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Whatever happened to the grand livestock of yesteryear? The one’s we’d to proudly parade up and down the central arteries of town? The ones for whom only our fanciest ranching duds would do? The ones we’d pose our children in front of? The ones our popular local photo magazine would so graciously feature in four colors between its covers?
Long since eaten I’m afraid, and their decedents relegated to the evil confines of some factory farm hidden out of site up in the hills somewhere. The only time they get their pictures in a magazine these days is if they’re lucky enough to have some PETA spy smuggle a camera into one of their torture sessions.
I joke, of course. The Arizona National Livestock Show continues to this day, going strong, “supporting youth and promoting livestock and agriculture since 1948.” In fact, you can go see it this year from December 28 through January 1 at the Arizona State Fairgrounds. Bring your camera (hidden or otherwise).
But if you can’t muster the effort to head down there (I know I can’t), you can check out these glorious pix from yesteryear — the October 1968 edition of “Arizona Highways” magazine, to be specific.
Back the late sixties, any time you’d see the likes of a Fonda, Nicholson, Sutherland or Redford up on the screen, chances are you’d also be hearing such “exciting” new artists as the Association, the Sandpipers, Simon & Garfunkel or B.J. Thomas on the accompanying soundtrack. This no doubt helped fuel interest in other members of the “now generation,” such as Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell, Three Dog Night or Blood Sweat & Tears. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that a whole generation was first exposed to the “now sound” at the movies.
Albums like arranger Joe Scott’s “”Motion Pictures: The NOW Generation” also brought added grease to the wheels, helping to point Middle America down unfamiliar roads and smoothing the path at the same time. Appropriately lush and stately-of-pace, with just a touch of electric grit, Joe’s album offers listener a nice pat on the back for being so musically adventurous. Which is to say, the whole thing goes down like the average late-sixties nightly network news broadcast theme.
The album kicks off with a glossy reading of The Band’s “The Weight,” and includes driving, uptempo detective-show takes on “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and “Mrs. Robinson. The rest of the album is filled with alternately shimmering and brooding big orchestra arrangements of such “now” filler as “Midnight Cowboy,” “Goodbye Columbus” and “Come Saturday Morning.” My personal favorite track is a version of “Born To Be Wild” that’s just dying to be carved up into dope samples.
I don’t know much about this album or Joe Scott. The internet has not been much help either, telling me only that the album can be purchased for collectors prices and that the name “Joe Scott” is quite common. Fair enough. I can’t do anything about the latter, but as to the former, I might be able to save you 35 bucks. That is, provided you don’t mind that my rip is from a non-shrink-wrapped copy.
Like so many guys my age, I made my first connection with male sexual identity in the back of mass-market magazines like “True Detective” and “Man’s Adventure.” Naturally, I was drawn to the so-called “adult” content in these tiny sidebar ads, but what strikes me now is how juvenile they are, and how devoid of any actual females. They almost seem to suggest that pictures, films or stories about women are much better than the real thing.
Continue reading ‘Things I Should Throw Out: “The Kind Adults Want”’
I haven’t been to Chicago in over a dozen years, but I still have my memories. Unfortunately, most of them involve trying driving around the club trying to find safe legal parking for two vans and a trailer. So the next best thing for me are these postcards from my grandfather’s collection, some of which date back a hundred years, to the 1893 World’s Exposition.
Here’s one I should seriously throw out. This coverless 1947 edition of “True Romance” was already in tatters when I found it in the back of a dusty gift shop in Oatman. But I fell in love with the magazine’s beautiful postwar art direction, as well as its haplessly out-of-date take on feminine empowerment — that is to say, landing a man. The advertisements were especially poignant, offering guidance on how to manage such typically tragic social disasters as halitosis, menstruation and “borderline anemia.” And the advice doesn’t stop at the altar. The helpful hints for homemakers are equally plentiful. No doubt, many of our own grandmothers used Drano to combat humiliating “sewer germs,” treated “childhood constipation” with Fletcher’s Castoria and curbed “spousal indifference” by douching regularly with Lysol brand disinfectant.
Continue reading ‘Things I Should Throw Out: “True Romances” Magazine’
Thanks to the share-isphere, the best time for your fans to catch up with you is once you’ve died. It’s not like everything you’ve ever released isn’t already available for free several times over, but once you die, everything gets consolidated and much easier to find. Last year it was James Brown; the year before, it was Buck Owens. Right now, it’s George Carlin’s turn.
Thinking about George Carlin for the past week or so has kind of pissed me off. I can still remember how delighted I was to discover him back in 1972 (which, by the way, was inversely proportional to how disgusted my step-father was to discover him). But that seems like only yesterday, and now, just like George I’m getting damn old. And I’m also just about as charmed by the current state of affairs as he was. So, as liberating as his long-haired counter-culture material was to a twelve-year-old boy 35 years ago, the enlightened bitterness of the take-no-prisoners routines from the end of his life end up resonating with me even more.
Continue reading ‘Things I Should Throw Out: Clippings From The Eighties’