HIST3170: United States - History of the 1960s: Selected Topics: Culture - Music and Film

"Sixty years after it took the world by storm, rock and roll continues to be a vital musical force. It may have branched off into a million little variations, but it remains the subject of documentaries, scholarly volumes, and much more. This collection from the WGBH Open Vault brings together dozens of interviews with rock and rollers from the 1950s to the 1990s. These interviews were originally conducted as part of a co-production between WGBH/Boston and the BBC. All told, there are over 160 interviews here with folks like Ben E. King, Al Kooper, Dick Dale, Kenny Gamble, and Leon Huff. Each video also has a transcript and complete bibliographic information. Visitors can search through interviews by name, date, or media format. Users are encouraged to leave their own comments on the videos as well." [Internet Scout Project]

"Founded in 1985, Rockmine is Europe's largest independent rock music archive, providing information for researchers and the media. Rockmine first went online in 1995 but has continued to develop since. One of the more notable recent additions is the Archive, which currently contains a gallery of over 100 posters and handbills from the famed Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom; all thirteen issues of the Mojo Navigator, one of the first rock music newspapers; and the Vault, a collection of police, coroner, and legal files presently featuring 94 pages of FBI files on the Doors and Jim Morrison. The Cyclopedia, which is still under construction, will contain "a full alphabetical listing of artists, giving band details, session details, brief biographies, photographs, [and] links." The Cyclopedia may be browsed alphabetically in frames or non-frames versions, and, at present, contains basic information on a large number of musicians and bands. Rockmine's main site offers a host of articles, original documents, and audio interviews with individuals and groups that inhabit rock's Mount Olympus. Featured artists include The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols, and Cream. Additional resources, such as a free email update service, timelines, quizzes, and a discussion board, round out the site." [Internet Scout Project]

"Since the 1950s, rock and roll has exerted a major influence on American – and, more recently, global – culture. Impacting everything from fashion to politics, the history of the contemporary U.S. cannot be easily separated from the history of its popular music. This modest but interesting site traces the history of rock music by decade, from its roots in the African American Rhythm and Blues to the grunge craze of the 1990s. Along the way, readers can glean interesting tidbits (did you know that the term 'rock and roll' was coined by Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed?) from well-constructed essays, and view classic photos of rockers across the generations. The site is structured by decade for easy browsing." [Internet Scout Project]

"This online educational resource, presented by Steven Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, is interdisciplinary and designed for middle and high school students. On the landing page, educators will find an introduction to the site, a featured lesson, and several featured resources. From there, readers may like to delve into the Curriculum section, which tells the story of Rock and Roll in America through four books: Birth of Rock, Teenage Rebellion, Transformation, and Fragmentation. Each book is comprised of comprehensive chapters outlining the history and social importance of rock music, from its origins in blues to its development into everything from heavy metal to hip hop. Readers may also enjoy the Resources section, with links to other online rock and roll information, or the section For Teachers, which outlines the site's teaching philosophy, suggestions for classroom use, and other helpful elements." [Internet Scout Project]

"Founded in 1965 in Palo Alto, California, The Grateful Dead's music was at the epicenter of the American hippie movement for over 30 years. The Grateful Dead Archive Online, primarily constructed from the University of California Santa Cruz's Grateful Dead Archive, comprises over 45,000 digitized items, from audience-recorded bootlegs to fanzines to photographs, posters, tickets, and T-shirts. There are a number of ways to search the website. For instance, selecting Shows provides a map of venues. Click the map, and then the venue for a list of images, recordings, and other items. The Milestones tab presents an interactive timeline with arrows that move the years forward and backward over important events in the history of the band. The Artists tab links to thousands of photographs and posters, organized by artist. Perhaps best of all for Deadheads, the Media tab opens to selected audio and video recordings." [Internet Scout Project]

"In this exhibition, the Special Collections Department at the University of Virginia uses books and posters to attempt to answer the following questions: Were the Sixties the best of times or the worst of times? Did America evolve as a nation and we evolve as individuals? Are we better for the experience? The exhibition begins by hypothesizing that many of the radical ideas of the sixties can be found in the literature of 19th-century social movements. Other precursors to sixties thought, such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the Beats of the 1950s, are then given center-stage. Finally, visitors arrive at the sixties with sections devoted to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Woodstock, Rock Music, Hippies, the Civil Rights Movement and more. The exhibition, which is really an annotated bibliography in disguise, does not actually answer the questions it poses, but instead presents a wealth of material, and lets the viewer decide. And the images will surely bring back memories, be they happy, sad, or addled." [Internet Scout Project]