The Michigan Daily j michigandaily.com Thursday, April 5,2012
THE EVOLUTION OF
By Jacob Axelrad, Senior Arts Editor
Rock and roll emerged as a reflection and
as an expression of the economic and
technological changes taking place in
western civilization, it was no accident, it
was the precisely perfect manifestation
of the tremendous changes going down
throughout the western world.
- John Sinclair, "Guitar Army: Street Writ-
ings /Prison Writings."
A man observes audience members from behind
a projector in the University's Art & Architec-
ture Auditorium as they watch excerpts from
the movies he has come to screen at the fourth
annual Ann ArborFilm Festival: "Vinyl," "Lupe"
and "14 Year Old Girl."
The films are experimental, cutting-edge
examples of what he terms "neo primitive real-
ism." And the audience doesn't know how to
react to scenes of the grotesque, such as a boy
being tortured just because he enjoys reading
books.
Some critics might have called the young
filmmaker avant-garde. But in an interview
with The Michigan Daily at the time, the artist,
named Andy Warhol, didn't seem to find any-
thing odd about the films he'd chosen to pres-
ent.
"I didn't think these films were unusual, they
were just very humorous," Warhol said.
Before John Sinclair was ever arrested and
sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession of
two marijuana joints, before John Lennon and
Yoko Ono came to town to rally for Sinclair's
freedom, and before Hash Bash left its legacy
as the embodiment of the hippie movement and
counterculture here in Ann Arbor, there was
Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground and a
tradition of festivals that ignited a generation.
"Well, they certainly
weren't bored."
- Andy Warhol,
commenting on the audience's
reception of his movies.
Organized by the University's Cinema Guild,
the Dramatic Arts Center of Ann Arbor and
Detroit's American Civil Liberties Union, the
Ann Arbor Film Festival - then in its fourth
year - wanted to continue its tradition of off-
beat cinema, the kind that still distinguishes the
festival to this day.
They looked to Andy Warhol, the luminary
of the pop art movement; his 16-millimeter film
projections were exactly the sort of thing the fes-
tival wanted.
But there was a catch. Warhol would only
come if he could bring his band, the Velvet
Underground. After all, they were a team. They
relied on each other for their traveling show, the
Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
"Apparently, Andy said, 'Sure, I'll come, but
you have to let me bring my band with me,' "said
American Culture Prof Bruce Conforth. "So of
course they agreed, and they come, and they do
the concert."
The Velvet Underground's performance
was something wholly new to the town of Ann
Arbor. They were not the Beatles or the Rolling
Stones. Nor were these guys your typical light-
hearted fare from San Francisco, Conforth said.
Their music was gritty, urban, like the sounds
of New York City transplanted to the Midwest.
More importantly, they were bringing what
would later be called "punk rock" right to the
steps of the University campus.
"Here come the Velvet Underground singing
about something that was diametrically oppo-
site from what the love generation was experi-
encing," Conforth said. "So, they get out there,
and their music was very drone-like. It was very,
very simple. Very basic. Very much like what
punk would ultimately become, ya' know, with
the basis very easily on that three-chord for-
mula."
The audience thatthe Velvets appealed to back
in March of '66 wasn't just composed of college
students. Two future musicians were in atten-
dance that day: Iggy Pop and Wayne Kramer.
"(Iggy Pop and Wayne Kramer) have com-
mented that - largely on the basis of what they
experienced that night - it led them to want to
get into music," Conforth said. "I mean, basically
Iggy created Iggy Pop and the Stooges based on
what he had seen from that concert.
"They were influenced all the way around.
They saw this and said 'That's what I want to
do. I want to be a rock 'n' roll musician ... I don't
want to just be a Beatles clone. I want to do
something that's very different, too.'"
While Iggy Pop would go on to found Iggy
and the Stooges, Kramer stayed closer to Ann
Arbor. He subsequently joined the Detroit-
based MC5, a band that was, for a time, man-
aged by John Sinclair himself.
Though Sinclair is perhaps best known for
his radical political affiliations - he was the
founder of the anti-racist White Panther Party
and the namesake for the 1971 John Sinclair
Freedom Rally, which spurred the tradition of
Hash Bash - he was first and foremost an artist
and poet who devoted himself to Ann Arbor's
music scene.
But at the time, concerts were not unusual.
Big-name artists like the Velvet Underground
had already been comingto Ann Arbor for some
time.
So, on Dec. 10, 1971, the date of the famed
Freedom Rally - when acts such as Commander
Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, Stevie Won-
der and Allen Ginsberg came out to perform
at Crisler Arena in support of Sinclair after his
arrest - John Lennon and political fervor were
what made the concert unique.
"Concerts like that were promotions," Sinclair
said in a phone interview. "You hired the acts,
and promoters made a lot of money. Show busi-
ness. What we did (with the Freedom Rally) was
a political act. Everybody did that for nothing."
Conforth agreed, but he also asserted that the
context from which the Freedom Rally emerged
should not be ignored.
"There was precedent for that many artists
coming to (Ann Arbor)," Conforth said. "Hav-
ing a Beatle there changes everything. But still,
if you took John Lennon (and) political speeches
out of the event and just had the artists, it would
have been just another big concert at Ann Arbor."
As fortune would have it, "just another con-
cert" was what was in store for John Sinclair.
See HASH BASH, Page 3B
MARCH 9-13, 1966
DECEMBER 10, 1971
51
SEPTEMBER 8-10, 1972
p p p
4th Ann Arbor Film Festival
Andy Warhol brings his band The Velvet Underground to
perform. Iggy Pop and Wayne Kramer are in attendance, both
of whom cite the show as influential on their later careers.
John Sinclair Freedom Rally
John Lennon and numerous other artists perform at a con-
cert to rally for poet and artist John Sinclair's freedom after
he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for two joints.
Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival
Peter Andrews and John Sinclair revive the Ann Arbor Blues
Festival, expanding it to include jazz, making it the Ann
Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival.
Design by Amy Mackens
Images courtesy of Frank and Peggy Bach papers, box 6, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
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