Havens gives Homer a taste of Woodstock - The Homer Tribune :: Homer, Alaska

Richie Havens is on the road this year performing at festivals and solo gigs and promoting his latest CD of 13 cover songs. This article showcases his performance in Homer, AK, and provides a good interview and historical background.

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Havens gives Homer a taste of Woodstock - The Homer Tribune :: Homer, Alaska

Design Artwork for a Shrinking Album Cover

"Back in the day" (as they say), album covers used to offer a broad canvas for artistic expression, as evidenced by many classic album covers, including many from the '60s (such as the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa, above). But the canvas shrunk with the shift from LPs to CDs and has shifted again with the prevalance of the iPod and other portable music devices that limit album artwork to dimensions measured in pixels rather than inches or square feet. This article in Wired magazine laments this trend but also points to some musical artists (and their graphic artists) who are responding to this challenging trend.

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Design Artwork for a Shrinking Album Cover

James Rejects Woodstock Snub - contactmusic.com

Woodstock or Hawaii? Which would you choose? Tommy James and the Shondells were given this option while they were already vacationing in Hawaii and they chose to stay there, and today they wish they had chosen Woodstock because the cultural importance of the event.

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http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/james%20regrets%20woodstock%20snub_1095523

Nazi Airport Meets Flower Power: Woodstock Coming to Tempelhof? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

A 40-year-anniversary celebration of Woodstock on an old Nazi air base in Germany??? Don't believe me? Read it for yourself...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,606886,00.html

'1969': The year, and a book, that defined an era - USA Today

While many people might feel like 1968 was a more momentous year, but author Rob Kirkpatrick makes a claim for 1969's honor to that distinction in his new book 69: The Year Everything Changed (Skyhorse Publishing, 288 pp., $24.95). For our studies on Woodstock, this is a good thing. Pick up the book and see if you agree.

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http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-01-25-1969-book_N.htm

The Associated Press | San Francisco weighs ban on new head shops

San Francisco civic leaders are attempting to crack down on the proliferation of head shops in the Haight-Ashbury district. Since I visited the area when I was last in San Francisco about three years ago, I'll do my scholarly duty and try to get back down to the Haight while I'm there in March to get a first-hand impression of how the situation has changed in only three years. I certainly don't remember the district being overrun with head shops when I was there. Stay tuned.

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i9rZ_yYn6PuxmBik79yl12vSTDywD96B0SS80

R. Crumb on display at Mass. Art - Arts

The work of noted counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb will be on display Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Who is R. Crumb? You've probably seen his work, but here's what the Suffolk College campus newspaper said about him:

Crumb was born in 1943 in Philadelphia, Penn. After high school, he moved out to Cleveland where he took a job designing greeting cards for the American Greetings Corporation. After experimenting with LSD, Crumb left for San Francisco, where he created Zap! Comics and co-founded the underground comix movement, a trend of self-published comics spawned by the 1960s counterculture that often took aim at sexual taboos, drug use, and the establishment in general.

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Crumb's work is a monument of the counter-culture movement, a virtual middle-finger pointed at the monotony and conformity of 1950's middle America and in many ways, the formulaic, basic approach being taken to comics up until that point in time. Crumb works to ridicule not only the establishment, but the middle-class hippies who rebel for the sake of rebelling.

One comic called "Squirrelly the Squirrel" works to lampoon Tom-and-Jerry-like antics that are all-too repeated in cartoons. After Squirrelly finds out that his arch-nemesis, the Fox, has become a vegetarian, he stomps all over his garden and permanently blinds him with insecticide. Squirrelly later runs into the Fox, who strangles him after Squirrelly tricks him into burning himself, and is thrown in jail.

Crumb also satirizes counter-culture with a comic called "Jumpin' Jack Flash" about a miscreant who tricks his followers into stabbing each other for his sexual pleasure. The comic ends with Crumb telling us that it "proves women are no god dam good!"

Another comic on display is Crumb's iconic "Fritz the Cat." The comic chronicles how Fritz mischievously manipulates some na've young hippy girls into coming with him to a friend's apartment for a smoke session and bathtub orgy. As the orgy grows in numbers, the police kick in the door and Fritz escapes in the confusion caused by a toilet exploding. Fritz then mugs a socialite on the street to disguise himself and makes his way to the park he was originally staying at.

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R. Crumb on display at Mass. Art - Arts