Whilst a fan of the fifties and sixties and quite clearly my appearance is that of a man stuck in a time warp I have always been a man who takes advantage of his current times. From attitudes to technology, and it is technology that I would like to talk about today. As ladies man, man’s man, man about town to quote Catcher Block in...
This morning I woke to the sad news of the passing of Bob Thompson. A composer, arranger, and orchestra leader who scored film and television soundtracks, and wrote commercial jingles. He was a leading exponent of Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. This experimental orchestral music became hugely popular in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of the home stereo systems that had become popular....
At some unspecified moment of the 1950’s the burgeoning technology of high-fidelity sound and sex became synonymous. Instead of grand-dad’s ukelele or uncle Frank’s player piano, vacuum tubes and transformers took over the machinations of audio seduction. Clearly it was the breakthrough technology of throbbing bass and ecstatic treble that opened the path to perdition. The breathless merging of woofer and tweeter. But there were...
Back in the 1960′s there were many bachelor pad films about and one of the key fantasy parts of this model was the fully decked out, technologically advanced bachelor pads. The reality of these films that it was pretty much impossible for the average guy to have one of these bachelor pads. Sure there might have been some rich guys who might have had access...
Thanks to a post-World War II economic and technological boom, the 1950s and early 60s was the golden age for the bachelor lifestyle. With the advent of Playboy magazine, the quintessential guide to urban living, it reached critical mass. Armed with affluence, abundant leisure time, and the sagacity of Saint Hefner, bachelors found themselves with two things: freedom and optimism. The ultimate expression of this...
Dave Pike has created this swell recording for all those swingin’ bachelors. Herbie Hancock plays the keyboard along side Dave Pike’s vibraphone. Bobby Hebb had wrote “Sunny” and introduced it in this album, which was later released for hundreds of additional recordings. This album reminds me a little of Cal Tjader, who was the creator of Acid Jazz. Some of my favorite recordings are “Blind...
Wednesday inspiration. The Stahl House, also known as Case Study House #22 was finished in 1959 and is most likely the most famous house from the CSH program with help from famed photographer Julius Shulman....