Entertainment For Lively Minds
Remember when smoking was cool?
Today I came across this 1977 Boz Scaggs tour programme which shows him lighting a cigarette from another cigarette. By today's standards it's quite a shocking image because it's something that you simply don't see anymore, certainly not on a publicity photo. Nobody in their right mind would use an image like this to promote themselves these days.
And yet it doesn’t seem that long ago that smoking was totally cool. People actually thought nothing of posing on their album covers holding a cigarette. Imagine that!
Look back through the early Beatles' photos and be amazed at how many of them show one or more band members smoking. Macca is even carrying a cigarette on the cover of Abbey Road (although I believe it's been touched out on some versions of the sleeve) and at least two of the Stones (Mick and Bill) are holding cigarettes on the cover of the UK Five by Five EP from 1964. It seems unthinkable now that someone didn't tell them to keep the cigarettes out of the shots.
Those were certainly different times.
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You mean...
It's not cool anymore?
Someone forgot to tell me.
I find
the shirt more shocking
Wasn't Paradine Entertainments David Frost's company?
Possibly so
It's an Australian Tour programme and Frost had many business interests down under in the 70s
Silk (Cut) Degrees?
May I point The Word Massive at a fantastic anthology called "My Time":
http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Time-Scaggs-Anthology-1969-1997/dp/B000024VCW...
Of course smoking CAN be cool
In this case:
In this case:
But most assuredly NOT in this case:
It might look cool but
the Thin White Duke's 60-a-day habit led to a blocked artery and suspected heart attack in 2004 years after he cleaned up his act on drug taking. You won't see a cigarette between his lips these days and his public performances have been severely curtailed since his recovery.
See kids
if only David Bowie had stuck to the pills and the cocaine he would have been fine
Sorry
I forgot to press the irony key on my keyboard. He is, of course, a clean-living heterosexual guy. Any suggestion otherwise would of course be wrong, unlike Pete sorry Peter Doherty he now has no need to enhance his career with performance enhancing drugs. And any mention of sucking on a few fags would be childish and inappropriate.
Would now be a good time to post this?
I refer to the second item:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/guest-columnists/2010/07/29/what...
Cool as f**k
never wanted to take up the cancer sticks ever but this looks good
and
Conclusive Proof
It's always cool, ask this guy
Still smoking.
I don't smoke because I think It's cool or uncool.I smoke because I am addicted to tobacco.We all have our little peccadilloes.What I do find very uncool and damn rude is the way some total strangers now seem to think they have the right to make off hand and offensive comments about my unfortunate habit even when I am indulging in it in the open air and up to now perfectly legally.Sanctimonious fucking hypocrites the lot of them and they can ALL FUCK OFF.I feel so much better for that little rant.Now where did I put those Rizlas.
I have, once or twice, nicked Bill Hicks' line when...
I've had someone cough pathetically in protest at my smoking, even though I'm outside and blowing the smoke in the opposite direction. "Man, that's a terrible cough you have there. I smoke 30 a day and I don't cough like that. I'd go to the doctor if I were you."
I hear ya brother
luckily all my mates (non-smokers) are really cool with my addiction, and they don't mind me smoking either
Boom! Boom!
For fact fans:
Apparently, that thing that Boz Scaggs is doing is called a Dutch Fuck.
Don't google it to check though.
As a kid
this was the only reason to smoke, so you could do tricks like this hippie dude on Saturday Night TV
Ah, genius
Thanks for posting that - brilliant.
Yes!
Of course Tom Noddy. I'd completely forgotten about him -- that brought a smile to my face this morning.
Eventually it will go the way of snuff and pipes
I will be giving up on my birthday in a few weeks, with the promise to myself that I will take it up again when I'm 70. I just find the whole thing rather inconvenient now.
I also find that when I look around at fellow smokers in designated areas, they do not tend to be maverick personalities like Hemingway, Hicks, Bowie, Hunter S Thompson or Oscar Wilde. Generally, it tends to be a sad looking bunch of people quietly coughing.
good luck with giving up
As an ex-smoker, I wouldn't nag anyone to give up. But if you've decided to do it, then "may the Force be with you"
Giving up smoking
I gave up in 1976, it was because they were becoming too expensive (50p a packet of 20 ) I found the first 30 years the hardest.
Smoking?
Some people just don't care who knows about their habit
The picture reminds me of
The picture reminds me of the scene in Breathless, when Mr. Nonchalance walks through a hotel lobby with shades and a fat smoke, and casually pulls another one out of his pocket. He then proceeds to light one with the other. Its cool.
If you don't die of smokin' cancer
you'll die of drinking cancer, and if you don't die of that, you'll die of eatin' cancer, or IKEA cancer, or watchin' films cancer or football cancer or something like that.
I wasn't trying to start
a pro/anti smoking row. Just observing how social attitudes have changed. As L. P. Hartley said in 1953, "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."
For example, can you imagine someone designing a huge selling record sleeve like Blind Faith today? How about Houses Of The Holy? Or Country Life? Or Electric Ladyland (UK version)?
How about Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, or the opening line of I Saw her Standing There. Would we accept those songs were they to appear today for the first time?
Sorry Mojo
I didn't mean to hijack,It's just a particular little bug bear of mine.Actually I think the responses have been as usual in this wonderful place very polite and frequently amusing.So once again sorry.Am I forgiven?
I'd forgive you anything sir!
And anyway, there's nothing to forgive.
It just struck me when I saw that Boz Scaggs picture how things have changed in, what? 10-15 years?