Tag Archives: 1970′s
Nina Simone: The Legend
I first heard about Nina Simone while reading Sam Shepard biographies which always mention his working as a busboy at the Village Gate, refilling the diva’s ice water glass during her performances in New York in the 1960′s. It was only years later that I fell under her spell and I still think her take [...]
Gene Vincent Lives
Today we celebrate the birthday of one of rock ‘n’roll’s original madmen: Gene Vincent embodied sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll about a decade before the emergence of an American generation that would take hold of those values and recreate world culture in a new era of freedom and expression. By 1969 Vincent was a [...]
Party at Worthy Farm
Today marks the anniversary of the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, first held on this day in 1970 on Michael Eavis’s family farm in Pilton, Somerset. Along with the utopian idealism of the time came an invention of the “free” music festival, a social movement based on collaboration and responsibility for one’s own expectations. [...]
Scorsese, Sedated
When I think of the films of Martin Scorsese, I’m never reminded of the music of the late, great Ramones, but between now and 2016 it’s not likely I’ll be able to make any other connection. It’s just been announced that the great director will be telling the tale of the punk pioneers in an [...]
AB: After Brando
Marlon Brando may have been the best American actor ever. He was a star of the stage before becoming a cinema idol, bridging a career between the two with his performance as Stanley Kowalski in both the Broadway production and the Warner Brothers film of A Streetcar Named Desire — both directed by Elia Kazan. [...]
Austin Spare: Chaos and Cats
Austin Osman Spare was many people including both an enfant terrible in the London art world at the beginning of the 20th century, and one of the pioneering forerunners of contemporary occultism. Wiki has the basics… Visionary artist and mystic Austin Osman Spare, who was briefly a member of Aleister Crowley’s A∴A∴ but later broke [...]
Sesame Street Hustle
Hello friends, Have you ever noticed that Oscar the Grouch looks like he’s made outta weed? Seriously. Of course, I don’t think this is intentional. Frank Oz probably had a run of the green shaggy stuff laying around and the rest is history. Along with groovy music and the kind of social awareness that came [...]
