Penthouse
June, 1976
June, 1976, and the top 40 chart reveals the impact of disco, with some classic boogie-oogie tunes present on the chart. Also appearing is 'Shannon,' by Sha Na Na band member Henry Gross. A song about Beach Boys member Carl Wilson's dog, Gross's falsetto, in an era before Auto-tune, is amazing. The latest issue of Penthouse magazine is on the stands, and it contains an advertisement for 'Calcutta Cloth,' a brand of leisure suits designed for summer weather. If nowadays they made these, and in a neutral color (as opposed to peach and canary yellow), I might buy them. Whether I would wear them in public, is uncertain....
There are some good articles in this issue. Anthony Pearson's 'A Conspiracy of Silence' examines the destruction of the U.S. spy ship Liberty at the hands of the Israelis in June, 1967. Lyndon Baines Johnson, the President at that time, suppressed reporting about the attack in order to avoid turning American opinion against Israel in the Seven Day War. During the Seventies and Eighties East Asian religious organizations set up shop, with some success, in the USA. One of these was the 'Unification Church,' founded by the North Korean-born reverend Sung Myung Moon. By the mid-70s the antics of the so-called 'Moonies' were gathering attention, such as this article by Michael Pousner, which portrays the cult in something of a negative light. The Interview is with Vincent Bugliosi (1934 - 2015) who gained fame for prosecuting the Manson Family for the 1969 Tate - LaBianca murders. Bugliosi's greatest talent was in self-promotion........
The fiction piece in this June issue is a neat little tale, set in the USA of 1997, titled 'The Technician.' Author Michael Rogers posits a near-future America where Christian fundamentalists are the major political power. The first-person narrator is a drug dealer who makes a mistake..........a mistake with hazardous consequences. This is the kind of story that would be a little too edgy for Omni (which would debut two years later).A portfolio is devoted to Chelsea Eriksen, a young lady with 'long blonde hair' and 'ice blue eyes,' and a 'free and easy California spirit.' The photos capture the California sensibility of the 1970s - an era now become myth - and the accompanying Earth Tone aesthetic. Quite a package, if you ask me........
And so we say farewell to June of '76, fifty years ago, when life was a little less complicated and colored in beige, brown, and gold.
