IN: The 5th Dimension is an American popular music vocal group, whose repertoire includes pop, R&B, soul, jazz, light opera and Broadway--the melange was coined as "Champagne Soul." Formed as The Versatiles in late 1965, the group changed its name to the hipper "The 5th Dimension" by 1966. They became well-known during the late 1960s and early 1970s for their popular hits: "Up, Up and Away", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Never My Love", "One Less Bell to Answer", "(Last Night)

The members began rehearsing as the Versatiles in late 1965 and auditioned for Marc Gordon, who headed Motown's Los Angeles office. Although Motown rejected the group's demo tape, Gordon agreed to manage them and brought them to the attention of Johnny Rivers, who had just started his own label, Soul City Records. Their first Soul City single, "I'll Be Lovin' You Forever", was a successful single.  In 1965 The Mamas & the Papas' first single, lead member John Phillips' "Go Where You Wanna Go", failed to open the foursome's chart career. At the suggestion of Rivers and their manager Marc Gordon, the 5th Dimension covered the same song virtually note-for-note (except for the last verse's upward modulation), and their early 1967 version climbed into the top 20 on R&B and pop stations and peaked at #16 on the Hot 100, opening the quintet's chart career.  The budding songwriter Jimmy Webb supplied the group with their breakthrough hit, "Up, Up and Away", a mid-1967 #7 hit that won five Grammy Awards. The following year, the group scored major hit singles with Laura Nyro's songs "Stoned Soul Picnic" (U.S. #3) and "Sweet Blindness" (U.S. #13). The group received a gold record for their album Stoned Soul Picnic.  That album included "California Soul", which peaked at #25 in February 1969. Weeks later the group's success broke wide open, with "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" from the musical Hair topping the Hot 100 for six straight weeks in April and May, and another Nyro song, "Wedding Bell Blues", doing the same for the first three full weeks in November. Their cover of Neil Sedaka's "Workin' On a Groovy Thing" went to #20 in between. Those four singles kept the group on the Hot 100 for all but four weeks in 1969. By some reckonings, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" was the biggest hit single for 1969.  Later top 20 hits included 1970's "One Less Bell to Answer" (U.S. #2), 1971's "Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes" (U.S. #19) and "Never My Love" (U.S. #12), 1972's "(Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All" (U.S. #8) and "If I Could Reach You" (U.S. #10). The group had seven other top 40 hits, the last being 1973's "Living Together, Growing Together" (U.S. #32) from the film Lost Horizon.

What were some hits from that album?

OUT: That album included "California Soul", which peaked at #25 in February 1969.


IN: Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker, where he made several high-profile and sometimes controversial covers. He is married to designer and editor

Hired by Tina Brown as a contributing artist in 1992, Spiegelman worked for The New Yorker for ten years. Spiegelman's first cover appeared on the February 15, 1993, Valentine's Day issue and showed a black West Indian woman and a Hasidic man kissing. The cover caused turmoil at The New Yorker offices. Spiegelman intended it to reference the Crown Heights riot of 1991 in which racial tensions led to the murder of a Jewish yeshiva student. Spiegelman had twenty-one New Yorker covers published, and submitted a number which were rejected for being too outrageous.  Within The New Yorker's pages, Spiegelman contributed strips such as a collaboration titled "In the Dumps" with children's illustrator Maurice Sendak and an obituary to Charles M. Schulz titled "Abstract Thought is a Warm Puppy". An essay he had published there on Jack Cole, the creator of Plastic Man, called "Forms Stretched to their Limits" was to form the basis for a book in 2001 about Cole called Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to their Limits.  The same year, Voyager Company published a CD-ROM version of Maus with extensive supplementary material called The Complete Maus, and Spiegelman illustrated a 1923 poem by Joseph Moncure March called The Wild Party. Spiegelman contributed the essay "Getting in Touch With My Inner Racist" in the September 1, 1997 issue of Mother Jones.  Spiegelman's influence and connections in New York cartooning circles drew the ire of political cartoonist Ted Rall in 1999. In an article titled "The King of Comix" in The Village Voice, Rall accused Spiegelman of the power to "make or break" a cartoonist's career in New York, while denigrating Spiegelman as "a guy with one great book in him". Cartoonist Danny Hellman responded by sending a forged email under Rall's name to thirty professionals; the prank escalated until Rall launched a defamation suit against Hellman for $1.5 million. Hellman published a "Legal Action Comics" benefit book to cover his legal costs, to which Spiegelman contributed a back-cover cartoon in which he relieves himself on a Rall-shaped urinal.  In 1997, Spiegelman had his first children's book published: Open Me... I'm a Dog, with a narrator who tries to convince its readers that it is a dog via pop-ups and an attached leash. From 2000 to 2003 Spiegelman and Mouly edited three issues of the children's comics anthology Little Lit, with contributions from Raw alumni and children's book authors and illustrators.

What did he do for the New Yorker?

OUT:
Spiegelman had twenty-one New Yorker covers published, and submitted a number which were rejected for being too outrageous.