Features and food editor Ty Bannerman and I met in distinguished professor Gerald Vizenor’s mixed-level American studies course at UNM, The Atomic Bomb: Los Alamos to Hiroshima. During that academically and emotionally intense semester, I cultivated a fondness for atomic kitsch in aural form. Archival website conelrad.com enabled my uranium rock dependency. It remains the definitive source for information on these so-called atomic platters. (“Platter” was 1930s slang for a “record” aka an album … on vinyl.)Stream a Spotify mixtape including several of these Cold War-era gems below. My personal favorites among these 11 tracks are: Ann-Margret’s ribald "Thirteen Men," Little Jimmy Dickens’ "patriotic" anthem "They Locked God Outside the Iron Curtain" and of course, Vera Lynn’s "We’ll Meet Again." That last track is featured prominently in the brilliant political satire Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb .
The Nuclear Option: Stream Our Uranium-Soaked Mixtape
Stream Our Uranium-Soaked Mixtape
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