What does ‘Classic Americana’ mean to you?

21 comments

1. Driving a 1968 Ford Mustang with your best girl while drinking a Coca Cola and heading to the local diner for a cheeseburger with fries and milkshake.

2. 50s era roads trip kitsch.

3. Norman Rockwell

4. One of the few types of music that I don’t listen to

5. The pretend era of the 50s, when all was right with white people (everyone else be damned). Norman Rockwell’s art.

6. Driving a 1950s “three on the tree” pickup down Route 66 while drinking a Coke listening to the Opry or KOMA on the AM radio

7. A 50s diner with pastel colors and red booths.

   Edit: And to add some more things. Pastel blue or green cars with fins near the trunk, a housewife making diner, some guy wearing a suit & tie running to work with a suitcase and with a black and white filter.

   You can tell that Fallout was the source of my inspiration.

8. Nostalgia for the period roughly from the late 1930’s to mid 1960’s. When the US was starting to recover from the Depression to when the US started to rapidly change culturally and politically and that rapid change scared a lot of people.

   Vintage diners complete with milkshakes, road trips, trains, classic cars, big home-cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, funny but inoffensive and uncontroversial TV shows, stable jobs with decent pay, overall a sense of comfort, prosperity, and well-being from an idealized view of a time when things (at least) seemed simpler.

   The stuff depicted in Norman Rockwell art. The way my grandparents told me it used to be, the way my parents told me it was when they were kids.

9. Folk kitsch from the 20th century. Usually thirties to eighties.

10. When I think “Americana” I think the music genre.

11. For me it is classic Americana music. Folk, blues, older rock and roll.

12. route 66 golden era, muscle cars, stop at a restaurant/diner/dive and get something classically american with a slice of pie for desert.

13. I think of tourist traps. A candy store in a beach town selling salt water taffy, for example, or a diner with red booths and a vintage jukebox located close to an amusement park (or hell, in the amusement park). I don’t think of anything that I interact with on a day to day basis (or my grandparents experienced in their daily lives for that matter).

14. Uncle Sam memorabilia

15. I think how much I want Art Deco back

16. [Mostly this](https://www-hotcars-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.hotcars.com/these-were-the-best-muscle-cars-of-the-50s/amp/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16587678575244&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotcars.com%2Fthese-were-the-best-muscle-cars-of-the-50s%2F)

    [This is part of the idea as well](https://www.pinterest.com/bona51/50s-diners/)

17. Blue jeans, white tee, pickup, hot dog and hamburger

18. I have no god damn clue

19. 1950’s era Stuff. Vintage Coca Cola ads, the cars from that era, poodle skirts (i guess)

20. its funny a lot of people are saying 50s but i also feel like 60s/70s era also is a contender for classic americana. like all the singer/songwriter, wonder years, civil rights, women’s rights, and tech.

    i feel like that era was the seed to what we know as modern society now.

21. “”Classic Americana” can be different for different eras. The thirties would be a wood fired kitchen stove and a coal fired home heating unit. A time before built in “wall to wall cabinets” so probably a “[Hoosier cabinet](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/c2/c9/22c2c955eb5a1a99d127247600a81ad4.jpg)” cabinet & workstation in the kitchen and a large “[sideboard cabinet](https://i.etsystatic.com/11708268/r/il/c7c949/1454428070/il_570xN.1454428070_hbha.jpg)” full of silverware & dishware in the dining room. Rugs, not wall to wall carpets, and only in the “living room/parlor”. “[Runner carpets](https://ak1.ostkcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/03072019-measure-the-space-for-runner-rug.jpg)” in the main hallway and possibly the bedrooms along the beds.

    Thirty+ years later; “Americana” would be me in late January 1969, dropped my girlfriend off at her parents house well within “curfew time”. Cruising home in my 1964 2 door Catalina, the 389 V8 powering me down the new and almost empty interstate highway under a full full moon. Listening to Ron Britain’s Subterranean Circus on the AM skip out of Chicago. Ron comes on; *”Here’s a new British band I think you’re all going to enjoy”* A moment of silence, then, the first time I hear [Led Zeppelin](https://youtu.be/yO2n7QoyieM). That night; Life was good.

    “Americana” can be many things.