As an antidote to all the 1968 nostalgia out there, here's an article about 1958. It suggests, in part, that this was an important year because it was the year when serious highbrow intellectuals and hipsters forged their historic avant-garde alliance to hate the masses for being so middlebrow.
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1958
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- Mar 2008
- 20753
- Black Country Green Belt
- Crusaders FC, Norn Iron, not forgetting Serendib
- Blueberry vodka Jaffa cake on marzipan base
1958
Any evocative songs? I offer 'Born late 58' by Mott the Hoople. It's about hoary old rockers (Ian Hunter, who appears to be still touring occasionally, was born in late '38) and a sweet innocent groupie.
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1958
So what are the lasting accomplishments of this "historic avant-garde alliance"?
The increasing marginalisation and irrelevance of liberal arts departments at US universities?
Kerouac-themed tours for aging hipsters that cost USD 750 a night?
The 1958 NFL Championship Game has had a deeper and more lasting impact on life in those United States than any of the "cultrual milestones" mentioned in the article.
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1958
Zenits date with Satans wrote:
Any evocative songs? I offer 'Born late 58' by Mott the Hoople. It's about hoary old rockers (Ian Hunter, who appears to be still touring occasionally, was born in late '38) and a sweet innocent groupie.
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1958
I saw the thread title, and guessed it was that article.
Pretty much par for the course for Rachel Donadio. I'll see a headline for one of those back page NYTBR essays that looks interesting, then I'll see her byline and prepare to be disappointed.
The blog Edrants has a series titled "Rachel the Hack". There's nothing up about her latest vacuous "idea" op-ed, but here's the first post on her (links at the original):
Long-time readers of this site know that we’ve often held Sam Tanenhaus’s feet to the fire. But with Rachel Donadio’s latest essay, it’s occurred to us that Donadio, perhaps working independently of Tanenhaus, may be one of the major problems with the NYTBR. While we applaud Dwight Garner’s “Inside the List” columns, welcome David Orr’s “On Poetry” (now regrettably behind a Gray Lady paywall), and believe Liesl Schillinger to be one of the NYTBR’s few assets, we suspect that the NYTBR’s very particular snobbish tone has much to do with Donadio.
Like most snobs of this ilk, Donadio is a writer who basks in reaching conclusions no more original than those of a struggling english comp student (witness this insulting review of a Berlusconi book; Berlusconi polarizes, who knew?). Donadio’s efforts to sound sophisticated frequently backfire (witness this elementary error in French; the Times, of course, “regrets the error”). And like most snobs, with Donadio, there is a needlessly triumphant sense of accomplishment in her reviews (“Time will tell whether McDonough and Braungart will make eco-skeptics eat their words.”), as if she has just won a spelling bee and is primed to wrest the prize from a PTA volunteer (or worse, the crying kid who came in second place).
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1958
The idea of following somebody else, let alone paying for the privilege, on a Kerouac-themed tour is rather funny. I imagine the people doing it don't see the irony.
That article is very unhelpful. I feel slightly dumber for having read it.
I've never bought this "high culture vs. low culture" shit. To me it seems like its all based on a lot of rather dubious assumptions. Nor do I buy the argument that to be anti-snobbery is to deny value or quality. Does anyone still believe that?
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1958
I think there's a definite alliance of trendy-lefties and Thatcherites against old-school anti-pop attitudes in the UK - it existed long before Blair brought the two tendencies together, but neither side has ever acknowledged it.
But all this stuff is highly specific to the UK, and doesn't relate to the US at all, because it's specifically to do with the legacy of the class system (a legacy which has done more for pop culture than anything else, because anti-pop attitudes are associated here with the most egregious form of snobbery in a way they aren't in most of mainland Europe).
1958 could be described as a reasonably key year in the UK, but again for reasons that most people in the US would find hard to understand - inception of the EEC without our involvement, creating the context for the Eisenhower visit in 1959 (which was the definitive moment when Britain accepted its post-imperial role as vassal state of someone else's undeclared empire), Bruce Forsyth and Cliff Richard breaking through, Armchair Theatre going socio-realist. Most people in the UK itself wouldn't know all that stuff, to be honest (except maybe the Bruce and Cliff bit, if only because they're the two most enduring light entertainers we have).
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1958
Heh!
BBC Four did a "1957 Week" at the end of last year which looked at some of the stuff I posted about above - the first stirrings of consumerism, etc. Remarkably, a best-of album by the Platters is currently in the UK Top 10 album chart - probably the Mad Men effect, but it says something about the importance of that era that such a thing can still sell (although I know that, as in the US, album sales are draining away as iTunes accelerates the return to the individual song above the album - one sense in which we're actually returning to the 50s).
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1958
Yes. They couldn't even get ITV there until 1968. Also I think I mentioned that Hereford United played their first league match the week "All The Young Dudes" charted.
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