Just home from the 5-show birthday blow-out! Sheesh! Started with New Orleans’ Soul Rebels outdoors in a park with my New Orleans Soul Brother Ross Perlmutter. The funky brass-n-drums combo were joined for some songs by Toronto’s own frontline horndogs The Heavyweights, creating a new 11-piece band called The Soulweights, or maybe The Heavy Rebels. But whatever it was, it was a living incarnation of the collaborative jazz that’s makes New Orleans the birthplace of music as we know it.
The show’s part of this massive luminous 2-week Toronto arts festival called Luminato with thousands of artists from all over the world putting on theater, film, photography, readings, magic, dance, installations, interview talks, improv street theater, and of course — music!
And as part of the park concert scene, this Cuban collective called Los Carpinteros (art carpenters) created the illusion of a beach with deck chairs, beach umbrellas, cabanas, and even a lifeguard tower — all made out of cardboard! You could lounge on the beach chairs or climb up in the guard towers of this temporary installation … but all made from recyclable paper products!
Ross and I groove post-show on the picnic tables in the enormous outdoor bar with some frosty Canadian microbreweries for company as we’re sharing crazy tales of mother Nawlins. After I walk him to his car to end Part One of the day, I head back to the park and sure enough Ziggy Marley’s doing his soundcheck for the evening show! I smooth-talk a security guard that I’m an out-of-town promoter and wanna scout the site, and he lets me in! And there’s the son-of-a-Bob and his enormous band that just won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album for his “In Concert” live disk last year, and he’s rockin’ steady with the real roots including a couple joyous run-throughs of his Dad’s inspirational incantation “Lively Up Yourself.”
Then it was a mad dash up to Bloor Street to hit my favorite little bookstores, where I walked away with a cool Evergreen Review collection with Kerouac and all the boys in it, and the Jann Wenner oral biography of the mighty doctor, Hunter S. Then it was a synchronistic sojourn back to the site of my 50th b’day, The Cadillac Lounge on Queen Street West, to meet up with the next round of loogans, Damo, Greg, Peanut and the boys, who were all caught up in a New Year’s Eve-like party of screaming World Cup “football” fans from a half-a-dozen face-painted countries in this multi-cultural metropolis, guzzling beer using pitchers as glasses!
With a Herculean effort, I finally pour my bloods out of the sports stream, and we toss Damo’s bike in the back of the Blue Bomber, put Dr. John’s “Locked Down” on the jukebox, and bolted off to the next big park party scene — with a Led Zeppelin cover band! Of course just as we’re walking in they begin the ultra-trippy “Dazed and Confused” which they proceeded to play for about the next week. Then in keeping with the New Orleans theme, they noticed we were there and broke into “When The Levee Breaks” which I thought was quite nice of them.
From there it was a bolt over to the main course of the day’s feast — a Jerry Garcia Band in a funky old neighborhood pub, the Linsmore Tavern, that’s been hanging there on the same corner wonderfully unchanged since the 1930s. Fulla Deadheads — in a place you wanna go where everybody knows the game. And they’re already playin’, both band and audience, in that magic unspoken collaboration between listeners and musicians that we all know and live — playing in combo and rising with the tide of the vibes.
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It was Mark Thackway’s band, and of course I ended up hanging with him and the Merl Saunders/Melvin Seals keyboard player, Wayne “Shakey” Dagenais. Although you’d never know it, it was actually these two veteran’s first public performance together — a new musical adventure for both them and the audience. And work it did!
But it was really this one Moment that brought it all together:
In this perfectly small bar, the quartet was perfectly replicating the small bar the Garcia Band was born and raised — the Keystone in Berzerkeley, California. With the band set up by the front windows and the tables and chairs cleared away all around the stage and corner door, the dancing music energy was at its vibrating peak at the very threshold where you stepped into the room.
And that’s right where this Magic Moment occurred numerous times . . .
As the musically motivated would arrive mid-set, when they pushed open the old inner smoke-windowed door they were already sporting a grin from ears to cheeks, and their face was beaming like an incoming stage light, as they gratefully, gracefully, dancefully floated into the improvised scene — not looking for a seat, not ordering a drink (till the set was over) — but falling seamlessly into the rhythm groove and group move, strangers dancing with strangers, just to shake their body, rub-a-dub dubbed, and the hugs were free.
And speaking of hugs, Magic Moment #2 happened right in the middle of this mayhem as some girl I’d been sorta dancin with n stuff overhears somebody wishing me Happy Birthday, and goes, “Oh — it’s your birthday!” Big smiles. “Well, what kind of a drink do you want, birthday boy?”
“Well, aw geez I don’t know …” cuz see, I don’t really drink the hard stuff anymore. But she’s quite persistent, she is.
“You gotta have something special. I’m buying. It’s your birthday …” And finally I come up with my old go-to — tequila & orange. And she squeals in delight and jumps me with a hug and kisses me on the cheek!
“I LOVE it!” she says, and heads to the bar, and all of a sudden I’m headin for trouble.
And, ya know … we start dancing side-by-side arm-in-arm, swayin’ in the groove and talking in the downtimes, and she’s very soft and bright-eyed, and it’s definitely The Old Flirty Bar Fling Routine. But to be perfectly honest I’m still in love with all the girls I’ve ever been in love with, and all my memories of intimacy are fairy-tale idyllic. And in this moment in this bar on this reflective day, I just didn’t want to mix some new bleary beery images with the tender magic I’ve lived. Not to mention mixing bodily fluids with a complete stranger. I believe it’s written somewhere — When A Girl Buys You Drinks On Your Birthday, You’re Supposed To Go Home With Her. But then … see … I’ve never been much of a rule follower.
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And THEN right when this is not going down … The Giant Downer Happens — where my ever-present everything-in-it over-the-shoulder bag was stolen! What an insane birthday bring-me-down! I’m talkin to some other vivacious girl post-show and go to grab something out of it — and … it’s gone. I mean — gone gone. Nowhere. Definitely. A bunch of people start looking around for it, so I bolt out the door to see if maybe I’d see somebody leaving with it or find it ditched somewhere or something … but of course … not.
My camera. Cell phone. Notebook. Car keys!!! What?! I’m totally fucked. It’s totally gone. I’m shaking, white as a ghost. I tell my bloods Damo and Greg while the blood is draining from my face … lost and gut-punched, in a trembling trance. Then at some point I turn around blankly and hear some guy say, “Did you lose a bag?” … And he’s wearing it! The guy was so dazed and confused by the end of three sets of Jerry, he walked out and started heading home with my bag instead of his own!! Oh my Lord! I had it back! Cashin’ in a buncha karma coupons right there! Had to have a whole sit-down chill-down after THAT!
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And THEN as a final evening musical encore — out on the sidewalk along the Danforth at 2-something in the morning, some brother strapped on an acoustic and began singing us all onto the road and into our night with “On The Road Again,” which I always thought harmonized so beautifully with my brother Jack’s most famous motif. 😉
And THEN he breaks into one of my handful of favorite songs ever written! “Not Fade Away” by the immortal Buddy Holly, which became a climactic singalong anthem in the Dead’s repertoire for their whole 30-year run. And not only is it a personal favorite, but it’s also the song where I appear in the movie of their Radio City shows, Dead Ahead! And there we all were, singing like buskers without a case on the street-corner of eternity.
And that’s the name of that tune.
“Love for real, not fade away.”
A smoky night in The Big Smoke.
(miraculous photo and tale exactly as happened)
Gonna ring a big ding
Calling out from Sing-Sing
Gonna have a spring fling
Kinda have an inkling
Everything is gonna sell
Comin’ out the dripping well
Middle East a burning hell
Clanging morning warning bell.
The toast is up, the jam is done
Twisted people think it’s fun
Blowin’ neighbors with a gun
Sneaky-creepy bang-bang run!
B for bombing and belabor
S for slitting with a saber,
I don’t know, but “Love thy neighbor”
Seems to me was from your labor.
Jumpin’ Jesus what went wrong?
Rodney King sez “get along”
Lennon leaves us with a song
Bloomberg does it with a bong!
The Dalai Lama makes the case,
And Jerry did it out of space,
Alicia’s singing soul’s new face
But best of all is this new place!
I’ll tell ya why, it’s cuz we’re here,
It’s live, it’s now, ya have a beer!
Top me up with living cheer!
I’m Sargent Pepper feeling gear!
We’re … water water everywhere,
Make us grow and make it better;
Water water everywhere
Take the dry and make ’em wetter
Spring is here, I smell the bloomin’
Many minds on Bowery zoomin’
Beatin’ back the glummy gloomin’
Trippin’ like you’re mushy schroomin’
Honest like you’re Harry Truman
Shooting wicked witches broomin’
Martin Luther King exhumin’
Everybody here’s a crewman,
Take your soul and keep on groomin’
Spike the spirit, keep on zoomin’
At the end of the darkness following Jerry Garcia’s death, the first instrument I heard played live a month or two later was a solo violin in an art gallery — and it was so beautiful it brought me to tears. After that breakthrough, when music seemed possible again, the first ensemble I went to hear was Johnny Clegg. He felt like the right and only music worthy of breaking the spell of silence — one of the few musicians whose impact transcended the medium — and it stole my face right off my head! That this similarly inspiring polyrhythmic mystic music was still being played broke down a wall and made me believe in the magic of the musical muse once again.
And here he was … comin’ around … in a circle.
The only floor ticket left five months ago was one of those wheelchair companion seats. As a former caregiver, I knew the routine, the seat next to the wheelchair spot, in this case towards the back of this gorgeous new 1,100 seat Royal Conservatory of Music hall, which feels even smaller with the two tightly stacked circular balconies. It’s got the best of everything, is acoustically immaculate and visually melodic, with plushy seats, high-class uniformed ushers, and royal everything.
When Johnny’s son Jesse was doing his half-hour opening set, during the last song I went down for a first-hand recon and the only empty seats were a nice 4-spot on the aisle in the 9th row! Ha! So of course that’s where I experience the show from — until the manic dancing up front for the climactic half-dozen songs with a bevy of joyously bouncing Canadian spirits.
The show was great, and as usual I was fully charged by the magic conjured by this all-South African troupe, and ready to groove-sail into the blissful Torontonian night. But when you exited the theatre into the lobby, they’d actually hired another South African band to play as people were leaving! It was so Bill Graham of them … simultaneously encouraging people to linger and maybe sponsor a World Vision child as Johnny’s promoting, and generally continue the experience, and perhaps have another cold beer or wine or whatever and dig on some music and bask in the aftershow glow with fellow concert goers before heading out into the cold late-snap April air.
And bliss it was, too — including a nifty outdoor balcony a person could slip out on for a smoke or a call. But fine groove though it was, after a wee buzz it was time for a wee pee before the drive home. And just for the trip of it, I decide to take the nearby elevator down instead of the faraway stairs. And as I’m waiting by the silver doors, these two bubbly well-to-do women come along, being ushered by a straight-street walkie-talkie Security Lady.
I’m trying to go down to the ground floor, but the elevator comes and it’s going up, which is where this trio was headed. And I’m, “Hmm … let’s see … you three are going to the third floor / upper balcony … after the show … why would that be?”
So, naturally, in an elevator ride of two floors, I become total besties with the happy duo who are just blubbering over some new Johnny CDs in their hands and still jammin in the joy of the just-birthed show. “Make friends with everybody,” I always say. Might as well.
At the third and top floor, Security Lady tells me there’s no bathrooms up here and I have to go back down. But … I know there’s bathrooms on this floor. I pre-scouted the hell outta this place. And the two friendlys walk out the elevator and go, “Oh, look, there’s one right here!” Uh-huh. So I slip out the doors behind them, turn left down the carpeted hallway, and Stop — in the name of … them having enough time to walk away. Turn, go back to the edge of the hallway/elevator alcove in time to see Security Lady leading the two birds diagonally across the balcony atrium into the only room up there, about a 20-foot lobby-cross away.
So … disappear — the old into-the-bathroom routine, give Security Chaperone time to leave. Back out … and it’s the third floor of this wild open-air atrium that goes all the way down to the band playing below … and the two outer walls … are made of glass! Ah-ha! So I stand back against the opposing alcove wall and with the pitch-black midnight mirrors can recon the empty lobby with the Shining bar along the wall and no one there except the lone bartender and one old security suit aimlessly pacing around, way past his bedtime by the looks of things.
As soon as I spy him turning and slumber lumbering off in the opposite direction I speed-walk on an urgent mission from my elevator cave to the cross-lobby sacred door alcove … which turned out to be two doors! Both wide open! And BOOM! The first person I see is … Johnny!
Keep goin’, no hesitation, you belong in this room. And the very next face I see is son Jesse! Who’s name is pronounced Jess, or at least that’s what Pops calls him. Anyway, he’s not surrounded like “the old man” is — as he calls Pops.
So I walk right up and tell him I liked his opening set, which was actually really good, hypnotic, up-tempo acoustic, just him and the old man’s guitarist who’s been with him since the Savuka days. Jess’s girlfriend’s from Toronto and he recorded his latest album here at David Botterill’s Rattlesnake Studios and we got talkin’ about Canadian immigration and visas and gigs … and that they’re doing this whole tour by bus, and I mention how they were soon playing both Boulder and Saskatoon — two usual places I’m familiar with. And he goes, “Yeah — and they’re back-to-back.”
“WHAT?!”
“Fourteen-hundred miles. We’re staying an extra night in Mile-high to rest up the driver.”
And then he starts telling me about how the Old Man just gave a lecture at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and how he riffed for an hour-and-a-half without notes, and I told Jess the truth: “Your dad’s as good a storyteller as he is a musician.” Cuz all during the show tonight he told the most wonderful and elaborate tales about South Africa and life and death that echoed with the rich anthropology that Johnny not only lived through and studied but also taught at the university in Johannesburg.
Then Jess tells me about how he and one of the crew slipped off afterwards to a Dartmouth keg party … in order to study first-hand the anthropology of American students in their natural habitat, you understand.
And the whole time he’s talking with that great lyrical British/South African accent that also weirdly comes through in their singing sometimes. Ya know how you don’t hear much of an accent in most British groups/singers’ recordings? Well, somehow in Johnny’s singing, his accent often comes through. It’s weird, and wonderful. Anywho, they both talk with that lovely lyrical sing-songy lilt.
And as Jess and I are hangin’, we’re right near the Old Man, who has a kinda unofficial receiving line going on. And all these different people including my two winking elevator besties are hanging around biding their time to go up and shake his hand. And it’s the same thing for all famous people who’ve affected others in a deep way — each person wants to share their story — how much the music meant to them, some pivotal moment where their life changed after hearing it — and he’s really gracious as he listens to each confession.
Then this funny thing happened where … when somebody came up to talk to Jess, I’d just spin over to Johnny beside me, and we somehow fell into this improvised routine where he started using me as his sidekick. He’d already seen me groovin with Jess, and … he’d often say these funny things, but the person he was meeting was so sorta nervous or whatever that they wouldn’t get he was making a joke. But I would. And he’d turn and twinkle wrinkle his eyes to me … and I ended up playing Ed McMahon to this Johnny all night. What a hoot!
Johnny Clegg, yours unruly, son Jesse Clegg
Note the eye line 😉
And another funny part was later when things were kinda winding down I blurted my own gushing moment! I told him how the climax of tonight’s show actually had me choked up seeing all these (I didn’t say it but, normally reserved) Torontonians up and dancing. It was crazy cuz it was what I call a “PBS audience,” all these lefty greybeards and beardettes in an already absurdly restrained audience city that does not get up and dance almost ever. But it was the women especially who were breakin’ ranks and excuse-me dashing from their mid-row seats out to the aisles and letting loose and we all had a helluva dance party out there, lemme tell ya! 🙂
It was so heartening and joyous I actually started choking up in the glowing love energy moment … having to force myself to not start bawling outright cuz I was, ya know, in a room full of people. But it was that beautiful a moment …
So I tell ol’ Johnny this emotion he evoked, and he’s like, “Yeah, uh-huh. Next!” After all my Ed McMahoning I was a little disappointed!
Nah — he didn’t really say that, he said something really nice. But the point is everybody, including me, thinks their precious anecdote is of vital importance … but people like Sri Clegg have heard so often stories of transformation from their art … it’s just part of the soundtrack of their lives. Imagine having people come up to you, multiple times a day, telling you how you changed their life. And it happening day after day, year after year. Psycho trips, man. Then add psychotropic drugs. By the bushel … … …
Wait, where were we? Oh yeah, I worked around pop-stars-of-the-month at MTV and it’s such a totally different trip when it’s artist-fans who’ve been sharing the same spiritual journey for decades. And Johnny’s been on this path since he first heard a guitar in the streets of Johannesburg in the 1960s. As a South African I met recently responded when I mentioned Johnny Clegg — “You just said the magic words.”
So, there we were, eye-to-eye — the two of us exactly the same height — check out the eye-line in the photo. It’s not often you talk with someone who’s on exactly the same level as you. 😉 Anyway, I ask him about his Asimbonanga performance when Mandela came out that was cited and quoted and shown all over the world after Madiba died a few months ago, and how I reviewed that very performance years ago and was now finally able to identify the heretofore unknown location of the gig straight from the horse’s source. He told me it was the closing night of some world health conference in Frankfurt, Germany, where Mandela had given the keynote speech, then stuck around for brother Johnny’s show.
Also … it hit me a couple days ago playin’ old discs n tapes that Savuka’s album cover had Johnny with a kid on his shoulders and I asked and sure enough that’s now 25-year-old Jesse.
I love this multi-cultural world-beat human-collage city. And so do a bunch of other people. And some of the locals are white South Africans tellin’ Johnny about how he and his music gave them strength and vision and direction of how to act with both purpose and dignity in their country’s racial revolution. And then there were these black-as-night South African Zulus who’d talk with him in their native tongue, and oh MAN! Is that one weird language! Holy surreal syllables, WhaKooBan!! Not exactly rooted in yer Latin!
And the son’s drinking white wine, and I’ve got a frosty local Steam Whistle, and Johnny’s got a straw in a tall glass of Coke, which somehow me and Jess start goofing with him on his line about “kinky kola” in “Digging For Some Words” and I ask him straight-up, “What the hell does that mean, anyway? Sexy Coke?” and he just smiled and nodded a sort of Yes but wasn’t about to elaborate, as is the poet’s prerogative, and at least not with his son standing right there.
And it was all magic and fun and then that part was over in the blink of a bus dash …
but just to flash back …
There was this stupendous two-hour concert …
The thing that’s different from his ’80s and ’90s shows is — he’s really evolved into a storyteller! It’s so enchanting and inviting and inclusive. I remember Sinatra did this. Randy Bachman does it. Neil Young’s been rambling a lot lately. He doesn’t do it every song, maybe every second or third he tells some wild elaborate wonderful story. It’s great. But unlike those other narrative troubadours, some of this guy’s tales involve band members and friends being killed in the warfare in South Africa. The whole show was kinda like a Director’s Commentary … explaining the motivations and background behind his shots/songs — like how the ground stomp was as important as the kick in the tribal dance he did. If you don’t know, this guy studied and performed with Zulu dance masters since childhood and was fluent in the spoken language by 16.
And it’s all about The Songs. It’s still that ripple from The Beatles’ splash — musicians writing Their Own songs. And Johnny now has a lifetime of them — anthemic authentic Zulu-Western songblends that grew out of the streets and tribal lands of a segregated country that he brought together musically. He’s got so many hits spanning so many decades he didn’t even have time to play them all in a two hour show.
And it’s the Unpredictable Arrangements … in an uncategorizable sound. It’s jazz, it’s pop, it’s world beat, juju, gospel … and all with a rock band foundation. It’s multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic and multi-instrumental. It’s multiple forms of magic, is what it is.
And it’s all about The Players! This band! These harmonies! Great 3-part all night, including the soprano he’s been teamed with since the ’80s, Mandisa Dlanga. And the guitarist and musical director, Andy Innes, who’s been with him since the ’92 Savuka days and switches off on electric, acoustic and mandolin as the song suggests. And then there’s the all-purpose horn man on alto and soprano sax as well as the keyboard fills, Brendan Ross.
And it’s all about The Vibe. It’s some sort of crazy mix between a black Baptist Sunday revival and a folk singer protest rally. It’s Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and Bob Dylan, “With God On Our Side.” At the same time.
And in this spiritual preacher space, he climaxes the main part of the show with “Cruel Crazy Beautiful World” (written for son Jesse) with its joyous endless chanting refrain, “It’s your world, so live in it,” over and over as the audience starts LIVING a few degrees higher than they were before.
And in the truest gospel tradition, he ends the final encore, “Dela,” with its benediction — “I’ll pray for you,” and makes a point of saying it one-by-one to every person in the room.
And … that’s sorta what Johnny Clegg is like.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Set list (except for a couple songs I didn’t know):
“Next stop, Shakespeare’s Globe,” says the driver downstairs on the red double-decker bus winding its way through the narrow South Bank streets of London.
I went early so I could do the official tour of the theater, and of course the guide was extremely well-versed, among other things explaining how back in the day the audience would drop their pence or two in the admission box, and then they’d go lock up the box in an office. That is, the “box office.”
And of course he and I start jammin’ and it causes our little tour to run way overtime.
Then I ask Mr. Cool-Guide if I can go back into the private area and look at their wall with all the founding donors’ signatures cuz I know Carolyn Cassady who I’m staying with is one of ‘em. And he lets me!
But when we get to this huge bronze wall of little signatures at the top of the stairs, he’s thinking, “Why did I let this guy back here? He’s never gonna find one signature …” and right away starts mumbling out loud, “Um, people aren’t really supposed to be back here, and uh … ” Boom! — “THERE IT IS!!”
And as I’m taking a picture of it he’s sayin – twice – “I can’t believe you found it that fast!” 🙂
After this score, I do the whole two-floor exhibit on Shakey Willie and how this theatre’s exact replica reconstruction took 50 years to happen, and I spend the whole afternoon totally living it and transported back to the horse & peasant days.
I’d made a bunch of really awesome daytime plans for a boat ride on the Thames and exploring Potters Field by Tower Bridge for the Olympic screen-scene, but once I was back in ancient England it was, “I’m not leavin’ Shakespeareville!”
At some point I slip through the back gates and end up backstage sitting at a courtyard picnic table with the props guys, and one of ‘em says, “You wanna beer?” and hands me a frosty Corona from the crew cooler and proceeds to tell me all these wild stories of how they do the “O.P.” shows, Original Practices, and how everything’s done exactly like it was in 1600 and all the costumes are dyed with animal fluids, and washed by hand, and the neck ruffs are made with pins-only — about 200 of them! — and how they toured America and played a prison and the guards counted every pin coming in, and the crew had to manually count and account for every pin coming out!
Next thing I know I’m in my freakin front-row-center lower balcony seat overlooking the groundlings on the floor — best seat in the house — and the show’s to die for!
And one of my questions going in was — are they gonna do the opening Induction? It’s this whole weird set-up to the play that’s often not performed — this elaborate premise that there’s some debate about whether it actually connects to the play or not.
But before it even starts there’s this drunk guy on the floor who gets into a fight or something with the staff! And it starts to escalate, and to get away from it the guy actually runs up on the stage! And security’s called, but before they can get there the guy starts taking a wiz against one the pillars! And then he starts stumbling around and literally pisses on the audience! And this poor guy in the crowd runs out screaming for a towel! And the drunk guy passes out or worse on the stage and the freakin’ paramedics get called! And the stage manager in her headset runs up there and is telling everybody what to do, and the crew and actors all peak out from the wings, and eventually she says the show has to be cancelled.
And I’m like, “Dude! This is two times in a row!! Can’t you guys put on a show in this town?!” This just happened when I went to Long Day’s Journey Into Night last week! They had some electrical fire backstage and the stage manager came out and cancelled the show half-way through the first act!
But eventually they wake up the drunk guy and decide to put on a play for him. Just as Shakey Willie designed it.
And thus it was we were introduced to the supreme majesty of THE theatrical master.
And of course the whole play — “The Taming Of The Shrew” — is insanely great, and they work with the groundlings on the floor during the entire show. At least half the stage entrances and exits are done walking down into the standing audience — pushing through them, starting arguments with them, hugging them, seeking their guidance — extending the play to forcefully include the audience whether they like it or not. No getting around this one. Yer in it.
And Then! All of Shakey’s plays back in the day ended with a jig! I never knew that. But all the actors would come out and have a party on stage and dance and improvise songs and interact with the audience and confirm to them this was all a play and a party and they’d end with a dance, the healthiest of human activities, London Olympics be damned. So this whole theatre-wide dance party happens, with everybody on stage and in the audience up and dancing and clapping and hooting and whooping.
And when the show’s finally over … I don’t leave. It’s just the way I don’t roll. I let everybody else make like sardines while I stay in my seat soakin’ it in, the last guy to leave the balcony.
And even after that, I linger in the second floor lobby of the modern building we exit into, and Boom! there’s the absolutely gorgeous delicate blond young-Michelle-Pfeiffer-looking actress, Sarah MacRae, who of course I had an instant crush on, walking right towards me! I jump at it and thank her for the great show and she’s all smiles and lovely and graceful and grateful. And as I can’t take my eyes off her I see her slip through some unmarked door. Ah-ha!
The power of the pre-scout, baby! I knew that that Open Sesame actually led to an adjacent Shakespeare-themed bar. So I follow her in, and right away meet one of my favorite actors from the play — in a supporting role, but he just Crushed it all night — Tom Godwin. In fact, he was also one of the musicians and at one point riffed a really funny “Johnny B. Goode” that got a theatre-wide laugh.
So we start talking and really getting into it and after a bit he pulls a cig out of a pack and I’m like, “Oh, can you smoke in here?”
And he’s, “No, I’m gonna go out there,” nodding to the outdoor patio. And I’m, “Oh cool, I’ll get a pint and join you,” and he’s like, “Yeah, great, do that.”
So I go out … and the guy’s actually waiting for me! And it’s this whole private patio garden bar overlooking The Globe and the mighty Thames and the whole cast is there including Michelle Pfeiffer looking like a white rose in bloom, and Tom & I start jammin’ fast n furious on Shakey Willie and theater and how to do it. And right away we fall in with one of the leads, “Lucentio,” and we’re all jamming the rehearsal process and turning the words into actions and creating the direction and Shakespeare vs. O’Neill and the overt sexual entendres in this 400 year old play and how slapstick isn’t a bad thing, and I’m having such a good time with these two I go ahead and have them sign my program. Gotta be the first time since I was a kid that I asked for an autograph, but we were having such a grand old groove of it on this riverside balcony with couches and cold ones, and I had one of these cool new £4 programs they sell insteada giving you a free one, but they’re so much nicer, and how many times do Shakespearean actors get asked for autographs? So the program gets passed around and about a dozen of them sign cool chit in it.
And I’m telling them the “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” story about the stage manager coming out to cancel the show, and how that’s now happened to me twice in a row in London! It kills.
And then one of the actors, he’s 26, in his first Shakespeare play, and is a total freakin’ Prankster, starts doin’ magic tricks right in front of us in the latenight trip of it all. In the middle of a conversation he suddenly starts spitting pins out of his mouth as though they kept unexpectedly showing up there.
And then he gets prodded by his troupe for more, so he tears off a long strip from a paper napkin on the table, hands it to a brother actor, and says, “Is that just a piece of tissue paper?”
“Yeah.”
Hands him a lighter. “Prove it — light it on fire.” So he does. And as it’s burning the guy reaches into the middle of the flame with his finger and thumb and pulls out … a crisp 10-pound note!
And then some New York actress falls into the scene, and the volume kicks up, but there’s also some bar manager nosin’ around startin’ to bust us for being in a pub after 11 PM in this Puritan country, and finally people start to cut out — and fully half the actors leave by bicycle!
For the first time all night I look at my watch and — “Holy oh-oh!” — it’s 20 minutes till the last train outta London!!
So I book it down the back stairs to the Thames — and on this pedestrian-only walkway … sits a freakin cab! What?! No way!! Boom! And he even knows a place between here and Waterloo Station to grab some late night beers-to-go, hits it on the way, and I’m once again on the last train outta Dodge with a pocketful of prosody.
Czechs:
Ondrej Pavelec — .899 Sv% — 3.02GAA (Winnipeg)
Slovakia:
Jaroslav Halak — .912 SV% — 2.29GAA (St. Louis)
For some reason Canada lucked out in the groupings — playing our three seed-determining round-robin games against, in order, Norway, Austria and Finland.
Whereas the USA has Russia & Slovakia in their group; and Sweden and the Czechs are in the same group.
We also have the preferred time slot for all the round-robin games — the last game of the day, 9PM local, or Noon in the Eastern time zone in North America.
Whereas the USA is playing all their games at 4:30PM local time, or 7:30AM on the East Coast.
With the passing of The Giant I thought of all great music he inspired …
and interestingly enough I’d reviewed a lot of it over the years so thought I’d put some of the best together here …
And then that captured moment was so priceless and impactful that the performer, Johnny Clegg, used it in his 2013 concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. And as The Great Spirit provides, one audience member up front was capturing it on his camera and shared it with the the world … http://www.rockpeaks.com/video/c/Clegg-Johnny/Royal-Albert-Hall-2013/Asimbonanga
Then there was The Specials’ “Free NelsonMandela” — the very first song in Western culture that brought attention to Mandela’s plight in early 1984.
Here’s the earliest live version of the song captured on film, on the offbeat Channel 4 show Tube, just before the song’s writer Jimmy Dammers would leave the band. And don’t miss the surprise appearance by Elvis Costello. 😉 http://www.rockpeaks.com/video/s/Specials/Tube-1983/Free-Nelson-Mandela
To these ears, the most powerfully rockin of all the Mandela songs is “(I Ain’t Gonna Play) Sun City,” written by Little Steven and recorded by his all-star assemblage Artists United Against Apartheid in 1985, following in the draft “We Are The World” earlier that year.
Here he is whipping the best live version ever captured on film — in the small-venue Ritz in NYC with brother Bruce showing up to join Little Steven’s Disciples of Soul … and whoever the hell that teeth-rattling bass player is — I want him in my band! http://www.rockpeaks.com/video/l/Little-Steven/Ritz-1987/Sun-City
Here’s the long-form video of “Sun City” that Little Steven’s collective of masters made. Some of the legends I noticed — Miles, Herbie, Dylan, Ringo, Springsteen, Bono, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Peter Wolf, Jimmy Cliff, The Temptations, Clarence Clemons, George Clinton, Afrika Bambaataa, Run-DMC, Darlene Love, Nona Hendrix, Ruben Blades, Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil … and … my old front yard, Washington Square Park, was the setting of the climactic choir scenes! 😉 http://www.rockpeaks.com/video/l/Little-Steven/Washington-Square-Park-1985/Sun-City
And in 1988 when Jimmy Dammers, the guy from The Specials who wrote “Free Nelson Mandela,” organized the massive all-star “Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute” at Wembley Stadium, he was able to summon the likes of Little Steven, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, The Eurythmics, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Joe Cocker, Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Simple Minds, UB40, Youssou N’Dour, Jackson Browne, Chrissie Hynde, Tracy Chapman, Paul Carrack and loads of others.
I just came across this in the files. Glad I did. Kinda cool.
They’re not really traditional 5–7–5 haiku — they’re what Kerouac called Western Haiku — “simple 3-line poems that make a little picture” — written while I was living with and inspired by Carolyn. There certainly was something about that woman that inspired. She had so many arts flowing through her at every given moment — painting, writing, theater — it couldn’t help but transfer to those around her.
This outcropping, sketched over the summer of 2012, is a portrait of her, using a tiny haiku brush.
Everything comes directly from something she said or I saw.
Haiku For Carolyn
Portrait painter, married Adonis
loved a movie star
could still draw their faces from memory
Houseful of books
skyscraper stacks
grow on every surface
Still watches movies
like the set and costume designer
she always was
Still cooks every meal
meat, potatoes and veggie
like her bio-chemist father taught her
Touch-typing emails
looking at giant Mac screen
words flow with ease
In love with history
so much a part of it
and not just this lifetime
Designed her own garden
and put in a waterfall
knowing I was coming
WACed a war
mothered a family
batted away suitors by the battalion
Hung with heavies
but keeps it light
as fans gush their hearts
Still twinkles by day
and beams at night
reading in every morning
Turquoise and purple
color her home
herself and her life
She enjoyed this life
as much
as she enjoyed all her others
Jack’s first wife Ediewas the one I could talk to back then — and in fact would grow to become close friends with shortly after Boulder. She even enlisted me to write her autobiography with her, which seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime, until I learned she’d already scratched out a thousand pages … and wasn’t even up to where she met Jack! She was absolutely insistent that every detail of every moment of her life be included, and even at my young age with this huge opportunity before me I knew this would be an impossible task and we’d end up fighting over every detailed description of every piece of clothing she ever wore … so I didn’t end up joining her on the journey and we stayed friends instead.
Where Jan and Carolyn were shy and quiet, Edie was a ball of fire — always talking, often to more than one person at once, telling stories, and relishing the spotlight. Where Jan didn’t want to go in front of a microphone, Edie would eat them up like the six sauerkraut hotdogs she ate the first time she met Jack, the story of which she probably told 60,000 times over that week.
She was a hoot, a bona fide character, “a real pisser” as they called people like her back in the day, a “dynamite broad,” a catalytic woman, gregarious, a natural chatterbox, a female Neal in her confidence and making the party jump wherever she went.
She came with all these paintings she claimed Jack painted, but nobody was ever able to authenticate them. She had them displayed in her room and at an art gallery show that was part of the conference and she was trying to sell them or get them in a museum or something. Never happened.
She and Henri Cruwere a real going concern for a while — until Henri made the mistake of introducing her to his friend Jack. That kinda put a damper on their relationship for oh about 40 years. But the old lovebirds finally reconnected in 1980 and became fast friends again for the rest of their days. And I could sure see why after I also became friends with ol’ Henri in the months following the conference.
These two birds were sure flappin’ the same feathers — always workin’ the angles to hustle a buck. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. They were both generous, giving, loving, people people, but they always had some wild get-rich-quick scheme goin’ and about 20 deals in the middle of being made at all times. Jack coulda written whole books about either one of these two.
The thing about Henri was — he had the greatest laugh in the world — but Jack already told you that in “On The Road.” And yeah — there was a pattern here among his old compadres. Henri was a born dry comic who loved to deliver drop dead funny lines totally straight and only move his eyeballs to see if you got it. And if you did, he’d explode with this high-pitched hee-hee-hee which would make you laugh even more which would make him laugh even more.
He had these stock lines he’d deliver over and over — “You can’t teach the old maestro and new tune.” Or “Plant ya now and dig ya later.” Or if someone wasn’t talking, “You wouldn’t say shit if you had a mouthful.” And for years he’d been immortalizing these sayings into rubber stamps he had made at some little shop in Chinatown. He had hundreds of them stored in various old fishing tackle boxes — sometimes whole 3-sentence jokes he thought were hilarious but were really just extremely corny puns. Maybe this was his way of getting his words in print like his friend Jack, I don’t know, but sometimes he’d send out whole letters to people that were nothing but pages of his stamped jokes and quotes of wisdom!
Unlike the people who’d made the pilgrimage to Boulder, which Henri couldn’t do because he’d just recently been confined to a wheelchair due to losing half a leg to diabetes, but he also wouldn’t do it because he didn’t share the assembled’s awe of his friend since high school. As Henri said, he “wasn’t entirely pleased” with how Jack portrayed him in his novels (even though anyone who knew Henri knew Jack painted a vividly accurate and loving portrait), and he didn’t care much for Jack’s “fruity friends,” or how rude he could be when drunk. ‘Course, that didn’t stop him from listing himself in the Manhattan phone book until the day he died as “Remi Boncoeur,” the pseudonym Jack gave him in On The Road. What the old buddies were, more than anything, were two dashing young men on the town on the make. Neither of them, as it turned out, were really the settle-down marrying types (as Henri put it, “I don’t breed well in captivity”), but they both loved to have a pretty woman on their arm and in their bed — and sometimes it turned out to be the same woman.
Henri Cru’s 70th birthday – April 1991. Henri in the chair — me in the peacoat, Stringbeans Kurman & Tim Moran in the back, Mary & Alexandra behind Henri, outside the Blue Note Jazz Club where we saw Maynard Ferguson, West Third & Sixth Ave. in the Village, with the famous Waverly Theater over our shoulders, where “On The Road” would finally open in NY 20 years later.
This gathering in Boulder was the first time Edie’d ever appeared anywhere to talk about Jack — but then that was the case for a lot of these people, this being the first major summit and all. Butshe knew Jack before anyone else who was here — having met him when they were both teenagers in 1939 and fallen in love not long after.
In fact, she had this whole thing she called “the ’40s gang” — which was just her, Allen, Burroughs and Huncke — the core four who pre-dated everybody. Neal, Carolyn, Holmes, Corso, Ferlinghetti — they all came years of youth later. You remember who your oldest friends are — who came first, who dates back the furthest. And same with Edie — acutely aware of who the original group was, and she made a point of reconnecting with each of them, but especially with Herbert who, for whatever reason, she seemed to dig the most. But then — that was my vibe, too.
And just to be clear — Allen was The Man. This whole thing happened because of him, start to finish. As an event producer myself … you don’t get to hang with your friends and have fun. I mean, you do on a deeper and long-term level, but in the present it’s all work, check lists, constant mental mapping of the future minutes, hours and days.
And that’s what old Allen was doing — working his ass off — starting more than a year before this happened, and then all during it, not only coordinating every damn thing that went on, but also conducting writing workshops, doing reading performances (where he killed), press conferences, conflict resolution, into leading silent meditation sessions, then back into administrative crap, and more hassle defusing, and croissant monitoring, and panelist rescheduling, and housing management, and dinner arranging, and most importantly — Vibe Establishing. It was all from his Tender Heart that this whole thing sprung and kept springing. And he was everywhere at once.
Neal Cassady + Bill Graham = Allen Ginsberg
But first came Edie — who introduced her brainy boyfriend Jack to this cool guy from her Columbia art class, Lucien Carr … who in turn introduced Jack to his life-altering partners in crime Allen Ginsberg and Bill Burroughs … making it pretty easy to peg the Beat Generation’s inception to Edie’s introduction and the all-night drinking and talking and phonograph playing sessions they danced across the universe in the four rooms of the Morningside Heights apartment she shared with Lucien’s girlfriend, then one Joan Vollmer Adams.
As much as Jack and the Beats were products and practitioners of the male-centric world of the 1940s and ’50s, it was almost comically common for the women to be the real catalysts of creation. It was Jack’s mother who gave her grown-up son the love and shelter and stability to write and preserve his manuscripts. It was his last wife Stella who mothered him after Mémère had a stroke, and was keeping his filing cabinets and archives intact after they both passed away. It was Ann Charters who was the first scholar to take him seriously — and while he was still alive — showing up on his doorstep in 1966 to begin the work that would become his first biography. It was his second wife, Joan Haverty, who had the job that paid the rent on the apartment at 454 West 20th Street that gave Jack the space to write his career-changing scroll of On The Road in that 20-day shot in 1951. It was Carolyn who first moved to San Francisco, 1947 — long before Ferlinghetti or any of them — and THAT’s why Neal went there, followed by Jack, Allen and the domino tumble of history. And it was one wild fun-loving woman named Frankie Edie Parker from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, who chose to room with a like-spirited woman who would soon be Mrs. Burroughs just as she’d be Mrs. Jack and who together hosted the rented Eden from which an entire generation spawned.
Ya know how our favorite Beats were not exactly role-model parents?
How there aren’t a lot of heart-warming parent-child stories in Beatlandia?
Well, …
there is one.
Carolyn Cassady and her son John were sumpthin else. Honestly I’m tearing up just now picturing them together. It was the greatest thing. They loved each other as much as two people can.
And they were like a comedy duo, like a Burns & Allen, or Dashiell Hammett’s Thin Man couple, wise-crackin’ all the time — so in synch you’d think they’d been jamming since birth!
They had each other’s rhythms and thoughts DOWN — and could just play the other — it was amazing — like two instruments trading off in a band.
There could be a room fulla people and they’d be in different clusters and they’d still somehow be hearing each other and one would say something and the other would laugh from 10 feet away.
And they could tell the most risqué jokes or one-liners that would make me blush — and the two of them would just roar!
There were so many nights in hotel rooms or restaurants that we’d all be talking and laughing so loud there were noise complaints.
And this was never ending. They didn’t even have to be on the same continent and they could make each other laugh — just by hearing the other’s voice in their head.
When I mention in my tribute to Carolyn about her inspiring me with my own mom, it was really seeing them together that exploded my framework of what a parent-child relationship could be.
They were like two little kids when they were together. Look at that picture above. I bet that’s the exact same expression of giddy silly playful joy Carolyn had when she was 4 years old.
And they could also be like two complaining old fogies on a swing on the front porch grousing about how things ain’t like they used to be — then crack each other up at the irony.
What I’m saying is — there was at least one tremendous parent-child relationship up on Mount Rushmore in South Beatlandia.
