Strips 82-86 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977, take us a little west of Yasgur’s farm.
82. Advertisements in this issue of The Observer include: a lecture on “Who Killed JFK?”; concert tickets for Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Aerosmith and Frank Sinatra; and a raffle at Corby’s where the winner gets to throw a full beer can at the TV when Howard Cosell is on.
83. The music in the background is Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Woodstock.” An article in The Observer reported on the controversy caused by an unannounced lottery for John Denver tickets. The Student Union wanted to keep the number of attendees small because for a large lottery the Student Union would use a Texas Instruments-58 calculator to generate random numbers. But the student who had the calculator was out of town.
84. Consciousness III was a reference to the counterculture book The Greening of America by Charlie A. Reich. The song in the background is “Helter Skelter” by The Beatles.
85. The song playing is “White Rabbit” by the Jefferson Airplane. The same song appears in Molarity Redux 3: Demographics. While this series of cartoons was well-received, the re-creation of Woodstock inside a Notre Dame dorm was not a big hit.
86. At this point in popular music, disco dominated the charts. Music tastes sharply divided the student population. Those of us who preferred harder rock thought we won when punk and new wave emerged. But at any wedding reception today, you are more likely to hear “I Will Survive” than “London Calling.”
See the first five classic strips. Check back monthly for more classic Molarity strips. Molarity Redux, the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends, also is posted monthly. For those new strips, check out the cartoon archives.