Americana Defined

[Maharlika]

I like things American, but it's sometimes hard to describe. You may say I like "Americana", like Pendleton shirts, Diners, Jazz and George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. What's "Americana' to you?

 

[Connemara]

It's really a post hoc invention, but The Band is often identified as Americana.

 

[odoreater]

Is this a thread about "Trad"?

 

[Maharlika]

^^^It doesn't have to be. When you think "American" or "Americana" what do you think of? Does Jack Kerouac come to mind?

 

[odoreater]

I think of green manicured lawns, white picket fences, and lemonade stands.

 

[RyJ Maduro]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1230/...a90991.jpg?v=0

 

[globetrotter]

all things good and pure and right, personified by 44 oz fountain drinks with lots of ice.

 

[Cas Ruffin]

70's pimps, cadillacs and Frank White. That's more American to me than Thermoses and Chevy Trucks.

 

[Lucky7]

Originally Posted by globetrotter

all things good and pure and right, personified by 44 oz fountain drinks with lots of ice.

44oz. Malt Liquor.

 

[Fuuma]

Pineups and cowboys.

 

[DocHolliday]

Buttondown shirts, skinny ties, Converse shoes, old-school department stores, Jell-O salad, Waldorf salad, The Thing?, the craze for the cosmopolitan and worldly in the '50s and early '60s.

 

[Agnacious]

Norman Rockwell

 

[Cas Ruffin]

Originally Posted by Lucky7

44oz. Malt Liquor.

Thunderbird

 

[Vintage Gent]

I think of Walt Whitman and James Dean
All night diners and dude ranches
Cornfields and cattle ranches
Robert Lowell and John Ford
Levis dungarees and snap button cowboy shirts
Western mountain vistas stretching for miles
New England selectmen
Burlesque dancers and porterhouse dinners
The waist and hips shaped glass Coke bottles
Aaron Copeland
The Beach Boys
Mount Rushmore
Bluegrass music played on a Tennessee porch
Kilroy was here
Chuck Berry
Combine and thresher
Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycles
Route 66
The Fender Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul and Rickenbacker 360
Jason and the Scorchers
Edison and Ford

 

[DocHolliday]

Mid-century ennui, motels, the unbearable whiteness of being.