Birth record for Hana Oberholtzer by David Cordier (1816). Probably Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Watercolor and ink on paper, 7 3/4” x 12 1/4”. “‘Oberholtzer’” is a Mennonite surname, enshrined in American life as Old Overholt, a rye whiskey initially made by a member of this family.” More Pennsylvania German birth certificates here.
![Ham radio QSL card:
Back in the day, if you were a ham radio operator, you had a few hundred QSL cards printed up and sent them to people you met over your radio. Many operators pasted these all over their room, as a hobby—to show how far away your signal was received. Most people made their own cards… and many went to the local printer and had one made. No one used graphic designers because there weren’t any, for the most part—except what the printer could throw together—and even then you were not much better [off].
More at Accidental Mysteries.](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ouxxa0eFam8/SwBA7DJ9j9I/AAAAAAAAF5Y/dXu6fb3qD0A/s1600/4054189998_5549d8f38b_b.jpg)
Back in the day, if you were a ham radio operator, you had a few hundred QSL cards printed up and sent them to people you met over your radio. Many operators pasted these all over their room, as a hobby—to show how far away your signal was received. Most people made their own cards… and many went to the local printer and had one made. No one used graphic designers because there weren’t any, for the most part—except what the printer could throw together—and even then you were not much better [off].
More at Accidental Mysteries.
John and Margharita Gendusa in their bakery. John Gendusa was the New Orleans baker who, in 1929, fashioned the first modern, New Orleans-style, French bread loaf, the base on which po’ boy sandwiches have since been built. More here.
Graphic Art of a Swiss Town by Armin Tschanen and Walter Bangerter (1963). Via the ABC Verlag Flickr Pool.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
“Another Sad and Lonely Night,” The Bobby Fuller Four (1965).
When the British Invasion hit in 1964, England’s rockers reeducated Americans who had long neglected their musical heritage. But while most American bands were happy to learn about Carl Perkins, the Crickets and other homegrown heroes via the Beatles, Fuller went straight to the source. An El Paso native, Fuller started playing plain and simple rock ‘n’ roll while fellow Texan Buddy Holly was alive and stuck with it even after the music died. By the time the Brits brought back the beat, the singer/lead guitarist and his band were ready to show America that a group didn’t need pointy boots to play kick-ass rock and roll.
The girls of ABC’s Shindig. Photographs by Bill Ray for LIFE, December 1964. The Beach Boys, the Righteous Brothers and Marvin Gaye played this episode.
What ever happened to “selling out”? My contribution to Newsweek’s head-spinning look back at the first decade of the 21st century:
In 1994 Eddie Vedder, the furrow-browed, vibrato-voiced lead singer of Pearl Jam, decided to don David’s mantle and take down Ticketmaster. Critics called it a watershed moment for Gen X; fans applauded the band’s “artistic integrity.” To protest the company’s inflated fees, Vedder & Co. filed a nervy lawsuit, testified before a congressional subcommittee, and canceled their summer tour, opting instead to haul their own fences and electricity to a string of shows at the few fairgrounds, parks, and colleges still untouched by Goliath’s greasy mitts. Sure, the whole jury-rigged, anti-Ticketmaster vision quest collapsed under the weight of its own principles halfway through. But that was OK. As Vedder sang on “Not for You,” “If you hate something, don’t you do it too.” And in those days, nothing—not even flannel—was more rock and roll than taking the high road.
Fast-forward to the fall of 2009. Vedder and the gang have decided to sell their latest album, Backspacer, exclusively at Target. To publicize the partnership, they’ve agreed to appear in a television commercial for the massive suburban discount chain, while a similar deal with Verizon has transformed snippets of new songs into promotional prerelease ringtones. Given Pearl Jam’s principled past, you’d think that fans would be sort of upset, or shocked, or something. And yet the most anyone can muster is a yawn. “I don’t mind getting paid and making economic decisions that benefit me,” wrote one Slate.com commenter, a self-described “diehard” who probably would’ve burned Vedder in effigy had he shilled for a phone company 15 years ago. “And I don’t begrudge them that opportunity either.”
If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the evolving relationship between artists and their audiences over the past decade, the End of Selling Out—or, more precisely, the End of Obsessing Over Who Has Sold Out and Who Hasn’t—won’t come as a surprise. Still, seen in retrospect, it’s a sizable and relatively sudden shift. As recently as 1998 or so, rock fans—whether of the indie-, punk-, hard-, or classic-rock varieties—seemed to adhere to a simple code of ethics: “F—k the man.” That’s not to say that deals with the devil didn’t exist before Y2K; the Rolling Stones, for example, have been cycling through corporate sponsors since the Age of Aquarius. It’s just that hard-core fans used to react as if signing to a major label or licensing a song for commercial use was blasphemous. But now more bands than ever are climbing into bed with corporations, and no one’s batting an eye. The question as 2010 approaches is not only why artists have recently been so willing to align themselves with big business, but why we’ve been so willing to let them—and what this willingness says about the deeper ways our culture has changed since the turn of the century.
Read the rest here.
From Newsweek: 20/10
“She’s a Fool,” Lesley Gore (1963). Key changes!
Pele + Polaroid + Warhol, 1977. From “Andy Warhol Polaroids of Sports Champions” at Danzinger Projects through Dec. 12. See also: John McEnroe and (non-athlete) Tatum O’Neal. H/t NW.
Tension and Compression by Morio Shinoda, 1962. Bronze and wire, 26 1/8” x 33” x 23 1/8”. From here.
