A great magazine from the generous G Barrett.

Seven Seventy One Publications got into the skin mag game in the mid-60's, with the usual "topless but not bottomless" format that was standard among U.S. girlie magazines at the time. They quickly joined the revolution and were showing split-beaver shots by the early 1970's. Their output was not big, but they fit into the growing trend towards hippy chicks and amateurs as opposed to strippers and starlets. Most of the girls were anonymous, picking up a few bucks and praying that their friends and families wouldn't see them posing nude. Most used aliases and in this issue there are no last names. I don't see anyone I recognize, but if more saavy readers know who any of these lovelies are, please let us know.

It's just one of many great magazines that G Barrett is sharing with us, and there are more to come. Stand by!

The generous waw5114 has added a great magazine for us all. (Thank you!)

Blaze was typical of Art Enterprise's output: beautiful girls and more pictorials than articles. No really big names here, but definitely beautiful ladies. A lot of them use aliases. (Including a girl called "Boo Boo" who looks familiar. Does anyone know who she is?) Art Enterprises was not known for great fiction, but they more than made up for it in the pictorial department. So here's another great offering. Thanks, waw5114!

G Barrett has been very generous with us all, and among the 70+ magazines he sent me are a few gems from American Art Agency (AAA). We all use "Parliament" when talking about AAA, but that's a misnomer. Parliament was the distribution arm of Milton Luros' magazine empire, and the actual publication was done under a number of banners, like Tower Publications and of course, American Art Agency. At the beginning, when Luros was having difficulty getting a magazine distributor to handle his product, he decided to handle that chore himself and that's how Parliament News came into being. As far as I know, they only handled Luros' magazines, but I wouldn't swear to that. Milton Luros was a keen businessman and knew how to make a buck.

This magazine (Black Magic), like almost all Parliament magazines, would try a concept for a few issues and see what stuck. At various times, Black Magic catered to such interests as standard girlie, black women, interracial couples, and pseudo-lesbianism. This particular issue makes some vague attempts at catering to a Wicken fetish, if indeed such a thing exists. The end result, while erotic, is no more "Wicken" than the old Bewitched TV show was from the 1960's. One pictorial's attempt would appeal to the Tiki crowd for the model's writhing on a Tiki statue. Interesting and sexy, but I think even modern witches would get a laugh out of it.

Every AAA mag was just an attempt to titillate readers with nude women and no offense or statement was ever intended.

It's one of many and it's a great magazine, so share and enjoy!

TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT

Most here know that I'm a Linux enthusiast. If there's something that Windows does that Linux doesn't, I can easily run a virtual machine and do it by running Windows inside of Linux.

Now Linux does a lot of things well, and scanning is one of them. About seven times out of ten, a scanner manufacturer will provide a Linux program to do the scanning, and I've been using one provided by Epson for quite awhile. The new scanner, however, is made by Canon, so I wasn't provided a program on the CD that came with the scanner. Ok, no problem, I'll just pick a free scanner program for Linux and get busy.

I've always heard that XSANE is the standard for Linux, so I chose that. BIG mistake! I've posted here about my scanner being on the fritz and replacing it with the same model. A quick scan of a small item verified that it worked, so I sent the old one off to Canon and sat down last night to scan. Only problem was that the same problem was back on the new scanner: lines of scans were being missed by the scanner. WTF?

I noticed that on a large scan, the scanner scans a few lines, stops, then resumes scanning. It seems that the skipped lines were happening at the point where the scanner paused. Hmmm... Since Linux has so many options to choose from, I quickly found and added another scanning program called Simple Scan. THAT solved the problem! My guess is that XSANE, which has more buttons, whistles, and knobs than anyone would really need, has a buffer setting somewhere that would fix this, but since Simple Scan works right out of the box, that's what I went with. The end result looks better anyway, so I think I'll stick with that. It seems faster too, so maybe I can start putting a sizable dent on the G Barrett stuff.

Eric

Ok, I got a new scanner today, so I'm back in the scanning business. Thanks to my good friend Texpix at the wonderful 30th Street Graphics site (Where you can get some VERY cool stuff. Check it out!) for pointing out the scanning problem, which I completely missed, and also for the wonderful scanning tips.

My scanner was skipping some sections of images. It was a mechanical problem which I didn't notice, but Texpix did. The scanner is new enough that it's under warrenty, but not new enough that I can return it to the store. It's a Canon scanner, so I expected it to work well. Go fig. Anyway, the same store had the same scanner for $20 less, so I bought another one. The old unit will go back to Canon for repair or replacement and the new one will handle the scanning. (I checked it out, the new one works fine.)

Everything from the G Barrett collection that I've scanned so far will be rescanned to correct any flaws. Again, thanks to Texpix, I have a better handle of the scanning, so all is well. Look for the replacement scans soon. Also, G Barrett, I've come up with a solution to get hi-res images to you, so I'll send you an email to discuss the particulars.

Thanks, everyone, for being here and sharing the magazines. It's a great way to ring in the New Year.

Eric

This was the last content type to restore from the old site. A lot of data still needs to be entered, but at least now I have a place to enter it.

I'm debating adding a content type for magazine distributors, and a way to show data for editors & art directors. What do you think? Give me some feedback here.

Eric