now i tell ya

Merle Travis was something to see. I saw him in Tulsa at a doo daa to honor Johnie Lee Wills (Bob's Brother who never left Tulsa) and Merle wasn't on the bill but he showed up (apparantly he was shacked up near Tahlequah at that time just waitin to die as they say) and it was close to the end of days (age had caught up with him pretty good by then) and I remember two songs he played and sang (he had a bit of trouble singing but that voice was chock full of experience) and he sang a song about Cairo (or Karo if you sound it right) and a song about Dry Bread

Dry Bread
Sho aint greasy
Hard Work
Sho Aint Easy
Dry Bread
And Hard Work
that's all I've known

well, i think we would all like the world to be a better place, healthy for people and other living things...
here's looking to the day when we all (all of us everywhere) can figure out how to accomplish this.

carry on...

here here!, could you pass the potatoes please?

cointainly.

The Dead at the Lunar New Year concert...

http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-11- ... sbeok.shnf

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002V ... nce&n=5174

first two times i saw the dead. the first featured Carl Star or Chunky as he was known showing up at my parents house ready to party. he had short black hair and it was parted in the middle for the show. we went over to Joy's (the Mezcal God's future wife) parents for the preshow party and Chunky took twenty bongs (witht he melted colored wax on the big bamboo) in a row. it was good and cheap mexican ($80 a kilo $10 an ounce). (look on a map, when it came across the mexican border, it didn't decide which way it would go until it hit OKC, that is the first major cross raods. California is west (of course that wasn't an important route until Columbia and Cocaine really kicked in) chicago is north and the east coast was east (far more important the weed followed the H). That info is probably not in yer history books but it made my life intersting. sad and exceptionally stoned at times, The second show was the best I thought (in 73) though Pig Pen was gone, it made dick's picks. the first show was in the civic center in OKC which is on the other side of the street where the mezcal god rode in all his glory (civic center / center theater, those OKC planners were not to creative with the names) on the night of 200 motels

I still think those two songs from Merle Travis or hearing Sonny Terry Whoop on his harmonica is as impressive as Jimi Hendrix (although I would have like to see Jimi, don't get me wrong), its a big world out there

anyone recall Phil Lesh's Sea Stones it came out when Rolling Thunder, Ace, Rum Runners, and (a little later) Old and in the Way and Garcia came out in '72, weird F'n music, that Phil

http://www.philzone.com/leshlinks/seastones.html

well it was a little later but like i said weird man, varese would freak

http://kingtet.com/steelwind/index.html

another interesting tid bit from that time

Another cosmic memory, when this guy showe up at the planetarium for a late night show it seemed those purple pills were everywhere. one performance in particular had King Krimson doing Father of Night (that dylan thing) and Loggins and Messina's be free (i can't remember the other song, damn, oh well)

you know, it seems these get togethers had to be statements of somekind for "big brother" I know they had to be watching

LASERIUM®

Ivan Dryer realised that movie film could not capture the pure, intense colours, the scale and the delicacy of the laser images created by Dr. Elsa Garmire. Only live projection of these effects with a laser could capture the excitement.
Elsa Garmire told the author, "Dale Pelton, Ivan and I worked together and it was his idea to take the Cal Tech laser, which we did, to the Griffith Observatory. We demonstrated it to them and they liked it! We were among the first laser light shows. Actually, the first laser light show was Lowell Cross, way before the Osaka show which I was involved in."
Dryer, Garmire and Pelton (who both later departed) formed "Laser Images Inc." using the then-young technology of X-Y scanning, plus several layers of lumia and various "sunglasses" performed the first Laserium® Show at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles in November 1973. Laserium® was the first company to commercialise the laser light show as a form of entertainment. Ivan Dryer is acknowledged as the father of the laser light show industry.
The early Laserium® shows were a mixture of non-representational scanned colour modulated abstract and cycloid effects, with optical effects, created by lumia and diffraction gratings. The shows were choreographed to recorded music and the laser portion was performed live by the laserist. They typically took place in planetariums as the star field projections could be used as a very effective background. Since the laserist had full control of the system and could react to the audience, no two shows were exactly alike. This probably explained why many in the audiences were repeat customers.

boy howdy!

one more comment and i will try to shut up (sorry Tom) I have spoke of drugs and freak flags and stuff, but at that time it seems everything i did was dripping with rebelluousness (is that a word, hell idon't know) but my whole youth just spent that way (and all that stuff i talk about was part of it) i don't know i am grasping and can't explain it but i think the youth today is close to an explosion of that sort, i just hope it is of value and goes the right direction and is not limited by borders and religions and things that seperate, but i do feel it, they got to, and i can't help but think that we are so dependent on the youth of the world (no borders remember) standing up and doing it, they represent the future and now we represent the past, i am for them, i am pulling for them, i hope they do better this time around, i hope the steps get bigger and bigger in the right direction

ok i m out!

you know, when i was writing on the other board about the dylan/hendrix thing, i was thinking how funny it was that from about age 11 to 13 how narrowly focused on hendrix i was. i mean i can see how he had my attention, but you are right about there being a lot out there!
some other artists were introduced to me by certain of my friends who who would like to give little impromptu performances on the spur, like right there wherever we were. and it would go from there.

anyhow, i did see the grateful dead once (almost twice)!

well i hope not.

i am operating a little slowly at the moment, by the time i get anything posted there are already about three more posts up, so anyhow...

Jerry was the only reason I would go to New York City. I can't take crowds and I need a couple of feet of personal space but if the payoff was to see Jerry, I climb into subways and crowds and whatever else is necessary.

The neat thing about Grateful Dead shows was the way the evening progressed. It always took two songs or so to adjust the speakers to the crowd who were soaking up some parts of the sound making the sound a little dull or muffled in the top end. Remember the speakers hanging from the ceiling to allow for room acoustics? Nobody set up a sound system like the Grateful Dead. When the sound system was adjusted perfectly all parts were balanced and audible, the boys would start playing softer and softer. A NYC crowd wouldn't let them get as quiet as a California crowd would. Can't have a creshendo without a pianissimo. Then they would build and build and build, top out and slow and soften and send us out at about the volume levels we arrived at. Kinda like a rollercoaster made out of sound. Only managed two nights in a row at one venue one time. It was astonishing how the two evenings interrelated. The two evening's rollercoasters of sound were unique but were parallel and reinforced and contrasted each other. And that was without a bong because I never would have found my way out of NYC if I was stoned.

kurt...