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Beaten or Stoned? Was 1968 the Beginning of the End of the Sixties?
Late in the summer of 1968, Pope Paul VI came out forcefully against the birth-control pill, putting a moral crimp in the decade’s libido. London, however, was still swinging strong, and the Beatles decided — perhaps as Communist lark rather than Christian tithing — that it was truly better to give than to receive. In […]
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Lester Bangs: The Rolling Stones’ Nostradamus
While it is no longer a burning issue (although those of a certain age might disagree), answering the question “Beatles or Stones?” can still tell you something about yourself: Is your favorite rock movie from the 1960s the madcap A Hard Day’s Night or the chthonic Gimme Shelter? Such questions will drift through the ether […]
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Altamont, the Rolling Stones, and the Death of the Sixties Dream
In the nearly fifty years since the Rolling Stones played a free outdoor concert at a racetrack in Alameda County, California, the word “Altamont” has become synonymous with the end of the 1960s, and the death of the hippie dream. On December 6, 1969, the Stones played for a crowd of over 300,000 people, with […]
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Lincoln Center’s James Brown Fest Showcases Peak Human Achievement
Is it overselling it to claim that James Brown’s 18-minute performance on 1964’s The T.A.M.I. Show rivals the moon landing as the choicest footage of human achievement of the 1960s? Stanley Kubrick couldn’t fake this: Hot-footing in a crisp, checkered vest and jacket, Brown connected the world of then to the world of now. (You […]
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THE FAMILY STONE
There are jazz fans and then there are jazz fans. The Stones — he Irving, she Stephanie — were the latter. Together, the husband and wife team became New York–famous by attending a mind-boggling number of shows during the past four decades (their first date was a Sonny Rollins gig). From Studio Rivbea to the […]
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THE ’70s ARE BACK
The names of The 1975’s songs are easy to remember. Usually just one word long (“Sex,” “Chocolate,” “Girls”), the titles are as quick, catchy, and cute as the tunes they’re attached to, which makes the Manchester band’s September 2013 self-titled debut a taut collection of clean-cut, shiny indie pop that sounds like summer days spent […]
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The History of Terrible Band Names
It’s widely known that band names, which once tended to give you a sense of what the artist’s music sounded like, have devolved into an apocalypse of in-jokes, cleverness, punctuation, and strange capitalization. It’s almost impossible these days not to look at a festival lineup without feeling dumber for the experience. But how did the […]
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Let It Be: The (Un)Fab Four
Let It Be, a new concert-style “celebration” of the Beatles and their ubiquitous music—which you would hardly think needs more celebrating—is basically a living greatest-hits album, an ambulatory boxed set, only performed by a bunch of ringers. (To be fair, the glorified tribute band is quite musically competent, if hammy and applause-hungry.) But because the […]
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SO HAPPY TOGETHER
Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, who has designed album covers for the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, and David Byrne, among others, has been on a 10-year quest, not for the perfect typeface, but for happiness. Sagmeister, a fan of positive-psychology pioneer Martin Seligman, has taken his exploration on the road through a series of traveling exhibitions. […]
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The Rolling Stones
It may have taken the Rolling Stones until the end of 2012 to figure out how to celebrate their 50th anniversary, but there’s no question they’re doing it in style. On the heels of releasing the epic, 80-track greatest-hits comp GRRR!, they’ve already staged two raved-about live celebrations in the U.K. that featured ex-Stones like […]