IN: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, an American country rock band, has existed in various forms since its founding in Long Beach, California in 1966. The group's membership has had at least a dozen changes over the years, including a period from 1976 to 1981 when the band performed and recorded as the Dirt Band. Constant members since the early times are singer-guitarist Jeff Hanna and drummer Jimmie Fadden. Multi-instrumentalist John McEuen was with the band from 1966 to 1986 and returned during 2001 departing once again in November 2017.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was founded around 1966 in Long Beach, California by singer-guitarist Jeff Hanna and singer-songwriter guitarist Bruce Kunkel who had performed as the New Coast Two and later the Illegitimate Jug Band. Trying, in the words of the band's website, to "figure out how not to have to work for a living," Hanna and Kunkel joined informal jam sessions at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Long Beach. There they met a few other musicians: guitarist/washtub bassist Ralph Barr, guitarist-clarinetist Les Thompson, harmonicist and jug player Jimmie Fadden, and guitarist-vocalist Jackson Browne. As Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the six men started as a jug band and adopted the burgeoning southern California folk rock musical style, playing in local clubs while wearing pinstripe suits and cowboy boots. Their first paying performance was at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California.  Browne was in the band for only a few months before he left to concentrate on a solo career as a singer-songwriter. He was replaced by John McEuen on banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and steel guitar. McEuen's older brother, William, was the group's manager, and he helped the band get signed with Liberty Records, which released the group's debut album, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band during 1967. The band's first single, "Buy for Me the Rain," was a Top 40 success, and the band gained exposure on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, as well as concerts with such disparate artists as Jack Benny and The Doors.  A second album, Ricochet, was released later during the year and was less successful than their first. Kunkel wanted the band to "go electric", and include more original material. Bruce left the group to form WordSalad and Of The People. He was replaced by multi-instrumentalist Chris Darrow.  By 1968, the band adopted electrical instruments anyway, and added drums. The first electric album, Rare Junk, was a commercial failure, as was their next, Alive.  The band continued to gain publicity, mainly as a novelty act, making an appearance in the 1968 film, For Singles Only, and a cameo appearance in the 1969 musical western film, Paint Your Wagon, performing "Hand Me Down That Can o' Beans". The band also played Carnegie Hall as an opening act for Bill Cosby and played in a jam session with Dizzy Gillespie.

Did they have any hits?

OUT: The band's first single, "Buy for Me the Rain," was a Top 40 success,


IN: Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen, July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history and culture. By the 1970s, Chicago had founded the first feminist art program in the United States. Chicago's work incorporates a variety of artistic skills, such as needlework, counterbalanced with labor-intensive skills such as welding and pyrotechnics. Chicago's most well known work is The Dinner Party, which is permanently installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

In 1970, Chicago decided to teach full-time at Fresno State College, hoping to teach women the skills needed to express the female perspective in their work. At Fresno, she planned a class that would consist only of women, and she decided to teach off campus to escape "the presence and hence, the expectations of men." She taught the first women's art class in the fall of 1970 at Fresno State College. It became the Feminist Art Program, a full 15-unit program, in the spring of 1971. This was the first feminist art program in the United States. Fifteen students studied under Chicago at Fresno State College: Dori Atlantis, Susan Boud, Gail Escola, Vanalyne Green, Suzanne Lacy, Cay Lang, Karen LeCocq, Jan Lester, Chris Rush, Judy Schaefer, Henrietta Sparkman, Faith Wilding, Shawnee Wollenman, Nancy Youdelman, and Cheryl Zurilgen. Together, as the Feminist Art Program, these women rented and refurbished an off-campus studio at 1275 Maple Avenue in downtown Fresno. Here they collaborated on art, held reading groups, and discussion groups about their life experiences which then influenced their art. All of the students and Chicago contributed $25 per month to rent the space and to pay for materials. Later, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro reestablished the Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts. After Chicago left for Cal Arts, the class at Fresno State College was continued by Rita Yokoi from 1971 to 1973, and then by Joyce Aiken in 1973, until her retirement in 1992.  Chicago is considered one of the "first-generation feminist artists," a group that also includes Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, and Rachel Rosenthal. They were part of the Feminist art movement in Europe and the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art.  Chicago became a teacher at the California Institute for the Arts, and was a leader for their Feminist Art Program. In 1972, the program created Womanhouse, alongside Miriam Schapiro, which was the first art exhibition space to display a female point of view in art. With Arlene Raven and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Chicago co-founded the Los Angeles Woman's Building in 1973. This art school and exhibition space was in a structure named after a pavilion at the 1893 World's Colombian Exhibition that featured art made by women from around the world. This housed the Feminist Studio Workshop, described by the founders as "an experimental program in female education in the arts. Our purpose is to develop a new concept of art, a new kind of artist and a new art community built from the lives, feelings, and needs of women." During this period, Chicago began creating spray-painted canvas, primarily abstract, with geometric forms on them. These works evolved, using the same medium, to become more centered around the meaning of the "feminine". Chicago was strongly influenced by Gerda Lerner, whose writings convinced her that women who continued to be unaware and ignorant of women's history would continue to struggle independently and collectively.

What did Chicago do in the 1970s?

OUT:
the Feminist Art Program,