"Up Your Game" Benefit/Dedication/Musical Performances For Long Beach's "Flying Morrison" Mural On One Year Anniversary; LBREPORT.com Will Webcast Event LIVE

Mr. Coke installed the Flying Morrison mural in November 2013 (LBREPORT.com coverage here) as a tribute to the 70th birthday anniversary of Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the 1960's L.A. band The Doors.

2013 photo by Joe Mello

Sunday's event title -- "Up Your Game" -- stems from Ms. Gershuny's advice to Mr. Coke when they discussed the potential use of his photographs of The Doors from a 1967 concert he attended. Gershuny's recommendation to Mr. Coke to "up your game" motivated him to develop the five month project that culminated with installation of the Flying Morrison mural.

A dedication plaque will be placed on the wall below the Morrison mural honoring Ms. Gershuny, who lost her battle with cancer last December. A long-time Rose Park resident, she had a successful marketing and publicist career with major firms and managed the marketing for 4th Street's Retro Row and Art Theater. Sunday's event will feature musical performances both before and after the 3:45 p.m. dedication ceremony (event schedule below).

The event's Facebook page says:

[Event Facebook text] This second annual music and poetry celebration will benefit the International Peace Choir with grants as well as donations collected at the event. The choir is made up of children ages 6 to 16 years old and embraces a vision of worldwide peace. They will open the show at the mural site, the Park (D) Plaza, with a performance that will include two songs by The Doors...

The event is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. with a performance by the International Peace Choir.

LBREPORT.com will webcast the event LIVE -- hosted by Joe Mello and streamed on LBREPORT.com's front page (www.LBREPORT.com) via the technical facilities of WebCastLongBeach.com -- from LB's East Village on Sunday afternoon [webcast start time roughly 2:00 p.m.]

The all day music festival surrounding dedication of the plaque to Ms. Gershuny will include multiple Long Beach based artists including: Matt Cohn, The Brophy Dale Blues Band, Shy But Flyy Combo, Slushbox and Fathers and Suns.

Also scheduled to perform will be: Emmy-nominated poet, playwright and recording artist Michael C. Ford with singer Jessica Wilson and flutist Juan Cardenas; and the trio of guitarist, banjo and harmonica player Peter Fahey, blues and rock drummer, percussionist and composer Stephen Hodges and Long Beach's John Bazz (bass guitarist for The Blasters). The trio's set will begin with an opening by The Doors' publicist Chris Boyle.

It will be Chris Boyle's first public singing performance in over six years. Fahey, Hodges and Bazz all played on Boyle's 2006 CD "Driving Through One Life into Another".

Boyle's relationship with The Doors began with an interview in October 1967 as a high school student when the band played in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. After graduation, Boyle moved to California to attend Long Beach State to study journalism. Boyle again interviewed the band when they played the Long Beach Arena in February 1970. When Boyle told the band how difficult it was to arrange the interview, they offered him a job as an assistant publicist. He stayed with the band until Morrison died in 1971. In the Oliver Stone 1991 movie The Doors, Boyle played the cameo role of a New York City journalist doing an interview.

This Sunday's event is free, but donations are being accepted to benefit the Long Beach based International Peace Choir. Begun in 1987, the choir is comprised of youngsters who perform in a costume depicting the singer's ethnic, cultural or national origin. According to its website, throughout its existence, the choir has performed throughout the U.S and abroad to "as an artistic and cultural resource". The International Peace Choir will open the festivities at 2:00 p.m. with two songs from The Doors.

The 20 foot mural installed last year that overlooks the Park (D) Plaza "parklet" features a horizontal Jim Morrison of The Doors holding a microphone comes from one of the photographs Coke took in 1967. That year, as a young student photographer interested in documenting the 1960s counterculture, Coke attended the "Fantasy Fair and Magic Music Festival" in Northridge, California that included performances by The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Iron Butterfly.

Thirty years later, Coke rediscovered the pictures he took with a Nikon F camera in near perfect condition with their proof sheets stored at his parents' home. As he did last year, Coke will display his phoso across 4th Street at Fingerprints Music. The exhibit includes 19 archival art photographs first printed in the early 1990's and a large "Scream Sequence" montage of Morrison that Coke sequenced from his photographs.

"Up Your Game" Schedule (area 425 E. 4th St., Long Beach)

Park (D) Plaza