If you were driving down the Sunset Strip in the late 1960’s, you’d be treated to what was essentially an outdoor rock and roll art gallery.  While psychedelic music poured out of the clubs, record stores and head shops along Sunset, the latest albums were being celebrated on gigantic billboards high above the street.  But it wasn’t always that way. The very first rock billboard arrived on the strip fifty years ago – just in time for the Summer of Love.

 

“It was this really unique period where art and culture merged and the sixties generation was sort of coming of age,” says photographer Robert Landau. “I think it was a really special time in a lot of ways.”

Landau spent ten years photographing the billboards on the Strip – producing what might be the most complete record of this largely unheralded art form. His photographs are collected in his book, “Rock ‘N’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip” (Angel City Press).  It all started in 1969, when Landau was just a shy teenager with a camera – and the Sunset Strip in his front yard.

“My dad had a bachelor pad right above the Strip here,” Landau remembers.
“And I was 15; I'd walk down here with my camera, getting into photography.  And I'd see John Lennon and the Beatles 15 feet high, and some guy up there painting them.”

 

Each day on his way to school, Landau watched as his rock heroes took over the billboards on the strip, changing month to month.

“About three weeks later, they’d paint it over with a new message,” he continues. “I knew they weren't around long. So I knew when I saw one I liked I'd better get a picture or it'd be gone. 

 

“So I just started photographing them, and it became kind of an obsession for about ten years.” 

 

Of course, there have been billboards on Sunset as long as there have been cars. But up until the sixties, they were mainly ads for the usual products – cars, whiskey, TV shows and Vegas acts.

Then, in 1967, an executive at Elektra Records had a radical idea. He’d noticed that all the radio DJ’s took Sunset on their way to work in Hollywood – and he wanted their attention.

“Jac Holzman got the idea that a rock and roll billboard should be up there, selling a record album,” says Landau. “And he had the perfect album.”

 

The Doors were an LA band, born on the strip, wildly popular and about to make it big -- Elektra was releasing their debut album. And when Holzman hung their four faces high above Sunset, he wasn’t so much trying to sell records as making a statement: The Doors are here, and Elektra’s got 'em!

 

“No other company was doing that,” remembers Robbie Krieger, the band’s guitarist. “They didn't know if they were gonna make their money back on something like that. It was just more of an ego trip, I would say -- for the record company and us.”

 

“We used to drive by every day and look at it -- kinda hold up traffic,” he smiles.

 

As Krieger leafs through Landau’s book, Krieger recalls the day the billboard was erected on the strip.  With the entire band on hand, Elektra made sure the event was well publicized. He stops at an image of the four of them - Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and himself – perched high on top of the billboard.

 

“Oh yeah, they let us go up on top!” Krieger chuckles. “That would never happen today. But we hung out there for probably half an hour while they were putting it up…I'm amazed they let us sit there like that, that's funny.”

 

Other labels caught on, and soon every major artist saw their latest album immortalized on the Strip –The Who, The Rolling Stones, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd. And while promoting rock music with just an image might seem counterintuitive, for a generation used to obsessing over on album covers in detail, music and art were almost the same thing. And, Landau adds, the billboards weren’t really about advertising -- they were about communication. Almost like sending a secret message to the fans.

“In a lot of cases they're not even telling you what they're selling,” Landau points out. We’re standing on the corner of Sunset and Holloway, where a selection of Landau’s images is on display throughout this year. He points to one image: a billboard showing a pig, and dog and a sheep – and not a word of text.  

 

“If you didn't know that Pink Floyd had a record out called Animals, you didn't know what they were advertising,” Landau remarks. “And they didn't care. It really wasn't about that.”

 

In the pre-MTV, pre-YouTube and pre-iTunes era, “the first way to get people's attention was through the album cover, the visual,” he continues. “And those visuals also became the billboards. So that's the connection.”

 

Landau photographed hundreds of billboards during rock’s heyday. His book is dedicated to the artists who created the billboards, many of which were hand-painted. Landau holds a special reverence for those artists, many of whom he got to know as he watched them at work on his daily walks.

“The billboards were an uncredited art form,” he says. “Nobody said who painted ‘em, who designed ‘em.  Just the art of rendering these heads, at that size, was an incredible bit of craftsmanship, artistry, whatever you want to say, but it was really spectacular. 

“Because when you get right up to any billboard, it looks like a series of splotches. These things are huge. And you don't really notice it driving by in your car, but you get up close and they're really large.”

One rock billboard was famously at the center of a crime that went unsolved for over four decades – Paul McCartney’s missing head. It all started with the release of the Beatles’ album “Abbey Road” 1969.  That year, you couldn’t escape the bizarre rumor that “Paul was dead.”

“People were playing the records backwards, looking for clues, and they even said that this image was sort of a funeral march because he's barefoot,” Landau recalls as we look at a photograph of the album’s billboard.  Like the album cover, it features the Beatles in single file, crossing Abbey Road. Their heads are cutouts that extend above the billboard, silhouetted against the sky.

On the morning of December 23rd, 1969, Sunset Strip commuters saw what looked like the latest clue to McCartney’s demise – Paul’s head was missing from the billboard. Capitol Records sent the art director, Roland Young, out to investigate.

“They say what do you want us to do? Should we replace the head?” says Landau.  “And he says, no, leave it like that - it'll get a lot more attention!”

Young was right - the publicity certainly didn’t hurt record sales. But who was behind McCartney’s decapitation?

 

“My buddies helped me, and we did it on December 22nd, which was my birthday,” remembers Robert Quinn. He was just turning nineteen when he got the idea to pull off the heist of the century.  Quinn enlisted two accomplices, and around two o’clock that morning, they pulled up underneath the billboard in his 1959 Volvo.  One of the crew had brought along a Skilsaw. Within minutes, they had their prize.

 

“So we threw Paul’s head into the trunk of my car and took off,” Quinn laughs.  “It was quick! If you were driving by, one second it was up there and the next it was gone.” 

 

McCartney’s head hangs on Quinn’s living room wall to this day. And he may have unknowingly salvaged the only remaining relic of this chapter in rock history. Because once a rock star’s billboard came down at the end of the month, it was destroyed, gone forever – and replaced by the Next Big Thing. 

http://www.rockandrollbillboards.com

Brazilian composer Manuel Lima pushes out a panel on one side of  The Cube, revealing a secret door, and invites me inside. The Cube is a steel frame covered in translucent white fabric, and it it will be Lima’s home for the next ten days. It’s set on a triangle of lawn on a busy corner of Sunset Strip, just down the street from the old Tower Records building.  And…it’s surprisingly cozy.

The tour doesn’t take long – the Cube is only ten feet by ten feet. On one side is a tiny console piano, borrowed from Lima’s landlord. Next to that are a rotary fan to provide breeze and a subwoofer, which provides bass notes for one of the pieces.  A California pepper tree grows up through the center of The Cube, spreading a shady canopy overhead.  Dozens of red light bulbs hang from its branches. A white wooden box serves as a storage unit and table and converts into a bed, where Lima will sleep for ten nights.

“I'm considering everything I do in this cube as a performance,” Lima tells me. “So eating, sleeping and playing the piano, they're all part of the same performance that is the life in the Cube, basically.”

 

Life in the Cube has a set routine – like any day job. After a morning run and breakfast at a nearby restaurant, Lima plays the piano from nine to five, with a second shift in the evening.  The structure is important to the piece, he tells me.

“I really don't like the idea that the artist is doing something like, really special and beyond regular people,” says Lima.  “I think it should be the opposite way. Everybody should realize in little things, the art in it.  For me an artist is just a worker, just like someone that does tables, or build cars or anything else. It's just a process that you do over and over.”

Lima is 35, with a shy, slightly goofy smile and a curly mess of brown hair; his uniform is a white t-shirt and faded jeans. He recently earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from California Institute of the Arts, supported by a grant from the Brazilian government.

 

He started playing the piano as a child in his native São Paulo, Brazil.  “I started taking flute lessons when I was six,” he recalls. But he was drawn to the piano in his flute teacher’s house instead.  “He would never let me touch the piano…but I really just wanted to explore it. I bothered my parents to put me in a piano lesson just so I could see what it is, a piano.  And then that was it.”

 

On top of the piano in the Cube sits a 70’s era radio, which Lima uses as a springboard for improvisation.

“The day piece, I call it Sunset Boulevard  And I just tune in the radio, some random station, and I listen to that for three minutes, and I do a piano loop of what I'm hearing.”

Lima twirls the dial, and the sounds of AM radio flood by – Mexican music, car commercials, talk show rants.  He settles on Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.”  His fingers move over the piano keys and he picks up on the bass riff, playing a few notes, then switches off the radio.  He sits quietly for a moment, eyes closed, hands on the keys, and lets out a deep sigh. Then he beings to play.

“Sunset Boulevard” is a repeating series of musical loops, which build as the day goes by.  The music is informed not only by the radio, but by the world immediately outside the Cube – the sounds of traffic, the curiosity of passersby, the changing light as the day passes. Lima admits that living, working and playing in such an iconic and exposed setting is a challenge – but as an artist, he believes, it’s an essential one.

“I know it's gonna sound strange, but for me it's like getting outside of the box,” he says. “Because as an artist, we create something that's very personal.  And we have to remove ourselves from the mass media…performing there, it's like connecting again with this world.”

 

At five o’clock, an alarm clock rings, telling Lima it’s time to take a break. He sets up a table and a group of folding chairs, and a nearby coffee shop brings over a container of tea.  The public is invited to stop, visit with Lima and chat.  Friends from CalArts are there to offer support; one offers to do his laundry during his stay.  People who live nearby walk their dogs over to visit.

 

After dinner, Lima re-enters the cube to start the evening shift, and begins his second piece, a light and sound composition called “Red Light Piano,”  which he plays blindfolded to cut down on distractions. As the light fades to dark blue over Sunset Boulevard, the Cube begins to pulse with red lights going on and off.  The Cube is transformed into an inviting lantern of warmth, with a changing pattern of shadows.  The sound of the piano and the bass notes of the subwoofer mingle with the Friday night traffic.  The whole scene is watched intently by the gigantic image of Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, which graces a billboard across the street.

 

People passing by on their way to drinks or dinner are drawn to the glowing structure with the slight, blindfolded man inside, silhouetted at the piano.  They stop out of curiosity…and stay to listen. Throughout the evening, small groups drift toward the Cube, talking quietly, taking pictures, and then breaking away to continue their evening.

At ten, Lima calls it a night. “I’m tired,” he admits. “Actually, the whole day, I was apprehensive – I don’t know why.  But I feel somehow it’s working.”

And with that, he prepares to go to sleep in the Cube.   When his alarm goes off at 7 am, it will be the start of another day for this working artist.

+  +  +  +

Manuel Lima’s “Sunset Cube” is made possible by the City of West Hollywood and its Art on the Outside program.

 Manuel Lima

The Cube: Score

The Cube: Awaken – A Time Lapse

 

At age two, Joe Powers received a Christmas gift that set him on a lifelong journey: his first harmonica. “Most of the time, when you give a kid a harmonica, you don't really expect them to dedicate their life to it,” says Powers.  “You kinda expect them to slobber on it, huff and puff a little bit, and then lose it somewhere. But actually, I just kept playing it.” 

While other teens were practicing guitar licks or piano scales, Powers continued to develop his harmonica chops, playing in blues and rock bands and exploring classical music as well.  Then, as a music student at the University of Oregon, he discovered another passion.  “My junior year, I got into dancing. And eventually that led to Argentine tango, and I got hooked on the music.” 

Upon graduating, Powers promptly moved to Buenos Aires to pursue tango dancing.   His two passions came together when a friend introduced him to the music of tango master Hugo Díaz.  Díaz’ records, mostly recorded in the  1960’s and 70’s, weren’t easy to find.  “I went to five different music stores trying to find a CD,” remembers Powers.  “And the only thing I could come up with was a cassette tape - and I didn't have a cassette player, so I had to borrow one.”  

Powers was so inspired by what he heard that he started a tango band of his own, one that featured his harmonica playing.  As he found, the harmonica is uniquely suited to express the musical passion of tango.  “The harmonica can bend pitches,” much like a voice, as Powers demonstrates.  “You can take a pitch on the harmonica and you can make it wail, you can make it cry.”

Powers eventually returned to Buenos Aires to record an album of tango music, Amor de Tango, with members of the Leopodo Federico Tango Orchestra, Horacio Cabarcos, Raul Luzzi and Latin Grammy nominated pianist Nicolas Ledesma.  Now 36, Powers travels the world playing with classical orchestras, jazz and blues bands, Japanese koto groups and, on one occasion, ten grand pianos at once. 

 

“Playing for symphony orchestras – there’s nothing like being backed up by a hundred musicians. The power, the energy that creates,” says Powers.  But he also thrives on the intimacy of playing to a roomful of dancing couples.  “I like to look out and see everybody dancing, immersed in the music. That's one of the things I really enjoy about this, is connecting with the audience. I like to share the energy of tango with people. And it comes back. That's what it's all about, for me.”

The death of Laurence King – killed by a junior high classmate in Oxnard, California in 2008 – highlights a big problem: If you're a teacher, how should you deal with homophobia in the classroom? One group is using theater to teach teachers how to counteract sexual bias in Southern California classrooms.

The program is put on by Encompass, a non-profit group that focuses on diversity issues in California schools. The actors are students from the LA County High School for the arts.

According to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, by the time they get to high school, ninety percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered students have experienced physical, verbal or sexual harassment at school. Those students are more likely to skip school out of fear, don’t do as well academically as their straight peers, and are less likely to graduate.

In the training, educators watch a scene where homophobic behavior disrupts a classroom and creates stress.  The observers are given insight into the students' inner lives and how they're affected by sexual bias. They're then asked to come up with techniques the teacher might use to make the classroom safer and more inclusive.  The scene is repeated, with the actors using improv to act out the new strategies.  With the teacher in control, things play out differently this time - the bullies dial back their behavior, the name-calling and hate-speech is squelched, and the students are free to focus on their lesson.

Student actor Drew Cameron says, “hopefully teachers are watching this and thinking, here’s some students that are putting on a scene for us. Here are some students who are showing us how to be better teachers. “

… better teachers in a school where every student feels safe to focus on the job of learning.

"We wanted to see how many emotions we could get out with our two voices, the way they intermingled," says Ann Savoy -- and mingle they do, stunningly so.  When Savoy joined voices with Linda Ronstadt for a tune on the compilation album 'Evangeline Made: A Tribute to Cajun Music,' they quickly realized they had a musical kinship that needed to be explored further.  

In this 2006 conversation, the two artists talk about making the album 'Adieu False Heart,' which leans heavily on traditional Cajun and bluegrass but also includes like-minded works by contemporary songwriters like Richard Thompson and Julie Miller, as well as a haunting reimagining of the Left Banke's 60's pop hit 'Walk Away Renee.' 
'It's not like any other place in the country,' says Ronstadt of Louisiana, 'There's something in the water that makes it an extraordinary assemblage of musicians, and their music sounds like where they're from...that neighborhood.' Having grown up in a multi-lingual household, she goes on to say, influenced her musical explorations.  "Spanish was the love language," she says, "it's a beautiful, sensuous language to sing in...but I kind of hang onto Ann's coattails when we sing in French!"  

Ronstadt's breathtaking voice and expansive musical canon have taken her from wild-child rock icon through country, folk, Latin, big band and opera.  In 2011 she was honored with a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. This year, she is being inducted into the 2014 Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. 

Musicians include Joel Savoy (acoustic guitar, fiddle), Sam Broussard, Chas Justus (acoustic guitar), Sam Bush (mandolin), Andrea Zonn (violin), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Krista Wilkinson (viola, strings), Dirk Powell (harmonica, accordion, bass guitar) and Byron House (upright bass). 

As winter approaches, we find ourselves drawn to the dark and distant places where time began.  Norse legend, Finnish folk tale and ice-bound landscapes combine to produce some of the haunting and evocative music being created today.  Modern Scandinavian artists like Mari Boine, Gjallarhorn and Garmarna meld these ancient elements with electronic instruments and interwoven vocals, inviting you to lose yourself in the ‘Grimborg’ –the  Finnish stone mazes that symbolize life’s journey of discovery. Then, you’ll travel below the equator to warm up on the shores of Rio de Janeiro, with the lighter Latin-flavored beats of Trio Mocotó, Fernanda Abreau and Bossacucanova feat. Marcus Valle.  Chill out - escape the chill - take your mind on an exotic, extended vacation.  

Host: Greg Dalton

Guests:
Erin Brockovich, Author, Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It (Pantheon, 2020)
Tatiana Schlossberg, Author, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have (Grand Central Publishing, 2019)
Rebecca Burgess, Founder and Director, Fibershed
Amina Razvi, Executive Director, Sustainable Apparel Coalition

 

“Erin Brockovich: Superman’s Not Coming” was first broadcast on September 25, 2020.
“Inconspicuous Consumption” was first broadcast on January 6, 2020.

 

On today’s program, we revisit three Climate One conversations from the past year that empower us to make a difference – both individually and collectively.

 

Twenty years ago, Julia Roberts won an Oscar for her portrayal of maverick environmental activist Erin Brockovich in the biopic of the same name. The film depicted Brockovich’s successful crusade against corporate behemoth Pacific Gas & Electric, which had been pumping contaminated wastewater into the water supply of the town of Hinckley, California.

 

The real Erin Brockovich hasn’t slowed down since then - in fact, she’s out there writing the sequel, taking on corporate polluters and government enablers from upstate New York to Flint, Michigan to Beverly Hills, California.   Much of her work centers on empowering underserved and overlooked communities to collectively advocate for themselves. And that can start with just one person. These days, in addition to her work on water safety and toxins in communities, Brockovich has taken on the climate emergency. The connection, she says, is fundamental.

 

“Climate change is about too much water, not enough water, no water, drought, flooding,” she says. “I think it's becoming real because it's tangible, it's touchable.  You're running from it, you’re breathing it.  You're swimming in it.  You could be drowning in it.  I just think it's here.”

 

“Climate change will be about our response, our preparedness, our defending ourselves,” Brockovich continues. “And not just thinking that because you can’t see it, it’s not going to happen.”

 

Everyday choices – like what to eat, wear or binge-watch – may impact the planet more than you think. But how far can individual choices take us?

 

Tatiana Schlossberg is the author of Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have, in which she argues that everyday consumer choices may not change the carbon economy, but they’re an important part of being the kind of person who acts in more collective and impactful ways.

 

“I don't think we should feel individually guilty necessarily for our consumption,” Schlossberg says, “but we should feel collectively responsible for fixing the systems and building a better world.”

 

Among the choices we make where our carbon footprint may be hidden in plain sight is in what we wear. Rebecca Burgess, Founder and Director of Fibershed, a nonprofit that helps develop regional and regenerative fiber systems for clothing producers, believes that our clothing choices can be as significant as our food choices.

 

“If I eat local, can I wear local? If I eat organic, am I wearing organic?” she asks. “If I’m interested in climate smart agriculture, how am I wearing those values and the fibers that I'm wearing each day?”

 

Burgess believes we need to re-think our relationship to our wardrobes. “Think about the timelessness of the piece,” she advocates, “think about wearing a garment or purchasing a garment that's gonna be with you for the long haul. Love it. Really be a custodian not a consumer.”

 

 

Related Links:

Erin Brockovich – Community Healthbook

Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It (Pantheon, 2020)
Hinkley groundwater contamination
Flint Water Crisis (NRDC)
Understanding the Safe Drinking Water Act (EPA)
Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have
Fibershed
Sustainable Apparel Coalition