Rather than print some cute little story about rabbits and chicks for Easter, we decided to offer up something completely different…but Happy Easter anyway!
As you’ve probably already figured out, being a baby boomer in this day and age is not for the faint of heart. And now we have the Justas Disease to cope with too. For example,
Just as we reach the age of Social Security the system starts to go bust.
Just as we find more leisure time our backs go out and we’re confined to the house.
Just as we finally get our kids out of the house, they get laid off and come home. Or we get laid off and they come home anyway to save on their rent.
Just as they invent a way to stream first-run movies in the comfort of our homes, we can’t stay awake through them, or there’s nothing we want to see.
And, just as we can finally trade in the Dadmobile for a cool sporty car, the price of gas goes so high we can’t afford to drive it anywhere.
The Justas Disease is a terrible affliction. To alleviate the pain and frustration we went digging around in the attic (doesn’t everyone?) and found some very old, well let’s make that just “old” not “very old,” magazines with cool pictures and stories in them. Most of what we found was from the 1960’s, so for those of you can’t remember that time period due to memory loss for whatever reason, we now present some interesting stuff. First up was a Life magazine from June 28, 1968. The cover story was about the “new rock,” most of which can now be found on the oldies stations or over the PA at the supermarket.
The Boomers
Let’s see how well you were paying attention back then and how many of these artists and groups you can name. Remember, it’s June 28, 1968 (pre-Woodstock for younger boomers) and these groups were Life magazine’s pick of music they thought would be the next big thing. So get on your tie-dye shirt, roll up a…chair…and enjoy our short trip back to…where did we say we got this from, man? Far out.
Jefferson Airplane
Here’s the cover and yes there was lots of other interesting stuff inside. Things that kids today would not recognize or understand, like cigarette ads, giant cars with big engines, vinyl jackets and frost-free freezers. Our first quiz question is to name the group on the front (we cleverly covered up their name with a classic black censorship blob). We were going to toss out a clue but the chick on top and the dude in the lower right kind of give the whole thing away.
Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company
Next up, Life apparently got some cheap thrills from listening to this new group which for a time had a female singer whose picture is cut off by the scanner. Oops. It would have given it all away anyway. But the way we did the picture is kind of symbolic and like, you know, represents…well nevermind.
Frank Zappa with The Mothers of Invention
The next group never made it to the rarified air of superstardom like some of the others here, but the group leader did a lot of solo work and was quite an interesting musician in his own right. If you missed it, or if small rodents ripped your flesh, a couple years after this they did a fun parody of Sgt Pepper, only the Indian influence in this group was the American kind.
Jim Morrison of The Doors
This next guy and his buddies had already been around a while by the time Life discovered them, but they were in many ways the definitive California sound of the late ’60’s. Like so many other groups they lost one of their members a few years later to booze and drugs, and they were one of the first groups to really piss off the cops and get chased off stage for things we will not mention here. The time had come, follow them down.
Cream (Clapton, Baker and Bruce)
One thing about rock groups at that time was they were an incestuous bunch who moved around a lot and, at least for the lead guitarist, this group was at a bit of a crossroads. Ahem…they had all come out of other groups and were pretty well seasoned by the time they got together. The aforementioned lead guitarist went on to become an icon for rock and blues music, but he is still remembered for his work in this time period as well. They had not one but at least two super hits from their ’68 album.
The Who
The Beatles were of course still around 1968, but remember Life was trying to peg the “new rock” and they were old men in an industry where a career often didn’t last more than a year or two. Just the same, another English group (yes, the flag is a giveaway) from around 1965 was moving up fast at this time and would hit a pinnacle in just one more year. Obviously the Life editors could see that coming for miles…and miles.
Country Joe & The Fish
Right behind Pat Paulson this was our favorite presidential candidate for 1968 (name again cleverly blocked out) and we think if he was running this year (2012) he’d be a shoe-in against the line up of candidates around now. Best known for anti-war songs, two years after this photo they starred in the first, and last, rock western movie called Zacharaiah. Yes, it’s a cult favorite and we still watch it now and then, but their signature song only appears in another movie from 1969 about a little concert called Woodstock.
Jimi Hendrix
The last musician in the June 28, 1968 issue of Life to get his photo included was this guy and, frankly, if you don’t recognize that face you will be forced to sit in a room and listen to non-stop Lady Gaga tunes for several days. Yes, it’s the one and only Jimi and boy could we use him and Purple Haze back again (and again for our younger boomers, he is not to be confused with the guy from the ’80’s who did Purple Rain).
So what do you think? How did Life do picking out potential winners for the 1968 music forecast? If you were living in a cave back then and don’t know any of these groups, we will, in our next post a week from now, re-run the pictures with their names. We were going to offer the actual magazine as a prize for anyone who could name all the groups and musicians, but we’re still reading an article about Gene McCarthy trying to return to the campaign trail after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination three weeks earlier (and ML King two months before that). 1968 was a pivotal year in many ways, not just for music, but we’ll leave analysis of all that to sharper minds than ours.
If everyone likes this kind of stuff we have a bunch more old magazines we found with different topics and photo essays we can present here. Let us know.
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