On Feb. 28, the Local East Village inaugurates its exhibit “Blowing Minds: The East Village Other, the Rise of Underground Comix and the Alternative Press” at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at 20 Cooper Square, appropriately located in the East Village.
From 1965 until 1971, this underground newspaper struck fear into the hearts of millions of Americans. But countless other Americans welcomed it as a glorious ray of hope and joy.
Essentially the flagship of the Sixties, EVO influenced many other so-called underground newspapers in this country and around the world. While resistance to the Vietnam War was often featured, it was scarcely the only theme. Nor was EVO only about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, though these were certainly present.
I wrote for EVO from 1968 to 1971 and before that helped out with other underground newspapers in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin. So let me confirm that other EVO topics included feminism, eastern mysticism, the commune movement, new approaches to education, practical problems of artists, the budding ecology/environmental movement, and the struggle for black and Hispanic equality. Read more…
From 1965 to 1972, it revolutionized ‘The Good News,’ and shook the foundations of the existing print and visual media. After seven years, it went just as it came – in a hail of livingness. In true American phantasmagoria, it was a legend in its own time.
Initiated by poets, painters, artists, seers, perverts and prophets, it shared its pages with the likes of Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, Robert Crumb, Ishmael Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Baba Ram Das, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman – the conspiracy of the 1960s.
The East Village Other had a consciousness which was created. The News needing a shoe-up to come alive was new to an unconscious civilization. It was more than Print, it was Imprint. An indelible biologue, the East Village Other made even The New York Times seem to come alive. Headlines, columns, advertisements, propaganda and prosletyzing made the “form of the newspaper an adjunct of reality . . .”
The above was written by the late Allen Katzman, poet and co-founding editor of the East Village Other, one of the pioneering underground newspapers. Over the next six weeks, The Local will journey back to the East Village of the mid-1960s and early 1970s with special weekend editions, culminating in an exhibit and party on Tuesday, Feb. 28. We hope you’ll join us for “Blowing Minds: The East Village Other, the Rise of Underground Comix and the Alternative Press, 1965-72.” Full registration details for this free event are at EastVillageOther.org, where you’ll soon also be able to find archival material, ephemera, photographs, and EVO issues. Read more…
