Tosh Berman's Blog, page 99
March 19, 2021
Wallace Berman "Mail Art" from Beverly Glen, Los Angeles
Wallace Berman "Mail Art" which sort of sounds like our everyday life in Beverly Glen at the time. Sent to David Meltzer.
March 18, 2021
Ciné Salon: Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World
Ciné Salon hosted writer, poet, and once publisher of TamTam Books, Tosh Berman, on Monday, March 8, 2021. Tosh Berman penned the acclaimed memoir Tosh: Growing up in Wallace Berman’s World (2019). Event description: Son Tosh Berman will approach his father’s art, the "father of assemblage art" Beat Generation icon Wallace Berman, with a deep-dive into the experimental collage film Aleph (1958-1976), a meditation on life, death, mysticism, politics and pop culture.
March 16, 2021
SIGNED TOSH books on the Artbook website
The image below is the 'now' me, or the adult. If you wish to purchase a SIGNED copy of my memoir about my youth: TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World (City Lights) you can do so here: Signed Copies of TOSH here
Playlist for Book Musik's "The Velvet Mafia" Featuring Joe Meek, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, etc.
We put together a playlist to go with the Book Musik episode on "The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties." We interviewed the author Darryl W. Bullock for this podcast. The Playlist is very detailed and indepth. Everything from Tommy Steele's "Rock With The Caveman" to Lionel Bart to classic Joe Meek, including the amazing "Do You Come Here Often?" by The Tornados. And some Brian Epstein related tracks as well. Enjoy!
Spotify: The Velvet Mafia Playlist for Spotify
Apple Music: The Velvet Mafia Playlist for Apple Music
Wallace Berman (self-made) Announcement and Sent to Michael and Joanne McClure
An announcement Wallace Berman (made by hand) and sent to Michael and Joanne McClure.
March 15, 2021
Who Is Lun*na Menoh? at the Ashland Indie Film Festival April 20th and April 21st
WHO IS LUN*NA MENOH? will be playing virtually on April 20-21 on Ashland Indie Film Festival's Eventive page on https://watch.eventive.org/. Tickets will be on sale on April 7th.Stay tuned for more information. #AIFF2021
Book Musik: "The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties" Discussion with author Darryl W. Bullock
Book Musik 042 – The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran the Swinging Sixties – discussion with author Darryl W. BullockPosted on March 15, 2021 by Book Musik
Tosh and Kimley are joined by author Darryl W. Bullock to discuss his new book The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran the Swinging Sixties. Rock ‘n’ roll as we know it would not exist if not for this group of gay men in the U.K. during the late fifties and sixties fondly referred to as “The Velvet Mafia.” Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein, Joe Meek, Lionel Bart, and Robert Stigwood are some of the major players in this book who left an indelible mark on the pop/rock world. At a time in the U.K. when being gay was illegal and when pop music could only be heard from pirate radio stations, they managed to push the needle forward and open up a culture that allowed us all to swing!
Theme music: “Behind Our Efforts, Let There Be Found Our Efforts” by LG17
March 14, 2021
Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World (Tosh Berman Reads from his Memoir)
TOSH is a memoir of growing up as the son of an enigmatic, much-admired, hermetic, and ruthlessly bohemian artist during the waning years of the Beat Generation and the heyday of hippie counterculture. A critical figure in the history of postwar American culture, Tosh Berman's father, Wallace Berman, was known as the "father of assemblage art," and was the creator of the legendary mail-art publication Semina. Wallace Berman and his wife, famed beauty and artist's muse Shirley Berman, raised Tosh between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and their home life was a heady atmosphere of art, music, and literature, with local and international luminaries regularly passing through.
Purchase SIGNED Copies of TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World (TamTam Books)
One can purchase a SIGNED copy of my memoir TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World (City Lights) here:
THE VELVET MAFIA: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties” by Darryl W. Bullock (Omnibus Press) 2021
THE VELVET MAFIA: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties” by Darryl W. Bullock (Omnibus Press) 2021
If I had my own record shop, I would name the shop after Darryl W. Bullock’s book “The Velvet Mafia.” In my shop, instead of having sections or categories on artists, I would have Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein, Joe Meek, Robert Stigwood, Simon Napier-Bell, and Andrew Loog Oldham sections. Since these gentlemen are not recording artists but managers and producers, it will focus on their pop music view. Mostly gay, when being gay was illegal in England up until 1967, these figures articulate and sold generations music that was essential and sometimes bad. Here, bad is a sign of genius. All above are strong visionaries in how they sold a product - usually good-looking males, with occasionally questionable music talents, and artists of great importance and brilliance.
Due to the laws and the straight world, LGBT professionals had to work publicly and secretively. Managers like Larry Parents and Brian Epstein came from Jewish working-class families who had retail shops. Both tried to enter the show biz world as entertainers or actors but realized that they could go into showbiz through promoter and manager. For Parnes, his ‘yes’ moment was seeing the teenage Tommy Steele in a Solo coffee house and Epstein visiting the Liverpool Cavern to see the future Fab Four. Both saw the future, and especially Parnes invented homegrown British orientated rock n’ roll. The Beatles, of course, became a planet to themselves.
The book covers many grounds, but the focus is on Parnes, Epstein, Meek, Stigwood, and songwriter Lionel Bart. Each figure has other personalities circling them, and eventually, they mixed with the others. There are other managers/visionaries such as Andrew Loog Oldham and Simon Napier-Bell. Still, they will get their own book, or there will be a sequel to this perfect volume. I love pop music because it must be part of a more extensive culture or society. The Gay world so secretive, even with their own language at times, Polari, which is traced back to the 19th-century, and possibly to the 16th. It is a form of can’t slang that only insiders can understand. Here the Managers/Promoters made marketing decisions to create a product that appeals to the Gay’s sensibility and the screaming female fan market. Parnes is not a music person, but he realized that Rock n’ Roll needed its own platform in England and not shared with clowns, jugglers, and comedians. The roots of music hall culture will not disappear but transform into British rock n’ roll packaged tours. At times even great American artists such as Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Buddy Holly would be part of the big show. This cross-continental programming fueled the imagination and desires of British youth. Many of the musicians from the British Invasion have seen Buddy, Eddie, and Gene.
At the beginning of his career, who would have thought Robert Stigwood would end up being the king of showbiz. Managing Cream and Bee Gees, or the talented Lionel Bart, would lose all his dough. Parnes rarely made financial mistakes, and at times Epstein was overwhelmed with problems of narcotics, a hard love life, and finances that went totally out of his control. The 1960s was in consistent motion. I think this was the force that led these gentlemen to use their desires to make money (always the concern) and forge a new liberating culture.
Darryl W. Bullock’s “The Velvet Mafia” is a well-documented look at that decade. With the skill of a historian/journalist, he captures these figures in motion and all the byproducts of that landscape. Here you get the Kray Twins and the voices of the young British artists as their lives being changed by these business and social visionaries. Joe Meek’s sad narration is told here as well. It’s a fantastic story of a man struggling with his place in society and being a genius in his field of record production. Kimley and I discuss and interview Bullock on his book on our podcast Book Musik. It will be up on March 15, 2021.
