July 4, 2005FANTASMAGORICAL! ENCHANTING REANIMATIONS!-A VIRTUAL MAGIC CARPET RIDE-A TRIP BACK IN A TIME MACHINE! THE BLOODY REAL THING-A MIDWAY RIDE SO NAMED: THE SPIRIT OF ROCK AND ROLL!
EVERYTHING IS POPPIN` UP DAISIES!
MUSINGS ON THE LBJ EXHIBIT-SIGN OF THE TIMES: LIFE IN THE SWINGIN` SIXTIES.
Sign Of The Times: Life In The Swingin` Sixties will run at the LBJ Library until September 5th. If you have forgotten many of the people and ephemera, this exhibit will bring them back in magnificent clarity. I lived in Houston, Texas (1959-1965) in the first half of the sixties, and in Dallas, Texas (1965-1969) the second half of the sixties. The whole time was charged with creativity and discovery, for me, but with struggle comes some pain. I seemed to reinvent myself daily in those days; I changed my priorities from sports to music. Strong forces seemed to seduce me over the line. This particular show focuses just on the aesthetic angle of the sixties. LBJ had established the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, as part of his Great Society plan, and it enhanced the arts throughout the nation. Even the Public Broadcasting Corporation ( PBS ) was a sibling of the Great Society. This exhibit does not touch on Vietnam, Civil Rights, assassinations, or class warfare. Those albatrosses remain in the back of your mind, but rather the show provides you with plentiful examples of the music, art, film, TV, and fashion from this era of zest.
LBJ`s Great Society promised much, and in essence, delivered much. Creativity abounded; no dearth of heroes existed-the times were all about POP ! The heroes that populate those times embody this notion. So load up your astro-bright Volkswagen bus with urchins and revisit the cutely, cobwebbed Summer of Love. Oh yea mate, everything is poppin` up daisies!
BRITISH INVASION
As you enter the exhibit, opaque black and white wallpaper pics of many of the British Invasion bands plaster the walls. Familiar tunes waft from the speakers: “Glad All Over” “Twist and Shout”, and “There`s A Place”. And to think that at one time, The Dave Clark Five competed neck-to-neck with The Fab Four, for the crown, king of the rockers. Rare footage of The Beatles plays on the wall, from their 1964 worldwind tour of the USA. Paul tosses clothes in a suitcase, Ringo and John mock the camera, and George too, defiantly grimaces at the lens, Also, on a gigantic screen, caged go-go-girls ( go-go-boots-yea ) dance kinetically to the Brit pop! Haven`t seen the Froog, Twist, Mashed Potato, or Watusi in lightyears. The Animals, Hermit`s Hermits, Gerry and The Pacemakers, and even The Hollies, all electrified our daily lives-in the wink of an eye. Hey, Dave Clark is a versatile chap, and a successful businessman. Early on he bought the rights to The Ready Steady Go! series, and has been racking up royalties for a good while!
GEAR FASHION
It is sheer bliss to see all of these fashion-plates again; many of the celebrated wearables are here: bell bottoms, a Nehru jacket, wire-rimmed glasses, and an electric shirt, all displayed as if one is peering through a boutique window ! A video monitor runs Carnaby Street footage and there is Twiggy walking the rug once again. Even some jewelry of Kenneth Lane can be viewed. Mary Quaint was the inventor of the mini-skirt, the optimum wear for liberated girls.
TV ROOM
“Winston tastes good like a…cigarette should.” The TV Room is set up just as many folks had there dens in the 1960s. The LP vinyl albums are in a metal rack near an old timey hi-fi-console, with an adjacent cone-tree-lamp-perceived as modern furniture! The RCA Victor plays many of those vintage commercials, and a night stand has a stack of Life, Popular Mechanic, and Mad magazines.
CUTTING EDGE COMEDY
This space has been set up like a little bare-bones Stand-up Comedy Club, and has a TV monitor running old Bill Cosby and Woody Allen routines. Suddenly, there was much risk-taking in comedy; jabbing at society and everything was subject to ridicule-race, sex, politics, The War! What`s cool is the stark simple staging- with just comedian, audience, and a pocketful of jibes!
TELEVISION
This section is broken up into various kiosks, that represent sundry program categories. There is Cool Camp; Gilligan`s Island, Mr. Ed, Batman, The Dating Game, and The Munsters-Breakthroughs; with Laugh-In, Star Trek, That Girl, and The Smother`s Brothers- AndCool Cops, Cool Spies; The Avengers, The Mod Squad, I Spy, and U.N.C.L.E. Oh, one other that I forgot to note, but it had comedy sitcoms such as: I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and The Beverly Hillbillies. You could turn on one of these shows and listen with headphones, but you could get bogged down, and bend your precious time, if you loitered latently at this locale! Here is an interesting site that has all the dribble that never made it big. Diana Rigg had me sweating sweet boy bullets with a rapturous, adolescent crush-delightful daydream dalliance though. All of these shows are massively imprinted on my cerebral cortex, and can be rerun with a wave of the wand to the telepathic television monitor in my mind.
BLACK MUSIC
The highlight of this section is the display of the Supremes` sequined butterfly dresses! There are also many black and white glossies of icons such as: Isaac Hays, James Brown, Rufus Thomas, and Ike and Tina Turner. It is a significant accomplishment that so many breakthroughs occurred in Black music. There is a nice photo of the Motown house, Hitsville USA and glossies of The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and The Four Tops. Powerful items indeed, were two pieces of sheet music: “I Hear a Symphony” and “You Keep Me Hangin` On”, both Holland-Dozier-Holland compositions. The only version I recall of the latter is Vanilla Fudge`s riveting rendition-an early suggestion of rock opera.
SPORTS
The sports area covered many of the larger-than-life figures, like “Broadway Joe,” arguably the greatest NFL quarterback ever, led the Jets to victory over the Colts in Super Bowl III-1/12/1969. Denny Laine, only foggily recalled, was a thirty game winner, pitching for the Detriot Tigers in 1968. He will be remembered mainly as an organ player, then for illegal gambling, fraud, and his lengthy jail sentences! Mohammed Ali is not only the greatest all time boxer, but also a champion for African American rights, as well as an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.
GARAGE BANDS
The diorama of this life-size rock combo, complete with Marshal amps, Ludwig drums, and mop-topped kids, accurately simulates the garage band craze of the 1960s. The dreams of many kids were processed through iconic pop music stars; role models from sports were freely jettisoned! Free-form bands popped up on every suburban street corner.
PSYCHEDELIC SCENE
As one drifts into the psychedelic section, representing the crowning years of the 1960s (67,68, & 69), the Moody Blues` anthem Legends of a Mind plays: “Timothy Leary`s dead, no no he`s outside, looking in!” A light show is projected on the wall, as in oil and colors swirling on an overhead projector, and it twitters with strobes, rewinding you to that electric time. Timothy Leary`s primer, The Psychedelic Experience , is mounted on the wall at eye-view. There also, is the first Rolling Stone magazine, with a publishing date of November 9, 1967. A striking photo of John Lennon, from the movie How I Won The War, is on that original cover.
POSTER SCENE
This section has perhaps a more indigenous cross section of items ! Austin produced an amazing poster scene! That is becoming increasingly apparent. I recommend that you read, “The Maverick Tradition: Postering in Austin, Texas” by Nels Jacobson. A real spiritual beeline was established between San Francisco and Austin. The Avalon Ballroom, in San Francisco, provided the inspiration for quality poster and flyer art. In Austin, especially, the posters of Gilbert Shelton and Jim Franklin are tantalizing targets for collectors! Many of these were created in cahoots with the Vulcan Gas Co., 316 Congress Avenue. They grow in value as more people intuit their historical importance. Especially some of the posters verily simulate the psychedelic experience by way of the visual senses, with astro-bright colors and surreal images. The posters also help to document the music scene, with local bands such as the Conqueroos and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and legendary touring marvels, Moby Grape, The Fugs, and The Velvet Underground. I could “turn on, tune in, and drop out” quite aptly in this section! I morphed once again to a flamboyant flower child for just a dash.
WRITERS
I was so inspired by this section, that I went out and bought Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer, and devoured it in a jiffy. It documents the march against the Pentagon by war protestors, on October 21, 1967, and is a full rave against the U.S.`increased commitment in Vietnam. Arguments for and against the war are provided, just in case you are hazy on it, after forty years.Armies won a Pulitzer prize, and used the literary device of history as literature, then literature as history. Do not forget Kurt Vonnegut`s Slaughterhouse Five; an odd blend of science fiction and some painful recollections of the Allies` bombing of Dresden in WWII. Tom Wolfe has a grab bag of insight into the far side of the American Experience, as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test chronicles the zany deeds of Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters. Also on display were Little Big Man by Thomas Berger, and Portney`s Complaint by Philip Roth. I never read the last two, but appeciated the movie, Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman. Truman Capote invented the genre of True Crime, and In Cold Blood has been thoroughly perused by yours truly.
POP ART
It emerged with meteoric spontaneity and freshness in the 1960s! Not very far from my side, for more than twenty years, a copy of Pop Art , edited by Lucy R. Lippard, has instructed me, and you would be wise to procure a copy for yourself. As I entered the Pop Art section I first saw a photo of LBJ and J. William Fulbright studying a piece of Op Art. They are unlikely advocates of this new art! Then I saw a photo of Yoko Ono bedecked in tattered rags, at her show Cut Pieces, from 1962-in fine form. People could come up and cut off a piece of her clothing; this is an early example of performance art.
Behind glass some works of the greatest pop-artists were displayed. One of Warhol`s silkscreens of Marilyn quickly comes into focus! These icons of starlets fetch a pretty penny these days. In fact, a silkscreen of Liz Taylor brought in 12.6 million at a Christie`s auction recently. One still has to scratch their head in marvel at the commanding pittance of these Warhols! Robert Rauschenberg experimented with the collage technique and multi-media, including photographs, utilized in many ways. Current events and history were interpreted effectively through the arrangement of images in a collage. Roy Lichtenstein would take an ad from a Sunday New York Times, isolate the girl from the ad, then greatly enlarge her- in this case to 60 ½ inches x 36 ½ inches. Just look at the gargantuan Girl With A Ball ; its billboard simplicity is striking, and sticks with you for eons of hour glass 180s. Jasper John`s flags and U.S. maps strike a chord with ones national sensibilities. Maybe his emblematic projections gave fodder to the rapacious rave for flag clothing and red, white, and blue rolling papers, that permeated the Woodstock Generation.
Included near to the end, was one piece by Larry Rivers, Dead Veteran; he too would take advertising ads, such as the Camel cigarette logo, slightly alter it, and replicate it on the canvas. The final piece in this section was Toulouse Lautrec by Peter Max. He is the consummate, quintessential, iconic representative of the 1960s; I know that I had many of his posters on my bedroom wall! I am currently looking for the Life Magazine of September 5, 1969 with Peter Max on the cover; a horded keepsake, I am mostly sure!
MOVIES
A Hard Days Night was included in the film section, and brought back the memory of taking the bus to downtown Houston with some elementary school friends, and feeling like we were a part of the event of the century. The songs were perfect and the black and white film gave it a documentary touch. All the Beatles were good, but Ringo walking along the river with an instrumental of “This Boy” was the mountaintop moment of the film.
Dr. Strangelove and 2001 A Space Odyssey are both Stanley Kubrick films, both are masterpieces, and sometimes I suspect that he is my favorite film-maker. I saw A Clockwork Orange at the Paramount a couple of summers ago, and I hadn`t seen it since 1971; I was riveted with the satire and wit. I worked as an usher at Northtown Six Theaters in Dallas in the late sixties, and saw Space Odyssey , maybe a thousand times. Its theme is the entire timeline of man, but modeled as circular rather than linear; ie history repeats itself continuously; it makes no difference if you reside in prehistoric times, or modernity. This was the theme that I was able to glean from Odyssey. Time matches Einstein`s Theory of Relativity, and the cosmic presence of the film moves freely about the past, present, and future! Dr. Strangelove is an anti-war film where comedy is a transparent veil for the sinister machinations of the Cold War, and the ease of atomic mishap, at the hands of berserko military generals.
Mike Nichol`s The Graduate best expressed the newly emerging phenomenon of the “Generation Gap”. Adultery, love, career, suburban sensibility, and youthful idealism are touched on artfully. The Simon and Garfunkel songs magnanimously compliment the film timbre, and Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross, and Anne Bancroft all emerged as superstars! Mike Nichols is recently back on top of his form, with Angels Over America and Closer. It is wise to review his filmography in order to realize how many really great films he has made.
In The Heat of the Night, directed by Norman Jewison, has a challenging who done it plot, and touched on racial issues in the deep south. Rod Steiger is fantastic and Sidney Poitier created a franchise playing Virgil Tibbs. Racial issues were finally out in the open in the 1960s.
There are also many other good choices for the very best films of the decade, such as Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde, or Woodstock. But one would best not be back-peddling `bout such enumerating trite.
CONCLUSION
So there it is, hope you had a pleasant journey! Not too much jet lag, or that bad brown acid that may still be going around! The best thing to do is to follow a more specific yellow brick road , and to bone-up on topics germane to this exhibit, that best accommodate your indulgences. This summer the Tate Liverpool is having a similar show, but naturally it covers the European connection to the arts in the sixties. Hope your dreams are not too clouded with musty, poisonous mushrooms and that everything is poppin` up daisies!
