the Magic Year of 1965

So why was 1965 'magic'? Well how about Bob Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home?

I don't know about you, but back in the Sixties (and for me, still I guess), I loved seeing how other people lived, especially checking-out the books they read, the pictures on their walls - and this Dylan Album cover contained the kind of clues I loved to examine. In Daniel Kramer's cover photo you pick-up on clues like the British Blue cat on Dylan's lap, the ultra boho-chic of Sally Grossman (Albert's wife) looking right at us, appraisingly, Lotte Lenya sheet music, albums by the Impressions, Ravi Shankar, Lord Buckley, Eric von Schmidt (I first met Ric van Schmidt on the green pastures of Harvard University), Francoise Hardy, Robert Johnston, the Fall-Out Shelter sign - 

Don Pennebaker's iconic clip of Subterranean Homesick Blues? This was the prototype pop-video, made in 1967 - it was the opening sequence in Pennebaker's docu-film of Dylan's 1965 tour of UK - Ginsberg and Orlovsky feature...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM25wA5NE-Q

Brian Duffy's portrait of John Lennon?

Joseph Losey's ultra-Sixties Modesty Blaise?

David Hillman's art-direction for Nova magazine?

Ted Nelson's Hypertext?

Yoko Ono's Cut-Piece Performance Art?

Jean Luc-Godard's sci-fi movie Alphaville?

or Gordon Moore's Moore's Law? - predicting that microprocessor power would double every 18 months, yet stay at the same dollar-price.

or maybe John Berger's fabulous The Success and Failure of Picasso?

or Steve Reich's breakthrough Iterative It's Gonna Rain?

Or Tom Wolfe's Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby 'new journalism'?

or Warhol's Chelsea Girls?

or Dylan's totally definitive Like A Rolling Stone?

or Barbara Rubin, Barry Miles and Ginsberg's Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall? what a gas that was - 5000 hipsters there - suddenly us ravers, beats and geeks could see we weren't alone!

Barbara Rubin - the film-maker and kind of ultimate counter-culture catalyst- with her Beaulieu 16mm - she helped Miles and Ginsberg organise the Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965.

Or was it Eduardo Paolozzi's brilliant photo-silk-screens?

Or Frank Herbert's eco-sci-fi epic Dune?

Or Guy Peelaert's fabulous Jodelle?

Peter Watkins depressingly ultra-truthful War Game?

or the first Expert System?

Whatever - it was a magic year for the media-arts...