June 1968. Seven new US Army officers — six Afro-Americans, one Caucasian, all honorary lieutenant colonels — are collected from Tan Son Nhut, Saigon’s main…
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The words ‘folk horror’ tend to evoke images from the 1970s – the beards, the flares and the knitted jumpers lend themselves perfectly to the…
For most British singers and groups in the early 1960s, chart success alone did not guarantee financial security. While pop acts might expect fair royalties…
Before 1964, America’s worldwide domination of the pop music industry — and youth culture in general — was virtually total. Few British artists made much…
Former circus clown, fire-eater, and war veteran Bruno Koschmider, a small, pugnacious club manager from Hamburg, Germany, wanted to book rock ‘n’ roll groups to…
The popular music industry in the United Kingdom continued to develop in the early Sixties, with talented individuals working across all areas. Billy Fury, for…
10 September 1969 was a bad night for Jimi Hendrix. Early in the evening, the guitarist stormed off the tiny stage of New York’s Mafia-controlled…
The CHIFFY Award was introduced in 1968 for the best Children’s Film Foundation (CFF) film of the year. The CFF was the major supplier of…
In February 1957, rock’n’roll thundered onto British television screens when the BBC introduced a new programme for teenagers titled Six-Five Special. As the 70th anniversary…
As The Beatles phenomenon grew in scale, it soon became clear that money could be made by catering to obsessed British teenagers. Eventually, millions of…
The term “Ozploitation” refers to low-budget Australian-produced exploitation genre filmmaking of the 1970s and 80s. From bawdy sex comedies like Alvin Purple (1973) to horror…
1964 was shaping up to be an extremely busy year for The Beatles. After touring the United States and Canada, sparking Beatlemania and performing their…
There were 300 working groups in Liverpool, and lots of them had *that* sound – a style that developed in isolation, away from the pop…
Psycho (1960) Turns out that stabby Mrs Bates is actually Norman in drag! That’s right, our motel man is a phallic-knife-wielding nutjob – Freud’s wet…
Closeted in the home or constantly watched over by parents, children today lack much of the freedom they had only 50 years ago. Up until…
Petrol rationing in Britain during the Second World War meant that private motoring virtually disappeared. When rationing ceased in 1951, fuel companies began a battle…
Dr Douglas Ross Cook County General Hospital Doug Ross (George Clooney) from E.R. is the paediatrician who looks like he just popped out for a…
Why is going to a public library like being transported 40 or 50 years back in time? Perhaps it’s that musty smell which seems to…
Independent Television began in Britain in 1955 as a franchised network of regionally owned companies – each functioning as both a broadcaster and a production…
Mary Tyler Moore, the pretty and talented screen wife in The Dick Van Dyke Show, was the Cinderella of TV. The clothes she wore on…