Review: 'Wake Me, Shake Me: New York City, the '60s & the Pop Youthquake'

Everyone who thinks that the world revolves around New York City should... wait, I'm not sure how to finish that sentence. Actually, a quick look at all the movies, TV shows, and books set in Manhattan alone (there are four other boroughs, you know!) kind of supports the idea that NYC is where everything is. And music? How many histories covering New York's punk scene or The Velvet Underground have there been? "A lot" is the answer.

Yet when considering what must be the most fertile period for pop music, the sixties, the New York City scene is often little more than a sidebar. While what was happening in London, Los Angeles, Detroit, and San Fransisco is often portrayed as downright mythic, what was happening on the East Coast islands seems quaint and scattered, at least when you've finished swapping legends about Lou Reed and Nico. And Dylan doesn't quite count as he was actually from Hibbing, Minnesota, and his New York City phase was just one of many. 

Farewell, Peggy Lipton

In a town of cuckoos, criminals, murderers, and demons, Norma Jennings was the token normal person in Twin Peaks. Peggy Lipton played the owner of the R.R. Diner with both a soothing sense of calm amidst the chaos and a sort of quiet toughness when confronted with bozos like lunkhead husband Hank Jennings and crass capitalist Walter Lawford. 

Of course, Lipton's career started well before the 1990 debut of Twin Peaks. Perhaps her biggest claim to fame was her role as counterculture cop Julie Barnes on Mod Squad, but she'd also appeared in a multitude of other series such as Bewitched, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and The Virginian. She had a side career as a singer, as well, releasing versions of Laura Nyro's "Stoney End" and "Lu" and Donovan's "Wear Your Love Like Heaven". 

Peggy Lipton was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, but following treatment, she resumed acting on series such as Rules of Engagement, Crash, and Psych, and even resumed the role that most endears her to Psychobabble when she returned to Twin Peaks as Norma Jennings in 2017. Sadly, Peggy Lipton died from cancer yesterday. She was 72.