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Sunday, November 25, 2007
MY FIRST RIOT
There were hundreds of underground newspapers in the U.S. published on military bases, in major cities- yet none were quite like The Great Speckled Bird. Mixing politics with the counterculture, Mike Wallace had called the paper "the Wall Street Journal of the underground press" and it had been noticed out of the 100's of papers being printed. http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/3403/1/50
The reason? People growing up in the 60's in the south were still living with racism and segregation. The first time I went to Stone Mountain, which years later I would discover was owned by a family in the KKK, I saw a picnic of Klansmen and their families- right next to a Black Baptist picnic. No Klansman was actually wearing their robes, no one was yelling at each other, but the Klan presence was still strong. There were still towns in Georgia run by the Klan, and everyone knew they ran Fulton County. The first time I heard a teacher in class use the "n" word I was in shock. I had grown up in Japan, found myself in the deep south and could not believe what I heard people and students saying.
I never, never heard the "n" word from any hippie.
That's what made the scene in Atlanta different from San Francisco. The Klan didn't run that city.
It was pretty easy to spot Klansmen. Some had jewelry that had KKK on the band. Some drove cars with AKIA bumperstickers ( A KLANSMAN I AM is what AKIA stood for). There was an underground paper for them too, THE THUNDERBOLT which called for a boycott when The Little Rascals shorts were shown on TV (because the classes were integrated in the films) and a boycott of a bread company that had decided to hire blacks.
You could not ignore the alliance of Democrats and Klansmen. You could not ignore Lester Maddox.
Maddox ran the Pickrick Restaurant on Northside Drive serving up to 400 white customers a day. By the fireplace he kept a pick handle which he would actually use to smash a black ministers windshield with who had made the mistake of trying to enter his restaurant. Then he pulled a gun on the minister
and was arrested on gun charges. An all white jury would quickly acquit him. His behavior overshadowed any Constitutional battle he might have been waging, he was seen as a violent racist. Which made him a hero to cops, workers and fellow Democrats. He cashed in on this by selling pick handles and signing them for customers, until he was forced to close his restaurant. Or rather, he closed it to keep from integrating.
He ran as a Democrat against Jimmy Carter for Governor and crushed him. A high school drop out, Maddox was a hero to whites in the south who feared blacks "taking over". During the primary when his landslide seemed apparent, Martin Luther King said he "was ashamed to be a Georgian".
Trust me, nothing like this was going on in San Francisco.
When Martin Luther King's funeral took place in 1968 Maddox refused to attend and was caught by news cameras trying to raise lowered flags, quickly backing off. Sitting in the state capitol building surrounded by his all white police department, he waited for the riots that never came.
This was the atmosphere in Georgia when kids, and we were all kids, decided to withdraw into our own community.
Piedmont Park would become central to all of us, and the weekend free concerts would eventually draw thousands. Tipped off to the bands playing by the Bird, the two biggest draws were The Hampton Grease Band and The Allman Brothers.
Bruce Hampton led guitarists Glenn Phillips and Harold Kelling into uncharted territory at every show. Mixing Captain Beefheart, Brecht and Frank Zappa stylings with country, rock and jazz there was simply nothing that sounded like them. They were popular in Atlanta, but baffled hippies elsewhere.
In 1969 I sat stoned listening to them in the park when a policeman walked a kid through the crowd, holding a gun to his head. People at first were stunned to see this, and sat in shock. As another cop approached, the gun wielding cop yelled, "Careful, this man is on pot" and the shock- turned to anger.
People began to stand up, and follow the armed cop. Maybe they wanted to make sure the kid wasn't shot down, but they quietly followed them and others began to join this odd procession. As the dangerous pot smoker was put in the police car, the crowd surrounded the car, and chants of "Let him go" began. Someone threw a pine cone, and more police began to show up.
People began rocking the car as the first tear gas canister was thrown. Then another. And another.
Hampton Grease band began to improvise. They began to play to the sounds of the riot as tear gas drifted across the crowd and stage.
Time stands still during a riot, a surreal atmosphere develops. Some cops began randomly selecting people from the crowd and clubbing them, tear gas floated across the hill and bandstand- and the band played on. Someone would walk by bleeding, a hippie would tackle a cop, my eyes would burn and all the while I would wonder, what would happen next?
The riot began to end, who had won? The band. Which had endured tear gas and had been jamming the entire time.
I would be in other riots in those days, but never would I be in another one that had a soundtrack!
Posted at 10:53 am by Psychomike
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Friday, November 30, 2007
Comments At SubGenius Slack
One of the fun things (and writing about my moments isn't always fun), about doing the SubGenius Slack blog is the comments that appear over time. If you haven't had time to read them you should click below. You'll find corrections, a defense of Lester Maddox, a southern chicken recipe ala Maddox, memories and more. This can't be done for a book on paper, nor can links be presented. Like The Blob, it keeps growing.
Anytime you see in the posts a number in the comments line at the bottom of the post check it out for comments. They add another dimension to this blog.
Last post was the 50th posting of this autohagiagraphy, so enjoy the riot and the comments.
Feel free to keep them coming. It makes this project an ever expanding one. Next chapter- something new.
Posted at 08:14 am by Psychomike
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Wednesday, December 05, 2007
I Met G. Gordon Liddy and Tim Leary!
Smoking pot with Leary, Del in front of G. Gordon Liddy!
It's 1982 and the phone is ringing. I'm watching Lupin the 3rd cartoons in Japanese reading from Doug Rice's copious notes/translations. Artist Doug has just started working with writer John Ostrander for FIRST COMICS in Chicago and was my main source for Japanese animation in the period in which no Japanese anime was being released here. Sitting down my papers I picked up the phone....
Voice: Close here.
Del always said Close here instead of hello. His answering machine said, "You know the drill, do the thing".
Me: Hi Del.
Voice: Listen to this. Tim Leary and G. Gordon Liddy are on their way over here. You have to be here for this.
Me: Ok I'm on the way.
I was living in a high-rise on LaSalle Street across from Sandburg Village. It was the cheapest rent in the area, Boom Boom and I didn't realize that was because of the still unsolved Tylenol murders. A woman who had purchased tainted Tylenol at the drugstore a block away had been discovered dead in the hallway by the restroom of the rented condo, and was responsible for our low rent.
A few doors down from the drugstore stuck behind buildings and next to the Blues Brothers Bar was Del's apartment.
The Sandburg's claim to fame was that the porn actress Seka lived there.
The Sandburg Village was designed by John Cordwell.
He was an interesting character then, when there were many characters with great stories still around Chicago. The Wise Guys of The Billy Goat and the liquor store wisemen on the southside. I guess I'm part of that tradition. He had been involved in the escape that became the movie THE GREAT ESCAPE. Played in the movie by Donald Pleasance (who played John as if he were blind, though John wasn't!) he kept a diary of life in the P.O.W. camp and would illustrate an incident of the day in the camp in each chapter. John kept it behind the bar he owned and worked in, The Red Lion across the street from The Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue. He would show some people the book while telling them stories. In the Great Depression The Red Lion had been a gambling joint. The "cover" or "front" of the gambling den was made to look like a produce store. When you walked inside giant chalkboards kept track of horse races and sports events.
John Dillinger was staying a few blocks away on Halsted Street at the whore house of Anna Sage. During the depression the banks had lost everyone's savings, jobs closed as a result, but the banks still expected everyone to keep up with their mortgages. If you didn't, the bank which had lost your money, took your home or farm. Banks weren't too popular in those days. And bankers were called "banksters" by the rural folks. Dillinger would rob banks all over the Midwest and would often hide with farmers- none of whom ever turned him in.
Anna was being deported however, so she went to the FBI and offered to trade him in for citizenship and the reward.
The FBI could never arrest Public Enemy #1 in a whorehouse. J. Edger Hoover was way too prudish and aware of his place in history for that. (Rumors that he dressed in women's clothes while funny, are not true by the way. That would have taken a sense of humor that Mr. Hoover lacked.)
Anna was told it was a deal. She was to take Dillinger to the Biograph, and the FBI would come in and arrest the unarmed Dillinger while he was watching the movie.
Dillinger was unarmed because Chicago was a safe city for him. His attorney was a former Illinois State's Attorney. ( He was the last person to see Dillinger in a Crown Point Jail before Dillinger escaped. Legend has it Dillinger crafted a gun out of soap, the real world teaches me the last person that saw him gave him a very real gun.) Dillinger often posed with Chicago cops and sent the pictures to the FBI man handling his case, Melvin Purvis.
Dillinger was said to have had many an apple at the front of the Red Lion, across the street from his fate.
Dillinger went to the movie but the FBI didn't enter. A policeman had been called by the box office when they noticed the FBI lurking about and mistook them for thieves. The cop was held in the back of his own police car to keep him from reaching police who might tip Dillinger off. When the movie ended John walked out with Anna and another girl from the house of ill repute, and the FBI opened fire.
On the crowd.
As bodies began to fall around him he took off down the street and the shots rang out on Lincoln Avenue. He got to an alley which today is next to a Mexican restaurant and collapsed face first. An unidentified FBI agent came up behind him and fired the coup de grace, a bullet through the back of his head to make sure he was dead.
Two women hit by gunfire almost died. No one sued in those days, so none of the injured sued the FBI.
As word spread that Dillinger was dead over 20,000 people filled the street. Women dipped their dresses in his blood. A man was caught trying to amputate his ear. It was a circus scene. For years afterward, a hazy figure has been seen running from the marquee to the alley and then disappearing like a ghost at the first telephone pole. But then again, there are a lot of bars around there......
Anna Sage never got the reward money and was deported. The moral of the story? When you deal with the FBI, GET IT IN WRITING!
The Red Lion was haunted,too. Lincoln Avenue on that one block has a few ghost stories. They say a woman who lived upstairs at the Lion haunted the bathrooms, and would hold the door when women tried to exit the bathroom. The Red Lion closed in December 2007, but there were always interesting and fascinating men and women there.
As I walked up to Dell's door, I thought about meeting two of my heroes.
Photo from Jay Friedheim -- from l to r: Jay Friedheim, Del Close, Justin Pomeroy, Cindy (?), and Timothy Leary. Del didn't meet Leary until the early 80's!
G. Gordon Liddy had first met acid guru Timothy Leary when he arrested him for what later turned out to be peat moss. Liddy would go on to be the only man connected to Watergate and Richard Nixon to go to prison after everyone else had made a deal and talked! Even if Nixon hadn't kept his word, Liddy had. Sentenced to prison, Liddy would parade naked in front of the other prisoners to the showers each morning, singing in German the Horst Wessel song which an early nanny had taught him as a child. G. Gordon Liddy showed he was a true bad ass and no one dared bother him in prison.
Because Liddy kept his word and lived the way he wanted to, many hippies respected him.
I had first seen Leary in the news in the early 60's promoting acid. LSD wasn't illegal yet, and I was very curious to experience it. I read Leary's books and articles that I found in the library and finally took it with a guide as Leary recommended. It was before I had smoked pot, drank a beer, smoked a cigarette.
Now I was about to meet these two icons from different sides of that era. Before you read any further you should look at this video of Ken Kesey and The Acid Test. Del first met Kesey in California and tried LSD with Merry Pranksters. His trip reminded him of his father's suicide, and after that Del didn't care much for acid. He got heavy into speed however, and would do the special effects lights for the acid test speeding his ass off. He had a series of overhead projectors from schools and many chemicals that he mixed together for an array of effects. Now, watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcstOdT1Pe0
Before there were raves, The Acid Tests were the first traveling raves. Going from city to city in a psychedelic bus, passing out acid for free and having The Grateful Dead play became a legendary way to try LSD.
In 1982 however, Tim and Liddy were friends.
Del's door was open and I entered. Del hadn't cleaned his place in years, and cat hair dustballs rolled gently along the floor as I entered.
Del called me in, and I walked into his bedroom. Del was sitting on his bed. Liddy was sitting in the chair. Leary was on the floor with his legs crossed. I sat at the end of the bed as Del introduced me. Leary had a sparkle in his eyes, like the kind you see in a kid's eyes at Christmas. Liddy was formal but polite.
The smell of pot was pervasive, and Del was rolling a joint and talking to the two men about improvisation and why it was different from ad libbing.
The joint came to me and I puffed on it and then passed the joint to Liddy.
He didn't take it. He didn't even look at it. I realized I was passing the joint to a man who might arrest me on the spot and got a bit afraid, pulling it back!
Then Liddy began asking some of the best questions I ever heard anyone ask on improv. To be able to ask questions that well showed a remarkable intelligence.
A couple of hours passed and Del, Tim and I smoked pot and spoke of the days. Tim had never met Kesey in the 60's or gone to an acid test!
Liddy left. All the while never mentioning the pot we were consuming.
I got to smoke pot with three of my heroes. Even though one didn't partake!
Posted at 11:11 am by Psychomike
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Donuts, Speed and the Road!
CHAPTER 6: THE ROAD TRIP
The first thing people from abroad realize when they come here is that this country is huge. It is several nations in one, and not just by geography. I was starting to get a travel itch, I had no relationship with any one girl, and wanted to see the country. No car, no real idea where I wanted to go. Just to leave Atlanta and see the place. I knew I wanted to see Big Sur, and travel on the coast of California. That was about it. I sat in the Krispy Kreme letting the black beauties I had taken earlier wear off watching a sheet of sugar fall like a waterfall as the donuts rolled through. I had a fake ID, a draft card that had been passed to the stage at an anti- Vietnam War protest that I pocketed when it got to me. Since it was going to be burned, I figured it wouldn't be missed.
Speed, amphetamines were everywhere in the 1950's and 1960's in America. They cut across all lines, all politics. Black Beauties, Dexedrine, and on and on. College kids used them to cram for tests with, truck drivers used them to drive long distances without sleep, doctors prescribed them like candy. Speed. Mercury, with wings that pushed you forever forward and made you talk to people ordinarily that you would ignore.
Like the guy next to me who took a couple of dexies in front of me and the donuts. He worked at a hardware store and had been up all night doing inventory. Bosses got a lot of work out of you when you were on speed.
Hugh Hefner, the man who discovered that by having the girl next door naked in a magazine he would have a big hit wrote his philosophy on speed- and large amounts of Coca Cola.
Need to diet? Take speed. Need to work? Take speed. Doing nothing? Take speed. Before I left home, all my parent's friends had it in their medicine cabinet. It wasn't even considered a drug. Some doctors, speeding their own asses off, would mix it with vitamins and give you a health shot.
Pretty soon some hippies were doing their own shooting.
Politicians used it. And this guy next to me. He started talking and I started listening and he handed me a dexie the way a person gets you a drink at a bar. He was talking about New Orleans and Mardis Gras.
That was it. The first stop on my odyssey. I didn't have to wonder about how to get there, everyone was hitchhiking then. Lines of kids on blocks waiting for cars to pick them up. Waiting in order. Like a taxi stand but with people. Mardis Gras.
Speed loosened the tongue, and this guy tells me about Sandy. The number one hooker in Atlanta. She dated politicians, city officials, even Mayors from cities around Atlanta. All this turned out to be true. He put on his cowboy hat and told me to come with him to meet her.
So with nothing else to do as usual, I did. Along the way he told me that they were going to drive to New Orleans and rent a place. She was going to hook, he was going to avoid the police. He was AWOL from the Army. We drove to her place, a nice house in a nicer hood than hippies lived in and we went to the door. It was late, but the lights were on inside. He knocked and Sandy came to the door.
Sandy was not a hippie. She looked like she could work in a bank. She was dressed more like my mom than the women I had been balling, and invited us in. When we got inside she kissed the guy whose name I still didn't know passionately- then turned and did the same to me.
I was hard instantly and she grinded her hips into mine. Jesus fucking Christ. The cowboy hat said, "This is.....", and paused because we had yet to exchange names. "Flash", I said, "Randy is my real name". It wasn't, but Randall was the name on the draft card. There was a smell in the room, but I couldn't identify it.
"Wanna smoke some pot?", Sandy asked and I said, ok.
"It's from Vietnam", she said.
I should mention here that pot in Atlanta had started out really good. Panama Red was around for example- but as the pot market grew that pot stopped leaving California. Mexican pot, often sold as Columbian, was weak. We didn't know it then, but compared with the seedless and hybrids to come God knows how we got high on it. Vietnamese pot I had never run into before. I was about to be kicked on my ass.
" I have some Thai weed too, dipped in opium", Sandy said, "Let me slip into something more comfortable" and she left us sitting on the couch.
"I'm Danny", the hardware cowboy said, and we gave each other skin ( one person held their hand palm up and the other slapped it with his hand, coming from above). Had she ever dated Lester Maddox I asked. "Naw, he likes guys", Hardware Cowboy said. I found this hard to believe.
"It's true", Danny said, "He has had people approach some of the hippies on the strip". I figured it was the speed talking.
Years later, Maddox would die of AIDS. He would deny he got it sexually, but his doctor would have no comment.
Sandy came in wearing a robe she was falling out of. She was hot, but I wondered where this was all going.
She sat down between us and took out a five inch stick with pot on it, tied together with a string and covered in something gooey. She unraveled a little, put some of the weed in the pipe she brought with her, lit a match and inhaled it. She turned to me and pointed to the smoke still in her mouth and pointed to my mouth, and kissed me open mouth as she blew the smoke into my mouth. The effect was sensual, but it was also an immediate buzz. This was not Mexican weed. I was already stoned.
She did the same routine for Danny, then me again. About the third time she was rubbing my cock as she blew the smoke into Danny.
Then she brought out the Vietnamese. As she rolled it into a joint, Danny told her I wanted to go to Mardis Gras. She said there was room in the van. "Cool", I said.
Vietnamese pot was really strong. I was wasted before the joint was done, and Sandy blew me while stroking off Danny. I was toking the remainder of the joint and passing it to Danny.
I thought to myself, this was going to be one cool road trip.
Posted at 02:43 am by Psychomike
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Sunday, January 20, 2008
Intermission
I've had some questions about this blog so let's get to them today as we take a break from this autohagiography.
Q: How often do you make additions to this blog?
A: When I feel like it, have time or the muse demands it. The best way to keep up with this blog is off to the side of this blog. There is a place to add your email to subscribe to the site. Then when I do updates you'll know.
Q: I just discovered your blog. Are there some chapters I should read first to get an idea of this?
A. Some people begin by reading a chapter, then start at the beginning. Some people read the chapters in random order. Some read the chapter twice. Once to read it and the second time a few days later to see the comments added. If you look at the bottom of the posts you'll see the word comment, if there is a number there comments have been left. Click on it.
This has been the coolest part of this project. There is what I write, and then the comments left by readers often end up being as long or longer that my post. This makes the blog organic in a way that blogs that leave comments usually don't explore. Most comments at places like Myspace or on blogs are like the comments left in a high school yearbook. Which brings us to this question:
Q: How did you get the idea to tell this story in the form of a blog? I ask that because I first thought blogs would bring back diaries and personal histories. I had yet to find one that measured up to that standard until I found this blog. Fake friends on Myspace and Friendster, blogs that reveal nothing or too much- I had given up on the medium ever living up to its potential.
A. I think part of it was that I had little contact with blogs and those I did see were usually sent to me for my blog http://allnightsurfing.blogdrive.com about the cool and weird stuff I find on the web. The ones I saw were exceptional. When I first saw Myspace it was advertising for bands and that was fine with me. I just presumed there were loads of blogs like this on the net.
So the fact I knew little of these sites probably helped. The idea of what a blog could be intrigued me. The comments part has been a fantastic part of this project and is a surprise for me. I never know what will be left there. Lester Maddox's chicken recipe is something I couldn't have predicted. Or thought to post! The leaving of comments started about half way through what I'd written so far without prompting from me. I hadn't even thought of it!
Q: When are you getting to the Church of the Subgenius again?
A: This is still, for a few more months the 25th anniversary of the Subgenius Convention I hosted, and film screenings and devivals I set up. So in the same random order these chapters are coming together there will be more on the Church. If I could tell you when I would, but all I can say is soon.
There are some people who only read the Atlanta parts, some that only read the Del parts, and a large hungry group that want me to toss in a Subgenius chapter. Most people read all of it. I thank you all!
Q: In your chapters on Del, which history wise are mind expanding about countercultures and I enjoy these parts very much, how do you know what was said by Del when you weren't there? Isn't that more of a scriptwriting exercise?
A: I knew Del and saw him daily for over 10 years. So many of these stories I heard more than once, or got into discussions with him about. My chapters on him are based more on the way we discussed the stories and the way he told the stories. A scriptwriter would be writing about someone either non existent or that the writer never met.
Q: How long is this going to be?
A: I had a long running joke with my pals that I would write CASANOVA 2020: DIARY OF A CAD, and that would be 20 volumes long. I suspect when I die I will still be posting. I would suggest going to the restroom and getting your popcorn now, as the next chapter is going to be about Del and James Dean. They actually had a class together!
Posted at 03:59 pm by Psychomike
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Saturday, January 26, 2008
Del,The Mob,Lenny,James Dean!
Close Encounters With The Mob, James Dean, Ray Charles and Lenny Bruce
Del, like most Beats of the day, was into bongos.
Bongos, a percussion instrument, were fun to play along with music and popped up as backing for poetry readings and performance artists. They were much cheaper than a drum kit, easy to learn and believe it or not, a chick magnet. So Del decided to take a class on bongos taught by an actor friendly music teacher. Bongos are cool, even if its hard to imagine today people lining up to take classes to learn to play them. To see the art of bongos, click here:
New York City was abuzz about a new actor in town named James Dean who at the time was working primarily on TV short story shows. Short stories were once in major magazines, were adapted for radio and were very popular during this time. Today short stories are rare. Movies and TV shows that have a different cast and plot either every week or a collection of stories in one film are avoided. In those days, short stories dominated.
To have a buzz on you in New York City in the 1950's without a press agent was and is unheard of to this day. James Dean was using improv in his performances (which pisses off other actors but electrifies audiences who can sense anything can happen), and even Del had heard of him and was curious.
Del walked up the stairs to the bongo classes and entered- to see James Dean sitting on the floor quietly looking at his bongos.
Del thought he looked a bit too preppy and didn't try to talk to him, but the word was out the teacher would have a party at his pad and all the students were invited.
Del made it to the party and there was Dean in the center of the party playing, and not too well, the bongos. Del went into the kitchen to make a drink, talked to people in the kitchen and went to the living room, where James Dean was still playing the bongos. Del spoke to other actors and made another drink and spoke to the teacher, and walked into the living room where Dean was still playing.
Three hours later Del decided he should go and went out to grab his jacket. In the living room. At this point several actresses were sitting around Dean intently watching him play badly. A guy walked over to Dean and he stopped playing. He rose up as the girls started to speak to "Jimmy", but he was involved with his buddy that had entered and barely acknowledged the girls. As he left Del turned to one of the party goers and said, "Another queer actor. What's the big deal?", and decided to stay for another drink.
The big deal of course, was that the "secret something" that turns actors into superstars is the ability to appeal to both men and women at the same time. And James Dean had it. To Del however, he was just an annoying jerk banging on the bongos.
Years later in Chicago Del was doing his standup act that he was trying to develop and would do heroin with Lenny Bruce. At the same time Bob Newhart was playing in Chicago ( he would go on to make the biggest selling comedy album in history- a feat which has not been topped). Bob Newhart was not into drugs or getting wasted on alcohol, but Del respected his act. This unusual trio hung out together at the Old Town Ale House while one or the other was playing Mr. Kelly's.
Here is how the bar looks now:
Heroin consciousness is not pretty. It takes about two weeks to get addicted. You know you are because you don't get sick anymore. At that point, you have spent two weeks throwing up when you shoot the drug. With many drugs you might be led to a position of being too trusting with people or situations. With heroin it's the opposite. People you don't know, you think you have figured out. Intentions the user believes are easy to figure out, and their intentions are always worse than your own. Getting high with different people or alone- you are probably going to nod out and fall asleep. Del once shot up with Ray Charles while he was in Chicago, they both shot up using Ray's limo as a table. I asked what they talked about. They didn't. They just nodded off together listening to jazz! Add to this that Del was also drinking- downer's paradise.
At this same time, the mob was "collecting" comedians. They owned the best clubs (until Hefner started the Playboy Clubs), they ran talent agencies which also subbed as prostitution fronts, they could help a comedian break from the pack. Del feared them and did not want to end up owing his career to the mob. So he would play folk venues and small neighborhood joints, avoiding nightclubs and Vegas.
One night Del did his show, and the mobster in the audience with the hot "niece" declared he "wanted the kid" and one of his flunkies went off to fetch Del.
Del realized what was happening and said once he changed he would come out and talk to them. He checked the windows and one opened. He climbed out the window and took off into the night, never to see the mobster again.
FOOTNOTE: You can watch James Dean warning about reckless driving:
Posted at 05:03 pm by Psychomike
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Saturday, February 02, 2008
GOODBYE TO PATTI, HOW DO YOU SPEAK TO THE PRETTIEST GIRL?
Things were winding down with stripper Patti Petite when she dropped a bombshell on me. At this point, everything was a bombshell with her. Flying me out to be with her and Marilyn Chambers. Her mom re-introducing her to cocaine. Being a child hooker. I can't honestly recall anything being simple- but the biggest shock was to come.
Patti towards the end of whatever it was we had, vanished for longer periods of time but would pop up to share wealth, cocaine and money. The bridge at Playboy was burned, and her mom had moved back to Chicago to help watch after her for the mob. I had discovered that many women had noticed the two of us together and were very curious about what Patti saw in me, so I found myself at the punk rock bar NEO and at the Blues Brothers bar cashing in on their curiosity.
One night she popped in and was not her usual sexy self. She was nervous and hesitant, something she never was before, and it wasn't drugs or booze.
"I have to go on trial", she said, "and I may have to go to jail".
My heart sank. But that comment, it would turn out wasn't the big bombshell.
"I was involved in a series of robberies, and we got caught with stolen goods and cocaine". A previous boyfriend and his girl gang had decided to go to Wheaton and do a series of home robberies in one day. That day happened to be Christmas, and they hit families away for church.
I was floored. No mention of this had happened before, and I for once had nothing to say.
Wheaton was dry at the time, very conservative and the last place to go on a crime spree in Illinois. And Christmas........ yeech.
She was involved in some complicated court nonsense, that involved her testifying against the guy, whom she was now living with. Are you following this? He would end up serving a year with time off, and I couldn't even follow it all. But she couldn't meet with the attorneys where they lived, so could she meet them at my place and pretend it was hers?
I said yes, and saw it as the way to end things with her.
The lawyers came, fell for it. She went to the trial, got off scott free and the guy- was back on the streets in months. I still don't know how they pulled that one off.
She called to tell me she was going off to California, to start a new life. I wished her well and was about to meet a woman who was as different from Patti as one could be.
A few months later Del showed up from the adult book store with a paper bag with two films in it. Films that she was on the cover of. She had become an instant star in the porn world. She spoke to me a few times on the phone to apologize to me "for everything", whatever that meant, and if you missed the prologue way back on page one how she ended up was either dead, legless or as a hair stylist. Her mom and her cocaine must have been proud.
Her mom did try to blackmail me at one point, threatening to tell my family that I had no contact with about Patti and I. I gave her a lawyers name I didn't know, and she never bothered me again. What a mom!
I felt I had been put through the ringer. I realized I had never had a real honest relationship with a woman up to that point, and wondered if I ever would.
and I saw a woman.
How Do You Speak To An Angel
A son who is cursed with a harridan mother
Or a weak simpering father at best
Is raised to play out the timeless classical motives
Of filial love and incest
How does he
Speak to a
How does he speak to the prettiest girl
How does he
Talk to her
What does he say for an opening line
What does he say if he's shy
What do you do with your pragmatic passions
With your classically neurotic style
How do you deal with your vague self-comprehensions
What do you do when you lie
How do you
Speak to a
How do you speak to the prettiest girl
How do you speak to her
How do you dance on the head of a pin
When you're on the outside looking in
How do you
Speak to a
How do you speak to the prettiest girl
How do you
Speak to a
How do you speak to the prettiest girl
You just say - Hello, hello, hello Baby
LOU REED
She was tall, had a cleft chin (which I've always been a sucker for) was with a date and I spoke to her. She laughed, she was from the suburbs, and she was unforgettable. There was something nice about her, but her smile revealed a lustful side. She asked if she could have the olives in my drink and ate them, proclaiming her love of olives.
But she was with a date! He wasn't too happy and suggested they leave. I couldn't ask for her number in front of him and she walked out of my life and out of the bar. An hour later a pal would show up and ask if I wanted to go to the 950 Club and off we went. We walked in and I looked up and there she was.
I couldn't believe it. I walked over to her and there was no boyfriend in site. He was in the john. We exchanged numbers, and I promised I would call.
I didn't know it then, but I was about to learn the true meaning of love.
And I gave her my olives before her date returned!
Posted at 09:28 pm by Psychomike
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Saturday, February 23, 2008
The Key To Subgenius Slack!
This site has grown very large, hey some of the stories have even ended! Eventually I suppose they all will. Here is an easy guide to the posts with links so you can surf the site at your leisure. Hopefully this will make your trips here more rewarding.
I use to have a running gag that I would write my life story and would have to be 20 volumes long and include the history of America's subcultures. From the Beats to the Compass Players, Psychotronic Film Society to The Nervous Set, the hippies to Bettie Page, punk rock to The Church of the SubGenius. It is a joke no longer and eventually I'll get to it all.
The introduction:
Prologue; Patti Petite, NEO and punk rock, John Belushi and the illegal Blues Brothers club:
A SOUTHERN BOY COMES NORTH: The Red Squad holds a gun to my head, moving to Chicago during winter, The Great Speckled Bird, a riot at my high school
A SEXUAL JAM SESSION: My sex with Patti reminds me of sex I had in the park years before as a hippie with Mona, why sex is like musical jam sessions, Patti reveals her mom turned her into a hooker at age 12. http://subgeniusslack.blogdrive.com/archive/6.html
CHAPTER 2: THE MONOLOG: The Road To "Bob", H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Anger and Big Al Crowley http://subgeniusslack.blogdrive.com/archive/11.html
DEL'S INSPIRATION: What inspired Del to create the long form improv style? A French arts movement! (As far as I know, I am the only person Del discussed this with)
CHAPTER 3 MUSIC MAYHEM AT SUBGENIUS SLACK: I use one of the French techniques to create a song out of 25 songs! Must have been a slow day....
LSD'S JOHNNY APPLESEED : How rogue CIA agents spread LSD into the culture, Al Hubbard spreads the drug, an article from The Chicago Tribune on who I am
SEX, MOVIES AND MAGICK: I lie about my age to get in to see Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger movies, I meet George Ellis aka Bestoink Dooley
THE IMPACT OF SENATOR McCARTHY: Joe had a major impact on the times del grew up in, but after the fall of the Soviet Union we have discovered he was right!
BOB, TEXAS, THE CHURCH: I post a piece on the church, only to be corrected by Ivan Stang. Since I kept a diary during this period, it will be interesting to see how the origins have changed over the years! http://subgeniusslack.blogdrive.com/archive/48.html
I MET G. GORDON LIDDY AND TIM LEARY: Chicago backround: The Red Lion, John Dillinger, smoking pot with Del, Tim Leary in front of G. Gordon Liddy
DEL JOINS KESEY'S ACID TEST Del joins up with Ken Kesey's acid test and does the light show
THE 1969 ATLANTA POP FESTIVAL I see Led Zeppelin for the first time and meet Owsley!
JIMI HENDRIX IN GEORGIA Hendrix is the first national rock show I go to!
AS DEL LAY DYING The story of Del's last party
ATLANTA TURNS ON HIPPIES The Manson murders changes the way the police and public view us. I decide to become a writer
HOW TO SPEAK HIP - Hear the record Del did that taught hippies how to talk!
MARDIS GRAS 1970 The good, the bad and the ugly
DEL CLOSE DOES GET SMART! Del hopes for a recurring role on Get Smart!
A NIGHT OF COCAINE Partying in a motel on the way to Clovis, New Mexico
WHEN YOUR HERO DIES What happened during the maing of my first play, THE BETTY PAGE STORY? Now it can be told. I also say bye to Arthur C. Clarke, Bettie Page and Forrest J. Ackerman
HOW BUDDY HOLLY LED ME TO JAIL! Every Feburary I get to think of Buddy Holly dying, and the night I turned 16 in jail because I was a fan!
LINCOLN AND GROWING UP AT THE END OF THE OLD SOUTH
This is a talk I gave here in Chicago about growing up in the end days of the romantisized South and the Lincoln no one talks about today.
CALIFORNIA BABYLON My hitchhiking experiences and finding the cool people in California.
THE MAD WORLD OF SEVERN DARDEN The bravest comedian takes on 2 colleges, and follows a path leading directly to Del Close.
Posted at 02:56 pm by Psychomike
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Monday, March 03, 2008
Del Joins Kesey's Acid Test
Del joins the Merry Pranksters
"Kid Charlemagne"
While the music played
You worked by candlelight
Those San Franciscan nights,
You were the best around
Just by chance
You crossed a diamond with a pearl
You turned it on the world
That's when you turned the world around
Did you feel like Jesus?
Did you realize
That you were a champion in their eyes?
On the hill the stuff was
Laced with kerosene
But your was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your Technicolor motorhome
Every A-frame
Had your number on the wall
You must've had it all
You'd go to L.A. on a dare and you'd go it alone
Clean this mess up
Else we'll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get 'em all outta here
Is there gas in the car?
Yes, there's gas in the car
I think the people down the hall
Know who you are…
Careful what you carry
'Cause the man is wise
You are still an outlaw
In their eyes…
-STEELY DAN song about LSD manufacturer Owsley
Del opened his eyes and quickly squinted under the lights. A barrage of math symbols, pyramids, stars and planets returned. But behind all that was a nagging thought. One that simply wouldn't go away.
Del was a child called in to sit at the kitchen table. He sits obediently as his dad raises the battery acid to his lips. He starts to drink it.
Del's eyes open. He is tripping but he is not enjoying it. He looks around to see a room full of people laying around him. A few are nude. Most are lost in the music and lights. Music, there is a live band playing. He isn't home. He's at an Acid Test. A burly guy built like a wrestler turns to smile at him.
"Owsley made this batch. Isn't this acid great?", the man says.
Stanley Augustus Owsley
Del hears the music. This isn't the hillbilly rock he despised as a folkie. This wasn't the children's love songs like SHE LOVES YOU. This was music going into directions only jazz had been before. This was The Grateful Dead. Del sat up, smiling. The thoughts had passed. He was right there now.
The many faces of Ken Kesey
The man he was talking to had written "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest" and was not the kind of person Del would have previously hung with. A jock who had married his high school sweetheart and had a family was not Del's style. But his book had touched a chord with Del, and Del had recognized immediately that the book was about a real life mental institution. One that the writer had taken LSD in. Ken Kesey was no longer the athlete.
He was now a pioneer on the open range of LSD.
http://www.concertposterart.com/images/3228.jpg There has been some controversy over whether or not Del was involved in The Acid Tests. One look at the flyer above the word TEST and you will note his name. I call that, conclusive proof.
Del stands up and sways to the music, begging off doing the lights tonight. He tells Kesey he doesn't want to fool around with the lights and chemicals tripping. Del says he should wait until he can get some crystal to use and do the lights. Kesey smiles his Buddha grin, and Del sits back down. He looks over to the overhead projectors and carton and containers of chemicals. Ken pats Del on the shoulder and steps over people to stand by the band.
This is an acid test.
Crystal is crystal methedrine. Owsley had an interest in the drug as did most speed freaks in the post World War 2 era. Our pilots had been given Dexedrine during the war and came home looking for more. German pilots had been given crystal methedrine to keep them awake- Hitler received 4 to 7 shots a day of the drug. Today we understand the paranoia, anger and devastating effects of speed on the body and mind. In those days however, diet clinics operated legally injecting people with speed and vitamin B-12. Speed was taken by everyone. GI's used it on guard duty, which was how Elvis discovered the drugs. Students used it to cram for exams. Owsley had made his crystal to raise the money to start making LSD.
Del smiled as a naked girl danced in front of him. He was now in the crew known as the Merry Pranksters, and his job would be to run the light show. This wasn't a job in the usual sense, there was no pay as such. A place to crash, food, drugs and sex. Traveling as Del had in the carny from town to town. Only this circus was psychedelic.
As his hallucinations died down Del walked over to the discarded school projectors and stared at them. He began to pour the chemicals onto the screen of one of the projectors, and started swirling them with a paint brush. The crowd let out a cheer and people began rousing themselves to stand up and dance. Del was digging the dancing, the music, and he was getting the hang of the chemicals. Blobs of colors shifted and moved, transformed and reformed again.
Del looked out at the smiling faces of the trippers and knew he belonged. He couldn't wait to work the light show on speed.
Posted at 10:50 am by Psychomike
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Monday, March 10, 2008
The 1969 Atlanta Pop Festival!
MY FIRST POP FESTIVAL
I was at Atlantis Rising when I first saw the poster advertising the Atlanta Pop Festival. I stared at the line-up: there was Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, Ten Wheel Drive, Spirit, Joe Cocker, The Chicago Transit Authority, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sweetwater, Al Kooper, Pacific Gas & Electric, Dave Brubeck, Chuck Berry (who was a no-show, because the streets were blocked for miles) and a new act called Led Zeppelin.
This I knew was where I had to be, and every moment from that day on I thought, talked and awaited the festival. Festivals were a new idea, and I had no idea what to bring with me. I knew there would be refreshment stands, so I figured there would be enough for 20,000 people. What I couldn't know then was there would be over 200,000 people, the heat would go over 100 every day, and that my life would be changed, yet again, just the day after the festival. I say four days because I was high a day and a half after the fest as you will see......
It was a good thing there were so many hippies- because we all shared what we had from pot to beer those three days. There were so many highlights- seeing Janis perform. Canned Heat got the crowd on it's feet and boogying, Grand Funk arrived with a story about having thier van roll over (which would years later turn out to be false), but put on a great show anyway. Dave Brubeck played jazz to an enthusiastic crowd (we didn't have the kind of niched marketing they do now, we didn't know we weren't supposed to like jazz!), I had a great time. I even heard Johnny Rivers play SECRET AGENT MAN! I still love that song!
Not everyone on the poster was there, but for me the highlight was Led Zeppelin. Originally the band was to be called THE NEW YARDBIRDS, but what I saw that afternoon tripping my ass off was nothing like The Yardbirds.
As Jimmy Page, wearing a farmer's hat to keep the sun out of his eyes played and Robert Plant used the microphone for effect, I was transfixed. It was huge, heroic in parts and grandiose in others. I would see the band 8 times over the years, but this show clocking in at under one hour would remain the best performance I ever saw of the band. This was the blues taken to a new level, a mystical level that the audience sat stunned by. A good thing the audience was stunned- critics would hate the band for their first three albums. This was before any reviews had come out on the band, and the crowd's reaction was honest. Half way through the set women were heading toward the stage, and one woman ran across the stage to hug Robert Plant- and was promptly removed. Raw sex appeal, mystical blues, heroic riffs- there was nothing else like them. Janis had impressed me with her control of the crowd as she slinked across the stage, but Led Zeppelin had taken me to a new place.
There was an LSD freakout tent, but there were no drugs for people having bad trips. There were plenty of salt tablets that had been passed out during the heat, so as trippers entered with stories of UFO's and the fest going on forever they were handed a salt tablet and told it was a downer. Then the volunteers would ask people about their jobs, parents- they would come down instantly. I learned about the placebo effect watching the people enter the tent!
When the festival ended I was handed a flyer about a party in Piedmont Park the next day, and I couldn't wait to go keep the festival high going.
I got to the park and walked to the bandshell as Hampton Grease Band were playing, and I noticed the skull and lightening bolt that Owsley had created for the Dead on music equipment. Peter Pan, a blonde I was hot for told me Owsley was at the Fest too! She asked if I knew what he looked like. I said no.
Spirit came on and were phenomenal, much better than at the Festival where bad sound had done them in. When I heard someone say that Owsley was giving out acid. I looked over and saw a guy with a handle bar moustache, older than most of the crowd, with a group of people around him. I walked over and sure enough, people were walking away with hits of acid. I decided I wanted one too.
I approached him after I saw him hand two people in a row the drug and held out my hand for one. He abruptly said, "No way". He then handed one to the person behind me. I was persistent. "There is no way you are even 17", he said to me, "this is not going to be your first trip". I felt crushed. My ID! I had my fake ID! It was resume time I thought, and I pulled it out and handed it to him.
I certainly did not look like a "Randall", but I started talking. I had done peyote, I had read Leary and I was ready. I had actually done those things, and he looked me up and down and handed me a hit. I took it on the spot, and he was called away by one of the roadies.
I had taken acid before, but nothing like this. At some point the Dead were jamming and Duane Allman was onstage and a girl named Mona and I walked over to a bridge to join others having sex there. I was timing myself to the music, but had no sense of how time was flying by. We finished and it was 2 am! I went back to watch the show and grooved until it stopped. One of my pals offered me a ride home but I decided to walk!
I walked back to my Morningside duplex and the sun was beating down on me. I couldn't open my eyes fully because it was too bright. I got to my place and looked at the quilt on my bed. I saw people rising out of the quilt, laughed and looked again only to see a quilt. I decided to play a Donovan album I had and it sounded like the notes were breathing, flowing in the air. I walked onto the porch and the sky was a psychedelic barrage of colors with a big bright sun in the center.
One of my roommates came out and asked if I was ok. I said I was, but I needed my sunglasses. He laughed and said it was 4:30 in the morning!
Owsley went to prison. I quickly realized I would never get acid like that again. Window pane was close, but no cigar.
The images of those four days remain in my memories and I still smile when I remember them. If only the DEA stories of flashbacks had been true. They said years later you would find yourself in an intense acid trip that would come out of nowhere.
I'm still waiting!
Posted at 07:28 pm by Psychomike
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