Color my World

When I was a kid, I thought that people in the 1950’s could only see in black and white. After all, all of the TV shows from back then that I watched as a kid, Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, Mister Ed, Ozzie and Harriet,, were all in black and white. Furthermore, all the characters on these shows seemed to think nothing of it, going about their daily lives as if it were perfectly normal that everything was shades of gray.

Then, some time in the mid1960’s, something happened. Something mysterious. Something BIG. I wasn’t sure exactly when or how, but, sometime between seasons one and two of Gilligan’s Island, SOMETHING HAPPENED, and humans were able to see color.

Picture yourself, falling asleep on night in a world that is black and white, as it had been all your life, and waking up to find the world alive with color. I imagine that it would have been not unlike the scene when Dorothy takes her first steps out of her black and white Kansas farmhouse and into the marvelous Technicolor Land of Oz.

The “Wizard of Oz” actually supported my hypothesis. For Dorothy, only Oz was in color, and she seemed sufficiently amazed by that fact. When she returned to Kansas, it was back to good old black and white.

I was surprised this hadn’t been mentioned in my history books. After all, you’d think it would’ve been kind of a big deal at the time. Surely it would have made the paper. But where were the old news clippings? Where was the news footage of a television announcer, Walter Cronkite perhaps, announcing excitedly that the world was suddenly and mysteriously full of color?

Did people just not notice? Was there a conspiracy afoot? Or, was it simply a situation wherein they just didn’t want to talk about it. It all seemed like a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, and trapped inside of an enigma.

Nevertheless, I am aware that there were some gaping holes in my “Something happened” theory. For example, how did I explain the full color paintings of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln in my elementary school classroom? For that matter, how did I explain “Little House on the Prairie” which, though it took place way back in the 1800’s, was awash in color? In truth, I never fully reconciled these disparate facts. I was six. And anyway, the 1800’s were so long ago, that the might as well have been, well, the 1800’s.

But, looking back now, there never really was any contradiction. My theory was not that the WORLD was black and white. It was that humans could only SEE in black and white, just like my dog. I surmised that human beings had some how evolved, or “grown up” during this time, and the result of this maturation was the ability to see color.

Today, when I watch those old shows, especially those shows like Gilligan’s Island, or Andy Griffith, that straddled the black and white and color TV line, I enjoy the black and white episodes a bit more. They somehow seem more authentic. Particularly with the Andy Griffith show, the colored seasons seem as if they were filmed in black and white and then painted over by an intern.

Maybe it’s because color brings out the details, those subtle differences on hue and shade that highlight the complexities of our world. Black and white, on the other hand, is cleaner, better defined and straight forward. The good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats, it was as simple as that

In some ways, the mid-sixties change from the clearly contrasted world of black and white TV, to the subtleties of color television mirrored the cultural shift happening at the time. After the fall of Camelot, the moral clarity of our culture, at least the perceived moral clarity, was coming apart at the seams, what with the struggle for Civil Rights, the rise of the drug culture, and war protesters, and burning bras. Even now those times seem so far removed from the idealized Leave it to Beaver version of the ‘50’s that it is hard to believe they took place in the same century, let alone less than 10 years apart.

World War II, the great, morally justifiable conflict between the evil Axis powers and the righteous Allied Forces: Black and white. Vietnam, the murky, morally ambiguous war of foreign intervention: Color.

The black and white Beatles were witty, lovable mop tops in three piece suits who sang about how much she loved you, wanting to hold your hand, and the virtues of yesterday. The color Beatles were long haired, pot smoking, LSD experimenting rock gods who sung of hallucinogenic trips through Strawberry Felids, happiness being a warm gun, and as long as we are here, why don’t we do it in the road.

In 1960, the number one TV show was the black and white version of Gunsmoke, where Matt Dillon always did the right thing and good always triumphed over evil. By 1969, the number one show was Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, with its counter-culture leanings, veiled references to sex and drugs, and a cast who seemed obsessed with looking things up in Funk and Wagnall’s.

The advent of color TV brought the complex inconsistencies of our society into our living rooms, and showed us that, as much as we might want it to be, our world was definitely not black and white. Black and white TV may be cleaner, but color TV showed the world as it was, warts and all.

In the early ‘90’s when Ted Turner was intent on colorizing every black and white film he could get his hands on, there was a cultural backlash, and he eventually gave up. I think this is because black and white movies and TV remind us of an earlier, somehow simpler time. A time when Good guys were supposed to wear white hats, and Bad guys are supposed to wear white hats. Because that’s the way it was back then, even if it wasn’t.

My Generation: Part 2, Verse 3, Chapter 4, Jackson 5, Nikki 6

“Do you get the impression that 20 years from now, when we look back on the summer of ’89, the only thing we are going to be able to reminisce about is how much we reminisced about the summer of ’69?”

So asked Todd Snider in this Youtube video introducing a song off of his 1994 album “Songs from a Daily Planet” called “My Generation, Part 2”

The song is a tongue and cheek defense of the “Me” Generation, written to counter the claims of ageing hippies lamenting that “You’re generation hasn’t done shit..(and Live Aid doesn’t count)” In the chorus, he sings wryly “Here’s to living off dad as long as you can and blending in with the crowd/Yeah, My generation should be proud…

I am not sure that I agree that my generation “hasn’t done shit” (Though I must admit that, as I write this, nothing comes to mind). I will admit, however, that the music of my 80’s youth is utterly forgettable. Twenty years on, I only have fond memories maybe 10 songs from the 80’s and have less than a handful in my CD and digital music collections. A quick survey of the songs on my Ipod finds that of 907 songs (pathetic I know, shut up), less than 25 of them (about 2.7%) were hits in the ‘80’s By contrast, my Ipod is littered with all kinds of music from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

Part of the reason for this is because my dad still has his box of original 45’s from his teenage years in the 50’s (Don’t know what a 45 is? Google it). Every now and then when I was a kid, he would take them out and blast Elvis’s “Hound Dog”, Ricky Nelson’s “Hello, Mary Lou” or Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba” through the house. I don’t care how old that music is, it’s impossible not to dance around like a happy go lucky fool when that stuff is playing full blast.

Also, I had a music teacher in middle school who introduced us all to 60’s and 70’s rock and pop. He wasn’t one of those “cool” teachers who wore jeans and said “man” a lot in order to “get down on our level.” He was the complete opposite. He dressed in a suit and tie every day, wore horn rimmed glasses and shiny leather soled shoes, and carried a briefcase. But within that Reaganesque conservative exterior was a rocker yearning to breath free.

He showed us the Chuck Berry concert film “Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll” on movie day. We spent an entire week dissecting Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. He handed out the lyrics to Don McClean’s “American Pie” and took us through a lecture on the history of rock and roll, verse by verse. We spent an entire class period discussing Simon and Garfunkels “I am a Rock” More than anything else, he is the reason I love rock and roll.

But, on a generational level, in the 1980’s there was a sense, at least amongst white suburban teenagers, that as hard as our music rocked, it paled in comparison with that which had come before. For every Gun’s and Rose’s, who legitimately rocked for at least one earth shattering album, or Motley Crue, who did a lot of Smoking in the Boys Room with Girls, Girls, Girls there are 10 or 15 Warrant’s or Wingers, White Lions, Whitesnake’s or W.A.S.P. (what’s with all the W’s by the way?) who are utterly forgettable.

At school dances, the most popular slow song was Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” , released in1977, when we were three years old. During the schools battle of the bands the loudest applause were reserved for “Stairway to Heaven” from 1971 or “Sunshine of You’re Love” from 1968. You always knew that the long haired kid who sat on the playground playing guitar was a “serious artist” when he burst into Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” from 1975.

Its not that I dislike ‘80’s music. When it “Pour Some Sugar on Me” comes on the radio,I will turn in up, and for a moment reminisce about mullet’s, and summer days alternating between my friend’s pool and Legend of Zelda. But the feeling is fleeting, and I quickly pull up the Beatles or the Stones, or Tom Petty, or Ryan Adams on my Ipod, and free my soul, getting lost in that rock and roll and drifting away.

I can compare listening to the music of my youth to watching the TV shows of my youth. The advent of the DVD box set has made it possible to relive cherished TV memories, some of which are best left alone.

I was shocked when, after shelling out $40.00 bucks for the complete first season of the A-Team, I realized just how ridiculous the show was. I will only say this. If I ever find myself on the run from the Military Police for a crime I didn’t commit, I would not buy a van with a distinctive red stripe on the side, ride around, and blow up bad guys in every town I came to. I just doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do. But that’s just me.

Whether it be the A-Team or LA Guns, my inner voice asks “Why did I used to like this?”

There has been a resurgence of interest in ‘80’s music that is in part due to nostalgic Gen X’ers, it is also driven by the current crop of teenagers. Just like it was cool for us to like classic rock, it is cool for them (at least some of them) to like ‘80’s rock (at least some of it).

In a way it makes sense. For them, as for me, it was the music of their older brothers or sisters, the music of the cool high school kids they looked up to in grammar school, the kids wanted to be like. Maybe, a part of casting off the chains of the former generation is to revere it, even as you cast it aside. Maybe I am just an idiot who is writing this because he can’t sleep. Who knows?

One this is for sure though, at least in terms of music, my generation hasn’t done shit, (and Live Aid doesn’t count).