Cheap Thrills^411
R. Crumb and Bob CatoA standing ovation at the
Fillmore East, New York’s
premier music hall during the late
1960 s, was reserved for rock-and-
roll royalty. The Fillmore hosted
the best bands of the age, and
Fillmore audiences were jaded,
demanding, and sometimes rude
in the bargain. On one occasion,
early in their career, the members
of the band Sly and the Family
Stone were shouted off stage
because the audience could not
wait a second longer for the
evening’s headliner, Jimi Hendrix,
who received one of the longest
and loudest ovations ever. That is,
with the exception of the time in fall 1968 when Janis Joplin announced to
the assembled fans that the cover for Cheap Thrills,the recent Big Brother
and the Holding Company album, was illustrated by underground
cartoonist R. Crumb. The audience went wild as a slide of the image filled
the huge screen behind her.
Back then, Crumb (b. 1943 ) was as popular as any rock star. His
cartoon inventions, Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Honeybunch Kominsky, the
Keep on Truckin’ chorus line, and scores of raucous and ribald comix
published in underground newspapers such as theBee, East Village Other,
and Gothic Blimp Workshad earned him hero status throughout youth
culture. He was in the vanguard of artists who forever busted the timidity
and mediocrity that had been enforced since the mid- 1950 s by the
industry’s self-censoring organ, the Comics Code Authority. Through a
combination of zany raunch and artful acerbity wed to unequaled pen-
and-ink draftsmanship, Crumb’s drawings of big-hipped hippie chicks,
bug-eyed nerdy guys, and weird average-American white folk engaged in
extraordinary (if unspeakable) acts pounded at the propriety and sanctity of
an aged establishment. No wonder the union of Joplin and Crumb (who
were born in the same year) was greeted with ecstatic delight when it was