Listen Bud, He’s Got Radioactive Blood

Wear a mask and maintain social distancing!

Not everybody will get the joke, but for those of us who do it’s very funny.

Note at the end of that 1967 cartoon, credit is given to “Jazzy Johnny Romita” as an art consultant, and not Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko. I can see where some of the animation was based on drawings by Romita, especially Aunt May. But the series also included direct photostats of some Ditko art. This was a technique that Grantray-Lawrence had used extensively in The Marvel Super-Heroes series a year earlier, which was in production when Ditko quit Marvel Comics.

It’s Flower Power, Baby

Two months before the famous Monterey International Pop Music Festival in June 1967, there was an equally interesting concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

Representing Folk Rock was the Buffalo Springfield. There was Pop music with the 5th Dimension. For Soul, the relatively unknown Brenda Holloway was there. And for a Garage band the Seeds.

https://youtu.be/-NJ9CBixSIk

But wait, there’s more! Singer-songwriter Johnny Rivers, and from Motown the one and only Supremes. Listen to these recordings for their historical significance, not the audio quality.

https://youtu.be/-cBZwgi3Ots

Note that radio station KHJ went by the pre-groovy slang “boss.” KHJ is the same station featured in Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood, as heard in the previous post.

Once Upon A Time… In Sydney

Let’s dip our toes back in Rick Dalton’s swimming pool with this track by Los Bravos, from Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.

The song was originally written and performed by the Australian band The Easybeats, best known for their big hit “Friday On My Mind”. The guitar opening for “Bring a Little Lovin'” was later apparently borrowed by another Australian act, the Bee Gees, for their song “Jive Talkin'”.

STOP or I’ll SHOOT — Again!

“You have to arrest people and you have to try people. And they have to go to jail for long periods of time,” the president said.

That should have been what he said about the cops and civilians who think they’re Judge Dredd, killing unarmed people in the street. Every time an unarmed black man is shot dead when running away from a cop, there are countless online comments saying, “Then they shouldn’t run!” Avoiding arrest isn’t a crime punishable by death. George Floyd didn’t run, and none of the video shows him resisting.

“It’s a movement, if you don’t put it down it will get worse and worse,” Trump said. “The only time it’s successful is when you’re weak and most of you are weak.”

Why bother responding to the crisis? The protests will just magically disappear.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

The Rolling Stones album Beggar’s Banquet includes a song called “Prodigal Son.”

There was some initial confusion about the songwriting credit, having not been clearly attributed to the Reverend Robert Wilkins, who first recorded it in 1964.

The song is actually a reworking of Wilkins’ song “That’s No Way To Get Along” from 1929, before he became a devout Christian.

https://youtu.be/9J2rEvVxBP8