Yup, subscribers, yours for th' takin' are two issues of th' noted intellectual review Motor City Comics, which may be all what wus published. Gals! Dope! Big asses! Brutal suppression of th' workin' stiff by fascist pigs! Oboy!
Mission Statement: to do very little, for very few, for not very long. Disappointing the easily pleased since 1819. Not as good as it used to be from Day One. History is Bunk - PT Barnum. Artificially Intelligent before it was fashionable. Fat camp for the mind! Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost. The Shock of the Old! Often bettered, never imitated.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Great Klassix Of Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Wensdy Crumbtacular!
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Get yer claw-like mitts on this swell material by surmisin' th' followin' conundrum - what th' fuck happened to th' underground scene? Huh? Hoo hah?
ReplyDeleteWe grew old. All of you kids, get off my lawn and get me my metamucil.
DeleteYou ain't got yer teeth in. What you done wit' yer teeth fercrissakes?
DeleteWhat indeed happened to that scene...coincidentally I have recently been reading issues of the Ann Arbor Argus, 1969-1971. The world it describes and assumes is as vanished, as imaginary really, as Tolkien's Elf kingdoms.
ReplyDeleteMaybe - and bear with me here - it was all just a brief epiphenomenon of peak industrial wealth, a flicker off the the hapax legomenal postwar conditions of FREE SPACE and EASY LIVING. Those times are gone and those reading this shall not see their return.
Ann Arbor Argus archive https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=cl&cl=CL1&sp=BEIBCAC&ai=1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN---------------1
I'm going to have to look up "hapax legomenal" because I want to say that next time a Thai cop pulls me over for not wearing a helmet. But the gist is understood.
DeleteFrom a personal standpoint (I'm ill-qualified to take any other): I wanted none of what my parents had fought and worked so hard for. The education, the career, the family, und so weiter. Answering the question *why* I didn't is beyond the scope of a blog comment (perhaps), but part of my rejection was due to there being something else - the counterculture - that I felt part of, that was mine. We can look at these R. Crumb comics today and find them at best puerile, at worst reprehensible, but at the time they were part of a youth culture which went out of its way to antagonise, to reject, and to protest, without this culture ever defining itself into something sustainable. The music, the books, the drugs, the urge to travel, the need to find some other way to live - these were over-riding concerns. Something happened - historically still in the 'sixties - to make the whole thing fall apart. Real aternatives to society hadn't been established on any meaningful scale. The Age of Aquarius didn't dawn. The counterculture broke up through infighting and conflicting interests.
Today, I doubt what passes for the youth generation feels anything like we did back then. Their concerns are the same as my parents' were - security, a job, a home.
It was fun while it lasted. That's something that gets forgotten when "Boomers" are blamed for everything wrong with the world since Woodstock. Zappa once asked "whatever happened to all the fun in the world?" - maybe it was a finite resource, and we strip-mined society to get it. What are you rebelling against? What have you got? is no longer a relevant equation. But I still live by it.
Don't hold back Farq, tell us how you really feel
DeleteThanks to the link to the Argus. That's an unfriggingbelievable archive!
Delete"That's something that gets forgotten when "Boomers" are blamed for everything wrong with the world since Woodstock. Zappa once asked "whatever happened to all the fun in the world?" - maybe it was a finite resource, and we strip-mined society to get it."
DeleteI would argue it's the faction trying to stifle the "Boomer" achievements from that era that are to blame for the world since Woodstock....
Boomers created the Teenage Culture the world knows today (for better or worse) but it was the reaction to that culture that shaped its future iterations.
Boomers made peaceful protest and civil disobedience an acceptable form of political dissent but it was the reaction to those forms of protest that shaped the "peaceful protest" free for alls we have today.
Boomers managed to turn a countrys opinion on it's "War on Communism" completely around,
and brought a war to an end in the process, but it was the reaction to that change that gives us the wars we have now.
Boomers made irreverent, off the wall, no sacred cows comedy the norm, but it was the reaction to that humor that gives us the 'cancel culture' we enjoy today.......
I could go on..........
I think part of it is that we thought (wrongly) that security, a job, a home were no longer goals, since a then thriving middle class made it appear that those "achievements" were always there for the taking. It made it easier to take on the risk of wanting something more, something different, realizing that the fall back position, really wasn't all that bad. Now? Fuck - that fall back position looks like nirvana to so many people.
ReplyDeleteevolved, some of the energy went computer hackers/gamers, some became political, some became off the grid folk, s0me went to artsy stuff ect.
ReplyDeleteA kind and generous gesture for those who remember a kinder, gentler, funnier, smarter, and more wasted world. Now quite where is the freakin' link? My synapses are a bit frazzled now, man.
ReplyDeleteI must have just missed the boat on this fad, always just gave me a "skeevy hippy vibe", creepy artwork depicting the most ordinary of characters, it all just yeeshed me out.
ReplyDeleteJust my thoughts
from beyond
Cheers, obeyGravity
I'm with you on the creepy artwork, OG. The last batch of Crumb comix included Mr. Natural getting a BJ from a baby. "At best puerile, at worst reprehensible" -- Farq said it hisself.
Deleteyou each sound like you are about to slump back into your barcolounger and burst into tears. if you are old now, you were old then. my nehru jacket still fits.
ReplyDeleteI miss my nehru...... Purple it was
DeleteAs much as I love R, Crumb, Stewart Brand’s, The Whole Earth Catalog was the countercultural “Bible”
ReplyDeleteMany claim “we” sold out. It's been my observation: The "Hippies" that sold out are the same ones that were "going along for the ride" during the '60s. They were out for the fun of it and the drugs. The rest of us who meant it didn't take them seriously, even then. The media, unfortunately, lumped us all together.
“The Scene” evolved. Countercultural practices that were once seen as radical or freaky are now widely accepted parts of American life. Yoga, organic food and vegetarian, whole-grain diets, recycling, acceptance of multiple personal lifestyle choices including acceptance of unmarried couples, rights of homosexual, bisexual and transsexuals. The list of things that were once considered symbols of the Counterculture goes on and on, and are now entrenched in American culture.
Just the other day, The House of Representatives passed sweeping legislation that would decriminalize marijuana and expunge nonviolent marijuana-related convictions.
The Counterculture is also responsible for personal computers, without which, this conversation would not be taking place.
yea what I wuz tryin to say but way more eloquitly put, cheers and thumbs
Delete....and yet, what do you hear?
Delete"Okay Boomer"
Crumb hated modernity, development, consumerism, capitalism, militarism. Those forces have won, completely. Yoga, weed, and homosexual rights are almost incidental, it seems to me. Window dressing.
DeleteFarq, much of what you wrote could also be applied to the punk generation: "a youth culture which went out of its way to antagonise, to reject, and to protest, without this culture ever defining itself into something sustainable."
ReplyDeleteWhen you say that "The Age of Aquarius didn't dawn," it reminds me of a quote from my favorite film about the end of "swinging London":
“The greatest decade in the history of mankind is nearly over. They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths. It is 91 days to the end of the decade and, as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black."
A decade later, Woolworths was selling Mohawk wigs and (depending on who you ask) punk had also failed to paint it black.
Jack Kerouac's Cat has outlined the positive response to this question. The other side is that we were always the minority, even among Boomers. The majority of kids I went to high school with in the sixties weren't remotely countercultural. Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump are all Boomers.
ReplyDeleteBy the 70's people understood that the best thing you could do was to change your own life.
agreed
DeleteLet's broaden the queschun out beyond Boom'rs, to "what would a modern underground/rebel culture position itself in opposition to?" What is the establishment? What are THEY trying to make us believe?
ReplyDeleteOne thought: chan memes often have the sloppy anarchic offensive feel of those 60s comix.
Deletei assume you mean beyond "Black Lives Matter"......
DeleteI don't "mean" anything, I'm just throwing the question out for some idle thonkery.
DeleteThe Counterculture: It's Not Just For Hippies Anymore.
DeleteThe counterculture by definition is:
"A way of life and a set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm."
So here's some "thonkery" Is it fair to say the "The Klan", The Alt-right, members of a Militia and so called "Patriot" movements are also Counterculture?
@OG: Not to mention: The Me Too (or #MeToo) movement.
Would any of these groups/movements describe themselves as the counterculture? The thing about the 'sixties counterculture/underground movement was that it defined itself as such. There's as much to be against today as there ever was - perhaps more "establishment" than ever - the absence of a youth counterculture can't be due to happiness with society. Pmac mentions the "safety net" up there. There is no safety net now, no job you can fall into. Without security, no kicking against the system that provides it?
DeleteThe economic aspect is a key one...luxury produces strange growths.
DeleteAlso, is there a modern counterculture that can say this, from Motor City Comics: https://imgur.com/ynZd0CT
"TV-induced stupor" was so much easier to walk away from than smartphones.
Delete"The counterculture by definition is:
Delete"A way of life and a set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm."
@OG: Not to mention: The Me Too (or #MeToo) movement."
I'll not be touching that third rail thank you.........
As for the rest, I'd say they are all "at variance with the prevailing social norm."......
Here's the thing though, nowadays most all "counter-culture" groups have huge political sponsors...... How does that work?
Cheers
oBeyGravity
We have an enormous safety net now......
DeleteWill it go away, though?
Cheers
obeYGravity
Here ya go, pals!
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/s8fyCF5wbXx
Crumb was never counter-culture. He was the ultimate loner, the outsider with a twisted inside. As an artist, he's some kind of genius - no other underground cartoonist can make a page of panels so satisfying to look at, so horribly compelling. But he was never to be trusted, on nobody's side but his dick's.
Boom!
DeleteI'm a big S Clay Wilson fan (Checkered Demon among others) but I'm probably a psychopath too.... Crumb is great and thanks
ReplyDeleteAll comics get weirder the more you look at them. Crumb put the psycho right up front rather than hiding it behind masks and mouse ears.
DeleteAgreed that Crumb is a great cartoonist AND has always been an old fart inside his head. He is very funny, though. Thanks, Farq.
ReplyDeleteSeems like an appropriate place to link a collection of Milwaukee's underground newspaper from 1967-1971. No reason you should be interested, but some university types were apparently willing to archive this Beertown newsprint reflection of the prevailing hippie cosmos, so feel free to dip a toe or immerse yerself in "Kaleidoscope".
ReplyDeletehttps://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/kal/search/searchterm/
Another great link! Thank you.
DeleteThanks, Hazy Dave!
DeleteI forgot about "Lenore Goldberg and Her Girl Commandos"!
ReplyDeleteI "like" the panel in which a Cop is all pounding Lenore's girlfriend's head on the sidewalk in a pool of her own blood while he screams, "You're sick, you're sick."
If this panel were lifted out of the story and printed by itself it would make an excellent Herblock-type political cartoon.