It’s the 40th anniversary of The Brady Bunch, the early 70s sitcom about two southern California families — one a lady with three daughters, the other a man with three sons — who join households to make one big happy family. The show aired for five seasons (1969-1974), during which time my own adolescence paralleled that of the eldest Brady kids. I didn’t pay much attention to the show until about 1973. My friends and I made fun of the show’s simplistic, dated take on teenage life and family values, yet we were strangely drawn to the characters, and to the way that the family represented an ideal where the teenage dramas were resolved in half an hour with a minimum of pain.
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Tags: culture by Jon O
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The New Yorker has published some great articles about the music industry this past year. Case in point: “The Price of the Ticket,” by John Seabrook (Aug. 10 & 17, 2009). Seabrook discusses the business of concert tickets, exemplified by everyone’s favorite bad guy, Ticketmaster. Who doesn’t resent those outrageous “convenience” fees and additional charges? But the problem goes beyond that. As Seabrook points out, the business of live music is dysfunctional. 
