The Society Of The Spectacle

The Internet has gone suitably Mad Men mental as Season 5, after a 17 month delay, finally returns to our screens (well, in the US anyway…). Having done a quick refresher of Season 4 this week, it’s quote easy to forget how brilliant the show is. It’s nuanced writing, it’s slow burn qualities (albeit diluted when you watch a few back to back), and of course, it’s obsessional attention to detail.

Newsweek has dedicated this weeks issue to the return of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce with these wonderful (and sometimes awful) retro ads for modern day brands. The brands that really nailed it? The ones that were around in that era. The collection shows how hard it is to do retro without it veering into pastiche. Having got a collection of vintage TIME magazines from around 1966/67, these ads really nailed the colours, and printing qualities, not just the art and copy.

The second thing that has broken this week is this weird fan mashup. 8Bit Mad Men is what happens when Choose Your Own Adventure, meets 8bit Arcade Game, meets 1960′s adland. Surprisingly, it works. It’s a hell of alot of fun, and is just another example of the devotion to detail that fandom of Mad Men generates.

Having read some of the preview reviews for the show, the quality of the two hour season premiere is undiminished. With so many questions left unanswered, and new plot-lines beginning to flower (Don & Megan etc…), it will be brilliant to see how the Mad Men evolve as the Summer Of Love approaches… (Which is nicely theorized in this article in the LA TImes; ‘How Groovy Will Mad Men Get?’)

Creating new spins on retro styles is nothing new. So the question is how do you hold someone’s attention with something they are already familiar with?

Well, in the example of these two videos, the answer is simple. Craft. The first video is a music video for the concert season at Bellavista Social Pub (Jesus, what a name…). Ignoring the lameness of the name, the Jazz theme of the season has led the team to create a supreme re-interpretation of some of Blue Note records most beautiful record covers. The attention to detail is exquisite, and I mean exquisite. Even if you aren’t familiar with the content of the records themselves (although I would highly recommend you check some of these out). You cannot fail to be impressed with the level of homage, as well as the bravery of taking this design/moving image challenge on.

While the classic designs of Blue Note were getting a makeover, there appeared another video that took it’s cues from a lower form of entertainment, but nailed this homage just as brilliantly.

A speculative music video made for Buck 65 by Travis Hopkins, it reinterprets the lyrics of this rapidfire tune into a visual assault of the senses taking it’s cue from the 1960′s/70′s/80′s Exploitation scene. There’s so much pop cultural referencing going on here that really, you just have to watch it. But again, the craft, the dedication and the sheer nuttiness of it makes it really stand out.

Inspiring stuff.

My new favourite Tumblr. Cosmic psychedelic coolness. Few of my favourites after the jump… (more…)

Here’s a fantastic flickr set uncovering the delightful world of 1960′s Advertising, US style. It’s illuminating to see the morals and attitudes of the Mad Men world so accurately reflected in these ads, it shows how well the show is researched and written, but also the almost unnerving positivity of advertising of this age. It’s pure unadulterated selling, and in it’s own way is quite a refreshing change of pace.

It’s a big collection, about 300/400, so take some time to really dig around. See some more of my favorites after the jump. (P.S if you want more of this type of stuff then head over to The Footnotes Of Mad Men – beware! Season 3 spoilers will be there for all UK followers…)
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Well Mad Men season 3 is in full swing, and the buzz (as i mentioned in a post last month) has never been greater. So it’s good news that the ratings have spiked for the show and the shows fan’s continue to help fill in the gaps of the Mad Men world, but also fill in some of the contextual gaps. This development in particular is of interest. (more…)

Andrew Andrew, those purveyors of New York cool, brightened my morning with this little clip via Twitter, all from the 1960′s.

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I recently found this fantastic set of images via Flickr of Los Angeles in the 1960′s. The images are that classic mix of 1960′s America, optimistic Mad Men esq stylings (the construction projects, the building of freeways etc…) And the countercultural underbelly that was stirring across the nation (and documented here via the denziens of Sunset Strip). Love it. Take a look here.