The Last Times
The Last Times was a tabloid underground newspaper published in San Francisco in 1967 by beatnik poet and printer Charles Plymell. It lasted only two issues, but included William Burroughs' text Day the Records Went Up (a version of which also appeared in Evergreen Review, November 1968), Claude Pelieu Do It Yourself & Dig It, Allen Ginsberg's poem Television Was A Baby Crawling Toward that Deathchamber, also published in Ginsberg's book T.V. Baby Poems (London: Cape Goliart Press, 1967). And a Charles Bukowski column, collected in his Notes of a Dirty Old Man and here reprinted from the underground journal Open City # 20, September 14–21, 1967. The Last Times #1 and 2 also contained articles by French avant-gardist Jean-Jacques Lebel and Man Suicided by Society by Antonin Artaud, translated by Mary Beach, Plymell's mother-in-law.[1] Issue #1 also contains the first Plymell printed work of R. Crumb that Plymell had "lifted" from the 2nd issue of Yarrowstalks (another tabloid newspaper). Plymell subsequently earned a bit of immortality in the underground press by printing only the first printing of the first issue of R. Crumb's Zap Comix, which Don Donahue took over from Plymell when he purchased his Multilith 1250 printing press soon after.