What was popular in the 60's?

Question

I have to do a history project and I have to put together a 40 minute presentation in a few short months. I need to know basically what was popular and stuff in the years 1960-1969. I need information like the clothes, how much gas cost, the music, political stuff, economics, and etc. Does anyone have any suggestions? Can anyone help me with information for this project?

Answer 1

Well, I was just a kid but here's what I remember, and some ideas for your project:
Gas: approx $0.15- 0.20 /gallon. So cheap, gas mileage wasn't a consideration-ever. ALL stations were full-service. In fact the term "self-service" for a service station didn't exist. Service stations used to give out premiums just to get your business. Like plates, books, records. I've still got a Gulf Oil book on the 1969 landing on the moon. Hardbound, beautifully illustrated.
Music: well as now there was rock, country, easy listening. The Beatles invasion was HUGE after 1965- I remember hearing nothing but Beatles songs on the radio (AM-only BTW). By mid-decade, the music began evolving into what you and I understand as Classical rock and heavy metal. Early 60's popular music was ballads, and quite a bit like that of the 50's.
TV: No cable, that wasn't popularized until the 70's. Most places had 3-4 stations. Maybe a couple more on the UHF side. We had a grand total of: 2 due to living in a valley. Didn't watch much TV. EVERYBODY watched the network news though.
Clothes: I think the media gives the impression that everyone was dressed like Austin Powers or a "Hippie" (that term didn't come into being until 1967 or so-the "Summer of Love"). Most guys had short hair, wore slacks or jeans. Jackets and ties were seen in a lot more situations than now. Women wore dresses, or slacks on occasion- mini skirts were a fashion statement. Not very common.
Politically the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War were the biggest issues. The Cold War was still a factor in international relations, but I remember Vietnam being a huge subject, on TV and in the newspapers. Not so much in conversations. Again, contrary to the popular imagination, public support for the war didn't really start to fall off until 1968 or so. It's important to note in this context, that in the /68 and '72 elections, the anti-war candidate lost-hugely.
I hope that gives some stuff to work on.

Answer 2

Wow, I feel old now. the sixties were about change. The adolesence of a generation growing up. Things that were important to us were (not in order)
1) Peace (not just anti Vietnam, world & individual peace)
2) Music (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Animal, The Beach Boys, Eric Clapton, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, many more). People actually eagerly awaited the release of a new album from their favorite group, ESPECIALLY the Beatles (they came out about every 10 weeks,not 1 a year, imagine that).
Even at the even of the decade that culminated in Woodstock.
3) Kennedy proclaimed the torch has been passed to a new generation and we took that seriously and were quite politically active in whatever area we wanted to effect change. (See 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago for more info)
4) The assination of 3 prominate leaders sort of snuffed out the charge for some of us. (JFK, RFK, MLK)
5) Fashion,-- wow talk about shaking things up. They were wild but still I loved them.
6) The sexual revolution brought about by the creation & introduction of "The Pill".
7) Economically, the costs were relatively stable and what was fashionable changed rapidly and the prices with it. The Baby boomers had money and spent it on whatever they wanted.
8) Drugs -- few people of the 60's didn't at least try some drugs.
9)Gas was about 35 cents a gallon and cars were about POWER. See Muscle cars for examples.
10) It was an era that saw the young people of a nation realize they had great strength of numbers and used that to effect change. There was a sense of empowerment of the young people and a distrust of the older (establishment). We felt we had to change the establishment if we were ever going to make the world better. There was a slogan--"Never trust anyone over 30."
We shared an idealism that was part dream, part hope, part youthful enthusiasm. To those of us who lived it is genereally remembered very fondly even with its problems.

Answer 3

I had a hula hoop in 1959-1960.
Groups sang songs and you could understand the words. The Temptation, the Supremes, Elvis. Elvis also starred in some movies. Group members dressed alike and looked good. No holes in jeans.
At one time gas was 25 cents a gallon. When I picked up 3 friends, we each put 25 cents worth of gas in.
Girls wore dresses to school, at knee length. In winter we sometimes wore slacks underneath to keep warm walking 3/4 of a mile to school, but took off the slacks before school started.
There weren't many discipline problems in school.
Most meals were prepared at home by our mothers.
We played outside; swim, roller skate, kick the can, or played boards games or solitaire inside.
We sometimes wore hand me downs.
One vehicle for the whole family.

Answer 4

The Sixties has also come to refer to the complex of inter-related cultural and political events which occurred in approximately that period, in Western countries, particularly Britain, France, the United States and West Germany. Social upheaval was not limited to just these nations, reaching large scale in nations such as Japan, Mexico and Canada as well. The term is used both nostalgically by those who participated in those events, and pejoratively by those who regard the time as a period whose harmful effects are still being felt today. The decade was also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the libertine attitudes that emerged during the decade.

As with the Seventies, popular memory has conflated into the Sixties some events which did not actually occur during the period. For example, although some of the most dramatic events of the American civil rights movement occurred in the early 1960s, the movement had already begun in earnest during the 1950s. On the other hand, the rise of feminism and gay rights began in the 1960s and continued into the next few decades. Homosexual acts between consenting adults in private were legalised in England and Wales in 1967. The "Sixties" has become synonymous with all the new, exciting, radical, subversive and/or dangerous (depending on one's viewpoint) events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the 1970s, 1980s and beyond. In Africa the 60s were a period of radical change as countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers, only for this rule to be replaced in many cases by civil war or corrupt dictatorships.

The rapid rise of a "New Left" employed the rhetoric of Marxism but had little organizational connection with older Marxist organizations such as the Communist Party, and even less connection with the supposed focus of Marxist politics, the organized labor movement, and consisting of ephemeral campus-based Trotskyist, Maoist and anarchist groups, some of which by the end of the 1960s had turned to terrorism.

The overlapping, but somewhat different, movement of youth cultural radicalism was manifested by the hippies and the counter-culture, whose emblematic moments were the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967 and the Woodstock Festival in 1969.

The sub-culture, associated with this movement, spread the recreational use of cannabis and other drugs, particularly new semi-synthetic psychedelic drugs such as LSD.

The breakdown among young people of conventional sexual morality led to the flourishing of the sexual revolution. The era heralded the rejection and a reformation by hippies of traditional Christian notions on spirituality, leading to the widespread introduction of Eastern and ethnic religious thinking to western values and concepts concerning ones religious and spiritual development.

Popular music entered an era of "all hits" as numerous singers released recordings, beginning in the 1950s, as 45-rpm "singles" (with another on the flip side), and radio stations tended to play only the most popular of the wide variety of records being made. Also, bands tended to record only the best of their songs as a chance to become a hit record. The developments of the Motown Sound, "folk rock" and the British Invasion of bands from the U.K. (The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, and so on), are major examples of American listeners expanding from the folksinger, doo-wop and saxophone sounds of the 1950s and evolving to include psychedelia music.

Answer 5

delight-The Rolling Stones understand -Aretha Franklin easy My hearth-The doors My era-The Who Like A rolling Stone-Bob Dylan Nights in White Satin-Moody Blues value tag to holiday-Beatles undesirable Moon becoming -CCR Born to be Wild-Steppenwolf heart finished of soul-backyard Birds you quite have been given me -kinks Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Crosby, Stills & Nash the circumstances they're a'Changin' - Bob Dylan Do you have faith In Magic - Lovin' Spoonful Dance To The song - Sly & the kinfolk Stone Dazed and puzzled-led Zeppelin on your Love-Yardbirds Piece Of My heart - enormous Brother & the protecting enterprise the load - The Band In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Iron Butterfly mutually as My Guitar gently Weeps - Beatles Magic Carpet holiday - Steppenwolf theres some, wish this facilitates

Answer 6

I made a calendar for school on the 60's. Try these...

http://www.kyrene.org/schools/brisas/sunda/decade/1960.htm

http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade60.html

http://www.1960sflashback.com/

http://www.wgeneration.com/1960.html

http://members.tripod.com/lisawebworld2/60s.html

Answer 7

Drugs, sex, assaulting veterans?

Answer 8

marijuana