The New World Has Hit Oakland
I made this up in early 1967. I was so caught up with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan that I had to find some way to express it, to represent it, to translate it, to take part in some intuitively esthetic way. At the same time in 1966 and on from there we were going to the Fillmore or the Avalon as often as we could, taking posters home each time. Starting in early 1967 we went almost every weekend to see the Doors. It never occurred to me to write about it—though as early as 1965 I was already writing about Dylan in college papers. KMPX in San Francisco, the first open FM new music station, was playing a borrowed/found/purloined/leaked tape of what was announced as "A Day in the Life Of" from an upcoming untitled Beatles album—playing it constantly. It was unlike anything anyone had ever heard and it sparked the air. I took a Fillmore poster, followed the basic design, bought movie magazines for rock & roll pictures and Mademoiselle for more pictures and Dylan lyrics printed on their own as poetry—"Visions of Johanna" was one, before Blonde on Blonde, and cut those out too. So I tried to act out the song, following the basic design of the poster but effacing it completely.
I cut pictures of Jeanne Moreau on a beach out of Playboy and made a lampshade—a version of "Light My Fire."
And then came this hilarious poster for a show across the Bay from the San Francisco Sound: "The New World Has Hit Oakland." Poor inferiority complex Oakland, seemingly the squarest place on earth, with the most right-wing daily newspaper in the state—it was like whoever put the thing up was telling a joke on themselves. I loved it, being so superior in Berkeley. But I also loved it for what it was—that picture of the old jazz band. So I did it again, this time to remake the Rolling Stones' "Something Happened to Me Yesterday" (that's what Allen Ginsberg is doing there in the band, for the line "Sitting on a mat about to pray," staring at Vanessa Redgrave in Blow-Up. It was so much fun. And I can’t believe that over all these years they haven't fallen to pieces, that it never occurred to me not to keep them. The two pictures were my first attempts at criticism.
Brilliant folk art collage takes on live rock posters from that period. How have they not turned up as book covers yet?!
Thanks for sharing these personal artworks. 1967 was the best/worst of times in America. Pop music was at a high summer (pun intended), but politics was then, as now, troubled and turbulent with the horrors of Vietnam raging and the horrors at home of racial division and political chaos to come. Then there was greater hope than we have now, I'm afraid and it was the music of that time, especially The Beatles, which gave young people hope. Maybe we should appreciate all the progress we have made despite current hardships, but when you realize there was a Mideast War in '67 (and '73) as well as now, we are still in a great struggle in our human evolution.