Good Condition (Considering Age):

These magazines/newspapers have been boxed-up and folded for 50+ years. 

GOOD Condition (Considering Age):

A book that has not been read and is in good condition. Very minimal damage to the cover including scuff marks. The majority of pages are undamaged with minimal creasing or tearing, no pencil underlining of text, no highlighting of text, no writing in margins. No missing pages. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections.

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ABOUT THE ORGAN

 JUST WHICH ORGAN DID YOU HAVE IN MIND?

 Richard A. Lupoff

THE ORGAN WAS a short-lived periodical of what is loosely known as “the Sixties,” although its actual publication dates were July, 1970 to July, 1971. Its physical presentation was the “folded tabloid” format popular in its era, used most notably by Rolling Stone but also at various times by Crawdaddy, Changes, Stormy Weather and many others. Covers were printed on good quality stock which retains its whiteness after nearly forty years. Interior pages were printed on lower-grade newsprint, now beginning to turn brown and become brittle.

Standard issue length was 36 pages, with a cover price of fifty cents. Covers were printed in two colors. Interiors were all black-and-white. This is regrettable, as interior artwork was extensive and sometimes of excellent quality, including a double-page poster in each issue and full-page cartoon strips by leading underground artists of the day including R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Greg Irons. There was even a two-page science fiction comic strip, copyrighted in the name of William M. Gaines, the late publisher of the famous EC Comics line. No prior publication data was furnished, and it is likely that the story was a leftover from the heyday of EC Comics in the 1950s.

For most of The Organ’s lifetime the publisher was listed as Christopher Weills. Editor-in-chief was Gerard van der Leun. Associate editors were Jon Stewart (not the television host of The Daily Show) and Howard Pearlstein.

Although the office address of The Organ is listed in each issue as a post office box in Berkeley, California, the actual editorial and production offices were located in a cavernous building located at the foot of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. A former poultry-processing plant, the building was widely known as “the Chicken Factory.” The smell of avian blood and entrails had so permeated the concrete floors and interior walls of the building that their odor was never absent. At least, such is my recollection. My friend Howard Pearlstein tells me that there was no such odor. I must be creatively editing my memories. Such things happen.

In the San Francisco wintertime the Chicken Factory was moist, dank, and bone-chillingly cold. In summer it was stifling hot and it stank. Still, in the spirit of the era a young staff — mostly in their twenties, with a few old-timers in their thirties — worked and fought with enthusiasm.

From its first issue The Organ was confused about its own identity, nor were matters clear to any newsstand browser who picked up a copy. Was The Organ a sex paper or a music journal? The “O” in the logo of the first issue had an arrow rising at one o’clock and a plus sign at six — combining the astrological symbols for Mars and Venus — male and female. A full-page photo showed a nude male and female sharing their tongues beside a pond. The top of the page blazoned THE C**KETTES / ALLEN GINSBERG / S. CLAY WILSON. Not a bad lineup of features: a calculatedly outrageous San Francisco based cross-dressing theater group, a poet-hero of the counterculture, and a talented underground cartoonist who specialized in violent and sexually-charged scenes of biker gangs and pirates.

Anyone who made it past that front cover was confronted with a huge tabloid-size photo of a C**kette — a bearded male in lipstick and painted eyebrows, Carmen Miranda tutti-frutti headgear, beads, bangles, feathers and tattoos. The accompanying report is a piece of relatively straight journalism that leads to a two-page jump spread of semi-nude photos of the Cockettes’ stage show. The essay ends with something of a polemic:

The C**kettes, however, are neither an act nor a review. In fact, their greatest danger lies in the quite present possibility of becoming ‘disciplined’ performers, developing standardized bits, and evolving a star system within their own group. This can happen through over-exposure or rapid success, either of which are traps that the C**kettes should try to recognize and avoid. For the C**kettes could not exist in the world of established performers, because, ultimately, the C**kettes are sexual outlaws. It is highly doubtful whether any of America’s major sexual organizations — the Daughters of Bilitis, the San Fernando Valley Swingers, or the Mattachine Society — would approve of the C**kettes. The C**kettes bear no resemblance to organized sexuality.

And if the C**kettes are political, they are political in the way that every public act is a political act. Their politics are contained and expressed within their rampant sexuality. They f**k with minds and f**k them well.

Thus, The Organ was launched with a mixture of warped libido, in-your-face outrageousness, and Sixties-style revolutionary fervor.

From Wikipedia:

The Organ was a US counterculture underground newspaper which produced a total of 9 irregularly published issues in San Francisco in a 36-page folded tabloid format between July 1970 and July 1971. It featured two-color covers, black-and-white interiors and a double-page centerfold poster in each issue, and cost 50 cents. It was published by Christopher Weills and edited by Gerard van der Leun.^[1] Contributors included Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Greg Irons, Tom Veitch, Dave Sheridan, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea, William Burroughs, Michael Rossmann, Richard Lupoff, Sandy Darlington, Howard J. Pearlstein, and Don Donahue. Interviews with a number of countercultural figures appeared, including Kenneth Anger, Jerry Garcia, and Allen Ginsberg.