I’m not sure I like the cover notes anymore. I don’t think they capture the book. I might redo them. But anyway – here they are:
The 1960s was a decade of great change. There was social upheaval and a generational split which is unparalleled. It is characterised by a naïve idealism, euphoria and optimism in the young and a reactionary conservatism in the old. Those who are familiar with the 1960s will recognise the time of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, the Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane, David Bowie, Captain Beefheart, Cream, Doors, Who, Joni Mitchell, CSN, Grateful Dead, John Lennon, Joan Baez, Roy Harper, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Country Joe and Bob Dylan and others as Rock Music played a major role in unifying Youth and reflecting the social changes manifesting themselves in society. This was the time of the 1960s Counter-Culture with its Underground Press (IT, Rolling Stone and OZ), Fun, Freaks, Acid Rock, the Black Panthers with Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson and Angela Davies, Sex, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights March on Washington, the Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam War March, the Kent State Massacre, Hedonism, Paisley patterns, People’s Park, Merry Pranksters, the Assassination of the Kennedy’s, Medgar Evans and Martin Luther King, Les Cousins, LSD, West Coast, Pot, Segregation, Festivals like Monterey, Woodstock and Altamont, Kaftans, the Tet Offensive, Napalm, Mods, Cambodia, LBJ and Nixon, Kissinger, Isle of Wight, the Yippies with Phil Ochs, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the Oz trial, Radical Politics, the Poet Allen Ginsberg, Flares, Speed, Eastern Philosophy, Mao, the Fugs Levitation of the Pentagon, Middle Earth, Drug Busts, Psychedelia, Happenings, Hippies, Turn-on, Gathering of the Tribes, Street Theatre, Heavy Metal, the Cold War, the Roundhouse, Beads & Scarves, the Electric Cinema, the Draft, Acid Tests, J. Edgar Hoover, City Lights, San Francisco, Face Paint, LA, London, UFO, Hyde Park, Love and Peace, the H-bomb, Blues, Communism, Hell’s Angels, Long Hair, Tune-in, Sexual Liberation, the Pill, Black Power, Women’s Lib, Mini-skirts, Racism, Squats, Peace-signs, Ecology, Light Shows, Chicago riots, Sit-ins, Peace Marches, the Anti-segregation Marches, Bus Boycotts and Protests, the Klu Klux Klan, Gandalf’s Garden, Drop Out, The Olympic Games with Black power Salutes – Tommie Smith & John Carlos, the Lynchings, Bob Dylan’s Motorbike Accident, Albert Grossman, Elektra, Abbey Road, Electric Ladyland, Mississippi and the Murder of Chaney Goodman & Schwerner, Emmet Till, Detroit Riots, Greenwich Village, Student Rebellion, and then later Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War. Imagine all that mixed up and placed a hundred and fifty years into the future in an Intergalactic setting?
If you would like to have a read of this book or one of my other Sci-fi novels I have put some links below:
My best Sci-fi books in the USA:
Ebola in the Garden of Eden
Green
Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar
Sorting The Future
My best Sci-fi books in the UK:
Ebola In The Garden Of Eden.
Sorting The Future
Green
Starturn – Intergalactic Rockstar
I’d agree with you about redoing these intro notes. What’s David Bowie got to do with the 1960’s? He had one top ten record out in 1969, prior to which he was barely heard of by anybody outwith his hometown. He wasn’t well known until 1972.
I use the term lightly – but Bowie was there trying very hard from the Lower Third and Mannish Boys on. He was another Jones back then.
Which one would that be Opher? David Jones, Dave Jay, Davie Jones or Davy Jones?
What does “he was another Jones back then” qualify for? What’s that about?
Nobody would have known who he was after all that. not even his record labels.
Nobody knew anything of him then unless they were snooping around the confines of Beckenham. He sold about 19 copies all in.
He was David Bowie by his 2nd Lower Third single, but that sold all of 300 copies.
If you want “lightly” why don’t you include Tom Jones, as he was 100 times more well known than Bowie ever was until July 1969.
You could list any one who was in a small unknown group before being famous.
But nobody would ever say “oh yes, the 1960’s – David Bowie!”. LOL.
That’s Davy Jones and the Lower Third – “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving”. Not greatly popular but around none the less. I have a copy of it. Although he did not make a big break through in the 60s he was hovering around.
When I think of the sixties I tend to extend it to around 1972 when the era finally died the death. But you’re free to interpret it literally if you want.
Yes Opher, I know. I own it too, but I didn’t buy it at the time. Nobody bought it at the time and if you say that you did then that would be a freaking miracle.
For your information that record credited to Davy Jones, Parlophone R 5315, does NOT credit The Lower Third anywhere on the label. It wasn’t in the least bit popular as I previously told you, and it sold … nothing.
It was released on 20th August 1965.
On 17th September 1965, Davy Jones was now known as David Bowie. Davy Jones was history never to be heard of again.
David Bowie sold almost no more records with multiple failures having been thrown off Parlophone, moved to Pye, and these records sold zilch, so moved to Deram recording demos for other artists to record, namely, Oscar, The Riot Squad, Dee Dee, Slender Plenty and The Beatstalkers, all to no success and left Decca in April 1968, to nothing. He then mucked about doing miming classes and making acoustic recordings in his bedroom for a year with his pal John Hutchinson. Ken Pitt, his manager got a one-record last ditch deal with Phillips and he started recordings in the second half of June 1969. His Space Oddity single was rush released in July, after which David Bowie had no further success for another three years.
I don’t know if there’s any other way of interpreting any of that, except to say he had pretty much absolutely nothing of any relevant presence to anything to do with the 1960’s in general. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about on this.
Some very good points BF. Isn’t that always the case when you do any list? It’s the ones you miss out that seem more important. But then the list becomes too extensive. It was intended to give a gist not to be definitive though. In hindsight, as I said, it needs rewriting because the book is not about the sixties at all. That was just the inspiration for the futuristic setting. I tended to think of certain events in order to project forward.
Eric you are telling me nothing new. How is that at all pertinent to what I was basing my character Zargos on? I regard Bowie as a thing of the 60s because that’s when he first arose and for me the 60s went on a bit into the 70s. My character was a composite and Bowie, actually in his Ziggy role, was just a part of that inspiration.
Nothing? Well I did actually. I corrected you on your claim as to that record with the Lower Third. I told you why there was confusion over his identity due to all the name changing. I highlighted the fact that he changed his name to an entirely new name immediately after the release of that record that you claimed was by him and the Lower Third. The fact that the Lower Third actually made that recording with him was between him and the studio and was not public knowledge at that time. Also the fact that he sold no records and had no longevity staying power with any record label.
You’ve given me the distinct feeling that Bowie was of no consequence to you personally whatsoever in the 1960’s, because if he had been then perhaps you could tell me something that’s new to me. You just scooped up his Ziggy image for your book purposes, in the belief it was “futuristic”. In reality it wasn’t and very retro. Bowie used ideas from Metropolis, Rudolph Valentino and Vince Taylor. Because you took him at face value you were fooled. That was his intention.
He was no Donovan.
I wouldn’t know your character. He’s not the topic right now and if he was why am I reading names like Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell? Are they also composite within your character? A basket-weaving, freedom marching, Laura Ashely frock wearing, manic depressive, rape-victim, prostituting, drug addicted, alcoholic? OK, interesting.
The topic is the Jones/Bowie presence in the 60’s. I agree that he arose, but to what? A name on every magazine cover? TV shows? Hit records? Concert tours of all the best theatres?
If that’s your logic why don’t you include these people who were also “first arose” (what a convenient expression, LOL) in the 1960’s but never made it until the 70’s.
They also sold many more records than Jones/Bowie did in the 60’s and were 100 times cooler than Bowie was back then. They WERE the 60’s.
Duncan Browne
Marc Bolan
John’s Children – with Marc Bolan
Ian Gillan and Episode Six
Billy Nicholls
Terry Reid
They didn’t do miming to three people in a club or ice-cream commercials.
Eric/Andrew – you live in a fantasy world. You corrected me about what? The arrogance of it. I knew all about Bowie, the name changes and Lower Third and Mannish Boys. You corrected nothing. I have the records. What fantasy world are you in?
Bowie was merely someone I used for my main character in his Ziggy role. Why are you stupidly picking a fight and making a big deal out of trivia?
I didn’t scoop up Bowie because he was futuristic at all. You haven’t a clue. My character just had a little bit of the dramatic and stage costume that’s all. There’s no big deal.
I told you that the record that you said you had a copy of as per your description did not exist. That’s a fact.
I told you quite a bit that was new to you including one piece of information that you definitely would not know. I’m a complete addict on the 60’s and everything about it. Your knowledge is rough and inconcise with your comments on Bowie being proof positive of that, no ifs or buts about it.
Ref your quote, “That’s Davy Jones and the Lower Third – “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving”. Not greatly popular but around none the less. I have a copy of it.”
If your copy names the backing band, I’ll give you 2 grand cash for your copy.
You have the only copy in the world.
Why can’t you just talk straight without making nonsense up?
Eric – well I’ve just dug it out – A mono ten inch on Charlie – The Mannish Boys one side – I Pity the Fool and Take My Tip and Davy Jones & The Lower Third on side 2 – You’ve Got A Habit of Leaving and Baby Loves that Way.
The record is mint (See For Miles label) biro – £1.25 written in middle, and cover has a mark where the price label was removed plus some slight scuffing at the edges – picture of them on the front looking very mod and dour.
Davy Jones and Lower Third is definitely named – yours for 2 grand.
Opher, you are simply hopeless at this sort of thing. Utterly and completely hopeless.
You do NOT own a 1965 original pressing on Parlophone R 5315.
What you have is a knocked together cash-in on a label that licensed the tracks from the parents owners, EMI. It was first issued on EMI in 1979.
You have a piece of shit 2nd edition 1982 issue. I’ll print that again, 1982!
It’s worth fuck all.
You haven’t got a clue about anything really, have you? LOL
You see Eric you get on your high horse. I never said I had the original single at all. That’s just you jumping to conclusion. I said I had a copy of Davy Jones and the Lower Third and I do. Of course it’s the reissue. I never said it wasn’t.
Oops! Oh man, that’s brutal, what a piece of crap!
Yup, this is definitely a case of wrong job in the wrong hands.
Some folks know records, some folks just don’t … LMAO
My ASS. I clarified the whole deal for you crystal clear above. I even gave you date of release and the fact he changed his name three weeks later. I also supplied the catalogue code. All that went over your head, because you just don’t understand it do you?
Don’t even try to bullshit me. You know absolutely nothing about it.
Just as well we weren’t trying to sell me a Stradivarius. You’d present a plastic Yamaha copy telling us it’s got Stardivarius stickered on it. You’re some guy. LOL.
Yeah, that spiel falls well short of reality Opher. I read what Eric said, I read what you said. There was no confusion there.
You ain’t got nuttin’ and you’re gaslighting.
Of course he is! Since when was having a shit repress on a compilation years and years later ever known as “having the record”? There’s a world of difference between owning a shit compilation out eighteen years after the original. They have a copy of the song, but they don’t have “the record”! Like I was born last fucking week.
Beatle Fan 9, Eric the half-a bee, Roger Newcome, Lord fucking Campbell, and a few other equally daft names – LOL.
Silly boy. Just stop being silly. I told you I have the record. You trying to punch your way out of a soggy paper bag. It makes you sound daft.
This situation is all it’s glorious hilarity only strengthens my earlier statement where I questioned – with very good reason – why anybody would suggest that Bowie was anything of a figure in the mid-60s. He was barely known outwith his home town of Beckenham. He got as far as the local scout hut for a gig now and again. But apparently this was sufficient exposure to include him on a list of important 60’s icons. I would suggest hallucinogenic drugs are best avoided.
Bowie was a minor influence on my Zargos character. He started up in the 60s and had his peak in the early 70s. What’s to get your knickers in a twist? Why invent a second person to have a daft dialogue with over trivia of no relevance?
What a silly fuss you make to try to stir up shit?
Yeah, it’s a tough call when people operate on different planets. LOL
Sure is. And you have to take into account their motives.
Boy? I’m fucking 71 next birthday. Boy? Heck, I’ll take that any day soon.
Is that the old school teacher in you, shouting down the corridor, “Boy, stop running!”.
Well I’m the kid that key’d your car for you. I hated my teachers. I also set fire to one’s huge garden fence that he’d just had painted with creosote and it went up like a torch. Ah, to relive these days all again!
You were discussing the 60s.
You said Bowie was a 60s icon.
I said he wasn’t.
I gave good factual reasons why he wasn’t.
Then you said you had a record from 1965.
I explained that you couldn’t have that record with that artist name on it.
You didn’t understand.
Then you eventually turned up with a crumby compilation record from 1982.
Your 1982 compilation was of no bearing to what happened to that record in the 60s.
So what were you comparing?
Which prompted Beatle Fan #9 to say your record was a piece of crap.
Which prompted Beatle Fan #9 to come back again and suggest you were on another planet – a sort of subtle Bowie “Space Oddity” reference, I think. I wouldn’t argue.
Whatever Opher, I also clearly explained to you why Bowie was no such 60s icon, and I explained that in clinical terms. I also explained what was the make-up of Bowie’s later 70s Ziggy persona.
That’s all it was Opher. You not knowing enough in the first place and me filling in your gaps. And you accuse me of living in a fantasy world – yet your the guy who wrote some daft book where your principle character is a composite of a 60s people.
Weren’t you able to come up with something original?
Did you miss the 80s, 90s, 00s?
You never seem to mention any music from after 1970 something.
What happened. Were you in prison or what because it seems you just left this earth and drew a line under that point in time.
Eric – no – don’t twist things round. I said that my character was based on Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Dylan, John Lennon, Hendrix and Bowie. It’s you that has made the silly pedantic mountain out of molehills.
I said I have a copy of the Bowie single and you jumped to conclusions.
I suggest you wind your neck in instead of causing trouble over childish things.
I have lots of stuff from later than the 70s thanks. I know what I like.
Opher – thing is to me it seems you’re not direct about your statements. I got what Eric said about that record and Bowie in the 60s. He wasn’t nearly any of a mover-shaker guy yet until 70s.
Your 80s record is trash and not the real deal. You can’t make a claim that record made an impression on you in the 60s.
Why the problem with information?
I know Eric from Beatle sites he’s on and he’s always got good information from England, Able2Know, Expert Texpert and Meanmistermustard.
Yeah – pigs are flying. The two of you connive. Are there two of you.
Two points:
a. I never said I had the original record. I said I had a copy of single. You infer what you like but don’t go twisting things round.
b. I said that my main character Zargos was largely based on Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Dylan and Bowie. The book was based on the sixties transferred to the future. That was the basis of what I was saying.
Now pedantically picking up on the fact that Bowie largely had his success in the early seventies is playing silly buggers.Talk about picking silly fights and making mountains out of molehills – childishness and nothing to do with the post.
There you go again – see, you don’t have a “copy of the Bowie single”. What you have is a copy of the song track stuck on a compilation record eighteen years later and with an entirely new accreditation attached to it. As I repeatedly told you, the original was credited to only Davy Jones and had no listing whatsoever for The Lower Third.
And you are also wrong with your post to Beatle Fan #9, with your assumption, quote: “Now pedantically picking up on the fact that Bowie largely had his success in the early seventies is playing silly buggers.”
You are completely wrong again.
In fact Bowie largest success was in the years 1983 – 1986.
This is getting tiresome.
Any childishness is all yours.
And the post was covered! More than covered.
In case you missed it, Beatle Fan #9 already covered the main part of the post, where he told you to make revision because you’d filled it up with some junk that wasn’t important and missed out a lot of stuff that was. Such a the MC5, James Brown.
In fact, he said this, quote:
“A lot of people missing of really important cultural significance in the 60’s in USA, Marilyn Monroe, Sid Caesar, William S. Burroughs, Lenny Bruce, Helen Keller, Alan King, Stan Freberg, Walter Cronkite, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., The Mothers, Bill Graham, Charles Manson & The Family – how could you forget them? and the MC5. The MC5! – THE counter-culture band if ever there ever was and they aren’t on that list! Where’s the really important people like James Brown, the guy who stopped Detroit from exploding. Where’s Malcolm X? Nation of Islam? There’s pop-people like CSN and Joni Mitchell, but not The Byrds lol.”
Tell me, are suffering from any sort of memory retention deficit? Because I get the distinct impression of symptoms of Alzheimers or similar. Either that or you need to re-familiarise yourself with the actual content of the posts and not a generalisation of. There is a difference and it’s only exacerbating your confusion.
From that list I can sort of guess what I’m going to get. (I know, nobody likes a smart alec) I’d lose a lot of these junk non-starters that didn’t make any difference to anybody. A lot of people missing of really important cultural significance in the 60’s in USA, Marilyn Monroe, Sid Caesar, William S. Burroughs, Lenny Bruce, Helen Keller, Alan King, Stan Freberg, Walter Cronkite, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., The Mothers, Bill Graham, Charles Manson & The Family – how could you forget them? and the MC5. The MC5! – THE counter-culture band if ever there ever was and they aren’t on that list! Where’s the really important people like James Brown, the guy who stopped Detroit from exploding. Where’s Malcolm X? Nation of Islam? There’s pop-people like CSN and Joni Mitchell, but not The Byrds lol.
That common mistake again with the KKK. It’s KU not KLU!
Jeepers, you English have bad reality checks. I’d want to do that list all again with some proper reality checking.
It’s always interesting to read that many people look no further than the artists themselves, as if they were responsible for change. When in reality they themselves were not and it was the corporations who promoted them and gave them license to promote themselves that should be held accountable for that responsibility. These same old reactionary conservatives!
Wow – all one and the same. You talking to yourself again Andrew?
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I am presently working on two new Sci-fi novels.