Rolling Stone, 1968

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

     I just looked through ROLLING STONE for 1968 (its first year).  You can
learn many important things about rock and roll--like Yoko has an ugly butt.
But I digress.

AXE:  10 August 1968, pg. 3, col. 4--At any rate, it seems to me that a
bi-monthly containing twenty-four pages, less front and back covers and
advertising, cannot afford to devote so much space to a guitarist (albeit
talented) who will hardly go down in the annals of music literature as an
important innovated.  Just what axe are you trying to grind?

AXE:  9 November 1968, pg. 23, ad for RMI, Macungie, PA, keyboard with the
cartoon character "Gopher Baroque"--"The RMI Rock-si-chord is a heavy axe",
says noted underground authority, Gopher Baroque. (...) This axe is 100%
solid state electronic harpsichord...

10 February 1968, pg. 1, col. 3--The book is a "coffee table" volume
handsomely designed and illustrated with lots of pictures of Morrison.

10 February 1968, pg. 16, col. 3--"folk-rock."

24 February 1968, pg. 6, col. 4--The brand of music they (Charles Lloyd
quartet--ed.) play is closely related to "free jazz" or the "New Thing", as
it is often called: there are no restrictions on chord structure (harmony),
tone...

9 March 1968, pg. 4, col. 4--"Gold Rush Rock" or "cowboy rock."

6 April 1968, pg. 8, col. 1--_Notes of A Super Groupie_.

27 April 1968, pg. 12, col. 1--"Superfreak."

11 May 1968, pg. 1, col. 1--Dick Gregory ("the convention will be held overy
my dead body")...

11 May 1968, pg. 12, col. 1, Eric Clapton interview--Everybody and his
brother in England still sort of think that spades have big dicks.  And Jimi
came over and exploited that to the limit, the fucking tee.  Everbody fell
for it.  Shit.

11 May 1968, pg. 19, col. 2--Billboard described it as "wall-to-wall rock."

25 May 1968, pg. 22, col. 2--8-track machine.

22 June 1968, pg. 14, col. 1--There are two often-quoted definitions of Los
Angeles: (1) It is 70 suburbs in search of a city; (2) It is a three ring
circus in search of a tent.

22 June 1968, pg. 14, col. 3--At the moment, the concept of "company freak"
is extremely popular.  These are also known as "house hippies," the record
company's equivalent of the "necessary Negro."

6 July 1968, pg. 16, col. 1--Last week Tiny Tim sat in a plush Beverly Hills
office remembering what it was like before he became a Super Star.

10 August 1968, pg. 4, col. 3--In our news item on the San Francisco
recording studio scene (ROLLING STONE, July 6), it was wrongly stated that
eight-track recording is unknown in the Bay Area.

10 August 1968, pg. 6, cols. 1-2 (headline)--Who Does Full-Length Rock Opera.

10 August 1968, pg. 13, col. 3--The chorus is "Please to meet you/Won't you
guess my name?/What's puzzling you is the nature of my game."  This is not a
"protest" song as they have come to be called, but it makes everything
recently done in that bag look pretty pablumish.

26 October 1968, pg. 28, col. 4--hard-rock (hard-folk?).

9 November 1968, pg. 8, col. 4--Our favorite combination is HOG (hash, O,
grass).  (O=Opium. See RHHDAS on "hog," pg. 118--ed.)

23 November 1968, pg. 6, col. 4--To mark this first anniversary, we've tried
to put together a super-special issue with a lot of good shit, as they say.

23 November 1968, pg. 20, col. 1--And anyone who so casually tosses around
the term "supergroup," better in fact have the Beatles around the corner,
because otherwise it's not going to work.

7 December 1968, pg. 3, col. 2--It all depend which way one's hand is facing.
 In England two fingers forming a V with the palm facing out, a la Churchill,
does indeed mean "victory," but turn the wrist so the back of the hand faces
out and it is equivalent to our own "up yours" middle finger gesture.  This
was pointed out to Sly & the Family Stone in England, but I guess Columbia is
trying to get a little publicity mileage out of a ridiculous series of events.

7 December 1968, pg. 19, col. 3, "TEX-MEX" by Barret Hansen--"Tex-Mex" has
been used for many years to mean various phenomena of Mexican culture on
Uncle Sam's side of the Rio Grande.  To find the derivation of Tex-Mex as a
rock word though, we have to go clear up to the Panhandle, at the Northern
end of Texas where Mexican influence is comparatively slight.  Adjoining
_New_ Mexico is a large expanse of cow country that is also sometimes called
"Tex-Mex," where several of the outstanding rock artists of the Fifties came
up.

21 December 1968, pg. 10, col. 4--"folk-rock," "raga-rock" and "acid-rock."

21 December 1968, pg. 12, col. 4--The "hard rock" aspect of the Beatles is
one often overlooked and neglected, often times purposely in the attempt to
get them to be something they are not.

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SCOOCH

    I was looking for "Tex-Mex" when I found "scooch" (DARE?) instead.  From
READER'S DIGEST, June 1970, pg. 161, col. 2:

     "But don't you think that this one is just a scooch too much?"
     "What's a scooch?" I asked.
     "Why," she said, "that's Texas talk for just a bit more than a smitch."
     I was still mulling this over when the stewardess asked me if I would
care for a drink.  "Well," I said, "maybe just a scooch of Scotch."
     "Why, you wonderful Yankee!" she gushed.  "Where did you learn to talk
Texas lahk that?"
      "Honey," I replied, winking at my neighbor, "doesn't everyone?"