March on Washington for
Lesbian & Gay Rights 1979
An Lp produced by Jok and Kaz, sponsored, in part, by Alternative Publishing (Drummer Magazine).
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March on Washington for
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Authentic Vinyl Lp |
Authentic Vinyl Lp |
The First March on Washington - 1979 needed documenting. My partner and I took the Gay Freedom Train with whistle-stop rallies all the way from San Francisco to Washington, DC, and documented with the tools available to us. Not rich kids, the idea of shooting 16mm film was beyond us. But Kaz taught photography at Sacramento City College and I was the News Director of KZAP-FM, Sacramento, so we had some skills to produce a document. We struck a deal with Drummer Magazine that we'd work in the mail room in exchange for their typesetting and photo halftoning the Lp cover and inserts. We put 32 photos in each Lp. This was long before desktop publishing and you had to pay to get it done. Meanwhile, I used any sound studio I could get into to mix the 18 hours of tape into these two tracks. The sound quilts present themselves. If you shut off your telephone, turn up your computer's audio volume, these tracks become what I like to call, Mind Movie Soundtracks -- the audio to movies we can create in our heads. But I am of an age sufficient to think of a hallucination as possibly a very good thing. We could afford 2,000 copies. Christopher Street Magazine generously gave us half-page ads for free. Selling them was long and tedious. Yet the first time the sides were put onLine, they were downloaded 60,000 times. It taught us the difference between item distribution and sharing; and the power of those tools that now exist in the 21st century. I take pride in J.D. SLATER using samples of Kate Millet's powerful speech to include in a music track he placed, as a bonus, on his Erotikus DVD, from Raging Stallion Porn Studios. Also, the Allen Ginsburg estate added his poem to his works index, this Lp being the only document that survives of the work. And, Jonathan Karr of the B.A.R. gave us a warm and welcome review, for which I am still grateful today. The emcee for the M.O.W. rally and organizer for the Gay Freedom Train Tour is Robin Tyler whose voice was among those that first called for the M.O.W. Her voice, with her spouse Diane Olson, is still heard in the fight - and all the law suits - for legal marriage. I am engaged in a long-term art project to create a synthesize of many men's voices to speak Ms. Millet's speech, to which she was kind enough to assign me the rights before her death. Those sound loops will be posted on music-loop web-sites for free distribution in the hope we can turn that wisdom into circuit-party groove/chill music tracks. Interested? eMale me. Hope you enjoy.
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