Another great exhibition went up in San Francisco's City Hall basement last week wth the unwieldy title, "The Art of Change: The Influence of Rock, Music and Art on Social Change."
The history of how this huge collection of imagery and posters from the last 50 years of rock and roll appeared on these walls is almost as interesting as the artworks themselves.
Bill Graham was a Berlin Jew born in 1931 who was smuggled from one orphanage to another until he ended up a foster child in The Bronx. His mother and most of his sisters died in the Nazi holocaust. After being drafted into the U.S. Army and doing his time in Korea, he worked at Catskills resorts as a maitre'd/poker room attendant, where he later claimed he learned his skills as a "promoter." (Click here for an evenhanded Wikipedia account.)
Graham (pictured above) showed up in San Francisco in 1965, became involved with Ronnie Davis and the San Francisco Mime Troupe's leftist theater happenings in public parks, then hijacked the San Francisco rock music promotion scene from the visionary Chet Helms who actually helped to create it.
Over the next 25 years, he arguably became the most important impresario of the rock music world in its 60-year history through his promotion of musicians at his various rock palaces which included The Fillmore (West in SF and East in NY), Winterland, and the Shoreline Amphitheater among other venues.
Many of his first concerts were fundraisers for various left-wing causes such as Cesar Chavez' Delano strike above, and he obviously loved the idea of changing the world through the nexus of music, art and money.
His first major outdoor arena concert was a 1975 benefit in Golden Gate Park's Kezar Stadium for the San Francisco School District, which was going through draconian budget cuts that threatened all extracurricular sports and music programs.
With everybody from Neil Young to Bob Dylan playing at the event, it was an assertive demonstration of how he could Use Major Celebrities for Good (and yes, that's Brando and Coppola above, who Graham had been hanging out with while filming the "Playboy Bunnies" sequence in "Apocalypse Now.")
This led to the "LiveAid" concerts and worldwide benefits of every kind, including one after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It was after that event in 1991 that his helicopter crashed on the way home to Marin County and Bill Graham died at the age of 60. It was the end of an era.
In 1995, a handful of Bill Graham's employees bought the company for $5 million from his estate, and then turned around and sold it for $65 million to Wall Street banker Robert Sillerman, who rebranded it as SFX Entertainment, which was in turn swallowed by the "radio/billboard/venue conglomerate Clear Channel." (For a fascinating recounting of the evolution of Wolfgang's Vault and its copyright controversies, click here for a June 2004 article by Todd Inoue in the San Jose Metro weekly.)
In 2002, a Minnesota insurance CEO named William Sagan bought Bill Graham's archive from Clear Channel for $5 million, transferred it to a warehouse on Bluxome near the Giants ballpark, and started selling memorabilia and classic live concerts over the internet from what he was calling "Wolfgang's Vault," in a nod to Bill Graham's original German name, Wolfgang Grajonca. (Click here to get to the Wolfgang's Vault website.)
The only problem was that Sagan wasn't offering to share any royalties with the photographers, illustrators and musicians who created the work in the first place. Sagan claimed he'd paid good money for the archive, and "the purchase allowed the company the rights to open the archive as they deemed fit," according to his lawyer, Michael Elkin.
In December of 2006, a consortium of musicians headed by the Grateful Dead sued Wolfgang's Vault. "We have never given permission for our images and material to be used in this way," said the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. "What Sagan is doing is stealing. He is stealing what is most important to us--our work, our images and our music--and is profiting from the good will of our fans." (Click here for an article by Tjames Madison at "LiveDaily.")
I called the San Francisco Art Commission the day after the show's opening at City Hall to ask them how the exhibition had come about and whether they were comfortable partnering up with somebody who was being sued by so many artists. This must have set off a few alarm bells because I was soon contacted by Gabby Medecki, the Marketing Director of Wolfgang's Vault, who informed me that "all lawsuits related to Wolfgang’s Vault have been either settled or dismissed. There are absolutely no current lawsuits between Wolfgang’s Vault and any performing artist."
She also directed me to a press release published in Billboard in November of 2008 announcing, "Grateful Dead Productions, Carlos Santana, Led Zeppelin, the Estate of Janis Joplin, The Doors and Wolfgang's Vault, wish to announce that they have settled their claims concerning Wolfgang's Vault promotion and sale of various items of memorabilia and merchandise. As a part of the settlement Wolfgang's Vault and the artists have entered into a licensing agreement pertaining to the sale of merchandise. The terms of the settlement are confidential and do not extend to certain outstanding claims concerning sound recordings."
Bill Graham, from all the accounts I've heard, was a great boss who kept the same loyal employees for decades, but if you were a competitor or a shoddy vendor, the man was utterly ruthless. It's something of a poetic irony that his private pack-rat collection should have ended up in the hands of somebody who seems to share some of the same qualities.
The exhibit is wonderful, though its attempts to link various decades to different social change themes seems a bit tenuous. "60's Rock - Feminism" and "70's - Peace," for instance, are obviously backwards.
There is a stab at multimedia where you can dial in on your cellphone (415-375-8282) and by pressing various extensions, you can hear music, interviews or further explanation of various artists (click here for the list). You also have to listen to a dreary intro by Mayor Gavin Newsom blathering on about "ordinary people" making "social change," but it's worth the effort, and the exhibition itself is well worth visiting.
The San Francisco Boys' Chorus and the San Francisco Girls' Chorus, in a fairly rare bisexual collaboration, previewed their Obama inauguration concert program for Washington, D.C. in San Francisco's City Hall on Thursday afternoon.
The event started with an overlong, blustering speech by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, ending with the presentation of two city plaques for the choruses.
The chorus then launched into "America The Beautiful" in a beautiful, ethereal rendition of that durable tune.
The conductor was Ian Robertson (above), the director of the San Francisco Boys' Chorus and also the director of the San Francisco Opera Chorus. If ever there was an unsung hero of San Francisco's classical musical life over the last 20 years, it would have to be the chain-smoking, wryly funny and utterly brilliant Scotsman Mr. Robertson, and it's great news to hear he's representing San Francisco in Washington, D.C.
I went to the top of City Hall's dome to hear the angelic strains of the childrens' choruses reverberating through the building.
There is a an exquisite, unweathered quality to a well-trained childrens' chorus that is inimitable, which is probably why so much church music has been written for their perfect soprano voices over the centuries.
I had read there was to be an Obama inauguration celebration in Civic Center Plaza on the Tuesday the 20th, complete with large screen, but when trying to find any confirmation of the event at "The Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services," I ran into a nasty middle-aged receptionist who treated my question as if it were a personal affront. "There's something going on at Bill Graham Auditorium that's open to the public, but it's not a city event, so I don't know anything about it. Go over there if you want any information," she said with vinegar dripping from her voice
I did go to Bill Graham Auditorium across the Plaza and asked an elderly security guard if there was anything scheduled for Inauguration Day on the 20th and he actually went back to an office and found out that no, there was nothing scheduled for that day. I returned to City Hall and ran into the newly elected District 11 Supervisor John Avalos who was extraordinarily sweet and helpful, and who gave me a printed postcard announcing that yes, there was to be a public simulcast in Civic Center Plaza from 7AM to 12 noon. It's being produced by a group out of the Mission called NextArts, which I called this evening to make sure the event was still on. The answer was yes, and all they are asking for is a donation of "socks or underwear (new)" to distribute to poor people. (Click here for more info.)
I returned to the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services and politely handed the receptionist the printed postcard with the inauguration info, and her response was, "I told you this wasn't a city event! What's your problem? I don't know anything about this," as she angrily returned the postcard to me. I told her I thought she might be interested just so she could share the information with others, but she was doing everything but spitting out "screw you" so I left, but not without taking a few photos of the lady with her hand in front of her face, along with her young assistant who decided to dance around like a fool before they called for a deputy. The two of them struck me as perfect gatekeepers for Mr. Newsom's administration.
Update: Heather Knight at SFGate wrote a piece this morning confirming what jerks the Newsom administration are being about inauguration festivities in San Francisco, while our Mayor hangs out with Senator Feinstein in Washington, D.C. Click here to read it.
