Hunter S. Thompson 1972

As I noted in the post prior to this, Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer are my go-to writers when it comes to topnotch US presidential campaign coverage.  I linked to an excerpt from Mailer's book on 1972, St. George and the Godfather yesterday.  Today, I am providing a link to a collection of random excerpts from Hunter S. Thompson's classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/timewarp-campaign-72-19730705

enjoy it and weep

Norman Mailer and the 1972 Political Conventions

Two people come to my mind when the subject of writing about US major party political conventions--Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer.  As the 2016 convention season closes down (thankfully), I thought I would post this 1972 piece from the New York Review of Books (when it was a radical liberal broadsheet instead of the neoliberal rag it has become) on Nixon at the 1972 GOP convention in Miami.  It is excerpted from his book on that year's conventions titled St. George and the Godfather.  
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1972/11/02/the-genius/

Midsummer Rock

On July 28, 1973, The Band, Allman Brothers, and the Grateful Dead played a mammoth show at Watkins Glen, NY.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqlADKgCS_Y

In late July 1970, a rock fest was supposed to happen, but the authorities cancelled it. People showed up anyway...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xeK-k9BRtQ

then there was this--I made it to one day....

Our National Malaise....

(from Daydream Sunset...)

“We arrived in Berkeley the day after the riots in San Francisco following the verdict for the ex-cop who killed Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. The six of us spent a month or so looking for a place to live. Most landlords rejected any thought of renting to us as soon as they saw our scruffy lot. Eventually, we did find a place. After listening to the landlord, who happened to be the second largest slumlord in the Eastbay, tell us how hard it was to be rich, we got the keys and moved in. Six of us in three bedrooms. We weren't a collective so much as we were a collection of people. We celebrated our new abode with a case or two of malt liquor and a gallon of wine. Bob Dylan's live album from Budokan was the newest album on our playlist. Jimmy Carter made a speech about a national malaise related to Washington's defeat in Vietnam and the corruption and fascist tendencies that had been exposed by the Watergate bust and investigation. The Sandinistas were our latest heroes as they fought their way towards an eventual victory in Nicaragua. Nicaragua's malaise was being wiped away by revolution.”

From History.com:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jimmy-carter-speaks-about-a-national-crisis-in-confidence

Let There Be Rock

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/let-there-be-rock/