1960s

Hicks, who died on Saturday, began performing with his band Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks in the late '60s. Rock historian Ed Ward has an appreciation. Originally broadcast Jan 10, 2002.

After all eight seasons of drama, the TV series about men and women in advertising ended with a full-length ad. TV critic David Bianculli says the conclusion was "so unexpected, yet so appropriate."

The AMC period drama returns Sunday, with the usual shroud of secrecy that makes it difficult -- but not impossible -- to review. Fresh Air critic David Bianculli does his best.

California parolee Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco in 1967, when the city was full of young waifs looking for a guru. In Manson, Jeff Guinn argues that if the cult leader had instead been paroled in a place like Nebraska, he likely would not have been so successful.

The creator of the acclaimed AMC series talks about his protagonist -- Don Draper -- as an aging existentialist looking for meaning in a chaotic world. He says the show's sixth season, set in 1968, is situated in that historical meaning for a reason: to reflect a traumatic passage in Don's life.

It used to be that TV's biggest annual event was the arrival of the fall season, but these days excellent shows premiere year-round. This spring, the return of AMC's stylish drama is the best reason to celebrate the season: The two-hour premiere delivers on the show's highest ambitions.

In his new film, Sopranos creator David Chase tells a coming-of-age story about Jersey boys in the 1960s who dream of riding the wave of the British invasion all the way to stardom. Chase teams up with Steven Van Zandt -- of the E Street Band and The Sopranos -- to make the movie's music rock.

One of the great fantasies of the hippie era was that new combinations of music would emerge from the experimentation that was going on. Still, very few lived it. Ed Ward says The Insect Trust was one of the exceptions.

In the late 1960s, Tommy and Dick Smothers challenged those who tried to tame their wildly popular show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. TV critic David Bianculli joins host Terry Gross to talk about the legendary comedy duo who tackled political issues and censorship.

The Emmy-darling AMC TV series devotes an almost fetishistic attention to style. But is there any substance beyond the surfaces? Critic-at-large John Powers goes looking — and comes back with one especially well-rounded answer.

When last we saw the ad men and women of AMC's Mad Men, the firm had just been bought by a British company and the Cuban missile crisis was underway. Critic David Bianculli offers a sneak peak at what additional drama the new season might hold.

On Sept. 21, the AMC series Mad Men became the first basic cable program to win an Emmy Award for outstanding drama. Executive producer Matthew Weiner and actors Jon Hamm and John Slattery discuss the madness of Madison Avenue circa 1960.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews Mad Men, the drama about advertising execs during the Kennedy years. Season two of the Emmy-nominated series begins on Sunday night on AMC.

Martinis, misogyny and men behaving badly: AMC's drama series remembers an era's excesses in stunning style. The setting: a Manhattan ad agency, circa 1960. The first season has just been released on DVD.

Novelist Robert Stone has written a new memoir that begins with a stint in the Navy in the late 1950s, continues through his work as a journalist in Vietnam and then includes his counterculture years in the 1970s, taking hallucinogenic drugs, cross-country road trips, and hanging out with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. His memoir is, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. Stone's novels include Dog Soldiers (which was adapted into the film Who'll Stop the Rain), and Outerbridge Reach.

It has been nearly 30 years since Jean-Luc Godard's film Masculin/Feminin debuted. Starring Jean-Pierre Leaud and Chantal Goya, the film captured the spirit of Paris in the late-1960s.

Corrigan's choices include: The Company You Keep by Neil Gordon; Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy; and They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 by David Maraniss.

Shawn Levy is the author of the new book Ready Steady, Go!: The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London. It's about London from 1961-1969. He writes, "for those few evanescent years it all came together: youth, pop music, fashion, celebrity, satire, crime, fine art, sexuality, scandal, theater, cinema, drugs, media: the whole mad modern stew." Levy is also the author of Rat Pack Confidential: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey & the Last Great Showbiz Party and the biography, King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis.

Writer David Hajdu is the author of the new book, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina. (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). The book focuses on the early 1960s when the four of them changed the nature of popular music. Hajdu is also the author of the award-winning biography, Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. Hajdu also writes for The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

Vee, who died Monday, had 38 hit singles including, "Take Good Care of My Baby." During a 1999 Fresh Air interview, Vee explained how the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly got him started in music.