1959

1959 seems to have been some sort of "power year," like 1968 was, in different ways, later. Certainly with regard to the sorts of things we are interested in here, it seems to mark a kind of apex and turning point. Denny's "Exotica" album reached #1 on the Billboard charts in 1959.

Here is a wonderful poem entitled, "Summers, About 1959," by Alberto Rios, read by Garrison Keillor on his show, "The Writer's Almanac."
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2002/05/06
To anyone interested, I would recommend listening to the audio.
**
Poem: "Summers, About 1959," by Alberto Rios from The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (Copper Canyon Press).

Summers, About 1959

Women wore those sleeveless blouses
Where, if you tried, you could peek in
And try to get a look.

But it was always the wrong angle.
Contact lenses got invented in those years, too.
I remember the first boy who got some:

He had big white lines
From his nose to his ears
As if he were wearing invisible glasses.

That's how someone explained them to me
And I believed it: invisible glasses.
But they were really just the tan lines

From so many years of big, standard-issue
Black frames, glasses a little like
Plymouths for the face.

This was when summers were all the X-15,
Mickey Mantle and Roberto Clemente,
TV dinners and the drive-in.

Summers had a smell then. When you inhaled
You got the sound of crickets and cicadas
As well in your nose, and Sputnik too-

A word that rolled around in our mouths
Then spat itself out. Sputnik. We said it
All the time. Things were changing.

**

[Edited to add text of poem]

[ Edited by: Thomas 2008-08-05 12:57 ]

There is also The Sisters of Mercy's "1959", released in 1987.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGtNeeLabJg

And Brian Setzer too.

Well, I guess I'm not alone in having this notion. A book, "1959: The Year Everything Changed" is out now. Article by the author:
http://www.slate.com/id/2220751/pagenum/all

Quotes from article:
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Several years ago, it occurred to me that many of my favorite groundbreaking record albums, books, and movies—Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz To Come, The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce, Norman Mailer's Advertisements for Myself, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, François Truffaut's The 400 Blows—were all released in 1959.

Was this just coincidence, or was it part of a pattern? Was there something more broadly significant about that time? The more I looked into it, the more it struck me that 1959 really was a pivotal year—not only in culture but also in politics, society, science, sex: everything.

Consider: It was the year when the microchip was introduced, the Food and Drug Administration held hearings on the birth-control pill, IBM marketed the first business computer, a passenger jetliner took the first nonstop trans-Atlantic flight, and America joined the Russians in the "space race." It saw the rise of free jazz, "sick comics," the New Journalism, and indie films; the birth of Motown, Happenings, and the Generation Gap; the Lady Chatterley trial that overthrew the nation's obscenity laws; the U.S. Civil Rights Commission's first report, which sparked the overhaul of segregation laws—all this bursting against fears of a "missile gap," the fallout-shelter craze, and the first U.S. casualties in the war in Vietnam.
...
In the summer of 1959, Allen Ginsberg, the generation's visionary poet of exuberance and doom, wrote in the Village Voice: "No one in America can know what will happen. No one is in real control. America is having a nervous breakdown. … Therefore there has been great exaltation, despair, prophecy, strain, suicide, secrecy, and public gaiety among the poets of the city."

He might as well have written that today.
**

.... and cadillacs reach the peak of their immense size and glamour that year, cullminating in the 1959/60 special cadillac biarritz...largest cadillac fins on those bad boys too...after that year, the fins slowly shrank with every passing year.....

My '59:

MadDog Mike had his first birthday in '59 :D

Official space helmet on, Captain Video!

On 2009-06-19 16:59, MadDogMike wrote:
MadDog Mike had his first birthday in '59 :D

So did Kiki v.!

Didn't everybody's favorite exotica LP come out in '59?

(VooDoo!)

That's good enough for me.

by the way, I think other "power years" were '39 and '84. Busy years for cool stuff.

Not to derail this topic with Disney facts, since there are already plenty of Park related topics, but '59 was a big year for Disneyland. That was the year the Matterhorn, Skyway buckets, The Submarine Voyage, The Alweg Monorail, Autopia and the motorboat cruise rides all had a big grand opening gala. Not since the official opening in 1955, has this many attractions been opened at one time.

1959 was also a good summer to catch the Tahitian Terrace show, or head over to the Plaza Pavillion and swing dance to the Count Basie Orchestra, or the famed in house band, The Elliot Brothers.

A not so happy note of 59.
The Department of Interior introduces Asbestos to America.
Ironic title:
"Asbestos, A Matter Of Time"

On 2009-06-23 19:42, Kiki von Tiki wrote:

On 2009-06-19 16:59, MadDogMike wrote:
MadDog Mike had his first birthday in '59 :D

So did Kiki v.!

...And Limbo Lizard!

So, born in 1959, are Mad Dog Mike, Kiki von Tiki, Limbo Lizard... and Michael Jackson.
Hey, people that are our same age, quit dying! It's creeping us out!

(Edit: Oops, M.J. born in '58. But he was 50, like me, so I'm still a bit creeped out by his dying. Though, not as much as by, well... pretty much the last 25 years of his life.)

"The rum's the thing..."

[ Edited by: Limbo Lizard 2009-06-25 16:16 ]

No, I had my first birthday in '59.

Your first birthday is... the day you're born. It's your, uh, birth day. Kiki v, you mean you had the first anniversary of your birthday in '59, then, right?
I guess I misunderstood what you and MDM meant. I was born in '59. Ya'll meant you turned "one", in 1959. So, it was MDM, K von T, and Michael Jackson, born in 1958. I'm in the clear!