Pass The Youth; 4; Youth Culture

How will someone please tell me how she can listen to that trash so early in the morning? Past the salt. And have you seen that revolutionary rag they call a school paper she's been working on? Past the toast. And frankly I don't care if BB King is at the film or she is going to the opera with us Friday night. Past the youth. Past the youth. A five-part series on today's young people, their efforts to meet society's challenges and their own challenges to society. This is part four, a look at the arts through the eyes of teenagers in which four young people discuss culture and the arts. Guests on the program are Frank Cupsidas, Ross Miller, Mark Clinton and Douglas Hedwig. Director for the Broadcast is Frank Ball, Director of the Theatre at the Riverside Church. The only time that I really listen to A.M. radio or when I'm driving in the car to school

every morning and QXR radio which is basically classical, I'm sure everyone knows, and L.I.B. which is basically soul music and good to make sure. Yeah, well, and every listen while when I decide to take a chance I listen to what is it? No, no, not ABC, the other one down at the bottom of the dial at Rockestation. No, no, no. What is it? W-R? W-M-C-A. M-C-A, right. Every once in a while they have some good music happening on that station, so that's about all on A.M. radio. If you've said that your boundaries are classical and so where does good music come in? Well, no, my boundaries aren't classical and so it's just that those are the only things that really do not meet the specifications for music, you know, like you hear on many of the channels. I find stations like W-A-B-C-A.M. You know, very insulting when you're listening to it, the way that just shocking comes on and this little hippie voice and screams about this commercial or that or this offer or

everybody rest down here and buy this or they have their little top ten. And they always cut it on your song at the end when you hit it on the screen. They come sing along the teeny-bopper bubblegum kind of thing, we're just jumping around. You know, it just really puts me in it and it makes you very embarrassed to listen to it, I find. When I turn on the radio, I'm expecting to hear music, not commercials, and A.M. has so many commercials. It's really ridiculous. The FM has some too, but they're not in this great number, but they're still, I think the number maybe. Maybe also the type of commercial. It's the way you do it. You can do a commercial, a very calmly like they do on W.N.E.W. when Roswell comes on or some of these other people and they just read it off or add a little bit, but the way they do it on A.M. You know, they're pounding it into you and over and over and over. When I was in high school, this was the era of that kind of station where they achieved immense popularity. And it was the only thing we listened to where the teeny-bopper voice came over and promoted bubblegum or soft drinks or whatever was the product with the music, the whole stack. And we listened to them and we sent in little letters saying, please play this song for

Pat and Ross and just named off a hundred names and they would read all these names and play this song. And we'd tell when we were going steady and when we had broken up would all be announced on the air. But if I'm hearing right, I'm hearing that at least from U3 high school people of today, this goes right by. Is that correct? Well, I think it also depends upon where you're living, too, because take over where my grandmother lives and Throg's neck in the Bronx. They still kind of dig this kind of A.M. sound, you know, with the disc jockey coming on and cutting in at the end, while over in Riverdale where I'm living, which is just the other side of the Bronx, you know, everybody listens to A.M. they don't dig A.M. at all. How long have you been making a distinction between the two kinds of radio? Since I've been about 12, I'd say, I've been listening to A.M. Did you listen to a radio as a child?

Is it a small child? Not very much. How about you? I always used to think of A.M. we used to live in Michigan and it wasn't a very big town. The only F.M. station was purely classical and news. And so I always used to associate F.M. with sort of something my parents would listen to and I never really got into it because it was always that sort of music and then when we came to New York, there's so many fantastic F.M. stations and with the, you know, the population that can do this sort of thing, A.M. was the only kind of music that I listened to. And then when I came here, it was very surprising to see that F.M. could also be good, you know, I had sort of a bad connotation with F.M. Yeah, it's the same when I was around 8, 9, 10, I was living in Houston and the biggest A.M. station was and probably still is, K-I-L-T. And I used to listen to people like Johnny Ray and everything and I thought they were great I'd be going around humming the songs for myself. And now I sometimes have to listen to W-O-R-F-M when I can't get in W-A-B-C and I can hear some of these old songs and I remember them and I think to myself, God, how could I like

this stuff? You know, and I switch it back to W-A-B-C as quickly as I can for like a breath of air. But I remember I used to be glued to the radio, you know, K-I-L-T. Yeah, it's very interesting, as you say, to listen to it as long as you can bear it at any rate, just to, just to realize exactly how much you've matured musically. Well, I think that's it, maturing musically, it's really, it's more sophisticated and approach. You really don't have to listen that much to the music on A-B-C and on A-M radio, it's just kind of, you know, sort of something going on, a little bit of action and F-M or something you can really listen to. Right, it's kind of studying. It's just quality. Today, you have to have something going on constantly. Right. It seems as if, you know, as the mechanical things in the world take over, we have more and more leisure time. And instead of using that time to patronize, say, the arts or even to just sit in a quiet room and meditate, if you will, this is, like, literally impossible for most people to do.

There's got to be something going, and thus, music or, you know, this blabbing, constant talking and blabbing, and just people making all kinds of sounds all around you, like this seems to be essential for one's sanity these days. And, I don't know, I find that recently I've been getting a great deal of enjoyment out of just sitting in a soft quiet room and thinking about something. Yeah, if you can find one, that's the point, too. And it's rather difficult. It's interesting to listen, as I say, you know, to F-M, of course, as we're all saying, much more than they am. And I personally, you know, listen to L-I-B-F-M, a jazz station, quite a bit, and R-V-R offers a Latin W-N-C-N, which, of course, I now hate for pulling out of the F-M guy. It's a man I've got a body there, thing, too. Well, it is sort of a background noise, I think. The way women were listening to all the soap operas in the morning when they're doing their ironing or cleaning around the house. Nothing else to do. And the music, they have the organ, you know, the high-pitched organ music, which I think

really appeals to mainly a feminine kind of instinct, is something about that little organ music. The way it goes on, you know, they get up there gripping it, go out and get some more ironing and bring it in during the commercial when they're kind of like this. It is just a background noise. People turn on when they're studying, you know, it's they're driving down the street. It's around the radio. It's really too bad that you can't find quiet. I noticed this. I was the summer up in Alaska and all of a sudden, you know, I noticed how quiet things can be. You really never realize what real quiet is because there's a constant noise level in the city of fans and horns and air conditioners and people and shattering. It can be very shattering to your sanity to find yourself in a completely silent, you know, under silent conditions. Well, it's exactly, but if you're used to, if you're living in a city and you're used to constant sound and noise and all of a sudden find yourself in deathly silence, you can just kind of flip you out. Well, let me ask you this. We seem to be pretty much agreed amongst us that FM is preferable to AM and that a certain kind of FM is preferable.

But I wonder for whom do these other stations that we've called not preferable, for whom do they play? Well, there's a great... There's a great percentage of people in New York and around the country that do not really like the more dignified, should we say, format of an FM station, they like, you know, they're still like the teeny-bopper music station, the fan magazines always have the disbanding. That's it. Things like that, people. Some people just still dig it. It could be just this area being in a big city where you can find this kind of excitement the way you get on a radio station, if you're living in sort of a hick place, I don't really want to use your word. But, you know, this is very exciting for you to listen to radio and hear something going on, but here you walk out in the street and there's that all going on anyway. So it's very relaxing. It's the only same thing to listen to a nice quiet, easy, you know, control kind of... You said listen to something quiet and easy, either that or listen to music that may be loud and violent, but in a controlled and purposeful manner.

Sometimes go very loud music, we'll give you the same kind of a sense of free of it. If it's so loud that you can't think about anything else, it can be very relaxing. Okay, if it goes way over and it's so loud that your mind can't possibly think about anything else, it can be such a relaxing, beautiful feeling. My parents always yell at me when I have something up loud, you know, it's, how can you think and how can you do this and that. But it can be so relaxing. I'm sort of off the subject, but it's sort of like music too, which is in many places, you know, doggies office, in fact, we've had surveys where they found that, you know, in factories, if they play music, it affects the way that people work in fact. It increases efficiency. That's, you know, you listen to, what is it, is it ORWOR that has almost constant music? No, it's not OR, it's the, that one that runs, you know, like music for an hour straight and then they say, you have now heard such and such. Or WPAT or something like that? That might be it. And you always, and I've, you always hear advertisements about how, you know, we go over 27 minutes straight. And it does, you've, I've read reports that they run these in factories and it does increase efficiency immensely.

But as you were saying before, that, that's a really interesting point though, that music can become so loud that, that it becomes relaxing and that is it becomes, it becomes, you know, so loud that you don't think about anything. You don't even think about that music. That's exactly right. And actually, it's a pity. See, that, I think, is a transitory kind of music. You're, right. People are used to, rather than pure meditation to reach out to a certain extent. Right. Jumping off point from that teeny-bop WABC music, the next step is to clear your mind. You recognize that it was all junk. So you clear your mind with this loud music. And eventually, you know, like rock musicians are now starting to realize that there's a hell of a lot to be learned from jazz, that's exactly where they've been so stuck. You know, I guess, you know, so stuck in a loud kind of music, you know, then they're starting to listen to a little culture and a little miles. They say, hey, what's going on here? Yeah. And now, you know, well, little by little subtleties coming up in the rock music. And so this transitory period is being replaced by a music that you can truly devote your entire mind and body into it.

I study and enjoy it. Yeah. Well, the music has been drawing on a lot of the old swing and the blues of the 20s and 30s. For instance, Blood Sweat and Tears made a big hit out of God Bless a Child, which was Billy Holidays. I mean, I think it was about her favorite song that she ever did herself. She wrote it. Made her the most money, believe too. And she was, it is a fantastic song. And I think I like it better the way she did it than, you know, the way the Blood Sweat and Tears did. Because I think you really only like a song by the first person who you're done by. That's true. Well, true. But I thought you were going to say something else where it was better. I'm thinking about, I feel that she was like really the only one that could give it its true meaning because the words of the song are just so heavy. She just, the only person that could speak these words or sing them and get a true, and someone get a true meaning out of it, it's someone like her who was, of course, a very heavy heroin addict and who had, God, no, she lived through a hell of a lot. And she was speaking straight from her soul, not just off the top of it, you know.

So there's something to be said for that. I think this is the same thing about sincerity and believing in it and they're actually experiencing something real. Which a lot of these team battle kind of things aren't real. And I think that's what we're, again, coming back to, something that's actually, there's something to it, you know. And the person really meant what they were saying and we're really into it. And you feel it. It affects you and you realize that it's something substantial and solid rather than some plastic little thing. Yeah. Sincereity seems to be a hard thing to combine. Right. Yeah. Well, like on WRAM and WRFM or WABCFM, there's a complete difference because on WABC AM, you hear things like Bobby Sherman, the Archies. And you don't hear songs like, for instance, about drug addicts, cold turkey or Cindy's crying or anything. You don't hear any of that on the AM stations and, you know, that is really a hell of a lot more truth than the Archies. It's the kind of people they're trying to reach. Yeah.

Most of them make money and that's the kind of people they're trying to reach and, you know, yeah, I don't know if it's, we're the people to say that, that kind of people, you know, that kind of music and that kind of people are not up to what we're doing. Or anything. I'm sort of a Frenchist kind of way of looking at it. Most of the times the songs on FM, though, are much too long for an AM station to play. Yeah. Also, which means it comes back to making money and getting their commercials in. The longer I struggle with it, the more inevitable it seems to me that you're not going to really ever make, if we could use this word true art or real art, pay for itself. And in no form of the performing arts or visual arts, really, are we seeing that an artist paying its own way, at least in the generation of the artist or something like that. You know, so many things have been so much more appreciated later on the authentic advantage. Well, if we consider the work of the artist, primarily has to be promoted and promulgated by various groups. If it's a performed art by some theater company or some orchestra, or if it's a visual art by a museum or an individual collector, nobody is making money at this.

In fact, everybody's going under. And you look at the major organizations around the country, the symphony, and... There's only one symphony in the entire United States that is being able to support itself entirely. That's the Philharmonic in New York. Every other major symphony is like, they have very large deficits. Extremely large. And some of them are going out of business, you know? They're years and years of colorful histories, and it seems criminal. And of course the jazz clubs are dying. Yeah. Yeah. Whether they're going to be sincere or prostitute, you're out to self out for some other thing, you'll make money, you know, keep yourself alive. It's kind of a tough one, isn't it? Let me sound you out about what you consider the most exciting architecture in the city. And let's just go around the table, don't think too much about this. Ross, what excites you? Just name a couple of places. Well, I really kind of like some of these old row houses and things like this. When I see these great, big, huge skyscrapers go up with metal and glass and all this, I don't feel like a person.

You know, it isn't the kind of thing that's built by a human for humans to live in. It looks kind of like an IBM computer there or something like this. And I think it takes kind of the people away from you. It's interesting because the row houses are built just to like. Well, so I'm talking about some of the kind of terms of century. Victorian type things with little doilies and, you know, as, okay, a skyscraper goes up in every apartment, it's just like the row houses go up in every row, the house in the row is just like, but the style they're built in, you know, it has, it feels a little bit more like a person. I feel when I walk through a building that's very plain and bland and things like that, it sort of puts me in that sort of mood. And when I walk through some of these things, they're all freely and have all kinds of interesting. It puts me in a very excited or creative kind of mood. It affects you so much. Right? Okay, well, I think the Ford Building, Ford Motor Company Building, this kind of architecture appeals to me, making so much out of a little space and also having a garden nature in the building.

And I really did that kind of architecture. And also General Motors Building, when you're looking downtown from Incentral Park, every building looks basically the same as even though they're different, they all look the same. But when you look by the General Motors Building, it somehow stands out. And even when you're there, it, you know, gives you a feeling of difference. I think modern architecture, though, is sort of progresses in stages. And first, they were all in glass and steel, and now they're going a little bit to glass and marble, like the General Motors Building and the buildings. And I think the pretty soon, some of the original glass of steel buildings will be ripped down and they'll put up glass and white marble or something like this, because they sort of go in styles. And the reason that stands out is because it is different in a modern sense. But I think they, you know, it goes on and they'll rip down all these buildings and replace it with that style. I was messy that it also stands out in the fact that it's attractive to the eye. But as is the true, I feel the true challenge to a good architect. It is also conserving of the space that is available, which is really important these days. So particularly in the urban centers, Mark would, what excites you about the architecture

in the city? Uh, mainly Gothic Victorian style. I don't like the modern that much because it's bare looking, you know, it's, makes you appreciate the Gothic and Victorian more of that. True. Yes, it does. You see this, the skyscraper that has nothing but, uh, smoke glass windows and steel edges. And it looks like it's just sitting there without any gloves on. It's very interesting, Doug. Uh. How do you fit it? Well, I, uh, I very much like the Guggenheim Museum, the architecture of that. It seemed, it first all out of place with the surrounding buildings, but now it seems to be the other way around. I also, of course, like the, uh, the cloister's, I've, I've visited there a lot. That's great. It's nice to think. Yeah. It's, it's very beautiful. But this is, I think, to sort of uniqueness that we like, because I think if everything was like the Guggenheim or everything was like the cloister's, you know, you have to have this, this, the reason New York is so nice, because there's so many varied things.

And you appreciate one in comparison to the other more. I like a building, basically, that fits in with its surroundings more than just putting up, you know, four walls in another word, uh, for example, in the building I live in in Riverdale. It's a semicircular building, but it fits, and it's 15 stories high, made out of, uh, cement, let's say cement, uh, railings, balcony railings, aluminum, and, uh, recessed glass. And the whole front of the building is just these balconies, very uniform, but it fits in with the surroundings so well, and you feel, uh, very comfortable when you're out on the balcony looking, uh, across to the Palisades, you don't feel like you're in New York city. Yeah. And you don't see all the pollution, but if you just turn your head a little, there's all the pollution set in, you know, over the city and all the identical houses again. I believe each one of you mentioned that, uh, at least one of your favorite kinds of architecture or places of architecture was, uh, remotely connected with, uh, the Gothic or the Victorian,

two periods, uh, from our near and distant past. I read an ad not too many days ago that was an ad for one product or another, but it said that we're funny people because we paused to, uh, examine the objects in an antique shop and then jumping a car to hop on a jet. Have you seen the ad? And I think the whole ad's finally put together because it, it tries to build and sell its product on this basis of our human ambivalence at this point. How would you translate this into terms of the theater if we can talk in that field for a minute? Uh, I'll be very interested to see some of your remarks, uh, here did you signal? Well, uh, as you walk up to the Vivian Beaumont Theater and Lincoln Center, here's a magnificent structure, all glass in front of a pond. I like this kind of look, although I've been told they don't like the way, just the appearance that gives them a cold appearance. But if you walk up, here's this tremendous building, all glass, with beautiful lighting inside and you go into a beautiful theater and hopefully for a good play.

I've been a few good ones over there. Well, what is the, uh, the real temperature, the barometer of, uh, fall as your age regarding the theater? I enjoyed. You go to the theater often? Yes. Uh, I enjoyed your own thing at, uh, the Arphium Theater Downtown, which is just recently closed. But I felt very into that and I couldn't believe two hours was up at the end. I just got very involved with it and the actors were, uh, the scenery kept on changing due to the rear projections and everything. When I go to a play, I'm not, I, uh, do the lighting at the school. So I usually looked at the lighting anyway for the play and also projections and things like that. So I like a play that has different scenes and moves fast. Did you know the story behind your own thing before you saw the play? Yes. You appreciated your own thing, uh, because I think visually you're saying at this point, right?

In which it was put together, um, how about the, how about the kernel of what that old play was about to, uh, can you give us a reading on how that got to you? The play just appealed, they whole, I went to it for enjoyment mostly. And, uh, when I was there, I just went there for enjoyment. I didn't try to get any moral things out of it or anything like that. I just went to enjoy this play, uh, enjoy the music, et cetera. Well, I think enjoyment certainly a legitimate function of art. Does anybody disagree with that? Uh, and of course the original form of 12th night and, and that is in Shakespeare's, uh, time is, uh, you know, not much more than a comedy. Uh, may have been the, uh, 30 minute variety show on TV of Shakespeare's day. It was, it was one of his most popular comedies. Mark, when, uh, have you been to the theater last and what did you see? The last time I've been to the theater was to go see Harvey with James Stewart and Helen Hayes, and that was fantastic.

Isn't this funny? Do you realize how many points we have scored in favor of antiquity and favor of heritage and in favor of the past at this point for you? What did you appreciate most about that play? The production itself, the stars and the production or, uh, the play itself? My favorite character in the play was Harvey. I don't know what to make of that answer. Uh, the idea appealed to me, how is it? Huge white rabbit as a friend, uh-huh, falling around. Now you know when that play was written, the play was written in, uh, the early 40s, and, uh, one, I think, a pure surprise, uh, in its post-war presentation. Um, why, what is it about the play that would be appealing about the absence of a white rabbit? Well, it's not the absence of a white rabbit, but the white rabbit is there, though, you don't ever see him, you know, you actually feel as if he is there. It's like, uh, if you go to see Silent Film, I went to see the vampires over at Lincoln Center, and there was, there were no titles they had been destroyed for some reason a long

time ago, and of course it was Silent, it was 1915, and when I came out, you know, the day after I'd seen the movie, I had thought of it as the characters were actually talking instead of them just mowling the words. I mean, I actually thought I was remembering the characters talking. That's very interesting. I'm loud in it. What's that? Um, what, what have you been up to in the theater? Frankly, very little, huh? I suppose a great deal of my reasons for not going is the money involved, because, you know, I am a student, and I'm a music student, not an art student, I mean, not a drama student, even though I am interested in drama, I, I don't know, I really can't put my finger on one specific thing that has kept me from going, but certainly the financial reason is a very large one. I mean, in England, I've heard many stories about how it's, it's just beautiful. So inexpensive, you can take two or three in one night.

Yeah, that's certainly true. However, in terms of New York, and particularly among people our age, it's, it's possible for us to hike up that extra couple of rows to the top of the balcony, and with movie prices being what they are now. It's honestly possible to see a legitimate stage show for as cheap or cheaper than a movie, and I'm sure you're aware that a number of places around town have special price cuts for students, Lincoln Center, I think, is a $2 ticket for a student, if I go, $9 tickets for two bucks. I've, I have seen free theater, I, and I have participated in free theater. That, that is very relevant to me, see? Would you define free theater for us? Define, oh, well, I mean, I'm not in drama, but it was just a matter of impromptu actions, you know, this, this border is on jazz, you know, where you are with your body and, and with your mouth expressing what you feel at that very moment without any inhibitions, you see, in, in normal day life, there are inhibitions, and that's, that's a place

where everybody playing their own life is like reading your script on a player or something Right, in the theater, the most moving play I've ever seen was Hadrian VII last year. That really got me so involved in the play, and I felt in with it, you know, I felt that I was really seeing a true story, and I felt like I was part of it. Alec McCallan did such a fantastic job. Well, what you're talking about, Frank, is, is this whole idea of the drama being able to become an imitation of life, a reflective experience of life, to the point that, of you are upon watching it, can enter in and then gain some kind of insight that's going to be profitable. I'm concerned, though, that, that we haven't got on the board at too many points with, with what you all are considering significant pieces of theater that have done something, said something to you or done something to you or have really scored with you in any way.

Hadrian, I think, is the first time we've been around the table, and then you mentioned that you enjoyed Harvey Mark, and so forth, but we still haven't talked about a kind of theater that has really done much for you, is there any, there may not be any. Well, as I said, I feel that three theater can do something for you. I mean, I walked out of that, well, call a theater, I call it kind of a, you know, is it a half-time rule? Yeah, right, exactly. I see. It's a happening. It's like a good party. Okay. Well, it's like, it's kind of like a party, except that there's a great deal of inhibitions that one may have come out of your tiki-taki box and, like, yeah, exactly. Yes. Now, what you're describing is a kind of experience that has just come of late to the theater, you know, with the advent of jazz, perhaps, so we saw for the first time the use of non-structure and music, you know, non-structure in a hundred percent way, you know. Oh, yeah.

Non-structure is a great deal of it and jazz. Now, only recently in the theater have we come up with any kind of notion at all like this. Here to four, everything was written down and said exactly the same way every night. And if you left out a word or too many words and then you give a night, you refined the stage manager reported it. And if you did it too often, you were fired and they got an actor that could say all the words. It's against a law to leave out words and play. Now, however, we're seeing a kind of experience develop where a company gets together, they're cast by some traditional method of casting. And then they go away, you know, for six months or six weeks or six days, and then they come back and they still don't have anything written down, but they're ready to perform. Or they have very little written down. And one night, one of them will play the lead and everybody else will play the bit parts and the next night, somebody else will play the lead and they'll change the bit parts. Because they've come back with a kind of a unified company and you feel like they're deriving a great deal out of it. And possibly now there's more chance for the audience to get something out of it. That's a sincerity.

The natural kind of togetherness follow people and you can feel that. Yesterday I saw the concept. And I thought that was very interesting, you know, done by the day top former drug addicts. And this whole thing related kind of what they did at this place, but it was very interesting to see their activity, their normal everyday activity. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. You see these people at the day top are not actors, they never went to the day top to become actors. An actor is a profession, making money. It's the same kind of a thing. It's a business rather than for a lot of people, rather than a free expression. I just, I flinched there because you said acting is something people make money on. See? Anyway, anyway, I feel, you know, this is kind of, I suppose, on the surface and no relevance, but we're all basically actors and all very good ones when it comes to revealing how they really feel. Well, this is precisely the point that Frank would pay money to go to date, go to where are they now at the pocket theater, and watch a group of non-actors do non-acting.

All of these are traditional terms, you see, and that he would pay money to go and see them. And then they're down there performing eight shows a week and people are paying money every night and have been for three years to see them. And you can bet your bottom dollar that they wouldn't have been there three days unless they were meaning something to somebody. You can just be sure as that. Or Mr. Van Amber, because the head of the theater club at the school brought out the house yesterday. Oh, they've been immensely popular and I've heard over and over again how, you know, having watched the concept was one of the high points of someone's theater going and you know, you're interested in this because this is not theatered by our traditional standards. There's no really hard, fast, written script. It was originated by a group of non-actors and it becomes interesting when someone tells you it's the most exciting theater they've seen. It's interesting also to find out how people feel when they come out of it. Mr. Van Amber felt it was his second time seeing it and he felt it was a very moving play and he got into it and it was interesting.

Well, my French teacher said he'd never pay $3.50 or whatever it is to go see the play because he thought it was a lousy play, didn't he? And you really have to say at that point that it's not a play at all. It's an experience, you know? No, they tell something. It can't be judged as a play because it doesn't have an author and a plot and it's called traditional things. You're listening to Public Affairs Unit Production from Riverside Radio, WRVR in New York. Let's talk about a specific trend in the theater that has only happened in the last two years and a couple of months as a matter of fact. And see what this does to the level of experience. Back in, I think it was April of 68, hair opened on Broadway and had the first legitimate nude scene. And it's now what?

May of 1970. And we've been through O'Calcata which opened just a few days over a year after hair. The hair nude scene is nothing compared with O'Calcata, right? And in this intervening period of a year, we saw great many movies which were able now to use nudity. And now, you know, two years after hair seemed to kind of break it all open. Well, you go to many plays and you see many nude people. It's been part of the business for the last couple of years. You could think it was maybe an opening up and people realizing, you know, people. But I also think business, you know, business, you would think would be sort of make people happy, you know, the business community and their products. But it's to make money. And I think that's what they're making money on. I didn't mean that in the sense that it's disgusting. I mean that it gets very boring. They wear it out. I mean, they use it. They use it. I think that's the answer. It's the sincerity being taken over by the money and things like that. Yeah.

Let's broaden the field to include movies at this point. Yes, certainly. There's none of you here that hasn't seen a movie in the last couple of years. Which stock? Yeah. Which has gone without somebody being nude on camera. Is that true? The nudist, let us say, the nudist movie I've ever seen was in the Magic Christian, the scene with something like 300 topless rowing girls. That was it. You remember them all. I'd like to know if we were talking a while ago about parents, I'd like to know if you would agree that the use of nudity as another tool of the artist is a valid tool, and whether or not you would expect your parents and the people who know your parents, your parents, friends and so forth, to go along with you there. Well, take Woodstock, what I saw was my mother last Saturday. Did you take her? Did she take you? She took me. When she came out, she said, do you think all this nudity is right in there? And they said, and she kept on asking me about the nudity.

Like, you know, the world was based on it. And that if she agrees with it and everybody agrees it's going to happen tomorrow, you know, I think she's a bit... Well, I'd exemplify as a basic feeling of being uptight, see, about something that was verboten before. You're saying frankly that it really wasn't that private or something? Was you, is that too? What? You're saying that the whole issue of it was not that bigger thing? Right. In relation to Woodstock? Right. I wanted to see the movie. I was at Woodstock and I have to just agree with that. See, I feel that the entire... I haven't seen the movie. Right. Like, I haven't seen a flick in quite a while. But, see, you're saying that the nudity had no relevance to the happening. I will call it Woodstock. I feel that it had a great deal to do with it. An explosion of freedom. An explosion of freedom. Relevance. He said it didn't bother him. No, but didn't you make it... Did I misunderstand you? I thought that's what you were saying. Yes, I thought it was very... I saw what he saw in the movie. I didn't bother him at all. But did you make a point that you felt that that didn't serve a purpose or something like that? That's what I saw in what he said.

Yeah. What you were going to come back to. I'm not saying that it didn't serve a purpose. But, I mean, when it's used in the film, you know, my mother was questioning whether it was right for it to be done in the movie. I'm saying this is part of what happened there. This is part of the expression of the freedom that went on there. Right. I agree with it. My mother just doesn't. Yeah, is that what you said? It didn't trouble you at all. Sorry. Okay. Anybody else have an experience relating with the other generation, the fear to say or with the generation immediately above us in relation to the suspect of contemporary culture? I think all things are just the way you've been brought up, whether it's prejudice on nudity or race or anything like that. It's just what you've been taught to. And I hope more and more people are being, you know, become free and not, you know, condemn people like this, but just sort of realizing what everything's all done. I understand the difference.

Well, I think it's certainly possible that building on to some of the freedom that has come about to really, just in a very, very short time, both in the films and in the theater, both of these art forms are going to perhaps survive and triumph at this point. The theaters kind of like religion. I think they're awfully close together. And I don't think religions ever going to physically out. And I don't think the theater is either. We haven't talked too much about some of the minor institutions of culture. And I don't mean minor in any kind of qualitative way, but to non-performing, let's call it that, museums and libraries. But you experience in these two areas. Do you visit museums? I'm really asking this for an honest answer because where I grew up, there were none, and we didn't. No. And so now I view museums going as something that you don't do naturally that you do. I don't have the patience to walk through a museum and just see, you know, corpses all over the wall. And, you know, ancient bones here and old stones there.

I don't have the patience to walk through these kind of museums. I go quite a bit, though. I mean, not to museums, but to their little galleries around where people are trying to sell. You know, artists have a little gallery all along Madison Avenue and 57 Street and things like that. Where artists are trying to sell things. And you can just walk in and look at the art as itself, not wanting to buy it. And I go into these quite a bit and look at the different things. It's very interesting. And then if you have some money, you can go now that the modern, which is really nice, is open on Monday free. It's fantastic going there. And if there's a good show on something like the Whitney or something like that, I'll pay you going to that. Most of the time I don't have, you know, I involve myself with so many activities. Well, the time I don't have even time to really think about going either. And there's so many things. Clothes as I've come to a museum is selling environment buttons in front of, you know, the museum of modern art. Mark, how do museums fit into your bag? I don't usually go to them unless they've got an exhibit that would particularly interest me. Like I collect antique 78 records. If they were having an exhibit as I didn't haul them around.

The haul them on my mind exhibit, you know, they did have quite a few recordings of old music, as background music. And there was one particular part where they had quite a few record labels. And that was extremely interesting. But I don't go to them that much. My mother thinks they're great. She goes almost every other day. But it doesn't really turn me on that much. Doug? Well, I wouldn't say I'm like a steady museum goer. But I was interested. This is no put down of any kind. But you said that you haven't got the patience to go and look at these stable exhibits, which is indeed most of the more with the exception of some of the museum of modern art, which are very moving and more than one. But as far as my relationship to them, you say that you didn't have the patience. This seems to be the hang up of many, many people that something has to be happening, if you're confronted with something right there, like that can of ginger real, right there.

Like I can look at that now and get a certain aesthetic beauty, or not beauty, but a certain pleasure, or some kind of feeling at any rate. And this is the way you go into a museum and you may look at a piece of art for five minutes. You may look at it for a second and spit, but it's given you some kind of feeling. That's what I think is important. See, I don't go regularly, but when I do, I enjoy it very much, because I go when I have plenty of time to walk around. But patience is one thing that has to come with art. This is, you know, if you're used to watching television, patience is like, well, it just starts to dwindle. It's a sensitivity. You go into, I went to an exhibit at the Whitney and they had Jim Dine there. Some of these things were like, you'd walk into a men's room and see the same thing. You'd have a washstand or a urinal. And I thought that was really a joke on people.

Like last time I'm walking on the street, now I look at water towers in the town of Billings, which are really beautiful, or little clarnishes, or things like this. And you look at a fresco, and you never really take time to look at these things. And some of these things are really a joke on people, like when they had the space to exhibit at the modern, and you walked into those rooms. They had rooms where you just walked in, and there's a black wall, and there's nothing on it, and you walk back out. And it was kind of, you know, people don't notice things. And it was kind of saying to people, you know, look around, look around it, yet your shoes are at the little piece of dirt on the floor, at the writing on your pencil and things like this. And then to pay to go into a museum, sometimes really bothers you when you see this. But, you know, the message he's saying is, you know, look at this, you know, why don't you look around you and get some sensitivity out of your life? And, you know, notice things around you. It's interest. And there's so many people who just sort of go through life and never really see things. And, you know, aren't interested or are interesting. You know, it all goes together. And people are too busy solving the problems of the world. Do you think museums are likewise trying to kind of come of age in the last 10 years, trying to update themselves, find a new audience?

Well, that's a good idea to talk about. That was just a comment, though, I think. You know, kind of a, hmm, on people. Well, David, this is the same thing as such as Harlem on my mind, which no museum would have dared to put in, let's say, about 30 or 40 years ago. And there are choosing things that are a lot more relevant to our times. It's a different kind of people I think are going to museums now, also. They still say it was the sort of patron of the art lady who used to go and they used to go after this little social meeting and walk through the museum. And look at the Van Goghs and students. And now, you know, people are realizing what really is. Which is great, it's fantastic. The museum is having as much trouble as any other arts institution and supporting itself. But it may have led the pack in trying to find a new audience. And I think that's really what the rest of them are going to have to do. And the new audience, quite frankly, is quite often me and you in our contemporaries. We're the ones that are not supporting a traditional old museum

or going to see a traditional old play, unless it's especially well done, is in the case of Harvey, and appreciate it as a piece of history. You see, I'm encouraged by the broadening of the definition of museum. And by some of the very creative things happening there. Well, everything's going on to be relevant. Yeah, which kind of brings us back to our main point, doesn't it? You know, if it's not relevant, if it's not some kind of reflection of life, if it's of no use, either as reflection, as a bit of enjoyment or as something of an educational value similar to this, that it's not worthy of support. There's my definition of trash right there. That's some value, right? But would you just say, you know, this is a great deal. Most of television is trash. Yeah, and the television may be the last great frontier for some of you to try to iron out. It's an electronic media that has tremendous potential. Reaches an awful lot of people.

Reaches an awful lot of people and has a lot of tools and gimmicks at its disposal. And it would be unfair to say that there's no creative men working in television. It's just, I guess, there's a lot of odds against it. Particularly at this point in history since it got so far along, so fast and only recently began to start wondering about why it was doing all of this. There are three shows on television that I really like. And there's the only three. That's one atom, twelve, dragnet, and eyewitness news. Sesame Street. What about Sesame Street? That's a good show. That is a beautiful show. Yeah, occasionally I'll look at it. I love it. I don't know. I don't know. I never have a patience to see. To sit through a big duck or a big what do you call it? What do you find interesting and dragnet? I'd just like to see these. Yeah, exactly. What did you say incidents? I said he has a police fetish. A police fetish. And you have a police fetish. I witness news. I witness news. Well, I witness news. I just like the way it's presented. I think that's, you know, unusual.

It's very biased. I think Roger Grimm's to be the way he presents it. It's like a wise English sheep dog, you know. What? If some of his expressions remind you very much, you've been like him. You've given us your favorite shows. Anybody else watch television at all? Commercials. Pepsi. Yeah, that's a very good commercial. Yeah, they are quite a few. I've always wondered if somebody could actually put up the Capitol to buy all the rights. And made a record of the music of some of these commercials like the Pepsi song and things like that. They would make a lot of money off of that record. Oh, well, they, you know, remember the, you know, no matter what shape your stomachs are? Yeah, everybody went out as a single. Yeah, I have it. I have it. There was one stunt. Great, exactly. Successfully. For some of the exact people, the most awful pieces of music. True. Well, let's focus again on contemporary television. This is worth exploring because it probably is the art form that most of us at least subliminally come most in contact

with if we can call it an art form. Now, there's a crisis for you. But to assume that it is for a moment and tell us where you stand. Well, I think they could do a lot more than television, of course, and they have done stupid things like the game shows. But that brings a certain kind of audience that sells a certain kind of product. Yeah, my grandfather. That's all he ever watches at night. The newlyweds show. The dating. And he sure doesn't listen to that. And certain they sell their products. You know, certain companies. Of course. It brings us back to the same kind of thing of what makes people happy and what makes people money. Do you see any danger in letting this kind of television just continue to go on for your grandfather? The only people that it's perverting are the housewives, I think. But kids, you know, my little brother will come home and he'll, he's nine years old and he'll watch TV, you know, six or seven hours. Exactly. And he doesn't even realize it. But a lot of things you're drilled into his head that keep on going on and on. And some of these commercials, the way they have the little sexy ads and all this,

it pertains to put certain kind of ideas in keep. I don't think they're real value type ideas. The melodramas and soap operas during the day. Those things. Well, they can't put anything else on. Because, you know, it's a deadening time. No show, you know, Ed Sullivan. Blink out in two weeks if you were putting any of those time slots. I don't know. Maybe Ed Sullivan is the answer to day times. It's very interesting to sit down and read the National Association of Broadcasters code and see what it reflects in terms of contemporary more ACE, contemporary values. It just lists one, two, three things one right after another that cannot happen on television. And I'm not positive, but I suspect that there's been some testing of individual items and that there's been some loosening of the code in the past few years. But it used to be extremely rigid. That shows had to have happy endings unless, you know, A or B could be proved. And that certain words could not be used unless so many other conditions could be met.

And these were words that, you know, we consider just quite a part of conversation. That alcohol could only be used in a certain way. True. And the drugs could not be used at all, you know. Yeah. You know, I'm not quoting it letter for letter. And perhaps incorrectly with the spirit of what I'm saying is true. Now, in this kind of vacuum, you know, I don't know if our old definition of art would stand a chance, if we're going to live by the one that we said that art is some way related to life and some way of value to life. So maybe the television is a hopeless view. Well, it's just like, let's go back again to AM stationing as we have been doing. It's, it's almost totally false because of this code, you know. People don't just walk around all their life without like saying one for letter word. Yeah. But talking is a really tricky thing because it reaches so many people. And some people just listen to it without even thinking just over and over and over.

Well, let's try to make a sum up and let's start by looking over these lists to see if there's anything we've ignored. Or if there's any point that you want to slip in that we missed. Well, what do we talk about books for a while? We didn't mention books. Probably because I don't do much reading. I just subliminally overlook that when the lead is off, Mark. My favorite author, of course, my all time favorite author is Margaret Halsey. Not too many people may have read her. She's very, very funny. She's got a very dry sense of humor. And what she says about life is so true that it can make you cry. You know, it's really fantastic. And I've only read two of her books. One is with Malice towards some. And the other is this Demi Paradise from, of course, Shakespeare. And it's really a very fantastic, both of them are fantastic. One was written when she was so, in her 20s and the other, when she was about 50 something.

And her style became a little bit more sophisticated, but was still virtually the same dry, common, and American life that was really, very, very funny. And she's very, very fond of quotations, you know, which gives it a very dignified sort of look. Do you read widely? Is this an integral part of your life? Yeah. I probably would average on the whole about a book a day, you know, but not. Well, if I had to retire, do something like that. You know, well, I really don't pay attention to the books I read. I read them. And if I don't like them, I just forget about them. Things like read a really weird book called The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pension. And I just was, I wondered what it was all about and what I finished the book. Wasn't that challenging to go back and read it again? It did, and I want to read his other book, V, which is slightly larger and just about the same thing. I think about Dan, I have to read.

What I read a book, and that's very seldom. It's James Thurber, I usually try to read. I've read all of his books now, and I find his wit very amusing. And with his drawings to accompany his stories, I'm very interested. And I hold my attention. And usually I can finish a book then within two, three days if it's enjoyable. Well, the book's like, again, relating to my record collecting. There was a very good book called The Fabulous Phonograph, which traces its growth since the phonograph was a little piece of machinery made by a little Swiss mechanic for Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park out laboratory. I think it was Menlo Park. And there were quite a few things about the records. It was mainly about records, actually. And I read it twice in the same day, and then I kept reading it. I still read it. Because it's good as a catalog, I can look up a record that I've just bought in the back

and see, you know, find out information about it. Yeah. Well, now this would be using books on a rather functional level, this kind of use. I think we ought to try to talk just a bit in relationship to whether or not books give us any input in an artistic sort of way, creative writing, science fiction, historical fiction, whatever. Autolift is to some kind of either enjoyment or insight or appreciation to fall under our definition of an art experience. And I was just interested in knowing how widespread reading as a pastime was amongst you. Doug, we haven't heard from you on this one. Well, I'm not a regular book reader by any means. I'm very much taken up by my music, as I said before. But when I have read, and what I've been reading lately is the writings of Hermann Hesse, who I just finished reading Siddhartha, which speaks of, as I was speaking before, a oneness

and actually an experiencing of life, you know, to a degree. And then the only other kind of book I would read, which I just purchased, would be about music. And I just finished reading, if you want to call it reading, the Encyclopedia of Jazz by Leonard Feather, which was, well, it's like an encyclopedia, you know, something you just don't read. It's there to kind of consult. Would you all agree with the notion that in past ages and past generations, the printed word was worth a lot more than it is today in terms of its consumer appeal, that there were a lot more people reading as a pastime. There were no things such as phonographs, radios, and television to, you know, widen the means of communication. You know, books, for instance, back in the Middle Ages, books were the way to tell people what your ideas were. That was a small minority of the people, though. But we can talk really, you know, and consider your mother and father.

Do they have a lot of books stacked around the house from before you came along to live with them? Did they used to read when you were a child? Did you observe them reading a lot? Yes. My mother reads a tremendous amount of books, and my father doesn't read that much, and I don't rarely read that much either. Except what I have to for school. Well, I'd be interested in knowing if you all can kind of individually make a bit of a summary of where our divergent tracks have let us. And let me just run around the table and see if you can. We've talked about a good many art forms, and we've talked a little about the very essence of art itself as it translates itself into these forms. And I've been quite frankly surprised and somewhat cheered to hear you affirm over and over again the ancients as well as the moderns to borrow some stock phrases for different levels of experience and traditions. And I'm surprised at this.

I'd like to see how you do with summing up what we've been talking about. Ross, you want to start us? Well, I think we've just been talking about an artist and sensitivity and truth, which is what most people, I guess, basically would like. We're good, right? We really sum up. We've been talking about the mass media as well as just our feelings of, say, the rows of houses, identical houses, and the difference in art and the way art can affect the lives of people. The pros and cons of a lot of different aspects of art. Mark? Well, I think we've been discussing about how the art forms have progressed, and they're becoming slowly, better and better, and they're trying out new things to see where they can go. I think nudity is just an experiment right now in the theater to see how well that fits in, and they're trying to put more truth into the arts. You know, and getting greater freedom of expression, which, of course, they didn't have.

Back then. Okay. Good, and Doug, you want to wrap up for us? Well, as Mark commented, truth will eventually take the place of a very vain appreciation of the arts as man, mature as it is thinking, and our society has always been built upon a work kind of program ever since the beginning of the world. And all his activities and thinking have been based upon the physical aspect of working. Soon, as I said before, our technical ability will wipe out the work time. It will be a great amount of time to explore one's mind. As of yet, man has not taken that option with the time he has. He's been taken up with many artificial means of occupying his mind, because as I'm sure Ross commented, it is painful to be sensitive of your fellow man.

And as time progresses and as man matures, he will find that art will supply and enhance his mind with a great deal more satisfaction than he's been able to achieve in any other way. Fine. Well, I've enjoyed listening with you for gentlemen today, and as I said before, have been heartened and encouraged by some of the things you said and stimulated by them all and appreciate your listening with me. You've been listening to the fourth and WRVR's five program series, Past the Youth, a study of the problems of youth in an urban environment. On this program, four young people discussed culture and the arts. It was moderated by Frank Ball, director of the theater at the Riverside Church. Guests on the broadcast were Frank Cupsidas, Ross Miller, Mark Clinton, and Douglas Hedwig. The program was produced by Barney Quinn. This program was a production of the Public Affairs Unit of WRVR, New York.

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