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In Reply to: RE: The coolness of stereos from 1956 to 1986 was a one-shot deal. posted by John Marks on October 09, 2014 at 15:38:08
I see you keep referencing 1986 as the day the music died. What happened in 1986 that caused this change?
Follow Ups:
Very few people remember (or have learned) that Henry Kloss, formerly of AR, KLH, and Advent, in 1976 had staked all his chips on projection TV.
His business venture failed because the technology was unproved and very expensive. And hard to set up.
However, 10 years later, companies with sufficient backing and clout had established high-quality and relatively affordable video playback and projection. The first LaserDisc player with a solid-state laser was Pioneer's LD-700 of 1984.
For not insane money, a yuppie in the mid-1980s could see operas, music videos, or soft-core porn on a 10-foot diagonal screen from an Ottoman-sized three-gun projector, and all the "aspirational" magazines like Playboy and Esquire abruptly stopped pushing audio and began pushing Home Theater.
End of story.
JM
Are you saying that back in the 60's and early 70's playboy had an influence on stereo buyers? If that is the case I have never heard that before.
Yes, that is what I have been saying for more than 6 years, and you have not been paying attention.
In the 1960s and 1970s Playboy's circulation was 5 MILLION copies a month; Playboy was read by appx. 25% the college-age men in the US (on the assumption that most copies were read by the subscriber and from 2 to 4 friends--and barbershop copies were probably read by 50 customers a month).
I wrote about this phenomenon in Stereophile's August 2008 "As We See It."
JM
JM,
It would help my understanding of your post and your hypothesis if you would cite any peer reviewed research that studied the effect of 'reading' Playboy on the college age demographic and purchasing audio equipment during the "baby boomer' years of the 1960s-70s.
Thanks.
And I don't need peer-reviewed research because the fact of the matter is that hi-fi companies were frequent advertisers in Playboy from 1956 on through the time I cite as the changeover from stereo to home theater. Companies that buy ads in the wrong media often don't stay in business.
But there actually is some peer-reviewed research I am aware of that indeed does cite chapter and verse for the strong linkage between the urban/indoors ethos of Playboy (versus the suburban/outdoors ethos of Esquire), hi-fi, and Hefner's particular vision of "the life well lived."
From JSTOR:
“ 'Turn it down!' she shrieked: gender, domestic space, and high fidelity, 1948-59”
Keir Keightley
“Popular Music,” Vol. 15, No. 2. (May, 1996), pp. 149-177.
“Popular Music” is currently published by Cambridge University Press.
# # #
I attach only two pages, in the spirit of Fair Use. Yes, that study ends at 1959 but by then the die was cast as far as Playboy's embrace of both hi-fi and jazz as signifiers of Hefner's ideals of modern male life.
Perhaps there is more research that is on point but I am more than satisfied that my thesis holds water, and more to the point so is JA, and he matters a lot more than you do. And I have discussed my thesis with academics in American Civilization and Musicology, and nobody has ever said, "You are barking up the wrong tree."
The book that someone has to write is about how Hefner, I believe, did more than anyone else during the years when Rock was in its ascendency to keep Jazz on life support, so to speak--one of the few instances in which Hefner consciously took a position that was uncool by the prevailing standards of the time. And perhaps it was Hef's continued showcasing of relics like Mel Tormé that was the chink in Playboy's armor that let Guccione's Penthouse come into the cafeteria and eat Hef's lunch... .
Have a nice day.
jm
JM,
It is an easy call to agree that Playboy played a not insignificant role in shaping the aspirational ethos of post WWII, white middle class males during the 1950s.
I specifically refer to the generation of white middle class,'Baby-Boomer kids who came of age in the early 1960s to the mid 1970s.
I would suggest that the Playboy aspirational life style ethos and view of the world was, in any practical sense, absent, if not anathema, to the life style of the aforementioned kids. They were, in fact, the adolescents and young adults who were in active revolt against their parents and who formed the core soldiers of the political and cultural struggles of those times. I remember the struggles of those times quite well. Music propelled the struggle. We bought audio equipment. Playboy was as dead as the proverbial door nail, just, as we thought, was our parents way of life; the former was a solid truth; the latter, well, we learned a lot about ourselves and attempted to pick and choose among the bones of what we rejected and arrived at our middle age a wiser lot.
I distinctly remember that not all Baby Boomer kids were the same. Indeed there were the rebels or the *progressive* kids, but there just as many who were traditional consumerists happy doing whatever it took to keep the finances and the flow of goods rolling. For every kid who struggled against the legacy of former generations, there was at least one other who carried the torch onward - even though it may have been "uncool" to admit doing so.Soon, the yuppie wasps would arrive (L.L. Bean catalogs in tow) in swarms, stinging and biting all in their path. The internet was ready to explode, and explode it did.
Today, we see that almost everyone is the same.
Edits: 10/12/14
To better understand the people involved in this topic it would help to know there age, where they resided between 1960-1969, their educational and draft/military status at the time. While many of us were united socially and politically the transformation (or when one may have dropped acid) occurred at different times.
In very broad terms the social changes between 1960-65 were different from those between 1964-69. Ones opinion of when the 'Summer of Love' actually took place and was that the West Coast or the East? Beat or Hip? Elvis or the Beatles and on and on? Regardless, it seems everybody at least flipped through Playboy regularly.
During that decade there was very little in the way of commonly available audio orientated periodicals and Playboy, regardless of its other lifestyle content, was providing the Jazz Poll and a usually interesting photographic look at the rapidly growing High Fidelity industries offerings beyond Heathkit.
Look at age breakdowns in the 1968 and 1972 national elections. Nixon got lots of young voters. Arguably, they were his margins.
You are lapsing (I think) into the mindset that when a year ending in "9" ends and a year beginning with "0" starts, it is like flipping a light switch. In most cases, not so.
All one has to do is look at Playboy's still-astonishing circulation and ad revenue figures from the 1960s through the mid-1970s, when Penthouse began spanking Playboy's rear for its complacency.
Indeed, the "real" Playboy died with the early death of Auguste Comte Spectorsky, the guy who was able to get world-class writers to swallow their pride while pocketing their check. Hef wandered around in his satin bathrobe while Specs put out a world-class general-interest magazine that also featured bare boobs.
Anyone who lived through that era (I still can hardly believe with the bad lottery number I got, I was not sent to Vietnam) can remember (selectively) what they wish to, in however self-congratulatory a way.
I not only lived through it, I studied it at the college level and have continued my studies in History and Material Culture and Technology as academic subjects, life-long. I am currently reading a Niall Ferguson essay on chaos and determinancy in History, and, frankly, it's hard work.
Indeed, later in life I met and was influenced by an important member of Shure Brothers' outside ad agency in the 1960s and 1970s, and for them, Playboy was a supremely important "get." And I don't think they were living in the past, they were reading the sales reports. Playboy's circulation in that time frame was more than TEN TIMES Stereo Review's!!!
Let us not forget that counter-cultural as they were, The Grateful Dead splurged on McIntosh amplification for their PA system. The revolution might not have been televised, but they like them their nice stereos.
JM
nt
Altho, GQ just ran an article about Return to HIFI. Sadly, not enough momentum reversing the pendulum but apparently it's COOL to have a hifi again.
The latest trend for metro sexuals: drink micro brew whisky or burbon with wagyu beef and spin vinyl records.
Edits: 10/09/14 10/10/14 10/10/14
...what sort of man reads
Way before Holt (much less HP) held court in these parts, Playboy would feature articles about stereo gear. After all, if you wanted to get laid, a great stereo could help set the mood. (along with the round bed!)
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