The music scene in the late 60's
You've heard it way too many times - "Things were different back then," "It was, like, a revolution. "So what?", you retort, "who cares?" Music is better now. We've got rap, alternative, punk, techno, disco, all this stuff, and it's all better produced and more sophisticated than any of that 40-year-old junk. Plus we've got music videos! This is hard to argue with. If you don't care about history, then you don't. If you do, the 60's are a fascinating destination for your mental time machine. It was a time of revolution, not just in music, but in art, fashion, politics, lifestyles, technology, everything. It was a startling orgy of bizarre experimentation that will never be seen again. Unlike the modern rock industry, the 60's was commandeered by a small pack of artistes whose gigantic popularity gave them the leeway to experiment like crazy. San Francisco's 1967 Summer of Love gave us Jefferson Airplane; Janis Joplin's Big Brother & The Holding Company; Quicksilver Messenger Service; Grateful Dead; Moby Grape; Hendrix and Sly Stone. From the other side of the pond, we had the reigning Kings of Rock: The Beatles; The Stones; Cream; The Who and Led Zeppelin. And, let's not forget Procol Harum; Pink Floyd; Moody Blues; Peter Green & Fleetwood Mac; Jeff Beck Group; Traffic; Jethro Tull; Joe Cocker and Faces & Rod Stewart. Our apologies for any omissions. By 1971, the major 60's rock figures were history, with Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison all dead;,Brian Wilson was a recluse; The Beatles; Cream; Airplane; Velvet Underground and Simon & Garfunkel all broken up; and other major acts like The Stones, CSNY, The Kinks and The Who, increasingly ossified. Motown, meanwhile, had pretty much ceased to exist as an independent creative force, Diana Ross split from the Supremes, the Temptations brought low by personnel changes, the Four Tops and Holland-Dozier-Holland leaving the label, and Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder about to strike out in radically different musical directions. The best Motown could manage at this point was a bubblegum act called the Jackson Five. But as pop music continued in the 70's, it grew and prospered - and, to our ears, became much less interesting. |
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How did the name Jumbo come about?
You know how it is, bands sit around for days or weeks trying to think of that perfect name, the name of all names, the one that will draw a crowd. We didn't escape the exhaustive search. Fortunately, our lead singer happened one day to be singing "Jambalaya crawfish pie me oh my oh" and Mike said HEY...Jumbo-laya, thus the name Jumbo was born.
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