets filed under protest or alienation.

MacArthur Park! Cake out in the rain! Sweet green icing flowing dooooown!

It struck me the other day that the sixties aren't really considered cool any more. Actually scratch that - compared to how popular the sixties used to be as a culturally important decade, they just don't seem to exist on today's radar in the same way. Of course the sixties will always be remembered and canonised, there's no denying that - but it feels as though the days when bands and DJs, designers and artists would draw and be inspired by the sixties are fading away, with no sign of a revival on the cards for now.
Are people just finally tired of talking-up notions of psychedelia, the Beatles, the Stones, mod culture, the San Fran free-love scene, Northern Soul and other sixties touchstones that have remained popular well after disappearing? Or does a decade, even one considered highly significant in pop culture, only have a limited life span of 45 years before starting to fade away from relevance all together?

what is all this Mad Men hysteria, then?

mad men's a good exception. i'm very much up for being proved wrong of course. there must be enough examples to do so. being a 'music guy' though, i'm not sure how much currency the sixties might have any more. feels like the kinds of people who still go around fetishising sixties stuff are people in their early-middle ages, who grew up in the 80s and 90s and were bombarded with sixties revivalism throughout.

It would seem that no one who lived through the sixties is considered cool any more. Unless it's the "hey! I think my grandma is pretty cool" kind of cool.

To fully appreciate the sixties, you need to have felt at firsthand the wretched discontent that drove them. The myth that it was a hopeful time is dead wrong. Whatever optimism there was, was fueled by the need to ward off the despair that surrounded you in every direction. It was an awful decade.

In the US, I can't imagine what the last optimistic decade was, unless one was a Reaganite in the '80s.

eh, it's probably because Gen Xers are now in the positions the boomers were back in the 80s and 90s when 60s revivalism seemed big, so we're getting movies about NWA instead of the Doors.

not that i think "optimistic decade" can be anything but a ludicrous projection

xp

Historians often call the US period from 1815 to 1825 the Era of Good Feeling. I presume it's because they weren't there.

Saw it before on BBC 3 - truly appalling. There should be a 'challenge' button on the TV remote for when the most ridiculous assertions are presented as facts.
― Bob Six (bobbysix)

this is a good idea also on ILX pls