Tag Archives: 1966
Blonde on Blonde at 50
A quick Google search finds Blonde on Blonde on most every top rock albums shortlist and it always places high in rankings of Dylan’s best. I take Highway 61 Revisited over Blonde, but Blonde is probably in any Dylanologist’s top three. Blonde‘s epic poetics in songs like “Visions of Johanna” and “Sad-Eyed Lady of the [...]
King of Kingston
Fifty years ago, in April 1966, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica for the very first time. Selassie was a controversial statesman. He is also the figurehead of the Rastafari religion which views Selassie as the returned messiah of the Bible. Here’s a bit about the man… Among the Rastafari movement, whose followers are estimated [...]
Flashback: The Acid Tests
This year we look back on half a century since the first Acid Test at The Fillmore in San Francisco. The psychedelic initiations came courtesy of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters whose exploits were immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s countercultural histoire, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test… With that in mind here’s to another 8 miles-high-stone [...]
Climbing the Tower
On August 1, 1966 Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin with a cache of rifles, handguns, shotguns and ammunition. In 96 minutes he shot 45 people and killed 16. It was the biggest mass-shooting in the U.S. at that time. At the age of [...]
Celebrating Frank O'Hara
Frank O’Hara would’ve turned 87 in March if he hadn’t been hit by a dune buggy on Fire Island in 1966. O’Hara was a category straddling artist who wouldn’t be boxed-in by the preconceived boundaries that separated – and continue to separate – artists and the people who organize and comment on their work. O’Hara [...]
