1967 (1966) (1968) (1960-1970) (1970-1980) Table of Contents
John Cage* A Year from Monday, Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, CN, 1967. 1931, 1930s, 1929, 1926, 1924, See Text
Roger Jones Windsurfing: Basic and Fun Boarding Technique Harper & Row: San Francisco, 1985, 128pp., 1967 See Text
John Arthur Maynard Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1991. 242pp., 1967 See Text
Andrea Schulte-Peevers and David Peevers Los Angeles, Lonely Planet: Oakland, 2nd ed., 1996(1999), 351pp., 1999, 1996, 1967 See Text
Jeffrey Stanton* Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987, 176 pp., 1967, 1965, 1964, 1963, 1960s, 1959, 1958, 1956, See Text
Calvin Tomkins, Profile: Flying into the Light, The New Yorker, January 13, 2003. pages 62 to 71, 2003, 1974, 1972, 1969, 1968, 1967, 966, 1965, 1961, 1960s, 1953, 1943 See Text
Documents
John Cage* A Year from Monday, Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, CN, 1967, 1924
On page 132 of A Year From Monday, "I was twelve years old. I got out my bicycle and rode over to KFWB. They said, "What do you want?" I said, "I'd like to give a weekly radio program for the Boy Scouts." They said, "Are you an Eagle?" I said, "No, I'm a Tenderfoot." They said, "Did the Boy Scouts send you?" I said, "No, I just got the idea and came over." They said, "Well, run along." So I went over to KNX. They liked the idea and arranged a time for the first program. I then went to the Boy Scouts, told them what had happened, and asked for their approval and cooperation. They said it was all right to give the program but that they would not cooperate. In fact, they never did. Every time I asked for the Boy Scout band, they said No. Individual scouts all gave their services willingly. There were boy sopranos; trumpet, trombone, and piano soloists; and Scouts who spoke on their experiences building fires and tying knots. The volume of fan mail increased each month. After two years, the organization called up KNX, said they'd never authorized the program, and demanded that I be put out and they be put in. They were. The band finally played. A few weeks later, KNX took the program off the air."
[Preparing these notes in October 2004, I checked my edition of A Year from Monday and discovered that there was only 167pages in the book. I also discovered that the stories on the endpages were the same in both the beginning and the back. I'd remembered them as being different. Rereading the book, I also discovered Ruth Weisberg's penciled note in the text that she and I had actually been part of the 1965 performance in Ann Arbor with John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Ashley, and Gordon Mumma. September, 2004, KR]
"While I was studying with Adolph Weiss in the early 1930's, I became aware of his unhappiness in face of the fact that his music was rarely performed. I too had experienced difficulty in arranging performance of my compositions, so I determined to consider a piece of music only half done when I completed a manuscript. It was my responsibility to finish it by getting it played." p.86
"It was evident that musicians interested in new music were rare. It was equally evident that modern dancers were grateful for any sounds or noises that could be produced for their recitals. My first commission was from the Physical Education Department of U.C.L.A. An accompaniment for an aquatic ballet was needed. Using drums and gongs, I found that the swimmers beneath the surface of the water, not being able to hear the sounds, lost their places. Dipping the gongs into the water while still playing them solved the problems of synchronization and brought the sliding tones of the 'water gong' into the percussion orchestra."
Roger Jones Windsurfing: Basic and Fun Boarding Technique Harper & Row: San Francisco, 1985, 128pp., 1967
"The idea of an articulated mast, which led to the patent, was conceived by Jim [Drake] while driving westbound, alone, on the San Bernadino Freeway. By early 1967 he was experimenting with two versions of a free-sail system, one with a fully-articulated universal on the mast foot, the other with the mast attached rigidly to the centerboard. The rigid connection made the centeboard swivel back as the mast was tilted forward. Both versions allowed the sail to swing in a full circle.
John Arthur Maynard Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1991. 242pp., 1967
"(c. 1967) In Venice, meanwhile, one of the beat ethic's more seasoned practitioner's, Stuart Perkoff*, was making yet another subsidized attempt to lead an orderly, productive life. His father had set him up in a house in Ocean Park; there he and Jana Baragan* would live quietly, write poetry, draw pictures, make collages, and learn to live without drugs. Or so the plan wen, at any rate. Like all the other plans, it demanded more concessions than he was able to make.
"To sustain his heroin habit, Perkoff* had put together a modest scam. His role was to be the man who knew the connection; drug trafficking had become so hazardous in Venice that most reputable dealers worked only through third parties. When a customer wanted to buy, he would take the money and score. He earned himself a "taste" that way, but he also assumed the risk for both parties. With a steady stream of customers flowing through his house, it was only a matter of time before the police realized what he was doing. When they did, they decided to set him up for his connection. There was no hurry about it; they waited three months to issue the warrents.
"Perkoff* hardly remembered the specific buys they arrested him for, let alone the phony customers. The warrants were Federal, and although he ended up being convicted of "transporting marijuana" rather than selling heroin, he drew the maximum penalty of five years, to be served on Terminal Island, in the man-made Harbor of Los Angeles.
"After his son's trial, Nat Perkoff drove down from Santa Barbara to clear out the house in Ocean Park. He and the landlord worked all day. There was no time to sort throught the mountain of clutter. Since it all looked like trash anyway, they told the workman they had hired to throw it all out. At precisely the moment Stuart Perkoff's* entire literary estate was being rolled out the door in a barrel, Larry Lipton,* the man with the perfect sense of timing, happened to be strolling up the front walk. Once he realized what was happening, he refused to stop shouting until the police arrived and agreed to impound everything until Perkoff was released." pp. 172-173
Andrea Schulte-Peevers and David Peevers Los Angeles, Lonely Planet: Oakland, 2nd ed., 1996(1999), 351pp., 1999, 1996, 1967
2732 Main St., Omelette Parlor, Opened 1967, 1999, 1996
Jeffrey Stanton* Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987, 176 pp., 1967, 1965, 1964, 1963, 1960s, 1959, 1958, 1956
"Santa Monica was ready to pull his park license at a meeting on March 16, 1967 when Roberts showed up at the last minute with a fist full of policies proving that the park was covered with $1.5 million in insurance. The city was ready to close the park when they got a cancellation notice from his insurance company.
"The Urban Redevelopment board was concerned that his park with its peeling paint and boarded up restaurants along Ocean Front Walk would scare away prospective apartment tenants. Although they would have liked to see the park closed, and nearly accomplished it during construction, they publicly wished Roberts well.
"Roberts, despite years of lagging attendance and piles of long overdue bills, expected things to improve. He was negotiating a loan of $1,600,000 from the Teamsters. In addition, urban redevelopment left him with a brand new access street, ample parking and a bus stop. The Cheetah, a mod rock and roll club planned to open in the Aragon Ballroom.
"Finally at the end of the 1967 season, P.O.P.'s creditors took action and forced the park into involuntary bankruptcy. Santa Monica precipitated the action when they filed suit to take control of the property because Roberts owed them $17,000 in back rent since 1965. The park closed on October 6, 1967."
Calvin Tomkins, Profile: Flying into the Light, The New Yorker, January 13, 2003. pages 62 to 71., 2003, 1974, 1972, 1969, 1968, 1967, 1966, 1965, 1961, 1960s, 1953, 1943,
"The artist James Turrell*: Born in 1943 and raised by his grandmother in Pasadena after his aeronautical engineer and academic father died in 1953 and his mother joined the Peace Corps shortly thereafter. Without graduating from high school, " . . . 1961, he entered Pomona College . . . and majored in mathematics and perceptual psychology, and . . .took . . . art classes." Continued his art studies for a year, 1965&endash;66 at UC Irvine. "In 1967, after serving some time in jail (vaguely for couselling draft resisters), Turrell moved back to Los Angeles. He had a little money saved up, which he used to take a lease on the old Mendota Hotel, a small, derelict building in what was then a sort of slum, the Ocean Park section of Los Angeles, where Richard Diebenkorn and a number of other artists had studios. Setting aside two rooms in front, on the street, for his studio, Turrell proceeded to seal them off from the outside world, blocking out the windows and painting the walls, floors, and ceilings a uniform white. Then he made some carefully calibrated openings that allowed light to enter the rooms under controlled conditions. In the daytime, shafts of sunlight would move slowly across a section of wall or floor". . . first one-man show in 1967 at the Pasadena Art Museum with the catalogue essay published in Artforum, . . He rebuilt old cars and flew airplanes for the Neptune Society and with Sam Francis. "The California light-and-space art . . . Irwin, Turrell, Douglas Wheeler and Maria Nordman&endash;never functioned as a group, and didn't agree on much of anything. . . He worked with Robert Irwin and Ed Wortz, a psychologist, in LACMA's Art and Technology Program for a year and a half in 1968 and 1969, exploring sensory deprivation and ganzfelds. . . .
"Turrell preferred to keep on transforming rooms in the Mendota Hotel. He made dreamlike spaces divided by walls of colored light that looked solid until you came close to them. He made ganzfelds in which the viewer lost all sense of dimension. Turrell cut his first skyspace in the roof of the Mendota Hotel. His landlord found out and made him repair the damage, but Count Panza di Biumo, an adventurous Italian art collector who visited the Mendota in 1972, commissioned Turrell to do a skyspace and several other works at his palazzo in Varese, This was Turrell's first commission, completed in 1974. That same year, a group of Hollywood investors bought up his entire block in Ocean Park, forcing Turrell and several other artists, including Sam Francis and Richard Diebenkorn, to find new studios."
Richard Diebenkorn moved into a new building at 2444 Main St. in Ocean Park.