Paul Meehan’s new title delves deeply into the portrayal of alien abduction and UFO phenomena in cinema, covering decades of films and cultural shifts that reflect evolving public perceptions of extraterrestrials. Certainly, the phenomena takes note of all the hysteria and sensationalism that is typical for such coverage. As such, UFO sightings and the development […]
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Tag: 1960s United States
The Bastard Instrument. A Cultural History of the Electric Bass by Brian F. Wright (2024)
The electric bass, an instrument that first received considerable recognition with the introduction of the “Precision Bass” by American company Fender in 1951, has left its mark on the history of popular music. That instrument, approaching the scene only very tardily and sporadically with country and jazz bands of the post WWII years in basically […]
Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos: New Perspectives on Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts by Michelle
The fame and the legend of the Peanuts started on October 2, 1950, and the newspaper comic strip became a success almost immediately: at its peak, it ran in more than 2,600 newspapers simultaneously and made Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy household names. 1952 saw the first edition of the Peanuts in paperback editions, where […]
The Jordanaires: The Story of the World’s Greatest Backup Vocal Group by Gordon Stoker … (2022)
The list of famous singers with biographies is huge and gets longer almost every day. Even so, there are just a few books on those voices that built the solid, reliable and harmonic background for countless hits. It is hardly possible to imagine songs such as Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” “Don’t be Cruel,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” […]
The Rebel’s Wardrobe. The Untold Story of Menswear’s Renegade Past by gestalten et als. (eds.) (2022
Lots of items from modern men’s wardrobes come loaded with history, were featured in cult movies worn by famous actors or have a past strongly connected to popular culture, even if many are not aware of that. Everyday apparel, such as the baseball cap, Dr. Marten’s boots, a pair of jeans, chinos or the leather […]
Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise by Joel Selvin ...
By introducing numerous future songwriters, musicians, and music producers, Joel Selvin presents a very colorful and intense picture of a California long gone. When with what he calls the “University High School class of 1958” the groundwork for the powerful American pop music of the 1960s and 1970s was laid, as some of that group […]
21st Century Retro: “Mad Men” and 1960s America in Film and Television by Debarchana Baruah (2021)
Revivals of cultural and retrospectively oriented tendencies in music, fashion and design have been around for a long time. Many contemporary American and European TV productions successfully revisit the 1940s, 1950s and very often the 1960s. The shows differ greatly in their amount of historical correctness and the many important events that influence the protagonists […]
Marvel Comics Library. Avengers. Vol. 1. 1963–1965 by Kurt Busiek and Kevin Feige (2022)
Merely six months after the last XXL version of the Marvel Comics Library edition – featuring Spiderman – arrived, Taschen is out to surprise us again. This time with an equally massive edition of the most powerful superheroes that joined forces and became THE AVENGERS. Again, the first 20 (!) comic books that feature the […]
Rock’n’Roll Plays Itself: A Screen History by John Scanlan (2022)
When in the mid-1950s rock’n’roll as both commercial force and incarnation of teenage style invaded the charts and cinema screens, the new category was a bit too much for most common and well-aged (British and American) entertainment shows and representations on screen. In the early days, neither TV nor the film industry would grasp the […]