Joan Baez Meets OJ & Other Insanity

When nostalgia is tempered by reality in the pages of Rolling Stone

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Record company guy one: "What should we do with this new wave crap?"

Record company guy two: "Whatever, throw some kids in the tub and sell it like a razor."

-- RS 11/3/77

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

I wonder if it is too late for Webster's to take some sort of legal action against Mungo Jerry.

--RS 10/1/1970

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

If no one realized by '72 that the sixties had gone down the drain, Danny Whitten's obituary made it clear, even if it took "Tonight's the Night" to spell it out 3 years later.

"He was sensitive and he loved everybody, but the main thing was drugs."

--RS 12/21/72

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Captain Beyond might be a band worth the crate digging, or might be a big bunch of early '70s crap.  I vote for the latter.

--RS 8/3/71

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Guy with short shorts: "No really, Don't Look Back is even better than Boston"

Girl with short shorts: "Stop trying to force me into your weird van that you won by drinking cheap rum, creep."

-RS 6/14/79

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

And so it begins, on a flight populated by cardboard cut-outs, launching a million slow dances, karaoke sing-alongs, and tribute videos. 

RS 2/23/78

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

 I believe this photo completely sums up early Genesis, and thus also all of 70's prog.

Genesis: To Them, It's Only Rock & Role (RS 1/2/75)

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Please be prog.

Please be prog.

Please be prog.

--RS 2/27/75

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

All these years I didn't realize that Billy Joel was telling me stories about myself. I do know that none of the stories about myself involve wearing a suit and no shoes.

RS 11/3/77

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Wow, I can't believe they put one of The Runaways on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Ron Wood Lives It Up, RS 11/3/77

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Another Reason to Hate a Hippie (Country Joe McDonald Edition)

In response to an article about the Sex Pistols, we have this nugget of "wisdom" from Country Joe:

"Just what do you mean by 'the Pistols are more than a little political—by which I do not mean Friends of the Whale' (American Grandstand, RS 246). I am aware that you do not really understand the “politics” (as you call it) of the Pistols and as for this stupid whale joke you probably do not know what a whale is, much less understand the international implications of a Canadian and American group placing their bodies in front of a forty-pound exploding Russian harpoon in international waters and risking getting their brains blown out. Well, it does not have the bullshit flash appeal of MC5 and their matching new street rods and sparkle jackets, or Iggy Stooge and his Safeway ground-round routines, but it is the essence of true revolution: to build a better world for all living things to be happy together in. Kick out the jams—my ass.”

Country Joe McDonald 

Berkley, California

--Correspondence, Love Letters and Advice, RS 11/17/77

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Which will haunt you when you close your eyes at night: Ted Nugent with no shoes on, or three kids with no shirts and paper mache Ted masks?

--RS 11/3/77

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

The immortal Doug Sahm and The Sir Douglas Quintet turn in an ad that looks totally of the time, and modern all at once.

Well done gentlemen, well done.

--RS 11/29/70

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

What's grosser?

Drinking from a hobo's bindle, or actually buying a pre-blended bottle of Smirnoff, apple brandy, and "other natural flavors?"

-- RS 3/29/73

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

Worse than usual, Rolling Stone

"No "flower children" they, the sinister emanation of a generation who only yesterday, it seems, were set on changing the world in the shadow of nuclear holocaust and overpopulation into a utopia of peace and love. They drop the knee of fealty before the Antichrist. The shoot "M" and they engage in group sex. No act is too depraved, no thought too bizarre as they plunge deeper and deeper into the realm of perversion, into the ultimate "trip" of Orgies, incest, drugs, homosexuality, necrophilia, public nose-picking, satanism, even living sacrifice.

And this is their music. Although you may not enjoy its "message", although you may not enjoy a lead singer (Kip Treavor), who sounds like Keith Relf whining about the tampons stuck up his nostrils, you owe it to yourself as a person concerned with contemporary society or merely with the artistic underground of the youth movement in general to be aware of the "heavy" sounds of bubble-gum Satanism and if you see them live sometimes they undress a hippie girl."

Review of Paranoid by Nick Tosches, RS 4/15/71

Just when I think maybe Rolling Stone did get it some of the time, I stumble across something like this. This weird sub-Burroughs "review" by Nick Tosches is obviously supposed to make some kind of statement about the death of the hippie dream in 460 words. Putting odd references to dead babies aside, he manages to mention the album only in the last three sentences, and then confuses the lead singer of long forgotten band Black Widow with Ozzy Osbourne.

Really Nick?

Also if anyone knows what shooting "M" is, or why orgies is capitalized, let me know.

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

The 70's were painful (for aging hippies)

"If a novocained nun shrieking Spanish Civil War songs in a Chinese brothel is your idea of tomorrow's music, you can enjoy it today: Grace Slick's there first."

--Review of Grace Slick's solo debut, "Manhole" by Jim Miller. Amazingly, he managed to skip a reference to her weight.

RS 3/28/74

[joanbaezmeetsoj]

I'm not the biggest Captain Beefheart fan, but this ad is pretty cool. Lick My Decals Off indeed.

RS 11/26/70