Thursday, January 19, 2012

1968: Turn On & Tune In













Bill Cosby of Philadelphia was big in 1968, here via his To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With album. We had some of his records, and I still remember whole sections of his routines decades later.



















Gore Vidal's anarcho-satirical novel Myra Breckinridge has sold more than two million copies since its debut in 1968. I've only seen bits from the 1970 movie version starring Raquel Welch -- atrociously bad ones.  



















Alien life, life on Earth, space travel, computers: it's all in Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey/l'Odyssée de l'espace. Clarke worked on the text version at the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan.



















A seriously grim future is glimpsed in Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie variation, directed by Ridley Scott, came out in 1982 as Blade Runner, and has since become a classic, especially with the Final Cut version released in 2007.  













Among others, Bill Cosby covers the Rolling Stones in Bill Cosby Sings Hooray for the Salvation Army Band! (1968).  Let's not forget his rendition of "Funky North Philadelphia."













Among other things, Woody Allen tells moose jokes in the 1968 Standup Comic compilation, which was orginally released as three records. Nowadays, after a huge international hit with his 2011 film Midnight in Paris, he's working to bring out Nero Fiddled in 2012.   



















Let's not forget Janis Joplin. Not only is January 19th her birthday, but 1968 was her heyday. By 1970 she was gone.

Today's Rune: Strength.  

2 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I remember quite a few Bill Cosby bits too. Hilarious stuff.

Mark Krone said...

That was some year. Funny to see Myra Breckinridge mentioned since I just took it out of the library this afternoon because I will be interviewing John Mitzel, who wrote Myra and Gore, a book about Vidal's writing and promoting of the book. He never thought it received its due but I think as you have found that the movie hurt it quite a lot.