They say if you can remember the 1960s you were never really there, but in my case the point is moot – I was never really there. Yet I’ve cottoned onto the absolute mania of the time, this strange period in which supposed “humor” was wrung from jabbering a mile a minute, from non-sequiter jokes and asides, and from this very 1960s sort of wacky patter I associate with TV shows like Laugh-In and The Monkees and with magazines like the short-lived Freakout, USA. I’m not sure it has dated all that well, but then again, it’s getting close to sixty years now. I’d imagine the humor of the 1900s felt a little dated when this thing was being published as well.
Readers may recall that I reviewed the second and final Freakout, USA #2 here. I also made you a promise that I’d find you (and me, of course) a physical copy of Freakout, USA #1, and here we are. That second issue was probably more bloated with “psychedelia” and over-the-top far-outisms than this one, but even here it’s clear from the cover that it’s not 1966 any longer, and the female target audience likes it freaky, wild and kooky. (For the record, it’s Fall 1967).
This time period coincides with absolute USA Monkee-mania. Accordingly, there are Monkees-only stand-alone pieces from Page 8 to 23 here, with loads of Davey-thinks-this, Peter-likes-this-kind-of-girl, Mickey-wants-that and so on. 15 straining pages of The Monkees, and loads of hot pix. Again, it’s not just who’s cutest, though – there’s talk of LSD, politics and other weighty topics for the times for clued-in teenage women and men. This is followed by three articles on whom I believe were considered the second cutest band of that year, Paul Revere and The Raiders. The girls loved “Fang”, the bass player. Fang!!
I really can’t think of The Mamas and The Papas any longer without immediately calling up the lyric, “And no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass”. Poor Ellen Naomi Cohen. What a raw deal this young woman got, all her earnings notwithstanding. The piece in Freakout, USA #1 is ostensibly about how rich the M’s & P’s are now, and what they’re doing with their “California Dreamin’” money. “They have called Cass the Fat Angel, which she doesn’t seem to mind, for she weighs over 200 pounds and pulls no punches about it”. You think maybe that’s because it’s all anyone could talk about with her? Jesus Christ, I know I wasn’t there, but someone else must have been overweight in the 1960s, right? If you were there, please let me know if it was just “Mama” Cass and no one else.
But really, and I hinted about this before when I yammered about Freakout, USA #2, this issue juxtaposes all the pretty boys and angel-throated girls with two other hot & hairy up comers – The Fugs and The Mothers of Invention! What do you think of these spicy hunks, young ladies? “The Fugs are not everyone’s cup of tea. They leave some folks cold. They are loud, vulgar, and dirty-looking….And they’ve become enormously popular”. Well, I’m not so sure about that last part. What’s great is that Freakout, USA #2 is so committed to the bit that they even are helping to flog Fugs sweatshirts and Fugs buttons. Ed Sanders even looks kinda handsome in his! Different times.
This issue is rounded out with some peppery prattle about Twiggy and an abysmally unreadable article about the Jefferson Airplane, which bums me out because besides The Fugs, they’re my favorite band here. Was no one writing about The Left Banke around this time??? I can’t say for sure if I’d been a 14-year-old American girl in 1967 that I’d have been completely immune to the charms of The Monkees, but I’d like to think my favorite band would have actually been the Left Banke instead. Or The Magic Band.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 