SG MAG APR 2018 MAIN1s

I’m used to hearing older Sha Na Na
fans say “That was my era” about the early rock n’ roll
years. I’ve understood in a limited way, but now that I’m
old enough to savor my own coming of mature age and
its historical setting, the ripening of post-World War Two
American confidence and our winning the Cold War sit
more solidly as defining elements than the overly
revered Woodstock festival or the classic movie Grease,
both of which I performed in. More than cultural landmarks
like those, the defining impression I have of “my
era” has turned out to be the freewheeling exuberance
of expression that I witnessed in New York City and Los
Angeles as the century ripened. There was never a lack
of remarkable creative characters in either of the towns
where I spent most of my time.
I had bought into the hippy sandals earthiness of the 60s
completely enough to find myself repulsed by the “me
decade” garishness that came prancing in with the disco
glitter of the 70s. Yet the 1970s turned out to be the
decade for television stardom and peak earnings for me
and my rock n’ roll group ShaNaNa. It was also when
the “misery index” worsened for my countrymen so as to
bring their rejecting Jimmy Carter’s presidency and
favoring Ronald Reagan’s claim that big government was
“the problem.” Then followed the “morning in America”
1980s with their economic growth and the disintegration
of Soviet Communism, and it was evident that “the
American century” could turn out to be, despite all the
sporadic heartbreak and disorder, actually a valid
descriptive phrase. Freewheeling ambition, excess, spiritual revivalism, and controversy were so common that
we hardly took notice, and the flamboyance in the art of a young Jack Armstrong (even in the entourage of a
celebrated Andy Warhol) could go un-noticed too. It caught my notice as a compelling embodiment of the
spirit of the unfolding age that is “my era” only here in the new century.
Seems to me, what we collect in art should reflect the frivolous side of ourselves along with the more
pensive. I find both, to my surprise, in Jack Armstrong’s work. His paintings’ stunning richness of hue, before
we knew computer graphics would be able to mimic it ever in our lifetime, typified our late-cold-war-era
brashness. His casually hiding his own name in plain sight, and hiding some little-understood names of other
things in plain site- - it’s a playful permissiveness that’s just bulls-eye on that brashness. And in my painting,
titled “Tulemagic,” I find a glimpse of it that requires a gaze, again and yet again. I enjoy how it always
provokes friends’ reactions, and for my own part, I’ve even recorded a song about it.
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