“Get Back” To The Future: Arts Council Marks 50

Break out those bell bottom trousers, the tie-dye T‑shirts, the paisley, the madras, your anti-Vietnam War pins, the hoola hoops and all your recollected tunes by the Supremes, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Allman Brothers.

They’ll all fit in on Audubon Street this Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m., as the Arts Council of Greater New Haven marks 50 years of groovy grooving, and looks to the future.

That was message from Sam Goldenberg, Debbie Hesse, and Coleen Campbell, as the hoola-hoopin’ trio took a break Thursday from decorating the Yale University-donated empty store space across from the Arts Council building.

The party kicks off with Alice (roll the Jefferson Airplane & Grace Slick tape:

“One pill makes you large, and one pill makes you small …”) greeting you at the door, an hour after the culmination of Saturday’s noon to 5 p.m. Audubon Arts on the Edge festival.

It’s a 20th anniversary for that family-oriented event, which is free and open to the public.

The 50th birthday party is likely to attract a different and older crowd, though not necessarily 1960s vets only, but their children as well, said Debbie Hesse, as she sat on a cute version of some magic mushrooms.

The birthday party the council is throwing for itself is a ticketed fundraiser, with $35 the price of the time-travel party for Arts Council members, and $50 for others. Click here for tickets, or call 203 – 772-2788.

Tickets are also likely to be available at the door. Just ask Alice.

Hesse said her teenage children are interested in ​‘60s sounds, as are current stuff. The difference is that while we were thrilled to have as many as eight songs on an eight-track player, kids today are frustrated if they have only 2,000 sounds on their devices, Hesse added.

Actually there appeared to be about 2,000 vintage record albums on display, all from the collection of retired teacher and album collector Sam Goldenberg, who was the lead decorator

On a tour of the party-rooms-decoration-in-progress, Goldenberg was arranging albums on shelves showing the musical chronology of the great names of the era like the Beatles, the Supremes, and the Allman Brothers.

“When you look at them in this context, you see what happened,” he said, meaning how a group appeared, played to 1960s emblematic greatness as an ensemble and then ​“dissolved” into solo careers for individual performers, for example, like Diana Ross, who emerged from the Supremes.

Or Duane Allman, in his first solo album, Allman and Woman, with Cher, his then-new wife (pictured).

In addition to listening areas, and dancing out on the large stage on Audubon Street, there will be ​“groovy game rooms” where you can play something called Twister (anybody remember?).

Lead coordinator Campbell described it as a physical encounter game for kids — you spin the board, then, following instructions, you end up twisted in knots and pretty close proximity to the other players.

In another room will be an ancient device called a record player. In another area of the party space the vintage clothing boutique Fashionista is supplying appropriate vines and threads so you can get yourself vintage-photographed as a ​‘60s hipster, regardless of what you have become over the last 50, by comparison, staid years.

Oh, and the photograph will be taken by a genuine 1960s-era Polaroid camera.

Why a 1960s themed party? In addition to the Arts Council having been established in 1964, it was time of change and creativity, hallmarks of the Council’s aspirations, said Campbell.

As the Beatles’ incomparable ​“Hey Jude” and ​“Get Back” played away on Sam Goldenberg’s Jambox, Hesse, who described herself as a 1960s tail-ender (“The Monkees was my first album”), added: ​“We’re looking at old music played through new technology.”

She likened the party to something akin to the ​“slow art movement,” where ​“we take a moment to reflect before we [and the Arts Council] fold in all this new technology, and remain meaningful.”

No word yet on whether the party will provide space for you to bend yourself under the bar to the Afro-Caribbean strains of Chubby Checker’s ​“Limbo Rock.”