National Lampoon January 1981

National Lampoon

January 1981

It's January, 1981, and the number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'Starting Over', by the late John Lennon.

Looking at the latest issue of National Lampoon, the lurid cover promises more than the contents deliver. This usually was the case with these 'sexy' Lampoon covers. Deceptive enticements !

Here, at the dawn of the 1980s, the magazine noticeably is thinner as compared to the glory days of the 1970s. Far fewer record album ads, cigarette ads, liquor ads, clothing ads, etc. 

P. J. O'Rourke now is the editor, and Matty Simmons, the publisher, is off on the West Coast, working on film treatments of Lampoon properties, such as the forthcoming National Lampoon's Class Reunion (which turned out to be a dud).

The Letters page makes fun of people of Puerto Rican ethnicity:

We are alerted to the latest album from Stevie Wonder.

There is a cartoon. And an advertisement for a film, The Idolmaker, which I never saw and know nothing about.

An ad parody takes presents urban wastelands as new venues for federal parks.

John Hughes, on the cusp of fame for the movies National Lampoon's Vacation and Sixteen Candles, contributes a satire of 'The New Millionaires'.

There is quite a lot of comics content.

The Iranian Hostage crisis was ongoing early in January, and only when Ronald Reagan took office as President on January 20 did Iran release the hostages. The Lampoon imagines the crisis as a sales and marketing opportunity:

There's an ad for comedy and rock record albums from Passport records. The ad uses the 'New Wave' color scheme: pink and black, that was popular in the early 1980s. 

All of these albums are available at YouTube, and they are not that special. The best-known track on the album That's Not Funny, That's Sick is the 'Bass Player Interviewed by Mr. Rogers' bit, featuring Bill Murray.

Let's close with a 'Foto Funnies' about kids and drugs.

And that's how it was, 43 years ago..........

Book Review: Nothing's Bad Luck

Book Review: 'Nothing's Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon' by C. M. Kushins

4 / 5 Stars

'Nothing's Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon' (406 pp.) was published by Da Capo in May, 2019. It was the first published book for author Kushins, who in 2021 published a biography of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, titled 'Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin'.

If you're a Baby Boomer, then the music of Warren Zevon likely is part and parcel of your memories of the 70s and 80s. I was in my senior year of high school when 'Werewolves of London' began heavy rotation on FM radio, and I later procured Excitable Boy, which remains one of the best rock albums of the 1970s. Zevon's followup albums, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School and The Envoy, never achieved the chart and commercial success of Excitable but contained their share of worthwhile tracks.

Zevon positioned himself as a more eccentric member of the 'California' genre of rock that included the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, J. D. Souther, and Jackson Browne, among others. Zevon was as likely to sing about mercenaries, psycho killers, and werewolves, as he was to sing about failed love affairs and heartbreak. 

'Nothing's Bad Luck' covers Zevon's life and times from his birth on January 24, 1947 in Illinois; his childhood and adolescence in Fresno; and his initial forays into the music business. I was not aware that in 1966, Zevon joined White Whale records, the label best-known for having The Turtles on its roster. Performing with his girlfriend at the time, Violet Santangelo, as the folk rock duo 'lyme and cybelle', Zevon had a minor hit with the single 'Follow Me'.

Zevon spent the next ten years as yet another of the struggling musicians wandering L.A., making connections and bouncing from one never-realized project to the next, in the hopes of getting a recording contract with a major label. Zevon's 1976 album, titled Warren Zevon, attracted critical praise but didn't have much of a commercial impact. But Excitable Boy, recorded late in 1977 with the participation of the stars of the California rock world, was a major success following its release in January 1978, and made Zevon a rock star.

'Nothing's Bad Luck' is at its best in chronicling the interval from 1978 to 1989, when Zevon saw his fortunes rise, then gradually fall. Like many singer-songwriters who prospered in the 70s, Zevon experienced difficulty in transitioning to the era of the music video and New Wave, and after the release of Sentimental Hygiene in 1987 and Transverse City in 1989, he was dropped by Virgin records.

The period from 1990 to Zevon's death at age 56 was one of reduced expectations, for Zevon's album releases and his tours. In his later years he branched into composing soundtracks and making cameo appearances in television shows like Suddenly Susan, and remained a favorite guest on Letterman and other late-night programs. 

The book's closing chapter describes the events following Zevon's diagnosis of lung cancer in August 2002, and center on his efforts to record a final album (The Wind, 2003). This chapter is poignant and imparts a redemptive quality to Zevon's last year of life. 

review of 'Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School', Rolling Stone magazine, March 6, 1980, illustration by Robert Clarke

'Nothing's Bad Luck' is not quite a hagiography, nor is it an unbiased and objective biography. Kushins makes clear that throughout his life Zevon could be unpleasant to those around him, particularly in his years of rock-n-roll excess when he overindulged in drugs and alcohol. Zevon could be cruel and vicious towards his wives and girlfriends: 

Only a few nights after the studio altercation [between Zevon and] Wachtel, Browne received a frantic phone call from Crystal [Zevon's wife]. Warren was on a drunken rampage. In fear - and at her wit's end - she pleaded for Browne's help. He immediately sped to their home in Los Feliz and spent hours calming Warren down. He later recalled, "I went over to his house because a bannister had been ripped off the wall. It was late when I got there, one or two in the morning, and he had no memory of doing this."  (p. 94)

Reading between the lines of Kushins' prose, it's clear that when Zevon dedicated himself to sobriety in 1986, he tempered his objectionable behaviors to some extent, but did not eliminate them. I finished the book with the conclusion that Zevon was one of those creative individuals whose actions regularly veered between the engaging and the intolerable, demanding considerable forbearance from those close to him in both personal and professional capacities.

Summing up, 'Nothing's Bad Luck' will be a recommended read for those interested not just in Zevon's music, but in the California sound of the 70s and 80s. The book also will direct the reader to some of Zevon's lesser known recordings, which certainly offer their rewards to those with a fondness for the singer-songwriter musicianship of past decades.  

The Wild Wild West theme song by Neil Norman

Wild Wild West Theme
Neil Norman and his Cosmic Orchestra

from the CD Greatest Science Fiction Hits Vol. IV

Crescendo Records, 1998

It's not easy to take a theme song as iconic as that for the television show The Wild Wild West and rework it into something that stays true to the original, but at the same time, brings a new sensibility to the composition. 

But Neil Norman (and his Cosmic Orchestra) succeeds with this interpretation, from the 1998 album Greatest Science Fiction Hits IV. 

(The Crescendo Records website is here). 

Book Review: The Dream Lords: A Plague of Nightmares

Book Review: 'The Dream Lords: A Plague of Nightmares' by Adrian Cole

2 / 5 Stars

'The Dream Lords: A Plague of Nightmares' (176 pp.) first was published by Zebra Books in 1975. 

The followup volumes in the so-called 'Dream Lords' trilogy are 'Lord of Nightmares' (1975) and 'Bane of Nightmares' (1976). Zebra subsequently reissued the series, with different covers, in 1976 and 1977. Trying to figure out the order of the books, based on the cover numbering of the Zebra titles, is confusing: both 'Lord of Nightmares' (1977) and 'Bane of Nightmares' (1976) are numbered 'Volume 3'.......?! While 'Lord of Nightmares', from 1975, has no cover numbering at all................. 

My copy of 'A Plague of Nightmares' was issued in July 1977 (176 pp.) and features striking cover art by Tom Barber. 

While the cover art suggests that 'A Plague of Nightmares' is a fantasy / sword & sorcery adventure, in fact, the novel is science fiction with a heavy overlay of fantasy elements. So readers will encounter hovercraft, spaceships, ray guns, and robots, along with telepathy and occult phenomena.

The plot is set in the far future. Earth, convulsed by wars, has degenerated into a wasteland ruled by warlords and inhabited by 'barbarians'. For the colony worlds, settled centuries ago by Terran fleets, Earth - known simply as 'Ur' - has become nothing but a legend. Foremost among the colonies is the planet Zurjah, whose potentates, a cabal of powerful telepaths known as the Dream Lords, pacify the population with a constant flow of psychic sendings. 

Protagonist Galad Sarian is the son of one of the Dream Lords, and destined to take his father's place. However, Sarian can't help feeling that something is wrong with the seemingly placid world ruled by the Dream Lords, and as the novel opens, he makes the acquaintance of an elderly seer named Chalremor, who informs Sarian of the underlying reality that is hidden from the people by the psychic machinations of the Dream Lords.

When Sarian confronts his father and the other Dream Lords about their machinations, he is reprimanded and exiled to the plant Gargan, one of the polities in the Zurjah Federation. There, Sarian learns of a conspiracy to overthrow the Dream Lords and place all of the Federation under the rule of a homicidal despot. Hunted by his enemies, and forced to rely on a group of rebels armed only with swords and spears, Sarian will need to unleash his own psychic abilities if he is to have any hope of saving the Federation from slaughter and slavery......

UK writer Adrian Christopher Synnot Cole (b. 1949) began publishing short stories in the small press in the early 1970s, and has since become an accomplished author of novels in the fantasy, science fiction, and sword & sorcery genres (my review of his 1993 novel 'Blood Red Angel' is here.) 

Given that 'A Plague of Nightmares' is one of his first published novels it would not be appropriate to give it an intense critical scrutiny. It is safe to say that 'Nightmares' reads like the sort of novel that would have been serialized in Amazing or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the 1960s. The prose style is reminiscent of pulp-era horror and fantasy fiction, and is intended to lend a Lovecraftian flavor to the proceedings.

As far as plotting goes, the first 86 pages are devoted - in a leisurely fashion - to characterization and background, and the very first action scene doesn't arrive until page 87. Thereafter events unfold at a frantic, at times contrived, pace, which is maintained until the very last paragraph (which necessarily introduces a cliffhanger ending, since the story is continued in volume two).

I suspect that eventually I'll tackle the other two volumes in the series. For volume one, I am comfortable with giving 'A Plague of Nightmares' a 2 Star Score.

For another take on this novel, readers are directed to a 2016 review over at the MPorcius Fiction Log.

David Soul R.I.P.

David Soul, R.I.P.
1943 - 2024

David Soul passed away on January 4 at age 80.

He was a seventies pop culture icon, surfacing first in the TV show Starsky and Hutch. I was a fan of the show, and its at-times wild storylines (which arguably reached an apogee with the 'light bulb killer' episode from November, 1976).

In 1976, Soul released an LP, titled David Soul, that had the hit song 'Don't Give Up On Us Baby'. I remember how that song dominated the FM top 40 playlist in the Spring of 1977, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in April of that year.

A followup single, and another good track, was 'Silver Lady'.

For fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Soul perhaps is best remembered for his lead role in the 1979 television production of Stephen King's Salem's Lot.

Salem's Lot was not the best film or television incarnation of that novel, but given the constraints of network TV at that time, it was a significant acknowledgement that there was an audience for horror content among American viewers. This was some 31 years before the debut of The Walking Dead, mind you. Soul's performance was a decent one despite the at-times awkward plotting, and to this day I retain a fondness for the quirkiness of 'Salem's Lot.

1979 also saw David Soul immortalized in the pages of the Warren magazine Eerie. He was the lead character in 'Gotterdammerung', a Budd Lewis sci-fi story published, in issue 100, about a post-apocalyptic, near-future Earth. 

Soul's character, 'Juda', specialized in taking out cannibal zombies with a scoped laser gun - ! How fuckin' cool is that ?!

Rest in Peace, David Soul !

Penthouse January 1973

Penthouse magazine

January 1973

Time once again to dip into our archive of back issues of Penthouse magazine. Why not showcase the January, 1973 issue, and see what Bob Guccione has for us ?

Back then (January 13, 1973), the number one single in the land was 'You're So Vain', by Carly Simon.

An eclectic array of albums are featured in the magazine's 'Disc Discussion' column.

Back in '73, an electronic calculator was a precision instrument with an accordingly high price tag. And instead of Alexa and amazon Echo, you had 'video voice'.

The Pet of the Month is an amazing young woman named Maggi Burton, from Australia. Guccione photographed her portfolio, and he knew what he was doing.

There is a feature article, by Donn Pearce, on country music performer Merle Haggard, who at the time was riding high on the success of the 1969 song 'Okie from Muskogee'. Pearce's article is an unflattering, even depressing, look at how it was for a singer and his entourage to travel through the north-central USA in the early 1970s, staying in budget motels, and doing shows at middle-of-nowhere venues like Goose Lake, Michigan, and Ponderosa Park, Ohio. 

As Pearce tells it, Haggard and his band (the 'Strangers') spend their road trip stalled in various motels due to poor weather. They pass the time having perfunctory assignations with various groupies, ladies who sport bell-bottomed jeans and dyed-blonde hair.

The January issue takes a skeptical view of two personalities who were immensely popular in the early 1970s: David Reuben, the psychiatrist whose book 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)' was a monster best-seller, and psychologist Arthur Janov, whose 'primal scream' therapy was very trendy among celebrities.

We've got a cartoon.........

.........and a feature on the 1983 R-rated softcore film 'Cheerleaders'.

We'll close with a second portfolio, this one involving an athletic young woman named Susan Backlinie, of Washington, DC. Susan gets gets in very close proximity to a real, live, lion. Ahh, workplace safety standards were a little looser, back in 1983.........

Dice Men

'Dice Men'
The Origin Story of Games Workshop

by Ian Livingstone with Steve Jackson

Unbound (UK), 2022

Anyone with familiarity with Anglophone science fiction and fantasy media is aware of Games Workshop, a UK firm with a juggernaut presence in the world not only of tabletop gaming, but video gaming, too. Games Workshop also ran / runs  the Black Library and Solaris book publishing imprints.

What I didn't know is that Games Workshop began back in 1975 as the brainchild of three Manchester residents and grammar school chums who met, and discovered a mutual liking for board games: Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson (not to be confused with the Steve Jackson from Austin, Texas) and John Peake.

'Dice Men' is a memoir, authored by Livingstone with contributions from Jackson and other Games Workshop employees and gaming world luminaries, of the founding of the company, all the way up to 1991.

Although priced at barely $20 at amazon, at 297 pages in length this is a formidable book, measuring 8 1/5 x 12 inches, with study hardbound covers and high-quality, thick paper stock.

Livingstone is a capable writer and he tells the story of Games Workshop's early days in a conversational, flowing style that touches the right notes of nostalgia without lapsing into sentimentality.

The book is copiously illustrated with scans and photographs of vintage periodicals such as the Owl and Weasel newsletter, which morphed into White Dwarf in 1977. There are photos of gaming conventions and personalities from the early era, as well as portraits - if you could call them that - of the large library of RPG figurines the company produced in the 1970s and 1980s. 

I particularly enjoyed Livingstone's account of a summer, 1976 trip that he, Jackson, and some friends and fellow employees made to the U.S. They drove across the country to California, taking in the sights, and then turned around for a rendezvous with Gary Gygax and TSR at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in August. It was a road trip inspired, according to Livingstone, by the Kerouac novel 'On the Road'.

As someone who was 16 years old in 1976, I found this part of the book to be a powerful shot of nostalgia, and an interesting look at America as it was in the mid-1970s. It brought me new appreciation for that time, and that place. 

One aspect of the company history that the book tends to be rather self-effacing about, is the fact that Livingstone and Jackson, while bereft of MBA degrees (or much in the way of formal training and experience in business, period), took their creation from very humble beginnings into a very successful corporation. This is particularly true when the book recounts the Workshop's interactions with TSR, who made overtures towards buying the company. There were times when much money was dangled in the faces of the Games Workshop executives, but they decided not to cash in, and instead focused on the long term success of their company. 

This was no small achievement in the era before venture capitalism and investment firms. One only has to think of how TSR overextended itself, and experienced financial problems, in the mid-1980s, and sowed the seeds of later bankruptcy, to realize that the tabletop gaming industry could be a fragile enterprise. It was Jackson's habitual caution in making business decisions that helped keep Games Workshop not only solvent, but prosperous. 

The book recounts the rise, and tremendous success, in the early 1980s of the 'Fighting Fantasy' line of books designed to introduce younger people to the world of RPGs. The books met with some condemnation from religious activists with the UK's 'Evangelical Alliance', who warned that the material would promote Satanic practices (!).

Livingstone's history of his personal involvement in Games Workshop ends on something of a melancholy note, as 1986 saw he and Jackson ceding greater control of the day-to-day running of the company to others. In 1991, Workshop executives and part-owners Bryan Ansell, Tom Kirby, and Keith Pinfold became convinced that the future of Games Workshop lay with selling the company to the private equity firm ECI Partners. Livingstone and Jackson were less than enthused about the idea, but as minority shareholders they eventually capitulated to the pressure from the other owners, and sold their shares and completed the buyout. 

That decision ended their involvement with the company they had created back in 1975 in a flat on the top floor of a house on Bolingbroke Road in West London. In fairness to Ansell, Kirby, and Pinfold, the acquisition by ECI gave Games Workshop the capital it needed to become its present-day £3 billion firm, and for their part, Livingstone and Jackson went on to fame and prosperity in the world of computer and video gaming. 

Who will want a copy of 'Dice Men' ? Needless to say, UK fans of tabletop and RPG games will want their copy. But I also think it's a useful addition to observations of popular culture in the UK and the USA during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a good overview of how one can go from a startup company manned by a handful of people in a tiny office, to a resounding corporate success. In other words, it shows the best side of the economic enterprise we know as Capitalism !