For some unfathomable reason, several folks have asked that I weigh in on this whole issue of whether a mosque should be built at Ground Zero in New York. I’m not sure why anybody would really care what some pundit in Kentucky thinks about what is essentially a zoning issue in Manhattan.
But . . . here’s what I think.
I think it’s a damn shame that with all the issues of a really serious nature facing our country, our world, we have chosen this to argue about.
Last week I was able to chat with some friends who, do to business misfortune, have been forced to move, seeking work and income in other places.
“People don’t seem to really understand,” said Simone. (Not her real name.) “There just aren’t many jobs out there.”
Part of what she said is true.
There aren’t a lot of jobs in the marketplace for people who were making healthy incomes of $50,000 or more before the recession hit. And my sense is there aren’t a lot of positions going begging in lower income ranges. There are only so many needed to sell burgers under the Golden Arches.
Part of what she said is false.
A lot of people understand all too well that there aren’t a lot of jobs out there. It was most unusual to see a Help Wanted sign the other day when entering an Office Depot.
This stasis is manifesting itself in various ways, some oddly interesting.
This past year, the University of Louisville Law School had 500 more applications than the year before. Which number was 400 more than the previous highest year, which was sometime in the early 90s.
So, all of a sudden, a lot of twentysomethings want to become barristers at the bar?
Nah.
It’s simply that the positions as waiters, baristas, nannies, maids aren’t cutting it for college grads. Mowing lawns is not what a Big Ten grad expected to be doing with a B.A.
So, what the hell. Let’s try law school. Maybe that will open a few doors.
What does this have to do with that Muslim community center and mosque that is causing such a ruckus among the talking heads?
Nothing. And that’s my point.
The economy is going to take a dip again very soon. People need work.
The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is far from the only environmental concern we should be considering. Global warming, and eventual global environmental disaster, are very very real.
How to deal humanely with the immigration problem that exists in America is something that must be faced. I mean, really, who is going to do the roofing across the land if we imprison then deport all the aliens?
That’s just to touch the surface of legitimate concerns that should have our attention.
Instead we fall hook, line and sinker — Mr. President included — for Fox News’ bait. We are now mired in a debate with minimal relevance to real world problems.
What do I think should happen with the mosque at Ground Zero?
I am proud to say I’ve just finished the NYC Deli Triathalon.
Katz’s for lunch.
Sarge’s for brunch.
Stage for breakfast.
Different days, of course.
We were headed to the Carnegie this morning, but hit the Stage first. What a damn treat. When Barb, our waitress with enough eye liner to start her own salon at Macy’s, asked if I really wanted the belly lox platter. “You sure you don’t mean Nova,” she asked? “That’s awfully salty.”
“Barb, I’m not a virgin.”
By the time we left she’d explained how she loved to watch the horses run. “I was in Louisville once. I went to Churchill Downs at night, and tried to look through the gates. Couldn’t see nothin’.
“I sure want to make it to the Derby one time. I want one of those mint juleps.
“My uncle Maury Kaufman, he was the rich one in the family. Made a fortune in real estate. So he retired and bought a horse farm in Ocala. He loved cowboys when he was a kid. We all did. Tom Mix. Especially Johnny Mack Brown.
“So he changed his name for the horse business. Johnny Maury Kaufman. He rode around his farm on a pinto in a cowboy hat.”
Ah. Noo Yawk. Noo Yawk.
* * * * *
The flip side — and, of course, there’s always a flip side in the Big Apple — was the snarling gal at Lenscrafters on Fifth. I needed one little tweak to the nose thingamajiggy on my glasses.
“There’s nowhere and no way to twist this. It’s as far back as it goes already.”
Get that woman an egg cream.
* * * * *
Spent more time on Lexington Ave than any previous trips. It’s my new favorite NYC thoroughfare.
We had dinner last night at a great spot at 62d and Lex: Fishtails by David Burke. The maitre d’s family lives in Morehead.
The fish was boffo, but nothing like the night before at Oceana. Where I ate the finest seafood of my life.
* * * * *
The answer is No. We indeed do other things than eat.
Saw the photography exhibit at the Guggenheim. Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of a building remains iconic a half century after being built.
The photos were interesting, but explanations on the little machine they give you were awfully pretentious.
* * * * *
We stayed at the Royalton. It’s on 44th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, right across the street from the Algonquin.
Trés chic.
Did I already mention that in my blog yesterday. If so, sorry.
* * * * *
At the NBA store on Fifth Ave, there’s a table with t-shirts featuring just two players.
Rajon Rondo.
John Wall.
* * * * *
Okay, that’s enough insignificant musing. It’s of interest only to me, I know.
What’s a guy to do while waiting for his flight? Read The New York Post?
It’s a vision that would make even curmudgeonly Steve Jobs sport a smile three time zones wide.
I’ve spent the weekend with the Film Babe in NYC. I got up early this Sunday a.m. to jog. From our hotel on 44th, I headed up Fifth Avenue toward the park. Right there at Central Park South, across from the Plaza is the entrance to the Apple Store.
The glass cube sits in a plaza like the famous pyramid that is the entrance to the Louvre. Except, of course, this is a square and the edifice in Paris is, like I said, a pyramid.
What’s not different: The lines to get in. Except the one at the Louvre is somewhat smaller.
As I headed by it the first time headed uptown about 8:00, there were about 100 people in line. Fifteen minutes later when I passed heading downtown, the line had quadrupled.
The demographic wasn’t too awfully diverse. About 15% more or less were distinguishable geeks. The rest were Japanese.
Jogging down Fifth early morning when it’s mostly deserted makes me think I’m going to run into Holly Golightly, staring at jewelry, eating a Danish.
* * * * *
It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve been to New York.
I don’t mind glorying in the touristy stuff.
What’s a trip up here without passing through Times Square at night? On our way back to the hotel from a show, we hit it about 11:30 Friday night.
The descriptor that came to mind when negotiating through the humanity, passing on a genuine Rolex for $60 as well as a ride on the full size Ferris Wheel inside the Toys ‘r’ Us store, having Joanie agree that zipping her purse was a prudent move and craning our necks gomer-style at the Ginza light show: Clusterfuck.
* * * * *
Which is the same word I’d overuse to describe Katz’s Deli at a little after noon on Friday.
It’s pastrami is reputed to be the best in this pastrami town. Still. And it is.
But getting to the sandwich counter where a tip in the jar adds to the girth of the sandwich was like getting a bet down on the Derby ten minutes before post. Squared.
Why didn’t we grab one of the waiter service only tables, you might ask? Well, I’d never been to Katz’s (on Houston in the Lower East Side), so I didn’t know. That’s why.
But we did pass on the other gomer move. We didn’t ask anybody where the table is that You Know Who faked her You Know What in “When Harry Met Sally?”
We went for that deli brunch again this morning. Eschewing the ordinary at the Carnegie, we ventured to the Murray Hill neighborhood, chowing down where the locals do at Sarge’s on Lexington at 36th. Their latkes won a citywide smackdown with those from the Second Ave Deli.
Delicious and abundant. Plus our food was served by an honest to Betsy older Jewish gal with a mouth on her.
* * * * *
If you’re coming up here any time soon, and want to head to the theater district, you could do a lot worse than “Fela.”
The musical about the Nigerian musician who invented Afro-Beat and managed to piss off the government with his politics at the same time is mighty scintillating. Amazing and unique song and dance.
* * * * *
Saw two movies up here. That’s right, came to NYC and went to the movies. Times two.
Because, well, there are a bunch of films here that aren’t now nor ever will play Louisville. And, hey, I do review films for a major metropolitan public radio station. And Joanie is, after all, The Film Babe.
To find out about them, tune into 91.9 a little after 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday.
* * * * *
It started to rain this afternoon.
At which point, as if sprouting from the pavement, vendors selling umbrellas appeared on every corner.
I swear, I haven’t a clue where they materialized from?
Which leads to my last bit of advice when away from home. Pocket parkas. They’re a good thing.
Now that the trial of you know who concerning her “relationship” with you know who is yesterday’s spam, let’s consider a few other things, shall we?
* * * * *
While we weren’t paying attention, and after much ado about political posturing, Elena Kagan was confirmed as Supreme Court justice.
Just as she should have been.
Just as we always knew she would be.
Of course, since ‘87, there’s the borking process that must play out.
Robert Bork was a GOP nominee for the Court. He had been the hatchet man that fired Watergate independent prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Nixon administration in what’s been dubbed the “Saturday Night Massacre.” So, if only for that, the donkeys hated Bork, a bright and qualified jurist, albeit very conservative.
Besides Bork had that scraggly beard that was off-putting and made him look like some Colonial era Puritan preacher. Then there was his imperious manner.
Anyway the Dems were able to foil his nomination. The process has been repugnantly political ever since.
You may not like the politics of Scalia or Roberts or Ginsburg or Kagan, but they’re all qualified. And the country would be a lot better off if the Senate stopped looking at nominee’s politics and just at their qualifications.
* * * * *
Is it my imagination, or are there cicadas every summer now? Not just every 17 years the way Mother Nature planned the cycle.
What happened?
Well, maybe it is nature’s way.
* * * * *
What’s up with this Kentucky dirt that’s been hauled to Indiana by the appropriately named Kentuckiana Trucking Company?
It seems there are a few petroleumish contaminants in the soil from the new arena site. And the trucking company dumped it where it wasn’t supposed to. Frankly, I’m shocked, shocked I tell you that such illegalities occur.
Wonder if they considered hauling it down to the Gulf, to maybe soak up some of that sludge? Or, Mega Caverns, where’s there is plenty of room and they invite new fill?
* * * * *
Why is Charles Moore still on the Louisville police force?
* * * * *
Speaking of governmental shenanigans and police department inefficiency, the Film Babe and I are halfway through Season #3 of our annual marathon viewing of the entirety of “The Wire.” Two and a half seasons down, two and a half to go.
Which we’ll do in, oh, the next ten days or so. Those of you familiar with the old HBO series understand why it’s so compelling. A couple episodes a night are the minimum. One night last summer, we watched five. Not that we’re obsessed or anything.
Those of you who’ve never watched it, tsk, tsk.
One guy’s opinion: It’s the best dramatic series in the history of television. Period. It is Godfather quality. Yes, yes, it is.
Like a carny barker at the Shelby County Fair, the unique trombone riff lures you into the song.
Then you’re enveloped like a summer evening’s fog at a lookout over the city with pitch perfect, adenoidal four part harmony.
The scene is set.
Then with a teen whine for the ages, Johnny Hourigan’s voice — think Nick Cage’s Charlie Bodell in “Peggy Sue Got Married” — soars over the top of Bill Mathley, Joe Bergman and Jim Settle’s chorus.
Moments/ Moments like this/ With her, embracing/ Sharing a kiss/Make me realize/ The meaning of paradise.
Doo wop defined a simpler time in the 50s and early 60s. It was to the mid 20th century as Schubert’s romantic odes were to the early 19th.
Settle’s paen to young love is as good as any that came out of Louisville at the time. With all due respect to my buddy Cosmo, whose “It’l Be Easy” with The Sultans was the first #1 local doo wop charter in town, and The Monarchs “Look Homeward Angel,” which went national, “Moments Like This” is the one.
How much in depth rumination can an Observer of the Scene consider when, long after coming into the AC, he’s still shvitzing like a pig on a spit after a morning jog?
Let’s find out.
Toll Booths ‘R’ Us. Like most other reasoning humans, I was aghast at the first mention of possible tolls on the new bridges, which structures have been on the drawing board since, I dunno, Charlie Farnsley was mayor.
Three bucks to visit grannie in Cementville.
Three bucks to make it back home.
At first blush, and perhaps at second, it seems a heinous exaction. I know I was ready to pull out my dusty “No Taxation Without Representation” banner. Then I remembered I lent it to my Tea Party neighbor across the street.
The article in this morning’s C-J gave some perspective on the situation. I know when visiting the Bay Area last year, we stayed in Mill Valley and thought nothing of paying the toll when crossing into San Francisco. Much to our chagrin however, we got no discount for the flowers in our hair.
I have no idea how this is all going to play out. I do predict that there will be no new bridges in Louisville built in my lifetime. And I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, though my instinct tells me we’ll survive without them.
Pols ‘R’ Us. Another interesting read in this morning’s C-J was Jim Carroll’s take on our major party candidates to fill Jim Bunning’s senate seat.
Not only are Rand Paul and Jack Conway seriously serious 24/7, they are, let’s face facts, B*O*R*I*N*G.
The desk holding the computer I’m writing on has more personality than both combined. And it’s standard utilitarian office equipment company issue.
Being a good Donkey, and being more than a little scared of Paul — actually, what he stands for — I’m sure I’ll vote for Conway. Understanding he’s never going to be confused with Henry Clay or John Sherman Cooper.
Trolls ‘R’ Us. It’s Day #3 of Hullabaloo. And for the third day in a row, I’m sad to say I’m taking a Pasadena.
I know, for years I’ve been ranting about the lack of a real summer music festival here in Louisville. Now that we have a legit foray toward one, I’m staying away.
Trust me, it’s not out of protest at the lineup which I find less than compelling. I intended to go out today with the Film Babe, plunk down our $150 and show our support. Terry Adams’ new band intrigues me. But he’s about to start playing as I write. Dwight Yoakam and Loretta Lynn are certainly worth hearing. Though I’ve seen the former. But, Sweet Loretta, it’s just too damn hot to stand in the sun and listen. Sorry.
It’s not gonna happen.
I hope the event is a financial success. I hope Churchill Downs figures out a way to have it when it’s less hot and steamy. I also hope they find it in their hearts to present a future lineup of acts with a bit more zest. Like, oh, say, they do at Forecastle. And New Orleans. And Nashville. And Milwaukee.
All of which is to say I’m a troglodyte for the day.
There was a time when a fellow could adopt a nickname of some sort, and it would be just that.
A nickname. Puff Daddy. (Or, if you prefer P. Diddy.)
A moniker. The Splendid Splinter.
An affectation. Lady Gaga.
Or, say, the Culture Maven, to use one very handy example.
No more.
Turns out I’m now a brand. Just like Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.
Who knew?
And no different than Kleenex®.
Or Coke®.
Or Chevy.
Oh, wait a sec. Didn’t GM announce recently that it was eschewing the use of the shortened Chevy, pushing instead the more formal and official Chevrolet®. So customers won’t be confused about the brand. Or, so they believe.
It seems to me that Chevy is pretty ubiquitous. There are songs about this most famous of American cars.
Treat me like ya Chevy/ You can show me off.
Or,
26’s on my chevy (my chevy)/ Chrome on my chevy (my chevy)/ Candy on my chevy (my chevy)/ Flakes on my chevy (oooh)/ Dudes on my chevy (my chevy)/ Girls in my chevy (my chevy)/ Screens in my chevy (my chevy)/ Shove in my chevy/ I’m so hiiiiiiigh/ I’m so hiiiiiiigh
Okay, maybe lyrics like those are why some doofus in the Iron Belt, sitting legs up behind a desk, with too much time on his hands and way too much say so in GM corporate affairs, wants to drive Chevy off the levee.
But I digress.
My point is to decry the commercialization of, well, just about everything.
U of L basketball used to be a program. Now it’s a brand. So proclaims CEO Rick Pitino.
Kinda like Yum!®. Which, in case you haven’t heard, bought the naming (Read: branding) rights to the new arena where the Cardinals® will play starting next season.
We’ve sure come a long way since some wary rancher burned a symbol on the hindquarters of his whole herd, to psychologically ward off rustlers. (Quick aside having very little to do with this rant: The slyest rustler film ever made is “Rancho Deluxe” featuring Slim Pickens as Henry Beige, Cattle Detective.) The word itself comes from German, meaning “to burn.”
The term evolved to designate the identity of a certain product, business or service. So says Wikipedia. Which brand stands for the place we go to find an immediate answer for any question.
But now schools and teams and people are brands.
Most especially King LeBron®.
And, sigh, me too.
I sit here drinking my Heine Brothers brand coffee, typing away on my MacBook brand laptop, writing a piece to appear on my culturemaven.com brand blog.
(When I first registered the name, these things were still called websites. Now they’re branded blogs. But, hey, don’t get me started on the evolution of that appellation.)
So, you get my point. I find this whole branding thing a bunch of bunk, a trend most heinous.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Truth in Advertising Caveat: My name is Chuck Kaplan, actually Charles David Kaplan. I only started calling myself c d kaplan when I began writing professionally. Am I being duplicitous? You decide.
My friend David Leibson, a well regarded professor at U of L Law School, tells this tale on Bob Heleringer, a former student of his.
Heleringer is a hail-fellow-well-met, a former Kentucky legislator and very funny fellow.
After the professor greeted his student who entered his office, Heleringer proceeded to rifle through the documents sitting on Leibson’s desk, picking up papers, looking underneath, then setting them back down.
“Mr. Heleringer, may I ask whatever you are doing?”
“Searching for a point or two. I really could use a better grade on my exam.”
I too am now a seeker in need.
At Heine Brothers on Frankfort Avenue on a blistering Monday afternoon, searching for my muse.
If only Bob Heleringer were here to make me chuckle.
Lady Inspiration has been MIA for awhile. Where is it that she goes periodically? On vacation? To nestle across the river on Bob Hill’s desk? To the Upper Peninsula for vacation to avoid the humidity?
Perhaps she’s lurking over here by the railroad tracks. Or so it seems reasonable.
Which is why I’m nursing a cup of decaf and pecking away at my MacBook in the company of nine others, also taking advantage of free wireless and fair trade joe.
Anyway, I’ve written this far already. That’s a good thing.
Whether it’s of any consequence is yet to be determined?
That determination, I’ve long since learned, has little to do with how many, if any, of you eventually read this onanistic little essay? There are so very many of us fighting for your attention on the internet that any blogger of minimal emotional health realizes — or should realize — that page views do not self esteem make.
Short interlude to check email.
I’ve just received my weekly printout from Facebook. It advises that the monthly active users for my Page (Culture Maven c d kaplan) increased by 51.2% last week. That the total number of fans increased by 3.1%. Page views are up 14.3%.
Cut to clip of Sally Field accepting her Oscar, “You like me, you really really like me.”
Now, back to reality. Actually, the proof of value here will come when I stop typing and start reading. Will my sentences make sense? Will they be full with logic and perception? Will I have at least somewhat artfully considered and described some realization that has value in its statement.
Lord, I hope so. Don’t want this to turn into the type of dialog you might hear amid the cacophony in “Inception.”
It’s not that there isn’t a lot going on. Politically, there’s the whole Tea Party movement. Environmentally, there’s the BP negligence in the Gulf and the devastation resulting in the Gulf. In the world of entertainment, there’s the contemplation whether Lady Gaga is a worthy successor to Cher and Madonna or not?
Then there’s that novel I’ve been giving lip service to for several years now. And the opus that would be an enumeration of all the musical acts and anecdotes I’ve seen and heard.
We’ll see.
What I do know is this. The coffee worked. That the wireless connection here is a bit slow has been beneficial. (Can’t surf, must write.)
Maybe this will be read. Maybe it won’t.
What’s important, frankly, is that it’s been written.
My fingers haven’t cramped. My mind has thawed somewhat. The sentence make some sense.
And I swear I just saw Lady Inspiration slip in the backdoor for a latte. She’s already gone like a wisp.
Harvey Pekar wasn’t the only icon from the cultural unterbelly to pass away this week.
A moment of silence — followed by ironic cacophony, in order to display the proper respect — for Tuli Kupferberg.
The guy has been described as an anarchist, a beat, the guy made famous in Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl” for having jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. (That it was actually a different bridge, and that it was a point of some embarrassment for the rest of his life to a fellow not easily embarrassed must be noted.)
He was an ironist of the highest order, if that’s what you can call somebody prone to irony in their art. He could deliver deadpan with but the faintest hint of a knowing smirk.
More important to those of us who are musically-addled, he, along with fellow Commie pinko Ed Sanders, founded New York’s first truly punk band.
Hearing this first Village Fugs album in ‘65 was more than a might startling. (For those of you not familiar with the origin of the word “fug,” it was the euphemism used by Norman Mailer in “The Naked and the Dead.”)
Sure, there were Dylan and the Beatles and Stones. But the record charts at the time were littered with “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter,” “I Got You Babe,” “Hang On Sloopy,” and “Eve of Destruction.”
So, when a buddy showed up with this LP with lyrics like — “Do you like Boobs a lot?/ Yeah, I like Boobs a lot/ Why d’ you like boobs a lot?/ You gotta like boobs a lot/ Do you wear your jock a lot? . . .” — it was bound to grab my attention.
It did. “Slum Goddess from the lower east side” became part of my vernacular.
The satirical nihilism of Kupferberg’s “Nothing” still brings a smile to my face.
Ed Sanders, like Tuli, was a poet, political polemicist and a member of the bluejean literati. The Fugs were founded at his Peace Eye Bookstore in late ‘64, where they played their first gig. It was there that he edited his periodical Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts.
Some of the band’s songs included the words of William Blake. Others dealt defiantly with sex and drugs. With irony, of course, they were at the forefront of a movement toward the expression of outrage led to the masses by Lenny Bruce. A classic example is Ken Weaver’s “I Couldn’t Get High.”
“Cause I couldn’t get high/ And I don’t know why?/ So I threw down my pipe/ As made as I could be/ And I gobbled up a cube/ Of LSD/ So I waited thirty minutes / For my body to sing/ Yeah I waited and I waited/ But I couldn’t feel a thing.”
Remember, kiddies, Louisville KY in the mid 60s was still a place where cruising the Big Boy after curfew was the apotheosis of rebellion, when the depth of our angst was having to implore Rhonda to help us get her out of our heart.
This isn’t the kind of album that will suffer repeated listenings. Truth be told, it’s probably been decades since I laid a needle on the vinyl. But it is one that every one considered a member of the rock & roll generation should know.
As we bid a sad adieu to Tuli Kupferberg, let’s hear the band’s paean to that “swingin’ little goddess from Avenue D”:
In parting, let me remind you to heed this admonition: Be sure to “wear your jock a lot” because “Down on the football, football field/ You never can tell what a heel may wield.”
It’s forty years gone this weekend since those nicknames were bestowed upon my pal Stephen and me at the Atlanta Pop Festival.
Many if not most of the memories of that magical interlude have long been lost in the daze of time. But this I can say for sure. We came upon those identities honestly.
As for the rest of that Fourth of July weekend outside Byron, Georgia, the tales told here may be true or not. Only the synapses of my cerebrum know for sure. And they’ve long since lost most if not all connection to that time and place.
Stephen was The Mailman; I, Captain Canada. The sordid details:
We knew there was going to be triple digit Fahrenheit at the festival. So the day before we left, we purchased pith helmets. If such a chapeau provided protection for long lost Stanley Livingston in deepest, darkest Africa, we presumed one would work for us.
I went with basic khaki.
Stephen opted for that light grayish blue with maroon straps that we’ve come to associate with the United States Postal Service.
So hot was it that the very first day down there, we, along with our traveling companions Don and Merrily, sought respite in the nearest body of water. Which lake or river or pond — frankly I can’t recall — we found by following the gaggle of hippies on hoods of cars all headed, they said, as if guided by a stoned Trip Tik in that direction.
When Stephen jumped in, pith helmet firmly in place, one bleary-eyed bather adroitly observed, “It’s the Mailman.”
Firmer monikers have been borne of lesser tales.
The origin of Captain Canada is somewhat more convoluted. The statute of limitations having lapsed, the story can be revealed. With haste and for the last time, so we can move on.
The day before we departed Louisville, our friend Becker needed help moving from one furn apt. to another. Among the items he intended to discard was a flag of Canada. Which artifact I commandeered, immediately tying about my neck like a cape.
That’s only the germination of the nickname.
Which flowered fully on the first night of music at the festival. (Caveat: The imagery that might manifest from the description of the following interlude is not for the faint of heart, grannie or youths under the age of majority.)
That weekend marked my first experimentation with psychedelics. When the mescaline kicked in, it started to rain. At which point it seemed eminently logical to my then “experienced” mind to fully disrobe. No matter that we were sitting in throng of several hundred thousand. It seemed the natural thing to do.
Besides, I didn’t want my clothes to get wet. I had hand fashioned with a magic marker a “Who is Ron Dante?” t-shirt which I thought too clever and pithy to not be able to wear again once the showers had abated.
From such reasoning, wackier tales have been told.
The inclemency didn’t however prevent me from wearing my Canadian flag cape. From which point on, and for several years thereafter, I was known to a few as Captain Canada.
Enough of that.
Admittedly I am finding it difficult to accurately describe how wonderful and fun that weekend was. The experience is proving sensible description.
When I’ve attempted to do so through the decades, I have reverted to this. That weekend is something outside the timeline of my life. It is as if it was all a dream, so fantastic, so unreal, so joyous was the moment.
The performers included the following whose music I do recall if only to a limited extent. Jimi Hendrix, who played with fireworks filling the sky behind him at midnight on the 4th of July. The Allman Brothers Band, including a jam with Johnny Winter. The Chambers Brothers. (For which set, I stood directly in front of the speakers, as a result of which stupidity, my hearing has never fully recovered.) BB King. Grand Funk Railroad. Hampton Grease Band. Ten Years After.
Among the groups that I have no or only vague recollection hearing: Procol Harum. Poco. Terry Reid. Ravi Shankar. John Sebastian. Mountain. Spirit. Ginger Baker. Chakra. Cactus. Gypsy. Bloodrock. Captain Beefheart.
I know a number of folks who attended. I have read remembrances of the festival online. What fascinates me is how few speak of the musical moments.
The sounds were more a nucleus around which this grand, garish carnival evolved, an excuse for the gathering of southern tribes.
Considering the entire experience, I do have an acute feeling of personal evolution. I had taken the bar exam the weekend before the festival, didn’t think I’d pass it since I hadn’t studied much. And hadn’t a clue what was in store for the rest of my life.
It was your classic pivotal moment at the onslaught of adulthood.
So, hey, let’s go get stoned and rock.
I’d lived at home with my parents until my senior year in law school. My growth had thus been stunted. So my socialization abilities were still in their early stages.
Hey. let’s mingle en masse and talk jabberwok.
So, without getting too awfully philosophical, I’ll just offer that this eminently eye-opening weekend fostered a sense of freedom and wonder and creative possibility which I hadn’t previously conceptualized. Mostly it was just a load of fun.
As for specifics, there are but a few I remember.
An interlude where I handed a merchant enough Uniform Commercial Code razzmatazz in the middle of the night that he cashed a personal check for some biker dude. Which black leathered hulk expressed his appreciation by telling me he had my back in case I needed something taken care of during the festival.
Not wanting one blistering afternoon to walk all the way to the water spigot a mile away, I, much to the chagrin of Don and Merrily, filled our thermos with $3 worth of Pepsi.
Through my own personal haze, trundling back to our campsite on the final morning, while Richie Havens sang “Here Comes The Sun” at sunrise.
Camped next to us was a group, which included a gal who wore a wig the whole weekend in that awful heat, because she didn’t like the color of her hair after dyeing it. How antithetical to the whole counter culture ethos, I thought at the time.
A couple having sex the next blanket over, with the girl shouting in ecstasy “Ooooooooh, the stars!” While her head was resting on my lap. Trust me, it felt as odd at the time as it sounds now.
The pathway from our camping spot to the stage, lined with hundreds and hundreds of people selling drugs.
Laughter. Early. Often.
Juicy peaches bigger than my fist for a nickel.
The Heat. And I’m talking Fahrenheit not cops, which were essentially nowhere to be seen.
The Chambers Brothers doing “People Get Ready.”
Hendrix playing the “Star Spangled Banner” at midnight on the Fourth.
The Allman Brothers Band, whom I’d never heard before. Specifically, “Every Hungry Woman,” during which I was drawn closer to the stage as if it were a siren call.
The Hampton Grease Band.
Frankly, sadly, that’s about it for the music.
It’s not like I/ we weren’t paying attention to the sounds. It’s just that the entire experience was so overwhelming, that there was so much sensory input, so many diffused interactions that the music was but one element. An important one, but just one of many nonetheless.
I guess it’s fair to ask, beyond the fact that it was a super time, if there were any cultural imperatives to be learned from Atlanta Pop?
Well, yes. One, there is power in numbers.
Law enforcement was basically non existent. Byron had a couple of part time cops. A number of state troopers were sent to the scene. I’ve read that nobody was arrested, despite the drugs and nudity. There were just way more of us than them that weekend. Besides it was a ferociously peaceful gathering. (Apparently there was a brouhaha about opening the gates and freeing up the festival. It passed me by. We actually bought tickets in advance. $14 for the weekend.)
Pepsi doesn’t quench thirst like H2O.
Nobody had a clue who Ron Dante was? Nor much cared. (FYI, he was the studio guy responsible for The Archies. That’s right, “Sugar, Sugar.”)
Pith helmets are an effective way of protection from the sun.
Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman — both of whom died within months of the festival — were the best. I’m grateful that I heard them live when they were still around. That I remember at least some of their playing there.
And that I can now, forty years after the fact, lord it over today’s guitar fawning youngsters.
The other weekend I was on a road trip with friends. We were playing oldies on the box.
One of the most maudlin tales of tragedy played — Ray Peterson’s “Tell Laura I Love Her.” Those of you who grew up with rock & roll, know the details all too well. Laura and Tommy were lovers. He wanted to buy her gifts, most of all a wedding ring.
Oh, why should you hear it second hand? Here’s Ray himself, still sharing the sadness after oh so many years (Wearing a tux out of respect for the departed.):
Listening in the car with more mature ears, I couldn’t help but wonder: 1) If Tommy and Laura were so close, why didn’t she know he was racing that night? 2) If Tommy couldn’t get Laura on the phone, why didn’t he text her? And, most of all, 3) Where was Laura that night, with Tommy’s best buddy, who apparently wasn’t at the race either?
I’m not sure exactly why, but there were any number of these teen weepers back in the Days of Top 40, News, Weather & Sports. The reason why is a cultural contemplation too serious for examination at this time.
But I do have some queries, since more than a few of these songs raised salient questions, which, frankly, we never asked back in the day. I guess it’s never too late to investigate.
Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” died in a car that was stalled on the railroad tracks. But, 1) If she went running back after safely out of harm’s way to get the high school ring, why wasn’t she wearing it around her neck, as was the style in the day? Didn’t she want her friends to know? 2) Why did the car stall? Didn’t her boyfriend have it serviced before their big date?
Did her family sue?
Speaking of stalled and smashed cars and dashed relationships, J. Frank Wilson’s “Last Kiss” was most sad:
I mean what happens if the kid 1) heeded his daddy’s warning to get some new tires and a brake check up at Ken Towery’s, or 2) kept two hands on the wheel instead of trying to cop a feel while driving?
Speaking of what on earth was he thinking — why was Jan Berry of Jan & Dean speeding in a Corvette at Dead Man’s Curve just two years after he sang these ominous lyrics, “Won’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve.?”
That, my fellow rock & rollers, is life imitating art.
It’s been said that his girlfriend’s dad put a voodoo hex on Jimmy, the Leader of the Pack. We’ll just never know.
But life back then was fraught with more than car crashes or motorcycle wrecks.
A walk on the beach could mean an end to a relationship that maybe just maybe wasn’t meant to be. Listen to Johnny Cymbal’s all too sad tale.
I mean if the kid was strong and courageous enough to kill the shark — with his bare hands — why on earth didn’t he do it before the beast chewed his significant other to death?
Speaking of being chewed to death, how about poor Timothy?
Well, we could go on and on, wallowing in the angst, decrying cars that stalled at the wrong place and wrong time. So let’s call it a day. But only after allowing eminent cultural observer Julie Brown to put it all in perspective.
Which means that all the questions I’ve got boil down to one.
Who’s Johnny?
Okay there’s more. Read on, s’il vous plait.
After being publicly humiliated by my host James Bickers during my weekly film review this morning, I feel compelled to add one more song to the mix: Dickey Lee’s “Laurie (Strange Things Happen)”. Laurie was an angel. Perhaps literally. Though she’s not to be confused with Teen Angel, who didn’t even live in the same town.
Anyway, the kid hooked up with Laurie — or so he thought — and she asked for his sweater to stay warm. Oh, the tale is too weird. I can’t go on. So, here’s Dickey:
Even though this was 1965, I must ask: Was this kid on LSD or what? Or was Laurie’s dad just being a schmuck?
As it turns out the iPhone 4 does do everything a customer could possibly want it to do.
With two exceptions:
1) It won’t scour the toilet in the bathroom when your cleaning service doesn’t show up.
2) Its reception — sketchy already with AT&T’s lack of enough towers and bandwidth — is further compromised when you hold the phone in a normal manner.
Since there came an avalanche of complaints about the latter from first day customers — Apple acolytes disinclined to utter a discouraging word — Mahatma Steve Jobs came out from his cave and pontificated.
To paraphrase The Holy One: “Get over it, dumbasses. Hold it differently.”
So much for the oldest adage in commerce, “The customer is always right.”
Seems the problem hasn’t a thing to do with a possible design flaw — the antennae is in the metal edge strip where 99% of users hold a cellphone. It’s the fault of customers who stayed up all night to be first in line to plunk down hundreds of dollars and be the first on their block with the latest of Jobs’ gadgets. They simply didn’t read the manual to learn how to properly hold the new smart phone.
And what a contemporary device it is. Tens of thousands of apps. It does everything. (Except scrub the tub.)
It does everything, that is, except connect speedily to its network.
Am I missing something here? Isn’t that the baseline?
Actually I’m an old school guy. I understand that smart phones are the future. The present actually. Pretty soon they’ll be able to safely drive your SUV, so you can text without worry while speeding down Shelbyville Road. But I’ll only have one when it’s the only type of cellphone available.
My current phone can send and receive calls. Period. (Okay, it has rudimentary texting capabilities, which I never use.) And that’s it. No internet. No email. No travel directions. No videos. No camera.
I bought this particular model because all the reviews said it had the best voice quality incoming and outgoing.
It wasn’t an easy purchase. When I hit the Verizon store, my trusty and helpful rep had never heard of the model. “Customers could care less about speaker quality.” She found one on a bottom shelf in the corner. The box was dusty. Literally.
I don’t have an innate dislike for cellphones. Except when people use them for any purpose when driving or at the dinner table or when I’m trying to talk with them face to face. You know, in person. I sit at a computer most of the day, so I don’t feel it necessary to have www access when I’m away from my desk.
Besides everybody else has one. So when I was at my daughter’s birthday party last night and wanted to know the draft status of UK’s Fab Five, several guys scurried to show they could connect the fastest.
As for my response to Steve Jobs: “Rotate on this, dude!”
Read sports rants, rumors & innuendo from my alter ego Seedy K. Click to check out Score! at leoweekly.com.
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For some unfathomable reason, several folks have asked that I weigh in on this whole issue of whether a mosque should be built at Ground Zero in New York. I’m not sure why anybody would really care what some pundit in Kentucky thinks about what is essentially a zoning issue in Manhattan.
