Thursday, July 21, 2005

"A Great Day in L.A."

Here's something from Yahoo!:

Punk rock photographer Gary Leonard plans to shoot a musical class picture -- of a class that was assigned to detention.

Leonard, who vigorously documented the Los Angeles punk scene of the late '70s and early '80s, wants to assemble "a gathering of the tribes" -- vets of the original punk crew -- at Barnsdall Art Park in Hollywood for a group photo during the inaugural ArthurFest music gathering on Sept. 4.

He's calling the shoot "A Great Day in L.A.," in homage to lensman Art Kane's "A Great Day in Harlem," a celebrated 1958 photo that captured nearly 60 jazz greats en masse on a Harlem street. (Jean Bach's 1995 film about the picture received a best documentary Oscar nomination.) Leonard says he also was inspired by a group shot of Liverpool's rock musicians in a mid-'60s Merseyside pose. He finds the L.A. punks no less important.

"This is an L.A. scene that went by relatively unknown by the mainstream," Leonard says. "There was something important that happened, and it should be recognized."
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Sounds like a good idea. Of course, old jazz guys usually look just a tad better than old punk guys, even though they lived just as hard. That's why hats are better than tats.

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