Tag Archives: baby boom

Peter Paul & Mary, the sweetest voices of the 1960s folk era

Although I covered pop music at a time when punk, hardcore, “alternative” rock, rap and hip hop were the coolest sounds, I always had a soft spot for the sweet sugar of pure pop. I once wrote an essay comparing Michael Jackson to Prince, as if Jackson were the Beatles and Prince were the Rolling […]

Slinky, a truly classic Baby Boomer toy

Betty James just passed away. Who’s that, you say? She’s the woman whose husband invented the Slinky, and the woman who headed the company that manufactured all the wacky variations of Slinky, from Slinky Dogs to Plastic Rainbow Slinkys, for decades. My friend Leland Rucker, with whom I co-authored “The Toy Book” in 1991, just […]

Listening to oldies when they were new

“Time-shifting” is a new media term for the ability of technology to allow us to consume media — whether it’s video or music or text — at any time. The most obvious example is people recording TV shows on the DVRs to watch later, at their leisure. You can hear a teleseminar via podcast any […]

1968 redux

As a card-carrying baby boomer (I guess officially, with my AARP membership!), I was 10 when most of 1968 happened. It was a pivotal year, no doubt — though in my consciousness, ’69 left a deeper impact. AARP magazine does a fine job of using the Web as a story-telling device to revisit the year. […]

Echoes of FM Radio in the Summer of Love

Interesting exercise in nostalgia with irony: KCUV-FM in Denver is celebrating the official kickoff of summer by recreating the sound of Denver’s FM radio from 1967, complete with news items, radio commercials from back then, and typical playlsists, all presented by the airstaff of progressive radio from the time, including guys like Bill Clarke (who’s […]