Pico Boulevard

Maintained by	Bureau of Street Services, City of L.A. DPW
Location	Santa Monica, Los Angeles
West end	Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica
Major junctions	Lincoln Blvd. in Santa Monica I-10 in West Los Angeles I-405 in West Los Angeles La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles Western Avenue in Los Angeles I-110 in Downtown Los Angeles
East end	Central Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles

Pico Boulevard is a major Los Angeles street that runs from the Pacific Ocean at Appian Way in Santa Monica to Central Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, California, USA. It is named after Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California.

Description[link]

Pico runs parallel south of Olympic Boulevard and is one of the southernmost major streets leading into Downtown Los Angeles, running north of Venice Boulevard and south of Olympic Boulevard. Numerically, it takes the place of 13th Street (many cities with numbered streets use a named street in place of thirteen)

Major landmarks include Santa Monica College, Santa Monica High School, the Westside Pavilion mall, Fox Studios, the Hillcrest Country Club, the Staples Center, and the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Pico Blvd. at Pacific Ocean

Pico Boulevard starts in the city of Santa Monica and enters the city of Los Angeles near the intersection with Centinela Avenue. The neighborhoods of Los Angeles through which Pico Boulevard travels are among the most culturally diverse in the city. From west to east, they include the Japanese and Persian neighborhood of West Los Angeles, the predominantly Anglo neighborhood of Rancho Park, the business and entertainment center of Century City, the primarily Jewish neighborhood of South Robertson, the largely African American and Latino Mid-City district, the heavily Korean neighborhoods of Country Club Park and Koreatown, the predominantly Central American neighborhoods of the Byzantine-Latino Quarter and Pico Union, the redeveloping South Park, and the Garment District of Downtown Los Angeles.

Pico Boulevard in the media[link]

Pico and Sepulveda, 2008

The music video for the 1991 single "Unfinished Sympathy" by band Massive Attack features singer Shara Nelson walking along West Pico Boulevard in an unbroken camera shot.

The artist Fatlip walks along Pico Boulevard in the music video "What's Up Fatlip?"

The 1947 song "Pico and Sepulveda" by Felix Figueroa & His Orchestra (actually Freddy Martin & His Orchestra) was frequently featured on Dr. Demento's syndicated radio show.^[1]

In his poem "Hot," Charles Bukowski abandons his mail truck in the intersection of Pico and Western because it stalls and won't start, and he desperately has to get home on time because his girlfriend leaves whenever he's late.

Act five of the This American Life episode 110: Mapping features Jonathan Gold's process of eating at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard.

"South of Pico" is a feature film that focuses on events in the neighborhoods referenced in its title.

The rapper Kool Keith mentions Pico Blvd. in the song "Baddest MC" on the album Matthew.

A shootout in James Cameron's 1984 film The Terminator takes place in Tech Noir, a fictional nightclub on Pico.

Notable landmarks[link]

• Santa Monica State Beach - California State Park operated by the City of Santa Monica. It is two miles (3 km) long, has a picnic area, shops and pier. Visitor activities include volleyball, basketball and a bicycling and running path along the beach.
• Casa del Mar hotel - luxury hotel at base of Pico Boulevard, Club Casa del Mar originally opened in 1926 as a beach club. The building, built in a Renaissance Revival architectural style, became a hotel and recreation center for U.S. service personnel during World War II. After the war, the building underwent different incarnations, becoming, among other things, a drug rehabilitation center and a Pritikin Longevity Center. In 1998, The Edward Thomas Hospitality Corporation acquired the building and converted it into a luxury hotel.

• RAND Corporation Headquarters - opened in November 2004, the RAND Corporation new headquarters facility was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council's Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for the environmentally responsible design of the headquarters campus, along with the Los Angeles Architectural Award for corporate headquarters design.

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

• Santa Monica Civic Auditorium - 1855 Main Street (at Pico); 3,000 seat auditorium opened in 1958 and designed in the international style by Welton Becket; home of the Academy Awards ceremony from 1961-1968.
• Santa Monica High School - 601 Pico Blvd.; public high school opened at same location since 1906; alumni include Dean Cain, Ry Cooder, Carson Daly, Robert Downey, Jr., Daryl Dragon (Captain & Tennille), John Ehrlichman, Emilio Estevez, Glenn Ford, Rob Lowe, Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen, and Heather Thomas.
• Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery, Santa Monica - 1847 14th Street (at Pico); celebrities buried at Woodlawn include Glenn Ford, Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, Charles Bickford (three-time Oscar nominee), Irene Ryan (Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies), Ted Bessell (boyfriend Donald on That Girl)

McCabe's Guitar Shop

• Santa Monica College - first opened in 1929 as Santa Monica Junior College, current enrollment is 32,000 students; the college also has one of the largest international student populations of any community college in the US, with approximately 3,000 from more than 100 countries.
• McCabe's Guitar Shop - Located at 3101 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, McCabe's is a musical instrument store that opened in 1958 specializing in acoustic and folk instruments: guitars, banjos, mandolins, dulcimers, fiddles, psaltries, bouzoukis, sitars, ouds, ethnic percussion. Since 1969, McCabe's has also been one of the most noted forums for folk concerts.

Former National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences headquarters

• National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences - Formerly headquartered at 3402 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, the Recording Academy is a U.S. organization of musicians, producers, recording engineers and other recording professionals dedicated to improving the quality of life and cultural condition for music and its makers. The Academy is famous internationally for the Grammy Awards. (NARAS moved to a new location in 2009, although the Pico Boulevard building still stands.)
• Pico and Sepulveda - a song by Felix Figueroa & His Orchestra (stage name for Freddy Martin's band). The 1947 song was frequently featured on Dr. Demento's radio show. It is about streets in Los Angeles and was composed by Eddie Maxwell and Jule Styne.

• The Apple Pan - Located at 10801 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, The Apple Pan restaurant opened in 1947 and is locally famous for its hickory hamburgers and apple pies served with vanilla ice cream. In the first season of Six Feet Under, Nate Fisher (Peter Krause) asks his sister Claire (Lauren Ambrose) if she wants to go to the Apple Pan to eat together.

Westside Pavilion

• Westside Pavilion - Spanning a full block on the south side of Pico between Westwood Boulevard and Overland Avenue, three story urban-style shopping mall with 150 shops anchored by a Macy's (formerly May Company and later Robinsons-May) and a Nordstrom. Part of the current mall occupies the site of the Pico Drive-in theater, which was located there from 1934 to 1950 and is considered only the fourth drive-in in the United States, and the first in California.
• Rancho Park Golf Course - Located along Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles, Rancho Park Golf Course was the busiest golf course in the United States with more than 125,000 rounds played. In 2000 Rancho was the only golf course in the United States to have hosted the PGA, LPGA and the Senior PGA. The golf course first opened in 1921 and was built on land that was part of Rancho Rincon de los Bueyes in what was in 1921 the town of Sawtelle, 12 miles (19 km) west of Los Angeles.
• Cheviot Hills Park and Recreation Center - Located at the corner of Motor Avenue and Pico, the Cheviot Hills Park and Recreation Center includes 14 tennis courts, basketball courts, gym, picnic areas, volleyball courts, archery range, auditorium with stage, amphitheater, and sports fields.
• Fox Studios - 20th Century Fox or simply Fox, is one of the six major American film studios. In 1926 Fox acquired 300 acres (1.2 km²) in the open country west of Beverly Hills and built "Movietone City", the best-equipped studio of its time. In 1957, Fox announced plans to develop a portion of its backlot into a new city center. In 1963 the first building, Century City Gateway West, was complete, followed the next year by Minoru Yamasaki's Century Plaza Hotel. Fox Studios continues as an active film studio on the southwest portion of the property, along Pico Boulevard.
• Hillcrest Country Club - Located at 10000 West Pico Blvd., is a country club and golf course located across the street from Fox Studios. Hillcrest was the first Los Angeles country club for the city's Jewish community. In old Hollywood, when Jews were not permitted to join non-Jewish country clubs, they instead joined Hillcrest, all of whose members were Jewish. Hillcrest's members have long included many of Hollywood's biggest stars, including Milton Berle, Jack Benny, and George Burns. Even Groucho Marx, who famously proclaimed that he would not want to be a member of any club willing to have him as a member, was a member. Producer Louis B. Mayer reportedly punched producer Sam Goldwyn in the showers at Hillcrest. The 18-hole "Hillcrest" golf course was designed by Willie Watson and opened in 1920.
• Simon Wiesenthal Center - With headquarters at 1399 South Roxbury Drive (at Pico), Los Angeles, the Wiesenthal Center was established in 1977 as "an international Jewish human rights organization" dedicated to confronting antisemitism, hate and terrorism, promoting human rights and dignity, standing with Israel, defending the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaching the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations.

Museum of Tolerance.

• Museum of Tolerance - Located at 9786 West Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, the Museum of Tolerance is a multi-media museum opened in 1993. It receives 350,000 visitors annually. In "The Holocaust Section," visitors are divided into groups to take their own place in some of the events of World War II. The museum also features the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. A classroom visit to the museum was featured in the 2007 movie, Freedom Writers. The museum was parodied in an episode of South Park called "The Death Camp of Tolerance".
• Roscoe's House of Chicken 'n Waffles - soul food restaurant founded by Herb Hudson, a Harlem native, in 1976. It is best known for serving chicken and waffles. The popularity of Roscoe's was assisted by celebrity support, including Natalie Cole, Redd Foxx (who would tell his television audience that Roscoe's was a place they should eat), Arsenio Hall and Snoop Dogg. Will Smith also made frequent references to Roscoe's on his sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
• Byzantine-Latino Quarter A neighborhood known for its historically Greek American population (Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral is just south of Pico), now primarily Latino in population.

Byzantine-Latino Quarter

• St. Thomas the Apostle Church - founded in 1903, St. Thomas the Apostle is one of the oldest parishes in Los Angeles, located at the corner of West Pico Boulevard and Mariposa Avenue. The architecture of the church is from the Spanish renaissance period used in many of the old mission churches.

Los Angeles Convention Center

• Los Angeles Convention Center - 720,000 sq ft (67,000 m²) convention center in downtown Los Angeles. The LACC hosts annual events such as the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, Anime Expo and is best known to video games fans as host to the now-defunct E3. The LACC also gained notoriety for hosting Celebration IV.

Fashion District, Pico & Santee

• Fashion District - The Fashion District is a design, warehouse, and distribution nexus of the clothing, accessories and fabric industry in Downtown Los Angeles. The district spans 90 blocks and is the hub of the apparel industry on the West Coast of the United States. The area also features Santee Alley, a heavily populated "back alley" shopping path between Maple and Santee Streets.

Education and transportation[link]

• Pico Boulevard is served by two major bus companies: Santa Monica Transit line 7 (along with the Rapid line 7) and Metro Local line 30 and Metro Rapid line 730, all of which meet in Mid-City at the old Vineyard Junction at Pico and Rimpau Boulevards, a former rail stop of the Pacific Electric Red Car Lines more than 50 years ago; Santa Monica lines 7 and Rapid 7 run between Ocean Avenue and Rimpau Boulevard, Metro lines 30 and 730 between Rimpau Boulevard and Downtown LA. In Downtown Los Angeles, Pico Boulevard intersects with the Metro Blue Line and Expo Line light rail, and is served by the station of the same name, directly adjacent to the Staples Center, the Los Angeles Convention Center, the Nokia Theater, and several new housing and entertainment developments in the South Park district.
• Bishop Conaty-Our Lady of Loretto High School is located on Pico Boulevard.

See also[link]

• "Pico and Sepulveda" video
• "On Pico: What's the Deal" video

Gallery of landmarks along Pico Boulevard[link]

• 

  Barnum Hall, Santa Monica High School

• 

  Rae's Restaurant, 2901 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica

• 

  Valentino Restaurant, Santa Monica

• 

  National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, West LA

• 

  Talpa and Don Antonio's, 11751 and 11755 W Pico Blvd, West LA

• 

  Norm's Restaurant, 11001 W Pico Blvd

• 

  St. Timothy's Catholic Church, 10425 W. Pico Boulevard (at Beverly Glen)

• 

  Chabad Bais Sonia Gutte Campus

• Roscoe's Chicken 'n Waffles, Pico Blvd.JPG

  Roscoe's House of Chicken 'n Waffles, 5006 W. Pico Blvd.

• 

  Ethiopian Christian Fellowship Church of Los Angeles, 3405 W. Pico Blvd.

• 

  St. Thomas the Apostle Church, 2760 W. Pico Blvd.

• 

  St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church, 1324 S. Normandie

References[link]

External links[link]

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Ray Manzarek
Ray Manzarek
Background information
Birth name	Raymond Daniel Manczarek, Jr.
Born	(1939-02-12) February 12, 1939 (age 73)
Origin	Chicago, Illinois, USA
Genres	Psychedelic rock, acid rock, blues rock, Jazz rock, hard rock, blues, jazz fusion, funk, Rock and Roll
Occupations	Musician, Songwriter, Keyboardist, Filmmaker
Instruments	Keyboards, Keyboard bass, Vocals, Marxophone, Guitar, Percussion
Years active	1961–present
Labels	Elektra
Associated acts	The Doors, The Butts Band, Nite City Manzarek-Krieger Rick & the Ravens
Website	TheDoors.com The Official Site of Ray Manzarek
Notable instruments
Vox Continental Gibson G-101 Rhodes Keyboard bass RMI Electra Piano

Raymond Daniel Manczarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek (born February 12, 1939), is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.

Early life and career[link]

Manzarek is of Polish descent, born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, as were his parents. Growing up, he took private piano lessons from Bruno Michelotti and others. He originally wanted to play basketball, but he only wanted to play power forward or center. When he was sixteen his coach insisted either he play guard, or not at all, and he quit the team. Manzarek said later if it was not for that ultimatum, he might never have been in The Doors. He went to Everett Elementary School on S. Bell St. and attended St. Rita High School in Chicago.^[1]

In 1962–1965, he studied in the Department of Cinematography at UCLA, where he met film student Jim Morrison. At UCLA, Ray also met Dorothy Fujikawa who would later become his wife. Forty days after finishing film school, thinking they had gone their separate ways, they met by chance on Venice Beach in California. Morrison said he had written some songs, and Manzarek expressed an interest in hearing them, whereupon Morrison sang a rough version of "Moonlight Drive." Manzarek liked the songs and co-founded the Doors with Morrison at that moment.

Manzarek met drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger at a Transcendental Meditation lecture. Densmore says, "There wouldn't be any Doors without Maharishi."^[2]

In January 1966, The Doors became the house band at The London Fog on the Sunset Strip. According to Manzarek, "Nobody ever came in the place...an occasional sailor or two on leave, a few drunks. All in all it was a very depressing experience, but it gave us time to really get the music together." The same day The Doors were fired from The London Fog, they were hired to be the house band of the Whisky a Go Go. Their first performance at the Whisky was with the group Them.^[3]

The Doors' first recording contract was with Columbia Records. After a few months of inactivity, they learned they were on Columbia's drop list. At that point, they asked to be released from their contract. After a few months of live gigs, Jac Holzman "rediscovered" the Doors and signed them to Elektra Records.

The Doors lacked a bassist, so Manzarek usually played the bass parts on a Fender Rhodes piano Bass. His signature sound is that of the Vox Continental combo organ, an instrument used by many other psychedelic rock bands of the era. He later used a Gibson G-101 Kalamazoo combo organ (which looks like a Farfisa) because the Continental's plastic keys frequently broke according to Manzarek.

Manzarek occasionally sang for The Doors, including the live recordings of "Close To You" and on the B-side of "Love Her Madly", "You Need Meat (Don't Go No Further)". He also sang on the last two Doors albums, recorded after Morrison's death, Other Voices and Full Circle.

Later career and influence[link]

Ray Manzarek (The Doors) at the Bospop festival, Weert 2010, The Netherlands

Manzarek in March 2006, performing in the Netherlands

Manzarek has been in several groups since the Doors, including Nite City.^[3] He recorded a rock adaptation of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana with Philip Glass, produced and backed Echo & the Bunnymen and Los Angeles band X, played with Iggy Pop, backed San Francisco poet Michael McClure's poetry readings and he has done improvisational composition with poet Michael C. Ford.^[4] Ray also worked extensively with "Hearts of Fire" screenwriter and former SRC front man Scott Richardson^[5] on a series of spoken word and blues recordings entitled "Tornado Souvenirs".

His memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors, was published in 1998. The Poet in Exile (2001) is a novel exploring the urban legend that Jim Morrison may have faked his death. Manzarek's second novel, Snake Moon, released in April 2006, is a Civil War ghost story.

In 2000, a collaboration poetry album titled: Freshly Dug was released with British singer, poet/actor and pioneer Punk rocker Darryl Read. Read had previously worked with Ray on the Beat Existentialist album in 1994, and their latest poetical/musical collaboration was in 2007 with the album "Bleeding Paradise."

On August 4, 2007, Manzarek hosted a program on BBC Radio 2 about the 40th anniversary of the recording of "Light My Fire" and the group's musical and spiritual influences.

In April 2009, Manzarek and Robby Krieger appeared as special guests for Daryl Hall's monthly concert webcast Live From Daryl's House. They performed several Doors tunes ("People Are Strange", "The Crystal Ship", "Roadhouse Blues" and "Break on Through (To the Other Side)") with Hall providing lead vocals.

After living many years in Hollywood, Manzarek now resides in Napa County, California in a house he remodeled extensively.^[6] He also plays with local bands in the Napa area.^[7]

In 2009, Manzarek collaborated with "Weird Al" Yankovic, playing keyboards on the single "Craigslist" which is a style parody of the Doors.

Manzarek was a co-producer on a few tracks for Universal Recording artist Michael Barber. A track recently appeared on the Intenet titled "Be Ok," on Michael's Universal Records Debut.^{[citation needed]}

In May 2010, Manzarek recorded with slide guitarist Roy Rogers in Studio D in Sausalito. The album Translucent Blues, released in mid-2011, was ranked #3 on the Top 100 Roots Rock Albums of 2011 by The Roots Music Report.^{[8][clarification needed]}

Discography[link]

The Doors[link]

Solo[link]

• The Golden Scarab (1973)
• The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll Now It's Out of Control (1974)
• Carmina Burana (1983)
• Love Her Madly (2006)
• Ballads Before The Rain (With Roy Rogers) (2008)
• Translucent Blues (With Roy Rogers) (2011)

Nite City[link]

• Nite City (1977)
• Golden Days Diamond Night (1978)

References[link]

Books[link]

• Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors (1998) ISBN 0-425-17045-4
• The Poet in Exile (2001) Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002 paperback: ISBN 1-56025-447-5
• Snake Moon (2006) ISBN 1-59780-041-4

External links[link]

• Official website
• The Doors official website
• Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek
• 1998 Fresh Air with Terry Gross interview
• Manzarek Interview from St. Petersburg Times (June 2005) about the legal battle with Densmore over the use of the Doors name
• Article about Ray Manzarek's recent work, March 1, 2006
• Article from the Napa Register (October 9, 2006) about Ray Manzarek
• December 2006 interview in Horror Garage magazine
• Undercover video interview, April 2007
• Ray Manzarek interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969).

Michael McClure
Photograph by Gloria Graham during the video taping of "Add-Verse", 2004
Born	(1932-10-20)October 20, 1932 Marysville, Kansas
Occupation	Poet, songwriter, Critic, Playwright, and Professor
Nationality	American
Influences Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder

Michael McClure (born October 20, 1932 in Marysville, Kansas) is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums. He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and is immortalized as "Pat McLear" in Kerouac's Big Sur.

Biography[link]

McClure's first book of poetry, Passage, was published in 1956 by small press publisher Jonathan Williams.^[1] His poetry is heavily infused with an awareness of nature, especially in the animal consciousness that often lies dormant in mankind. Not only an awareness of nature, but the poems are organized in an organic fashion, continuing with his appreciation of nature's purity. Stan Brakhage, friend of McClure, stated in Chicago Review that:

"McClure always, and more and more as he grows older, gives his reader access to the verbal impulses of his whole body's thought (as distinct from simply and only brain-think, as it is with most who write). He invents a form for the cellular messages of his, a form which will feel as if it were organic on the page; and he sticks with it across his life..."^[2]

McClure has since published eight books of plays and four collections of essays, including essays on Bob Dylan and the environment. His fourteen books of poetry include Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror and Plum Stones. McClure famously read selections of his Ghost Tantra poetry series to the caged lions in the San Francisco Zoo. His work as a novelist includes the autobiographical The Mad Cub and The Adept.

On January 14, 1967, McClure read at the epochal Human Be-In event in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and transcended his Beat label to become an important member of the 1960s Hippie counterculture. Barry Miles famously referred to McClure as "the Prince of the San Francisco Scene".^[3]

McClure would later court controversy as a playwright with his play The Beard. The play tells of a fictional encounter in the blue velvet of eternity between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow and is a theatrical exploration of his "Meat Politics" theory, in which all human beings are "bags of meat."

Other plays include Josephine The Mouse Singer and VKTMS. He had an eleven-year run as playwright-in-residence with San Francisco's Magic Theatre where his operetta "Minnie Mouse and the Tap-Dancing Buddha" had an extended run. He has made two television documentaries – The Maze and September Blackberries – and is featured in several films including The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese) where he reads from The Canterbury Tales; Beyond the Law (dir. Norman Mailer); and, most prominently, The Hired Hand (dir. Peter Fonda).

McClure was a close friend of The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison and is generally acknowledged as having been responsible for promoting Morrison as a poet. To this day, McClure still performs spoken word poetry concerts with Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek and they have released several CDs of their work. McClure is the author of the Afterword in Jerry Hopkins's and Danny Sugerman's seminal Doors biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive. McClure has also released CDs of his work with minimalist composer Terry Riley. McClure’s songs include "Mercedes Benz," popularized by Janis Joplin, and new songs which are being performed by Riders on the Storm, a band that consists of original Doors members Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger.

McClure's journalism has been featured in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The L.A. Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie Award for Best Play, an NEA grant, the Alfred Jarry Award and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. McClure is still active as a poet, essayist and playwright and lives with his second wife, Amy, in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has one daughter from his first marriage to Joanna McClure.

[edit] The Beard

McClure's play The Beard debuted at the Actor’s Workshop Theatre in San Francisco on the December 18, 1965. A second performance followed at Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium on the July 24, 1966. With the Fillmore’s high profile, the play attracted an audience of 700. After success at the Fillmore, the following month the play opened at The Committee, a theatre nightclub in the North Beach area of the city, where it was hoped it would enjoy a lengthy run.

Now aware of the play’s subject matter, the San Francisco Police Department secretly tape-recorded the first two performances and secretly filmed the third performance. Having failed in their attempts to successfully censor Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, the performances of Lenny Bruce and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the police department was intent to succeed this time.

At the end of that third performance on August 8, 1966—only the fifth time the play had been performed in public—the SFPD raided the venue and arrested actors Billie Dixon (Jean) and Richard Bright (Billy). Under Penal Code Section 647(a) the pair were initially charged with “obscenity”, then “conspiracy to commit a felony” and ultimately with “lewd or dissolute conduct in a public place.”

The American Civil Liberties Union took the case and represented the actors. Twelve days after the arrests, the play was performed at The Florence Schwimley Little Theatre, in Berkeley. The audience included more than a hundred ACLU-invited expert witnesses, including political activists, academics, writers and even members of the clergy. Seven members of the Berkeley Police Department and the District Attorney’s office were also present. Five days later, the city of Berkeley brought its own charges of “lewd or dissolute conduct” against the play. It became a theatrical cause célèbre, until finally, after months of legal deliberation, Judge Joseph Karesh of the San Francisco Superior Court ruled that while the play did contain material of a troublesome nature, it was not appropriate to prosecute such work under the law. All the charges were dropped and the subsequent appeal lost.

Unable to perform in the San Francisco area, the play moved to Los Angeles where the play's attempt at a run was disrupted by the arrest of both Dixon and Bright at curtain down of fourteen consecutive performances. McClure recalls, “The actor and the actress actually got two standing ovations, one at the end of the play and the second when the police hauled them out of the door and into the waiting wagon and took them off to book them.”^{[citation needed]}

The Beard eventually transferred to New York where in the 1967–1968 Obie Theatre Awards, it won Best Director and Best Actress. It has since played successfully all over the world and is a favorite with American university drama groups. It is interesting to note that the play has enjoyed particular success in London, having been produced there twice. In 1968, actor Rip Torn directed a notable production at The Royal Court Theatre and it has most recently been revived at a smaller venue, the Old Red Lion Theatre in 2006 under the direction of Nic Saunders with new music by Terry Riley. The play is currently out of print in both the US and UK. Saunders would collaborate with McClure a second time in 2008 on the award-winning short film Curses and Sermons which would mark the first time McClure had authorised a filmed adaptation of one of his poems.

Bibliography[link]

• Passage (1956)
• For Artaud (1959)
• Hymns to St. Geryon and Other Poems (1959)
• The New Book/A Book of Torture (1961)
• Dark Brown (1961)
• Meat Science Essays (1963)
• The Blossom; or Billy the Kid (1964)
• The Beard (1965)
• Poisoned Wheat (1965)
• Unto Caesar (1965)
• Love Lion Book (1966)
• Freewheelin Frank (with Frank Reynolds) (1967)
• The Sermons of Jean Harlow and the Curses of Billy the Kid (1968)
• Hail Thee Who Play (1968)
• Muscled Apple Swift (1968)
• Little Odes and The Raptors (1969)
• The Surge (1969)
• Star (1970)
• The Mad Cub (1970)
• The Adept (1971)
• Gargoyle Cartoons (1971)
• The Mammals – includes The Feast, The Blossom; or, Billy the Kid, and Pillow (1972)
• The Book of Joanna (1973)
• Solstice Blossom (1973)
• The Grabbing of the Fairy (1973)
• Rare Angel (1974)
• A Fist-Full (1956–57) (1974)
• Gorf (1974)
• September Blackberries (1974)
• The Last American Valentine: Illustrated poems to seduce and destroy – Write Bloody Publishing anthology (2008)
• Mysteriosos and Other Poems (2010)

Selected filmography[link]

• Two (1965) – as himself
• Be In (1967) – as himself
• Beyond The Law (1968) – as actor
• The Hired Hand (1971) – as actor
• The Last Waltz (1978) – as himself
• The Source (1999) – as himself
• Love Her Madly (2002) – as himself
• The Third Mind (2006) – as himself
• Curses and Sermons (2008) – based on his work

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)

External links[link]

• Michael McClure official website
• Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek official website
• Michael McClure's pages at Light & Dust
• Michael McClure Selected Bibliography
• Works by or about Michael McClure in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Guide to the Michael McClure Papers at The Bancroft Library
• "Add-Verse" a poetry-photo-video project McClure participated in
• Photograph, Michael McClure, 1951, with David Haselwood and Lee Streiff, Wichita, KS
• The Flame is Ours The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure1961-1978 Edited by Christopher Luna at Big Bridge 15

Margaret Becker
Background information
Born	(1959-07-17) July 17, 1959 (age 52)
Origin	Bayshore, New York
Genres	Christian rock, CCM
Instruments	voice, guitar
Years active	1985–present
Labels	Sparrow Records
Website	www.maggieb.com

Margaret Becker (born July 17, 1959) is an American Christian rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She has had twenty-one No. 1 Christian radio hits, won four Dove Awards, and been nominated for four Grammy Awards.

Biography[link]

Becker was raised in Bay Shore, New York, and began playing in coffeehouses while teaching music and taking opera lessons. Having graduated from James Madison University with a degree in communication, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1985, and signed to Sparrow Records as a songwriter; soon after she toured with Rick Cua as a backup singer and sang on Steve Camp's 1986 album One on One. The next year she landed a contract as a solo artist, and released her debut album, Never for Nothing. The single "Fight for God" was her first hit, and her second LP, The Reckoning, followed with two more hits, "Light in the Darkness" and "Find Me".

Becker began working with producer Charlie Peacock starting with 1989's Immigrant's Daughter, and a string of successful albums followed, including a Spanish language LP. She won two Dove Awards in 1992, for Rock Album (Simple House) and Rock Song ("Simple House"). However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Becker occasionally encountered controversy in the world of Contemporary Christian music because she is a Roman Catholic; some Christian stores refused to carry her album, and her concert appearances were sometimes picketed.^[1] Although she was raised in Catholicism, Margaret currently attends a non-denominational church in Nashville, TN.^{[citation needed]} After 1995's Grace, Becker decided to take a sabbatical from the music industry; during this time she wrote a book entitled With New Eyes and wrote editorials for Campus Life magazine.

She left Sparrow Records in 2002 but has continued to record since then, both her own albums and for compilation albums. She appears on the albums Sisters (Warner Bros. Records, 1994), Listen to Our Hearts (Sparrow, 1998), Heaven and Earth (Sparrow, 1999), and the New Irish Hymns series (Kingsway Music), and is one of the members of Ashton, Becker, and Denté. She co-wrote Bob Carlisle's "Bridge Between Two Hearts". Her second book, Growing Up Together, appeared in 2000; her third, With New Eyes, came out in 2004, and a fourth, Coming Up for Air, was published in 2006. In late 2007, Becker's newest album, Air, was released.

Becker gives teaching seminars across the United States. She also produces records for other singers, and in 2006 she wrote a series of columns for CCM Magazine. Becker has also been active in supporting charities such as Habitat for Humanity, Compassion International, and World Vision.

Becker has been single for her entire life and currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Discography[link]

• Never for Nothing (Sparrow, 1987)
• The Reckoning (Sparrow, 1988)
• Immigrant's Daughter (Sparrow, 1989)
• Simple House (Sparrow, 1991)
• Soul (Sparrow, 1993)
• Fiel a Ti (1995)
• Grace (Sparrow, 1995)
• Falling Forward (Sparrow, 1998)
• What Kind of Love (Sparrow, 1999)
• Just Come In (Cross Driven, 2003)
• Faithfully Yours (2004)
• Air (2007)

Collaborative works

• Along the Road (with Susan Ashton and Christine Denté, 1994]
• New Irish Hymns (Kingsway Music, 2001)
• New Irish Hymns 2 (Kingsway Music, 2003)
• New Irish Hymns 3 (Kingsway Music, 2004)
• New Irish Hymns 4 (Kingsway Music, 2005)

Compilations

• Steps of Faith: 1987-1991 (Sparrow, 1992)
• Early Years (Chordant, 1996)
• Very Best of Margaret Becker (Sparrow, 2006)

References[link]

1. ^ Mark Allan Powell, The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music (Hendrickson, 2002), p. 74.

Further reading[link]

• Margaret Becker at Allmusic.com
• Interview with Margaret Becker

External links[link]

• Official website