bebop videos

Monday, June 1, 2009

WELCOME TO BEBOP VIDEO NOOZE...

Thursday 9 July, 2009 ( on this day in history )

here's another oldie...

an oldie but a goodie...

Friday 3 July, 2009 ( on this day in history )

Bepopvideos scoops Drudge by 11 minutes...

12:42 pm Pacific...Sarah Palin will step down as governor of Alaska in 3 weeks....not on Drudge yet...12:53 pm Pacific, it's finally on Drudge...the race is on to announce the dropping of the other shoe!!!!!!!!! dum ta dum dum, dum ta dum dum, dahhhhhh

Thursday 2 July, 2009 ( on this day in history )

JK's Chinese Buffet,Sat. 4th of July, 6-8pm, 595 Rohnert Park Expressway, Rohnert Park, CA

Rock Me Baby...

Thursday, May 28, 2009

IN AND AROUND MARIN COUNTY

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

IN AND AROUND THE SF BAY AREA

After the bottom fell out of the oil business back in Louisianne, I returned my houseboat to the bank and my current squeeze, Dianne, who was "as fine as wine", and Honey Bear, and myself journey'd west, We stayed over night with brother Ed in Morro Bay and moved on up the coast to San Francisco. Back in 72' I met a fella named George who had recently returned from flying medi-vac helicopters in Viet Nam, He was hangin' with Ham and Carey, our engineer at KFML. He was a fine fella' but had little or nothing to say about anything. Viet Nam left a lot of feelas' with little or nothing to say.

By now it's Christmas time in 1985 and George has migrated with Ham and Carey to Marin County and got himself a job flying tourists in a Jetstar helicopter at Pier 39 in San Francisco. I mentioned to George that I had a good video camera and had been shooting video for a while and would love to shoot from a helicopter. If I came over to Pier 39 the following Sunday, any time he did'nt have more than 5 passengers, I could ride along and shoot some video.

With Dianne in tow, I was there with bells on. We spent the day riding with George and various and sundry "paying guests" and here's what I was able to assemble from two hours of shakey camera work.

I was at a Verizon store in Corte Madera one day and ran up on a spectacular looking woman working customer service. I had spoken to her a couple of years before, and determined that we were both happily "married". Having found myself recently single, I asked her if she was still happily married. "All men suck", she replied, and I mentioned that my video work occasionally took me to clubs to "shoot" lounge acts and maybe we could meet at The Seafood Peddlar, a nearby waterfront restaurant, have a glass of wine, and "kick the gong around".

I was talking fast as the store was full of up-tite customers with a myriad of complaints, champing at the bit to unload on someone. She slipped me a note that read, "I'm playing at the Elbo Room in San Francisco next week, come and see me". I said, "I'll call ahead and clear it with management to bring a camera, and she said, "Just bring it and shoot, they shoot me all the time".

Your about to see what I saw, and heard, and although I was dumb-founded, I managed to shoot a good hour of video. Here's a couple of tunes, and the reminder that "there's no fool like an old fool". http://www.nobodyfromipanema.com/ Enjoy...

LIGHTS OUT JERRY LAWSEN

Here's Jerry Lawson and The Talk Of The Town and the tribute he wrote and they recorded for Barack Obama in general and our Obama-Thon in particular...thank-you Jerry and Julie Lawson and The Talk Of The Town...

Jerry Lawson and the Talk Of The Town documentary...

Here's Jerry Lawson and The Talk Of The Town with Rod Stewart performing live at the Katrina Benefit Telecast September 9, 2005

The Persuasions - Dream...

The Persuasions - Looking For An Echo

The Persuasions On September Songs

The Persuasions - Gypsy Woman

David Gans & Jerry Lawson Live from BlueIceVideo on Vimeo.

"It Must Have Been the Roses" from BlueIceVideo on Vimeo.

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Jerry1234 said...

Thanks so much for sharing my music. One friend at a time. Means the world to me. By the way the video above me & Gans is "Heavenly Salvation" a Kurt Weill tune. Also I have a brand new CD with my new a cappella group. Jerry Lawson & Talk of the Town. Masterpiece of my career. Hope you'll check it out. www.jerrylawson.biz

In Harmony,
Jerry

MAY 27, 2008 9:55 PM

Ayo Down On My Knees - Jerry Lawson

And here at our own Freight & Salvage...

Jerry1234 said...

Jerry Lawson here, lead singer , arranger & producer of The Persuasions for 40 years. Preetty touching that you have those memories of us 35 years later. Sure would love to hear those ids we did. Some fun times. Did you know I left The Pers in 2004? Thought I was through with a cappella but the universe had other plans. Got a new a cappella group & just released the masterpiece of my 40 years! I hope you'll check it out & spread the news. In Harmony,
Jerry Lawson
www.jerrylawson.biz

LIGHTS OUT 19 BROADWAY

The Jealous Kind...

Rock Me Baby...

Gangster Of Love...

Red House Blues...

Feelin' Alright...

Hambone...

The Jealous Kind...

Wednesday 3 December, 2008

Here's the first sampling of The Jeb Brady Band live at 19 Broadway, the 30th of November...Bex Marshall opened the show with the biggest performance I've ever seen come out of one lady with a National guitar...

Black Guitar...

Slow Down

Stand Up...

Hip Shake...

Hush-Hush...

Outskirts Of Town...

Golden Rock...

The Other Shore...

Moanin' For My Baby...

Chuck Day's last performance...

Here's the 19 Broadway Swingband opening for The Buddy Owen Band on 3 December, 2006. That would be Gary Graham at the piano, the band leader, he also owns the joint. That's Chuck Day singing "You Are My Sunshine", he played the guitar solo on the Johnny Rivers hit, "Secret Agent Man", he also played bass with the Mamas and The Poppas.. Small world...enjoy...

Sadly, I just learned of Chuck's passing on the 10 th of March, 2008...there will be a celebration of his life Saturday, the 22 nd of March at 19 Broadway...Tim Bush, Chuck's bass player has several useful links at Tumbleweedpacific.com ...Chuck Day 1942 - 2008 RIP>

Hallelujah...

And they open with Green Onions...

Here's the line-up for the 3rd of December, 2006, performance of The Buddy Owen Band, live at 19 Broadway in Fairfax...Ernest (Boom) Carter on drums, Ian Lamson on guitar, Steve Evans on bass, and Richie Smith on keyboards...enjoy their rendition of Hoochey Coochey Man with Harmonica Phil

Here on April first of last year: The Buddy Owen Band live at 19 Broadway in Fairfax with Ernest (Boom) Carter on drums, Ian Lamson on guitar and Richie Smith on keyboards performing Red House Blues. Steve Evans is on the road with CoCo Montoya so we have the extremely capable Phil Marshall on bass...

"Great job bebop. I can smell the smoke and sweat and taste the cold beer here in Wisconsin. Thank you Buddy Owen & Band." wag11man

Gypsy Woman...

segues into an introduction of the individual band members on the 3rd of December, 2006.19 Broadway it's in two parts because it takes a little time to look at these boys and peruse their wares...Ernest (Boom) Carter on drums, Ian Lamson on guitar, Steve Evans on bass, and Richie Smith on keyboards...enjoy

The second half of the band introduction...

Here's the Buddy Owen Band doing Love Light...

And Walkin' The Dog...also with Harmonica Phil

And Buddy's Hey Joe with his son, Tony sitting in...

LIGHTS OUT PERI'S

Hopefully moving the local San Francisco bay area music videos to it's own blog will speed up navigation on both blogs. For kfmlnooze and all it entails...

Sweetie Pie and the Doughboys @ Cathleen Riddley, Vocals, Mike McShea, Guitars and vocals, Tim Bush, Bass, Tue, Mar 11, 9 PM at Peri's Silver Dollar in Fairfax.

Here's Sweetie Pie And The Doughboys live at Peri's in Fairfax. Standing On Shakey Ground...

And here's You Beat Me To The Punch from Sweetie Pie And The Doughboys, live at Peri's.

Here's You Are My Sunshine, Sweetie Pie And The Doughboys live at Peri's on the 28 th of September.

Here's Sweetie Pie And The Doughboys live at Peri's on the 28 th of September. I'll be posting more as I process them through the day.

I'm back from Louisiana so heres the tunes I promised from The Ed Earley Bands performance I shot live at Peri's on the 18th of August. We'll kick it off with Fanny Mae.

And the Game Goes On...

And I Feel Good...

And here's Blues At Sunrise...

Here's Can't Get Next To You...

And Run ,Run, Baby Ed Earley Band clip.

LIGHTS OUT BISCUITS & BLUES

My first post will be the March, 25 th appearance of The Ed Earley Band at Biscuits & Blues in the city. With many special guests, including Buddy Owen. As fast as I can edit the tapes, I'll have some clips up. What a club. Great sound, food to die for, excellent lighting, parking discounts...I could go on and on about what a great experience it was\is\will be as soon as you go there. April 12 th might be a good start...John Lee Hooker Jr. for $20

PAINTIN' ON THE EDGE IN LAGUNA

After the bottom fell out of the oil business back in Louisianne, I returned my houseboat to the bank and Diane, Honey Bear, and myself journeyed west, We stayed over night with brother Ed in Morro Bay and moved on up the coast to San Francisco. Back in Denver, in 72', through Ham & Carey, I met George, who had just finished a tour in Viet Nam flying medi-vac helicopters and although he almost never spoke to anyone, he was pleasant enough. At that time I had about a thousand albums alphabetical order and I told him he was welcome to bring his new Teac cassette deck over and hook it up to my new stereo and record what he wanted during the day when I was at work.

Here it is 12 years later, 1985, and George has migrated with Ham and Carey to Marin County and got himself a job flying tourists in a Jetstar helicopter at Pier 39 in San Francisco. I mentioned to George that I had a good video camera and had been shooting video for a while and would love to shoot from a helicopter. If I came over to Pier 39 the following Sunday, any time he didn't have more than 5 passengers, I could ride along and shoot some video.

With Diane in tow, I was there with bells on. We spent the day riding with George and various and sundry "paying guests" and here's what I was able to assemble from two hours of shaky camera work.

After a couple of months painting track houses in Santa Rosa for $22 per hour, it finally came time to send Dianne home. She was missing her kids and Louisianne in a big way and as I had promised her earlier, when the time came I would fly her home. She was a great gal and had really pleasant kids, I hated to see her go but there was nothing else to be done.

I decided to take a leasurely tour of Southern California, as I had spent most of my time in California in the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought I would have a good look at the Palm Dessert where it's so warm all winter. The reality is you can fry eggs on the sidewalk in the summer. From Palm Springs I drifted on north to Laguna Beach and my old KFML buddy, Scott Coen. By now Scott was a successful real estate broker in Laguna and I came up on him just as he had gotten married. His folks had gifted him with a house across the street from the beach and he was in the middle of remodeling. I moved into the guest house and started painting the place.

Once I finished Scotts projects I moved on down the street and repainted a $6 million mansion on the water. It was built in 1929 for the movie director, Ed Griffith. It had two man-made salt water swimming pools, refilled with the incoming tides. There was a light house that started at the main level 70' to the breakers below. I'll never forget standing on my knees on the crown of the lighthouse, painting the weather vane. I swore I would never find myself that high off the ground painting again. I've kept that promise.

When I finished Scotts house, they moved in and I migrated to the Capri Laguna Motel in downtown Laguna Beach. I soon arranged an apartment in trade for painting the exterior piece by piece as the stucco repairs were to ensue and my arangement was to paint each section as it became ready.

I read once that Mae West said, "You can fall in love with a rich man as quick as you can fall in love with a poor man, it's just a matter of who you hang around with". I can tell you, it works both ways. Living in the Capri Laguna exposed me to a wide range of beautiful women who came and went over the space of most week-ends. Women would fly in from all over the country, recently divorced and anxious to enjoy a weekend in paradise. The opportunities were so abundant, I soon formed up weekend forays to the Hotel Laguna, sharing the expenses, taxi, etc. and taking as many as 3 or 4 single women, dining and dancing, dutch treat.

There was a one-legged Viet Nam vet singing and playing requests on the piano at the edge of this enormous dance floor that was sided with bay doors to the patio that straddled the beach with lights on the roof that lit up the breakers. What a joint! Pretty soon I met the McMurray clan and found a temporary home for my unsettled heart. Glenn and Murray Mcmurray were brothers, Glenn lived in eastern Canada and owned the largest carpet operation there. His brother Murray had made his life as a General Contractor, building homes in Laguna Beach. For many years their mother lived with Murray in Laguna and Glenn would fly down and visit regularly.

An opportunity arose for the McMurray boys to buy a five thousand square foot carpet showroom on the Laguna Canyan road and thats what they did. It meant Glenn could spend two weeks of the month in Laguna with his brother and mother. One day this affable, Irishman shows up at the Capri Laguna and rents a two-bedroom suite up on the top floor, beachside, with his beautiful daughter Teri in tow. He brought her down from Calgary to do the bookeeping. She had left her boyfriend Doug back in Calgary, and the family was pretty happy about that, as they found him arrogant in the extreme.

It started with me taking Glenn along with me to my favorite haunt, The Hotel Laguna, and soon evolved to my dating Teri. We "kicked the gong around" for a month or two and I was about as happy as I could be. Then one day, Doug sells his house in Calgary, and with 150 pound dog in tow, drives down to Laguna. Surprise!!! Teri asked me to go see my brother in Morro Bay for the weekend and give them some time to sort things out. I did, and when I returned the following week, Doug had won back her heart, and that was that.

Doug and I became fast friends, having Teri in common, and turned out to be a fairly interesting fella. He had a hobby building model ships and was quite good at it. He was an accomplished tennis coach and had earned a good living as a ski instructor. We all started eating together a couple of times a week and when they were headed back to Canada that fall, they stopped at my brother's in Cayucas on the way and camped out in a tent in the empty lot across the street from my camper. I think if we all lived in the same town we would have remained friends for life.

When Honey Bear and myself were bounced from the Capri Laguna, after several joyful months, Murray McMurray invited us to plug our new camper into the carpet store on Laguna Canyan Road. The owner of the Capri Laguna was a Greek gynecologist who lived in Downey. On occasion he would make surprise visits to the motel in an effort to catch his employees in the act of doing something sneakey. He was a very noisey fellow with limited speaking skills and a penchant for hollering at anybody that got in front of him.

On one of his surprise visits, he happened to be standing outside of my little apartment and when he went "off", Honey Bear didn't like it at all and pulled the curtain back and gave him "what for". He starts screaming, "That's a dog, what's a dog doing in there?" Nancy, the manager told him, "its ok, that's Ed's dog, it's ok, he's the painter". "I don't care about that, there's no dogs here, period, he's got 24 hours to get off the property, and take that dog with him". Nancy tried her best to explain to him that I owed him paint work for my rent, but he wouldn't hear it. She finally gave up and let it go at that.

Across the parking lot from the carpet store was the studio of Wyland, world famous artist and painter of the "Whaling Walls" all over the world. I helped Murray install a hardwood floor in his house in Laguna. In the lobby of his studio, he had a 250 gallon salt-water fish tank and he allowed me to take some video of his Lion Fish. By putting the camera lense in micro phase, I discovered that the effect was like getting inside the tank. You just had to focus with the zoom, not an easy task. Here's what I was able to salvage from 45 minutes of taping.

TALES OF THE CENTRAL COAST

Hopefully moving the local San Francisco bay area music videos to it's own blog will speed up navigation on both blogs. For kfmlnooze and all it entails...

For one reason or another my father wandered back to southern Louisiana a couple of years after I was born and hooked up with my mom again and fathered another son, naming him Edmund Alfred Chatham, I was named after my dad, Edward Albert Chatham and although we were raised in seperate homes for the most part, this was a source of confusion and friction between us for most of our lives.

Edmund suffered his first heart attack in 1982'-1983' and luckily it happened in Denver, Colorado, and they had an aggressive open-heart surgery "machine" going and were doing 250-300 operations a year. After his surgery, his doctors advised him that he would do better at sea-level, and his lady had family in Santa Maria, California, so they relocated to the Central Coast.

Over the years Eddy, tried to convince me to live in the area and I made several attempts over a 22 year period. Having lost my home and love in Laguna, I joined my brother and his family in Cayucos for a period of soul searching and calm. I told Eddy I would give it a good six months try, and if I couldn't make it in that time I would move on back to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Here, we find Ed, (me), and my dog Honey Bear, April fifth 1987, camped out in brother Eddy's front yard. LIterally...

MEMORIALS

Sadly, we lost Bill this last December. His programming was so entertaining that they still run his program to this day. I listen to it often when I'm surfing my news sites for the latest calamity and I keep waiting for his voice to break in and back announce the set I was grooving to, I'm listening to it right now.

For me, The Rock Garden is a womb-like experience. and It’s easy to keep “my eye on the prize” with Bill in the back ground-- sometimes taking me back, sometimes catching me up, sometimes taking me forward, but always taking me higher. R.I.P. Bill Ashford, a Colorado pioneer in the underground "free-form radio" genre best remembered for his years as a disc jockey at Boulder's KRNW and Denver's KMYR and KFML, he died December 10th in Ocala, Fla., his home since 1993. He was 66.

Chuck Day's last performance...

Here's the 19 Broadway Swingband opening for The Buddy Owen Band on 3 December, 2006. That would be Gary Graham at the piano, the band leader, he also owns the joint. That's Chuck Day singing "You Are My Sunshine", he played the guitar solo on the Johnny Rivers hit, "Secret Agent Man", he also played bass with the Mamas and The Poppas.. Small world...enjoy...

Hallelujah...

MARTIN "THE MEESTER" FIERO - 1942 - 2008 RIP

There's going to be a memorial tribute to Martin tonight at 17 th & Bryant & S. Van Ness...Ed Earley just told me what he knew about it...you'll have to track down more information if it's of interest to you...diamond ed

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIAMOND ED

After 2 years, two months and 20 days, and two round trips to the western Pacific, I decided to retire from a navy unresponsive to my long range needs, and finessed myself an immediate and honorable discharge.

My recruiter in Houston had promised me sonar school, and after scoring high on the GCT test, number six out of 90 some-odd guys in my company in boot camp, I was confident that would happen. My folks were gonna be so proud of me with my headphones on, defending my shipmates from enemy submarines. My folks were deaf and would never have had such an opportunity.

My mother was stone deaf and my father only had 12 per cent hearing in one ear. My mom lost her hearing in a plague that hit southern Louisiana when she was about 4 years old. She lost her mother, 2 sisters and a brother, and her hearing all in 6 days. At that time there were damn few orphanages that would take the hearing impaired, much less offer them any specialized training. It just happened that one of the best schools for the deaf in the country was right there in Baton Rouge, run by the Catholic church. They must have been awful good to her, because she was a loyal and dedicated Catholic her entire life.

My father, born and raised in Detroit, lost his hearing to a bout with rheumatic fever, about the time he recovered from that, he was hit by a truck delivering newspapers on a bicycle. Since both my parents hearing-loss was due to illness, and not hereditary, my hearing was unaffected, and I think my mom would have enjoyed seeing me in pictures with a head-set on looking all important running around in some submarine. My dad had a younger brother, by two years, and right out of high school he joined the Army and when he came home from the war he went right to work on the assembly line at Dodge main making apparent strides in his young life.

My dad on the other hand, although a handsome and charming man was constantly mistaken for a hearing person and as soon as he saw the disappointment in their eyes, it was like getting shot. My dad didn't' hang around Detroit for long after he got out of high school and like so many deaf people, soon found himself acquainted only with other hearing impaired people and coaxed into a gypsy kind of life runnin' the roads, traveling from one big city to the next and hanging out at the deaf clubs. In this picture he has found work in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at a munitions plant and he meets my mother. They fall in love, marry, have me, and before too long, my dad gets bored or whatever and runs out on us. My mom takes me and my half brother on a train to Detroit and gives me to my dad's parents because she could'nt afford to keep all of us. Twp years later, my dad is back down south runnig around and hooks back up with my mother and has another child. They named my brother Edmund Alfred Chatham. I was named after my father, Edward Albert Chatham. All of this had no effect on my life and I remained in Detroit. My grandparents spoiled the shit out of me and I lived the life of a Lord Fauntleroy. When I was about 13, my mom, with my brother, and a half brother, Freddy, came up to visit me for a week and not long after that asked my grandparents to send me down to Houston to live with them. Reluctantly, they put me on a plane, and off I went.

Upon graduation from boot camp, most of the guys were sent to schools. I was sent to the fleet and the deck force of the U.S.S Cacapon, AO 52, an oil tanker home ported in Long Beach, California. It was a fine enough ship, as tankers go, and safely carried me through Typhoon Nancy in 1961 and the inimitable experience of having waves passing over the bridge for a couple, three days. Not to mention that it didn't break up and sink in that typhoon.

Super Typhoon Nancy (18W) was a powerful tropical cyclone of the 1961 Pacific typhoon season. The system with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, Nancy caused extensive damage and at least 173 deaths and thousands of injuries in Japan and elsewhere in September 1961. The destruction was so heavy that the Japan Meteorological Agency gave the typhoon its own special name, one of only eight systems to have been named.

A reconnaissance aircraft flying into the typhoon near its peak intensity on September 12 determined Nancy's one-minute sustained winds to be 185 knots (215 mph; 345 km/h). If these values are reliable, they would be the highest wind speeds ever measured in a tropical cyclone.
"Wickapedia"

They did keep the "see the world" part of they're promise, I celebrated my 18th birthday in the Cherry Bar in Hong Kong, but I never forgave them for denying me the opportunity to advance my position in life through the confidence-building experience of being schooled to a specific task.

The Navy obscenely explained not sending me to school because I lacked a high school diploma. I passed the H.S. GED and failed a 2 year college equivalency test two weeks later, by such a narrow margin I could have insisted on a retest. But to no avail, I was strictly "blue collar fodder," just another refugee from the industrial grade elementary school system of Detroit, Michigan, and by god, so I would remain.

"my town was fathered by orphans, praise god
who came from across the sea
time gave them plenty of nothing praise god
so why do they ask more from me

they preach to me of the factories
and tell me to take my place
but I'll stay here in the willows,
erasing the shame from my face

My Town
Paul Seibel © 1971
Woodsmoke and Oranges

Upon securing my strolling papers from a Navy psychiatrist, I was transferred to Treasure Island and after two months of haunting the discharge barracks, I was finally scheduled for discharge. The process took three days. One day for a physical, one day of signing forms and listening to speeches about taxes and what not, and on the third day you would assemble at building 218 promptly at 10:00 am and you would be payed off and discharged. Once you made the list, it was a well oiled machine, satisfaction guaranteed. Literally, thousands of discharges, without interruption...until they got to me.

The room was full of sailors and their families, they processed us out in groups of eighty, many family members and loved ones had traveled across the country to retrieve their loved ones and the hum of anticipation was buzzing with rumor. Ten-o-clock rolls around and nothing happens. The date is 25 October, 1962.

About eleven-thirty am, a 3 rd class yeoman, a very low ranking beaurocrat in the navy, comes in and nervously reads us a telegram. “Due to the missile crisis in Cuba, the President has extended the active duty of all members of the armed forces of the United States, indefinitely. At 20 years of age, having pretty much had my way up until then, I was stunned that fate could deal me such a blow, with one foot literally out the navies door.

That afternoon I received orders to report to the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard CVA 31, an Essex Class aircraft carrier, home ported in San Diego, CA, but temporarily berthed at Bremerton, Washington.

That evening, I went to San Francisco with my phony I.D., as was my custom, and went to my favorite bar. The Brown Jug on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin District. The Brown Jug was a typical Tenderloin neighborhood bar, located in a rough neighborhood but steadfastly attended by a loyal, warm and fuzzy clientele. You just kind of had to stay inside the bar..

It was barely dark when I began hammering gin and sevens, my drink of choice, for its lack of odor, and commenced to ponder my future on a ship that my tanker had refueled in the past, that in fact had a reputation with the "salty dogs" on the Cacapon, of having a bad rudder that could render the ship helm-less at the worst possible moment.

Let me back up a couple of years to the summer of 1960, I'm finishing up a year and a half of misadventures at the George Junior Republic in Freeville, New York. Now this is a high-dollar, self-governing, co-educational private school sitting on 40 some acres in up-state New York near Ithaca. Admission requirements include having an above average i.q., excellent health and physical abilities, all dental and medical needs brought up to speed before admission, a wardrobe that will outfit you with a sport-coat for breakfast and lunch, and a suit and tie for dinner, seven days a week.

All that and $5,200.00 annual tuition plus transportation home twice a year for two week vacations, and you were good to go. All of this was furnished by the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department, Cleveland, Ohio as I had been declared a ward of the state of Ohio when my dad took me down to the welfare people to get me some clothes for school. They just kept me and after much testing, poking and prodding sponsored me to a two year stay at the George Junior Republic private school.

One of my best buds at the GJR, whose motto by the way was "nothing without labor", was a fine fella from Hells Kitchen, New York, by the name of Arthur Matthews. He had a rapier wit, intelligence, great conversation and the charm and good nature of an Irish New Yorker. We were fast friends and partners in mischief at school and although separately, we left with high hopes, and no regrets, and neither of us let the door hit us on the ass.

Now, as I lower my third or fourth empty rock glass and peruse the growing assembly of Saturday night all-stars, my eyes lock in on a gorgeous, Elizabeth Taylor\Ava Gardner caliber, raven-haired beauty in a full-length white mink, sharing a toast with none other than my old pal Arthur Matthews. The ladies name is Angel, and she too is from Hells Kitchen. She loves dancing, drinking, shopping, and the immortal classic Rock and Roll dirge, "Death of an Angel" by Donald Woods and the Vel-airs. The knowledge of which sealed our bond for life.

They are toasting their engagement, joined by most everyone in the bar and when Matty's eyes meet mine, bridging the length of the bar, we both lite up like Christmas trees. He, for what he envisions as sharing a golden moment in his life, and yours truly, for what this unexpected reunion was taking off my mind, at warp speed.

As the night wore on, I was dancing and snuggling up to a little cu-tie from Chicago, who was being chaperoned by her lounge lizard mother, and was reinforced by the drivers license of a girl-friend back home masking her true age, in fact, like me, she was a minor.

Later, when it was decided that Angel and Matty were going to Reno to get married, Mary and I were recruited as brides maid and best man and I commenced, unknowingly, to violate the Mann Act, right off the top.

The bartender, one of the brothers who owned the Brown Jug, pony'd up a new Imperial for the trip and the regulars passed the hat and we soon had in excess of $200 for the trip. In 1962 money, that was quite a chunk of change, considering a gallon of Red Mountain and a large tasty dinner south of market street could be had for less than a buck.

Now anywhere else in the world, this chain of events would be freaky and extremely unlikely, but in the magic that was San Francisco, even then, it was as natural and effortless as fartin' in the bath tub, nothing you'd want to brag about, but hardly worth the effort to deny.

We spent some of the money closing the Brown Jug, and then proceeded to drink-drive our way up to Reno. We traveled all night and rolled into Reno at first light. As providence would have it, Arthur and Angel, who looked decidedly older and unquestionably more mature than little Mary and myself, couldn't find a living soul that would accept their phony I.D.s.

In the frenzy of a drunken blitz to find a typewriter to improve the credibility of their phony I.D.s, I put my shoulder to a glass door to an office that had a typewriter on a desk in my line of sight. The door was locked, and in fact had an arrow and sign at eye-level directing me to use the other door. Mary saw it but failed to mention it in time and my forward momentum carried me through, landing in a heap at the foot of a frightened secretary's desk in a pool of broken glass.

The judge, who happened to own the building, kept me sitting in a chair at his desk for 2 hours while awaiting an appraisal for the repair before presenting me with the bill for $100 to fix the door.

Nobody in our party was anxious to return to the Brown Jug broke, hung over, with our faces hanging out, and no bride and groom to account for the lost time and money. No problem, everybody loved our IDs, so we got a quick license and married for about $15 in one of those street-corner chapels, allowing once more, the sun to set slowly in the west.

When we got back to San Francisco I spent the night with my new bride and returned to Treasure Island the following morning with Arthur, Angel and Mary in tow and told an un-imbelished "amazing" little story to the Duty Petty Officers at the barracks. The story was so outrageous it could stand no embellishment.

Yuk, yuk, they thought it was a great story and in view of the Cuban thing, and the fact that the free world might soon be in harms way, gave me absolution and told me to go ahead and return to the city for the night, and return the following day for one day of duty, followed by another 3 days off while waiting for my traveling money to transfer up to Bremerton, Washington.

In fine fettle and good grace, I returned to the base and made inspections in my last uniform sans glove-leather lined pointed Italian shoes, my very first pair of San Remos in fact, and proceeded to move on. It was common practice to sell what you could and give away the rest of your navy wardrobe once you began the discharge cycle, and I had saved one dress uniform and one hat for musters. That afternoon, two armed Marines came and escorted me and my duffel bag full of "civvies" from the discharge barracks, to the restricted barracks.

This I thought was a little strange but I wasn't locked in or anything so I wasn't too concerned, and wrote it off to some kind of navy base B.S. About midnight, here comes two more armed M.P.s and cuff me and escort me to the brig.

There, they shave my head, and stand me up against a wall, in a cell with a chicken-wire ceiling and a sentry wandering up and down a cat-walk over-head making sure I don't sit down. I'm thinking, "boy, when they change their mind around here, they really change their mind."

I was totally unaware of the fact that my "naive, quiet-as-a-mouse like" little cu-tie from Chicago, who was already married to a 3 rd class Petty Officer right there at Treasure Island, dropped me off at my barracks, and proceeded to the administration building, marriage license in hand, and filed a second Dependents Military Allotment application against my name.

It was about a week to ten days of frat-house hazing type captivity before they finally stood me up before an extremely up-tight Lieutenant Commander, a mid-level line officer, that had been temporarily trapped in limbo, assigned to Treasure Island awaiting a fresh assignment somewhere in Navy-land and assigned to dispense a military type spin on justice to people like me "who acted so crazy".

Hearing my straight forward, almost casual account of the events leading up to this alleged dastardly deed, he was convinced that it was all my idea, and declared that I must be thinking he's a complete idiot. "In the best interest of the United States Navy, and you, I'm going to give you an immediate General Discharge under Honorable Conditions, and you can skip your two year reserve obligation as well. "Now get him out of my sight."

"I don't want you hangin' round, I don't want to see you after the sun goes down
I said, I don't want you hangin' round
go and spread your lies on the other side of town

when I first met you,
you talked those words so sweet
now you lied to me
you was livin' in a tree
and you didn't have nothin' to eat

so head your feet towards the edge of town
cuz, I don't want you hangin' round...
in my vicinity
no I don't want you hangin' round

Hangin' Round
Patrick Sky© 1965

They did keep the "see the world" part of they're promise, I celebrated my 18th birthday in the Cherry Bar in Hong Kong, but I never forgave them for denying me the opportunity to advance my position in life through the confidence-building experience of being schooled to a specific task.

The Navy obscenely explained not sending me to school because I lacked a high school diploma. I passed the H.S. GED and failed a 2 year college equivalency test two weeks later, by such a narrow margin I could have insisted on a retest. But to no avail, I was strictly "blue collar fodder," just another refugee from the industrial grade elementary school system of Detroit, Michigan, and by god, so I would remain.

"my town was fathered by orphans, praise god
who came from across the sea
time gave them plenty of nothing praise god
so why do they ask more from me

they preach to me of the factories
and tell me to take my place
but I'll stay here in the willows,
erasing the shame from my face

My Town
Paul Seibel © 1971
Woodsmoke and Oranges

Upon securing my strolling papers from a Navy psychiatrist, I was transferred to Treasure Island and after two months of haunting the discharge barracks, I was finally scheduled for discharge. The process took three days. One day for a physical, one day of signing forms and listening to speeches about taxes and what not, and on the third day you would assemble at building 218 promptly at 10:00 am and you would be payed off and discharged. Once you made the list, it was a well oiled machine, satisfaction guaranteed. Literally, thousands of discharges, without interruption...until they got to me.

The room was full of sailors and their families, they processed us out in groups of eighty, many family members and loved ones had traveled across the country to retrieve their loved ones and the hum of anticipation was buzzing with rumor. Ten-o-clock rolls around and nothing happens. The date is 25 October, 1962.

About eleven-thirty am, a 3 rd class yeoman, a very low ranking beaurocrat in the navy, comes in and nervously reads us a telegram. “Due to the missile crisis in Cuba, the President has extended the active duty of all members of the armed forces of the United States, indefinitely. At 20 years of age, having pretty much had my way up until then, I was stunned that fate could deal me such a blow, with one foot literally out the navies door.

That afternoon I received orders to report to the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard CVA 31, an Essex Class aircraft carrier, home ported in San Diego, CA, but temporarily berthed at Bremerton, Washington.

That evening, I went to San Francisco with my phony I.D., as was my custom, and went to my favorite bar. The Brown Jug on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin District. The Brown Jug was a typical Tenderloin neighborhood bar, located in a rough neighborhood but steadfastly attended by a loyal, warm and fuzzy clientele. You just kind of had to stay inside the bar.

It was barely dark when I began hammering gin and sevens, my drink of choice, for its lack of odor, and commenced to ponder my future on a ship that my tanker had refueled in the past, that in fact had a reputation with the "salty dogs" on the Cacapon, of having a bad rudder that could render the ship helm-less at the worst possible moment.

Let me back up a couple of years to the summer of 1960, I'm finishing up a year and a half of misadventures at the George Junior Republic in Freeville, New York. Now this is a high-dollar, self-governing, co-educational private school sitting on 40 some acres in up-state New York near Ithaca. Admission requirements include having an above average i.q., excellent health and physical abilities, all dental and medical needs brought up to speed before admission, a wardrobe that will outfit you with a sport-coat for breakfast and lunch, and a suit and tie for dinner, seven days a week.

All that and $5,200.00 annual tuition plus transportation home twice a year for two week vacations, and you were good to go. All of this was furnished by the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department, Cleveland, Ohio as I had been declared a ward of the state of Ohio when my dad took me down to the welfare people to get me some clothes for school. They just kept me and after much testing, poking and prodding sponsored me to a two year stay at the George Junior Republic private school.

One of my best buds at the GJR, whose motto by the way was "nothing without labor", was a fine fella from Hells Kitchen, New York, by the name of Arthur Matthews. He had a rapier wit, intelligence, great conversation and the charm and good nature of an Irish New Yorker. We were fast friends and partners in mischief at school and although separately, we left with high hopes, and no regrets, and neither of us let the door hit us on the ass.

Now, as I lower my third or fourth empty rock glass and peruse the growing assembly of Saturday night all-stars, my eyes lock in on a gorgeous, Elizabeth Taylor\Ava Gardner caliber, raven-haired beauty in a full-length white mink, sharing a toast with none other than my old pal Arthur Matthews. The ladies name is Angel, and she too is from Hells Kitchen. She loves dancing, drinking, shopping, and the immortal classic Rock and Roll dirge, "Death of an Angel" by Donald Woods and the Vel-airs. The knowledge of which sealed our bond for life.

They are toasting their engagement, joined by most everyone in the bar and when Matty's eyes meet mine, bridging the length of the bar, we both lite up like Christmas trees. He, for what he envisions as sharing a golden moment in his life, and yours truly, for what this unexpected reunion was taking off my mind, at warp speed.

As the night wore on, I was dancing and snuggling up to a little cu-tie from Chicago, who was being chaperoned by her lounge lizard mother, and was reinforced by the drivers license of a girl-friend back home masking her true age, in fact, like me, she was a minor.

Later, when it was decided that Angel and Matty were going to Reno to get married, Mary and I were recruited as brides maid and best man and I commenced, unknowingly, to violate the Mann Act, right off the top.

The bartender, one of the brothers who owned the Brown Jug, pony'd up a new Imperial for the trip and the regulars passed the hat and we soon had in excess of $200 for the trip. In 1962 money, that was quite a chunk of change, considering a gallon of Red Mountain and a large tasty dinner south of market street could be had for less than a buck.

Now anywhere else in the world, this chain of events would be freaky and extremely unlikely, but in the magic that was San Francisco, even then, it was as natural and effortless as fartin' in the bath tub, nothing you'd want to brag about, but hardly worth the effort to deny.

We spent some of the money closing the Brown Jug, and then proceeded to drink-drive our way up to Reno. We traveled all night and rolled into Reno at first light. As providence would have it, Arthur and Angel, who looked decidedly older and unquestionably more mature than little Mary and myself, couldn't find a living soul that would accept their phony I.D.s.

In the frenzy of a drunken blitz to find a typewriter to improve the credibility of their phony I.D.s, I put my shoulder to a glass door to an office that had a typewriter on a desk in my line of sight. The door was locked, and in fact had an arrow and sign at eye-level directing me to use the other door. Mary saw it but failed to mention it in time and my forward momentum carried me through, landing in a heap at the foot of a frightened secretary's desk in a pool of broken glass.

The judge, who happened to own the building, kept me sitting in a chair at his desk for 2 hours while awaiting an appraisal for the repair before presenting me with the bill for $100 to fix the door.

Nobody in our party was anxious to return to the Brown Jug broke, hung over, with our faces hanging out, and no bride and groom to account for the lost time and money. No problem, everybody loved our IDs, so we got a quick license and married for about $15 in one of those street-corner chapels, allowing once more, the sun to set slowly in the west.

When we got back to San Francisco I spent the night with my new bride and returned to Treasure Island the following morning with Arthur, Angel and Mary in tow and told an un-imbelished "amazing" little story to the Duty Petty Officers at the barracks. The story was so outrageous it could stand no embellishment.

Yuk, yuk, they thought it was a great story and in view of the Cuban thing, and the fact that the free world might soon be in harms way, gave me absolution and told me to go ahead and return to the city for the night, and return the following day for one day of duty, followed by another 3 days off while waiting for my traveling money to transfer up to Bremerton, Washington.

In fine fettle and good grace, I returned to the base and made inspections in my last uniform sans glove-leather lined pointed Italian shoes, my very first pair of San Remos in fact, and proceeded to move on. It was common practice to sell what you could and give away the rest of your navy wardrobe once you began the discharge cycle, and I had saved one dress uniform and one hat for musters. That afternoon, two armed Marines came and escorted me and my duffel bag full of "civvies" from the discharge barracks, to the restricted barracks.

This I thought was a little strange but I wasn't locked in or anything so I wasn't too concerned, and wrote it off to some kind of navy base B.S. About midnight, here comes two more armed M.P.s and cuff me and escort me to the brig.

There, they shave my head, and stand me up against a wall, in a cell with a chicken-wire ceiling and a sentry wandering up and down a cat-walk over-head making sure I don't sit down. I'm thinking, "boy, when they change their mind around here, they really change their mind."

I was totally unaware of the fact that my "naive, quiet-as-a-mouse like" little cu-tie from Chicago, who was already married to a 3 rd class Petty Officer right there at Treasure Island, dropped me off at my barracks, and proceeded to the administration building, marriage license in hand, and filed a second Dependents Military Allotment application against my name.

It was about a week to ten days of frat-house hazing type captivity before they finally stood me up before an extremely up-tight Lieutenant Commander, a mid-level line officer, that had been temporarily trapped in limbo, assigned to Treasure Island awaiting a fresh assignment somewhere in Navy-land and assigned to dispense a military type spin on justice to people like me "who acted so crazy".

Hearing my straight forward, almost casual account of the events leading up to this alleged dastardly deed, he was convinced that it was all my idea, and declared that I must be thinking he's a complete idiot. "In the best interest of the United States Navy, and you, I'm going to give you an immediate General Discharge under Honorable Conditions, and you can skip your two year reserve obligation as well. "Now get him out of my sight."

I've been in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1961. I came here on an oil tanker and passed under the GG Bridge 6 times before I ever rode over it.

Christmas of 1962, I was discharged from the U S Navy at Treasure Island, in the San Francisco Bay and moved into a frunished room in the Hotel Tavere above the Cafe' Trieste in North Beach, Nifty rooms, nice and toasty with steam heat for the chilly nights year-round in the city. The bath was down the hall, but for $25 a week it could have been up the street.

Most of the performers there were traditional folk singers and poets, but on the weekends there were also a handfull of "white traditonal blues players", and this one fella' Mike Wilhelm,that regularly blew all their hats in the creek. 1967: "Jerry Garcia was asked to name his favorite guitarist on the San Francisco scene. His quick reply? "Mike Wilhelm."

Everybody worked for a "world class" hamburger and their tips, that was it, Steve Martin, Janis Joplin, no exceptions. I moved from North Beach in 1964 to Haight and Cole and stayed till they put the last candle out.

My buddy, Reg G Williams, is one of the original founders of the Straight Theatre on Haight Street back in 1966. In 1965 I went on a trip to Salt Lake City with one of his partners, Luther Green, to gather sound equipment just before the grand opening. Reggie was Peter Albins roomate at USF and introduced him to Janis Joplin which led to the formation of Big Brother And The Holding Company.

He's put together one of the best "Haight Ashbury" oriented web sites of all time. You can virtually (pun intended) spend days rambling around such features as "The Scrawl On The Wall" where you can swap tales of those "head'y" times. Or review the many posters of the bands that were born, nurtured, and yes fostered, by The Straight Theatre, Chet Helms Avalon Ball Room, and many another grass roots venue, untill Bill Graham came along and pulled the first corporate "raid" on Chet Helms and built the contractual clause that bands that signed on to play for him weren't allowed to play at the Straight Theatre, or The Avalon, or any other venue that wasn't controlled by Bill Graham.

In fact, it would be years before anyone was able to break the strangle-hold that BGP, Bill Graham Productions. 2b1 began in 1995 but its roots are deep within the San Francisco Community via its promoter Boots Hughston. He began playing saxophone in the 60’s/70’s with many llegendary bands, including Santana, It’s a Beautiful Day, Marty Balin (form the Jefferson Starship), Nick Gravenities Blues Band, John Cipollina (from Quick Silver), Van Morrison, Bobby Blue Bland, The Hoo Doo Rhythm Devils, Gregg Allman as well as his own bands Aum and Womb. Boots promoted his first show with Lue Williams and the “Stray Cat” at California Hall in San Francisco. The concert included Janis Joplin and Big Brother. Boots recalls “It was more of an experience then a money maker, I never got paid, just had fun putting up posters and hanging out”.

In October 1995 with blessings from Chet Helms (the original promoter of the Family Dog) opened their doors at Maritime Hall as “The Family Dog/Image of the Dog”. Boots Hughston and his sons Dusty and Boot as production and stage manager made ready for their date with destiny . The 3,000, + capacity, three floor venue had chosen a formidable adversary; no venue had survived longer than a year or two against BGP. Even the original Avalon ballroom from the 60’s only lasted a couple years. In the 30 years since then no venue large enough to compete has survived. BGP (Clear Channel) controls it all, the booking agents, venues, bands, ticketing, newspapers, magazines all owed something to BGP (Clear Channel), people feared their wrath. Industry professionals, took bets on how long Maritime would last. The San Francisco music scene was suffering from stagnation, and only the bands controlled by BGP (Clear Channel) were booked.
“Maritime Hall Productions” not only survived but also grew. Now 2b1 Productions had expanded into 3 cities and 5 venues. At their height they employed over 80 people in San Francisco.

I was into Bo Didly, Chuck Berry, The Coasters, The Platters, Laverne Baker, Paul Anka and had seen all of them in live performances at Houston's Central Auditorium in 1957-1958, I can still sing along with the hits of Dion and The Belmonts, Curtis Mayfield andThe Impressions, The Ink Spots Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Drifters, The Cadilacs, The Flamingos, Bobby Blue Bland,( I was in Houston when "Further On Up The Road" went to number one ) the first black artist to cross over from what they had called "Race music"and crack the Billboard list. This was long before sterophonics, but the "wall of sound" roared out of those Wurlitzer juke boxes, and AM radio that had no line of sight issues, playing the same 40 records over and over in no time, you could sing along with a thousand hits that could be heard from coast to coast, and seen on American Bandstand every afternoon after school...and they played them loud when I was a kid.

My first job was as a newsman, which consisted of gathering local counter-culture features and mixing them with music and sound effects that would be pleasing and interesting to our well buzzed audience. About Christmas time I was awarded, two 6 hour radio shows of my own. Midnight to 6am, Saturday and Sunday. I reveled in this joyous free-form experience for a year, the first complete year I had stuck with anything in my life.

During that year I was fired \ laid off at least 3 times and soon learned that it was par for the course in "show biz". These interruptions seldom lasted more than a week and were rooted in the politics of "radio land".

After an exciting year there, I moved on to another station and launched a career in radio spot sales. My last station was KTAL, in Shreveport, Louisiana, the year was 1983 and to supplement my income, I hired on at the local Panasonic dealer, learned camera operation, purchased an industrial level system, at cost, and launched EC Video Productions.

In late 1984, the bottom fell out of the oil industry in the Ark-La-Tex and I was forced to return to California.

when I returned from my big adventure in Louisiana, I just happened to roll up when he was finishing up a remodel of his house and it was time to paint.

The house is right across the street from the Pacific Ocean. It's so close, you can hear the breakers at night from his front yard. I stayed in the guest house for a couple of months and put back some dough, Laguna Beach is paradise, the weather reminds me of Hawaii, but it is expensive.

Once I had finished his house, one of his neighbors hired me to re-paint her five buildings and light house. I shot some video of Scott's house and the spread up the street. When Scott and his wife moved into the house , I moved into the motel, my room was $140 a night, winter rates and no dogs. I soon arranged a trade out for re-painting the entire motel, which got into the better part of a year and I never did get to finish it.

After a year in Laguna Beach, literally, I left the Motel Laguna, and migrated back to the SF Bay Area, met Cathy, sold my camera, focused on house-painting, and worked our way on to living comfortably in Marin County. We moved into an RV park, 10 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge and set about the most rewarding and enjoyable period of my life.

In 2000, I bought a Canon XL1, 3 chip video camera and sprung back into the video production business with my very own little company, Bebop Video Productions, this turned out to be very much like buying a big boat. By Xmas time 2003, web sites were all the rage and I thought I'd "get on board". I had an account with Earthlink for my high-speed internet access and with their free web-building software I put together bebopvideos.com and the rest isn't history.

In 2005, with total disregard for reality, I launched a second website, kfmlnooze.com, a sort of tribute site to KFML. With photos I had taken back in 71-72, I put together a sort of "who's who, and what are they doing now" collage kind of thing with some old recordings and air checks, and mosey'ed on down memory lane.

I recently parked it and moved eveything over to a feature on bebopvideos.com, A BRIEF HISTORY OF KFML, because I can't afford to host two web-sites that generate no income. I've been doing video production for about 25 years now and I think it's safe to say I don't know how to not make a living on the internet.

If you read any of my comments on Huffington Post, a current pastime, you'll no doubt I.D. the ramblings of a man with a 10th grade education...which I had to repeat because I didn't quite get it the first time...(I got some mail at KFML for miss-pronouncing Thailand, "thigh land") manage to Forest Gump my way through, venting till' relieved. I don't know how good I'm doin' cuz' nobody ever responds, or maybe that's how I'm doin'.

One of my KFML alumni, Jim Clancy is working for CNN International now and I'm the "old crypt keeper" down here by myself tendin' to kfmlnooze and bebopvideos...When they sold KFML out from under us, Jim eventually migrated to the bay area to see what I had been raving about when we worked together back in Colorado. While he was shopping another job in radio, he taught banjo lessons at my friends' music store, Amazing Grace Music, in San Anselmo and played gigs all over the S F Bay Area with his brother, the guitar picker, earning way better money than he had ever made at KFML.

Starting at KCBS AM radio, and advancing to anchor work at channel 2, He was soon snagged by Ted Turner and off to the races. I tried to get him to come back out here but he's in some kind of a rut down there in Atlanta with a big ol' house, a wonderful family, and of course, makin' a shit ton of money so he won't be comin' back to us any time soon...and speakin' of KFML alumni, Dan Fong, official KFML photographer is currently selling Rock & Roll photos, printed and framed out of his studio, The Creative Eye, http://www.thecreativeye.net/ Dan's an extraordinary cook, just ask The Rolling Stones...and how can I not mention Bill Ashford the only one of us that's still playin' the tunes 5 shows a week at the Rock Garden...sadly Bill died this last November but the rock garden marches on based on Bill's library and algorithms.

I hope you'll follow the link to bebopvideos.com and join me in celebrating a lifetime of rollin' with the rock. Lots to listen to and view and very little reading.

diamond ed

HIDIN' OUT WITH DIAMOND ED

Back in 2000, when I first got my new camera, the Canon XL1, I took it up to Petaluma to my friend Franks and took it out behind his house to kick the tires and light the fires. At that time Frank and his wife Judy had about 7,000 orchids growing in the greenhouse, and several hundred outdoor orchids growing about the yard. I started shooting the yard and eventually worked my way into the greenhouse. See for yourself...

Also about this time Duke Wilson paid me a visit in his Mitsubishi VR- Spider, a high performance luxury car that Mitsubishi put out for a while. Production of the car was too expensive to endure so they only built about 500 of them. He was good enough to demo it for me and I shot the demo with my new camera. I met Duke in Lakeport back in 1979 and he was good enough to teach me the painting business, an honest way to make a living just about anywhere one might find ones self. The last time I spoke to him he had a Candy Apple Red Corvette, being built in a speed shop up in Sacramento. So far its up to 500 horsepower. I'll have video of it as soon as he gets it out of the shop. They've been working on it for over a year now.

Here's a video of a former neighbor of mine, Jeanette, and her free-fall adventure in Cloverdale. I don't think I would be able to muster the courage to do this, but she makes it look easy. The company, http://www.skydivesf.com/index.htm has a system of videotaping your event that surpasses any taping service I've ever seen...

Here's Jeanette again, this time she's skippering me around the flooded trailer park at Christmas time 04. Ever so often we find ourselves inundated with water. All it takes is a little wind, a high tide, and we're off to the "boat races". Jeanettes' folks, Jessie and Doralece, are in the video, busily salvaging Jessies' motorcycles.

I was at a cyber cafe called Respectech in Ukiah and its really the ideal cyber cafe in that they sell computers, repair computers, and councel newbies in an extremely comfortable environment with free wi-fi and 110. Beyond all that they serve up a wonderful banana split, serve food and stay open untill 11 pm...and they're right around the corner from The Coffee Critic that closes at seven pm, that's how I found out about them.

I went to The Coffee Critic in Ukiah with the intention of getting some computer work done at my favorite table. However, a band was all set up to play and I decided to go ahead and tape a few tunes and put my work off untill later...

Anyway that's the plan. I thought I could get some privacy up here in Ukiah, but it just didn't work out that way. So I'm heading back to Marin later tonight. My grandaughter is having her birthday at a skating rink in Antioch and I want to be there for that. Soooooooooooooooo,I'll say goodnight,
diamond ed for kfmlnooze.com in Ukiah

Sunday! Sunday! It's time for my grandaughter Anyssa's 8 th birthday at the roller rink in Antioch.

Here's a slideshow of my grandaughter Anyssa's 9 th birthday party in Antioch.

HOME SWEET LOOSIANA'

My old radio buddy, Buffalo and his wife Cathy had migrated to Lake County and a gig as house parents to six wayward "yutes" in a nice little house on Clear Lake and I had limped up there in my Barracuda with little money, a heavy heart, and no drivers door window.

In a few weeks time I had kfmlnooze pretty well laid out, choosing to follow in Malcolm's footsteps and create a blog. In three more weeks I had twenty some-odd videos up in some semblance of a structure and that's how I got to where ever I am now. One of my chief regrets is that I didn't think to do this while Buffalo Chip was still alive. He was our all-night man and had worked at Tracy's Doughnuts on Haight Street back when I lived around the corner on Cole & Haight back in the mid-60's.
Buffalo probably had the most contagious laugh of anyone I ever met.
"In 1975, I rejoined my old radio bud's, Buffalo and his wife Cathy at KSML, The Secret Mountain Labratory in Kjngs Beach, North Shore, Lake Tahoe for a couple of months before I had to move on. Bill Ashford, The Warthog, Bob O'lear, Reno, and many another freeform refugee fell in and out of there by the time it crashed and burned by the late 70's..

By 1979 Buffalo and Cathy had migrated to Lake County and a gig as house parents to six wayward "yutes" in a nice little house on Clear Lake. I had limped up there from San Francisco in my Barracuda with little money, a heavy heart, and no drivers door window. I was there to kick back and charge my batteries. Within a week, I had contracted pneumonia. The "yoot.s" showed up and as planned I moved int a tent in the back yard. Within a few days the antibiotics kicked in.." ( continued at HOME SWEET LOOZIANA ) was a joy to listen to whether he was playing records or jokes, or laughing at all of the above. All of us that knew him, love and miss him dearly...

Lakeport had a daily feature on the local radio station called "The Trading Post," and it was about the busiest event in all of Lake County. About the time I shook the pneumonia, the clutch in the old Barracuda took a header, and I was more or less stranded a hundred miles north of San Francisco with very little money and no transportation. I started listening to the Trading Post daily and before I long a lady called in for someone to come paint her kitchen. I called her and told her that if she could come and get me and return me at the end of the day, I would be thrilled to paint her kitchen. I always had a steady hand and had worked as a painter several times by that juncture and easily got into a rhythm. I painted the kitchen, two baths, a living room, a dining room, 3 bedrooms, and finally the entire exterior.

My car was soon running again and beyond that I had befriended the owner of two Benjamin Moore Paint stores, one on each side of the lake, and started picking up work from him. This evolved into my working for him, he lining out the jobs and setting in the materials, me doing the rest. In 90 days I bought the 64' Chevy Pick-up that "Duke" had started his business with back in San Jose. Then I bought a used gasoline powered paint sprayer \ power-wash combo, ladders, a complete set of paint tools, i.e.. brushes, rollers, extension poles, sanders, scrapers, etc. I then traded half cash half paint work for a 22' silver bullet trailer from a retiring postman that had commuted to San Francisco where he had parked it for 20 years. It had furniture, pots, pans, utensils, air conditioner, central heat, and a set of brand-new tires that he had just purchased for the final trip home. I bought it for a total of $380, part cash, part paint work.

Now my buddy Duke Wilson has me painting store fronts, two-story houses, in and out, businesses, you name it. The biggest RV park and camp is called Willow Point, it's located on the lake, in central Lakeport and it needs a paint job. The work came to Duke and he passed it on to me. I made a deal for painting 8 cabins, in & out, 17 large picnic tables, the rest shop, the bait shop, fences and the laundry. Part of my deal was a space to park my trailer with electric and water for the 3-4 months I estimated it would take me. I stayed in Lakeport for about two years and finally loaded up and hit the road for Shreveport, Louisiana and a family reunion at Christmas time. I had bought a cab-over camper and installed it in a 1\2 ton truck bed that had been converted into a heavy duty trailer.

I painted my way across the country, stopping long enough to paint 4 outside buildings at a wrecking yard \ garage in exchange for a re-built Chevy engine. I worked out of the back of my truck, where I had mounted the sprayer \ power washer, so that the cab-over floated over it, and they worked on the front. By sundown I was back on the road with all 8 cylinders hitting for the first time in years. I painted a half dozen store-fronts in Grand Junction, Colorado, caught the Stones concert in Denver, and arrived in Shreveport by my birthday, which is one week before Christmas. I drove my mom to a hair dressing appointment, fell in love with her hair-dresser, a little bitty Jewish Yankee from Long Island, NY, that got marooned there when her boyfriend caught a 10 year prison sentence for robbing a card game in Baton Rouge.

Karen had met my family 20 years earlier when she came to Louisiana in my older brothers' school bus. Her and her husband were in Daytona Beach for the motorcycle races when they him and he just brought them on home with him. My mom used to go to Mexico every year and visit with her many deaf Mexican friends. Invariably she would bring as many as a van full home for a "visit" that would sometimes last for 6 months. But that's another tale.

Before I got the houseboat and moved to the lake, I lived with Karen for nearly 3 years. We lived in her trailer off the Flournoy Lucas Road in Shreveport. In the fall of 1984, Thom and Gayle came through and stayed a few days. This video is of their last day visiting and about to head home to Denver. They had been in Houston, visiting Thom's ailing father. I had'nt seen them in a good 10-12 years and tried to show them a good time. I took Thom fishing on Cross Lake, but it was windy and the water was choppy so we didn't do well..

When consumer cameras first came out in the early 80's, I took a sales job for the local Panasonic dealer, to learn about shooting video. I had just started a video production business by putting an ad in the paper advertising $250 weddings. I shot 6 weddings in the first month. I just followed the photographer around the first time and after a few weddings I new what to do. In the early spring I did a lucrative paint job, the Social Security Office, in Shreveport, and on completion I walked with a $10,000 profit. It never happened again, but that's not the point. As a Panasonic salesman, I got to buy stuff for wholesale, so I gave my girlfriend 2 grand to do whatever she wanted, and I shot the other 8 on an industrial strength video system. Lights, camera, action.

This was my first video camera and I had it for about a week when Thom and Gayle showed up. I wish they'd show up again. I think they would like the weather here in Greenbrae a little better. Back in 1971. when I had first met Thom in Denver, the law of the land in Louisiana was, if you sold pot to a minor, it was a capital offense, and you could wind up a dead man walking. I used Hank Williams' Jambalaya, and Tom Pettys' You Don't Know How It Feels, ("but let me get to the point, let's roll another joint, and turn the radio loud, I'm too alone to be proud") but YouTubes new filtering system "tilted", challenged my right to use those tracks and I was forced to replace the audio with YouTubes substitue royalty-free music bed and it aint' really all that bad.

Shortly after Thom and Gayle's visit, I decided it was time to head on back to California. The economy was in the dumper and for the three years I had been living in Louisiana, nothing came easy. In 84' several key industriess left Shreveport, Poulin Chain Saws for one, and Western Electric had built a new plant in Singapore and closed shop in Shreveport, leaving thousands of good souls with no jobs. They had built an enormous assembly plant there, one square mile under one roof.

I had given Karen the two thousand dollars in the hopes she would pay off her trailer and come on out to California with me. She decided to use the money as a down payment on a new Pontiac Fiero and stay. We parted company amicably and had a nice good-bye dinner with Rick Delisle. Rick was the Prudential Realtor guy that had given me the contract for the six buildings. When I first arrived in Shreveport, in 1980, I was offered an opportunity to bid on re-painting six buildings, if I could prepare a proposal in 6 day. Six buildings, seven colors, eight weeks. In our last meeting to determine the issue of a contract, he introduced the concept of a $50 a day late fee if I went over the 10 weeks I had to finish the job. I had bought the latest book on negotiating and was pretty well prepared at that 4th and final meeting. I countered with $50 per day early money if I should finish early. It was winter time and he eagerly agreed. I earned $500 early money, but I had estimated the paint at 650 gallons and it went to 900. I suggested that I could have easily watered the paint and made do, but opted to go ahead and put the amount of paint that the job demanded. In that the extra paint was in fact on the buildings and would serve him well over the years to come, I felt it only fair that he share the overage with me. He agreed, and that was pretty much the foundation of a friendship that lasts to this day..

At our good-bye dinner Rick told me that my bid of $29,000.00 was conservative in the extreme. The next bid was $59,000.00. After dinner he handed me an envelope with a thousand dollars in it for the road. I hooked up my bass-boat and camper and headed west. I stopped at a truck-stop in Arizona and encountered an elderly biker couple and shot this short video of them.

I spent a couple of months running around California and had just returned to Morro Bay when I got a call from Rick in Shreveport. They had just started a tract of 13 homes and wanted me to come head up the painting operation. $500 followed the invitation and I headed back to Louisiana. Upon arriving, I was presented with an incredible offer. I had a choice of a brand new 3-bedroom brick house by the air-conditioned race track in Bossier City or a 16'x60' houseboat on Lake Bisteneau. Either choice would cost me nothing down, a total of $64,000 in $640 a month payments.

This houseboat is sitting right where I used to park my own. This is Camp Joy, Lake Bisteneau, Louisiana. This boat is for sale for $50k and that's a steal. Mine was only 60' long, but it had a third deck, two band boxes, and It would carry 200 people, and a live band, and run around the lake all weekend for $50 worth of gas.

I sensibly chose to spend a weekend on the houseboat to check it out. The following Monday I signed the agreement and moved aboard. Two weeks later Sam, one of the sellers, came out to the lake for the day and showed me how to start and maintain the twin Volvo Pinta's and the 6kw Onan generator and in a couple of hours I was off to the races. This video is of the "big day", kicking the tires and lighting the fires. Karen had come along for the ride, the decision to take the houseboat over the new house pretty much canceled any future relationship between us. We remained friends but moved on otherwise.

Petit Mamou is one of my favorite Cajun tunes and my feelings for it are shared by most lovers of Cajun music. I have a tape I shot about this time at the Louisiana State Fair of the Dewey Balfa band and its one of the songs they covered that day. For now heres my friends the Cotton Kings doing Petit mamu (sweet maumu)

I used to trade out video promotion for bands to play gigs on my boat. One such band was called Loose Change, and I wasn't the only one that found them remarkable. They were invited to perform at the Olympics in Los Angeles the same year they appeared on my boat.

At the foot of my pier. Upstairs, was a seafood restaurant with a full bar, and downstairs was a beer bar with a pool table, noisey juke box, and a house band, "The Cotton Kings", that had just crawled back to Loosiana from a 3 year run living on a boat in Cape Cod or some such high end "watering hole", and if you remember the 80's, these poor bastards had been "rode hard and put up wet", and had to come home to survive.

Here's another clip of Loose Change with an old Patsy Cline tune. Note the Joe Cocker style she aplies to this performance.

Here's another offering from the Cotton Kings. this was a typical Saturday night at Camp Joy and this was going on literally in my front yard. After living in city's for years, it was really a fine thing to be able to "turn it up", the rule of the lake was, "let the good times roll", 24 & 7...here's "Frauline"

DEMOS PERFORMANCE-WEDDING-MEMORIALS

Performance Demo - When I shoot a performance in a club, I charge $250, you get 2-3 sets taped, I choose 2 clips to put up on YouTube and Google Video, which you can email or embed in your own site, whatever, they're yours, I deliver a 2 hour DVD with your selection of 2 hrs. of your performance and I furnish one copy per member of the band. If you want a high resolution 1 hour DVD with a menu and scene selection, art-work printed on the disc, it's an additional $100 per 1 hour disc. ie., Part 1, and Part 2, etc.

WAR...WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

I'm not sure where I got this material, either Pacifica Radio, PBS, or KSAN but I taped it off the radio in early 1971 just before I moved to Denver to begin my radio career as a news man on KFML AM FM, free-form radio. It was one of my first news presentations. The MSM in Denver at the time made little or no mention of Operation Dewey Canyon III.

Personally, I had never heard an anti-war speech as powerful and I was anxious to share it. Nothings changed, it has as much or more merit today as we seem to have learned nothing from the Viet Nam war.

Let's pray there will be no more, no more...Part I

'DAVID GANS AND JERRY LAWSON LIVE..."

"It Must Have Been the Roses" from BlueIceVideo on Vimeo.

Jerry1234 said...
Thanks so much for sharing my music. One friend at a time. Means the world to me. By the way the video above me & Gans is "Heavenly Salvation" a Kurt Weill tune. Also I have a brand new CD with my new a cappella group. Jerry Lawson & Talk of the Town. Masterpiece of my career. Hope you'll check it out. www.jerrylawson.biz

In Harmony,
Jerry

As we say back in Loosianne', "Dis is wut I'm talkin' bout',"

A GATHERING OF THE MASTERS

MY INTRODUCTION TO JAZZ, AHMAD JAMAL, "POINCIANA"...UP STATE NEW YORK 1959

MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL-JOHN HENRY

JIMI HENDRIX

R.L. BURNSIDE-STACK-O-LEE

I'm tuned in to the Rock Garden this morning, and you never know what wonders you may behold, I heard these wonderful old timey harmonies and I was like hypnotised like in the "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" film when the "boys" are seduced by the gorgeous siren\laundry ladies. I Googled "The Be Good Tanyas" and found they have three videos posted on YouTube. This tune is called "The Littlest Birds Sing The Pretiest Songs", enjoy...

China Doll by David Gans..

HISTORY OF KFMLNOOZE

I started this mess back in July of 2005 after perusing Malcolm Gault-Williams Freeform Radio Blog, I got so stirred up I decided to create another website and named it kfmlnooze.com to try and restore something thats been missing for 35 some-odd years of my life. I was feeling like I had left a piece of my heart back "in the mile-high city of Denver, Cod-derado", as the Persuasions so poignantly i-deed us. So I thought I'd throw some stuff together and see if I could get one more ride out of that "cosmic car" that this bunch of freeform radio pioneers had built so long ago. Many say you can't live in the past but it seems to me like you ought to be able to visit from time to time.

So come on and we can mosey on down this old trail together, for what it's worth, I feel a whole lot better, I hope it will do a little something for you.

After running little ads on craigslist Denver \ Boulder for some time asking for (old) KFML radio fans (their aren't any young ones) to send along any air-checks or reel-to-reel tapes or whatever that sampled our programming back in 71-72, a fine fella' name of Lloyd Hanson, sent me a DVD with some High Street skits, a simulcast of a band named Cross, and an 18 minute air check of Brian Kreizenbeck which includes a bunch of ads and even one of my news pieces. Brian ( Super Warthog ), one of the pioneers of freeform radio in Colorado, had the 10 pm-2 am shift.

Early in 1971 my neighbor, and new best friend, Brian Kreizenbeck (The Super Warthog) got me started in radio at KMPX FM in San Francisco and in a few short weeks of taping "shows" in the production room, skipped through and graded at the end of his shift, my brand new friends all got fired. My little heart was broke. But, in a couple of weeks time Brian called and told me if I wanted to come to Denver he could get me plenty of week-end work, no pay, so I could finish getting my 3rd Class Radio License, which was required back then, and once I got my license I could start getting paid. I packed my stereo, and some clothes into my pristine, 1964 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce and followed them to clean and fresh Denver, Colorado, and a brand-new start at counter-culture living with the added benefit of a seasoned sizzling psychedelic history in my kit. KFML AM\FM “in the mile high city, Denver, Coderado” as the Persuasions so poignantly “id’ us.

I first saw the Persuasions at one of our sponsors clubs we were running ads for, and I got in free, My personal taste in music has always skewed towards rich black voices, having grown up in Detroit, Cleveland, and Houston where passionate Top 40 radio exploded over the airwaves, and I never lived anywhere that I couldn't hear the The Wolfman. ( listen to The Wolfman here )

I was into Bo Didly, Chuck Berry, The Coasters, The Platters, Laverne Baker, Paul Anka and had seen all of them in live performances at Houston's Central Auditorium in 1957-1958, I can still sing along with the hits of Dion and The Belmonts, Curtis Mayfield andThe Impressions, The Ink Spots Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Drifters, The Cadilacs, The Flamingos, Bobby Blue Bland,( I was in Houston when "Further On Up The Road" went to number one ) the first black artist to cross over from what they had called "Race music"and crack the Billboard list. This was long before sterophonics, but the "wall of sound" roared out of those Wurlitzer juke boxes, and AM radio that had no line of sight issues, playing the same 40 records over and over in no time, you could sing along with a thousand hits that could be heard from coast to coast, and seen on American Bandstand every afternoon after school...and they played them loud when I was a kid.

These materials, a bunch of slides I had shot back in Denver in 71'-72, the KFML website that Sandy Phelps had put together, and finally, access to Malcolm Gault-Williams research at Freeformradio.orgblogspot that gave birth to kfmlnooze.com. Sandy's show kicked off each day from 6 am-10 am.

The Persuasions - Gypsy Woman

One of our best loved showmen was Bill Ashford, up to just recently, he was single-handedly programming and operating a freeform station on the web. The Rock Garden, runs 24 & 7 and Bill did a live show daily, Monday thru Friday, 8 am to noon Eastern, Somehow, that bunch over there have figured out a software program or something that clones Dump Truck O'neils magic at selecting, not only what cut to play now, but how best, with the available library, to continue set after set without a clue that Bill isn't there, hands on, heart on, soul and spirit...on. Bill's shift at KFML was 6 pm-10 pm...now it's 24 & 7 as one of the phantoms of KFML plays on through...you can listen right here...

Here's our glorious leader, Thom Trunnell,
Thom would take the helm from 2 pm-6 pm daily. Thom had been up in Chicago with Herb Neu at WLS, and as far as I know that was his last big mis-adventure in the Majors. Thom isn't just another pretty face, he'a gifted copy writer and comercial producer and Herb is a world-class salesman, so the boys had big fun with the "suits" of the Chicago fast-lane. Most times the ad agencies won't let radio stations produce their own spots for "big-time" sponsors like Ford or GM but that didn't slow the boys down,

Thom was cranking out first cabin spots for any account Herb put in front of him and they did well for a time. With their deep- disregard for all corporate monsters, as they do run the world, you just had to know this wouldn't last forever and a difference of style brought the boys back to Denver, in time to help launch KFML. They played an environmental album of the ocean for a week while putting the necessaries together and early in April, 1971 an assortment of the paramours of freeform radio, set forth broadcasting on KFML AM, FM, 24 & 7in Denver, Coderado' till' they dropped.

Jerry Mills shift began at 10 am and ended at 2 pm, in addition to being KFML's authority on bluegrass, folk, old-timey, and country music, Jerry is a premier mandolin player and has fronted many a bluegrass band, not to mention appearing over the years in many of the genre's finest bands. Jerry is currently hosting The Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Show on KOLT-FM out of Cheyenne, WY ("It's a 100,000 watter country station and goes all over Northern Colorado and into Denver. You can stream it at www.koltfm.com on Sundays 8a-10a (Mountain time). The PD has a Sat show called The Saturday Night Roadhouse from 7-10p that has one foot into our old format. Skynard, Grateful Dead, Allman Bros, etc. I'm grateful to still be doing this program. (25 years counting the time on the air at KFML") He can be heard here playing with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and, as of our last conversation he's with the Southern Exposure Bluegrass Band. Denver hosts one of the finest folk music and instrument stores in the world, The Denver Folklore Center. and it's owner and founder, Harry Tuft did radio programs and filled in as a part-timer when needed.

...and speakin' of kfml alumni, Dan Fong official kfml photographer has an official website, The Creative Eye, where you can view thousands of candid shots he's taken over a 35 year career. He'll be celebrating his 60th birthday soon so "Happy Birthday Dan, and if your cooking I'll come all the way back to Denver to feast on the spread"...

Dan's an extroardinary cook, just ask The Rolling Stones...
"Dan Fong cooked and served a 14 course sit down dinner for 100 people. And it was awesome! There was a little of this and a lot of that and oysters and duck and a roast pig the size of a small Mercedes cooked over an open pit. There were intoxicants of every sort, beer and wine, tequila and whiskey, and all sorts of other stuff, too; and there was that most ethereal of drugs: the bending of elbows with real celebrities, the once and future royalty of rock & roll."

James Pagliasotti

Bill Szymczyk, producer of The Eagles, B B King, and many great early jazz artists on ABC Impulse did wonderful free-form shows. He and his partner, Larry Ray, had Tumbleweed Records at 13th &
Gilpin. Larry did some air work at KFML, too. Jim Pagliasotti, Jr. Cabus, Butch Grayer, Michael Muirhead, & Steve Thoreson were all there, too. Here's a short list of his accomplishments...

One of my KFML alumni, Jim Clancy is working for CNN International now and I'm the "old crypt keeper" down here by myself tendin' to kfmlnooze and bebopvideos...When they sold KFML out from under us, Jim eventually migrated to the bay area to see what I had been raving about when we worked together back in Colorado. While he was shopping another job in radio, he taught banjo lessons at my friends' music store, Amazing Grace Music, in San Anselmo and played gigs all over the S F Bay Area with his brother, the guitar picker, earning way better money than he had ever made at KFML..

And bringin' up the rear we have Scott Coen, or "Quinn" as Joe McGoey had nick-named him. Scott was a transplant from Laguna Beach who had just graduated from CU Boulder and having worked with some of the guys at KMYR eased right in having done air work and even had some experience selling ads. We have maintained a friendship over the years and when I returned from my big adventure in Louisiana, I just happened to roll up when he was finishing up a remodel of his house and it was time to paint.

Once I had finished his house, one of his neighbors hired me to re-paint her five buildings and light house. I shot some video of Scott's house and the spread up the street. When Scott and his wife moved into the house , I moved into the motel, my room was $140 a night, winter rates and no dogs. I soon arranged a trade out for re-painting the entire motel, which got into the better part of a year and I never did get to finish it.

Here's a 20 minute air-check of the Warthog on KFML Denver, fall, 1971'

Savoy Brown--will be at Shapes this weekend, tickets are $3.50 at the door or you can pick them up at The Folklore Center on Pearl Street..."

Here's Junior Cabus simulcasting the band Cross from Summit Studios in Denver. We did these simulcasts pretty much weekly and as soon as Ham can sort out the legality of re-broadcasting them, I'll have them up on this blog. We join them now as Brian Kreizenbeck, The Super Warthog, passes the torch to Junior..

I was hired by Lynnette Shaw, who owns our local pot club, to help organize and tape an Obama-Thon for Barack Obama at the 19 Broadway night club where I do most of my taping of bands,

I got the bright idea of Jerry Lawson doing a jingle for Barack and I called him and ran it by his wife Julie. She in turn ran it by Jerry and this was on a Monday, and Thursday Jerry had to be in the studio anyway, so he knocked out the audio for me and they emailed the MP3, and we were off to the races. I assembled a slide show of public domain shots of the Obama's and laid it over the audio.

Here's Jerry Lawson and The Talk Of The Town and the tribute he wrote and they recorded for Barack Obama in general and our Obama-Thon in particular...thank-you Jerry and Julie Lawson and The Talk Of The Town...

We've come a long way since I first got into free-form radio as a rookie "nooze" man...the bebopvideo nooze links list on your right gives a glimpse of the vast assortment of up-to-the mnute information available to you these days...

SUMMER OF LOVE

Christmas of 1962, I was discharged from the U S Navy at Treasure Island, in the San Francisco Bay and moved into a frunished room in a hotel above the Cafe' Trieste (pictured above) in North Beach, which I'll be gettin' back to later, a half block up Grant Avenue was the legendary Coffee And Confusion and that's where I stumbled into a lifetime love for the blues, I was already pretty much obsessed with Rock and Roll music but I started catching this tall drink of water who'd show up with an electric guitar and a little piglet amp and do 30-40 minute sets of slide guitar blues in the best Danny Kalb, Mark Spoelstra, Jeff Muldaur tradition. Most of the performers there were traditional folk singers but on the weekends there were also a handfull of "white traditonal blues players" but this fella' Mike Wilhelm blew all their hats in the creek. Everybody worked for a "world class" hamburger and their tips, that was it, Steve Martin, Janis Joplin, no exceptions.

Here's a fella with a magic face if ever I saw one, remember "Cmon people now, smile on your brother, ev'rybody get together, try and love one another right now." The Youngbloods re-released this Dino Valenti song in 1969 and it became the anthem that so many of us swayed to in our most inspired moments. Lowel "banana" Levinger lll , was keyboard-guitar player with the Youngbloods when they had this hit. More recently he plays keyboards-guitars with The Barry Melton Band having spent time with Zero in the 80's. For an immortal moment that may well be burned into time, you might want to catch them Saturday, May 7 th at the Saloon, 1732 Grant Street in San Francisco (band includes Peter Albin, Big Brother, and Roy Blumenfeld, Blues Project).

My buddy, Reg G Williams is one of the original founders of the Straight Theatre on Haight Street back in 1966. He's put together one of the best "Haight Ashbury" oriented web sites of all time. You can virtually (pun intended) spend days rambling around such features as "The Scrawl On The Wall" where you can swap tales of those "head'y" times. Or review the many posters of the bands that were born, nurtured, and yes fostered, by The Straight Theatre, Chet Helms Avalon Ball Room, and many another grass roots venue, untill Bill Graham came along and pulled the first corporate "raid" on Chet Helms and built the contractual clause that bands that signed on to play for him weren't allowed to play at the Straight Theatre, or The Avalon, or any other venue that wasn't controlled by Bill Graham. Reggie was Peter Albins roomate at USF and introduced him to Janis Joplin which led to the formation of Big Brother And The Holding Company.

MUSIC OF THE 70'S

Bill Ashford put the headphones on me one day, and told me, "this is the best rock & roll song ever recorded", I tend to agree with him...

The closing of the Filmore Auditorium 1971-White Bird-It's A Beautiful Day-

MOVIN' RIGHT ALONG IN THE 60's

I've been in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1961. I came here on an oil tanker and passed under the GG Bridge 6 times before I ever rode over it.

A half block up Grant Avenue was the legendary Coffee And Confusion and that's where I stumbled into a lifetime love for the blues, I was already pretty much obsessed with Rock and Roll music but I started catching this tall drink of water who'd show up with an electric guitar and a little piglet amp and do 30-40 minute sets of slide guitar blues in the best Danny Kalb, Mark Spoelstra, Jeff Muldaur tradition...

In fact, it would be years before anyone was able to break the strangle-hold that BGP, Bill Graham Productions. 2b1 began in 1995 but its roots are deep within the San Francisco Community via its promoter Boots Hughston. He began playing saxophone in the 60’s/70’s with many llegendary bands, including Santana, It’s a Beautiful Day, Marty Balin (form the Jefferson Starship), Nick Gravenities Blues Band, John Cipollina (from Quick Silver), Van Morrison, Bobby Blue Bland, The Hoo Doo Rhythm Devils, Gregg Allman as well as his own bands Aum and Womb. Boots promoted his first show with Lue Williams and the “Stray Cat” at California Hall in San Francisco. The concert included Janis Joplin and Big Brother. Boots recalls “It was more of an experience then a money maker, I never got paid, just had fun putting up posters and hanging out”.

In October 1995 with blessings from Chet Helms (the original promoter of the Family Dog) opened their doors at Maritime Hall as “The Family Dog/Image of the Dog”. Boots Hughston and his sons Dusty and Boot as production and stage manager made ready for their date with destiny . The 3,000, + capacity, three floor venue had chosen a formidable adversary; no venue had survived longer than a year or two against BGP. Even the original Avalon ballroom from the 60’s only lasted a couple years. In the 30 years since then no venue large enough to compete has survived. BGP (Clear Channel) controls it all, the booking agents, venues, bands, ticketing, newspapers, magazines all owed something to BGP (Clear Channel), people feared their wrath. Industry professionals, took bets on how long Maritime would last. The San Francisco music scene was suffering from stagnation, and only the bands controlled by BGP (Clear Channel) were booked.
“Maritime Hall Productions” not only survived but also grew. Now 2b1 Productions had expanded into 3 cities and 5 venues. At their height they employed over 80 people in San Francisco.

Christmas of 1962, I was discharged from the U S Navy at Treasure Island, in the San Francisco Bay and moved into a furnished room in a hotel above the Cafe' Trieste (pictured above) in North Beach, which I'll be gettin' back to later, a half block up Grant Avenue was the legendary Coffee And Confusion and that's where I stumbled into a lifetime love for the blues, I was already pretty much obsessed with Rock and Roll music but I started catching this tall drink of water who'd show up with an electric guitar and a little piglet amp and do 30-40 minute sets of slide guitar blues in the best Danny Kalb, Mark Spoelstra, Jeff Muldaur tradition. Most of the performers there were traditional folk singers but on the weekends there were also a handfull of "white traditonal blues players" but this fella' Mike Wilhelm blew all their hats in the creek. Everybody worked for a "world class" hamburger and their tips, that was it, Steve Martin, Janis Joplin, no exceptions.

"Chet Helms; The Big Brother of the Summer of Love" (2006)

A documentary short film about the life and times of Chet Helms, a rock and roll icon; band manager, and promoter who was involved in organizing and promoting many famous bands in the 1960's and 1970's--including Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin's band), Blue Cheer, Canned Heat, The Doors, The Grateful Dead (free download Avalon Ball Room 5 April,1969) The Paul Butterfield Band, Quicksilver' Messenger Service, and Sopwith Camel. Chet was loved by thousands, and misunderstood by many. A documentary feature about Chet is also in development.

Executive Producer: Norma Lambert Macleod
Producer, Director, Writer: James Macleod
Production Company: Highlander Productions