Brubeck: The soundtrack of mid-1960s campus progressivism

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Wed Dec 5, 2012, 04:31 PM - Edit history (4)

A few words about the passing of Dave Brubeck.

Rock, like many things, has gotten respectable with age. Back in the day, however, the left intelligentsia thought of rock music as unsophisticated noise for impulsive children... freshman stuff... teeny-boppers.

The aspiring Freedom Rider, the educated socially concerned white young person of the LBJ era, was usually something of a square. Cardigans and horn-rim glasses for the guys. For the women, skirts and shirts or the simplest shift with a proto-feminist unadorned plainness.

And you listened to intellectual jazz (with the almost Baroque precision of Brubeck) or folk music.

And when Bob Dylan went electric it was a betrayal... we want another Woodie Guthrie, not more Beatles!

As the world moved past LBJ Vietnam betrayal and "clean for Gene" into the assassinations of 1968 and the horror that was Nixon, the soundtrack shifted from Puff the Magic Dragon to Gimme Shelter. But back in the day—civil rights and early Vietnam—it was squaresville. Check out this audience... not exactly Altamont. Wine, premarital intercourse with a diaphram... maybe a little grass on special occasions. And real hope for technocratic, civilized solutions.

I'll take five here to plug one of the best, and deepest, books I've ever read about popular culture:



Spoiler: The author has nothing against the Beatles. It's a history of American popular music, how it differs from the history critics create (critics are mostly males who don't dance), and the immense effects of music technology in making music less local and more more passively-experienced. Wonderful book.

http://www.valorebooks.com/textbooks/how-the-beatles-destroyed-rock-n-roll-an-alternative-history-of-american-popular-music/9780195341546?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Froogle&utm_source=Froogle

[slackmaster]

1. I remember a powerful anti-smoking ad from around 1965

It showed scenes of a young boy and his father, with the boy imitating things the man was doing.

The voice-over said "Like father, like son" over and over.

At the end the man lights up a cigarette, and the voice says "Like father, like son?"

[villager]

11. I remember that ad well

The two of them were knocking around, skipping stones, etc...

I think the kid begins picking up the cigarette pack as his dad lights up....

[lalalu]

2. Well some considered Brubeck

an insult to "real" jazz. I think he was another great musician adding his creativity to a genre. He will be missed and I like his music.

I just don't think you have to put down other musicians and their sounds to appreciate Brubeck. Although I will agree that the Beatles sucked.

[WinkyDink]

4. Sorry, but you have zero clue about the Beatles or of their innovations.

[lalalu]

8. Well Vanilla Ice was also innovative to some people.

[cthulu2016]

10. Whatever edgy cred you think disliking the Beatles gets you...

...it doesn't.

It's a tiresome sort of pose... a "Christopher Marlowe was better than Shakespeare" sort of cry for attention.

[lalalu]

12. LOL, I said the Beatles sucked and

some of you whine about it. You could easily ignore it and just disagree but nooooo...

[cthulu2016]

6. There's no put-down in the OP. It is about soundtracks of life, and how

those soundtracks are often re-written after the fact.

There was a young progressive class that was quite different from the hippies, but things get blurred together with hindsight.

Like Vietnam movies... it's odd that everyone in Vietnam listens to the DOORS. Really? Country and Western and Motown were probably more popular than the Doors in 'Nam but that's not the history we have written looking backward.

From the vantage of 2012 I am capable of liking Brubeck and the Beatles in the same way most of us like music from both sides of the Mods and Rockers division in the UK.

These little cultural self-definitions of the moment never mean the same thing in retrospect.

[lalalu]

9. Look I remember the times well and I doubt everyone

would agree Brubeck was THE icon of the times. He was one of many and deserves his place but he is not the only occupant.

[WinkyDink]

3. Depends upon which part of the 60's. Rock surpassed Jazz by 1968 on campuses.

At PSU, the ostensible Jazz Club was inviting---besides Herbie Hancock---Jefferson Airplane, Chicago, Janis Joplin, and the like.

"Hootenanny" gave way to "Hullabaloo."

[cthulu2016]

7. I agree. I'm thinking pre-1968.

And really 1960-1966... the peace corps and freedom riders era, when the beatniks morphed into studious urban planners before being forced into anti-system defiance.

[leveymg]

5. Depends upon the campus. By '64, the psychedelic sound was on in NYC and the Bay Area

See, http://www.lysergia.com/LamaWorkshop/lamaEarlyPsychedelia.htm

[left on green only]

13. "A Taste Of Honey" how sweet it was!

Nice Writing!

I remember at Cal Berkeley how the undergrads used to hang in the scene along Telegraph Ave. where the sounds of The Beatles could be heard drifting out from the open doorways of every record (yes LP) store.

By contrast, the grad students would hang in another area off campus called "North Side". It was there that the sounds of Brubeck could be heard emanating from the sidewalk cafes along Euclid Ave., together with the aromas of freshly brewed Java and the sweet smell of weed.

"By the old wood stove our hats were hung
Our words were told, our songs were sung
We'd sit together through many a years storm
Laughing and a joking, 'til the early hours of the morn"

Bob Dylan - from one of his many dreams.

[pokerfan]

14. Unsquare Dance