hot news of 50 years ago

[calimac]

The only information I had on the source of what I was looking for was that it was published in the Saturday Evening Post sometime in 1964.  It wasn't in the first bibliography I checked, so I decided on paging through the magazine.  So I pulled the heavy bedsheet-sized volumes down from the top shelf in the compact shelving in the university library basement.  I found what I was looking for, but I found a lot of other stuff too.

*Nervous speculations on whether Goldwater was likely to win the nomination/election, whether Robert Kennedy will run for VIce President, etc.
*Polemics by both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the latter torn out of the library copy.
*Not one but two cover stories on the Beatles, both featuring cover photos I've never seen reproduced in any books about them.  Texts mostly about the band members quarreling.  Excerpts from Lennon's yet-unpublished In His Own Write, heralded on the cover with a slug line of "If you think their music bugs you, read this."  Subsequent letters to the editor, however, were mostly favorable.
*The oddest thing in the second Beatles article, though, was a page of photos of four other rock groups emerging in the Beatles' wake.  Now, a lot of great and famous rock groups came along with the Beatles, but of these four, I had heard of exactly zero.  Looking them up now, I find that two actually have Wikipedia entries, but web info on the other two is minimal.  They are: The Swinging Blue Jeans (who dress in blue jeans and ride the ferry), The Undertakers (who dress as undertakers and ride motorcycles), The Mersey Monsters (who dress like ... wait for it ... monsters, with masks and cloaks), and The Blackwells (I don't remember what they dress like).  Ring any bells?
*At least two cover stories, as well, on quintuplet babies.  These days even the Octomom can't generate that much high-toned publicity.

And a column called "Speaking Out" offering controversial opinions, such as:
*A screed against tipping (nothing's changed)
*A screed for gun control (nothing's changed).  It's by John Lindsay, then still a congressman; remember him?  He says that, after JFK's assassination, enough is enough.  We said that after Sandy Hook, too.  Now we're saying it after Isla Vista.  Nothing's changed.
*A screed defending smoking.  It's by Ogden Nash, of all people.  He says so what if the Surgeon General says it's dangerous, life is risk.  (An odd attitude for a man to take who feared flying because he'd once seen a small plane crash in 1929.)  He says he just likes to smoke.  The subsequent letters to the editor, many in sub-Nashian verse, say, "It's because you're addicted."

Comments

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

I checked with Lin who is hard to fool on British Invasion, and she'd never heard of the Mersey Monsters, the Undertakers, or the Blackwells either.