3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Songs To Sit At The Soda Foundation By, November 19, 2010
This review is from: The Rock and Roll Era: The '60s Teen Time Time-Life (Audio CD)
Every "teenage nation" generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century ago has developed it own tribal rituals and institutions. Today's teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades and the ubiquitous Internet screen connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of '68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market; the every present pizza parlor with its jump jukebox where we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters; for some of the dweebs (or if you wanted to get away with a "cheap" date, but only as a last resort ) the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with car hops for more "expensive" dates; and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually owned drug store that used the fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those are for old people, we are invincible) into the store.
That last scene is what will drive this review, and for a simple reason. The cover of this CD (which is part of a huge Rock `n' Roll Era set of CDs from this period) under review, The 60s; Teen Time, has an illustration of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with three whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one paper cup while a faux Fabian-type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
And what drove the girls in those days was the kind of music presented in this compilation. Most of it was strictly from some Teen Romance notion of what girls, girls who bought records in vast quantities to while away their giggling girlish listening hours, though would sell. This stuff is definitely not classic rock like Elvis when he was young and hungry. Or Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley. No way. What this, mainly, is mood music now that we were high strung teens very aware of what sex was, if not always what to do about it. And while one would not be caught dead dancing to this stuff at a dance, even a school dance, out on the beach, in the car, or wherever boys and girls went to "be alone" this was the background music.
That said the ones that, as I recall in the mist of time, that set the "mood" best were Cry Baby Cry by the Angels; Sugar Shack by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs: Clarence Henry's classic make-up song, You Always Hurt The One You Love; and, Trouble In Paradise by The Crests.
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