ART BY: JACKIE SYNAN AKA “JOGGER JOHN”
- At the time Artists Space got no ink in the art press. There were no reviews that I recall. Many of the actual works in the Met show of 2009 were shown first either during Paul’s tenure at Artists Space or at Project Inc. in the 70s. About those years David Salle wrote in 1998, “Whether we constituted an artistic alliance, I’m not really sure. But the galvanizing member of this unusual club was someone who hadn’t gone to CalArts, and that was Paul McMahon…I keep coming back to the same point: Pictures was all really ephemeral. It was never meant to last and didn’t last, not really. The key intelligence here was always Paul McMahon, and the keynote of Paul McMahon, as an art critic, was humor. He was essentially a postmodern comedian.”-500 Artists Return to Artists Space.
The Battle of the Bands was an impromptu all hands on deck party game he emceed in the midst of parties at 135 Grand St 1978-80. They have come to be well known, referenced in the Pictures Generation book and since then a few magazines and books of and by David Salle and Eric Fischl, who alleges he had a hand in it.
- With Nancy Chunn he created the Party Club in 1978 and again in 1986. Many wonderful artists and musicians in performance festivals in faux niteclub settings at the Franklin Furnace, including coatcheck girl Cindy Sherman, roving polaroid paparazza Paula Court and Linda Mary Montano in her orange year as the resident gypsy fortuneteller. One of the volunteers, a young guy from Madison, in part inspired by the Party Club, opened the Knitting Factory that winter and asked McMahon to book it, which wasn’t that good an idea for either of them but it was fun for a while. It was when McMahon connected Michael to Philip Johnston who connected him to Wayne Horvitz to book Thursday nights that the floodgates opened for the new jazz scene with John Zorn, Elliot Sharp et al who totally made the Knitting Factory happen in 1987. In Woodstock, Paul organized concerts and showed his art works in 1991-3 at the Wittenberg Center, a shamanic workshop center and seminary where he was Artist in Residence. In 1994 Paul opened an acoustic music venue in a shop, called the Dharmaware Cafe. The Woodstock shop sold ritual objects to students at KTD Buddhist monastery and other things like clothing from Asia. A diverse program of musical, video and spiritual presentations plus food was put on by McMahon with help from Marc Hayden Jargow.
- He also hosted a series of Poetry Parties in the late 90s in his living room salon with local youth. For some reason all of the teens and twenty-somethings in town suddenly considered themselves poets. There are six chapbooks of all of the participants, called ‘Of the Beet and Poe Tree’. He directs the Mothership, an everything center in his house in Woodstock, in operation since 2007 (a long story). It is a gallery, a B’n’B, music venue, classroom, and a site for spiritually oriented events, like memorials. It is a social sculpture in progress as McMahon has been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be some of the change he would like to see. The small population of Woodstock is heavily weighted to the creative and spiritual. McMahon’s aspiration is to amplify peace and love through the presentation and encouragement of creativity in self and others. When we make art we feed the spirits-Joseph “Beautiful Painted Arrow” Rael
Woodstock 50/50 August 2019
50th Anniversary Concert of Woodstock 1969
The only one of those held in Woodstock (so far)
According to an unofficial count there were 114 acts; 86 solo and 38 groups.
2019 was the fiftieth anniversary of an event in Bethel that has been this small town’s claim to fame ever since. In 1997 I realized that Woodstock was the most famous small town on Earth. I wondered what would be the appropriate form of a concert fifty years removed from its progenitors.
The greater society used to be vertically organized; a competitive hierarchy where those at the pinnacle broadcast to the masses. But ever since the advent of the Information Age society has been getting more and more horizontal. Now everyone can be their own artist, engineer, producer, publisher and so on. Anyone can make a music video with their phone, which could become an internet sensation and you could actually get rich and famous, sort of.
Michael Lang, may he rest in peace, was trying to make the greatest show on Earth in that older paradigm -booking the very top talent of the day. But that talent is so expensive nowadays the planned show eventually collapsed under the weight.
Fifty years after that watershed event what has been the effect? On the next generations of Woodstockers? I decided the thing to do would be to invite all Woodstock musicians who wanted to play and however many people and bands wanted to play I would simply divide up the 960 minutes by the number of acts. It ended up being five minutes for solo and ten for bands and was strictly enforced. I reached out to as many as I could. In two eight hour days over 100 acts played and it was a very sweet occasion. The shows were from 11-7 that Saturday and Sunday in mid-August. Both days rain was forecast during the afternoon but it held off each time right up until 7, when it let loose in torrents.
So I conceived of the project and was in negotiations with the town over the use of Andy Lee Field and the Volunteers Day tents when Neil Howard offered to host it in the Colony’s back yard. It was the first real use of the space. An embryonic form of th beer garden which is there today. They did a fabulous job and Jim from Kansas Friskel was the other emcee and collaborator. Songstress Peggy Atwood really helped too. The Colony built two beautiful stages; a big one and a small one. Solo and acoustic acts used the small stage and bands the big one. The use of two stages enabled a seamless transition from act to act, without ‘dead air’, to borrow a radio term.
I came away with the conviction that Woodstock a couple of generations after the sixties is a community awash in creativity with literally hundreds of very good musicians in a relatively small population.
I called the show 50/50 because it was 50 years after and because so many participants were not born then, so it was people who were over 50 and under 50.
1972-1975 Project Inc.
INDIAN SUMMER ARTISTS left to right: MATT MULLICAN, DAVID SALLE JAMES WELLING, PAUL MCMAHON and ROBERT C. MORGAN
Taken at Bob Morgan’s loft soon after he arrived in nyc. probably 1975; photo by Welling on McMahon’s Canon FTb.
“Indian Summer“ and the Emergence Of a Group Aesthetic at Project Inc.
Although he made a series of career moves that put him on a trajectory different from his CalArts friends, McMahon often found himself at the center of group activities-beginning in 1972 when he opened Project Inc.It was at Project Inc. between 1972-1975 that Conceptualism passed the baton to the new Post-Conceptual art…An important group exhibition…entitled Indian Summer featuring McMahon and his friends could be described as the first presentation in embryonic form of what would become the Pictures sensibility. Douglas Eklund THE PICTURES GENERATION 1974-1984 p 53 Yale University Press, Metropolitan Museum 2009
Party Club 2 1986- More coming soon
TV and Radio
DOGS ON PATROL
DOGS ON PATROL, a public access Woodstock Cable TV show 1994-96, was arguably the most ‘normal’ part of a tumultuous relationship forged in creativity between Paul McMahon and Magnolia Santibanez-Nava in 1994-95. Mostly improvisations in a schizophrenic variety show setting. With appearances by Bhagavan Das, Elda Stiletto, 3, Phil Void, Sham Morris, Norm Wennet, Greg Rogers and others -sorry if yr not there. Theme music by Jimi Woodstock.
Magnolia formed Bicyclettes Blanches with Mackenzie Parker and performs her gutsy punk rock under that name, often in Europe.
ALL WOODSTOCK MUSIC AS A FILL-IN HOST ON WIOF FM WOODSTOCK COMMUNITY POWERED RADIO
The idea is to represent the idea that Woodstock is an amazing luminous fountain of sacred sound generated in the heart of the real deal history of life on Earth. When BabaWawa asked Michael why he was always grabbing his crotch he whispered, “Ask the Music.”
Four 2 hour shows on WIOF Birds of a Feather radio 104.1 fm, filling in on Rachel Marco-Havens’ Same Boat show 9/11/23-10/2/23 Some stretches in here no doubt…
Here is an almost complete list of Woodstock Musicians whose work I played. Woodstock artists send me your music. Mp3s oK.
A Band, American Film Archives,Arms, Army of Love, B-52s, Bad Brains, The Band, Sandy Bell, Bhagavan Das, Big Sister, Wes Buckley,Burnell Pines, Charleston Wave, Daily Life, Karen Dalton, Reema Datta, Deep Chatham, Clayton Denwood, Robbie Dupree, Bob Dylan, Andre Fiala, Frankie and his Fingers, Gizmo, Tim Hardin, Peter Head, Jimi Hendrix, Mikhail Horowitz, Michael Hurley with ida, Addy Idol, Journey Blue Heaven, Sarah Kramer, Buzzy Lindhart, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Gilles Malkine, Naked , Graham Nash, Matthew O’Neill
Ras T Asheber Posse, Robin the Hammer, Rock’n’Roll Therapist, Alyssa Sage, Sasha Pearl, Shamsi Ruhe, Sharanam Sharon Gannon, Bart Thrall,3, Marian Tortorella, Truffles, Gayle Two Eagles, Venture Lift, Peter Walker, Norm Wennet, Judy Whitfield, Amanda Jo Williams