It’s Only Rock & Roll….But I’ll Buy It! Pt.1

During the 1960’s & 1970’s about the only venue for advertising an artist’s new release nationally was in the music publications. Many stores, chain stores in particular, would do co-op advertising with certain labels and buy local advertising in local/regional nespapers hyping the label’s new releases, but that was limited to specific geographical regions.

Granted, some record companies sprung for television advertising on occassion, you might see one for the new Rolling Stones album on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, but they were few in number. Below is a look back at various print ads that appeared in such publications as Creem, Circus, Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Hit Parader, Rock Scene and all the rest. Here is a random sampling, with more to come at a later date.

 

You Gotta Start Somewhere!

 

 

Random Beatles Nostalgia

Shhhhh! Lauren Is Really….

All Good Vibrations & Positive Energy & Good Things To You Lauren!

Akron Bands Documentary Online

Western Reserve PBS (WNEO/45 Alliance-WEAO/49 Akron) has been showing the 2005 documentary If You’re Not Dead, Play! The documentary is an awesome look back at Akron’s 1977-1983 era of New Wave and Rock bands that caused a bit of a sensation throughout the USA and Europe with some media back in the day dubbing Akron the “new Liverpool”. Lots of great insights, stories, reminisces with video and photos pack this documentary. You may even see yourself if you were a regular at JB’s, the Bank, Filthy McNasty’s, etc…

From the Western Reserve website:

“University of Akron documentary maker Phil Hoffman is rocking Akron again. His new production for Western Reserve PBS If You’re Not Dead, Play!! is a sequel to It’s Everything and Then It’s Gone, Hoffman’s documentary that chronicled the rise of Akron rock legends like Devo and The Waitresses.
If You’re Not Dead, Play!! documents the second wave of Akron “garage bands” that continued in the tradition of “the Akron sound” that began with bands like Devo, Tin Huey and The Waitresses. In the wake of this first wave of rock bands, whose story Hoffman told in It’s Everything and Then It’s Gone, a second group of bands formed and took over an old dilapidated bank in downtown Akron, which they dubbed The Bank. Soon, bands such as Unit 5, Chi Pig and Hammer Damage were drawing larger crowds than the first bands ever did, and it looked like the road to rock stardom would run right down Akron’s Main Street. “

Both documentaries are worth watching and even purchasing. Great fun! Great Memories!

Check the documentary out online at Western Reserve Public TV.

I’m Back-k-k-k-k-k!

I made it! After having three heart attacks, major open heart surgery in July 2006 (five bypasses) and then another open heart surgery just this past month on March 12, ’10  ( a new mitral valve replacement) I am still alive and kicking! (I must have had wayyyy too much fun in the 60’s & 70’s!)

Apologies for neglecting this website for so long but the past 15 months or more have been tough with a variety of health issues (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys). But we made it through, feeling pretty good and the wife says June 1 I can start kicking butt and taking names on this website (married to a nurse…*sigh*….. and she always sides with the doctors! Go figure.) soon as I am 100%, which won’t be long.

My thanks to Dr. Paulowski (my cardiologist) and Dr. Novoa (heart surgeon) and their staffs in addition to Aultman Hospital in Canton, OH. Want your life saved? Go to Aultman!

Check back in, lots more to add (Music Hall, Agora, Public Hall memories,and m-o-r-e!).

Favorite Books Of My Youth #7

The Illuminatus Trilogy came out in 1975 during my senior year of high school and I purchased them at Dick Zarles’ Drug Store in Orrville, OH. I recall reading about them in Crawdaddy Magazine and, as an impressionable teenager in the post-hippie era and post-Nixon era I was all for conspiracy theories and the like. Other publications began hyping it and there were some writers who boldly proclaimed it was true!

 

Supposedly written in 1969 by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, it’s basically a science fiction spawned story of magic, sex, drugs and conspiracy interwoven with factual and fictional conspiracies. It was a tough read as I often surmised the authors were likely tripping (old school version) as they knocked out the pages of their version of the Illuminati.

 

The three books were titled The Eye In The Pyramid, The Golden Apple and Leviathan. For a minute or two I actually thought it may all be true but soon afterwards I apparently came to my senses. Until ‘W’ was elected that is.

 

I’d explain more about the books but fear of assassination and the potential for my family to disappear prevents that (anyone who read the books know where I’m coming from – OK, OK, tongue is in cheek!). Check out more of the Illuminati on this website.

 

If They Only Knew!

I was still in grade school in 1966, but how many people at the time would have traveled cross-country if they had known this was to be the last Beatles concert?

Favorite Fanzines Of My Youth #1

A favorite fanzine from back in the day was Gary Groth’s Fantastic Fanzine, published in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and always chock full of quality. This is one of my favorite issues (big Steranko fan here). Fantastic Fanzine #11 was published in 1970. The 52-page zine featured a huge Jim Steranko interview with art as well as art and features on Dave Cockrum and Barry Windsor Smith, among others. Groth went on to form Fantagraphics Publishing that still exists.

Favorite Books Of My Youth Pt. 5

When word came out that this book, Ian Hunter’s Diary Of A Rock And Roll Star (titled Reflections Of A Rock And Roll Star here in the States), would be published in 1974 I literally haunted books stores, record stores and head shops for several months until I finally came across a copy either at (faulty memory here) Camelot Music in Akron or Arsenic & Old Lace in Akron. I read it several times over the ensuing months and next several years and it took a proud slot in my library at the time.

The book was originally published in 1974 and Ian Hunter chronicles Mott The Hoople’s November-December 1972 tour of the United States right after All The Young Dudes LP was released. It’s an inside look at touring and the rock ‘n roll lifestyle in 1972 and Hunter…ahem…rolls away the stone and leaves everything exposed that entails life on the rock ‘n roll road. It was critically acclaimed.

Unfortunately by the end of the decade it was gone, loaned to an acquaintance to never be seen again despite having loaned it to over a dozen people in the preceding years (Mott The Hoople were big time in Orrville, OH back then, especially from 1972-1975).

But one day in the winter of 1996 the wife and I stopped in Canton, OH at the Quonset Hut store and as I’m walking down an isle of CD’s there in a big display is a reissue (import) of Diary Of A Rock And Roll Star! I had no idea they reissued it but I immediately purchased it! Even today, it is among my other books and is still shrink wrapped! I haven’t even opened it in 12 years!

That is going to change in the next week or so, as soon as I find a spare evening I’m going to open it up and read it once again, for the first time in nearly 30 years. I think I was afraid to peel open the shrink-wrap and read it for fear it would be lost again. But I’m willing to chance it….!

Spare Change, Man?

C’mon, admit it! If you were somewhere around 18 years old in the late 60’s and met these two, you KNOW you would have wanted to party with them!

Happy Birthday

John (Winston) Ono Lennon
October 9, 1940
Liverpool Maternity Hospital
Oxford Street
Liverpool

“He played his guitar like he was ringing a bell….”

Four Color Beatles

Here is a random sampling of some Beatles related comic books that I had in my comic book collection back in the 1960’s. Marvel Comics did a Beatles bio comic book sometime in the 1970’s that I missed. Marvel also did the infamous KISS comic book where they mixed some band members blood with the ink prior to printing the KISS comic book. During the height of Beatlemania you could hardly pick up any comic books (especially the teen comics) or magazines without a Beatle tie-in somewhere.

Favorite Books Of My Youth Pt. 4

I ordered this book from Scholastic Books through my school (Apple Creek Elementary School in Apple Creek, Ohio) in May 1969. I ordered it two weeks before school was out for the summer along with a half dozen other books. It arrived at home about a month later and I read this book the day it arrived. I forget what the others books I ordered were!

Presidential Blast From The Past

HHH & LBJ. It's my understanding this artwork was commissoned by the Democratic Party.