Welcome to Talking ‘Bout My Generation: How the Formative Years of The Baby Boomer Experience Changed America and Continue to Influence Our Country Today

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Hello. My name is Dave Price and I’m the creator, curator, and chief content producer for Talking ‘Bout My Generation, a project which deals with some of the most important events, people, ideas, and topics from the initial years of the Baby Boomer Experience that changed, helped shape, and continue to influence the America we live in today.

History tells us the Baby Boomers are the large generation born between 1946 (the 1st year after World War II) to 1964 (the year the Beatles came to America).

Since I Was born in 1952, I have been around to personally witness all but the first 6 years of Baby Boom times. When I retired from the 9-to-5 work world in 2017, I decided to use the skills I had developed in my 12 years in journalism, 20 years in high school English teaching, 5 years as as teacher trainer and instructional coach for the Talent Development Program of Johns Hopkins, and 5 years as a DC-based national educational consultant to create and operate the project. (And yes, for those of you who know your rock music, I did steal the title from the 1965 British Invasion single by Pete Townshend and The Who).

During our first 4 years, highlights included the researching, writing, and publishing of my 1st book Come Together: How the Baby Boomers, the Beatles, and a Youth Counterculture Combined to Create the Music of the Woodstock Generation. (And yes, I did steal that title from the Beatles 1969 single – I’m sure you see a pattern developing here). I also guided Baby-Boom-themed tours at the former museum of news the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, designed and delivered a walking tour on famous DC protests for Smithsonian Associates, and presented a series of interactive lectures at the Smithsonian and other DC venues.

I believe there is much here for you to enjoy whether you are a Baby Boomer, or someone from a younger generation who wants to learn more how the past is directly influencing all our lives today. If you do like what we’re offering, please subscribe to the email link above so you can get regular updates on what’s new and what’s news at Talking ‘Bout My Generation: The Baby Boomer Experience.

Our Talks/Lectures/Presentations Available for Any Group, Organization, or Venue

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Talks from my book Come Together

Before the Beatles: A Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On — How Did Rock and Roll Come to Be?

  • 12 Changes That Paved the Way for the Rock and Roll of the 50s
  • What Was the 1st Rock and Roll Record?
  • The King and Court: Elvis and 6 other rock and roll pioneers who greatly influenced the Beatles
  • A New Frontier: The music of the Kennedy years (1960 to 1963)

With the Beatles: A 6-year musical road trip from Liverpool to Woodstock

  • 1964 – The Beatles and the Music of the British Invasion
  • 1965 – With Rubber Soul, The Beatles, Under the Influence of Bob Dylan and Pot, Create Song Lyrics with More Mature Meanings
  • 1966 – Garage Rock Rules, but Albums like the Beatles’ Revolver Begin Making LPs More Important Than 45 Singles
  • 1967 – With the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s as Its Soundtrack, a Summer of Love Gives Birth to Psychedelic Rock and the Hippie Lifestyle
  • 1968 – The Music of the Beatles, the Stones, and Others Reflect Turbulent Times
  • 1969 – The Beatles Stay Home But from Atlantic Pop to Woodstock to the Isle of Wright to Altamont, It’s a Year of the Big Music Festival
  • from Our Rock and Pop Culture Division – Rock of Agers Icons

Songs of Protest and Peace – 45 Revolutions Per Minute: 60s & 70s Music as a Call for Social Change

  • The Times They Are A’ Changin’: Bob Dylan’s Anthems of Dissent
  • We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Anti-Vietnam War Classics
  • A Change Is Going to Come: Songs of the Civil Rights Movement & Black Power and Pride
  • You Don’t Own Me: Songs of Female Equality and Freedom
  • Smile on Your Brother: Songs of Peace, Love, and Understanding

A Nixon Court: How Supreme?

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This post first appeared in The Prices Do DC

Nowhere is the legacy of a president more lasting than in his (and someday her) power to appoint Supreme Court justices who serve for life. And no one was more cognizant of that fact than Richard Nixon, who appointed 4 justices in his time in office to the 9-member court. In fact Nixon called his judicial appointments “the most constructive and far reaching impact of my presidency.”

This afternoon, The Richard Nixon Foundation and the National Archives presented the program Nixon and the Court: The Story Behind President Nixon’s Supreme Court Appointments, another in a series of the 37th president’s legacy forums.

Five distinguished panelists, all prominent political and legal players during the Nixon era, took part in the forum at the Archives. Fred Fielding, who served as counsel to Nixon, moderated. Panelists were headed by former Nixon speechwriter, 3-time presidential candidate, and uber conservative Pat Buchanan. Buchanan was joined by Robert Blakey, former Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and later of the House Select Committee on Assassinations; Wallace Johnson, former Associate Deputy Attorney General; and Earl Silbert, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.

The mid 1960s, when ex-Vice President Nixon re-emerged politically, were turbulent times. The Vietnam War. Racial unrest. The Black power movement and the Black Panthers. Student riots. Police engaged in street war with protesters on almost a daily basis. “It seemed like the country was coming apart,” Buchanan said. “For Middle America and the Silent Majority, it seemed the country they grew up in was disintegrating before their very eyes.”

Many conservatives blamed Supreme Court leader Earl Warren and his court for issuing rulings that, according to Buchanan read “their own (liberal) ideology into the Constitution.” Nixon made his view of restoration of law and order a cornerstone of his campaign. And, once elected, he used his power to appoint philosophical conservatives to the nation’s highest court, including then 47-year-old William Rehnquist, who ended up serving 33 years, several of those as Chief Justice. 

The panelists agreed that the legal world is constantly trying to the balance the rights of the individual with public safety. Johnson said Nixon’s appointments “moved the pendulum.” According to Johnson, it was “a major, major triumph” for the president, who, ironically given his law and order stance, was driven from office by the outgrowths from the Watergate break-in.

“There was a perception (when Nixon took office) that things were tilting more toward protecting the rights of individuals who had been accused or indicted than public safety,” Silbert, agreeing,  said. “Some thought it was leading to an explosion in crime. I could not myself make that connection, but many did.”                                                                                                                                                      

Blakey contended that the Nixon era was “the golden age of Federal Criminal Law.” This was especially true in the area of organized crime. For example, Blakely said when Nixon took office, there were about 5,000 members of the Mafia distributed between 22 families nationwide. Today, that estimated number stands at about only 1,500 members with only 2 strong families both based in New York. “Nixon gets a bad rap,” Blakely, now a law professor at Notre Dame, said. “But he said ‘go get the crooks.'”

Roy Lichtenstein: The Art World’s Prince of Pop

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This article 1st appeared in The Prices Do DC – December 23, 2012

In 1961, at the urging of a fellow Rutgers University art professor, Roy Lichtenstein loaded up a station wagon with a few pieces of his new art work, and, accompanied by his colleague, headed across the river to New York to try to convince an influential gallery owner that his work should be exhibited. Among those paintings was “Look Mickey, 1961.” On a first look, the gallery owner was impressed and Lichtenstein was on his way to sharing billing with Andy Warhol as the 2 most noted artists in the school of visual creation that came to be known as Pop Art.

But as art historian Avis Berman points out, Lichtenstein was no overnight sensation. “His life was divided into 2 roughly symmetrical halves: 38 years of obscurity and 36 years of permanent fame,” Berman says. “He hung in and hung on.”

Berman’s remarks came during a lecture entitled Roy Lichtenstein: Voices from the Archive she recently delivered at the National Gallery of Art as part of that institution’s major retrospective of Lichtenstein’s work now on display.

As consultant for the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, Berman has conducted more than 200 interviews with the artist, his family, and those who knew him. One of the most unusual aspects of her talk was that it was punctuated more than a dozen times by the actual words recorded from Lichtenstein himself. “Call it an art historian’s version of a Tony Bennett duet,” Berman joked before she began her talk.

Berman said Lichtenstein, best known for his trademark use of benday dots that he used to create works lifted from cartoons and comic strips, was constantly intrigued by the question – what is art? As Lichtenstein put it, “I was always baffled by why are these few marks art and these few marks are not art? Why is one valued and the other one isn’t?”

On Pop art, Lichtenstein said, “Part of the intention on Pop is to mask its intentions with humor. But Pop should also tell you something you didn’t know.”

Berman said the oral interviews have greatly expanded the understanding of both Lichtenstein and his work. “He had no impulse to accumulate documentation and he lived in a time when the telephone was replacing the letter as the means of communication,” she noted. “The more we can understand the background of an artist the more easy it is to understand the art.”

For example, her interviews revealed that despite his fame, Lichtenstein was extremely generous. “He gave anyone who did something nice for him or anyone who worked for him some of his art work,” Berman said.

Much of Lichtenstein’s reputation rests on the fact that he upended virtually every prejudice of high art that existed at the time he began his Pop work. However, Lichtenstein admitted that his breakthrough was really unplanned. “My ability was way above my awareness. The rationales came later. I guess anyone can become a crazed genius for a second,” he joked during one of his interviews.”

Lichtenstein definitely believed that all art isn’t really new, but is based on the art of the past. “It takes a lot of generations of artists looking at other artists to produce new art,” he said.

Berman said she doesn’t agree with the contention that Lichtenstein was simply aping work others had originally created. “He didn’t just copy. He changed and strengthened the original completely. He looked at what had been overlooked,” she said.

The art historian maintains that Lichtenstein and Warhol will remain significant figures in the history of art. “Pop was denigrated but it has come to be recognized as a legitimate school of art. It captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s,” she contended.

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips

Taking the Stand to Make a Stand

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This article 1st appeared in The Prices Do DC – 10.01.11

It is one of the most dramatic, revolutionary pictures of all-time. Two young black men, just moments removed from winning track medals in the 1968 Olympics, standing on the medal-platform, heads down, a single back-gloved fist raised in the air in silent protest.

And tonight, 43 years later, John Carlos, one of those historic figures, appeared at the Busboys and Poets bookstore along with sports writer Dave Zirin,to discuss the book The John Carlos Story they had co-written.

In a lengthy, highly entertaining, often hilarious monologue, Carlos detailed his life which led him from the streets of Harlem to his historic moment in Mexico. Initially, he said, there has been much discussion of a boycott of the 1968 games by black American athletes to protest conditions for blacks here and in white-dominated African countries.

That boycott was to receive full support from Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.  In fact, Carlos said he had a chance to meet with King, who was then embroiled in a trashmen’s dispute in Memphis, and asked him why, with death threats escalating, he continued his crusade.

Carlos said Dr. King very simply told him: “John, I have to go back to stand for those who won’t stand 
for themselves and I have to go back to stand for those who can’t stand for themselves.”

Within months, Dr. King was assassinated and the boycott idea was dead. However, Carlos and his running mate Tommie Smith vowed to take some kind of a stand. And so, when Smith finished 1st and Carlos 3rd in the 200, an eternal visual symbol of protest came to be.

Interestingly, while all the focus was on the gloved raised fists, there were other aspects of the protest. Both athletes wore necklaces for lynchings of blacks in the South and  stepped up to the podium without shoes to call attention to the plight of the poor. Carlos further left his track suit unzipped in a sign of solidarity with oppressed workers.

Zirin, who is one of the most socially conscious sports writers in America today, said he had 2 major questions when he and Carlos started the book.  The first was – why did you risk what you did? (and indeed the  fallout was nasty and long-lasting).  Zirin indicated that perhaps the answer to that could best be explained in a quote on the front cover of the book:”How can you ask someone to live in the world and not have something to say about injustice?”

The second, and perhaps even more important question, Zirin said is – why does what Carlos did still seem to matter so much and resonate so loudly? “We still have injustice today and it’s still important for people to take a stand. John did that. And he paid for his stand, but he says he really had no other choice – it was the right thing to do,” Zirin said.

Andy Warhol: Flash and Shadows

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This article 1st appeared in The Prices Do DC – 12.03.2011

Pop artist Andy Warhol exhibited a life-long interest in news and news makers, a fascination that was reflected in much of his art over 3 decades. Whether it was small black and white pictures of news boxes or giant Warholian replicas of actual tabloid headlines, the daily news often served both as source and inspiration for the New-York based artist.

Today, we headed to the National Gallery of Art to view the exhibit Warhol: Headlines. Work there ranged from one of his first large prints of news tabloid material “A Boy for Meg” (1961) to his last 1980s TV shows for MTV Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes of Fame.

To me, the most captivating piece was a large work entitled “News Flash.” which transposed enlarged actual news flashes from those historic 3 November days in Dallas in 1963 when President John Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, who, in turn, was gunned down by Jack Ruby as a stunned audience watched on national TV with screen shot prints of Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, in the colorful Warhol style.

It was the news and the handling of the same that moved Warhol to create the piece more than paying any tribute to the slain president. “I was thrilled having Kennedy as president. He was handsome, young, smart – but it doesn’t bother me much that he is dead.” Warhol once said. “What bothers me was the way television and radio was programming everybody to feel so sad. It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get away from the thing.”

Ironically, in 1968, Warhol had his own brush with assassination and Kennedy death.  Hanger-on Valerie Solonas asttacked Warhol, firing point blank at him with a pistol. Coming back from the edge of death in the hospital Warhol said “I heard a television going somewhere and the words ‘Kennedy’ and ‘assassin’ and ‘shot’ over and over again. Robert Kennedy had been shot, but what was so weird was that I had no understanding that this was a second Kennedy assassination. I just thought that maybe after you die, they rerun things for you, like President Kennedy’s assassination.”

To complete our DC day with Warhol we crossed the National Mall to the Hirshhorn Gallery of Modern Art to take in the companion show Andy Warhol Shadows, which features a pattern of  a 100 large canvases with streaks and trails created by painting with a mop.

When Warhol himself hung that exhibit in New York in 1979 he said, “Someone asked me if I thought they were art and I said no. You see the opening party has disco and I guess that makes them disco decor.”

“The show will not be liked like all the others. The reviews will be bad – my reviews always are. But the review of the party will be terrific,” Warhol concluded.

Tales, Tips, and Traveling Tips
Both Warhol exhibits are temporary and will be gone from DC by mid January. However, if you have an interest in Warhol, his works, pop art, or the 60s, you can always visit the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the city of his birth. We’ve been there and the trip is worth it.