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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

This Was My Song — It Is Ours Now More Than Ever

June 7, 2025 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

Long, long ago — in 1970 to be precise — the Berkeley radio station KPFA borrowed a collage of mine for the cover of its guide. I believe it was Charles Amirkhanian who prompted them to use it — and this is how it appeared.

© 1970 by jh

I had titled it “This Is My Song,” thinking it was a kind of obituary for the 1960s. KPFA added “quadraphonic RADIO” and “April 24/25, 1970” to the image, although it had nothing to do with four-channel surround sound. The collage was also used several times elsewhere for other reasons, including in Fantastic Architecture, which was edited by Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins and published by Something Else Press (since reprinted in a facsimile edition by Primary Information). And now, with the Trump regime’s attack on the arts and humanities both by defunding federal grants to support them and using unmitigated propaganda about “wrong ideology,” the collage seems more apt then ever … even if I say so myself.

(Nanos Valaoritis had the original, which I gave him because he admired it. It is probably among his papers, either in his archive at Princeton or elsewhere.)

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Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
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Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

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The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

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