In the nineteen eighties I worked at City Lights press and bookstore. I'd get a few bucks from the till for refreshments on my break and, like just about everyone who worked there, would get a soft drink and perhaps a snack at a place across Broadway known by all as "The Dirty Bookstore." In addition to junk food and tobacco the place did a brisk trade in perv mags. By perv mags I don't mean your usual nudes and smutty content, I mean fetishistic specialty mags. It bordered Chinatown and did business amid all the garish strip joints: a ready clientele was apparently abundant.
It had all sorts of general erotic mags as well; I might have checking out a forbidden pleasure like Euro Guy magazine, when I noticed that Bill Cosby and an attractive young woman, not his wife, were also in the place. Bill had been playing the clubs of Broadway when he broke big in the early nineteen-sixties. In the course of his ever more successful career he maintained several public friendships with the stalwarts of North Beach, particularly with Enrico Banducci whose club Enrico's is an institution on Broadway. Word had it that the Cos had bailed-out the cafe when Enrico's ran into financial trouble. It is situated a few doors down from the Dirty Bookstore, and that is where I supposed he was heading.
When he went up to the counter to buy cigars or whatever it was, I slyly observed him doing his famous faces while focusing his attention and the girl's attention on a vitrine stocked with various "marital aids" as they used to be called---dildos, butt-plugs, vibrators, what have you.
The girl laughed nervously but didn't recoil from the rather embarrassing stuff on display. It was amusing to observe and of course the horn dog aspect was subsumed by the comedy.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Friday, February 25, 2011
George Harrison
In 1964 I made my Confirmation, a sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church. At that time it was quite an elaborate and radiant ceremony in which the Bishop asks you for a new name of your selection. Naturally it was expected to be the name of a saint.
The Beatles were the center of my world at the time. I had fallen in love after seeing a film of them on the Jack Parr Show in December of 1963. Parr was mildly ridiculing a novelty act in his sophisticated mind. Looking back, they seem to be a gift from God to youth coming so soon after the Kennedy assassination.
The next day after the Parr show my brother and my brother and I found the Capitol single of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" with its truly iconic black and white photograph of the Beatles in their odd tight suits with no collars. I remember wishing it was the song from the film clip, "She Loves You." That song we found within days, an earlier 45 rpm release on the swan label.
So began my Beatlemania. I remember seeing "Meet the Beatles" for the first time during lunch hour at school. I had to go in and ask the guy in a little records show if this was the same Beatles. I had studied the single sleeve photo and they looked too different to me in that stark chiaroscuro LP cover shot. They were archetypal for me from the beginning, and mildly obsessional.
So my choices were going to be two when I knelt before the Bishop at St William's in the newly built Kennedy-era white modernist church. Ringo would have been out of the question and Paul was already my middle name. John may have been my favorite but his name was just too dull for me. Years before he was identified as the spiritual Beatle, when the venerable older man with a glorious miter and gold-embroidered chasuble asked me the name I had chosen, I answered with confidence, "George."
A decade passed rather eventfully and I found myself at the Boston Garden for a concert by George Harrison. He had just released a fine but somewhat poppy and "New Age" follow-up album to his hugely successful debut solo collection and was touring the United States with a band and with Ravi Shankar as opening act.
I don't recall many of the particulars of the day. I do know that after being admitted early and that we greatly improved our seating over those printed on our ticket. We had hopped down onto floor level from our bleacher seats and gotten to within five rows of the stage just left of center. Miracle upon miracle, before long out came George and his band for a soundcheck. A few in the sparse crowd may called out to get his attention in a desultory manner and without success.
The cover art for his new album was a painting of a hillside of spiritual personae with the figure of Baba Ji, the undying Yogi Christ of Tibet floating above all. I had read the Autobiography of a Yogi the very widely-read book by Paramahansa Yogananda and so was familiar with Baba Ji. Although not a devotee myself I was inspired by its devotion. For some time before that, I had chanted and done yoga as well as familiarized myself with the art and literature of Hindusm. But I was at best an eclectic dilletante not a well-versed follower.
So when I called out to George standing not far away on stage with his electric guitar, "Jai Baba Ji!" I was unprepared for his response. He turned to me and bowed while giving me a pranam, the familiar gesture of extending hands folded in the manner of prayer. I was of course expected to return the gesture after calling the Maha-guru's name but I was too awe-struck to do other than to smile. Simultaneously the fellow directly behind me got the hot square on due to me. Perhaps due to my lack of reciprocation and the well-positioned photographer but it seemed that George made a wry micro-expression of disappointment as he turned back to his business.
Nevertheless I can still feel the exhilaration of his blessing after these thirty-five years, ten years after his death. Today was his birthday. I'm remembering him with a pranam as I close.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Namedropping Project Update
My long-held intention of working steadily on this project had to be side-lined for the moment. Since I just linked it to my other sites I'd thought I should add this note. But I will get the hang of this until I have written a bemused gadfly's guide to contemporary culture, an encyclopedia of observation, a subjective cross-section of my times.
Jeff Koons The Residents Bono William Vollman Cecilia Bartoli Kurt Vonnegutt Mikal Baryshnikov Richard Avedon John Lee Hooker Van Morrison Seamus Heaney William Burroughs Joe Perry Fritz Weaver Bob Dylan John Lydon James Laughlin David Gascoyne Trungpa Rinpoche Bob Marley Art Buchwald William Everson Dennis Hopper George Harrison Allen Ginsberg Robert Frank Wavy Gravy Joe Strummer Max Roach...
Coming Soon:
Jeff Koons The Residents Bono William Vollman Cecilia Bartoli Kurt Vonnegutt Mikal Baryshnikov Richard Avedon John Lee Hooker Van Morrison Seamus Heaney William Burroughs Joe Perry Fritz Weaver Bob Dylan John Lydon James Laughlin David Gascoyne Trungpa Rinpoche Bob Marley Art Buchwald William Everson Dennis Hopper George Harrison Allen Ginsberg Robert Frank Wavy Gravy Joe Strummer Max Roach...
...to name but a few
Friday, April 17, 2009
Richard Brautigan
By the time I relocated to California, I had read all of the available books by Richard Brautigan. Most of them included a list of all his books and pointedly included several that were even then quite scarce.
His style was most applicable to the 60s and the books suggested a new way of life with the peaceful quaint denizens of Watermelon Sugar. I was in my teenage years when I read his best known novels and poetry volumes.
His extreme self-consciousness was evident not only in the loving and fastidious descriptions of his life and his friends, but in the cover photos he selected for them. Most featured a posed photo of Brautigan dressed as a wild west hippie original, sometimes with a hippie lady friend alongside. His look was widely imitated soon afterward in the manner of his contemporary pop stars. It is so recognizably himself that even the briefest sketch can make even those with a cursory familiarity and hazy memory of him recall where they first encountered his look and his books.
Tall man with a soft hat made shapeless as a bucket, long blond hair, round wire-rim glasses and bushy mustache framing his mouth to his chin. Add a rumbled sportcoat, jeans and boots and filigree with some Haight Ashbury beads and you have the picture.
He had been a quite figure in the Haight during it's heyday. While living in a modest place on Geary avenue, he moved his affiliation from the dwindling Beat scene in North Beach toward the psychedelic precincts east of Golden Gate park. There his idealism and utopian thinking brought him comrades and a common cause with the Diggers. The Diggers operated a free store where all was donated and for the taking at no charge. They also fed as many of the youngsters who found themselves hungry and chilly on foggy gray streets with no money in their pockets after the lysergic acid wore away.
One of the most legendary of the Diggers series of free publications under the general rubric of the Communications Company, was a poetry pamphlet by Brautigan. Far beyond their usual mimeographed one-sheets on cheap stock, this book was a singular and elaborate production.
"Please Plant This Book" as it was titled consisted of a small glossy folio-style book whose every page contained a poem printed on an actual seed packet containing seeds of the plant in each poem's title.
I actually owned a copy myself but it was still back with my belongings in Massachusetts when in 1979 I got the opportunity to meet this highly elusive figure. He was known to give public reading only very rarely, but not only was he scheduled to read at the San Francisco International Poetry Festival but was advertised to be participating in appearances at both Cody's books in Berkeley and at City Lights in San Francisco.
(to be continued soon)
His style was most applicable to the 60s and the books suggested a new way of life with the peaceful quaint denizens of Watermelon Sugar. I was in my teenage years when I read his best known novels and poetry volumes.
His extreme self-consciousness was evident not only in the loving and fastidious descriptions of his life and his friends, but in the cover photos he selected for them. Most featured a posed photo of Brautigan dressed as a wild west hippie original, sometimes with a hippie lady friend alongside. His look was widely imitated soon afterward in the manner of his contemporary pop stars. It is so recognizably himself that even the briefest sketch can make even those with a cursory familiarity and hazy memory of him recall where they first encountered his look and his books.
Tall man with a soft hat made shapeless as a bucket, long blond hair, round wire-rim glasses and bushy mustache framing his mouth to his chin. Add a rumbled sportcoat, jeans and boots and filigree with some Haight Ashbury beads and you have the picture.
He had been a quite figure in the Haight during it's heyday. While living in a modest place on Geary avenue, he moved his affiliation from the dwindling Beat scene in North Beach toward the psychedelic precincts east of Golden Gate park. There his idealism and utopian thinking brought him comrades and a common cause with the Diggers. The Diggers operated a free store where all was donated and for the taking at no charge. They also fed as many of the youngsters who found themselves hungry and chilly on foggy gray streets with no money in their pockets after the lysergic acid wore away.
One of the most legendary of the Diggers series of free publications under the general rubric of the Communications Company, was a poetry pamphlet by Brautigan. Far beyond their usual mimeographed one-sheets on cheap stock, this book was a singular and elaborate production.
"Please Plant This Book" as it was titled consisted of a small glossy folio-style book whose every page contained a poem printed on an actual seed packet containing seeds of the plant in each poem's title.
I actually owned a copy myself but it was still back with my belongings in Massachusetts when in 1979 I got the opportunity to meet this highly elusive figure. He was known to give public reading only very rarely, but not only was he scheduled to read at the San Francisco International Poetry Festival but was advertised to be participating in appearances at both Cody's books in Berkeley and at City Lights in San Francisco.
(to be continued soon)
Friday, April 10, 2009
Marty Balin
Surrealistic Pillow was a favorite album of mine at age 15. I listened to a hundred times and I still play it on occasion. The Jefferson Airplane are now somewhat sadly consigned to anachronism and nostalgia. They are dismissed by many who never outgrew their anti-hippie prejudice adopted soon after they lost their own shaggy hair and flares. It is even worse for the noble and beloved Donovan, who first mentioned the Airplane in a song called "The Fat Angel" on his seminal psychedelic rock album "Sunshine Superman."
What I've heard of them on radio recently consists of a only few well-known songs when their entire catalog is rich with songs that seem to never get played. It must be said though that the Airplane are partially to blame for the lack of abundant serious reconsideration of them. They were too eager to form frothy splinter outfits like Jefferson Starship. Only to have the name wind up in the hands of plasticized show-biz types playing the songs of the 70s in Reno--"We built this city...". Indeed. They milked the franchise to the extent that a re-union was rendered superfluous even if Jorma could be enticed back.
But back in the day, they were the formidable edge of a world-wide cultural tectonic shift. They always had a smart, creative and provocative sound. If you still doubt it, watch the short film of them by Jean-Luc Godard (available on YouTube). They are playing " The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil" on the rooftop of the Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Tough-looking cops show up to put an end to the possibility of an encore. It's very exciting and it's well over a year before the Beatles stage-managed the same stunt. One can be certain the Beatles knew of Godard's film, as well.
I saw the original Airplane play at Providence College in 1970. I remember it being fabulous and thrilling, but not much else. The opening set by John Hammond still has an image in my mind. but, other than that I really enjoyed myself, only Grace Slick's unbuttoned shirt is still vivid from the Airplane's set. Uncharacteristic of me really, I might have over-fed my head.
And I was still young and romantic enough in the mid 70s to fall for the song "Miracles." I went to see the Jefferson Starship featuring Grace, Paul Kantner, and Marty Balin, again in Providence but this time at a cavernous civic center. It was not a complete loss yet, but they were in the process of losing the thread.
Marty Balin was the founder of the Airplane and of the San Francisco nightclub The Matrix. The club was in North Beach, as I recall reading, and was one of the very first venues for psychedelic rock. The Matrix pioneered the use of arabesque, day-glow, and otherwise trippy posters to advertise shows as well. It was the third-eye chakra of the electric zeitgeist, or something.
In every respect Balin was not only a gifted singer and song-writer but he was among the very few true visionaries who led the way into the international psychedelic cultural movement via the look, the rap, and, most crucially, the "San Francisco sound." They loosened the moorings on the rec-rooms and dens of homes across America with LPs, artwork and clothes and accessories of a massive collective inward journey and outward celebration. "Saturday afternoon, Acid incense and balloons..."
By the mid-eighties, I had been living in and around San Francisco myself for five years. I recall seeing Paul Kantner several times sitting nearby in the small Old Waldorf club in downtown. I commended him in my mind for turning out to see some of the new wave, post-punk, and ska bands that I was digging too. There was yet another false dichotomy fanned by the media concerning a generational disaffiliation taking place at the time. The punks certainly made a show of hating the hippies who were in some cases their parents. I bought into that a bit because, after all, it really represents kind of a bohemian house-cleaning or renewal.
Similarly, the print media had also gotten mileage in the 60s by announcing the the hippies rejected the beatniks. Yes, and the existentialists rejected the surrealists. It is really just a way for successive waves of artists and others to get attention and to tell the oldsters that they can't make the new scene.
Besides all that, a band called SVT with Airplane bassist Jack Casady opened for new wave juggernaut Blondie at a show I attended in Oakland in 1979. And that same year I saw the phenomenal Jorma Kaukonen play outdoors in front of the SF city hall a few weeks after seeing the Ramones play in the same spot. There was no contradiction in my mind. Good music was good music. I'm glad I managed to hang onto all the records that I did, instead of periodic purges to fit in with some contrived notion of what hip is. Hot Tuna, amen.
In 1984 I began to work at City Lights. I had never been overly star-struck and I was by then philosophically quite cool about the proximity of the famous. At the bookstore the reigning attitude was an even more blase. It was considered better form to ignore a star's presence in the store if possible. You might even raise conspiratorial eyebrows with one when someone else approached them.
Marty was a regular customer at the store. He may have lived within walking distance. He sustained an abiding interest in Surrealism, lingering at a narrow Surrealism bookshelf just across from the front counter and purchasing the new titles quite often. I would ring him up but other than that had never indicated that I recognized, him let alone that I was an old admirer. A taciturn manner, almost a loner way about him, made it easy to be quiet oneself.
He was in one afternoon when a even better-known face entered with a small entourage. It was the type of celebrity I definitely fade out on. But even though I did not watch the most popular show on television at the time, I recognized the actor who played the notorious beer-loving character "Norm."
So in comes George Wendt, assistants, and handlers, looking like I'm supposed to greet him like they do when he walks in to the ersatz bar on TV. I didn't. He was one of the many tourists who would come into City Lights but who were obviously not, shall we say, book-lovers. He walked around a little and looked at the place but not the books.
Thankfully no one accosted him and they all piled out again. But then they stopped on the sidewalk to have a little conference. Next, one of the assistants was delegated to return and approach Marty. I could here the pitch, "George would like to meet you and wonders if that would be..."
Marty says, "Sure."
The assistant goes out and retrieves the big shot. Wendt comes back in and Marty comes to the front to meet him. The TV star mumbles a spiel about how great it is to meet him. He was a big fan of the Jefferson Airplane, etc.
"That's great. It's nice to meet you," says Marty in his cool way.
The star and the entourage turned around and left, perhaps for a drink next door at Vesuvio's.
A customer and I wait a minute for Marty to disappear again into the back of the store, then start laughing.
"That was strange. Marty probably didn't even know who he was," I remarked.
From the back of the store, "I knew who he was."
Marty, I thought you were cooler before you told me.
postscript.
Fast forward 20 years and it was the Summer of Love 40th anniversary concert in Golden Gate park. Of course everyone who knows, knows that 1966 was the real summer of love. By the summer of 1967 the Haight Ashbury scene was no longer an inside tip-- the song "If You Go to San Francisco" was on the top ten worldwide. It was a second, more public and populous summer of love in '67. Nevertheless, it's like Plymouth rock, that's where the marker was set in contemporary and subsequent history.
So the reunion was in 2007. I went, arriving sometime after a hundred thousand others had. But using my extensive knowledge of the Polo field gleaned from many a recent Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. I found a perch, literally, a horizontal low branch to sit on. I lit a fist full of incense sticks and attached them to the branch with tin foil. Then I smoked some special herbs and got into the spirit of it. There was a big screen blowing-up the events on-stage, slightly creaky as they may have been. Wavy Gravy married a couple on stage. And various dinosaurs of acid rock assembled what was left of bands with legendary names.
The geezers and the youngsters were gathered there as far as the eye could see. I realized a childhood fantasy to be in a be-in at Golden Gate park while the Jefferson Airplane (of sorts) performed "Volunteers." It was fun in a white-haired sort of way--I mean the band as well. Marty can still sing and Kantner can still strum a mean hook and yowl.
I read in the rather obviously obsolete SF Chronicle recently, that Kantner now hangs out at the Trieste Cafe in North Beach a lot these days, holding open discourse and planning his next blow against the empire.
What I've heard of them on radio recently consists of a only few well-known songs when their entire catalog is rich with songs that seem to never get played. It must be said though that the Airplane are partially to blame for the lack of abundant serious reconsideration of them. They were too eager to form frothy splinter outfits like Jefferson Starship. Only to have the name wind up in the hands of plasticized show-biz types playing the songs of the 70s in Reno--"We built this city...". Indeed. They milked the franchise to the extent that a re-union was rendered superfluous even if Jorma could be enticed back.
But back in the day, they were the formidable edge of a world-wide cultural tectonic shift. They always had a smart, creative and provocative sound. If you still doubt it, watch the short film of them by Jean-Luc Godard (available on YouTube). They are playing " The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil" on the rooftop of the Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Tough-looking cops show up to put an end to the possibility of an encore. It's very exciting and it's well over a year before the Beatles stage-managed the same stunt. One can be certain the Beatles knew of Godard's film, as well.
I saw the original Airplane play at Providence College in 1970. I remember it being fabulous and thrilling, but not much else. The opening set by John Hammond still has an image in my mind. but, other than that I really enjoyed myself, only Grace Slick's unbuttoned shirt is still vivid from the Airplane's set. Uncharacteristic of me really, I might have over-fed my head.
And I was still young and romantic enough in the mid 70s to fall for the song "Miracles." I went to see the Jefferson Starship featuring Grace, Paul Kantner, and Marty Balin, again in Providence but this time at a cavernous civic center. It was not a complete loss yet, but they were in the process of losing the thread.
Marty Balin was the founder of the Airplane and of the San Francisco nightclub The Matrix. The club was in North Beach, as I recall reading, and was one of the very first venues for psychedelic rock. The Matrix pioneered the use of arabesque, day-glow, and otherwise trippy posters to advertise shows as well. It was the third-eye chakra of the electric zeitgeist, or something.
In every respect Balin was not only a gifted singer and song-writer but he was among the very few true visionaries who led the way into the international psychedelic cultural movement via the look, the rap, and, most crucially, the "San Francisco sound." They loosened the moorings on the rec-rooms and dens of homes across America with LPs, artwork and clothes and accessories of a massive collective inward journey and outward celebration. "Saturday afternoon, Acid incense and balloons..."
By the mid-eighties, I had been living in and around San Francisco myself for five years. I recall seeing Paul Kantner several times sitting nearby in the small Old Waldorf club in downtown. I commended him in my mind for turning out to see some of the new wave, post-punk, and ska bands that I was digging too. There was yet another false dichotomy fanned by the media concerning a generational disaffiliation taking place at the time. The punks certainly made a show of hating the hippies who were in some cases their parents. I bought into that a bit because, after all, it really represents kind of a bohemian house-cleaning or renewal.
Similarly, the print media had also gotten mileage in the 60s by announcing the the hippies rejected the beatniks. Yes, and the existentialists rejected the surrealists. It is really just a way for successive waves of artists and others to get attention and to tell the oldsters that they can't make the new scene.
Besides all that, a band called SVT with Airplane bassist Jack Casady opened for new wave juggernaut Blondie at a show I attended in Oakland in 1979. And that same year I saw the phenomenal Jorma Kaukonen play outdoors in front of the SF city hall a few weeks after seeing the Ramones play in the same spot. There was no contradiction in my mind. Good music was good music. I'm glad I managed to hang onto all the records that I did, instead of periodic purges to fit in with some contrived notion of what hip is. Hot Tuna, amen.
In 1984 I began to work at City Lights. I had never been overly star-struck and I was by then philosophically quite cool about the proximity of the famous. At the bookstore the reigning attitude was an even more blase. It was considered better form to ignore a star's presence in the store if possible. You might even raise conspiratorial eyebrows with one when someone else approached them.
Marty was a regular customer at the store. He may have lived within walking distance. He sustained an abiding interest in Surrealism, lingering at a narrow Surrealism bookshelf just across from the front counter and purchasing the new titles quite often. I would ring him up but other than that had never indicated that I recognized, him let alone that I was an old admirer. A taciturn manner, almost a loner way about him, made it easy to be quiet oneself.
He was in one afternoon when a even better-known face entered with a small entourage. It was the type of celebrity I definitely fade out on. But even though I did not watch the most popular show on television at the time, I recognized the actor who played the notorious beer-loving character "Norm."
So in comes George Wendt, assistants, and handlers, looking like I'm supposed to greet him like they do when he walks in to the ersatz bar on TV. I didn't. He was one of the many tourists who would come into City Lights but who were obviously not, shall we say, book-lovers. He walked around a little and looked at the place but not the books.
Thankfully no one accosted him and they all piled out again. But then they stopped on the sidewalk to have a little conference. Next, one of the assistants was delegated to return and approach Marty. I could here the pitch, "George would like to meet you and wonders if that would be..."
Marty says, "Sure."
The assistant goes out and retrieves the big shot. Wendt comes back in and Marty comes to the front to meet him. The TV star mumbles a spiel about how great it is to meet him. He was a big fan of the Jefferson Airplane, etc.
"That's great. It's nice to meet you," says Marty in his cool way.
The star and the entourage turned around and left, perhaps for a drink next door at Vesuvio's.
A customer and I wait a minute for Marty to disappear again into the back of the store, then start laughing.
"That was strange. Marty probably didn't even know who he was," I remarked.
From the back of the store, "I knew who he was."
Marty, I thought you were cooler before you told me.
postscript.
Fast forward 20 years and it was the Summer of Love 40th anniversary concert in Golden Gate park. Of course everyone who knows, knows that 1966 was the real summer of love. By the summer of 1967 the Haight Ashbury scene was no longer an inside tip-- the song "If You Go to San Francisco" was on the top ten worldwide. It was a second, more public and populous summer of love in '67. Nevertheless, it's like Plymouth rock, that's where the marker was set in contemporary and subsequent history.
So the reunion was in 2007. I went, arriving sometime after a hundred thousand others had. But using my extensive knowledge of the Polo field gleaned from many a recent Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. I found a perch, literally, a horizontal low branch to sit on. I lit a fist full of incense sticks and attached them to the branch with tin foil. Then I smoked some special herbs and got into the spirit of it. There was a big screen blowing-up the events on-stage, slightly creaky as they may have been. Wavy Gravy married a couple on stage. And various dinosaurs of acid rock assembled what was left of bands with legendary names.
The geezers and the youngsters were gathered there as far as the eye could see. I realized a childhood fantasy to be in a be-in at Golden Gate park while the Jefferson Airplane (of sorts) performed "Volunteers." It was fun in a white-haired sort of way--I mean the band as well. Marty can still sing and Kantner can still strum a mean hook and yowl.
I read in the rather obviously obsolete SF Chronicle recently, that Kantner now hangs out at the Trieste Cafe in North Beach a lot these days, holding open discourse and planning his next blow against the empire.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Baba Ram Das
It was 1972. My house-mate Gerry and her layabout declasse patrician boyfriend Ned Dibble and I were driving back to school at UMass Amherst. They started out in Fairhaven and had collected me in my hometown Fall River. We were bound for our rented house on Route 9 in Belchertown.
Traveling on the Massachusetts turnpike, we decided to pull into the rest stop and hit the Howard Johnson's. On our way out of the place we approached our car and took notice of Volkswagon bus parked next to us along the sidewalk by the front door. It had been gotten-up very attractively with yogic emblems, meditation cushions, Indian fabrics, and a guru's photo on the dashboard.
Just as we were admiring it the driver came up.
"Richard Alpert," I said. I had instantly recognized a face then ubiquitous in the contemporary world of natural foods stores, yoga magazines, New Age events, and the whole boatload of trendy spiritual materialism. But I had used his obsolete name.
"Or Baba Ram Das, I should say," I added.
"Yes, either way is fine." He responded in a gentle voice.
Unlike today's headlong rush toward the next event horizon and concomitant jumpy reaction time, people in those days had a great way of just smiling and quietly feeling it a while. It was like letting the rush wash over you a second before going on to the next thing. It's kind of like an anachronistic hippie thing that drives coffee-achievers crazy. And this we did for a moment.
"You want to smoke some pot?" little, enthusiastic, and quite cute Gerry interjected just then.
As bearer of the stash in question, I took the responsibility of clarifying while he deliberated.
"It's hash, actually." I was actually a little concerned that she had asked because I'd read his books. "Be Here Now" was a counter-culture bible, and I had assumed from it that for him meditation had replaced the psychedelic experience.
"Sure, why not?" he answered. He suggested we move to some picnic tables which were in a fairly deserted area nearby. It was in the middle of the wide open parking lot and under flood lights, which made it a riskier spot than we ordinarily would have chosen. But he was self-possessed and confident about it and we were not about to miss this opportunity.
I asked him if his spiritual philosophy wasn't opposed to pot-smoking. I told him about some devotees of a Kundalini yoga ashram I took a course with in the Education department at school. I rode with them one night to see the Gandharva string choir at Mt. Holyoke college in South Hadley. When I said I did the yoga in the morning and smoked dope at night they became more than judgmental. It's clogging up your chakras they warned me. I later attended a lecture by their fearless leader Yogi. He said, "What does this mean to get stoned? If you turn yourself into stone you must wait again until you are dust then go through the entire process of evolution until you are human again." It sounded kind of like fun.
Ram Das explained that his spiritual philosophy consisted of not regarding himself as either a pot-smoker or as a person who does not smoke pot, to make his determinations anew as new situations arise. Coming from the guy who teamed-up with Dr Timothy Leary at Harvard University to begin the psychedelic revolution in earnest, this revised wisdom sounded sage and serviceable.
We sat on top of a picnic table and I filled a stoneware bowl with some feisty Afghani hashish. I set it afire and we passed it around-- and around. I made it a memorable chalice-full to give the experience some duration. It was such a joy. We became warm and intimate friends in minutes.
Minutes was all it took for our abandonment of caution to bear the fruit of fear. We found ourselves in a prolonged moment of surveillance as a Massachusetts state police car pulled off the turnpike. Following the roadway, they quite noticeably slowed down while driving toward us, then turned right by us. While we went immobile with dread, Ram Das showed none.
He calmly laid the pipe down on the table next to him. Whether they had seen it we knew not. It was rendered out of sight to the roadway but would be a bother if they exited their vehicle, as they like to put it, with those Doberman eyes fixed on us. They wouldn't need to search us--it was like a cop's dream come true. It's what they always say happened anyway--"Your Honor, the controlled substance was in plain sight."
His saintly peacefulness inspired us to be peaceful as well and our police karma was good. They drove on by without troubling these peaceful citizens of Massachusetts, all were natives even. (Ram Das was from Newton, I think, and Ned was from Leary's hometown of Longmeadow.)
Delivered, we sat and enjoyed each other's company for at least an hour. I remember him saying apropo of Richard Nixon, that no man is free of karma.
Then we boarded our respective motor vehicles and drove West. As I recall, he drove rather slowly and we soon lost him from sight.
I should note that Massachusetts state policemen are a highly formidable breed of cop. They are not like some California Highway patrolmen. They rule, and they know it, like ubermensch in high pointy hats and polished boots. All hip kids and most other people knew you did not want to get on the bad side of one. Had our fate been a different one however, we would at least have had glory with our notoriety--busted for smoking hash with Baba Ram Das at a HoJo's on the Mass 'pike!
Within a year or so after our chance encounter, Ram Das came to speak at a free campus event at UMass. I brought with me my copy of "Be Here Now" and I went over to see him milling at the lectern before it began. "Hi, remember me from the Mass 'pike last Summer?"
He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. In my book he wrote,
"On the road, we meet again and again until..."
I returned to my seat. Seated behind me was Judy Roberts, a lovely red-haired girl who had been a year ahead of me in high school. She was one of most hip girls in town-- rode a bike when nobody did. I had a crush on her but never knew her until meeting again in Amherst. The crush was over pretty much over, even with her nude-modeling for my advanced drawing class. But we were friends now and I patronized her little natural food cafe.
She leaned over next to my ear and said, "I saw you get kissed." It was quite an honor.
Looking back in all humility, I may have in fact been the charm that made him accept our invite. I later learned from his writings that he was queer. He wrote that his father called him, "Baba Rammed Ass." I was the unattached one in the trio he had met, and, blushingly but to create a complete picture, I'll admit I was pretty cute in those days too.
Traveling on the Massachusetts turnpike, we decided to pull into the rest stop and hit the Howard Johnson's. On our way out of the place we approached our car and took notice of Volkswagon bus parked next to us along the sidewalk by the front door. It had been gotten-up very attractively with yogic emblems, meditation cushions, Indian fabrics, and a guru's photo on the dashboard.
Just as we were admiring it the driver came up.
"Richard Alpert," I said. I had instantly recognized a face then ubiquitous in the contemporary world of natural foods stores, yoga magazines, New Age events, and the whole boatload of trendy spiritual materialism. But I had used his obsolete name.
"Or Baba Ram Das, I should say," I added.
"Yes, either way is fine." He responded in a gentle voice.
Unlike today's headlong rush toward the next event horizon and concomitant jumpy reaction time, people in those days had a great way of just smiling and quietly feeling it a while. It was like letting the rush wash over you a second before going on to the next thing. It's kind of like an anachronistic hippie thing that drives coffee-achievers crazy. And this we did for a moment.
"You want to smoke some pot?" little, enthusiastic, and quite cute Gerry interjected just then.
As bearer of the stash in question, I took the responsibility of clarifying while he deliberated.
"It's hash, actually." I was actually a little concerned that she had asked because I'd read his books. "Be Here Now" was a counter-culture bible, and I had assumed from it that for him meditation had replaced the psychedelic experience.
"Sure, why not?" he answered. He suggested we move to some picnic tables which were in a fairly deserted area nearby. It was in the middle of the wide open parking lot and under flood lights, which made it a riskier spot than we ordinarily would have chosen. But he was self-possessed and confident about it and we were not about to miss this opportunity.
I asked him if his spiritual philosophy wasn't opposed to pot-smoking. I told him about some devotees of a Kundalini yoga ashram I took a course with in the Education department at school. I rode with them one night to see the Gandharva string choir at Mt. Holyoke college in South Hadley. When I said I did the yoga in the morning and smoked dope at night they became more than judgmental. It's clogging up your chakras they warned me. I later attended a lecture by their fearless leader Yogi. He said, "What does this mean to get stoned? If you turn yourself into stone you must wait again until you are dust then go through the entire process of evolution until you are human again." It sounded kind of like fun.
Ram Das explained that his spiritual philosophy consisted of not regarding himself as either a pot-smoker or as a person who does not smoke pot, to make his determinations anew as new situations arise. Coming from the guy who teamed-up with Dr Timothy Leary at Harvard University to begin the psychedelic revolution in earnest, this revised wisdom sounded sage and serviceable.
We sat on top of a picnic table and I filled a stoneware bowl with some feisty Afghani hashish. I set it afire and we passed it around-- and around. I made it a memorable chalice-full to give the experience some duration. It was such a joy. We became warm and intimate friends in minutes.
Minutes was all it took for our abandonment of caution to bear the fruit of fear. We found ourselves in a prolonged moment of surveillance as a Massachusetts state police car pulled off the turnpike. Following the roadway, they quite noticeably slowed down while driving toward us, then turned right by us. While we went immobile with dread, Ram Das showed none.
He calmly laid the pipe down on the table next to him. Whether they had seen it we knew not. It was rendered out of sight to the roadway but would be a bother if they exited their vehicle, as they like to put it, with those Doberman eyes fixed on us. They wouldn't need to search us--it was like a cop's dream come true. It's what they always say happened anyway--"Your Honor, the controlled substance was in plain sight."
His saintly peacefulness inspired us to be peaceful as well and our police karma was good. They drove on by without troubling these peaceful citizens of Massachusetts, all were natives even. (Ram Das was from Newton, I think, and Ned was from Leary's hometown of Longmeadow.)
Delivered, we sat and enjoyed each other's company for at least an hour. I remember him saying apropo of Richard Nixon, that no man is free of karma.
Then we boarded our respective motor vehicles and drove West. As I recall, he drove rather slowly and we soon lost him from sight.
I should note that Massachusetts state policemen are a highly formidable breed of cop. They are not like some California Highway patrolmen. They rule, and they know it, like ubermensch in high pointy hats and polished boots. All hip kids and most other people knew you did not want to get on the bad side of one. Had our fate been a different one however, we would at least have had glory with our notoriety--busted for smoking hash with Baba Ram Das at a HoJo's on the Mass 'pike!
Within a year or so after our chance encounter, Ram Das came to speak at a free campus event at UMass. I brought with me my copy of "Be Here Now" and I went over to see him milling at the lectern before it began. "Hi, remember me from the Mass 'pike last Summer?"
He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. In my book he wrote,
"On the road, we meet again and again until..."
I returned to my seat. Seated behind me was Judy Roberts, a lovely red-haired girl who had been a year ahead of me in high school. She was one of most hip girls in town-- rode a bike when nobody did. I had a crush on her but never knew her until meeting again in Amherst. The crush was over pretty much over, even with her nude-modeling for my advanced drawing class. But we were friends now and I patronized her little natural food cafe.
She leaned over next to my ear and said, "I saw you get kissed." It was quite an honor.
Looking back in all humility, I may have in fact been the charm that made him accept our invite. I later learned from his writings that he was queer. He wrote that his father called him, "Baba Rammed Ass." I was the unattached one in the trio he had met, and, blushingly but to create a complete picture, I'll admit I was pretty cute in those days too.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Jeff Buckley
I first heard and met Jeff Buckley in 1995. He and his band played outdoors for free on Sproul plaza at UC Berkeley one Spring day at noon.
Since then, I have come to love him and his music quite a lot. Yet not only his tragic accidental death, but my regrets over missed opportunities with him, weigh on the joy he brings. Though I have cherished a number of other great musicians who died along the road before and since, none inspire so deep a sense of loss.
He and I were having a friendly banter after his set. At one point he asked where I had gone because he wanted to argue some more. "Where's that old guy?"
I was only 43. Although I was wearing a tie and a tweed sport coat, and hounds-tooth pants with cuffs. I was going onto San Francisco to mix business and pleasure that day.
Jeff had gotten a little attitude when I said I had also seen his father play outdoors. It was on my sixteenth birthday with a date at an afternoon concert at the Newport Folk Festival.
He said "Lucky you," and signed the booklet for Live at Sine CD, "From the Live One, Jeff Buckley." That signature became shockingly ironic only a few years later.
He was somewhat high-strung, maybe a little petulant, but incredibly warm at the same time, and he was beautiful--just like his voice. He played the previous night and here he was up early for a noon-time show. Who could fault him if he found it annoying that someone brought up Tim Buckley in his moment of triumph. After all, he had himself never seen his father perform.
I told him that I thought his voice was even more beautiful than Tim's. This from me was extremely high praise. I did blunder into over-praising Tim's songs. I asked if Romanticism was it now, and no more.
I certainly had hold of the wrong end of the stick that day. I also tried to say the band should play harder. I didn't realize that this had been their "unplugged" outdoor set.
"You gotta kick out the jams a little," I boldly went on.
"You don't know what you're talkin' about! We even play "Kick out the Jams" every night! You gotta come see the show!
Just then a young female admirer broke in for her autograph and said,
"I think that you are great no matter what he says!" She indicated me with an accusing look.
"What?!" I said," I just told him that his voice was more beautiful than Tim Buckey's! And honest criticism is better than fatuous praise."
"Yeah! Ya hear that, all you fatuous people!" Jeff said to his assembled mob of fans in a slightly demagogic fashion.
My big friend Tim who worked for Jeff's label was around--wisely keeping clear. Another friend had in fact slipped me the booklet to get Jeff's signature. He said he'd give me the CD later.
When I saw him later, I said that as usual I had put my foot in it. He said, "You really got his attention, though."
Later that same day, I was walking in North Beach, the old Italian section of San Francisco made notorious by the Beat generation, and I noticed Jeff's bassist Mick Grondahl walking past me on his own. We stopped and talked. I told him that I had irritated Jeff. He said forget about it. Chatting away I mentioned PJ Harvey had experienced a nervous breakdown after her first record. He replied, "We've all had nervous breakdowns, Jeff especially."
We were well met and he insisted I come to their show at the Great American Music Hall that night. I felt odd about taking Jeff up earlier when he insisted that I come to the show, but this was clearly Fate working at this point.
Some time afterward, I bumped into Mick again at City Lights Bookstore. We hung out there discussing Paul Bowles, kif tales, and the trance music of the Sufi-like groups of Berber musicians in Morocco. Mick was tall, 20s, longish curly hair, bright and eager to learn more. It helped matters that I was a Bowles scholar. I urged him to try Bowles' translation of Mohamed Mrabet's kif tales in M'Hashish. He was buying Bowles' little book A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard. He said maybe he would get it another time. So, after he left, I got the book to give to him at the show.
Then we split and I made my way to the club that night. Mick left me an all-access pass at the ticket window and I saw him again back stage. We smoked some herbs and he was knocked-out that I brought him the book. Then he wanted me to go over and talk to Jeff but I was too stoned and shy at that moment. Jeff was about to play and I didn't want to make us both nervous. Especially with my track record for faux pas with him earlier in the day. He noticed me there though. I tried to lean back into the margins of the back stage scene before I went back out to the big dark room full of people to more-or-less suffer through the opening band.
After a break there followed Jeff and the band's great full-blown show, so rich in beauty, emotion, and kicking out the jams. I have thought of it often over the years. Weary coming in, I mainly sat and listened at a table on the sidelines. I could only see Jeff's face from there, that angelic face emitting that angelic voice. But I did wade out onto the main floor of this former Wild West bordello for the encore, try to kick them out a little myself. What a memory it remains, to have witnessed Jeff's genius and that powerful and intuitive band in performance twice in one day, an experience never to be repeated.
At the end, I was too tired and too far from home to go to the after-party. Looking back I should have been willing to wait for BART to resume service in the morning before I decided not to stay for it. It might have been a chance to say that I was mistaken and to make friends with him. But, of course, regrets make no sense.
Otherwise a another regret I suppose I'd have, was that in 1994 a friend told me that Tim Buckley's son was playing at the Starry Plow, asking if I wanted to go.
If only he had played me his music, I would have gone. I lived only three blocks away. There was only ever so few opportunities to see him play.
Anyway I started hearing unreleased tapes of his music in addition to his two CDs and I was a very avid Jeff Buckley follower two years later when the news came of his disappearance, followed by the confirmation of his death. I'm still sad over it. It is rare that I can hear his music without its touching a broken-heart.
Since then, I have come to love him and his music quite a lot. Yet not only his tragic accidental death, but my regrets over missed opportunities with him, weigh on the joy he brings. Though I have cherished a number of other great musicians who died along the road before and since, none inspire so deep a sense of loss.
He and I were having a friendly banter after his set. At one point he asked where I had gone because he wanted to argue some more. "Where's that old guy?"
I was only 43. Although I was wearing a tie and a tweed sport coat, and hounds-tooth pants with cuffs. I was going onto San Francisco to mix business and pleasure that day.
Jeff had gotten a little attitude when I said I had also seen his father play outdoors. It was on my sixteenth birthday with a date at an afternoon concert at the Newport Folk Festival.
He said "Lucky you," and signed the booklet for Live at Sine CD, "From the Live One, Jeff Buckley." That signature became shockingly ironic only a few years later.
He was somewhat high-strung, maybe a little petulant, but incredibly warm at the same time, and he was beautiful--just like his voice. He played the previous night and here he was up early for a noon-time show. Who could fault him if he found it annoying that someone brought up Tim Buckley in his moment of triumph. After all, he had himself never seen his father perform.
I told him that I thought his voice was even more beautiful than Tim's. This from me was extremely high praise. I did blunder into over-praising Tim's songs. I asked if Romanticism was it now, and no more.
I certainly had hold of the wrong end of the stick that day. I also tried to say the band should play harder. I didn't realize that this had been their "unplugged" outdoor set.
"You gotta kick out the jams a little," I boldly went on.
"You don't know what you're talkin' about! We even play "Kick out the Jams" every night! You gotta come see the show!
Just then a young female admirer broke in for her autograph and said,
"I think that you are great no matter what he says!" She indicated me with an accusing look.
"What?!" I said," I just told him that his voice was more beautiful than Tim Buckey's! And honest criticism is better than fatuous praise."
"Yeah! Ya hear that, all you fatuous people!" Jeff said to his assembled mob of fans in a slightly demagogic fashion.
My big friend Tim who worked for Jeff's label was around--wisely keeping clear. Another friend had in fact slipped me the booklet to get Jeff's signature. He said he'd give me the CD later.
When I saw him later, I said that as usual I had put my foot in it. He said, "You really got his attention, though."
Later that same day, I was walking in North Beach, the old Italian section of San Francisco made notorious by the Beat generation, and I noticed Jeff's bassist Mick Grondahl walking past me on his own. We stopped and talked. I told him that I had irritated Jeff. He said forget about it. Chatting away I mentioned PJ Harvey had experienced a nervous breakdown after her first record. He replied, "We've all had nervous breakdowns, Jeff especially."
We were well met and he insisted I come to their show at the Great American Music Hall that night. I felt odd about taking Jeff up earlier when he insisted that I come to the show, but this was clearly Fate working at this point.
Some time afterward, I bumped into Mick again at City Lights Bookstore. We hung out there discussing Paul Bowles, kif tales, and the trance music of the Sufi-like groups of Berber musicians in Morocco. Mick was tall, 20s, longish curly hair, bright and eager to learn more. It helped matters that I was a Bowles scholar. I urged him to try Bowles' translation of Mohamed Mrabet's kif tales in M'Hashish. He was buying Bowles' little book A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard. He said maybe he would get it another time. So, after he left, I got the book to give to him at the show.
Then we split and I made my way to the club that night. Mick left me an all-access pass at the ticket window and I saw him again back stage. We smoked some herbs and he was knocked-out that I brought him the book. Then he wanted me to go over and talk to Jeff but I was too stoned and shy at that moment. Jeff was about to play and I didn't want to make us both nervous. Especially with my track record for faux pas with him earlier in the day. He noticed me there though. I tried to lean back into the margins of the back stage scene before I went back out to the big dark room full of people to more-or-less suffer through the opening band.
After a break there followed Jeff and the band's great full-blown show, so rich in beauty, emotion, and kicking out the jams. I have thought of it often over the years. Weary coming in, I mainly sat and listened at a table on the sidelines. I could only see Jeff's face from there, that angelic face emitting that angelic voice. But I did wade out onto the main floor of this former Wild West bordello for the encore, try to kick them out a little myself. What a memory it remains, to have witnessed Jeff's genius and that powerful and intuitive band in performance twice in one day, an experience never to be repeated.
At the end, I was too tired and too far from home to go to the after-party. Looking back I should have been willing to wait for BART to resume service in the morning before I decided not to stay for it. It might have been a chance to say that I was mistaken and to make friends with him. But, of course, regrets make no sense.
Otherwise a another regret I suppose I'd have, was that in 1994 a friend told me that Tim Buckley's son was playing at the Starry Plow, asking if I wanted to go.
If only he had played me his music, I would have gone. I lived only three blocks away. There was only ever so few opportunities to see him play.
Anyway I started hearing unreleased tapes of his music in addition to his two CDs and I was a very avid Jeff Buckley follower two years later when the news came of his disappearance, followed by the confirmation of his death. I'm still sad over it. It is rare that I can hear his music without its touching a broken-heart.
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