Nostalgia For New York In The Sixties

All this week on Soundcheck, we're taking getting all nostalgic for New York music in collaboration with New York magazine, which this week is presenting their annual "yesteryear" issue -- this year, focused on New York City music. And we've asking listeners which decade you're most nostalgic for. (Call us at 866 939 1612, or leave a comment below.) 

Yesterday, Jody Rosen reflected on the 1920's. Today, New York magazine culture editor Lane Brown delves into the music of the '60s, a vital time he says had "a 1000 different things happening."

"You had the Brill Building just churning out hit after hit after hit; you had the birth of salsa; you had Barbara Streisand on Broadway; you had Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall," Brown tells Soundcheck host John Schaefer.

"But you also had this interesting collision with pop music and mass media -- and it's kind of a time when pop music becomes self-aware and concerned with branding. And you have people like Bob Dylan, who is this nice kid from Minnesota who comes to New York and pretends to fall out of a boxcar, basically, and becomes the king of the Greenwich Village folk scene. And later, when that kind of curdles, he becomes this rock star."

Brown also points to The Velvet Underground as a band of the 1960's that many people feel nostalgia for, even though they may have missed that music at the time. 

"There's that famous Brian Eno quote," Brown explains, "where very few people actually bought the album when it came out, but they all went on to form bands of their own. It was 171 on the Billboard charts... I think it took a long time for people to catch on. They were way ahead of their time."