SOCIAL CALENDAR October and November 2016: EVENTS DOCUMENTED AND UN-

Above, three photographers who have photographed Iggy and The Stooges live, taken by a fourth, yours truly. Left to right: Robert Matheu, Ron Sobol and Kurt Ingham at the book signing event for Jeff Gold's Total Chaos, Nov. 19, 2016. What distinguishes this tome on the history of The Stooges and Iggy and The Stooges are Jeff's extensive interviews with Iggy Pop who lets loose his inimitable wry wit, and a never before seen array of pertinent Stoogiania.

The event was held at Leigh Kaplan's art book store ARCANA in Culver City CA. Both Jeff and Leigh are friends of ours from the very distant past of our UCLA days. 

Below, guest photographer © 2016 Kurt Ingham shot of yours truly and the author signing his book for me. Right: Mr. Twister finds his own exceptional live shot of the Ig which graced the cover of an early edition of Creem Magazine. Lots of Stooge memorabilia from Jeff's own collection and perhaps items of his music collector clients via Gold's business RecordMecca.com were to be found in glass display cases.

 

 

 Guest photographer © 2016 Michael Eivas took this nice shot below of Mr. Twister 
and yours truly at the San Fernando Valley Arts & Culture Center's October 4th opening of Rock Image-ination, a composite show of rock photographers Michael Eivaz, Kevin Goff, Scott Mitchell, Jimmy Steinfeldt and Richard Upper.  (Eivaz' work was demonstrably among the best.) 

I shot assorted ambience commemoration of exhibit goers, interesting faces and the great School of Rock kids performing at the event...however...all of my smartcard's images' immediate demise when downloaded presaged a wretched turn of events.

Astute readers* may note that I proffered a single blog post in October. That's when Microsoft™ chose secretly to install Windows 10™ in my computer overnight without warning. And overnight all of my photo processing programs and photography archives disappeared; i.e., my life's work and its manufacture. It took topflight professional data recovery experts even to locate the buried files much less to restore them, an expensive endeavor. The kindly computer repairfolk tried to comfort me saying that their business was swamped with similar victims, and mine wasn't even the worst. They told the tale of an accountancy firm wherein all of its multi-thousand dollar business-specific programs disappeared into the WIndows 10 ethers, never, ever, ever to be returned...

*Astute readers also may notice I wore the same necklace to both events.

BEAUTIFUL DOG and HORSE PAINTINGS BY BROTHER GUISEPPE CASTIGLIONE in the 1700s...

 

Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian Jesuit friar in the Chinese Emperors' courts in the 1700s, painted a beautiful mashup of European and Chinese styles. Selections from three favorite series: Ten Prized Dogs and Ten Prized Steeds. At the bottom, a portion of 100 Horses which is 26.7 feet long painted 1723-5. All were painted with tempera on silk. 

 

 

JIM JARMUSCH's GIMME DANGER STOOGES DOCUMENTARY

 Above, my photo of Iggy and The Stooges live at the Whisky A GoGo, Hollywood, California. 1973. Below, my photo of Jim Jarmusch and crew shooting Iggy and The Stooges live in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the Tribute to Ron Asheton, 2011.

 Evita Corby and I saw Jim Jarmusch's well done Stooges' documentary Gimme Danger last night. You can too no matter where you live using this LINK. I was thanked in the small print credits crawl, and Evita appeared in the film's visuals.

None of my pics were in the film, but I had brokered the live Raw Power-era Stooges' footage that wasn't Ivan Kral's, therefore 50% of the universe's known footage, which heretofore was unknown to the world (Antiques Roadshow moment!) except for my brokering its only other public appearance in The Making of Raw Power dvd that accompanied its re-release in 2009. Originally videotaped for a St. Louis, Missouri broadcast news tv program, the footage was 6 minutes long and silent. But extant, thanks to my archiving.

Gimme Danger Tech Notes: 
1) Virtually all live footage of that era, except for that of the mighty Cincinnati Pop Festival (best rock footage ever, of anyone) was indeed subject to severe technical limitations of 1960s/70s low-light photography/cinematography, and was silent unless you had a Hollywood Studio's well-funded production budget behind you. None of us did,of course, even those with great access like photographer filmmaker Leni Sinclair.  All the early footage in this film was augmented with all sorts of bootleg audio that is traceable to each show. Once a lip reader can sort out which song the singer is performing, it's not too hard to sync up the bootleg music...

2) I am guessing that despite my best efforts, they couldn't locate the original footage (mine was a copy of its maker's Betamax format that I had digitized as soon as one could. Apparently, even its maker hadn't.) It looked like what happens when computer programs try their darnedest to sharpen and resolve resolution of vintage, highly grainy low-light stage photography/videography. Can we say "Fastfilm" boys and girls?

GINGER ME

At the risk of all humanity screaming "wha' the hell happened?!?!" I offer this pic of me as a redhead in Summer, 1980 with ever-present camera at the last Behemoth Festival (see LINK.) I think I used Cellophane colours on top of henna. And my eyesight then hadn't deteriorated into the present need for glasses either...

 

In penance, I confess that I do not do everything now that I did then to stay that thin. My own health thanks me, Fashion and Society do not.

HOW I STARTED A RIOT 47 YEARS AGO WHILE PHOTOGRAPHING GRAM PARSONS and THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS

I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out, hence my confession...

The Palm Springs Pop Festival, April 1, 1969 was a music event a tad bigger quantitatively than the more celebrated Monterey Pop Festival of the same era, although smaller by many triple digits that the later that summer Woodstock. For the record, the Palm Springs Pop Festival was in fact peopled by some eight thousand, drug-fueled hippie-dancing young souls.

I went with my new college chum who shared such interests specifically to see Moby Grape (see blog link HERE) and The Jeff Beck Group, the latter an astonishingly adept and charismatic ensemble which included Rod Stewart back when he cared and was actually fun and magnificent alongside future Rolling Stone Ron Wood, all of whom I had witnessed in sheer jaw-dropping awe in San Francisco a year earlier. (Worse confession: no HH pix of the 1968 Jeff Beck Group at Winterland by me. It was the first time I had tried to shoot 35mm natural stage light with my new used Edixa and, with no instructions for this pre-set lens camera except for those in the German language, I botched it.) Both of these bands canceled at the last moment, unbeknownst to us when we embarked for same in a 3 hour tour...

When we got to this outdoor venue, it was my first time attending a show that had blocked off the entire front of the stage from the audience or photographers like me. I was as determined then (particularly given the Jeff Beck Group Fiasco) as I am now to get great live shots, so I just tore down the offending chicken wire, entered the rarefied area and took the following photograph of The Flying Burrito Brothers. (Left to right: the legendary Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, Chris Ethridge and Sneaky Pete Kleinow, all accoutred in their infamous custom Nudie suits--Gram with cannabis leaves and pills, Sneaky with pterodactyls etc.)

I only got this one shot of the Burritos because suddenly eight thousand people rushed forward to join me in the once-blocked off area, and I was jostled terminally away from any further photography. It was truly uncomfortable amongst the new surging throngs, it was quite cold in the desert night air, the two bands we wanted to see had canceled, we'd seen most of the remaining acts, and my friend was starting to get drugsick. So we left. 

But apparently those pushing stagewards continued in their spirit of surging and mobbing, eventually rioting throughout toney Palm Springs all the way to Taquitz Falls Park. It was one of the first instances in utter failure of concert crowd control for festivals ending in rioting, quite some months before the Rolling Stones' Altamont downer and I, dear reader, may be responsible for its inception.

Later I would find access to stage photography limited by far more than chicken wire fencing, instead by micro-managing control freaks associated with the acts. This has proven in the long run to be a far more formidable obstacle to great photography than any 8,000 person riot behind me ever was...

ARWEN LEWIS and PETER LEWIS LIVE 10.23.16 at CAFE NELA

 Songstress Arwen Lewis and dad Peter Lewis (of the dynamic frontline of singer/guitarists in 1960s San Francisco's Moby Grape) appeared in the suitably psychedelic light show of Cafe NELA on 10.23.16. With bassist Nick Babishoff, Arwen and Peter sang their set of solo originals and Grape covers with all electric accompaniment.

Peter was celebrated for his ballad contributions to Moby Grape as much as his rockers, and both show up here. I for one was thrilled to hear one particular deviation from their own penned material, a second Skip Spence song besides "Omaha" from the Grape debut album, the rocket blast of "Indifference". These two strong singers traded its call and response alternate verses to great effect, alongside Peter's legendary picking. Whew!

Set list for this show...