I remember Mother

Black Gold / Texas T / Big times in Big D. Soft talkin & big stick walkin. Hotter than blazes out but we were all keepin cool in the shade of pre-bust boom, mid 70s Dallas Texas. Cool beneath the “Gimme another one of them gold mirror type buildings” cluttering up the prairie sky. For those of us not old enough to know about the dust bowl beneath and why we had to gag down every bit of liver & onions on our plate every Wednesday, we were lappin it up.

Everyone but our own Mother Dear. 2 Darn Hot, she’d proclaim – hair high, fag danglin from her mouth! She’d pack us up every summer and we’d drive to our step family’s part of the world where it was drier – to a little Podunk town called Wheeler – you know, next to Shamrock & Pampa & … Amarillo? Mom got a break from the kids, & could smoke with the adults to a Conway Twitty soundtrack – mmmmm Dogies – whilst we ran wild with our cousins out there in the Panhandle

Plus Wheeler was windy and that made it cooler too. My cousin Penny – I believe she’s in corporate communications now – told me it was so windy there, that I wouldn’t even be able to wear a dress in March, because I’d get sandburn on my legs. In fact every March & April the sky’d turn yellow as the wheatfields, the barometric pressure would drop down to the devil and giant twisted sisters of random devastation would pop up to perform their whirling snakedance across the sky! They didn’t call it Tornado country for nothing out there. We’d run screamin through Cora’s backyard “Nana, Nana, it’s a twister!” – assuming the position, sliding down the cellar doors to the basement shelter just wishin we were there a coupla months earlier to see it all for ourselves. During one particularly turbulent bout of roleplay, my sisters & I stopped in our tracks as we heard a call to arms from Penny. The children of Nana’s maid had joined us that day and it seemed that the younger one left a little streak of something behind her on the cellar door.

“Oooh weeee, it’s nigger pee!”, Penny shrieked.

I’d like to say that I was moved by sympathy for my new little friend who stood there, head bowed, shamed by the slant – insult to injury for the real reason why she couldn’t control herself – In fact she would have been trying too hard to control herself since Wheeler hadn’t quite got the hang of “separate but equal” facilities by the mid 70s, much less the concept of integration.

No, the 1st thing on my mind – and my whipsmart sisters – was where the hell to hide. In a lightning flash all three of us Dallas girls fled from a real force of nature – my mother – who might, at any time, emerge from the place where you least expected her – twister mister mother sister – shoe or belt in hand – to beat you to dust in front of God & everybody. “How many times have I told you NOT use that word!” She had the eyes of a fan tailed hawk, could hypnotise like a snake, the keen nose & ears of a wolf and the strength of a bear – no backchat, no negotiation and no charge for delivery.

It only really made us more violent with each other though, and to avoid a mutiny from her growing girls, she’d changed tac, using situationist methodology.

“Yes, girls, you were right, I was wrong. It’s true, we are the niggers of the world.”, removing a pick from her purse to fluff up the freshly permed afro that sprung out of her ski-cap, “but you can call ME Superfly”

“Mom, NOOOOOOOOOO!”

Soon we found ourselves being bussed to the wrong side of town to a black school – we would not be using that word, there. But to ease our tension, and to give us some clues about what she was tryin to do, Mother Dear, initiated us into a little ritual confined to the carpool. Everyday, after school, Mom would knock back her fave drink – Dr Gin (Dr Pepper & Gin) – pile us into the car and switch on KKDA Dallas Disco Soul on the AM dial. We would listen and clap along to the last few songs at 5pm en route to ballet, gymnastics, choir practice, baton twirling, personality & charm … At the end of every broadcast day, KKDA-Dallas Disco Soul, would sign off with a little ol’ speech by the Rev Dr Jesse Jackson – and we were expected to chime in

I AM

SOMEBODY

I MAY BE UNEMPLOYED

BUT I AM

SOMEBODY

I MAY BE IN JAIL

BUT I AM

SOMEBODY

I AM

SOMEBODY

I AM

SOMEBODY

I AM

GOD’S CHILD

SOUL POWER

BLACK POWER

YEAHHHHH

The roaring congregation would fade to static on the carpool radio, but the simple eloquence & power of the message hypnotised me toward belonging to a better history.  I had no idea what magic my mother wove into our lives then.  I can only begin to grasp it now….  I really miss her.

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Radio Joy Live from the Foundry 2NIGHT Sunday 17 Jan 8pmGMT

 

WWW.BANDOFHOLYJOY.CO.UK  8pm GMT

Archived later on www.radiojoy.co.uk

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TalkinMusicalRevolutions 7 Mining4Gold RadioResonance 16/17 Jan 10

Yeah, way too much fun, last night, burnin the midnight oil into early mornin – what I live for.   Johny Brown & Inga Tillere,  Band of Holy Joy, hosted & enabled an electric Keseyan presentation on Resonance Radio of Gavin Martin reading Wipe Out….. Sex & Drugs & Rock-n-Roll …. California Groupies – the extended mix, hard corps of & sneaky peep at Talking Musical Revolutions 7 – Fun, Can you have too Much?, comin up 9th Feb – Three Blind Mice in Shoreditch. 

Inga Tillere & James S Finn served up a flashback soundscape of Malibu on STP, Cool-aid mashups of  Beach Boys Pet Sounds with a twist of Hotel California

 

I scatted some free association harmonies with Wilson bros & the Eagles too, including Hotel California guitar solo.

Johny Brown was the wizard of audio curation and direction, as per usual.  Flyin!

www.resonancefm.com

http://www.miningforgold.net/

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Standing next to a Mountain – TMR 6: JIMI HENDRIX

19.30, 12 January Twenny-Ten – Sagittarius Moon – and The Three Blind Mice in Shoreditch was crowded out for Volume 6 of Talking Musical Revolutions:  Standing Next to a Mountain – Jimi Hendrix the man of honour.  We were all jacked up with anticipation, watchin a pre-show performance art piece by Gemma Ray who was conducting a Keseyan soundcheck b4 our very eyes. 

Ooweee, what a warmup!!  Planned or no, she would open the show and close it too.  There was  a Stevie Wonderwoman collage poster behind her.  Coulda sworn it was undulating, & I hadn’t even hustled a drink yet.

Gavin Martin, host & curator, brought us back to the earthly realm by reading about Hendrix care of  Keith Altham, Jimi Hendrix Monterey 1967.  As GM qualified, Altham sent his apologies, but we were treated to a fab exposition of Hendrix, including a glorious story about him haggling with The Who, over who’d go 1st at the Monterey Pop Fest in ’67.  I mean who could follow Jimi – or not – and who could blame them?   

He then handed the floor to Harry Shapiro, Jimi’s 60s, Sex and Psychedelia.  Communications Director of Drugscope, Shapiro gently introduced us to the idea that Jimi wasn’t so much about love & peace as sex & drugs – ie acid & DMT otherwise known as STP, but that he did find his limits ie not actually a “chosen one” who could do as much acid, and as often, as he would have liked.  He summed up by pointing out that the true survivor of the 60s’ Summer of Love, was Rock-n-Roll – only one third of the old adage (Sex, Drugs &….)  saving best for last.

Dave Stubbs was up next,  reciting his Jimi’s Roomful of Mirrors  over a sublimated soundscape of his fave Hendrix fare.   Explored a feminised and diffused Jimi who’d supported the war in Vietnam (for their own protection, due to Chinese Communist threat? – No way, that’s too American!) and drugged himself to oblivion; but finally tuned in to his greatness as a musician and visionary at 24, thus ritualising a Blake-ian transition from songs of innocence to experience:  Thee Experience.  He listed bands who’ve borrowed from him – Afro Futurists, like Asian Dub Foundation & A Guy Called Gerald.   I was the most touched by a story involving KKK-style louts cheering news of MLK’s death in Jimi’s presence, because his response was to back away & sing out 4 the great Rev Dr – ‘House Burning Down’, Electric Ladyland.   I mean, is that a passive or weak choice?  It’s certainly a peaceful choice.  I’d assert that the man was behaving according to laws of serenity.

Anna Le, Poetic Tribute – She came on joking about possibly being racially profiled, as the only black female on the bill, and confessed that she knew very little of Hendrix when she was 1st approached by Gavin Martin to perform.  Her poem was a seamless flow from intro to prose to verse, from incidental to declamatory to exclamatory which would reveal her amazing rite of passage.   It began like a fairytale.  An old man with no left hand appears, requesting her words on Jimi Hendrix, to which she replies, “Who?”.  “Forget The Who!” he clamours (HA! Abbot & Costello – one old man deserves two more)….  Midpiece she addresses her introductory racial profile joke , asking why her, and realises she has been chosen for the challenge itself, then launching into a winding, whirling, rocky labyrinth of revelation toward Hendrix’s significance.  Her lovely low Uribbean voice crescendoed, flexed and chopped, accelerating toward  serene denouement:  gradually the old man disappears and she claims ownership of Hendrix, whose legacy belongs to us all.  Voodoo Child, Baby!  I was struck – a slap that felt like a kiss – when she spoke out – pardon my paraphrase – “He was like Ike, his guitar like Tina, nearly worked her to death, but by doing so, he brought out her best”.  I wanted to protest, but then was reminded of the older Tina (another Sag, or am I wrong?)  singing ‘Simply the Best’ compared to say, ‘River Deep, Mountain Wide’ – and realised she was damn right ON!  I can’t wait to see how this chick develops into herself.  2010, Year of the poet, natch!

Neil Spencer, Jimi’s Star Sign –  affirmed Hendrix’s claim to have arrived on earth from another planet – Jupiter – astrologically placing him in the pantheon of other Sagittarii like Jim Morrison & Joseph Conrad.  Spencer found Sag(e)ly wisdom in his lyrical mastery, influenced by Mercurial conjunct of water moved by sky in his Cancerian moon – “…sunrise from the bottom of the sea”.  He quoted another famous Sag to descibe the essence of Hendrix – name escapes me – claiming that the characterised equine bottom of a Sag gave him rights to shit upon the Earth?  His Mars in Scorpio made JH a jealous Sag swinger – behold Jimi & Marianne vs Mick & Devon Dolly:  ‘Dolly Dagger’.  Spencer’s presentation was also superb poetry, and he transcended a sceptical, cynical BabyBusterBrown-out ‘tude toward Astology into an aura of laughing children returned to innocence.  I suppose he was enabled by the revelation that Jimi himself was a keen follower of the Zodiac.

Charles Shaar Murray, Crosstown Traffic, also emphasised the softer, weaker, more feminised side of Jimi Hendrix – so twice already this evening I’d been confronted with notions of “feminised” and weakness in the same breath.  (Any of  you silly bastards ever heard of the Donner party?  You can think it through as climate refugees over the next coupla years.)  We also learned that Jimi was a member of the Liberal Party – woo hoo.  CSM made an excellent point though that Hendrix did not exist in a vacuum, that there was black rock before he came along, which would imply there was something more to his legacy.  No mention of his Native American, Cherokee roots, mind.  Murray just had to sabotage himself next, as he read a fantasy passage from his book, in which he would have interviewed the man, the myth, the legend, the survivor Jimi Hendrix, alive today.  Not only did his rendition of Hendrix alternate b/w clicheed deep southern Uncle Tom and Urbbean, but his Hendrix also read stupid like Spinaltap Goes Britpop, AND he had to stop to answer his mobile TWICE!  I knew I was in the presence of greatness when an uber-matriarch in the crowd heckled, “Ooooh, it’s Alistair Campbell”.  My bitchiness aside, it was quality entertainment. 

Both DS & CSM steered to Jimi’s early death as a blessing somehow – that he’d reached his limit as a creative, and was on a spiral to self annihilation etc ad infinitum.  Then, as if to my rescue, came Jeff Dexter, with his High and Low Times with Hendrix, who proclaimed  the tragedy of Jimi’s creatively premature end, having actually communed with the man, and he was nearly the only performer off-book.  The Stevie Wonderwoman poster began to undulate again as Dexter summoned La Loba into the room.  She laid down beneath his feet morphing into a burning Strat – his features transmogrified from the flames below, vestments animated, transporting us to the company of an artist who was becoming himself – freed from his rabid bond to an evil empire back home & on the scene in London.  JD wove in real stories of backstage antics at the Isle of Wight fest – how he’d used his skills as a tailor to sew up some trousers Jimi’d ripped up, before going onstage to introduce him; described how the fest made bedsheet bags full o cash, contrary to claims of financial loss .  Touchingly, he recounted Jimi’s reconciliation and reunion that v night with an old friend – Howard Parker, aka H – havin forgiven him for a loud, public racial slur he’d made a coupla years back.  I was beginning to get a feeling for a time of uncomfortable change and an air of forgiveness to help it along.  Apparently H and his mother were looking after Jimi, who was in the UK without a visa.  JD’s account of JH’s pre-celebrity cult years, here, revealed a portrait of a very vulnerable man – subject to many dangerous people including pushers and middlemen, who arguably robbed him blind whilst he was surviving on tomato sauce sandwiches.  Dexter revivified the old Roundhouse vibe w stories of the  ‘Million Volt Light & Sound Show’.  He remembered how some freak ran onstage during a Hendrix gig,  grabbed his White Strat right off the ground  and tore off into the audience, never to be seen again.   Jimi was pioneering his closing gimmick of leaving the guitar onstage playing feedback to the vibe of the house, allowing the guitar its own curtain call perhaps.   Jeff emphasised just how devastating such a gesture was for Jimi – broke & beneath the radar – and it ruined any potential curtain call.  It was hard to imagine how someone so legendary, now, might have been so unprotected then, but Dexter gave us a good hard glimpse.  I really felt I was there with Jeff, when he recalled how he & Jimi were shunted away from a table @ ye olde  Bag O Nails for not being the “kind” that would buy enough drinks, and Jimi boasted that someday he’d come back and buy that table.  He then got up on stage to jam with the band, and blew the room away.  Impossibly young and innocent seemed my Jimi Hendrix, the rock god. 

As promised, Gemma Ray closed the evening.  Styled in 50s-esque black chignon,  hot red flower to contain a cascade down one side, she sang Hendrix like an angel and played like the devil in a polka dotted A-line skirt and thights – ha-cha!   Very much a ‘Crimson & Clover’ style swirly guitar with a twist of sonic purple haze that was nothing short of pure contact high.

Something loosed itself in me.  In fact it was La Loba on the loose, having peeled herself off Jeff Dexter like the eternal groupie she is, grabbing me by the neck because it was time to dance.  She put her claws into my head and spun my brain like a globe, stopping it with a tap of their bloodstained tips.  There was Jimi Hendrix supporting the Vietnam War, the room began to spin as she fast forwarded to him fanning the flames on his burning Strat, for the truest, red-white-&-bluest Amerikan national anthem ever heard at Monterey… TAP….. SPIN….. there was Jimi the womanizer gnashing his teeth over his Devon Dolly …  TAP there was Jimi biting the naked harem centerfold of Electric Ladyland because of its sleight on womanhood.  SPIN…. TAP…… SPIN …… TAP….. TAP….SCRAAAAYPE….As she restored my balance and disintegrated into a StevieWonderwoman, I gained focus on a man who was trying to deconstruct his world and invited us along on the journey:  A Shapeshifter, sports fans.   Once a refugee from criminalised entrapment, his masters had fatigued and booted him into the meatgrinder as colour-coded, collateral damage; but Jimi foiled them again, shedding the patriotism that got him through that long night’s journey into the heart of darkness within a brutally unforgiving world.  He emerged from that world kinder, gentler, empathetic, peaceful – STRONGER. 

Some have asserted – Bell Hooks, Naomi Wolf – that olde worlde, post-Suffragette/pre-post-feminist Feminism was a saviour to men, because it allowed them to let down their pre-supposed guard and embrace a more dynamic, honest side of themselves – ie “Hell no, we won’t go!” vs pressure to be tough, rough and ready enough to fight someone else’s war.  Feminism allowed men space to refuse violence without suffering the  stigma of cowardice.  When stalwarts of alternative culture begin to associate female values with weakness I start to scream, “ATAVISM!”.  Do they truly understand Jimi, do they? and is their cynicism part of the problem or the solution? 

“We’re a long way from being created in God’s image …. but let’s don’t hang back with the brutes”  – Blanche Dubois, Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

“Et tu, Brute?” – Caesar, Julius Caesar,  William Shakespeare

Next Talking Musical Revolutions – No 7 – 9th Feb, 10 – Three Blind Mice, Shoreditch  EC2A

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Get your skis on! Country Dirt play Twisted AM Lounge Sunday 10/01/10 8pm

Country Dirt support The No Frills Band – Local goodtime folk faves with added tuba!

London’s hottest new country music band – COUNTRY DIRT – showcases London’s finest contemporary country musicians, including;                                                                                                                                                                                    

Marianne Hyatt (Dragstripper)on vocals                                                                                                                                                 

Patmo Sheeran (Big Self, Stone Rangers) on BIG guitar and vocals                                                                                                     

Bob Staunch (Jegsy Dodd & the Original Sinners) on boogie-woogie-bass                                                                                 

George Blacklock (Blacklock & Brown on acoustic guitar, vocals and mandolin                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Frank Brown (Hangin Ropes) on the 5 string banjo and harmonica

‘…. adding aural shooting stars and neon fire to the roadhouse vibe.’ Gavin Martin, Family of Rock

www.myspace.com/countrydirtband                                                                                                                                 www.hyattesque.com                                                                                                                                                                 http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.myspace.com%252Fthenofrillsband&h=a1b8c0b41996fd568e70ddef92320e47                                                                     http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=277333642032&ref=mf

Twisted AM Lounge @ The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, London, SW2 5BZ

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There’s a Thin Line between Love & Haight

I made it back to the Red Victorian Saloon today just in time for the Peace rap at 9am and caught site of my dashing ally, Troy presiding over about 10+ participants, brunching.  I pulled up 2 the round table & heard a soft spoken guy named Robert describing a Feng Shui technique performed for young mothers.  Apparently based on a Native American custom, I think he said it relied upon positioning to induce familiar comforts from common perceptions of shared experience  – for example, how “we” all feel during a hot afternoon or cold snowy midnight.  Well, I get depressed on sunny days – doesn’t make me special, just weird – would I be incurable?  So I asked what was the intent of this technique and Sami Sunchild asked to intervene with instruction on how she likes to conduct Peaceful World Conversations.   

 

Sami is the 84 year-old artist in residence and founder of Red Vic Peace Center- though the hotel has been around since the turn of last century.    Preliminary introductions would last 30 seconds, to include one’s name, the home with which each identified growing up and the home most identified as an adult, with a description of the view, if it would fit into the time slot.  We were all introduced to each other as Swedes living in Berlin, a German in New Zealand, a Mexican & Austrian in LA, some Southern Californians & Vegasians in Frisco, a Southern Californian in Paraguay and one Texan who’d relocated to London.  Sami asserted our common orientation as white, middle class and college-educated whilst migratory to other states & countries, emphasising how well equipped we were to help others less fortunate than us, people devoid of food and shelter.  (I refrained from qualifying that I hailed from the Cherokee & Choctaw nations as a proper American mutt and settled for passing for white, as it was Sunday.)  We were then urged to tell a 3 minute story about ourselves involving a decision made toward a better world.  First we would split into two groups – about 5 folk each – synopsise titles round the group then recount our stories in entirety.  Sami kicked off our group with memories of  her choice to adopt 2 children, both from cultures different to her own and each other.  We soon sampled tales of volunteering in a teen crisis centre, educating LA communities about the Holocaust @ The Museum of Tolerance, explorations of Fatherhood, whistleblowing for the Department of Energy, a mapmaking internship for the Parks council, selling door-to-door disarmament & non-intervention in S America on an airforce base as well as other lifestyles outside consumerism.

Troy took over and invited us to host weekly Peaceful World Conversations, in our own migratory hoods – cafe or other public space – and gave us a web address where we might download a free pdf with specifics on how to do it, even offering to direct world travellers our way. 

http://redvic.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/PWCManual.pdf

He also mentioned that the Red Vic was in the process of establishing itself as a historic site for it’s LEGACY OF LOVE – the social experiment that was the Summer of Love.  Ask & ye shall receive. 

Well I was a little late, but en route to my 11 o’clock – Glide, sweet as crystal methodist serenity with a soundtrack to match – my connection called from all the way cross the pond, “…fill ‘er up @ 1286 Fillmore St, Noon sharp – bring an instrument if you got one, but strap yourself in, Toots, cuz you’ll be singin  & dancin thru a Love Supreme by the time it’s through.  Gotta go ” click.  I could not ignore my ride #71 approaching that v street as the pre-recorded buslady sang it out loud, and I simply do NOT ignore serendipitous intervention like that, so I flew away from Haight to a Love Supreme as promised.  Crosstown on #22 to a glass fronted building where the numbers matched and there it was, THERE IT WAS:

St John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, Jurisdiction of the West

I’d been to the last church service of the year ’09 @ Glide, but would ring in the new year on the 1st Sunday of  2010 at the church of John Coltrane.  About 10 or so in the congregation of thee jazz church 12.15, musician time, fashionably late but always ontime.  There was the unmistakable sound of saxophones and congos warmin up just outta sight.  I sat down next to a multi-instrumentalist named Hollywood and returned the penetrating gaze of a glorious Black Dread Jesus directly ahead of me.  Swathed in indigo robes, the sun on his left, a crescent moon on his right, sparkling smatter of stars reflecting his luminescnt orb halo, adorned with a red Celtic cross, just radiating from the back of his head.  He blessed me with his right hand and held a book in his right, with the words, “I am Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and The Ending”.  Only a larger than life tempera panel, adorned with gold leaf behind the drum kit 5 rows ahead of me, but I did feel the gaze.  To his right sat an early gothic hooded, berobed in blushin rose Mary mother of the ancient Christ child, perched on her lap.  An Oriental St Gabrielle flanked her on her left and a gold haired St Michael on Dreaddy Jesus’s right.  To my immediate left was the sacred image of John Will I AM Coltrane in white robes, holding a sacred sax in his right hand and a scroll in his left, “Let us Sing All Songs To God to which all Praise is Due”.   Whew!   

The warmup music crescendoed to a jam and the musicians filtered on to the stage, including Bishop King in his collar and sanguine sash on sax, the Deacon on drums, the pianist snuck in off the street as did one of the stylish elder backing singers.  One of them handed out tambourines to the crowd.  Sister Mother Marina swept into the room from backstage to conduct the bvs and all of us with her voice, “Rise Up and Praise the Lord Jesus!”.  She wore a t-shirt that read, “Damn the rules, it’s the feeling that matters”, motto to the image of St John.  She made us feel it all right, as we sang and danced our way through ‘Thank-You, Jesus’, ‘Keep on Walkin’, ‘Lord’s Prayer’, ‘Can’t Keep it to Myself, Gotta Tell  Somebody Else’, ‘Hallelujah’ and countless other gospel choons.  The prophecy was indeed made manifest.  We were singin, dancin, bumpin, beatin, shakin & screamin for more than an hour, I’m sure.  At one point, the Deacon drummer brought out an English horn I think and the Bishop was on drums.  He conducted us all with his drumsticks and beats – one song had a marathon coda.  He simply would not give up on us til we got it right – together.  Hell he even came into the crowd & danced with us.  One of the musicians sang us through the gospel in Matt 2:19 and from the Old Testament’s Isaiah 61.1.  Then a very young backing vocalist, Sister Erin, sang us through “I Honor You Right Now, Just Because You’re God”.  She sealed it with a little spoken word, “We have got to get it together, Brothers & Sisters!  We got a lot of work to do in the year 2010.  So many trials to face.  Some of us are losin homes….”

Bishop King, saxophonist supreme, divine drummer and super-soul dancer took the pulpit, “It took a God to help save you from yourself, to release you from your dark desire and monkey mind.  Lord, hide me in your glory.”  He implored us to do as Sister Erin had spontaneously asked, because “coming together and giving praise magnifies the presence of God.”

“God is with us through the ages and manifested through those he chooses”.  The Archbishop Franzo Wayne King D. D. spoke to us of the seemingly unlikeliness of many prophets and saints, but that the prophets & saints were raised up from their own people in their own time.  He turned to St John Coltrane who had experience suffering and disappointment and could empathise with his own people through his great creation, the music.  In 1969 when the St John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, Jurisdiction of the West, was established, there was talk of how “God is Dead”, but then there was also the Death of Hippie,  “wickedness in high places” and the Summer of Love was coming to a shuddering halt,  replaced by a “den of iniquity:  druggin, drinkin liquor and rubbin up against each other in the dark”. 

“Coltrane came to remind us that God is so alive, and we needed to know and needed to hear…Who gives God a name?  John Coltrane:  A Love Supreme.  Words to quicken inside you and remember God’s greatness.” 

“Praise God for the Heathen in the House”, the he did spontaneously sing.

The Archbishop King delved into the sung gospel earlier – he must’ve known that I was gettin a little antsy at hearin bout God as a man.  Matthew 2:19 tells the story about how Joseph took Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt, during Herod’s paedo-killing spree decree, but that an angel told him to ARISE & take the baby Jesus and his mother back to Israel when Herod had died.  Bishop King noted the emphasis on the mother and clarified that women are the wisdom of God, the 3rd part in the trinity – The Holy Spirit, our 1st teachers.  I felt much better.

“Where is the God in Your Fear?”  King focused on the “power of God to visit us” and identified Coltrane as an angel messenger of God who had RISEN up from his people.  I looked at the son of God before me, felt the sun’s heat through the window behind me and began to realise how perfectly placed was this jazz church. “God is all.  We are the ambassadors of God.  All of us together is God.  We are the ‘body’ of Christ….”  Joseph had to take his christ child and its mother wisdom, rise up from the fear and go to Israel, the land of Peace, so that Jesus would be known as Jesus of Nazareth.  The saviour of our collective soul would lay down his life to be reborn in all of us, and he came from the unlikely small town of Nazareth.  Similarly John Coltrane would hail from the city of Jazz, never to receive the acclaim he deserved in his lifetime, lay down his life in his music and rebirth us with  A Love Supreme:  Part 1, A New Year’s Revolution.

 

Bishop King gave the floor to Sister Katie – with the church for nearly 20 years – who recited her beautiful poem ‘Music of the Soul’.  We all hugged each other goodbye to another jazz jam, looked each other in the eye and said, “God Bless You”.  We’d been there for 3 hours, and it was hard to go.

www.coltranechurch.org

Tune in to www.kpoo.com every Tuesday 12-4pm PST for John Coltrane conciousness broadcast to you live and direct

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If UR going 2 SAN FRAN CISCO…. Died, Crucified, Disnified

be sure to bring your history book or something that Googles, because you’re not gonna find jack if you’re lookin 4 what put this psychedelic city on the map.  Well you can if you hold your breath & dig deep.  I’m kinda sick, mo like mad as hell & not takin it anymo.  God Damn the pusherman and city planning!  Try to find somethin, anythin, hell I’d settle for a fuckin plaque to commemorate say ye olde Psychedelic Shop on The Haight.   It’s a pizza joint now – gimme strength, there’s not even a gluten-free option there.  I stumbled over to the Red Victorian Saloon/Peace Cafe  to watch a free movie advertised on the wall outside – Summer of Love, History 0f The Haight –  and enquired about the time, not disclosed.  The person behind the counter asked what I wanted to drink as response.  Coffee, please, and before I could qualify, he began to prepare that  bitter, bottomless cup of shit  which made my cunt-ry famous.  I piped up, Latte  please, to which I received a torrent of restrictions – no latte, no cappucino, no toilet, not even for customers.  Had I transformed into a panhandler?  OK, what about the film- he pointed me to some literature which I couldn’t see from white heat in my eyes.  I reiterated that the film was advertised on the wall outside.  He then detoured me to the Red Victorian Cinema down the road apiece.  Twas a red herring, obviously.  DAMNIT, why was it so hard to get to the heart o this place & how did my pretty, city by the bay, Frisco – YES, FRISCO!! – become a ghost town & feedin trough, all gussied up in day-glo war paint, like a whore on a holiday?  I gave it a coupla daze & got back.  Luckily that little shit-kid-bitch was gone & I spoke to a mo dignified peer who offered to play “Summer of Love” on the spot – much mo like it.   I sat down w a giant latte, and focused through the trashy cell-chat of a loud fuckwit who planted her big, fat dumbass in front of the screen.  Luckily my dashing peer showed again, offering to maximise the volume for me, and it was glorious.  Behold the Human Be-in, The Death of Money, The Diggers’ Free clinic, Survival School, The Free Store, The Oracle – the micro-cosmic socialist experiment that was The Summer of Love, launched on the Summer Solstice 1967, ending a few months later in October at the Death of Hippie march – beseeching us all to “Bring the Revolution to Where You Live”.  Those kids didn’t wanna work, well too bad there were not mo Diggers who did organise to redistribute resources &  inspire future generations with something to work for besides dope & fuckin in the streets.  Shame the Morning Star Ranch or The Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City, Nevada couldn’t or wouldn’t handle the spillover of teenage runaways, whose composite, fragile, endoskeletal deconstruction was in desperate need of rebuilding. 

I don’t mind performing Hippie acts at home, but did we have to bury the flagship?  “If you can act it out, it’s real”, “Culture is more important than politics”, “Spiritual Values are mo important than the GNP”.  What happened to the seething turmoil of those young people then & the struggle for human rights? 

Why the hell are we bombing life off this planet, as the polar ice caps and Greenland melt, so that the water tables & pestilence rise, and the coastlines recede? 

Why are we shopping ourselves to hell? 

Do some elite few of us have something to fall back on, besides this everyday, earthly paradise? 

 My spiralling paranoia was diverted by the lovely Dawn, another soeur-stren behind the counter at the Red V, who introduced me to a Peace Rap, next Sunday 9am – tomorrow – b4 the amazing Glide Service I will attend, which is an agnostic soul gig service of the finest order, with a revolutionary, civil rights sermon thrown in for good measure. 

 I hope to hear mo about laughin yoga seshes there for my non-stop chronic pain, and the mulitple-part choir & horn section too.  The Summer of  Love extends into the bleak mid-winter, but mostly it’s Love vs Haight.

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