"So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." JFK, June 10, 1963.
This homeless man in San Francisco today came back from the bathroom to find that police were loading his sleeping gear and all his worldly possessions into a Department of Public Works truck for disposal at 16th and South Van Ness. He objected and began reclaiming his property when the police and "sanitation" workers confronted him, threatened him, beat him, and arrested him.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Instead of actual solutions to the very real homeless crisis, officials are content to simply remove the homeless and their possessions from public view.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Shame on the "sanitation" workers and cops who harass homeless people, stealing their meager possessions including sleeping gear. And shame on "liberal" San Francisco for not working for compassionate long-term solutions to the homeless problem, the housing crisis, and the sky-high cost of housing in Northern California in general.
Last night's Pathway To Paris concert, a cultural response to San Francisco's Global Climate Summit, presented a variety of musicians and activists in a quick-pased show which lasted nearly 4 hours.
Hearing from activists was inspiring, especially the three teen-agers who started Zero Hour. Two were 17 and one was only 16. They reminded me of the Parkland kids and they give me hope for this country,
Many in the audience came to see Bob Weir or Patti Smith and they were not disappointed.
Bob Weir brought out legendary Ramblin' Jack Elliot for "Friend Of The Devil":
Bob sang "The Other One), his tribute to Neal Cassady (Beat generation inspiration & driver of the Further bus with Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, as immortalized in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test):
Escaping through the lily fields, I came across an empty space It trembled and exploded, left a bus stop in its place The bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus to never ever land...
The evening began with a musical performance from the two Pathway To Paris co-founders, Jesse Paris Smith (Patti's daughter) on the piano, and Rebecca Foon on cello.
We soon learned that tonight would have been the 70th birthday of Fred "Sonic" Smith, guitarist extraordinaire for Detroit's MC5, the 1960's era explosive revolutionary rock band, late husband of Patti, and late father of Jesse and Jackson.
Both Patti and Jesse seemed very emotional about the anniversary, understandably so, and perhaps this only added to the intensity of the evening.
Patti joked that she was playing with TWO bass players - Flea on bass and Tony on piano.
Their version of "Pissing In A River" was one for the ages:
Patti went on to sing her classic "Because The Night":
At the end, the entire ensemble returned to help out on a song that Fred inspired, Patti's "People Have The Power":
It was nice to see one of the evening's MC's was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. He plays Jaime Lannister on HBO's Game Of Thrones, which has wrapped filming its series finale (although we won't see it until next year). He joked that he was now out of a job since Game is over. He's quite serious; however, about his role as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNDP. I still don't understand why he had to push Bran out the window like that. That was rather rude.
Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, did a solo set which was really interesting. He created a bass loop, then played trumpet over that. His energy was infectious, which is one of the best types of infection.
Eric Burdon, classic singer for The Animals and (sometimes) War, did a great, short set of a Leadbelly cover ("In The Pines" AKA "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"), followed by Memphis Slim's "Mother Earth".
I enjoyed some of the lesser well-known artists too, such as Tenzin Choegyal (a Tibetan singer based in Australia), Imany, and Suluit as well, and having short speeches and videos from activists like 350's Bill McKibbon, simply brought home the message of why we were all there.
By the way, they are doing it all over again this Sunday in L.A.:
Pathway to Paris concert event set for San Francisco
Patti Smith and Bob Weir to join a celebration of climate action during the Global Climate Action Summit.
San Francisco, 11 July 2018: Pathway to Paris, together with 350.org and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today announced a special concert on September 14th at the historic Masonic in San Francisco. Set to cap off the Global Climate Action Summit, the concert will focus on the potential for cities to push for, achieve, and go beyond the climate targets highlighted in the Paris Agreement.
Bringing together leading musicians, artists, thinkers, and policymakers, this concert will serve as a call to action, urging the international community to ramp up ambition towards a climate safe future for all.
This marks the fourth collaboration between the partners who previously joined forces for concerts in each of the last three years. The first concerts, in Paris in 2015, coincided with the adoption of the Paris Agreement, while events in 2016 and 2017 served to celebrate climate action by state and non-state actors. Most recently, 2017 saw the partners host a concert at New York City’s historic Carnegie Hall where Pathway to Paris announced the launch of the ‘1000 Cities’ initiative. The initiative invites all cities of the world to transition off fossil fuels and move to 100% renewable energy by 2040in order to turn the Paris Agreement into reality.
“In the world of music, the best way to improve is through collaboration. This is the same with the critical issue of climate change. We must join together to make this the most ambitious collaboration of our century. We will not be able to implement crucial and challenging solutions to climate change, plastic pollution, and all urgent environmental problems as long as we stand divided. Inseparable from the issue of climate change is the need for world peace, global communication, and an international collaboration unmatched by any event in human history.”– Co-Founder of Pathway to Paris, Jesse Paris Smith
“Cities play a critical role in transforming our world out of the era of fossil fuels and into a renewable world. This is our time to make this shift and transform our cities to become sustainable, resilient cities for us all and future generations. This is our chance as our window of time is narrowing.” – Co-Founder of Pathway to Paris, Rebecca Foon
Along with Patti Smith and Bob Weir, the concert will also feature Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tenzin Choegyal, French pop-soul singer Imany, renowned artist Olafur Eliasson, and Pathway to Paris Founders Jesse Paris Smith and Rebecca Foon. Speakers also include 350.org’s Bill McKibben.
Artist Olafur Eliasson will turn the whole audience into artists by creating an interactive collective artwork. Eliasson leads a choreography that motions its audience to hold up a Little Sun solar lantern. The result is a visually striking solar-powered ‘sunrise’ which raises awareness for climate action and energy equality.
Multi media artist Steven Sebring will be presenting a visual art and immersive sound experience.
All proceeds from this evening will be donated to 350.org, Pathway to Paris, and the United Nations Development Programme.
PATHWAY TO PARIS
September 14th 2018
The Masonic, San Francisco
PATTI SMITH • BILL MCKIBBEN • BOB WEIR • FLEA
OLAFUR ELIASSON • ERIC BURDON
TENZIN CHOEGYAL • IMANY
REBECCA FOON • JESSE PARIS SMITH
+ SPECIAL GUESTS
Doors: 18:00 Show: 19:00
Tickets go on sale this Friday, July 13th at 10:00 a.m. PST at LiveNation.com,
all Ticketmaster outlets, or charge by phone 1-800-745-3000.
Sixty years ago, the American folklorists Samuel Charters and Ann Danberg visited the Fresh Creek settlement on the eastern end of the Bahamian island of Andros, just north of the Tropic of Cancer. Andros is now known chiefly as a sport-fishing and scuba-diving destination—besides a sizable barrier reef, the island is bordered by a massive oceanic trench known as the Tongue of the Ocean, and has more blue holes than anywhere else in the world. But Andros has received misfits and refugees for hundreds of years. In the early eighteenth century, the island, like all of the Bahamas, was briefly declared a pirate republic; the Welsh privateer Henry Morgan, later of dubious rum renown, supposedly entombed a portion of his gold there. (I like to think that he first mingled with the now extinct Tyto pollens, a flightless, rangy barn owl that stood more than three feet tall and wandered the island’s old-growth pine yards.) In the nineteenth century, when the United States acquired Florida from Spain, hundreds of Seminole Indians and African slaves fled for Andros, crossing the Gulf via canoe or wrecking sloop, eventually settling on the island’s western shore.
When Charters and Danberg arrived, in July of 1958, the island hadn’t yet been discovered by tourists, and life there could be arduous.
According to Charters, pervasive poverty had caused residents to feel “sensitive and dissatisfied.” Many split for Nassau, where work was more plentiful. The ones who stayed found solace in song. “Music is the only creative expression of the island’s people, and religious singing and instrumental music have become an intensely important part of their lives,” Charters explained.
Many of the men on Andros played unaccompanied acoustic guitar, tuned to a standard tuning, but with the sixth string dropped from E to D. Islanders were either Anglican or Catholic, and sang hymns and other religious music. One afternoon, Charters and Danberg came upon a guitarist sitting on a pile of bricks; some men were hammering away at the wooden frame of a house, and he was messing around, entertaining them. Joseph Spence was about to turn forty-eight, and mostly made his living as a stonemason. “I had never heard anything like Spence,” Charters later wrote. “His playing was stunning.” The performance was so rich and multifaceted that Charters started peeking around to see if maybe there was a second musician out of view. There wasn’t.
It’s not hard to understand why Charters was disbelieving. Spence often seems to be playing several melodies and countermelodies at once. The idea that all those notes could be nonchalantly generated by a single set of hands—well, it takes some getting used to. Spence lived in Nassau by then, but he was born in Small Hope, a settlement a few miles north of Fresh Creek (according to island legend, Small Hope took its name from the small hope that a person might one day dig up Captain Morgan’s treasure there). He had previously been employed as a sponge fisherman, a carpenter, and, briefly, as a crop cutter in the American South, where he undoubtedly absorbed the vernacular traditions of the region—the way Americans sang gospel, how they bodied the blues.
Charters and Danberg asked Spence if they could record him playing on the front porch of the small house where they were staying. “He did a version of a popular island folk song to warm up and tune the guitar, and then, without stopping to do much more than laugh and joke with the women between the pieces, he recorded the instrumental solos that become the first Folkways LP,” Charters later wrote. “When he’d played as much as he wanted, we paid him the little money we had and he walked off with the people who’d come to hear him, and for the rest of the afternoon he sat in the shade playing Bahamian checkers.”
The subsequent album—“Music of the Bahamas, Volume 1: Bahaman Folk Guitar”—was released by Folkways Records in 1959, and recently reissued as part of the label’s seventieth-anniversary celebration (Folkways was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now known as Smithsonian Folkways). Spence would go on to make other recordings—including one studio album, “Good Morning Mr. Walker,” for Arhoolie Records—but there’s nothing quite as loose, buoyant, or expansive as those first recordings.
In the nineteen-thirties, the folklorist Alan Lomax travelled to the Bahamas and recorded local fishermen singing sea chanteys and anthems (there’s some enduring confusion about whether or not Lomax recorded Spence, too, although Todd Harvey, a curator at the American Folklife Center, which manages the thousands of recordings Lomax made under the auspices of the Library of Congress, recently told me he couldn’t find any definitive connection between Spence and Lomax). Even if Lomax had come across Spence, by the nineteen-fifties, Spence’s repertoire would have been broader and weirder, its influences more disparate and motley. Island cultures tend to be insular, which is why music developed there can feel so unique—it’s often conceived of and honed in relative isolation. Spence didn’t seem to think about his work in terms of genre, yet his playing refers to the musical conventions of Tin Pan Alley, to gospel hymns, Delta blues, Appalachian folk, calypso, and any other number of things a listener can sense but not quite explicate. His notes are often just a little off-kilter, yet even the technical imperfections in his playing feel precise and intentional. It was just the way he thought things sounded best.
Spence liked to improvise, and often worked a familiar melody into something deeper and more idiosyncratic. His take on “Jump In the Line,” a calypso jam written by the Trinidadian musician Lord Kitchener and made famous—to American audiences, anyway—by Harry Belafonte, in 1961, starts out recognizable, but gradually mutates into something wilder and more abundant. The effect is like discovering a secret door in a house you’ve occupied for decades. Spence was often delighted by the winds of his own work, how a tune could blow him one way or the other, a palm in the breeze.
“Sometimes a variation would strike the men and Spence himself as so exciting that [Spence] would simply stop playing and join them in the shouts of excitement,” Charters noted.
Spence has been compared to the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, who could be similarly abrupt and dissonant, cleaving or perverting a melody (the poet Philip Larkin once compared Monk’s playing to an “elephant dance”). Spence didn’t sing too much on Charters’s recordings, though he wasn’t entirely silent, either. He referred to his musical process as “scramming,” a word which feels just as applicable to his vocal style—some grumbling, a mutter, a gasp. It reminds me of when a cat’s purrs eventually give way to something more guttural, a raspy, contented heave. That’s Spence’s voice: spontaneous, serene, and unself-conscious.
Decades later, in the spring of 1971, after the Folkways L.P. had been embraced and exalted by folk revivalists (many of whom travelled to the Bahamas to make their own recordings), Spence flew to Massachusetts to record “Good Morning Mr. Walker,” and to play a concert sponsored by the Boston Blues Society. He took quickly to the place. Many of his musical brethren—the “rediscovered” folk musicians of the fifties and sixties, who were trotted out on a well-intentioned but occasionally objectifying circuit—closed up or grew anxious in cold Northern cities. But Spence seemed to absorb new things with ease. There was just so much joy in him. He was spotted flying kites on the banks of the Charles River, eating Chinese food, shopping for clothes. “Spence obviously found friends wherever there were people,” Jack Viertel wrote, in the liner notes to “Good Morning Mr. Walker.”
Charters and Danberg eventually married. She went on earn her doctorate, and became a scholar of the Beat Generation and also Jack Kerouac’s first biographer; he continued to work as a folklorist, and eventually wrote “The Country Blues,” a heavy and formative text on the genre. Spence died in Nassau in 1984. He was seventy-three. It feels so lucky that we have a document of their brief time together. This is the curious pleasure of field recordings, especially ones this great. A snapshot of a moment; a steamy afternoon by the sea.
Cool British band Palma Violets, whose intertwining lead singers Sam & Chilli some compared to The Libertines' Carl & Pete, have a new band, Gently Tender.
The band sent out this notice: Hello Palma fans,
Sam, Pete and Will here.
We have formed a new band called GENTLY TENDER with two new members, Celia and Adam, and we just released our first single.
We've just announced our first UK tour, come join us -
26th September - LONDON Lexington 27th November - MANCHESTER Yes 28th November - GLASGOW Broadcast 30th November - BRISTOL Crofter’s Rights 2nd December - BRIGHTON - Sticky Mikes
That means that Alex AKA Chilli, the bassist/singer of Palma Violets, in NOT in the new band.
Guitarist Sam said in an interview in July 2018:
"We didn't fall out or anything like that. We just changed as people. We were 18 when we started the band and everything is quite easy to get on the same page, write the same kind of music all the time. Whereas when you hit 24 after 5 years of touring, I think you just become different people and we naturally just moved on"
Richard Thompson 13 Rivers
Renny Conti People Floating
Paul Weller True Meanings
Spiritualized ...And Nothing Hurt
The Pixies Live From The Fallout Shelter
Treetop Flyers Treetop Flyers
The Freak Accident (feat Ralph Spight) Misfortune Teller
Iron & Wine Weed Garden
Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood With Animals
RANDOM
The Kinks The Great Lost Kinks Album & At The BBC
Joseph Spence Good Morning Mr. Walker
Stevie Wonder Talking Book,Innervisions, & Fulfillingess' First Finale The Pixies Live From The Fallout Shelter is part of the massive collection commemorating the 30th anniversary of their classics Come On Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa. It was recorded in the studios of WJUL, UMass, Lowell, MA., December 15, 1986 and captures the band at their most explosive. If you want to remember why you always liked The Pixies... or wonder what all the fuss is about... this is the record for you...
A post from Clayton's family (Posted on Clayton's Facebook Page)
We lost a beautiful young man on August 31, 2018. The speed of public media has made us address his death sooner than we were ready, but…. really, the truth is that Clayton left this earth too soon and it is his death that we most certainly were not ready for.
If you knew Clayton, you knew he was unique, brilliant, loving, kind, funny, and adventurous. If you knew Clayton well, you also knew that for a number of years he struggled with substance abuse and addiction. Clayton’s substance abuse and addictions were something that we, his family, were painfully aware of. We have had agonizing periods of praying, confronting, supporting and hoping beyond hope that his addictions would eventually become history and Clayton could fully grow to become all he was intended for in this world. He had so much to give.
Clayton became addicted to heroin some time ago while a college student…..it doesn’t matter which college, heroin, other drugs and alcohol are readily available everywhere. Clayton considered his addiction a ball and chain that kept him tethered to one area as it took all of his energy to earn the money he needed to support his addiction. He had been to treatment, willingly, more than once, and was able to leave heroin alone for long periods of time.
When Clayton was clean (not using heroin), he was able to leave that ball and chain behind and enjoy his freedom by following his dreams of adventure by riding his bike around the country, playing music as he went to experience the people, the beauty of wilderness areas, the excitement of city life, and the different cultures of our great country. He did that!!! He traveled by bicycle for close to two years!!! So many of you who are now reading this long message, are friends, fellow musicians and travelers that he met while bicycle touring the United States, busking where ever he was. He was so very glad to meet all of you on his journeys. He shared with us so many stories about you and his travels. Without heroin, his personal ball and chain, life was good for Clayton.
Why he went back to heroin, we cannot know, and we are deeply grieved that it took our beautiful son, brother, grandson, nephew, uncle, and friend. We are richer from having had Clayton in our lives, we will grieve him being gone all the rest of our days. If you have substance abuse issues and addictions, reach out for help, there are millions of people who have left it alone, one day at a time. It is our wish that you remember the beauty, the joy, the music, laughter, and deep thought that Clayton brought to this world and not to focus on the ugliness and wretchedness of how he left us. He is now part of a heavenly choir, albeit sooner than we wanted. If you wish, please leave a comment regarding where you met Clayton and how he brought joy to your life….your comments will bring us comfort.
Thanks and love to you from his grieving family.
Michael Donnelly, ThisSmallPlanet.com: When I first met Clayton, he was playing Townes Van Zandt on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz. Later, you were more likely to hear him play The Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Mississippi John Hurt, or Hank Williams, perhaps followed by a silly TV-show theme song ("Cheers" for one), or a version of "Kaw-Liga", accompanied by generous doses of comic mugging. Last year, I followed his postings on social media about his bicycle and busking journey across the U.S. It seems Clayton touched many people in many places with his music. He recently returned to Santa Cruz and, unfortunately, passed away this weekend. I will miss him dearly, but will always hear his song being sung somewhere deep in the canyons of my soul. The singer is gone, but his song goes on...
On the anniversary of the Byrds' seminal "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" album, listen to a Pete Seeger demo of the song that became a hit for the band in 1965.
Pete Seeger was a full-fledged folk star at the turn of the 1960s, having spent much of the two decades prior popularizing the genre that would spawn the likes of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary and The Mamas and the Papas. But perhaps his most important work was still ahead of him, as a recently surfaced recording of the iconic “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)” seems to indicate. Found in a private collection and believed to be a demo pressed around 1961, the one-sided vinyl, 78 RPM acetate was intended to showcase the song for performance or recording considerations, as was common at that time. It may be the earliest known recording of the song.
Of course, most people are familiar with the ubiquitous version by The Byrds from 1965. That band epitomized the mid-60s folk-rock boom, and their immortal rendering of this particular message song has become synonymous with the decade itself. But the history of this composition is itself an interesting time stamp of a major moment in musical history.
Seeger saw the original folk explosion as part of the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie in the early 1940s and again as a member the Weavers until he left that famed folk quartet in 1958. As a songwriter he excelled at appropriation, using the poetry of Idris Davies for the song “Bells Of Rhymney” and adapting verse from the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes for “Turn! Turn! Turn!” Both songs had a similar descending melody that Seeger himself called “conventional…even cautious” and acknowledged their basic structural dept to the old chestnut “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
“Turn! Turn! Turn!” first appeared on wax in 1962 on The Limeliters’ “Folk Matinee” LP. A clean-cut folk trio featuring lead singer Glenn Yarbrough, The Limeliters’ hearty version sounds like a drinking song or something from a Union hall meeting — perhaps not the most auspicious debut. A few months later, Seeger included it on his own album, “The Bitter And The Sweet” (recorded live at the Bitter End). Slowed down for his audience with just voice and guitar, this live version feels laborious. The album liner notes state simply, “’Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)’ is another new song written by Pete Seeger, its power may remind many of ‘The Bells Of Rhymney.’ The words are from the Book Of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.”
The song could have ended up a preachy folk standard right there—another stiff sing-along like Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene.” But, the times they were a-changing. Young troubadours like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were extending the folk tradition with songs of their own declaration and a new wave of folkies had begun to sing out.
In 1963, Judy Collins recorded the album, “Judy Collins #3.” The LP included both “Bells Of Rhymney” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” A fast-rising folk interpreter, Collins was shrewd and discerning when selecting material to perform. In the album notes she writes admiringly of Seeger’s compositions and concludes, “I do the ‘Bells of Rhymney’ with the 12-String guitar, since I see no way of improving upon the fine Seeger musical setting for the song.”
As fate would have it, accompanying Collins on this record was the young guitarist Jim (Roger) McGuinn, who went on to become the mainstay of The Byrds. McGuinn had studied 12-string guitar and banjo at the Old Town School Of Folk Music in Chicago, and was mentored by the great folksinger Bob Gibson.
McGuinn had even done a stint with the Limeliters and was already familiar with the Seeger songs Collins had chosen. McGuinn arranged “Turn! Turn! Turn!” for Collins and must have loved the way the ephemeral melody sounded on his guitar, as he tucked away both Seeger tunes for future reference, the future being The Byrds
The Byrds burst onto the pop scene in 1965 with their chiming rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which reached No. 1 on the singles charts. Producer Terry Melcher duly captured McGuinn’s Rickenbacker 12-string jingle-jangle, as well as the rich harmonies of McGuinn, David Crosby, Chris Hillman and Gene Clark singing folk-tunes with a Beatle beat and voila! Folk-rock was born. The “Mr. Tambourine Man” album was released three months later and contained four Bob Dylan tunes, it also included Pete Seeger’s “Bells Of Rhymney.”
When The Byrds’ second single, the Dylan song “All I Really Want To Do,” barely made it into the Top 40, the band needed a stronger follow-up. Columbia Records was pushing to release yet another Dylan tune for their third single but instead, at McGuinn’s suggestion, they went into the studio and recorded “Turn! Turn! Turn!” More upbeat than their version of “Bells Of Rhymney,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” found the cultural sweet spot for an entire generation and gave the group another chart-topping hit.
McGuinn and The Byrds had intuitively tapped into the deeper folk traditions of Pete Seeger for a unifying song of meaning. Amidst the tumult over the Vietnam War, rising social and racial protest and the emergence of flower power, it was a message of change, hope and acceptance, drawn from the bible itself — a song that came to characterize the blossoming of the 1960s. A song whose time had come, as it was the season.
