This post is "a movement in my life" (NOT a moment...) for several reasons… It describes a series of events and situations scattered over time and "thought" together at the moment of writing it. The themes are huge for me: from my lifelong love for rock music to my intense hatred of racism, and an abusive father that somehow tied them together in my mind.
After a few hours of helping
shoppers at Food for People’s choice-pantry, I came home and finished my Oxford presentation; it’s pretty damn good, and a real potential bridge burner I am "proud" (?!?) to admit. I have
13 daze until I fly to London! Maybe I'll figure out how to make the message more palatable to my audience by then.
When I first got home tonight I put on a random series of 5 CDs I pulled out of my "rock" box, edited the presentation paper for awhile, washed dishes, and made some dinner. Jimi Hendrix’s
“Electric Ladyland” was already playing when I left the kitchen to put away the laundry I had done in the morning. Suddenly I recalled when I really “heard” this album for the first time, while tripping on
acid and smoking hash oil. I was 17 years young…
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| THAT'S why they called Electric LADYland! As usual, the European cover was nixed for the American release; what do we have against women's bare breasts on rock albums? (See the English cover for Blind Faith's Album for another example...) |
I was at an artist friend’s
house in downtown Fullerton, and a bunch of us rode trikes around the adjacent parking lot in
the late afternoon sun while “Still Raining, Still Dreaming,” “House
Burning Down,” and “All Along with Watchtower” (the video just below; you HAVE to watch it!) blasted out of the house’s windows and
doors. I could really see the music in it's rainbow colors, because I was flying very high… Even now, tonight, I smelled those feelings again for a few minutes, and then I
remembered even more profoundly MY Hendrix Experience…
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
was my first concert, 5 years earlier. A friend bought tickets to the then-new LA
Forum; I remember thinking how expensive those $5 tickets were! There were 3
bands: Cat Mother (who died without a trace), Chicago (then a new band that
wowed the crowd from 10 to near midnight, and then The Experience, which came
on at almost 1 am, and played until dawn. My friend "Michael" and I went down to
the open space in front of the stage. It was 1966, and there was no visible
security. We were packed into the space, and everyone was moving, smiling, and
singing. I saw my cousin "Carl," sitting on the stage, 10 feet from Jimi’s
feet, smoking a joint! (I didn’t start using drugs for another year…)
Jimi’s “Star Spangled Banner” (you really should watch this Woodstock version some time!) went on for an hour, with improvs and solos so long and diverse that the
audience would forget that the hook was the national anthem until he got around
to playing a few more riffs now and again. As the sun was rising in the parking lot, I
stopped to buy a psychedelic poster of Jimi from a vendor, much like this one…
I was star-struck, and on
the cusp of adolescence in the middle of the fucking ‘60s! I stuck Jimi’s
poster up on my bedroom wall without a moment’s thought. I didn’t think of the
televised Watts “Riots” (Rebellion), and how my father, just 2 years earlier
had yelled racist obscenities at our black and white TV screen. “Kill the
fuckin’ black apes!” was one of his more creative screams… I was 10, and wondered who could possibly scare my big, bad, bully of a dad (future posts) so much!
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| THE most infamous photo of the Watts Rebellion... |
How could I not remember
that?!? Freud calls it a repressed memory, and it was about to get a chance to
be relived. When my father got home he somehow saw the poster in my bedroom. He
ripped it down with one outraged swipe of his hand, and then balled it
up and yelled at me, “No one is gonna put up pictures of niggers in MY house!” I was speechless, without a clue yet as to the depth of racism
in contemporary America.
Why get so hung up on the color of a person's skin? It would be 3 years later, locked up in a padded cell on an out-of-control 3-day acid trip, before I would remember that "The Revolution had been Televised," and to confront the fact that, as I would later love to say, “My dad would make a great Nazi if he hadn’t been born a Jew.” That was in 1970, when the '60s were over too quickly, and the downward spiral of the Boomer generation was already underway…
Why get so hung up on the color of a person's skin? It would be 3 years later, locked up in a padded cell on an out-of-control 3-day acid trip, before I would remember that "The Revolution had been Televised," and to confront the fact that, as I would later love to say, “My dad would make a great Nazi if he hadn’t been born a Jew.” That was in 1970, when the '60s were over too quickly, and the downward spiral of the Boomer generation was already underway…
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| My cell didn't look like this modern version; it was like a concrete cell with wrestling mats nailed onto the walls and floor, and with a drain to hose out the vomit and urine, etc. in the middle. |
As a hint of what was to come, by then Jimi Hendrix had
already died, along with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and so many others, famous and unknown. Why did
so many of our creative artists flame out so young? Perhaps they couldn’t bear to
live in the hateful society they could see so clearly? A lot of people blame their demises on drugs, but maybe they were "medicating" because they couldn't stand the realities all around them. The Vietnam War continued for 3 more long, genocidal years, and the Civil Rights movement had been stalemated. Although the United Farm Workers union was looking stronger, it would soon be just another feel-good cause without any rebels. And, the Boomers that had fueled the '60s would put away their love beads and flock to Wall Street.
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| Morrison's grave site; maybe I'll make the pilgrimage while in Paris? |
Somehow I survived my own
decade-plus drug trip… I should have died any number of times; I actually rode a motorcycle up canyon passes and to Big Sur while out of my mind on this or that.
My cousin "Carl," up there on the stage at the Hendrix concert, had died during this period. He tried killing himself by running onto the 101 freeway in evening rush hour traffic while naked. When the cars didn’t finish him off, he bought a gun.
My cousin "Carl," up there on the stage at the Hendrix concert, had died during this period. He tried killing himself by running onto the 101 freeway in evening rush hour traffic while naked. When the cars didn’t finish him off, he bought a gun.
I grew up with the notion
that life and death were equivalent, and that it was OK to off myself if I
wanted to. I remember eating a bottle of orange baby aspirin when I was about 10, mad
that I was made to go to bed before my TV show was over!?! My puke tasted like orange candy all night long…
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| Why do they give it an orange flavor?!? |
My favorite book was Albert
Camus’ “The Stranger,” wherein he shoots a man on the beach instead of killing himself. I grew up angry and hurt, but for some reason, I just
never did flip the ultimate switch.
The evening of this post I laid down on
my bed, thinking about all these things, while listening to “Voodoo Child (Slight
Return).” Jimi must have loved life to write and perform such incredible songs. I know it was hard for him to make it in the US music scene because he was a
Black man. He had to leave the US and perform in Europe for years, until he
broke through in England with the British Wave of white groups like the Stones
and the Beatles. Once England loved him, he could finally come back to the US
and have a career here. He must have reeled from our hypocrisies; like all these racist middle-age men rooting for the "home team" full of black and brown players...
Now I’m going to England, and I’m thinking of Jimi. Too weird! I just googled
Jimi’s death to add a few facts to my post and found the following:
“Jimi said, "When I die, I want people
to play my music, go wild, and freak out an' do anything they wanna do." This musical genius died at 27 years old,
leaving behind only 4 completed albums. Although he was staying in a London
hotel at the time, on September 18th,
1970 Jimi was sleeping in his girlfriend Monika Danneman's flat, in Notting Hill, London.”
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| RIP, Jimi Hendrix... |
I had NO conscious idea that Jimi’s death-iversary was upon me, nor did I recall that he had died
in London! I do remember than Jim Morrison died in Paris (grave photo way above), which is where I’m
going after the Oxford Workshop! Now I need to find out where Janis Joplin
died, and tie that into all this other happenstance… Meanwhile, rest in peace all
you hipsters and revolutionaries! I think that a new generation is arising, and maybe THEY will carry on the work of making this world a slightly better place.
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| Janis with her Southern Comfort (the only booze to ever make me puke all night long!)... Cheers! |
[Update (9-19-2011): drugs now cause more deaths than traffic accidents in the USA... However, marijuana, other hallucinogens, and all other "illegal" drugs combined are NOT the culprits, so what is described above is NOT an endorsement of suicide-by-drug-use; for THAT pitch, contact the "adult beverage" industry, and big pharma's sales reps and their best buddies, your families' doctors!]
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