A time-out is due to honor the drummer of the World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band.
The legendary Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones, their ONLY drummer, passed-on today.
Charlie never missed a tour in the band’s 58 years.
Rest In Peace Charlie – you were exemplary in all that you did.
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And now, MAD Magazine – ’60’s & ’70’s Gift of Enlightenment
A typical satiric MAD take on Timothy Leary’s, “Turn On Tune In Drop Out”
There was a saving grace for adolescents of the prevailng boredom of the ’50’s and early ’60’s, and that bit of pre-teen / teen enjoyment was available through the irreverent genius of MAD magazine by “the Usual Gang of Idiots”. Those Idiots were: founder editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines.
The first issue was October/November of 1952 and published through to 2017 (original magazine) and June 2018 – ? (reboot).
For kids who grew up during that era, decency, manners, politeness, and respect, were well-known traits that were upheld but it was MAD that allowed for a much-needed relief from those societal rules. Comic books were great fun and adventurous distractions and provided escapist entertainment, but Mad provided just what was needed – stupid fun that slyly revealed truths.
MAD magazine’s influence over more than a half-century is righteously apparent in the quotes by just these few:
In 1977, Tony Hiss and Jeff Lewis wrote in The New York Times about the then-25-year-old publication’s initial effect:
“The skeptical generation of kids it shaped in the 1950s is the same generation that, in the 1960s, opposed a war and didn’t feel bad when the United States lost for the first time and in the 1970s helped turn out an Administration and didn’t feel bad about that either … It was magical, objective proof to kids that they weren’t alone, that in New York City on Lafayette Street, if nowhere else, there were people who knew that there was something wrong, phony and funny about a world of bomb shelters, brinkmanship and toothpaste smiles. MAD’s consciousness of itself, as trash, as comic book, as enemy of parents and teachers, even as money-making enterprise, thrilled kids. In 1955, such consciousness was possibly nowhere else to be found.”
In a 1985 Tonight Show appearance, Johnny Carson asked Michael J. Fox,
“When did you really know you’d made it in show business?”, Fox replied, “When Mort Drucker drew my head.”
In 1994, Brian Siano in The Humanist discussed the effect of MAD on that segment of people already disaffected from society:
“For the smarter kids of two generations, MAD was a revelation: it was the first to tell us that the toys we were being sold were garbage, our teachers were phonies, our leaders were fools, our religious counselors were hypocrites, and even our parents were lying to us about damn near everything. An entire generation had William Gaines for a godfather: this same generation later went on to give us the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, the peace movement, greater freedom in artistic expression, and a host of other goodies. Coincidence? You be the judge.”
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Boyd wrote,
“All I really need to know I learned from MAD magazine”, going on to assert: Plenty of it went right over my head, of course, but that’s part of what made it attractive and valuable. Things that go over your head can make you raise your head a little higher. The magazine instilled in me a habit of mind, a way of thinking about a world rife with false fronts, small print, deceptive ads, booby traps, treacherous language, double standards, half truths, subliminal pitches and product placements; it warned me that I was often merely the target of people who claimed to be my friend; it prompted me to mistrust authority, to read between the lines, to take nothing at face value, to see patterns in the often shoddy construction of movies and TV shows; and it got me to think critically in a way that few actual humans charged with my care ever bothered to.
Artist Dave Gibbons said,
“When you think of the people who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, the letters M-A-D were probably as influential as L-S-D, in that it kind of expanded people’s consciousness and showed them an alternative view of society and consumer culture — mocked it, satirized it.”
Robert Crumb remarked,
“Artists are always trying to equal the work that impressed them in their childhood and youth. I still feel extremely inadequate when I look at the old MAD comics.
Critic Roger Ebert wrote:
“I learned to be a movie critic by reading MAD magazine … Mad’s parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin—of the way a movie might look original on the outside, while inside it was just recycling the same old dumb formulas. I did not read the magazine, I plundered it for clues to the universe.”
When Weird Al Yankovic was asked whether MAD had had any influence in putting him on a road to a career in parody, the musician replied,
“[It was] more like going off a cliff.”
Mystery Science Theater 3000 writer-actor Frank Conniff wrote,
“Without MAD Magazine, MST3K would have been slightly different, like for instance, it wouldn’t have existed.”
In 2019, Terence Winter, writer and producer of The Sopranos, told Variety,
“When we got into MAD Magazine, that was the highlight for me. That said everything.”
Rock singer Patti Smith said more succinctly,
“After MAD, drugs were nothing.”
The Aurora monster model kit craze of the ’60s – in reverse.
Like most kids his age, 00 looked forward to the next MAD issue. Everyone had their favorite segments; Spy vs Spy, The Lighter Side, the Back-Cover Fold In, but for 00 it was all about the parodies of current movies and TV shows and the excellent caricature likenesses of the stars, actors, celebrities, amd politicians that he liked best.
And of course, the back cover mock ads for current well-known products looking professionally shot, like: Marble Row (cemetary gravestones) Marlboro cigarettes, or a passed out drunk with the title Sadder, But Wiser for Budweiser Beer, and so on, those were just from memory.
A parody of Breck hair products usually done in the above style with a woman’s beautiful hair –
this time with Ringo done beautifully by Frank Frazetta:
Walking on his way home from grade school, then later junior high school, 00 would literally walk through the front door of Stewart’s Bottle Bar (liquor store) that was on the corner of his long block home and then out the side door with a 10 cent bag of suns (sunflower seeds), a 15 cent big sixteen ounce spiral-class RC Cola, and the new 25 cent MAD magazine, or a couple of 12 cent comic books.
He’d eat the salted suns ’til his tongue was swollen from the salt and down slugs of the RC to quench his thirst. Then, once home, finish off the bag and RC while expanding his mind with smiles and appreciation while devouring MAD magazine.
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Here are the artists (“the Usual Gang of Idiots”) known and loved by those lucky and fortunate enough to have had them in their lives during the Best Times in United States History. the 1960s and the 1970s: Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Sergio Aragones, Kelly Freas, Dave Berg, Paul Coker, Mort Drucker, Don Martin, Norman Mingo, Basil Woolverton, and many others.
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MAD PREDICTS THE FUTURE – EVERY 50 YEARS!
1971 and now 2021!
MAD = Tribal Truth.