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Sunday, October 14, 2007
DEL'S WORLD
Del loved jazz and folk music. Science fiction. Mixed with booze and narcotics.
I have been asked if I've ever thought of turning this blog into a book, but the problem is this is written in the form of a blog- and you have to be able to follow links.
This is especially true today.
Though racism may have ruled around the country, in New York City this was not the case. Especially in the Village. The Village was an oasis in America. While experimentation and spontaneity frightened most Americans, the Village was built on it. Del heard the word Beat, and he knew the word from his carny days. It meant a person who was beat down, on the downs. But in the Village Beat was a rhythm, was a rebel, was a riff that emerged while no one was watching. It was words following music and it was hip. Hipper than thou.
To the masses it was Maynard G. Krebbs on Dobie Gillis. It was Beat NIK as in Sput NIK - there was something vaguely communist about this much freedom.
The Village was asking political questions no one dared ask, it was chicks that would live with and have sex with you, long before hippies made it a national pastime. It was nights of poetry, stoned and nodding out to jazz riffs so cool- well, this cool:
Miles Davis and John Coltrane
Miles Davis cool and collected measuring each note while Coltrane walked, no strolled into uncharted territory. Miles wasn't his shadow as much as his co-conspirator. Carefully measuring each note and laying down a beat so Coltrane could soar. It was rooms full of smoke, drinks and drugs and waking up to find you had just been somewhere without benefit of luggage.
It was Thelonius Monk. The tragic junkie. A German film group shot him for a documentary while he was being evicted from his home. He mistakenly thought they would help him with the rent. No chance. Not with these kind of images of America mistreating its artists.
Yet he played until the cops arrested him for heroin found in his pad. No one since has played like him.
Pete Seeger. Del hated the new rock and roll. This hybrid of redneck segregationist county and poor black music. But he dug folk because it dealt with issues and today and with the sound of yesterday. Pete would praise the Soviet Union and hate McCarthy and sing the songs of America's struggle- the struggle of labor.
Peter, Paul and Mary. Were they The Monkees of folk? Del actually auditioned to be a member of the group, put together to be a modern take on The Weavers, a famous folk act. Mary was the Village- the hundreds of pretty girls who would argue politics all night and still be creative and knew the past and the present and dreamed of a future when they wouldn't be called an old maid for not getting married before they were 21. Mary and the hundreds of Mary's like her didn't know it, but they were living a dream most American women wouldn't have until years later.
They may have been pre-fabricated, but oddly they are one of the few folks acts that actually lasted. They still record and tour!
Chet Baker. Saint Chet. There was more pain in one note of Chet's music than in most blues. Hear him sing My Funny Valentine and he pulls your heart out by the root and takes it around the corner. He was as stoned as his audience, but he was just trying to hide the pain.
Billie Holiday. She lived three lives in one, and they were all lives you wouldn't want. Heroin may have been the least of her problems. But hear her sing and you heard the experiences of every black woman that had ever lived. They called her Lady Day. But she was the Queen.
Forbidden Planet. Science fiction rocked in the 1950's and no audience was ready for the re-telling of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST on a different planet but here it was. And it had a sound. The sound of the Theremin, a musical instrument that played air! It was the impossibly beautiful 17 year old Anne Francis and the coolest robot that ever was, Robbie. He could manufacture booze! A film so cool that it's still cool and still holds up.
The Day The Earth Stood Still. Michael Rennie will live forever as will Gort- the second coolest robot that ever was. The squares thought they were going to see a robot rampage movie, imagine their surprise when they got a message pleading for hope and dignity- in a world that had long ago given up both.
Science fiction was everywhere, horror was huge and even b-movies warned us of science and fear out of control.
Even on the radio. Few had TV's but radio held our imagination above all. The audience couldn't see the actors or the story unfold, but they could imagine it. Imagination is the image/nation!
Radio had Dimension X and X Minus 1 and the science fiction writers were the best there was. Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and many more who would become household names. Radio was also the familiar, decades of Jack Benny and Amos 'n Andy and Burns and Allen because America liked the familiar.
But Del liked the New, and he wanted to find a way to merge the coolness of a Miles solo with the words of a Kerouac- in comedy.
The beat, the beat, the beat........
Posted at 07:34 pm by Psychomike
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
BALLING* IN THE SIXTIES
First guy: Did you know Baptists have banned having sex standing up?
Second guy: No. Why?
First guy: It's too much like dancing!
My first time having sex was unconventional http://subgeniusslack.blogdrive.com/archive/37.html , but I was a novice and hadn't learned sex, I had studied it. I had read all about it in the books that filled in for adolescent and kids views http://subgeniusslack.blogdrive.com/archive/25.html which as soon as I kissed a girl I realized was all bullshit. Kids and teens, even the ones having sex, were prone to lying. In the magazines I was reading there were stories about everything from the Kama sutra, then I started reading about sex magick, to articles about everything from oral sex to everything but the missionary position.
These articles are all over mainstream magazines, TV talk shows, radio talk shows today. But most of them were illegal in 1960's America.
Charlie Chaplin had found himself in a divorce case because he had asked his wife for oral sex. The asking itself was grounds for divorce. She got the divorce, loads of his money and was to receive a piece of his films whenever they were re-released. That led to him refusing to show his films until she died! He left the country after that, but most writers repeat the story of him leaving over politics. No, he left over our sexual politics.
Sodomy laws were not directed against gays, though they were used against them. They were originally directed against heterosexual couples. Anal and oral sex were both covered, both could be invoked alone or separately as an excuse for divorce. The woman's word was always taken.
How long were these rules on the books? Until 2003! "On June 26, 2003, the United States Supreme Court ruled that state sodomy laws can no longer be enforced against consenting adults acting in private. This affects laws in the remaining thirteen states which had not yet followed the trend of repealing or invalidating such laws at the state level." http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2269/?200724
Psychiatrists had declared that oral sex was a sign of "latent homosexuality" and had declared it a perversion. That kept guys from complaining loudly about the law. And it was the real reason prostitution and mistresses flourished in the time of the Booze Generation. They were the girls you could ask to do things that if you asked your wife, could cost you everything. Including all your friends thinking you were gay.
In 1972 a book would come out and sell millions of copies and revolutionize sex in America called The Joy Of Sex. But this was years later. I doubt few of the people reading the book had any idea they were actually breaking laws far worse than any pot smoker was. A man in most states could lose their home, their money and even access to his kids if they even showed the book to his wife. Yet straight people decided those laws weren't as much fun as the positions in the book. Positions we hippies had learned from 1965 on and had mastered by the late 60's, from a book called the Kama Sutra.
Porn was nearly impossible to find in the south, but the cops hadn't started busting anyone for looking at statues!
And there were endless possibilities in the statues.
We also had PLAYBOY, which introduced a concept that had never existed in America before. Why rush out and get married? A guy could date, have a cool stereo, his own TV, a bar- why rush? For generations men and women married and had kids knowing the mom might not make it. Childbirth killed many (a nasty side effect to home childbirth). Even after the numbers began to change the reason had become lost and become a tradition. At 18 you either got married if you were a woman, or became an old maid as a school teacher, librarian, secretary, nurse. The pill however had given women something they had never had before. The concept of sex for sexual enjoyment , without guilt or fear of pregnancy, with whomever they wanted had liberated a growing section of younger women. Before hippie girls began experimenting and playing with sex, that only happened with biker girls and prostitutes. Bad girls.
So, like everything else we were doing as hippies, even our acts of sex were illegal!
The reason we would end up around Peachtree and 12th through 14th street was the neighborhood was poor. It wasn't ghetto, but the homeowners who rented asked few questions. Everywhere else in Atlanta no one would rent to people of the opposite sex who weren't married- even if they were just roommates. Many states had laws against co-habitation- so again hippies were openly breaking those laws. Before anyone had ever heard of "living together".
SEX ON ACID
I had met Mona in Piedmont Park and we hit it off in seconds and found ourselves in the woods having sex while The Allman Brothers jammed. I saw them many times, so many I can't add the times up. And had sex while they were playing often. Others may have seen the band more than me (I stopped going after Duane died), but I doubt few had sex as often as I did while they played live!
I guess it says something about those days that we never asked for each others last names!
Having sex to the Allman Brothers made us different in our rhythms than the straights. They had a three minute pop song, Or a three minute Sinatra song. Live, a jam number could go 30, 40 minutes. I also grew to love having sex to classical music and jazz, again because the timing of the song eliminated forever the word "quickie" from my vocabulary. Never liked them, never will. Music was sex. Music was as much of the act as the act. That's how important music became to me. (And probably explains why I became a fan of techno music years later, and was happy to find women who liked sex to one hour mixes! I also became a fan of Opera, and go every season as a subscriber. Haven't had sex there yet, however!).
Because on our radio we could hear The Beatles, Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Rolling Stones, B.B. King, The Four Seasons, The Mamas and the Poppas, The Beach Boys, Otis Redding, James Brown all on the same station, we were exposed to a variety of music that today doesn't exist on a single station today.
Mona asked me to meet her the following night at the Krispy Kreme and I said yes as we walked back to the concert, splitting up.
As I walked the following night to meet her, a fellow passing out free acid approached me and I asked for two. He gave me them and said it was a microdot and I looked at the tiny pills, thanked him and walked on.
I sat at the doughnut shop for about 20 minutes before she entered in hip huggers with shiny buttons up the front, a gypsy top that revealed her waist and no bra- her breasts moving as she walked in. Who cared about time?
She ordered a coffee and two donuts and I told her about the acid. We agreed to take them and did. In those days I could eat onion rings, ice cream, donuts and never gain an ounce!
After about a half hour I started to feel the tingling in my jaw and she had broken into a smile. We both knew it was time to get back to her place. I put on my suede jacket with fringe and we walked out into the night. I was use to it taking about an hour to feel the effects, a half hour was a good sign to me. We walked holding hands as she talked about hoping she could find her place. We laughed and came up to her door, and entered.
She cut on the light and there were the colored beads that hung in rows from the kitchen to the living room, a bean bag chair on the floor , a beat up couch, a stereo, no TV. Candles everywhere. We decided to take a bath together. Or she suggested.
WHAT TALKS LIKE TARZAN, WALKS LIKE JANE AND SMELLS LIKE CHEETAH? A HIPPIE! - DJ Doctor Don Rose, WQXI-AM
Actually the myth of hippies not bathing was exactly that. A myth. Conversations abounded on the latest home made soap at the head shop, everyone was digging Dr. Bronners soap and his wild labels,
but we did something straights didn't do. We were wearing musk and patuille oil before they were. I've never been a fan of patuille oil but in the 70's musk would become a huge hit nationally. We actually loved showering together, taking baths as a way to introduce sensuality to the proceedings. Straights smelled the musk and couldn't figure it out.
She pored the bath and the bubbles became a kaleidoscope of colors and I put a stack of records on the spindle and followed her to the bathroom as she lit candles on the sink.
The lights went off.
Illuminated by candles as The Doors hit the turntable we kissed and I began to undress her. Her shirt fell to the floor and I kissed from her lips, to cheek, to her neck. to her shoulders, to her pert breasts with nipples protruding and a slight turn down to wet her nipples and then blow on each one and then to lick them and kiss them and I could feel her hands undoing my shirt. http://tw.video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=380174
We mucked about and laughed and got the shirts off and I started unbuttoning her pants. I don't know who invented hip huggers with buttons instead of a zipper but I certainly hope they won the Nobel Peace Prize for it!
As I unsnapped each button it was clear she was wearing no underwear. That got me hard before she even started to take off my pants.
So here we stand naked and the rushes are coming every other second it seems and we dip into the bathtub, which is an old fashioned stand alone tub with claws for feet.
And we bathe each other, play with the bubbles and laugh and have - fun.
We rise from the tub, shower off the bubbles and dry each other all the while laughing and smiling and kissing. Oooooooh Mona.......
We lay naked on her bed and I can smell flowers and the vanilla scent of the candles and this time I go from her breasts right to that spot I had read about in PLAYBOY.
The most neglected spot. The secret spot only lesbians, bikers and hippies knew.
The clit.
I pulled back the hood and began to lick lightly as she moaned and this would go on until her face turned beet red, and I began licking faster and harder. BANG!
She lay there covered in a glistening sweat and rose to show me her oral skills. Because she saw my balls as part of the package, she licked, kissed and sucked on the entire region.
This led to her mounting me for 69.
My face covered in the taste and smell of female we faced each other as I kissed her rubbed my cock around her other lips.
I put my cock in bit by bit while licking her nipples as this began to play on the stereo. Go ahead and play it while you read the rest.
We thrust away, her pelvis meeting mine and our lips locked and pyramids and deserts, jungles and lions appeared when I closed my eyes and she and I touched each other and laughed and held on and I said, "Let's pretend we are lions' and I struck harder and faster and now we were fucking as the ceiling gave way to stars, she said.
We changed positions and I entered her from behind and moved my hand around to play with her clit and bit her on her back and she dug into my legs with her nails and we were lions and the room was a jungle.
We turned to face each other and she kissed my face tasting herself and my sweat and clung on smiling and I removed my cock.
Waited.
Re-entered. Did this several times. She licked my nipples and off we went again.
Building our pyramid.
When I finally came I covered her from her pussy hairs up to her breasts.
And we hadn't peaked yet!
We resolved to wait until the peak started to start having sex again and off she went to grab a bottle of wine.
We had broken many laws this night!
* Balling was the expression for sex. As in, "Wanna ball", or "I like balling that chick".
Posted at 11:49 am by Psychomike
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Sunday, October 28, 2007
When Strippers Had An Act!
THE RETURN OF PATTI'S MOM
I waited for Patti to come back. If a car stopped outside I ran to the window to see if she was there. I had a balcony at 1939 N. Lincoln- a "Juliet" balcony, the kind you can't actually stand in. http://subgeniusslack.blogdrive.com/archive/38.html She had left with her mom, who had re-appeared when learning from the agency that pimped her ( a fake theatrical agency) that she had given up hooking and coke for a really bad guy. Me.
She returned with her mom after several days and what looked like no sleep. Seems her mom had several ounces of coke when she called Patti for a meeting and that was how I ended up with a bag full along with her note.
I knew I would have to get out of my parents place when my mom freaked out that at 12 I was dating girls 6 or 7 years older than me. The clincher came when my dad and I got in a fight over the war. I called LBJ a liar and he socked me on the jaw. I flew over the table, the couch and right into the wall. That was enough. Meeting her mom who laid out the rules for me ( Patti was to return to prostitution because "she wanted to". I searched Patti's face for a response, there was nothing there), only reminded me of my horrible luck with parents.
I had met many evil people in my life, but this woman took the cake.
I knew it was over with Patti and I, I had actually done something decent in my life and now this woman was giving me my marching papers.
I hung in, but was crushed. When her mom left she told me that she was her mom and she had to listen to her. I explained I didn't listen to mine, but it was far too many years late to tell Patti that.
Patti responded the only way she really knew how. We had sex. Patti was beautiful, and she really did love sex.
Afterwards she told me she would be going to a strip club/ hotel called Swingers in Ohio for a couple of weeks. She invited me to see her perform in Chicago at a porno theater. Before the age of video and DVD's, porn theaters were the place to see adult movies.
Elizabeth Taylor had given the city of Chicago the Michael Todd theater for the arts. Mayor Daley, the real Mayor Daley gladly accepted the gift. Then promptly gave it to the mob for $1 a year to show porn. Taylor sued and years later got the city to stop showing porn there. Today it is the Goodman theatre, and shows plays. I like to joke the building is haunted by thousands of sperm that went on the floor!
Patti was a second rung stripper. Her name got on the bill, she had a following and theatres paid her huge money to travel to a city and strip. She had great outfits and was a really great dancer.
I sat in the projection booth with a friend of hers who was completely naked and as Patti got on stage her friend gave me a blowjob, one of the only jobs I had any interest in.
"Barracuda" - Heart
So this ain't the end
I saw you again
Today
I had to turn my heart away
Smile like the sun
Kisses for everyone
And tales
It never fails
You lying so low in the weeds
I bet you gonna ambush me
You'd have me down, down, down, down on my knees
Now wouldn't you?
Barracuda
Back over time
We were all trying
For free
You met the porpoise with me
Uh huh
No right, no wrong
Selling a song
A name
Whisper game
And if the real thing don't do the trick
You better make up something quick
You gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn it out to the wick
Ooh, Barracuda
'Sell me, sell you' the porpoise said
Dive down deep now save my head
You
I think you got the blues too
All that night and all the next
Swam without looking back
Made for the western pools
Silly, silly fools
The real thing don't do the trick
You better make up something quick
You gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn it out to the wick
Ohh, Barracuda
Ooh, hey
When the song finished the crowd went nuts- and Patti still had most of her clothes on!
Patti was excited to be heading out to Ohio- she was sharing the bill with Marilyn Chambers whose porn film BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR was a huge mainstream hit.
I partied with Patti whenever I could see her, but there was no more talk of PLAYBOY, which before her mom had shown up had already had her in the mag 3 times and were getting ready to do a centerfold with her.
I went out with Skip Williamson the day she left and got blind drunk. I woke up on my couch in pain with no idea how I got home. Gin was my sin then.
A couple of days passed and I came home from the Blues Brothers bar at 5am to find a message on my answering machine. It was Patti. And Marilyn.
Marilyn told me she heard from Patti that I could handle two beautiful women at once.
She wanted me to prove it. Both girls started laughing...
Patti got on the phone and told me that they had bought me a plane ticket and I was to fly out that afternoon for the weekend.
That gave me about 5 or 6 hours to sleep. No jacking off tonight. I was going to be ready!
Posted at 01:41 pm by Psychomike
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Sunday, November 04, 2007
"Bob", Texas, The Church!
KNOCKIN' ON "BOB'S" DOOR
Texas. A very strange state. Not a state in a geographical sense, but a state of mind. A country within a country. More blondes per square inch than any other state in the union. More beauty queen winners than any other state. Acknowledged to have the best cheerleaders in football.
I don't know what's in the water in Texas, but clearly they should bottle and sell it!
How different is Texas? The state song of Texas is about a high yellow. The old term for a racially mixed person. Don't believe me? Here are the original words to THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS:
There's a yellow rose in Texas, that I am going to see,
No other darky [sic] knows her, no darky only me
She cryed [sic] so when I left her it like to broke my heart,
And if I ever find her, we nevermore will part.
[Chorus]
She's the sweetest rose of color this darky ever knew,
Her eyes are bright as diamonds,they sparkle like the dew;
You may talk about your Dearest May, and sing of Rosa Lee,
But the Yellow Rose of Texas beats the belles of Tennessee.
When the Rio Grande is flowing, the starry skies are bright,
She walks along the river in the quite [sic] summer night:
She thinks if I remember, when we parted long ago,
I promised to come back again, and not to leave her so.
[Chorus]
Oh now I'm going to find her, for my heart is full of woe,
And we'll sing the songs togeather [sic], that we sung so long ago
We'll play the bango gaily, and we'll sing the songs of yore,
And the Yellow Rose of Texas shall be mine forevermore.
[Chorus]
That's the State anthem!
People have guns but refrain from shooting up schools. Rednecks watch on the border for illegals slipping in to take jobs they don't want. Good old boys.
How many people know that the people who died in the Alamo, were fighting to create a slave state?
So what happens if you aren't a stunning blonde, gun totin', beer swillin', country music listenin' redneck in Texas?
You sit on your porch and sip your hard liquor, eat moonpies, drink RC Cola and bark at the moon, that's what. With your friends.You listen to FIRESIGN THEATER and make home movies. Because under the stars and the big wide open spaces there is room to blow your mind and put it back together again. To go wanderin' into the desert and find adventure.
As the bottle was passed around Doug Smith hit on an idea. "I want to make a movie. Maybe claymation." Claymation. A pain in the ass frame by fame pre-computer way to make cool films. The choice was that or drink. So he made a movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP3P-ZVv91Q and he enlisted help from his friends. But they all needed cooler names. Groggy from booze these rednecks sitting on a porch and howlin' at the moon would become others. There was Buck Naked and his cowboy hat. Philo Drummond the keeper of the flame. Sterno Keckhaver the opener of the sacred booze bottles. Doug became Ivan Stang. How do you stay hip in Texas? You create your own state of mind. You create, your own state.
In the desert you take the right combination of frop (the Sacred Smoke), 'shrooms (ask your kids), and the Holy Liquid That Kicks Our Ass (booze) you can dismantle the universe and put it back together again. You listen to NICK DANGER and I THINK WE'RE ALL BOZO'S ON THIS BUS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPrmD2g3KNc and you wait for divine revelation.
You wait, for "Bob".
You get to introduce yourself as Buck Naked to strangers. ("It's ok honey, he's from Texas".)
You stagger from the porch on so many nights trying to remember why you laughed so hard. You listen to preachers on AM radio late at night ranting about the conspiracies that run everything. The Zionist Occupation Government, the UFO cover-ups, cattle mutilations, abductions- to flying saucers. The Illuminati. The Freemasons. Scientology. The vast left/right wing conspiracies. Not only did Lee Harvey Oswald not kill JFK, everyone at the Plaza was armed and firing at him.
The hollow earth, the flat earth, Stonehenge. Redneck preachers with the message. It wasn't enough to believe in God, not when reptile like creatures roamed the Earth- searching for Us against Them. Especially when them was a vast conspiracy aimed at destroying Texas.
By God they can take down New York, but don't mess with Texas.
The peak passes and you start to re-awaken to reality after all that.
But how do you put it all together?
So the good old boys put what's left of their minds that fateful evening together. Why not put together a state of mind that appeals to people who dig hip stuff looked on with confusion by the real them. Those who think playing music, writing, filmmaking, performance isn't really work.
They couldn't be alone. But what could they discover that would bring this new nation together?
Perhaps, this man- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6787459861634734507&q=%22Bob%22+Dobbs&total=205&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Posted at 09:13 am by Psychomike
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Friday, November 09, 2007
The Bird! Underground Paper!
SELLING THE BIRD
I had been to the Bird House, the home that functioned as an office for some Emory kids who mixed politics, socialism and counter culture happenings. Very few underground papers of the day mixed politics with music, but The Bird did and helped create the hippie scene in Atlanta. I'd pick up a bundle of the papers at 10 cents each and almost everyone that bought one would give me a buck a paper. Minimum wage was $1.60 an hour or so, two newspapers sold and I was already making more than that. At 15 I was living large. Sell papers for three hours and my $30 rent was covered. After that, it was sell when I wanted.
I'd stand on the corner hoping not to get arrested (police busted Bird sellers all the time) and I never was. Once in a great while a car would pull up, grab a paper and drive off, but the vast majority didn't.
Many were people drawn to the area to stare, as if we were a lost tribe living among them. Some were kids from the South drawn to the oasis in the wilderness of racism. Some were soldiers on leave and curious about the free love. They usually ended up in the topless joints in the area. As the cars jammed the streets on the weekends many may have bought papers as their lone souvenir. Safer than getting out of the car and walking among us!
The idea to cover the music scene in Atlanta and the action in Piedmont Park was an early version of marketing genius. The announcements of who would be playing free in the Park drew bigger and bigger crowds. It wasn't just The Allman Brothers, it was The Hampton Grease Band.
It was The Brick Wall. It was many bands, including one that actually did a rock opera about Mothra! The Bird had made itself the center of the community.
I had many stories of selling the Bird. First I'll tell you the story of my best sell, and then, the scariest.
My best sell was for a beautiful girl in a Camaro who asked me about pot. I should explain that when the hippie movement started in Atlanta there were only 2 people on narcotics detail on the police force! They worked exclusively in the ghetto. Someone actually planted pot seeds in the front of the station which grew into big plants in front of the police sign before someone told the police what it was! Her car was way too cool to be a cop car. At that time, there were few women on the Police Force as well.
She bought my paper and we headed to my place to smoke. Turns out, she had never smoked before and I showed her how. Somehow I felt I was creating a hippie! Nothing sexual happened, it was just a thrill to be the person that turned this beautiful girl on.
The scariest story was when standing on a corner, I was approached by a Black male who pulled a gun on me and told me to step into an alley. I did, and as the guy ordered me to turn over my dollars two members of the Outlaws motorcycle club from New Orleans stepped into the dark alley. I could see the 1% tag and DILLIGAF on their jackets. 1% was a reference to a comment made that only 1% were criminal bikers, most bikers weren't. Wearing a tag that said you were part of that 1 percent was far more honest than most clothes could ever be. DILLIGAF meant DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A FUCK.
The guy holding a gun on me quickly put it away. He said something about making good, and the two Outlaws beat him down to the ground and hurt him really bad. In just seconds, I had lost count of the number of times they were able to hit him. One of the bikers turned to me and said, "You ok, kid?", and I mumbled a yes. I walked away, and it wasn't until minutes later that I realized they had just saved my life. They probably were beating him up for some other reason, but never the less, they had stepped in at the right moment and saved my ass.
I never saw those two guys again. Bikers came to Atlanta to lay low because the police liked them. This was a safe city for them.
How many people can say, The Outlaws saved my life?
I had heard about Big Sur in California, and decided that it might be nice to take a few months off and hitchhike around the country. Everyone hitchhiked in those days, and people picked them up! I had no way of knowing it at the time, but I was about to hitch through 34 states, spend my 16th birthday in a Clovis, New Mexico jail, trip on route one and hear Canned Heat play in Topango Canyon. A 16th birthday I would never forget.
As I thought of my strategy, which I actually didn't have, I knew I had to wait until after the weekend show at the Park to leave. A show that would end up being the first riot I was ever in!
Posted at 10:56 am by Psychomike
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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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