Utterly terrifying and exciting to me as a 12-year-old, with their slinky guitar and reverb

[koganbot]

I write about Cruisin' 1966 over on my Tumblr.

Comments

(reposting what i said on tumblr)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

OMG that cover! Are they dating? If so, what’s the intended politics of what he’s saying? Isn’t it a Free Market critique of the Great Society and Welfarism? (OK, so a standard-issue political stance you could have heard then or now, except surely NOT from the lips of the kind of white guy who’d be dating a black girl in 1966!!? This is weirdly contrary and confrontational: not just as the cover of a pop LP, confronting its purchasers, but internally, confronting itself… )

Re: (reposting what i said on tumblr)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Her expression could easily be read as "WTF???", like this is a sudden outburst.

The covers are a serial, about an on-off couple (both white) - Peg and Eddie (this is Eddie). Eddie has done a year in the army - coterminous with Elvis I think! - but in the early 60s sleeves he's getting quite earnestly into progressive politics: in the sleeve before this he's talking to another white girl, Genevieve, at the library, and has a big beard. Peg is off the scene at this point.

In the NEXT sleeve he's talking to Genevieve again - she now runs a head shop, and he's worrying about the impact of the stuff she's selling on younger kids. By the 69 and 70 sleeves he's worrying about his career and playing golf.

So I think the black girl's a friend, part of the political crew he's been hanging with, but he's moving rightwards, and this is his (poorly-timed!) moment of revelation.

Re: (reposting what i said on tumblr)

[koganbot]

Might fit James Brown's politics, which were a very entrepreneurial idea of self-determination; but the album actually came out in '73 (these are reenactments), when "self-help" and "benign neglect" were more the thing. I really don't see these sentiments as being '66, and they brought me up short as anachronisms when I first saw the album cover (though I have no idea when that was).

Re: (reposting what i said on tumblr)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, 1973 that makes more sense (I read you as saying you owned this LP in 1966): I think if you had found a young Goldwater conservative who wasn't a racist, you might just have heard language like this from them, and Brown's politics of course links back to Booker T. Washington's -- but yes I think in 1966 both streams of discussion were very much swamped by other, much louder voices. Also the term "community" in this sensev -- of the social nexus of urban blacks -- feels as if it arose later (though presumably it was used in black churches). But perhaps unlikely on his lips, if not hers.

I notice -- which I didn't before -- that she has a clip-board: so possibly, rather than a friend (because even this would have been a bit startling on a 1966 LP sleeve, no?) she's someone on the street doing a survey that Eddie's storming past. She just asked a question like "what does this community need?" and he has aggressively answered her.

Even if it's 1973, that doesn't take away from the sense of internal confrontation: the idea that the array of music speaks to people like Eddie -- as opposed to excluding him, per the more usual countercultural assumption (that he's a Mr Jones, who knows something's happening but not what it is...)

Re: (reposting what i said on tumblr)

[koganbot]

I'd heard the songs when they originally came out, in '66, and that's when I had my age 12 reaction. But Cruisin' is an oldies series, conceived of as a history of rock and roll radio: its first seven releases were in 1970, encompassing 1956 through 1962; in 1972 it added two years on each end, 1955 and 1963; and in 1973 it added four more, 1964 through 1967. It was on something called Increase Records, distributed by GRT Music Tapes, and of course it'd have been limited by what music they could get or buy permission to use.

But it's not clear what Eddie's politics are in this picture; "self help" could read as "blacks should be running the anti-poverty efforts." It's crucial in looking at U.S. politics not to project European attitudes on it or to underestimate how disengaged and ignorant most Americans are when it comes to politics. "Economic" doesn't code as "free market," necessarily, and in 1966 it certainly wouldn't code as, say, anti-union. And the two hot-button political issues of the Sixties - civil rights and Vietnam - didn't code as management versus labor; nor did the more diffuse culture clashes such as freaks versus straights, hip versus unhip, feminism versus male privilege, drugs versus beer, sexual liberation versus whatever it was opposed to or opposed by.

Re: (reposting what i said on tumblr)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i guess i would tend to read "economic improvement" as meaning more self-run small businesses -- rather than, say, injection of govt money into infrastructure or via welfare -- but i agree, it's much too abrupt to be unambiguous

"the two hot-button political issues of the Sixties - civil rights and Vietnam - didn't code as management versus labor" is i think another way of saying the same thing, really: someone restating these political issues in terms of economics (whatever they meant, a marxist might just as well insist on this as a free-market conservative) would have been an oddball

which was no longer so by the early 70s

what;'s intriguing to me is: is this anachronism as error (i suppose more likely) or anachronism as contrarian insight?

Re: (reposting what i said on tumblr)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

another way of saying the same thing, really: ie same as i said above, re " both streams of discussion were very much swamped by other, much louder voices"

Re: (reposting what i said on tumblr)

[koganbot]

Well in the Sixties there were certainly people on the left who were trying to make the connection to economics ("why are we supporting the landlords in a war between peasants and landlords in Asia?" might be one way of putting it; and when Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, he was there in support of a sanitation workers strike); but also, I don't think leftists were or are against the idea of, say, governmental encouragement for minority and female-owned business. This is one issue where left and right aren't totally opposed in principle, except the right is against government having a policy (or having policies at all; the left may be somewhat askew in its attempts to make policy and principle coincide, whereas the Republicans are utterly incoherent, at least on the national level).

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

First off, Frank, I didn't know you even had a Tumblr. Second off, here's what I wrote on ILM two years ago, about a different album in the Cruisin' series, the 1960, which I found for 75 cents while visiting Houston in April 2008:

wondering why i never bought any of those "cruisin'" compilations before. the 1960 one seems really cool -- "alley oop," "you talk too much," "finger poppin time," "tears on my pillow," "because they're young," etc., and i really like the pop-art drive-in comic-book packaging. the series came out in 1970, apparently, on chess-distributed increase records, and each volume (one for each year, 1955 to 1962) is picked and annotated by an apparently famous top 40 dj. the 1960 one is curated by dick biondi from wkbw buffalo; 1956 (which i don't have -- in fact, i don't have any others) by robin seymour for wkmh detroit; 1962 by russ "weird beard" knight of klif dallas, etc. i've seen these in used record stores for decades, but never gave any thought to them, for some reason, and don't remember reading much about them anywhere else. seems to be a more hip version of the oldies but goodies concept, but i'm not sure how popular or widely distributed they were.

-- xhuxk, Sunday, April 27, 2008 7:40 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

As for Cruisin', what I wrote above was just me going by the track list and liner notes. I didn't realize the albums were actual DJ air checks, but that's what they seem to be according to these links:

http://www.dailyvault.com/toc.php5?review=3203

http://www.epinions.com/content_370728799876

http://leemichaelwithers.tripod.com/cruisin.htm

(I guess the 1963 to 1970 editions came out later, like maybe when the series was re-released on CD?)

-- xhuxk, Sunday, April 27, 2008 10:37 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link


xp Or okay, maybe not actual actual DJ air checks, but a remarkable facsimile thereof:

"The series not only includes the original songs by the original artists from a particular year but also includes a Disk Jockey (D. J.) from a particular radio station all across North America. Included with the music is original radio advertisements (commercials), some public service announcements, radio station jingles, D. J. banter and numerous other goings on to make the record sound like it was recorded right from a live studio broadcast."

-- xhuxk, Sunday, April 27, 2008 10:51 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

[koganbot]

Mostly use the Tumblr to feed links from my lj, though occasionally I'll use it to comment on what someone else said on Tumblr.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

On the cover of the 1960 one, for what it's worth, two apparent teenagers (both white) are at a date at the drive in (apparently called Drive In). The marquee says "PSYCHO and THE TIME MACHINE -- DOLLAR . A . CAR . NIGHT." The blonde girl is saying "IT'S....EDDIE!" The very clean-cut boy has a "For President: Richard Nixon" button on his button-down shirt. Behind them, there's another car, with another couple cuddling in it; the guy in that car seems to be a soldier, and the car has a "Kennedy/Johnson" bumper sticker on its front bumper.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

...This makes me think of the Grand Theft Auto soundtrack album collection (platonic ideals of 80s radio stations), and Cowboy Bebop Remixes: Music for Freelance (SF send-up of concept). I guess I'm of the generation where my introduction to everything was via video game and Japanese animation simulacra XD;

[giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

This might have been mentioned already, but all the Cruisin' covers were drawn by Mike Royer, best known for inking lots of Jack Kirby's work in the 1970s. More recently Royer has worked for Disney as their 'official' Winnie the Pooh artist, doing all the character designs etc for their merchandising.