I'd like to think that SurferJoe, but I dunno. I'm already hearing lots of 90's songs played almost as 'classic' tracks, and it seems to me (although I could be just imagining this) that the 50's nostalgia in our culture is all but dead, and the 70's nostalgia is on the rise. As in, the 'cool' decade is moving.
Personally, I know nothing about the 40's. When I was a kid, I listened to 50's music all the time, many movies were set in the 50's, etc... now as I'm a little older, a lot of movies are set in the 60's and 70's, it's hard (very hard) to find 50's music on the radio, nobody talks about Marilyn or James Dean or even, gasp! Elvis to a large extent anymore. Lots of kids have never heard of Buddy Holly or Richie Valens or god forbid the Big Bopper.
So while I personally feel that you're right and there's a huge golden age there, it seems like at least the 50's portion of it is being lost, and the 70's are now considered equally as important and as 'retro' as the 60's.
Get what I'm saying? It's hard to explain, but imagine a 20 year span of 'cool' and 'vintage' that moves with the times.
I do get what you're saying; you have a strong point, Ron, and I'll continue to give it thought, but I tend to think that most things come back once from nostalgia, and I think that's what's happening with the 80s and maybe 90s now. People remember it fondly, but there's just not much else there. Different aspects of the 50s come back over and over in different forms. And remember the Swing craze about seven years ago? That'll happen again.
You may think of the fifties, for example, as Elvis (and he'll keep coming back forever without ever really going away), but Louis Prima (to name one) will keep having his innings. I'm a former animation artist, and we kept returning to the fifties (see: "Ren & Stimpy", "Dexter's Lab", etc. etc. etc.) over and over for different influences- character design, background styling, sponge-painting, the eclectic scores...
Clothing styles still draw from the fifties heavily- see Charlie Sheen's shirts on "Two And A Half Men". Elements of the forties, sixties, and seventies are just as much present all around us. Personally, I think that as years go by the culture of the eighties and nineties will be rehashed far less in part due to quality but in part because they were rehash to begin with. In thirty years "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners" will still be classic comedy. But will "Saved By The Bell" or "Who's The Boss" be around when the people who watched the original runs are gone?
Mark Volman watched me punch out a concrete wall at the Burbank Courthouse in 1995.
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