Simone de Beauvoir Understood the Link Between Gender and Class Oppression

1968-Paris, France: Simone De Beauvoir in a head and shoulders shot.

“When Simone de Beauvoir died in 1986, Le Nouvel Observateur’s cover carried the headline ‘Women, You Owe Her Everything!’ This was a male editor’s audacious revision of philosopher Élisabeth Badinter’s article ‘Women, You Owe Her So Much!’ It is almost impossible to imagine men ever being told that they owe one particular person everything. The cult of Simone de Beauvoir and the accreted legends surrounding her two-part 1949 essay The Second Sex have developed in the context of a profoundly sexist world. Beauvoir always seems to be a few things all at once. She is an icon of sexual independence but also Jean-Paul Sartre’s faithful, betrayed, subservient girlfriend; a pioneering feminist but also an honorary male and enduring misogynist; a card-carrying leftist but also a lipstick-clad bourgeoise; a committed anti-colonialist and supporter of Algerian independence but also the embodiment of white Parisian chic, a cultural export. And on it goes. These patterns of reception give us a sense of how the West tries to make sense of the so-called ‘key’ choices women make. The all-too-eager contrary reading that is waiting just around the corner — independent yet promiscuous, polyamorous yet betrayed, accomplished yet childless — serve to remind women that the choices they make are ultimately not their own. The drastically opposing perceptions of Beauvoir are again keenly felt when it comes to recent calls to ‘cancel’ her, given the credible allegations that she groomed and seduced her underage female secondary-school students, while the Beauvoir commentator Margaret Simons is currently making a case for Beauvoir’s own history as a repeated victim-survivor of sexual violence. Some assessments of Beauvoir are more judicious than others, as we shall see. But one prevalent line of criticism is particularly unjust. … By the mid-1950s, for many women in the West, Beauvoir represented a certain freedom of lifestyle: to travel, to pursue pleasurable sex, and to follow one’s creative and intellectual passions. And since that time, the public has maintained an unhealthy interest in her love and sex lives. Wedged awkwardly alongside her status as an icon of freedom, she was first (and best) known to the world as Sartre’s partner (and often inaccurately referred to as his ‘wife’). Women were justifiably inspired by her independence as part of the Left Bank milieu, where she and Sartre collaborated and partied with prominent artists and writers. Beauvoir and Sartre lived separately, took other lovers, and kept their finances separate (though they covered for one another when required). Yet many biographers and commentators have contended that their open relationship suited only him and that his liaisons tortured her. …”
Jacobin
U. Chicago: Woman is a Rational Animal

The Castafiore Emerald – The Adventures of Tintin (1963)

“The Castafiore Emerald … is the twenty-first volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from July 1961 to September 1962 in Tintinmagazine. In contrast to the previous Tintin books, Hergé deliberately broke the adventure formula he had created: it is the only book in the series where the characters remain at Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock‘s family estate, and neither travel abroad nor confront dangerous criminals. The plot concerns the visit of the opera singer Bianca Castafioreand the subsequent theft of her emerald. Although The Castafiore Emerald received critical acclaim for its humorous depiction of its characters following a trail of red herrings, it failed to match the commercial success of previous volumes due to the experimental nature of its narrative. It was published as a book by Casterman shortly after its conclusion. … Tintin and Captain Haddock are walking through the countryside of Marlinspike when they come across a Romanicommunity camped in a garbage dump, and reunite a lost little girl named Miarka with her family there. The Romani explain that they are not allowed to camp anywhere else so Haddock invites them to the grounds of his estate, Marlinspike Hall. Haddock has been trying to get the local stonemason Arthur Bolt to fix a broken step at Marlinspike, but he is never available. Milanese opera diva Bianca Castafiore invites herself to Marlinspike Hall. Haddock, who dislikes her company, tries to leave before she arrives but trips on the broken step and sprains his ankle. The doctor puts his foot in a cast and imposes bed rest. Castafiore then arrives with her maid, Irma, and pianist, Igor Wagner. Castafiore presents Haddock with a pet parrot and fusses over him, to his great discomfort. The magazine Paris Flash claim that Haddock and Castafiore are engaged, on the basis of a misinterpreted interview with Professor Calculus. This results in an avalanche of congratulations from Haddock’s friends. A television crew come to Marlinspike Hall to interview Castafiore and a mysterious photographer, Gino, appears with the crew. Suddenly, Irma informs Castafiore that her jewels have been stolen, and Tintin suspects Gino who runs away during a temporary power cut. Castafiore, however, finds the jewel-case which she herself had misplaced. The next day, an angry Castafiore shows Tintin and Haddock a copy of the magazine Tempo di Roma with a picture of Castafiore taken at Marlinspike Hall without her permission, proving that Gino was only a paparazzo. …”
Wikipedia
The Castafiore Emerald
Ampton Reads: The Castafiore Emerald
amazon

National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam

Anti-war demonstrators gather opposite the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 21, 1967, to protest the Vietnam War. 

“The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which became the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, was a coalition of American antiwar activists formed in November 1966 to organize large demonstrations in opposition to the Vietnam War. The organization was informally known as ‘the Mobe’. Individuals and organizations associated either with the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam or the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam include Dr. Benjamin Spock and SANE, Sidney Peck, Eric Weinberger, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, James Bevel, Stew Albert, A. J. Muste, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Rennie Davis, Karen Wald, Fred Halstead, Bradford Lyttle, Charles Owen Rice, Vietnam Summer, Cornell Professor Robert Greenblatt (who became national coordinator of the Mobilization to End the War), and Tom Hayden. The November 8 Mobilization Committee formed in Cleveland, Ohio September 10–11, 1966. The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam emerged from the November 8th Mobilization Committee, and was cemented at the Cleveland Conference on November 26, 1966. The national director was Reverend James Bevel. … April 15, 1967, demonstrations. On April 15, 1967, the Spring Mobilization’s massive march against the Vietnam War from Central Park to the United Nations attracted hundreds of thousands of people, including Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, James Bevel, and Dr. Benjamin Spock, who marched and spoke at the event. During the event many draft cards were burned, according to the New York Times. Among the speakers at the simultaneous march in San Francisco were Coretta Scott King, Eldridge Cleaver, and Julian Bond.  … 1967 March on the Pentagon. The Mobe then planned and organized a large demonstration for Washington, D.C., on October 21, 1967. This demonstration was a rally at West Potomac Park near the Lincoln Memorial and a march to the Pentagon, where another rally would be held in a parking lot, followed by civil disobedience on the steps of the Pentagon itself. The action was known as the ‘March on the Pentagon.’ Hoping to attract young, educated college students, Mobe coordinator David Dellinger appointed Jerry Rubin, who led the large Vietnam Day Committee at the University of California, Berkeley, to organize the march. The initial D.C. rally, which was galvanized by a concert performance from counterculture folk singer Phil Ochs, drew approximately 70,000 participants at the Lincoln Memorial. …”
Wikipedia
FoundSF: The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, 1967
Daily News: The 1967 anti-Vietnam war protest in Washington, D.C.
YouTube: Anti war demonstrators storm Pentagon 1967, 15th November 1969: 500,000 people march on Washington

Review: ‘Catching Fire: The Anita Pallenberg Story’ Zeroes in on a Fashionable Force of Nature

“Who would’ve thought that one of the best rock documentaries in recent memory would be about someone who lived on the periphery of the tempest rather than inside the storm itself? Perhaps the view of the circus that was the Rolling Stones during the ’60s and ’70s is more authentic when seen from the margins and not center stage. At least that’s how it felt watching Catching Fire: The Anita Pallenberg Story, a potent, delicately rendered portrait of the famed model and actress who found herself twisting in the eye of a rock and roll hurricane. The ultimate ‘It Girl’ of the ’60s, Pallenberg was a stunning European model who created friction for the Rolling Stones when she left founder and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones for guitarist Keith Richards. She is also considered the penultimate ‘rock wife,’ whose relationship with Richards lasted longer than anyone could’ve predicted. But as this film convincingly contends, Pallenberg was more than an annotation in the band’s bio or a muse to the band’s principal songwriters. She was also a highly intelligent force of nature who starred in some of the best avant-garde films of the era and became an important fashion icon. Her sense of style still inspires the industry today; Kate Moss is interviewed in the film. Directed by Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill with a craftsmanship that’s equally loose and deceptively refined, the film is narrated by actress Scarlett Johansson, who reads excerpts of Pallenberg’s unpublished memoir. Johansson lends Pallenberg’s unsentimental words a spectral poeticism that floats through the film like a sparkling cloud. ‘I’ve been called a witch, a slut, and a murderer,’ Johansson reads in the opening voiceover, as we watch a striking blonde twirling in a cape, floppy hat, and pair of go-go boots. Born of German parents on April 6, 1942, in Rome (or perhaps Hamburg, Germany, according to her son Marlon), Pallenberg was sent to live with family in Germany while the war was raging. … Later in the film, Richards admits they were probably drawn to each other because they were both ‘war babies.’ A descendant of an artistic but orthodox family, Pallenberg rebelled by dropping out of high school in Germany and traveling to New York. There she quickly ascended from assisting artists in their studios to commercial modeling and hanging out with Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd. As her friends attest, Pallenberg’s zest for life was like a beacon of light for everyone in her circle. …”
Voice (Video)
LA Weekly – Review: ‘Catching Fire: The Anita Pallenberg Story’ Zeroes in on a Fashionable Force of Nature
W – Anita Pallenberg

Bringing up baby: Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg. 

Jimi & The Experience back in January 1969 on the Happening for Lulu Show

“In our haste, the lump of hash got away and slipped down the sink drainpipe. Panic!”: What happened when Jimi Hendrix created havoc and got banned by The BBC: “On January 2 1969, the Jimi Hendrix Experience flew into London from New York for a European tour that would start with a TV appearance on BBC1’s Happening For Lulu show. The band had spent virtually the whole of 1968 in America, and had played just one British show, at the Woburn Festival in July. It was something Hendrix felt a little embarrassed about, jokingly offering to buy everyone in the country a drink, according to one reporter who interviewed him on the afternoon before the show on January 4. The band seemed in good spirits, although with bassist Noel Redding in the process of forming a side project, Fat Mattress, there were rumours that he was not entirely happy in the Experience. It was known that he was feeling some frustration, having been a guitarist before joining them on bass. His commitment to the Experience had also been questioned during the recording of Electric Ladyland, which had been released in October 1968. He had failed to show up for some sessions, and Hendrix had played bass on a couple of tracks, although he had still been allocated his own track on the album, Little Miss Lover. But there was no disharmony evident as they chatted to journalists while waiting to perform at the BBC’s Television Centre in west London. Happening For Lulu was BBC1’s primetime Saturday Evening show, broadcast live before the six-o-clock news in black and white – BBC2 had started broadcasting in colour in 1967, but BBC1 would not follow suite until November 1969. Hendrix would play two songs, starting with Voodoo Child (Slight Return)from Electric Ladyland. The show’s producer, Stanley Dorfman, then wanted Hendrix to play Hey Joe, even though All Along The Watchtower had been a Top 5 hit just a month earlier. Hendrix was not happy, feeling that Hey Joe, which had been released over two years earlier, was something of a backward step that did not represent where he was now. But the producer insisted, perhaps believing that after such a long time away Hendrix needed to play something a family audience would recognise. There was also talk of Lulu joining in for a duet on the last verse, although no definite plan appeared to have been reached when the group rehearsed their spot earlier in the day and camera positions and angles were worked out. The band then retired to their dressing room and, to pass the time or maybe assuage Hendrix’ grumpiness at having to play Hey Joe, they decided to smoke the lump of hash someone had thoughtfully provided. …”
Louder Sound (Video) 4:52
YouTube: Jimi Hendrix at the BBC live [Colourised] 1969 8:37

The Beats’ Holy Grail: The Letter That Inspired On the Road

“The audience at the Beat Museum in San Francisco’s North Beach was small, and it fit a certain profile. About 20 people, mostly older—gray hair, jeans and open sandals—occupied a few rows of folding chairs in an upstairs gallery on a Saturday afternoon early this summer. At the front of the room, Cathy Cassady, 69, was narrating a PowerPoint presentation about her father, Neal. She was talking about his infamous ‘Joan Anderson Letter,’ one of the legendary lost artifacts of American literature. Lost, that is, until it wasn’t. It’s conventional wisdom that without Neal Cassady, there would not be a Beat Generation. He may not have been there at the inception point—the moment that Jack Kerouac, then a student at Columbia University, met Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs in 1942—but in every way that matters, he was the catalyst. ‘[F]ast, mad, confessional, completely serious,’ Kerouac called Cassady in a 1968 Paris Review interview; he is remembered as the inspiration for Dean Moriarty, the central character in Kerouac’s 1957 breakthrough novel On the Road. And yet, as true as this is, it is perhaps not true enough. Yes, Cassady was a muse of sorts. He appeared, in some form or another, in dozens of books: John Clellon Holmes’ Go, Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, as well as many works by Kerouac and Ginsberg. After the Beat days were over, he met Ken Kesey and drove the psychedelic school bus, Further, that carried the Merry Pranksters from San Francisco to New York. He was a road warrior, a nonstop talker, a speed freak who died in 1968 of exposure at age 41 in San Miguel Allende, Mexico. His life, or so legend tells us, was one of action, not thought. At the same time, Cassady also was a literary influence who pushed Kerouac toward spontaneous prose. The author had struggled to write On the Road for more than two years when he received a letter from Cassady that changed how he thought. ‘I got the flash from his style,’ Kerouac told the Paris Review, recalling ‘the greatest piece of writing I ever saw’: thousands of words describing a star-crossed romance with a woman named Joan Anderson in 1940s Denver, typed single-spaced on both sides of several pages, with sporadic handwritten edits and interjections. ‘Neal and I called it, for convenience, the Joan Anderson Letter,’ Kerouac told the Paris Review, adding that the letter had ended up with ‘a guy called Gerd Stern who lived on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, in 1955, and this fellow lost the letter: overboard, I presume.’ …”
LitHub
The Lost Letter: The Joan Anderson Letter Revealed

Pages of Neal Cassady’s “Joan Anderson Letter.”

27 Important Facts Everyone Should Know About The Black Panthers

“The Black Panther Party was founded 50 years ago ― and still, many misconceptions about its revolutionary work run rampant. ‘The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,’ a documentary by Stanley Nelson which aired on PBS Tuesday, shined a necessary light on the contributions, convictions and struggles of members in the party. Nelson’s informative film took a deep dive into discussing the truth behind the Black Panthers and underscored the heavy institutional backlash the liberation movement received from police and the government. From the group’s radical inception in 1966 to its dissolve in 1982, here are a few important things you must know to better understand the Black Panthers. 1. The Black Panthers’ central guiding principle was an ‘undying love for the people.’ The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, otherwise known as the Black Panther Party (BPP), was established in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The two leading revolutionary men created the national organization as a way to collectively combat white oppression. After constantly seeing black people suffer from the torturous practices of police officers around the nation, Newton and Seale helped to form the pioneering black liberation group to help build community and confront corrupt systems of power. 2. The Black Panthers outlined their goals in a 10-point program. The Black Panthers established a unified platform and their goals for the party were outlined in a 10-point plan that included demands for freedom, land, housing, employment and education, among other important objectives. 3. Black Panthers monitored the behavior of the police in black communities. In 1966, police violence ran rampant in Los Angeles and the need to protect black men and women from state-sanctioned violence was crucial. Armed Black Panther members would show up during police arrests of black men and women, stand at a legal distance and surveil their interactions. It was ‘to make sure there was no brutality,’ Newton said in archival footage, as shown in the documentary. Both Black Panther members and officers would stand facing one another armed with guns, an act that agreed with the open carry law in California at the time. These confrontations, in many ways, allowed the Panthers to protect their communities and police the police. …”
HuffPost

‘Dr. Strangelove’ explained: The truth behind Stanley Kubrick’s comedy ending

“The 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) consistently ranks among the greatest comedy films of all time. I mean, what couid be funnier than an atomic device capable of blowing up the entire planet and everyone on it? That was what writer-director Stanley Kubrick and writing collaborator Terry Southern found when attempting to adapt Peter George’s novel Red Alert into a serious Cold War drama film. There was no getting around it: only human beings would be ridiculous enough to invent something deliberately intended to end the existence of their species. The subject matter may be dark, but it’s ripe for razor-sharp comic satire. And so, Kubrick and Southern set about writing multiple characters into their script especially for the finest comic actor of the moment, Peter Sellers. Kubrick had worked with Sellers on his previous film, the first screen adaptation of Lolita, and Dr Strangelove was developed as a project specifically with the actor in mind. Never are Sellers’ comic talents more apparent than in the film’s pitch-black ending, which still leaves audiences perplexed today. After Soviet defences failed to stop one partially damaged US B52 bomber jet because it was flying below their radar signals and had lost contact with the American command post trying to recall it, the plane dropped a nuclear bomb on Russian soil. Back at The Pentagon, all hell breaks loose. Why is everyone so upset that the bomb was dropped in Dr Strangelove? Earlier in the film, the Russian ambassador reveals to everyone in the War Room that the Soviet Union has created a nuclear ‘doomsday device’, capable of blowing up the entire world. The device would be detonated automatically the moment any nuclear attack is launched against the Soviet Union, according to algorithms pre-programmed onto a computer. The ‘doomsday device’ of the movie satirises the real-life Cold War principle of mutually assured destruction (fittingly abbreviated to the acronym MAD). It takes this principle to its logical conclusion, embodied in a single weapon of preposterously destructive proportions. Despite scepticism from the American military chiefs in the film about the existence of such a device, their nuclear weapons expert, the ex-Nazi Dr Strangelove, confirms the likelihood of its creation. And so, with one of the US bombers able to hit a Soviet target with a nuclear missile, the entire American and Russian military executives recognise the prospect of an impending apocalypse. …”
FAROUT (Video)
Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb Introduction (Beyond the Bay)
YouTube: Dr. Strangelove trailer
1960s: Days of Rage – Dr. Strangelove – Stanley Kubrick  (Sep. 2017)

Stanley Kubrick

Bootleg recording

The first popular rock bootleg, Bob Dylan‘s Great White Wonder, released in July 1969

“A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. Making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging. Recordings may be copied and traded among fans without financial exchange, but some bootleggers have sold recordings for profit, sometimes by adding professional-quality sound engineering and packaging to the raw material. Bootlegs usually consist of unreleased studio recordings, live performances or interviews without the quality control of official releases. Bootlegs reached new popularity with Bob Dylan‘s Great White Wonder, a compilation of studio outtakes and demos released in 1969 using low-priority pressing plants. The following year, the Rolling Stones‘ Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be, an audience recording of a late 1969 show, received a positive review in Rolling Stone. Subsequent bootlegs became more sophisticated in packaging, particularly the Trademark of Quality label with William Stout‘s cover artwork. .. . Since the bootleggers could not commercially print a sleeve, due to it attracting too much attention from recording companies, the LP was issued in a plain white cover with Great White Wonder rubber stamped on it. Subsequently, Dylan became one of the most popular artists to be bootlegged with numerous releases. When the Rolling Stones announced their 1969 American tour, their first in the U.S. for several years, an enterprising bootlegger known as ‘Dub’ decided to record some of the shows. He purchased a Sennheiser 805 ‘shotgun’ microphoneand a Uher 4000 reel to reel tape recorder specifically for recording the performances, smuggling them into the venues. The resulting bootleg, Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be, was released shortly before Christmas 1969, mere weeks after the tour had finished, and in January 1970 received a rave review in Rolling Stone, who described the sound quality as ‘superb, full of presence, picking up drums, bass, both guitars and the vocals beautifully … it is the ultimate Rolling Stones album’. … The large followings of rock artists created a lucrative market for the mass production of unofficial recordings on vinyl, as it became evident that more and more fans were willing to purchase them. In addition, the huge crowds which turned up to these concerts made the effective policing of the audience for the presence of covert recording equipment difficult. Led Zeppelin quickly became a popular target for bootleggers on the strength and frequency of their live concerts; Live on Blueberry Hill, recorded at the LA Forum in 1970, was sufficiently successful to incur the wrath of manager Peter Grant. …”
W – Bootleg recording
A History of Music Bootlegs, Told Through 25 of the Most Significant Recordings
Bootleg Records – Live, Unreleased, and ROIR Albums
Grateful Dead Bootlegs – The 60s and 70s
amazon: Bootleg: The Rise & Fall of the Secret Recording History
YouTube: The History of Record Bootlegs in the 70’s

Grateful Dead Bootlegs – The 60s and 70s

Robert Nighthawk / Houston Stackhouse – Masters Of Modern Blues

“After an absence of several years, playing mostly juke joints in the south, Nighthawk returned to Chicago and attempted to reestablish himself on the local blues scene. Competition was tough for Nighthawk who didn’t play in the popular styles of the day. Nighthawk did find some club work and supplemented this by playing at the Maxwell Street open air market on Sunday mornings during the warm months. Johnny Young and John Wrencher often backed Nighthawk while playing on Maxwell Street. Nighthawk related his dissatisfaction with Chicago to writer Don Kent: ‘the only work he could get was one-nighters in small bars, hustling on Maxwell Street and a job as a sideman on one Chess session. He told me he frankly preferred the South. It was cheaper, apt to be less violent than the City, and he was better known.’ Nighthawk benefited somewhat from the blues resurgence of the 1960’s and was written up and recorded by blues fans and scholars. In fact 1964 was his busiest year on record in some time. He also was filmed in a documentary about Maxwell St. called ‘And This Is Free’ as well as recording for the Chess, Decca and Testament labels. Pete Welding had formed Testament records in the early 1960’s as one of the handful of pioneering labels started by blues enthusiasts. Of the label, Welding noted: I started Testament Records in 1963 to issue some of the recordings of blues and black folksong I had been making over the previous four or five years. During that time I had recorded, first in my hometown of Philadelphia and then in Chicago where I moved at the beginning of 1962, a fair number of artists whose music, I felt, deserved to be heard. Having a good-paying job at the time, I didn’t have to worry overmuch about the records paying for themselves, so I put out what I thought was interesting and worthwhile. Come to that, Testament never had any commercial pressures behind its releases, so these were as irregular as they were unusual and, I hope, valuable in documenting a number of the music’s overlooked genres and performers. some unreleased sessions. ‘He recorded Nighthawk with his partners Johnny Young and John Wrencher on October 14, 1964 cutting seven sides. The chemistry between the three is evident but it was Nighthawk, above all, who commands attention with his remarkable guitar work and his powerful but understated singing.’ …”
Sunday Blues
Discogs: Robert Nighthawk / Houston Stackhouse – Masters Of Modern Blues (Video)

Fall of Saigon

A CIA officer helps evacuees up a ladder onto an Air America Bell 204/205 helicopter at 22 Gia Long Street 29 April 1975.

“The fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by North Vietnam on 30 April 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the collapse of the South Vietnamese state, leading to a transition periodand the formal reunification of Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under communist rule on 2 July 1976. The People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong, under the command of General Văn Tiến Dũng, began their final attack on Saigon on 29 April 1975, with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces commanded by General Nguyễn Văn Toàn suffering a heavy artillery bombardment. By the afternoon of the next day, the PAVN and the Viet Cong had occupied the important points of the city and raised their flag over the South Vietnamese presidential palace. The capture of the city was preceded by Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of almost all American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians who had been associated with the Republic of Vietnam regime. A few Americans chose not to be evacuated. United States ground combat units had left South Vietnam more than two years prior to the fall of Saigon and were not available to assist with either the defense of Saigon or the evacuation. The evacuation was the largest helicopter evacuation in history. … On 3 July 1976, the National Assembly of the unified Vietnam renamed Saigon in honor of Hồ Chí Minh, the late Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Vietnam and founder of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). … The rapidity with which the South Vietnamese position collapsed in 1975 was surprising to most American and South Vietnamese observers, and probably to the North Vietnamese and their allies as well. For instance, a memo prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Army Intelligence, published on 5 March, indicated that South Vietnam could hold out through the current dry season—i.e., at least until 1976. These predictions proved to be grievously in error. Even as that memo was being released, General Dũng was preparing a major offensive in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, which began on 10 March and led to the capture of Buôn Ma Thuột. The ARVN began a disorderly and costly retreat, hoping to redeploy its forces and hold the southern part of South Vietnam, south of the 13th parallel. … Along with International Workers’ Day on 1 May, most people take the day off work and there are public celebrations. Among most overseas Vietnamese, the week of 30 April is referred to as ‘Black April’ and it is also commemorated as a time of lamentation for the fall of Saigon and South Vietnam as a whole. …”
W – Fall of Saigon
Guardian – Forty years on from the fall of Saigon: witnessing the end of the Vietnam war (2015)
W – Vietnamese boat people
YouTube: The ‘Fall of Saigon’ in 1975, how the news reported it, The Fall of Saigon: 40 years later, Reliving the fall of Saigon with Vietnam vets and journalists, The Fall of Saigon, April 30, 1975

Local residents crowd North Vietnamese tanks taking position near the presidential palace in Saigon, following a last ditch battle on April 30 1975.

‘Taxi’: Andy Warhol’s cruel eulogy for Edie Sedgwick

“Edie Sedgwick is remembered as Andy Warhol’s ultimate Superstar. With her distinctive eye makeup, her pixie cut and her supreme beauty, she’s one of those faces that defined an era. But her story was a tragic one as the scene that she symbolised was also the scene that killed her. As she fell deep into addiction and became hooked on the drugs that circled Warhol’s Factory, you would have thought that her creator and friend would have been there. But really, Warhol watched Sedgwick’s death with cruel wonder. When Warhol met Sedgwick, their friendship burned bright and fast as a kind of mutual obsession. Sedgwick was looking to escape her abusive, well-to-do roots and connect with the art scene. Warhol, as always, was looking for money and fame. It’s no secret that the artist was a social climber. That was a fact that he’d happily admit. So when he met the troubled child of a wealthy family, he stuck tight to the ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’. For a few years, Sedgwick was his muse, appearing in several of his films, joining him for interviews and ruling as the Queen over his Factory kingdom. But as Sedgwick began to stretch out her wings when she met Bob Dylan, and when her addiction was starting to take hold of her head, health and bank account, the artist didn’t just abandon her but seemed to kick her to the curb with incredible cruelty. ‘Do you think Edie will let us film her when she commits suicide?’ Warhol said. In 1971, Sedgwick did die but Warhol was nowhere to be seen. After being pushed out of his circle and replaced by a new blonde fascination in the form of Nico, the superstar succumbed to her addictions. The world still mourns her, but it seems that Warhol never did, as even his written memorial for his supposed muse is callous. In his book, The Philosophy Of Andy Warhol, one cryptic chapter is described as ‘The Fall And Rise Of My Favourite Sixties Girl’. Even that feels odd. Either Warhol is deeming Sedgwick’s entire life as a ‘fall’, and merely her death as her ‘rise’, or he’s purposefully ignoring her fall into and struggles with addiction. ‘Favourite Sixties Girl’ also doesn’t seem to fit, considering the tone of the chapter. Telling the story of Taxi’, ‘a confused, beautiful debutante’, with a ‘poignantly vacant, vulnerable quality that made her a reflection of everybody’s private fantasies.’ From the first paragraph, Warhol seems to make it clear that his fascination with Sedgwick wasn’t based on who she was but on who he could mould her to be. He presents her as a void or a canvas, writing, ‘Taxi could be anything you wanted her to be – a little girl, a woman, intelligent, dumb, rich, poor – anything. She was a wonderful, beautiful blank. The mystique to end all mystiques.’ …”
FAROUT (Video)

Kwame Nkrumah today

Arrival of President Kwama Nkrumah, to the Non-Alignment Movement conference, Belgrade 1961.

“One of the most important dates for the Ghanaian left is February 24, 1966, the day the country’s first president Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown. At this year’s commemoration, the Socialist Movement of Ghana organized an event around the reissuing of a book, The Great Deception. Published by the Socialist Forum of Ghana, it documents the role of the CIA in the overthrow of Ghana’s first president. This release is just one in a long line of recent books, articles, and documents that seek to turn our attention to that historic moment of triumph and then tragedy. The euphoria of independence, and the hopes for new beginnings were immediately supplanted by despair after the interests of external powers destabilized the nascent state. Susan Williams’s White Malice, reviewed in these pages, touches on this. So too does a new article from Declassified UK highlighting Britain’s role in Nkrumah’s overthrow.  But why this moment? And what lessons should we take to make sense of the world we live in today? In an essay he published on the centenary of Nkrumah’s birth, Yao Graham, the coordinator of the pan-African policy and advocacy organization Third World Network Africa, and the chairperson of this year’s Nkrumah commemoration wrote: One of the key lessons from Ghana’s development experience under Nkrumah is linked directly to his commitment to a pan-African solution to the challenges of under-development. Nkrumah’s works are replete with warnings about the limits of what small, ‘balkanized’ African countries can do on their own. Faced with the absence of a larger political-economic unit he sought to transform the small economy and market of Ghana into an industrialized economy at a fast pace. The post-Cold War global economic framework has made the regional and continental even more key in any serious African project of economic transformation.  I spoke to Yao Graham to make sense of the fight to use Nkrumah in Ghanaian domestic politics, and better understand how real the New Cold War in Africa is, and how it might impact Africa’s development trajectory. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.  …”
Africa Is a Country
Africa Is a Country: Archiving pan-Africanism
W – Kwama Nkrumah

Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Nkrumah, and Shirley Graham DuBois 1967.

Gondor

“Gondor is a fictional kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien‘s writings, described as the greatest realm of Men in the west of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. The third volume of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, is largely concerned with the events in Gondor during the War of the Ring and with the restoration of the realm afterward. The history of the kingdom is outlined in the appendices of the book. Gondor was founded by the brothers Isildur and Anárion, exiles from the downfallen island kingdom of Númenor. Along with Arnor in the north, Gondor, the South-kingdom, served as a last stronghold of the Men of the West. After an early period of growth, Gondor gradually declined as the Third Age progressed, being continually weakened by internal strife and conflict with the allies of the Dark Lord Sauron. By the time of the War of the Ring, the throne of Gondor is empty, though its principalities and fiefdoms still pay deference to the absent king by showing their loyalty to the Stewards of Gondor. The kingdom’s ascendancy was restored only with Sauron’s final defeat and the crowning of Aragorn as king. Based upon early conceptions, the history and geography of Gondor were developed in stages as Tolkien extended his legendarium while writing The Lord of the Rings. Critics have noted the contrast between the cultured but lifeless Stewards of Gondor, and the simple but vigorous leaders of the Kingdom of Rohan, modelled on Tolkien’s favoured Anglo-Saxons. Scholars have noted parallels between Gondor and the Normans, Ancient Rome, the Vikings, the Goths, the Langobards, and the Byzantine Empire. … Gondor’s geography is illustrated in the maps for The Lord of the Rings made by Christopher Tolkien on the basis of his father’s sketches, and geographical accounts in The Rivers and Beacon-Hills of Gondor, Cirion and Eorl, and The Lord of the Rings. Gondor lies in the west of Middle-earth, on the northern shores of Anfalas and the Bay of Belfalas with the great port of Pelargir near the river Anduin’s delta in the fertile and populous region of Lebennin, stretching up to the White Mountains (Sindarin: Ered Nimrais, ‘Mountains of White Horns’). Near the mouths of Anduin was the island of Tolfalas. To the north-west of Gondor lies Arnor; to the north, Gondor is bordered by Wilderland and Rohan; to the north-east, by Rhûn; to the east, across the great river Anduin and the province of Ithilien, by Mordor; to the south, by the deserts of northern Harad. To the west lies the Great Sea. …”
W – Gondor

The Ghost of the 1968 Antiwar Movement Has Returned

“At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, anti-Vietnam War protesters clashed with police officers — whose brutal role in the confrontation was later described by a federal commission as a ‘police riot‘ — hijacking the focus of the convention. Those young demonstrators had come of age seeing continual — and effective — protests during the civil rights movement and national mourning after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A year earlier King staked out his opposition to the war, saying that while he wasn’t attempting ‘to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue,’ he wanted to underscore his belief ‘that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube.’ He said he was ‘compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and attack it as such.’ This was a generation primed for protest, with moral conviction as the foundation of its outrage about the Vietnam War — the first television war, one in which Americans could see the horrors of war, almost in real time — and the draft that saw around two million Americans conscripted during the era. The movement against it began mostly on college campuses and grew. Of course, semesters end, and students go home for the summer. But their opposition to the war didn’t end with the academic year. In the months leading up to the ’68 Democratic convention, which took place in August, organizers planned a major protest, intended to be held regardless of whether it was allowed, drawing students from around the country. Before the convention, Rennie Davis, one of the organizers, told The New York Times, ‘No denial of a permit is going to prevent the tens of thousands of people who are coming to Chicago from expressing their convictions on these issues.’ This is all playing out again. … As in 1968, the semester will soon end, and those students will leave for the summer, allowing more time and energy for their efforts to be focused on the convention in Chicago in August. Antiwar groups are already planning large protests at the convention. Hatem Abudayyeh of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network recently told The Chicago Tribune: ‘We’ll be marching with or without permits. This D.N.C. is the most important one since 1968, also in Chicago, when Vietnam War protesters and the Black liberation movement organized mass demonstrations that were violently repressed.’ …”
NY Times: Opinion | Charles M. Blow
LA TimesFrom the Archives: 1967 antiwar protest turns violent

Guerrilla Warfare – Che Guevara (1961)

“Guerrilla Warfare (Spanish: La Guerra de Guerrillas) is a military handbook written by Marxist–Leninist revolutionary Che Guevara. Published in 1961 following the Cuban Revolution, it became a reference for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. The book draws upon Guevara’s personal experience as a guerrilla soldier during the Cuban Revolution, generalizing for readers who would undertake guerrilla warfare in their own countries. The book identifies reasons for, prerequisites, and lessons of guerrilla warfare. The principal reason to conduct guerrilla warfare within a country is because all peaceful and legal means of recourse have been exhausted. The most important prerequisite for conducting guerrilla warfare in a country is the popular support of its people for the guerrilla army. Guevara asserted that the success of the Cuban Revolution provided three lessons: popular forces can win a war against a regular army, guerrillas can create their own favorable conditions (not needing to wait for ideal conditions to take shape), and in the underdeveloped parts of the Americas, the basic place of operation for a guerrilla army is the countryside. Guerrilla Warfare is a manual for left-wing insurgency which draws upon Guevara’s experience in the Cuban Revolution. It elaborates the foco theory (foquismo) of revolution in which the guerrilla operates as a vanguard, taking initiative to make revolution without waiting for ideal conditions to present themselves. Although the text has been compared to Mao Zedong’s On Guerrilla Warfare, Guevara claimed not to have read Mao’s book. Guerrilla Warfare was influenced by two books from the Spanish Civil War: Nuevas Guerras and Medicina contra invasión. South African revolutionaries read the work in the early 1960s; former Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils noted that the apartheid regime’s police questioned his late wife about an order of ‘Che Guevara’s book on guerrilla warfare.’ … While the book was intended for other revolutionary movements in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, it was also studied by counter-revolutionary military schools. With the success of Che’s military campaign in Cuba and the spread of communism in Latin America, U.S. military activity increased throughout the region. The U.S. military adopted some of Che’s own tactics in order to better combat guerrilla fighters in the jungle. This entailed U.S. military training throughout Latin America in order to counteract the spreading of guerrilla movements throughout the region (for historical context on United States foreign policy in Latin America, see the Good Neighbor policy). Che faced the results of this training in his disastrous Bolivian Campaign, in which most of the ELN rebels led by him were killed and Che himself was executed. …”
Wikipedia
Che Guevara – Guerrilla warfare: A method

Guevara in the Congo (Zaire)

Lou Harrison: La Koro Sutro

Lou Harrison playing one of his homemade instruments.

“Can you ever have too much gamelan? Not with Lou. Lou Harrison’s La Koro Sutro isn’t exactly what you expect. Known for his wonderfully imaginative blend of Asian and Baroque styles, the late/great Lou Harrison much like the more known minimalists — Steve Reich, Terry Riley, etc. — used a profound interest in ‘eastern’ music as a gateway to explore the edges of western-based ideas by trying to forgo imitation for new creation. La Koro Sutro, a collection of three compositions ‘La Koro Sutro’, ‘Varied Trio’, and ‘Suite For Violin and American Gamelan’ recorded in 1987 at Herz Hall by the Chamber Chorus Of The University Of California At Berkeley, and with esteemed colleagues at the same school, brought to life that heavenly combination of the little known with the universally profound, found only through self-examination. Surprising to me, outside of a few classical circles, Lou Harrison isn’t a name that is shared by many this days. It’s hard to understand why. Openly melodic, forgoing dissonance and harmony, Lou’s aim were for ideas that are instantly getable. Somehow, some way, Lou seemed like he missed the greater audience he was destined for. His own destiny wouldn’t seem to speak to this at first. Born in Portland, Oregon but raised in the Bay area after the first World War, Lou from a young age took in all the melange of musical styles he heard on the radio in California. When he was old enough to do so he moved to LA where he began his career not as a composer but as a dancer and sometimes accompanist. As he discovered musical ideas from Europe — serialism, musique concrete, etc. — and began taking compositional lessons from none other than the creator such ideas, Arnold Schoenberg. As he grew on his own as a composer early vastly more studied works, gave way to other ideas. Growing up as a young gay man, in the ‘40s and ‘50s in an increasingly hostile cis male-dominated environment had pushed him to try to out-muscle the next composer. Even as he’d count as great experimental composers like John Cage, Henry Cowell, and Aaron Copland as friends, he knew he had music that had a different outlook. After he moved to New York to become a music writer and help champion composers like Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse he turned back into his own work. A series of personal failures in New York led him to realize that going back home might just be better for him in the long run. He’d come back to teach where he could be in a better place. …”
Fond/Sound (Video)
The Gamelan Works of Lou Harrison (Video)
Sounds and Sawdust: The Instrumental Love Affair of Lou Harrison and Bill Corvig (Video)
Discogs (Video)
W – Lou Harrison
YouTube: Pacifika Rondo (1963), Suite for Violin and American Gamelan, Gending Pak Chokro (1976)

My First Antiwar Protest

Vietnam War protesters in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park in April 1967.

“Fifty years ago this spring, on April 15, 1967, a cold, damp Saturday morning, I walked from a friend’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I’d spent the previous night, toward the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. I was 16, a junior in high school from a small town in eastern Connecticut, and eager to join my first antiwar protest, which had been organized by something called the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam (or ‘Mobe’ for short), a recently assembled coalition of radical, pacifist and student groups. This was, in effect, my introduction to ‘the Sixties,’ as well as to antiwar protest, for the decade had as yet barely touched rural Connecticut. Although this would change in another year or so, in my hometown in the spring of 1967 teenage boys still kept their hair short, girls wore skirts below the knees (both per school requirements), nobody had bell-bottoms, and tie-dye was an unknown concept. And, more important, nobody in my high school or community was vocally opposed to the Vietnam War — except, it seemed, me (my parents had their doubts, but kept them to themselves). Which, up to that Saturday morning, left me feeling a bit lonely in my growing conviction that the war represented a moral disaster and a stain on the national honor. But when I reached the Sheep Meadow, suddenly I found I was lonely no longer. I knew that public protest against the war had been growing for several years, but such things took place in distant and inaccessible locales like Madison, Wis., and Berkeley, Calif., events that received, at best, grudging and sour attention from the newspapers and magazines available to me in the high school library. One exception that caught my eye had taken place two years before, on April 17, 1965, an antiwar gathering in Washington, D.C., organized by a small campus radical group called Students for a Democratic Society. Apparently much to the surprise of the organizers, some 15,000 or so mostly young antiwar protesters showed up that spring day, which was considered a huge turnout by then prevailing standards. The New York Times put the story of the march on its front page the following day, complete with a picture of neatly dressed students picketing the White House. … Well, O.K., they probably didn’t. But then neither did President Lyndon B. Johnson or Gen. William C. Westmoreland, as they oversaw the dispatch of ever greater numbers of young American soldiers to fight in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1967, with a corresponding sixfold spike in American deaths (1,928 would die in 1965; 11,363 two years later). …”
NY Times
April 15, 1967: Massive Anti-Vietnam War Demonstrations
The Nation: The Regrets of a Former Anti-War Protester

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to protesters outside the United Nations in April 1967.

Theatre of Cruelty

“The Theatre of Cruelty (French: Théâtre de la Cruauté, also Théâtre cruel) is a form of theatre conceptualised by Antonin Artaud. Artaud, who was briefly a member of the surrealist movement, outlined his theories in a series of essays and letters, which were collected as The Theatre and Its Double. The Theatre of Cruelty can be seen as a break from traditional Western theatre and a means by which artists assault the senses of the audience. Artaud’s works have been highly influential on artists including Jean Genet, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, and Romeo Castellucci. Antonin Artaud was well known as an actor, playwright, and essayist who worked in both theatre and cinema. He was briefly a member of the surrealist movement in Paris from 1924 to 1926, before his ‘radical independence and his uncontrollable personality, perpetually in revolt, brought about his excommunication by André Breton.’ Led by André Breton, the surrealist movement argued that the unconscious mind is a source of artistic truth and the artistic works associated with the movement looked to reveal the mind’s inner workings. Though only momentarily an official member of the group, he was associated with its members throughout his life time and the movement’s theories shaped Artaud’s development of the Theatre of Cruelty. … According to scholar Pericles Lewis, the influences of the Theatre of Cruelty can most clearly be seen in the works of Jean Genet, a post World War II playwright. His plays featured ritualized murder and systemic oppression in order to show the negative consequences and suffering caused by political subjugation. In the 1960s, a number of directors began to incorporate Artaud’s theories and staging practices in their work, including Jerzy Grotowski at the Polish Laboratory Theatre. In England, famed theatre director Peter Brook experimented with the Theatre of Cruelty in a series of workshops at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). These experiments are reflected in his direction and staging of RSC’s lauded 1966 production of Marat/Sade, a play with music by Peter Weiss. Marat/Sade uses dramatic devices developed by both Artaud and Brecht to depict class struggle and human suffering in the midst of changing social structures. … In 2011, a group of geography and sociology professors used the Theatre of Cruelty as a conceptual, experience-based technique to explore the agrarian struggle and deforestation in the Amazon Basin. …”
Wikipedia
LA Review of Books: Theaters of Cruelty
#Pratchat70 Notes and Errata
YouTube: Antonin Artaud and the Theater of Cruelty: Crash Course Theater #43

Evoking Emotions in the Sound Design of Theatre of Cruelty

Orson Welles Cinema

Globe Sunday magazine showing the Orson Welles Cinema.

“The Orson Welles Cinema was a movie theater at 1001 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts that operated from 1969 to 1986. Showcasing independents, foreign films and revivals, it became a focal point of the Boston-Cambridge film community. Originally the Esquire Theater in the early 1960s, it became the Orson Welles Cinema under its next owner, folk musician Dean Gitter. It was programmed by then-Harvard Law student Peter Jaszi. The Orson Welles Cinema opened under that name on April 8, 1969 with Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert, Orson Welles’ The Immortal Story and a midnight movie, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. On September 29, 1970, the cinema was raided by Massachusetts State Police for showing Oh! Calcutta! on video. Gitter, Jaszi, and Ted Uzzle, among others, were arrested, and spent the night in the Cambridge jail. The case would later be literally laughed out of court. … In 1972–73, the Orson Welles Cinema expanded with two smaller screening rooms in addition to the main 400-seat auditorium. Jackson, who worked with Gary Graver and Welles on The Other Side of the Wind, succeeded in getting Welles to visit the cinema named in his honor. Welles and his cameraman Graver used the occasion—the premiere of F For Fake on January 7, 1977—to shoot footage inside the large auditorium for their documentary Filming Othello (1978). …  Ancillary operations included the Orson Welles Film School, a photo shop, a record store, a bookstore and The Restaurant at the Orson Welles, aka the Orson Welles Restaurant. At first, it was famous for requiring strangers sitting at the same table to order the same meal. … Film personalities associated with the Orson Welles Cinema include the first house manager, future actor Tommy Lee Jones, during the spring of his senior year at nearby Harvard University. Producer-screenwriter John Semper (Class Act, Spider-Man) was an employee, as was the Brazilian film composer Pancho Sáenz, future writer-director Martha Pinson and future sound editor David E. Stone. The career of writer-producer Fred Barron began in 1975 when he used the history of Cambridge’s The Real Paper as the basis for a screenplay, Between the Lines. When Joan Micklin Silver brought Hester Street (1975) to the Welles Cinema, she was joined at the Welles Restaurant by Barron and others. When someone asked what she would direct next, she answered that she was looking at screenplays. Barron stood up, left the restaurant and returned with his screenplay. …”
Wikipedia
Boston Globe: Remembering the Orson Welles Cinema, 50 years later
The Crimson – The Movies in Cambridge: Some Thoughts, Some History (April 1974)
YouTube: The Orson Welles Complex – A Documentary Film

Ad in The Real Paper (June 13, 1973). Note the premiere of Ilene H. Lang’s short about famed Cambridge photographer Elsa Dorfman, At Home, Elsa Dorfman (1973), with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky.

1960 World Series – “The Mazeroski Moment”

October 1960; Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: No. 9 of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Bill Mazeroski, has just hit a pitch that is heading for the trees beyond the left field wall. It is an historic home run, occurring in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7, a walk-off home run that wins the World Series, beating the favored NY Yankees.

“It was the ultimate in baseball – the final, showdown Game 7 of a World Series. The place was Forbes Field, a classic baseball park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was October 13th, 1960, that time of year when the last warm days of summer begin to meet crisper fall afternoons. Excitement was already in the air generally, both in Pittsburgh and throughout the nation, as a presidential election race was also underway and a young man named John F. Kennedy was offering the country something new. Later that evening, in fact, Kennedy and his Republican opponent, vice president Richard Nixon, would debate on national television for the third time. But the business at hand in Pittsburgh that afternoon wasn’t politics; it was baseball. The New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates were tied in this World Series, each having won 3 games. Now, in the bottom of the ninth inning of their showdown Game 7, the score was tied, 9-to-9, as the numerals on the Forbes Field hand-operated scoreboard would reflect. However, a magical moment was about to unfold – ‘the Mazeroski moment’ – shown above and named for Pirate second baseman, Bill Mazeroski, No. 9, who was then batting. ‘Maz,’ as he was called, had just hit a baseball that would leave the confines of Forbes Field. The clutch, game-winning home run marked Mazeroski in that instant — and for the ages — as a hero for hitting one of the most famous home runs in baseball history. In fact, the Mazeroski blast still stands today as the only World Series-winning walk-off home run in a game 7. On some versions of the above photo, just off and above the upper right-hand corner of the scoreboard clock, the feint outlines of the baseball in flight can be seen. It was on a path to clear the left field wall where Yankee player, Yogi Berra, seen distantly in the outfield, is already reacting. (A colorized painting of this same scene in included at the very bottom of this story). Mazeroski’s home run was that dream heroic moment that every kid who loves baseball fantasizes about. A bottom-of-the ninth, game-winning home run – and more. But this was much more than your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill, bottom-of-the-ninth-inning home run since it came in the World Series. And yet it was even more than that – a home run of ‘David-vs.-Goliath’ proportion, in fact, since it had toppled the powerhouse New York Yankees – make that the “dynasty” Yankees, a team filled with superstars such as Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and others. ..”
The Pop History Dig
W – 1960 World Series
YouTube: The Greatest Homerun Ever: Bill Mazeroski 1960 Walkoff Homerun

Univ. of Pittsburgh students cheering wildly from atop Cathedral of Learning on school’s campus as they look down on Forbes Field where the Pittsburgh Pirates are winning their first World Series in 35 yrs. against the NY Yankees.

Various – Fame Northern Soul

“Mention Southern Soul, and there are certain record labels that spring to mind, including Stax, Hi Records and Fame Records. It’s no exaggeration to say that these three labels are synonymous with Southern Soul. Together they released some of the greatest music in the history of Southern Soul. Indeed, the artists who walked through the doors of Stax, Hi and Fame Records reads like a who’s who of Southern Soul. However, for far too long, Southern Soul has been overlooked, and  instead, record labels have focused on labels like Philadelphia International Records and Motown. Thankfully, that is no longer the case as reissue labels like Kent Soul, a subsidiary of Ace Records, are releasing a series of lovingly compiled compilations of music released by Fame Records. The most recent compilation is Fame Northern Soul. The story starts during late fifties when Rick Hall, Tom Stafford and Billy Sherill founded a record label, and built their first studio above the City Drug Store in Florence, Alabama. However, by the early sixties, this nascent partnership would split-up, resulting in Tom Stafford and Rick Hall needing a new studio. They decided to move to what had been a tobacco warehouse in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. As if by magic, Rick Hall soon recorded what would be his first hit single, Arthur Alexander’s You Better Move On. Wisely, he decided to invest the profit in a better studio, and moved to their current location Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The first hit single Rick Hall recorded in his new studio was Jimmy Hughes’ Steal Away. Little did Rick Hall know it back then, but soon his new studio would see artists coming from far and wide to record at Fame. After Rick’ Halls success with Jimmy Hughes, word got out that Fame was the place to go to record a new single or album. Quickly, everyone from Tommy Roe to The Tams, and from Joe Tex, Joe Simon, George Jackson and Clyde McPhatter right through to Irma Thomas, Etta James and Mitty Collier. Even Aretha Franklin recorded at Muscle Shoals. Indeed, it was at Muscle Shoals that Jerry Wexler brought Aretha Franklin, to record her 1967 album I Never Loved A Man the Way I Loved You. However, why did all these artists choose to head to Muscle Shoals to Fame? Part of the reason was the session musicians that worked with Rick Hall. This included the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and Muscle Shoals Horns. They were some of the hottest and tightest musicians of that era. This included drummer Rodger Hawkins, bassist David Hood, guitarist Jimmy Johnson and keyboardist Barry Beckett. When they recorded together, they were one of the finest backing bands ever. Between 1961 and 1969, when they departed from Fame to found the rival studio Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. …”
Dereks Music Blog
Discogs (Video)
amazon

A user’s guide to détournement

“Every reasonably aware person of our time is aware of the obvious fact that art can no longer be justified as a superior activity, or even as a compensatory activity to which one might honorably devote oneself. The reason for this deterioration is clearly the emergence of productive forces that necessitate other production relations and a new practice of life. In the civil-war phase we are engaged in, and in close connection with the orientation we are discovering for certain superior activities to come, we believe that all known means of expression are going to converge in a general movement of propaganda that must encompass all the perpetually interacting aspects of social reality. There are several conflicting opinions about the forms and even the very nature of educative propaganda, opinions that generally reflect one or another currently fashionable variety of reformist politics. Suffice it to say that in our view the premises for revolution, on the cultural as well as the strictly political level, are not only ripe, they have begun to rot. It is not just returning to the past which is reactionary; even ‘modern’ cultural objectives are ultimately reactionary since they depend on ideological formulations of a past society that has prolonged its death agony to the present. The only historically justified tactic is extremist innovation. The literary and artistic heritage of humanity should be used for partisan propaganda purposes. It is, of course, necessary to go beyond any idea of mere scandal. Since opposition to the bourgeois notion of art and artistic genius has become pretty much old hat, [Marcel Duchamp’s] drawing of a mustache on the Mona Lisa is no more interesting than the original version of that painting. We must now push this process to the point of negating the negation. Bertolt Brecht, revealing in a recent interview in France-Observateur that he makes cuts in the classics of the theater in order to make the performances more educative, is much closer than Duchamp to the revolutionary orientation we are calling for. We must note, however, that in Brecht’s case these salutary alterations are narrowly limited by his unfortunate respect for culture as defined by the ruling class — that same respect, taught in the newspapers of the workers parties as well as in the primary schools of the bourgeoisie, which leads even the reddest worker districts of Paris always to prefer The Cid over [Brecht’s] Mother Courage. It is in fact necessary to eliminate all remnants of the notion of personal property in this area. The appearance of new necessities outmodes previous ‘inspired’ works. They become obstacles, dangerous habits. The point is not whether we like them or not. We have to go beyond them. …”
A user’s guide to détournement
“Critic on the Political Practice of Detournement” by Jacqueline de Jong

Gruppe SPUR collective

The Great Distraction: On Aaron Sorkin’s “Trial of the Chicago 7” – J. Hoberman (2020)

“OK BOOMER, the consensus (or maybe the algorithm) has spoken: the last time I checked, Aaron Sorkin’s Trial of the Chicago 7 had a Tomatometer rating of 91 percent and an audience score of 92 percent. How is it that a feel-good iteration of the great Show Trial of the ’60s, characterized by no little artistic license, makes for such satisfying viewing in the year 2020? Tiresome as it is to refract every significant mass cultural event, no matter its intention, through the disgusting prism of our Boomer-in-Chief, it cannot be avoided. Reaching back (once more) to quote Norman Mailer’s musings on the 1972 Republican Convention that renominated Richard Nixon: the presidency is ‘a primitive office and inspires the tribes of America to pick up the modes and manners of their chief.’ This truth is more than obvious nearly a half century later and, actually, the Trump-Trial connection is hardly a stretch. The real Trial of the Chicago Seven (plus one) was great political theater, and Donald Trump is nothing if not a past master of the art. That said, Sorkin does a more than competent job of setting the table for the orchestrated Chicago police riot that wrecked the 1968 Democratic Convention (not to mention the Democratic Party). I confess to a nostalgic frisson but, really, it would take a Ken Burns full-court press to begin to evoke the political despair, frenzied rage, and universal delirium of the months leading up to the event that the underground papers would call Czechago. Still a college kid, I had a menial job that summer in San Francisco, working in the Ramparts mailroom. …  Unfortunately, the new Abbie Hoffman is the Great Distracter and Champion Disrupter, Donald Trump, a man who speaks truth to power in the mirror. Perhaps Sorkin has intuited this. Indeed, Abbie might have realized it himself. In an interview given shortly before his death in 1989, he remarked that ‘TV gets into your fantasy world. […] If you want to enter the fantasy world of America, which you have to because people watch seven hours of television a day and that’s how they get their information, you have to learn how to use it. It isn’t enough just to whack it as a medium.’ It might be argued that Sorkin too understands the medium. After all, his exercise in airbrushed Clinton nostalgia, The West Wing, enjoyed a healthy seven-season run, cracked the top 10 during the first year of George W. Bush’s reign, and won a record (since broken) 26 Emmys. But, take it from this boomer, compared to the psychological oxycodone served up by The Celebrity Apprentice, the fantasy put forth by The West Wing, not to mention The Trial of the Chicago 7, is but a moment’s sunlight fading on the grass. …”
LA Review of Books
The Nation: Aaron Sorkin Sanitizes the Chicago 7
NY Times – ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ Review: They Fought the Law – A.O. Scott (Video)
VOX: Our mixed feelings about The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Aaron Sorkin, explained
W – The Trial of the Chicago 7
YouTube: The story of the Chicago 7 trial – CBS Sunday Morning
1960s: Days of Rage – Chicago Seven (2020)

Various Artists: Chess Blues

“In the 1950’s and ’60’s, one of the most significant and successful labels offering blues as a strong part of its catalog was run by Leonard and Phil Chess. As Polish immigrants who landed on these shores in 1922, the brothers toiled in their father’s junk business, but later went on to define ‘The American Dream.’ Leonard bought and operated liquor stores and a few small nightclubs (described as little more than dives) while Phil served his country in the war. Leonard was not eligible due to a bout with polio as a child that left him with a limp. These joints Leonard ran featured blues as entertainment and served as a springboard for a larger club, the Macomba, and by recording the talent playing their venue, the brothers went on to run and improve the powerful Chess Records label in Chicago, where local competition came only from the neighboring Vee Jay imprint. After its beginnings with a stable of jazz lounge musicians and pop crooners that included Tom Archia, Andrew Tibbs, and others, success struck loudly when Aristocrat #1305 was released, a Muddy Waters’ recording titled ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied,’ in April of 1948. The track was a buzzing Delta-style blues, simply updated with overdriven guitar notes piercing from an amplifier. Hauling it to outlets which included barber shops and beauty parlors, taverns, Pullman porters, and a few record distributors, Muddy’s 78 would sell out quickly. After buying into, and later buying out the entire Aristocrat operation, the brothers developed a system where Phil would run the label while Leonard hustled new demo copies from the trunk of his car to radio stations and retailers within a one-thousand mile radius. Paying for the privilege of having their records played seemed completely natural to Leonard and Phil, natural enough that these monetary transactions would be claimed in their tax returns, long before anyone heard of the payola scandal that would rock the music industry to its foundation years later. The Aristocrat imprint was changed to Chess in 1950, celebrating the family’s name, and the successful business would bear offshoots over time that included the Checker and Argo labels. By appealing to a growing demographic of African-Americans from Southern states who found better paying jobs in booming industrial cities, Chess lasted a number of decades and boasted a roster of greats that reads like a who’s who in music. Willie Dixon may have been one of the more prolific songwriters and producers in blues, but he played important roles with the logo that launched Chuck Berry, sometimes credited as the man who invented rock ‘n’ roll, and Etta James, the quintessential R&B queen. …”
Building an Essential Blues Collection
Discogs
amazon

Family favourites: Lawrence and Gerald Durrell

“‘Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu, the blue really begins,’ wrote Lawrence Durrell. For TS Eliot, the walls of Magnus Martyr in London held ‘inexplicable splendour in Ionian white and gold’. Edward Lear was in raptures over ‘olive grove and orange garden, the blue of sky and ivory of church and chapel, the violet of mountain rising from peacock-wing hued sea’. But what really hits you, even in high summer, is the green. Utterly unlike the Cyclades or the Dodecanese, no other Mediterranean island is as fertile as Corfu. The cypresses tower above forests of enormous olive trees and beneath them are ‘English’ daisies, clover, teasels and grass. In England, cypresses are only found in formal gardens, planted with mathematical precision and never growing half so elegantly. To find them in such random profusion is as surprising as seeing your first flock of wild budgerigars. All plants seem to thrive in Corfu. Unfortunately so does concrete. Over the last 2,000 years, the island has survived attacks from Romans, Vandals, Goths, Genoese, Sicilians, Catalans, Turks, pirates, Italians and Germans only for much of the coastline to be overrun and destroyed in less than half a century. At the height of summer, Sidari has an English population of 30,000, bigger than many English towns. Durrell described the flying boats that landed once a week in Gouvia Bay: ‘Their keels suddenly rip open the emerald lake surface, and the long shavings of water curl up on each side.’ No one writes eloquently about the charter jets that land all hours of the day and night on the far side of Corfu Town. His brother Gerald, whose My Family and Other Animals did most to fix the island in the British imagination – even more than Shakespeare who, it is often claimed, set The Tempest here – was horrified when he returned in 1968. His guilt over what he saw as his own role in Corfu’s destruction led quickly to alcoholism, breakdown and a long stay in the Priory. And that was in 1968. We stayed in Acharavi on the north coast, west of Roda. Until 10 years ago, it was almost entirely undeveloped, which is odd because it has five miles of accessible sand and shingle beach, good flat roads and a narrow plain to build on between the sea and the hills. Acharavi has few ugly buildings, and none are more than three storeys high. But it sprawls like an American gold-rush town and, as you walk along the beach to get away from the sunloungers, you have barely escaped the outskirts of Acharavi before you find yourself in Roda or Almyros. It isn’t anywhere the Durrells would have recognised, nor is it an upmarket New Greece, rather a slightly better version of the old, low-budget Corfu. …”
Guardian
amazon: The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader

WNET (Koch & Ashbery) – John Ashbery

“JA: ‘I met Kenneth (Koch) when I was first a student in Harvard in 1947 and I met Frank (O’Hara) a couple of years later. We all wound up in New York more or less by accident , and got to know other poets here like Barbara Guest, James Schuyler.. But I think our poetry is pretty independent of each other.’ One critic has described John Ashbery as today’s (1966) most radically original American poet. Another description of his poetry is that he uses words much as a contemporary painter uses form and color, words chosen as conveyers of precise meaning, not as representations of sound. Born in Rochester, New York, and educated at Harvard, Columbia and New York University, John Ashbery has been the art critic for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune and is currently an executive editor of ArtNews. His first book of poems published in 1953 contained drawings by the artist Jane Freilicher, whose studio this is. ‘Jane was the first painter that I’d met in New York (through Kenneth Koch) and, I think perhaps the first who I felt..who’s work I felt had something to do with my own, since at that time.. (well, it didn’t yet, but after a while I began to think about it and it did it). She was painting very free, sort of expressionist portraits. And I liked very much the idea that you could seem to add or take away a great deal from them without it changing the whole thing very much which was a sort of reassuring state of mind for an artist to be in, I think. In a way I’m trying to get meaning through perhaps unconventional methods, that is perhaps trying to influence the reader to see a different meaning through shape and the sound of the words. For instance, a word which might suggest another word but has absolutely nothing to do with it, therefore has a kind of heightened power of expression, which the reader, even when he’s not aware of it, somehow affects his impression of the poem.’ John Ashbery’s most recent collection of poems is the book Rivers and Mountains published in 1966 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. This is the first of twelve poems in the book. … ‘In a way my poetry has sort of followed a circular route. This poem, which I think is one of the best of my early poems is not too unlike the ones I’m writing now, but I feel that things have undergone a change nevertheless which I’ll try to explain. When I was living in Paris for ten years I had first felt very much deprived of hearing American speech every day, which comes into my poetry quite a lot and it’s very vital to it . I certainly believe what Mallarmé says about purifying the language of the tribe, I always felt that was….. And, as a result, I felt my poetry, the first poetry I wrote in France was kind of anaemic and didn’t satisfy me at all.’ …”
Allen Ginsberg Project
On Ten Years of “Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets”
Criterion – Night on Earth: New York—Jim Jarmusch, Poet
YouTube: Jim Jarmusch on John Ashbery & the New York School Poets
1960s: Days of Rage – Locus Solus (journal)

12/17: the writing of Deborah Jowitt

Deborah Jowitt at her apartment in Greenwich Village. The 14th Street Y is honoring Ms. Jowitt with a series of performances next week.

“Deborah Jowitt was born in 1934 and began dancing professionally at the age of nineteen.  She performed with such luminaries as Mary Anthony, Doris Humphrey, José Limon and Anna Sokolow.  She presented her own work through Dance Theater Workshop (they awarded her a ‘Bessie’ in 1985).  She had a regular column in The Village Voice and her writing also appeared in The New York Times, Dance Magazine, Ballet Review, and Dance Research Journal.  She wrote Time and the Dancing Image and  Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, and she contributed essays to numerous publications, as well. I quickly realized that Ms. Jowitt’s writing is so expansive — and so smart!– that I would have to limit myself to writing about a small number of her shorter pieces in order to make a clear analysis.  To be concise about things, I have chosen the three that are included in our textbook: Beyond Description: Writing beneath the Surface, Form as the Image of Human Perfectibility and Natural Order, and Chance Heros.  ‘Secret Truths’—Beyond Description: Writing beneath the Surface is an anthem with which every dance writer (perhaps every writer period) should be familiar.  She opens by quoting a section of dance critic Joan Acocella’s review of Susan Marshall’s Articles of Faith.  Here Acocella describes the nuances of dance: ‘it is the qualities that belong specifically to the movement –its shape in the air, its weight, speed, attack– that speak to us secretly.  That is why a would-be profound dance may seem frivolous, a happy dance seem sad, or vice versa; because the movement has told us the secret behind the narrative.’  Jowitt agrees that because so much is left to interpretation by the audience, it is the job of a good writer to report the irrefutable facts about a dance.  She says ‘the point is, in searching for what a dance may mean, not to lose sight of what it is, or appears to be.’  She continues her case by reminding us of the ephemerality of dance– ‘it doesn’t hang about on walls to be revisited or wait by your bed with a bookmark in it or spill out of your glove compartment ready to be popped into a car’s cassette deck.’ That lovely bit of writing is so typical of Jowitt.  She makes a solid point by invoking somewhat everyday scenarios.  The most art-naïve person in the world could now understand the evanescent art of dance in comparison to a more tangible art.  She’s so believable because she’s not lecturing to us.  And she’s nudging us with her elbow because she knows we catch her drift. …”
dancecrit2015
NY Times: She’s Been Writing About Dance for 55 Years. She’s Not Done Yet.
W – Deborah Jowitt
IMPRESSIONS: “From the Horse’s Mouth Celebrates Deborah Jowitt” at the 14Y
YouTube: Breaking Ground: Trisha Brown in conversation with Deborah Jowitt (1995), Breaking Ground: Mark Morris with Deborah Jowitt (1995)

From the Horse’s Mouth Celebrates Deborah Jowitt;.

Diner

W – Mickey’s Diner

“A diner is a type of restaurant found across the United States and Canada, as well as parts of Western Europe. Diners offer a wide range of foods, mostly American cuisine, a casual atmosphere, and, characteristically, a combination of booths served by a waitstaff and a long sit-down counter with direct service, in the smallest simply by a cook. Many diners have extended hours, and some along highways and areas with significant shift work stay open for 24 hours. … Diners typically serve staples of American cuisine such as hamburgers, french fries, onion rings, club sandwiches, and other simple, quickly cooked, and inexpensive fare, such as meatloaf or steak. Much of the food is grilled, as early diners were based around a gas-fueled flattop grill. Coffee is a diner staple. Diners often serve milkshakes and desserts such as pies, cake or ice cream. Comfort food cuisine draws heavily from, and is deeply rooted in, traditional diner fare. Along with greasy spoon menu items, many diners will serve regional cuisine as well, such as clam chowder in New England and tacos in California. … Diners attract a wide spectrum of the local populations, and are generally small businesses. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, they have been seen as quintessentially American, reflecting the perceived cultural diversity and egalitarian nature of the country at large. Throughout much of the 20th century, diners, mostly in the Northeast, were often owned and operated by Greek-American immigrant families. The presence of Greek casual food, like gyros and souvlaki, on several northeastern diners’ menus, testifies to this cultural link. Diners frequently stay open 24 hours a day, especially in cities, and were once the most widespread 24-hour public establishments in the U.S., making them an essential part of urban culture, alongside bars and nightclubs; these two segments of nighttime urban culture often find themselves intertwined, as many diners get a good deal of late-night business from persons departing drinking establishments. Many diners were also historically placed near factories which operated 24 hours a day, with night shift workers providing a key part of the customer base. For this reason, diners sometimes served as symbols of loneliness and isolation. Edward Hopper‘s iconic 1942 painting Nighthawks depicts a diner and its occupants, late at night. The diner in the painting is based on a real location in Greenwich Village, but was chosen in part because diners were anonymous slices of Americana, meaning that the scene could have been taken from any city in the country-and also because a diner was a place to which isolated individuals, awake long after bedtime, would naturally be drawn. …”
W – Diner
W – List of diners
W – Diners on the National Register of Historic Places

W – Al Mac’s Diner-Restaurant

Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound Of British And Irish Folk 1966-75

“… With both sets intended to act as companion pieces to each other, there is much for both the casual fan and serious archivist to enjoy. However, the tightened theme of ‘Sumer is Icumen In’ lends it a coherence occasionally lacking in its predecessor’s endearingly scattershot runtime- and it ultimately contributes to a palpable tonal shift. Where ‘Nettles’- for which varied eclecticism was instrumental in its appeal- featured the wide-eyed, blissed out hippie mantra of Mother Nature’s ‘Orange Days and Purple Nights,’, Steve Peregrin Took’s ‘Amanda’ (nominally a tale of a fickle casino croupier that doubles as a rather obvious analogue for mandrax abuse), and the dreamy pop-mysticism of Frozen Tear’s ‘You Know What Has To Be’, not to mention Fuschia’s Syd Barrett-esque ‘Me and My Kite’, Wild Country’s utopian ‘Silent Village’ and the Peel-friendly esotericism of the Occasional Word’s ‘The Evil Venus Tree,’ ‘Sumer Is Icumen In’ makes little allowance for such far-out, Spirit-Of-The-Age fripperies. Indeed, not surprisingly for a compilation drawing its name from the oldest-known song in the English language, the music herein manifests as less a product of the late-1960s psychedelic Aquarian zeitgeist and more a product of reinvented tradition spanning back centuries. Therefore, for the most part, it sounds as ancient as Albion itself, and only occasionally does an incense-and-peppermints contemporary influence make itself known- the lapping sitar on Meic Steven’s 9 minute epic ‘Yorric,’ the shifting time sequences launching into the faerie freak-outs on Synanthesia’s ‘Minerva,’ the peeling organs on Chimera’s ‘Silver Man’, to name a couple of instances- but never enough so as to come across as jarring or to shatter the lush evergreen illusion. And, as is by now par-of-the-course for Grapefruit’s archival trawls, ‘Sumer Is Icumen In’ features an impressive roster of names, a number of which are likely forgotten to all but the most gnarled old apple trees lurking deep within the twisting orchards of Avalon. It makes for a real Fabergé egg-incidentally, a turn of phrase that could have hypothetically lent itself excellently as a band name to coexist with the likes of the very real (and featured) Vulcan’s Hammer, Green Man and Spriguns Of Tolgus. ‘The result,’ to quote David Wells’ excellent introductory essay, ‘is a fascinating window on something of a lost world: a shady, crepuscular glade in a darkly pagan woodland that’s peppered with invocations of corn gods, wicker men, bright Phoebus and other non-Christian deities; magickal tales of daemons, sorcerers, false knights and faerie queens… alongside dread stories of purgatory, sacrifice, rape, bestiality and murder.’ …”
It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound Of British And Irish Folk 1966-75 1 / 30

Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In

“Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (often simply referred to as Laugh-In) is an American sketch comedy television program which ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, on the NBCtelevision network, hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. It originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967, and was such a success that it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on Mondays at 8 pm (ET). It quickly became the most popular television show in the United States. The title of the show was a play on the 1960s hippie culture ‘love-ins’ or the counterculture ‘be-ins‘, terms derived from the ‘sit-ins‘ common in protests associated with civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the time. … The good-natured, lighthearted, and informal disposition of the show was thereby established. Laugh-In had its roots in the humor of vaudeville and burlesque, but its most direct influences were Olsen and Johnson‘s comedies (such as the free-form Broadway revue Hellzapoppin’), the innovative television works of Ernie Kovacs, and the topical TV satire That Was the Week That Was. The show was characterized by a rapid-fire series of gags and sketches, many of which were politically charged or contained sexual innuendo. The co-hosts continued the exasperated straight man (Rowan) and ‘dumb guy’ (Martin) act which they had established as nightclub comics. The show featured Gary Owensas the on-screen announcer, and an ensemble cast; Ruth Buzzi was part of the ensemble throughout the show’s six year run, while others who appeared in at least three seasons included Judy Carne, Henry Gibson, Goldie Hawn, Arte Johnson, Jo Anne Worley, Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen and Richard Dawson. Laugh-In was designed to be very lightly structured and consisted mainly of short comedic sketches. Some of these would reappear multiple times throughout an episode with variations on a theme, while others involved reoccurring characters created by the cast. In others, cast members and guest stars would simply appear as themselves, delivering jokes or reacting to a previous sketch. … A chain of Laugh-In restaurants opened in several states during 1968–69; primarily in Michigan, Ohio and Florida. Psychedelically-themed like the show, they offered such menu items as Bippy Burgers, Is That A Chicken Joke Chicken, Fickle Finger Of Fate Fries, Beautiful Downtown Burbank Burgers, Fickle Finger Franks, Verrrry Interesting Sandwiches, I’ll Drink To That beverages, Sock It To Me soups, Laugh-In Fortune Cookies and Here Come Da Fudge sundaes. ….”
Wikipedia
YouTube: Here Comes The Judge | Sammy Davis Jr, Tiny Tim’s First Appearance, Ernestine’s Top 10! | Lily Tomlin, Etc.
YouTube: Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In: Season 1-6

The Fire Within – Louis Malle (1963)

The Fire Within: Day of the Dead “When he shot The Fire Within in the spring of 1963, Louis Malle had already established a strong reputation. Incredibly precocious, he won a Palme d’Or at the age of twenty-four, at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, for the underwater documentary The Silent World, photographed and codirected with oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. One year later he anticipated the French New Wave with Elevator to the Gallows, scored by Miles Davis and starring a young Jeanne Moreau, who also starred in his next film, The Lovers, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1958 and created a scandal with its explicit eroticism. His follow-up, an audacious 1960 adaptation of Raymond Queneau’s farcical novel Zazie dans le métro, further proved his fondness for literary sources, and 1962’s Vie privée created a stir by featuring Brigitte Bardot in one of her more complex roles.  Yet despite his commercial and critical success, Malle felt dissatisfied with his career thus far. Probably his apprenticeship with Robert Bresson, for whom he was assistant director on A Man Escaped (1956), had instilled in him a high exigency for the practice of his art. He was also aware of the eclecticism of his style, as well as of his themes, while newcomers like Godard and Truffaut had imposed a stronger personality. Now thirty, Malle seemed to be hiding behind literary adaptations, which looked like aesthetic variations with no real focus. The son of a wealthy family of industrialists from the north of France, Malle felt ill at ease with his bourgeois upbringing, and unlike some of the directors coming from Cahiers du cinéma (Truffaut, Rohmer, et al.), with their right-wing inclinations, he was decidedly opposed to the war in Algeria and the Gaullist regime, even producing the overtly political first feature of his friend Alain Cavalier, Le combat dans l’île. After taking a break from fiction, shooting some documentary footage both in Algeria (for a film that never came to fruition) and back home, following the Tour de France (which became the short Vive le Tour), he began an original script, inspired by the tragic end of a journalist friend, about a man who commits suicide. … The film was then immediately shot in the spring, and edited in time for a September showing at Venice (where it won a Special Jury Prize) and an October release in France. The year was thus literally devoted to The Fire Within, made in a state of grace and at full speed. And this intensely personal work would help alleviate Malle’s doubts about his career. …”
Criterion: The Fire Within: Day of the Dead
W – The Fire Within
Criterion – Everyday Magic: Joachim Trier on Reimagining Louis Malle
YouTube: The Fire Within – retrospective
Criterion: The Fire Within ($)

The Birth of Psychedelic London

“There’s a clip that gets shown on British TV every time there’s some news item about ‘Swinging London.’ It starts with some turned-on teens perusing a rack of Chelsea Pensioner-meets-Hendrix military jackets on Portobello Road, and ends a few frames later with the kids awkwardly getting down to some far-out sounds in a West End nightspot, complete with obligatory groovy light show. I’ve seen this piece dozens of times; the whole history of one of the 20th century’s defining cultural eras reduced to an overgrown kids’ dressing-up party with flashing lights. The prime London psychedelic period – roughly 1965
 to the end of 1967 – may have been slowly reduced to an Austin Powers pastiche, but in reality it transcended such media shorthand. As Christoph Grunenberg observes, ‘Like Vienna at the turn of the century or Berlin in the 1920s, the 1960s were one of those rare moments in history when art, politics and cultural circumstances coalesced to create a favourable environment of imagination, experimentation and commitment.’ This was the dawning of the first great teenage counterculture movement. It’s a story of acid, flowers, dancing to poetry, beatniks, anarchists, finger cymbals, phaze pedals, giant jelly, legal LSD and pop art, the impact of which resonates to this day. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when the seeds of London psychedelia were sown, but the mid-’60s underground movement has roots in literature, music and political activism. The outpourings of the late ’50s jazz and beat generation, in particular imported works like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl, were a big influence, as were nascent mod all-nighters in Soho. Le Discothèque in Wardour Street was probably the first seedy late-night mod place, with crash-pad mattresses next to the dancefloor. Just up the road at the Flamingo, below the old Wag club, acts like The Animals, John Mayall, Geno Washington, Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe would work up a sweat, alongside visiting R&B stars like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and Solomon Burke. … The leading lights of the emerging counterculture were also connecting via politics, particularly with the birth of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, formed during a massive meeting in London in 1958, in protest against Britain’s first H-bomb tests. Every Easter, CND held marches between the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire and Trafalgar Square. A mixture of Quakers, veteran left-wing campaigners, trade unionists and anarchists were joined by a sizeable youth presence. In 1962, 12,000 campaigners gathered in Trafalgar Square; the following year, numbers at a Hyde Park rally had swelled to over 30,000, 90% of whom were under 21. Trudging to an arms base in the spring rain doesn’t sound like the prequel to mind-bending freakbeat, but for the first time the heads were starting to recognise each other. …”
Red Hull Music Academy
These Color Photos Capture the Psychedelic Hippie Fashion in London during the 1960s

Marian Zazeela (1940–2024)

Bear Lake Overlook, Utah, 1992

“Light art pioneer Marian Zazeela, whose vibrant illuminated environments profoundly influenced Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, died March 28 in New York. She was eighty-three. A member of the 1960s avant-garde collective The Theatre of Eternal Music, Zazeela is widely recognized for her collaborative work with her husband, minimalist composer La Monte Young. The couple’s Dream Houses, long-term immersive installations comprising Young’s sine-wave compositions cycling continuously in a spare environment bathed in glowing cobalt or magenta light designed by Zazeela, for more than five decades have provided visitors with respite from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, offering an immediate transcendent experience. Zazeela, whose practice additionally encompasses painting, graphics, and film, is also known for her wild, abstract calligraphy, which, like her environments and light sculptures, evoke dreamy otherworlds. Marian Zazeela was born April 15, 1940, in New York to Jewish parents and raised in the Bronx. After graduating from New York’s High School of Music & Art, she attended Bennington College in Vermont, studying under painter Paul Feeley, art historian Eugene Goossen, and sculptor Tony Smith and graduating in 1960 with a BA in art. While still in school, Zazeela began creating paintings, drawings, and prints centering the calligraphic stroke. Such marks figured heavily in her 1960 debut exhibition, at the 92nd Street Y in New York, where she exhibited a set of massive canvases placing calligraphic forms against fields of undiluted color. Having settled in New York immediately following her graduation from Bennington, Zazeela became involved in the city’s burgeoning downtown scene, acting and modeling for Jack Smith, and providing the cover for his 1962 Beautiful Book, in which she appeared in a number of photographs. Set to star in his pathbreaking experimental 1963 film Flaming Creatures, she wound up contributing just a cameo.  … Zazeela joined Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music, contributing vocals alongside Angus MacLise, Billy Name, and, later, John Cale, Tony Conrad, and Terry Riley. She also began producing light shows for the experimental group. The form was then in its infancy, and Zazeela’s works of this nature are thought to be some of the first, created at a time when Dan Flavin, who would come to be far more celebrated, was also beginning to work with light. Zazeela drew on her earlier calligraphic work to create light shows that relied on slow dissolves of still-image slides and colored gels. The resulting effect was frequently psychedelic, often conjuring Op art. Meant to be projected in accompaniment with Young’s music, these works were dubbed Ornamental Lightyears Tracery, and varied each time they were presented. Glenn Branca, writing in Forced Exposure, and David Sprague, writing in Your Flesh, have posited these light shows as the progenitor of Warhol’s 1966–67 Exploding Plastic Inevitable. …”
ARTFORUM
W – Marian Zazeela
marian zazeela’s the soul of the word (1970) from aspen #9
MoMA
1960s: Days of Rage – The Hum of the City: La Monte Young and the Birth of NYC Drone, Enter The Dream House of La Monte Young: the avant-garde pioneer who inspired The Velvet Underground, La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela – Selected Writings (2004), Theatre of Eternal Music

Aspen #9 (1970)

Massacre at Huế

Bits of tattered clothing, sandals and slippers are examined by South Vietnamese women who lost relatives in the 1968 Tet massacre. The latest mass grave discovered in Hue yielded remains of 250 victims.

“The Huế massacre (Vietnamese: Thảm sát tại Huế Tết Mậu Thân, or Thảm sát Tết Mậu Thân ở Huế, lit. translation: ‘Tết Offensive massacre in Huế’) was the summary executions and mass murder perpetrated by the Viet Cong (VC) and People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) during their capture, military occupation and later withdrawal from the city of Huế during the Tet Offensive, considered one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. The Battle of Huế began on 31 January 1968, and lasted a total of 26 days. During the months and years that followed, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Huế. The estimated death toll was between 2,800 and 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war, or 5–10% of the total population of Huế. The Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) released a list of 4,062 victims identified as having been either murdered or abducted. Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes buried alive. Many victims were also clubbed to death. A number of U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities as well as a number of journalists who investigated the events took the discoveries, along with other evidence, as proof that a large-scale atrocity had been carried out in and around Huế during its four-week occupation. The killings were perceived as part of a large-scale purge of a whole social stratum, including anyone friendly to American forces in the region. The massacre at Huế came under increasing press scrutiny later, when press reports alleged that South Vietnamese ‘revenge squads’ had also been at work in the aftermath of the battle, searching out and executing citizens that had supported the communist occupation. In 2017, Ben Kiernan described the massacre as ‘possibly the largest atrocity of the war.’ The Vietcong set up provisional authorities shortly after it had captured Huế in the early hours of 31 January 1968. They were charged with removing the existing government administration from power in the city and replacing it with a ‘revolutionary administration’. Working from lists of ‘cruel tyrants and reactionary elements’ previously developed by Vietcong intelligence officers, many people were to be rounded up following the initial hours of the attack. These included Army of the Republic of Vietnam(ARVN) soldiers, civil servants, political party members, local religious leaders, schoolteachers, American civilians, and other international people. Cadres called out the names on their lists over loudspeakers, ordering them to report to a local school. Those who did not report voluntarily were hunted down. …”
W – Massacre at Huế
NY Times: Opinion | Learning From the Hue Massacre
YouTube: The Massacre at Huế

Label on the shrouded remains of a Tet Offensive victim describing teeth, color of hair, footwear, and other possessions found with the body.

Silver Apples

“Silver Apples were an American electronic rock group from New York, active between 1967 and 1970, before reforming in the mid-1990s. It was composed of Simeon (born Simeon Oliver Coxe III, June 4, 1938 – September 8, 2020), who performed on a primitive synthesizer of his own devising; and, until his death in 2005, drummer Danny Taylor. The duo were among the first to employ electronic music techniques outside of academia, applying them to 1960s rock and pop styles. As part of New York’s underground music scene, the band released two albums—Silver Apples (1968) and Contact (1969)—to poor sales. … The group formed out of a traditional rock band called The Overland Stage Electric Band, working regularly in the East Village. Simeon was the singer, but began to incorporate a 1940s vintage audio oscillator into the show, which alienated the other band members to the extent that the group was eventually reduced to the duo of Simeon and Taylor, at which point they renamed themselves The Silver Apples, after the William Butler Yeats poem ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus‘. The arsenal of oscillators eventually grew (according to their first LP liner notes) to include ‘nine audio oscillators piled on top of each other and eighty-six manual controls to control lead, rhythm and bass pulses with hands, feet and elbows’. Simeon devised a system of telegraph keys and pedals to control tonality and chord changes, and reportedly never learned to play traditional piano-styled keyboards or synthesizers. They were signed to Kapp Records and released their first record, Silver Apples, in 1968, and from that released a single, ‘Oscillations’, a song that Simeon has cited as the first song he had written. … Warren, who subsequently became a published poet, met Simeon and Taylor at the Fifth Annual Avant Garde Arts Festival in 1967 in New York City, organized by Charlotte Moorman, who was famous as the ‘topless cellist’. … Silver Apples are regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music, electronica, synth-pop, electro and electronic rock for their experimentation with electronic music in a rock/pop context and innovative work in melding psychedelic rock with home-made oscillators and synthesizers. The band’s pulsing rhythms and electronic melodies would predate several contemporary artists, including Wendy Carlos, Kraftwerk, White Noise and Can, as well as later artists including Suicide, Stereolab, and Laika. AllMusic‘s Jason Ankeny called them ‘a surreal, almost unprecedented duo’. Alan Vega from the Synth-punk duo Suicide listed Silver Apples as one of the inspirations to form his group. …”
Wikipedia
Silver Apples: Early Electronica
YouTube: Electro-Glitch Pop in the 1960s: The Unreal Sounds & Story of Silver Apples, Silver Apples (Full Album)

Silver Apples live in Los Angeles, 1968. “In this shot you can see I have the oscillators mounted horizontally in plywood along with echo units, wah pedal, and so on. Here I am playing the ‘lead’ oscillator with my right hand, keying in rhythm oscillators with my elbow on the telegraph keys, changing the volume on an amp with my left hand, and singing. This was typical.”

The Fort Hill Community

“… It was his relationship with Judy Silver that brought him to Boston in 1963. Again, Lyman became acquainted with many artists and musicians in the vibrant Boston scene, including Timothy Leary‘s group of LSD enthusiasts, International Foundation for Internal Freedom (IFIF). Lyman was involved for a very short time and, against his wishes, so was Judy. Knowing LSD’s power, he felt she was not ready but stated ‘the bastards at IFIF gave her acid … I told her not to take it. I knew her head couldn’t take it.’ Lyman’s fears turned out to be justified and she left college and returned to her parents in Kansas. According to one of the anonymous sources interviewed by David Felton for Rolling Stone, ‘Judy got all fucked up – this is his second old lady – I mean like she got really twisted. I don’t know if it was the acid or the scene or whatever, but she split. She went back to Kansas. She was totally out of the picture by the summer of 1963. Judy is probably the most important thing in Mel’s life. He worshipped Judy, really loved her. Then she split, you know? She couldn’t help it, she was totally freaked out. They took her away.’ Lyman was by all accounts very charismatic and later, after Judy had left, a community tended to grow up around him. At some point thereafter Lyman began to view himself as destined for a role as a spiritual force and leader. In 1966, Lyman founded and headed The Lyman Family, also known as The Fort Hill Community, centered in a few houses in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury, then a poor neighborhood of Boston. The Fort Hill Community, to observers in the mid-to-late Sixties, combined some of the outward forms of an urban hippie commune with a neo-transcendentalist  socio-spiritual structure centered on Lyman, the friends he had attracted, and the large body of his music and writings. One of the stalwarts of the community was Jim Kweskin, Lyman’s former band mate. Members of Lyman’s Community briefly included the young couple Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, two non-actors who had been discovered and cast by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for the lead roles in his second English-language feature Zabriskie Point. Michael Kindman, founder of the East Lansing underground newspaper The Paper, briefly worked on Avatar and remained with the group for five years. He later wrote of his experiences in his book My Odyssey Through the Underground Press. Journalist and poet Paul Williams, founder of Crawdaddy rock magazine and author of Das Energi, spent a few months on Fort Hill. He told David Felton he had had to escape under cover of darkness after being told he would not be allowed to leave. …”
W – The Lyman Family
The Lyman Family’s Holy Siege of America by David Felton   1 2 3 4 Karma 5 6 7 Epilogue
The Avatar and Fort Hill Community
WFMU: he Mel Lyman Personality Cult Revisited by Kliph Nesteroff

Reading Fanon in Algeria, reading Algeria beyond Fanon

“In his biography of Frantz Fanon, intellectual historian David Macey narrates that in August 1955, Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) leader Moustafa Lacheraf suggested to Fanon that they collaborate on a book on Algeria. Fanon, however, declined, telling Lacheraf that ‘he [Fanon] was still thinking in European terms.’ Decades later, Lacheraf reaffirmed this, saying that ‘despite his political sympathies, Fanon was an assimilé,’ still ‘hostage to the European milieu.‘ Notably, Lacheraf was not alone in this characterization; similar statements had been made by Tunisian Jewish intellectual Albert Memmi, Algerian psychoanalyst and Fanon student Alice Cherki, and others among Fanon’s contemporaries. Fanon’s readers today may find such statements surprising, at odds with a more familiar characterization of Fanon as a strident revolutionary and the consummate critic of European colonial modernity. But this very surprise represents the failure of Fanon studies to engage the 20th-century Algerian context within and about which Fanon wrote. Not only does this failure erase the Algerians alongside whom Fanon theorized; it also prevents a full engagement with his thought that grasps both its limits and potentialities, the possibilities it both enabled and foreclosed. So why did Lacheraf describe Fanon this way? Fanon, born into an upper-middle-class Martinican family in 1925 and educated in France after World War II, was shaped by and intervened in several intellectual traditions, most of them European. His signal theoretical influences were structuralist psychoanalysis and innovative psychiatry, a leftist modernism shaped by Hegelian Marxism and phenomenological existentialism, and Négritude and pan-Africanism. The 1953 Algeria he arrived in, meanwhile, had been shaped by its own discursive traditions and transnational networks, most prominent among them Islam, Islamism, and pan-Islamism; Arab nationalism, pan-Maghrebism, and pan-Arabism; and native elite adoptions of French politics. Although both Fanon and the Algerian people sought to confront colonialism, they did so from different starting points. While Algerians were concerned with loss and revival of cultural and religious ways of being, Fanon deemed such questions immaterial, overlooking what may be lost in favor of what might be created. While Fanon intellectually matured within the Western traditions he criticized, Algerians still debated their alignment with those traditions. …”
Africa Is a Country
The new Algerian revolution and Black Lives Matter: A Fanonian perspective

Martha Graham was ‘Where the Action Was’

“From 1967 through 2011, Deborah Jowitt wrote a weekly dance column for the Village Voice. Her substantial experience as a dancer, choreographer, critic, mother, teacher, and writer of a clutch of valuable books; her long marriage to a composer; and her deep familiarity with both the Southern California environment that nurtured Martha Graham and the New York City dance world in which both of them came to maturity may make her the perfect person to produce a critical biography of the woman many consider the First Lady of American modern dance: Errand into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham. Jowitt takes all the space she needs to fully explicate an image or an idea — to interpret, theorize, and describe in great detail the universe, both on and off the stage, that surrounded Graham and all that she created. Jowitt has also taken her time: 10 years of research, on top of half a century of tracking the international modern dance scene, to produce this history of the Martha Graham Dance Company, which turns 100 in 2026 and is already celebrating. Jowitt watched dozens of films and videos, read the other books already out there about the dance diva, and interviewed many artists who participated in the creation and performance of what have become classic examples of American modernism, begging comparison to the greatest works of contemporary music and art. Errand into the Maze is cultural history entwined with critical biography, accounting for New York’s social, creative, and political climate in the interwar era. Jowitt’s method includes close reading, textual analysis, all the stratagems of literary criticism of the period: translation, observation, and thick description, work for which journalistic critics rarely have space or time. She explicates music with as much clarity and confidence as she does movement. Jowitt also uncovers a sensuous side of Graham, often submerged in the popular view of early modern dance as grim posturing in long underwear. Born in 1894, the eldest of three daughters of a doctor and a woman who traced her ancestry back to the Mayflower, the future choreographer grew up in a strict Presbyterian family, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. Then, when she was in her early teens, the family moved to sunny Santa Barbara, in California. “Many of the dances that later made her famous,” says Jowitt, ‘drew on the dualities of restraint and freedom, decorum and wildness that molded her bisected early years.’ …”
Voice
NY Times: ‘If I Was Martha, What Would I Do?’ For One, Stay Upright
Criterion – Martha Graham: Dance on Film
amazon: Errand into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham
YouTube: Martha Graham on Technique, Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring Part 1/4

“Send my love to Rosie”: The song John Lennon called his “all-time favourite”

“Whether it was Elvis, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly, music has always been bubbling in the blood of John Lennon. Ever the rebel, Lennon found comfort in the persistent non-conformity of rock ‘n’ roll and cherished it until his dying day. While The Beatles certainly dabbled in a range of different genres, with folk, pop and psychedelia all mainstays of their discography, Lennon was always a rocker at heart. The singer understood music’s value for the everyday working-class kid and prized the art form of songwriting above all else. It was an ethos he took into his time with The Beatles and his solo career. The ability to write and record a tune which not only expressed a personal emotion but opened up a universal theme for those who heard it was something truly transcendental, far richer than any deity or establishment. … According to the Express, there was one song that Lennon labelled his ‘all-time favourite’. The track was a rarely heard number titled ‘Angel Baby’ and was originally recorded by Rosie and the Originals in 1960. Perhaps one of the most obvious indicators of Lennon’s affection for the track was picking it for a legendary covers album. The song was originally scheduled to be a part of John Lennon’s iconic covers album Rock ‘n’ Roll, a record which is drenched in infamy for the singer. In a contractual agreement, Lennon phoned in some of the covers while he gave his utmost to others. One song that probably landed in the latter category was ‘Angel Baby’, which Lennon provided a rendition of during the sessions. Laying down the track on October 26th, 1973, as part of those now-notorious sessions during his Lost Weekend period, Lennon was clearly enamoured with the song’s original rendition. That’s because he didn’t see fit to include his cover on the album release despite the obvious quality. It’s unknown why Lennon decided to remove the song from the release. The doo-wop number was clearly close to his heart. … It might not have been the rock and roll foot-stomper you’d expect, but it is certainly dripping in sentiment and is likely the kind of track Lennon would imagine himself slow-dancing too at the end of the bike race. John Lennon was a man of contradictions, a peace-loving yet violent man, a folkish hero who desecrated his hero status, he was as much a rocker as he was totally enamoured with the sweetest of pop ballads. You can listen to John Lennon’s ‘all-time favourite’ song ‘Angel Baby’ by Rosie and the Originals below. …”
FAROUT (Video)
John Lennon & Rosie and The Originals – Angel Baby
YouTube: Angel Baby John Lennon with Rosie and the Originals Band, Angel Baby – John Lennon