The Future-->Cartoons and Comics: The Jetsons

[purchase the first season]

As we transition from The Future to Cartoons and Comics, it seemed fitting to write about The Jetsons, a cartoon that probably had more to do with my generation’s expectations for the future than anything else.

Prepare, now, to have your mind blown. The Jetsons cartoons that we grew up on consisted of a single season of 24 episodes that originally ran on ABC on Sunday nights from September 23, 1962, to March 17, 1963. It was designed to be the futuristic counterpart to the prehistoric Flintstones (which ran 6 seasons), which itself was a take-off of The Honeymooners. One season in prime time, and forever in syndication, which is where I saw it. (More episodes were produced starting in 1985, but I can be certain that I never saw any of those).

In The Jetsons, the future seemed pretty great. People lived in space, had flying cars and robot maids, none of which have yet to really be a common thing. On the other hand, videophones and holograms and moving sidewalks are part of our lives, to varying degrees. And George Jetson’s job, as a “digital index operator” at Spacely’s Space Sprockets only required him to work an hour a day, two days a week. Unfortunately, the future did not end the concept of the tyrannical and clueless boss, and poor George often had to deal with Mr. Spacely’s whims and his constant competition with Cogswell’s Cogs. George, by the way, was voiced by actor George O’Hanlon, who otherwise had only bit parts (with credits like, “Drunk,” “Bear Man,” “Drunk” (a different one), “Parking Attendant” and “Security Guard”), but he was able to voice George again when the series was revived in the 1980s. O'Hanlon died of a stroke in 1989, while recording dialogue for Jetsons: The Movie, which was dedicated to him and the legendary voice actor Mel Blanc (the voice of Cosmo Spacely), who also died that year.

My colleague Andy La Raygun recently linked to an article about The Jetsons from none other than Smithsonian magazine, and it discusses the outsized influence this cartoon has had on our culture. Go ahead and read it. It isn’t long. One interesting point the article makes is that although the show was produced and broadcast in color, in 1962, less than 3 percent of American households had a color television set. So the bright, colorful future that The Jetsons promised was rendered in dull blacks and grays for most people, and that may be why it only lasted a season in prime time. (Maybe The Flintstones’ greater longevity can be traced to the fact that people subconsciously were OK with seeing a prehistoric show in black and white, sort of the opposite reaction that we have today when we see footage of World War II in color, since, you know, it took place in black and white).

This being a music blog, I thought I should mention that the memorable theme song for The Jetsons was written by Hoyt Curtin, and it actually became a hit in 1986. Curtin was the composer of many Hanna-Barbera cartoons' theme songs, including The Flintstones, Top Cat, Jonny Quest, Superfriends, and Josie and the Pussycats, and thus may have been the composer whose music I most listened to as a young child.

The Future: Future Games

Fleetwood Mac: Future Games [purchase]

When the theme first cropped up, one of my first thoughts was "Future Games." Must have been '73 that Fleetwood Mac first captured me with Mystery To Me. As indicated in the name, the mesmerizing effect of many of the songs fit the times (mild psychedelia) and my own frame of mind. I listened for hours to the album: side A, side B, side A again (of course, on cassette tape- de rigeur).

You check out the song titles of Fleetwood Mac songs from the era, and notice that no small number of them reference time, the future: "Woman of a 1000 Years" ... "Sands of Time" ...

I did check into the archives of SMM - seemed not possible that the song had never been posted afore, and sure enough - back in 2009, it was presented here. Both in consideration of the fact that few of you were likely to have been here then and still here now, but even worse- the fact that the link to that post has deteriorated/gone missing, it would appear to be time to bring it back to life.

THE FUTURE: Welcome to the Future

How often have venerable space warriors Hawkwind appeared on this site, I wonder? (Answer: none). From this distance it feels that they, if not inventing the whole genre, have certainly run with the idea of "spacerock" longer than most, celebrating, this year, 46 years on the road. OK, so Pink Floyd have dabbled with this, and the Grateful Dead likewise, but I  am sure no other group has dedicated themselves to such dystopian visions with such dysfunctional relish, blending early bleep and booster electronica, with swords and sorcerers sci-fi, Always seemingly on the edges of society, embracing and being embraced by any counter-culture available, moving seamlessly from free-festival hippy culture of the 60s to the rave culture traveller scene of the 90s, their history a maelstrom of departing and returning members, drugs and mental illness, underpinned by the sturdy dictatorship of Dave Brock, sole man standing since their inception in 1969. For a more detailed idea of their chaotic journey look here. It's as their possibly most famous ex-member, Lemmy, sacked, ironically for his drug-usage, put it: "It was like Star Trek, but with long hair. And drugs."

The song "Welcome to the Future" is little more than a spoken introductory piece to "Space Ritual", a multi-media cavalcade of very loud and very heavy rhythmic rock, primitive electronica, lightshows, mime and dance, released in a live format in 1973, after being paraded around the world in the years ahead of that. (Little known fact, Hawkwind were the first UK band to headline a tour in the US, rather than as a support act to homegrown product. They lost money, but it was still the first.) This was largely funded by the UK single success of "Silver Machine", a studio cleaned up "live" performance of a concert favourite, with new vocals over-dubbed by the soon to go Lemmy. I recall this with joy, it being, and the concert footage that went with it on U.K. chartshow Top of the Pops, a delight to my teenaged ears, the dirtiest, greasiest noise I had ever seen or heard.

Exposure to that wholly unholy din (and statuesque dancer, Stacia) sent me to their back catalogue, and I hoovered up, over the next few years, their earlier output.These first few recordings, even the hesitant nearer psychedelia of the first, I think stand up well, and the resonance between what passed for driving rock back then and what would later emerge as techno is striking, and the influence undeniable. Check this recent automobile advert out!

I confess that I eventually lapsed, the procession of rotating door ne'er do wells, including Arthur Brown (Fire) and, bizarrely, Ginger Baker and an over-reliance on spoken word liturgies eventually alienating me, not least as my precocious tastes fled to country and folk pastures. Also I had read some Michael Moorcock, a sci-fi writer with whom they had become involved, and didn't like the books, deciding I didn't like the band any more either. Such was my fickle nature. But that didn't stop them, and the ramshackle circus is till doing the rounds, sometimes with different variations of the name: Hawkestra, Hawwkwind Light Orchestra, and sometimes even rival versions playing much the same: xHawkwind.com, formed by sacked saxist Nik Turner with other ex-members, until sued into changing their name to, no doubt all irony intended, Space Ritual. However, I am beginning to wonder what the live experience may now be like. I did see them once, in 1975, at The Reading Festival, sadly being then as out of it as their reputations for the same might suggest, so, who knows, maybe next years annual shindig, Hawkeaster, may find me back amongst the faithful in front of high priest Dave Brock (age 74), to see who he has with him now.

BUY!

The Future: 2000 Man

Purchase: Their Satanic Majesties Request

 

Ah, the future—flying cars, fully-automated homes, robot girlfriends…What a time to be alive.

When the information age really started taking off, which I calculate to be when I got my fist cell phone, I used to like to talk about how we really were living in age of The Jetsons. All those cartoon-fantastic, whiz bang inventions that made everyday life something much faster, more convenient and brought us more in tune with the wider world seemed to be coming true. Within reason, of course—I still had to sit in traffic, rather than fly over it on my way to not a pneumatic hive of prodigious industry and lightning fast tech innovations, but rather a crumbling building without air-conditioning.

But, no worry—I had a cell phone; I could talk to people while I sat in traffic. I had satellite radio, which meant I never lost the signal, unless it rained. And, as a teacher, I had this resource called the internet, so I didn’t really need to do much planning for my lectures—it was all right there for me, no trip to the library needed…

Strange how the Future ended up. I find myself often wishing for the days before I had high speed internet service and could stream and Google and text and Tweet and Snapchat and Instagram—and a whole host of other common elements of my life. Life seems to have taken not only a semantic shift of meaning, but undergone a radical revision in action and lifestyle as well. This is the information age, yes, but things change so rapidly as we trip merrily along to the future, we might as well dub it the age of Neologism, as well. We're constantly reinventing, in order to achieve this almost undefinable 'better', but we don't stay in one place long enough to think of what the better might entail...

But, let’s go back to get forward, shall we?

When I think of the theme “the Future”,  a lot of songs come immediately to mind, one because of their subject matter, but more for the sense that, when it comes to music, the future is all well and good, and I’m sure some great things are coming—but, it’s the past, the pedigree, the primordial beginnings, that make the future what it is. Rock comes from a specific well spring, a beautiful, ever-thriving gene pool that keeps replicating its DNA into new creatures, that look a little different but all come from the same family. Its like Jurassic Park—the old stuff makes the new...We never have to go travel too far into the past to find the specific root of not only the modern sense of music, but also to predict where it is headed. Rock 'n roll is very simple--it's a product of its upbringing, and damn, did it have good parents...

My song this month is The Rolling Stone’s “2000 Man”, from Their Satanic Majesties Request, their 1967 concession to psychedelia, and psychedelics (that means “drugs,” kids). It’s not a great album—even the band admits to thinking it was mess—court appearances, drug indulgences, no one to pull the strings—and it adds up to a collection of silly, flower child ditties, but overall, the album carries with the same sense of messiness that comes from over indulgence and the sense of boredom that inevitably follows said abusive behavior.

They say too much of anything that raises the senses will eventually dull them. And Request is just that: dull. And a bit silly.  Have you looked at the cover? It’s like a low-rent version of Sgt. Peppers, without the interesting subtext and treasure chest of oddities.

Even the band looks a little uncomfortable about what they are doing.  One might guess they are about 30 years early for one of those midnight Harry Potter Sales…

There are a few exceptions, such as the perfectly-pop She’s a Rainbow, and 2000 Light Years From Home, both of which listen now as not only what was good about psychedelic rock, but as a blue print for the sonic architecture of Brit Pop, and bands like Blur, The Stone Roses at their jammy best, and Oasis.

My favorite track on the album—the only other one I like, aside from the aforementioned two above is 2000 Man. Let’s be honest: it’s the standout track on the album. It starts with a country twinged guitar stutter and the chorus descends into a drum smashing, organ grind shout out, something that wouldn’t be out of place in the Three Penny Opera. The breakdown is pure static, and the song reads like a mash up of a few genres, steps lively, and relies on those gorgeous twin guitar ripples that Keith and Brian Jones did so well during their brief tenure as the melody makers in the Stones.

It’s reminiscent of The Who’s  A Quick One While He’s Away or Medley, from The Beatles’ later Abbey Road  in that it is more than one song rolled into a single vinyl track. And while both of those songs are much longer in scope and more masterful in instrumentation and riskier in trying to accomplish something grandiloquent and operatic, 2000 Man makes it mark as a gesture towards taking rock music in a grandly nuanced direction.

Lyrically, which is what brought me to the song for our theme, 2000 Man is as interesting as it is nonsensical. It’s a confessional poem of sorts, delivered by a man who identifies himself as the 2000 Man and who proceeds to confess his misdeeds, his infidelity to his wife, his disconnect from his children and in a strange nod to horticulture, the strange flowers he’s growing on his window sill.

In a way, the song talks to the future in the sense that the narrator just doesn’t fit—perhaps he’s outdated, but when he says don’t you I’m a 2000 man, he seems to be saying, you don’t get me because I’m well beyond you. I am the future. When the song switches narrative perspectives and the speaker’s kids start responding to the conceited claims of their father, they simply chant:

                           “Oh daddy, proud of your planet/ Oh mummy, proud of your sun.”

It’s not necessarily done with the clearest of intentions, but it does read like a back and forth between two parties, both insisting they are  hipper, more knowledgeable,  more at home in the new paradigm. The insistence at being a 2000 man comes across as a desperate claim of relevance, which is what happens to those of us who stick around long enough to see the world change, without our help, perhaps before we’re ready.

The world morphs at a rapidly accelerating pace and it’s hard to hold steady sometimes, especially for those of us who work and have to interact cross-generationally. Nostalgia—looking back fondly, or fiercely or with bitterness—is simply a self-defense mechanism that helps us to feel relevant in a place where the only true relevancy is measured by the newness of the idea or innovation.

The future was not kind to him...

I think, though, to disparage a younger generation is somewhat pointless. Being grumpy about being 'out if it' won't get us anywhere.   And, really, the more things change, the more they stay the same…No, that’s bullshit. The more things change, the better things will alwys have been ‘back in the day’.  It will just depend on whose day it was. Bands like The Rolling Stones? It will always have been their day, their party; we were just lucky enough to get the invite.

At some point—sooner, not later—those that think we’re dinosaurs will experience the same shame of irrelevance. Such is the pace at which we are growing. Hold on to the classics—they will be everyone’s classics at some point. Because, no matter how far we grow and move on, the beginning, the fount and wellspring of greatness, the firsts—will always be the best. Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones…all that amazing rock n roll, that was the future at one point—the future with a capital F and italicized, the ideal. And, because it was first, it will always be first and won’t fade away.

And if we go back to our stubborn speaker in 2000 Man, who insists he’s not lost his hipness yet, it’s interesting to compare him to Jagger and the Stones—is there any other outfit in rock ‘n roll who has the privilege of not having to insist at all on having stayed relevant, no longer taste makers, but the creators of the taste and pretty much the judge and jury of rock ‘n roll cool and the ones who created the measure that everyone else will always have to live up to…?

The Future: Fly Like an Eagle

purchase Fly Like an Eagle

It's been years since I listened to Steve Miller, but back "then", he was one of my main listens.  Heading into this theme, it was my recollection that the lyrics to Fly Like an Eagle include some kind of a reference to "the future". In fact, a re-listen to the song after maybe 20 years away reveals to me that a major conceit of the lyrics is not just that line, but in general what the future might/could bring.

Time keeps on slipping / Into the future ...  We can't/don't feed the poor now, but in the future .... I can't fly like an eagle now, but I would like to ....

In the various Youtube clips associated with this title, Steve Miller makes remarkably good use of the looping effect - playing on top of the just previously played notes as they loop past - just a thought: the present (if not the future) layered on top of the past.

Tangentially, I ran across an article in Open Culture in which there is an account of Miles Davis' rather dismissive take on Steve Miller. I enjoy them both and see no reason why one should over-ride the other - they're worlds apart.

Bonus: This is a pretty long live version and Joe Satriani joins in at about 5 minutes.

The Future: Somewhere Down the Road

Joe Ross: Somewhere Down the Road

[purchase]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoQnbTgEZqA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62fWb_MwBo

I live in Roseburg, Oregon, the town now known worldwide for the mass shooting that took place at Umpqua Community College on October 1, 2015 where nine people lost their lives, and nine others were injured. It was in an introductory writing class that the shooting took place, and I ponder what these students and their teacher would've penned if they had been asked to compose something related to music and the future.   

The victims of this tragedy included:

* Lucero Alcaraz, 19, of Roseburg

• Quinn Glen Cooper, 18, of Roseburg

• Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59, of Roseburg

• Lucas Eibel, 18, of Roseburg

• Jason Dale Johnson, 33, of Winston

• Lawrence Levine, 67, of Glide. Levine was the teacher inside of the classroom.

• Sarena Dawn Moore, 44, of Myrtle Creek

• Treven Taylor Anspach, 20, of Sutherlin

• Rebecka Ann Carnes, 18, of Myrtle Creek

Their futures were cut short, and we carry their names in our heavy hearts. Our entire community is heartbroken and grieves their loss. In their memory and as a tribute to them, I’d like to post a song I once wrote and recorded called “Somewhere Down the Road.” It speaks to the optimism and ideals that a young person might hold as they prepare for the future.

Unfortunately, the future for these nine has put them “Through Heaven’s Gate,” another song written to describe their new home – in a glory land with jasper walls, golden bells, angel band and harps of gold. 

THE FUTURE: Leonard Cohen

By and large there is nothing like the future for making a monkey of the past, with the present being, usually, equally no less capable of second guessing what's next. But it seems us humans love nothing so much as to dreaming away the now by imagining about later, whether a simple reverie about what's for tea, or all the pillars of literature parading their visions of times yet to pass. Orwell's 1984 is the prime example, written 36 years earlier and, as we now know, getting it not quite right. But, having read it at school, even as late as 1983, aged 26, I was certainly worrying whether he would turn out to be right, helped even, or hindered, by the film that came out in the same year it was supposedly depicting. Handy timing or what! And 2001, book and film, both from 1968, also portraying the future in a way the past has failed to deliver. Of course there are rules in all of this: just as the past is always portrayed as utopian, anything about the future has to have in its byline the word dystopian. Talk about glass half empty pessimism, I wonder whether it is an automatic response to the often grim reality of the present. Is the only way to accept the now to be by assuming worse ahead?

Music is no stranger to such fantasy, and what better place to start than rocks elder, maybe eldest, statesman, laughing Leonard Cohen. Having had a share of fame as poet and novelist, then bedsitter singer-songwriter exemplary, in the later 70s and early 80s it was all going a bit quiet for him. Rather than hanging up his mitts, he came back in 1988, already 54 years old, with 'I'm Your Man', a re-invention with a much wider sonic spectrum than his earlier acoustic guitar and drone. 1992 saw 'The Future' appear as a belated follow-up, and was arguably his most counter-intuitive work yet, blowing his old persona into a distant (utopian?) past, synthesisers and massed girly vocals well to the fore. Having loved 'I'm Your Man', I well recall being a little shaken at the time. Taking no prisoners, it burst straight for the jugular with the eponymous opening track, mentioning both crack cocaine and anal sex (censored in the above video) in the very first few verses. No more Mr Nice Guy, and good bye to playing it to your parents generation. (Or his, by chaotic coincidence.) But, the audience was growing, whether old fans, auspiciously disappointed,  or those who just liked to hear a grown man talk dirty.So long Marianne, for sure. All in an unclassifiable genre, probably its main strength, or, as his biographer put it: "Classic big budget AOR, yet with lyrics by Bukowski and Lowell, sung by an old wino from skid row who really wanted to sing like Ray Charles at the Apollo." I think that's perfect, and he even became Canadian Best Male Vocalist fo this in 1993, which tickled even him, even allowing for the partisan nature of his home crowd.


                                                   "Give me crack and anal sex
                                                   Take the only tree that's left
                                                   and stuff it up the hole in your culture
                                                   Give me back the Berlin wall
                                                   give me Stalin and Saint Paul
                                                   I've seen the future brother:
                                                   It is murder."

So what's it all about? Has it come true yet? Well, I neither know, nor, actually care that much, but here's a link to one essayists thoughts that are certainly profound. I'm not sure if I buy all of it, and, anyway, what's with needing to constantly understand and interpret? It's like the infernal never ending learned resumes about Dylan versus Keats. It's pop music, fer chrissakes!

What has troubled me, though, in times more recent, is how the singer has chosen to bowdlerise himself, the anal sex of the 90s now sung as careless sex, somehow altering the impact, not to say the cadence. Has the now octogenarian become a pussy? Or is there regret that his dystopian future failed to warn him of his own journey to follow, whereby he effectively retired to his cave whilst an errant manger spent his nest-egg, necessitating a return to the greasepaint and trappings of performance, a 3rd rebirth, possibly his most successful yet. And who, in 1992, could possibly have foreseen that, with new work appearing still, in his ninth decade? So. What's next for Cohen. Slippers and commode? Don't bet on it!

Studio or Live, buy it down the links!

The Future: In The Year 2525

Zager and Evans: In The Year 2525 [purchase]

The theme now is The Future, so, of course, I need to start by looking at my past.

I think that most music obsessives have a story about learning about music by listening to their parents’ records, or from an older sibling or a friend. I don’t really have that. My parents, who claim to have gone to some of the legendary Alan Freed shows in Brooklyn in the ‘50s, were not interested in rock music by the time I was old enough to pay attention. To my memory, they mostly listened to the Sinatra-heavy WNEW-AM, and news radio. And I’m the oldest child in my family. Instead, my first real musical education came during the summer of 1969, listening to top-40 radio station WABC-AM, in the station wagon that took me to day camp. Listening that summer was, for me, Rock Music 101, and my professors were the distinguished faculty members Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram, Ron Lundy and Cousin Brucie. It was an era in which top-40 singles could actually be great songs (although not always), and I remember soaking them up. It was like I had found something that was mine, an interest in something that was different from my parents.

In retrospect, of course, the summer of 1969 was a huge year for rock music, much of which completely passed me by at the time. Woodstock and Altamont. The Beatles’ last live performance on the roof. Dylan and Elvis returning to live performance. The sheer volume of music released in 1969 that is still considered classic today is staggering. Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II. In The Court of The Crimson King, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Kick Out The Jams, Goodbye. Dusty In Memphis, The Velvet Underground, Nashville Skyline, With A Little Help From My Friends, Chicago Transit Authority. Hair, Stand!, Clouds, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Tommy, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Meters, At San Quentin, Trout Mask Replica, Aoxomoxoa and Live/Dead, The Soft Parade, What We Did On Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking and Liege & Lief, Green River and Willie And The Poor Boys, My Cherie Amour, The Stooges, Blind Faith, Santana, The Band. Abbey Road, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, Hot Rats, David Bowie (Space Oddity). The Allman Brothers Band, Ballad of Easy Rider, Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) and Let It Bleed, Okie From Muskogee, Volunteers. And that is far, far from everything released that year that is still remembered and played today.

But the song that really gripped my 8 year old ears—the first song that I can remember caring about, was “In The Year 2525,” by Zager and Evans. The song, about the post-apocalyptic future, seemed so serious and “heavy” and the music was so dramatic, that it was impossible not to be struck by it. It was a vision of the future gone wrong, as a result of over-reliance on technology, lack of care for the environment, and passivity struck a chord with adults, too (or at least the record buying public) because its themes were certainly much discussed during that year. “In the Year 2525” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on July 12, and held the spot for six weeks, during the bulk of my summer camp season. Which meant that it was played over and over again on WABC, and I heard it in the car, and on the AM radio in my room (also used to listen to the Mets’ march to the World Series).

I’ll never forget how disappointed I was when the song was dislodged from its lofty perch on top of the charts by some weird song with lyrics I had trouble understanding—“Honky Tonk Women.” This inferior song only held the top spot for 4 weeks, when it was knocked off by the classic Archies’ confection, “Sugar, Sugar.”

As Wikipedia notes, “It is unusual for a recording artist to have a number one hit and then never have another chart single.” "In the Year 2525" actually gave Zager and Evans this status twice; they remain the only act to do this in both the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart.” Their attempt to follow up their big hit was a song (which I have no recollection of) called “Mr. Turnkey,” a pleasant ballad written from the standpoint of a rapist who nails his own wrist to the jail wall as punishment.  And that, was, pretty much that for Zager and Evans. Zager stopped performing and started a company building “E-Z Play Custom Guitars” and Evans retired to New Mexico.

Listening to the song now, I’m kind of horrified by how much I liked it. But my love and devotion to that song was the gateway to my life-long interest in music, and you can draw a line directly from that station wagon, to my first radio experiences in sleepaway camp, to my high school years listening to WNEW-FM and pawing through records, to my WPRB years, through the mixtape era, to downloading and more recently, music blogging.