From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-When Bob Dylan Ruled The Rolling Stone Folk- Rock Universe

Adam Evans was restless, restless in 1971 like he had never been before. Just out of the military service (Army, 1968-70, one ‘Nam hell year, thirteen months with R&R, and some tough “real world” adjustments), just out of a war marriage not made in heaven (made a week before he got orders for ‘Nam in the summer of 1968 in stupid haste because she, Delores, wanted them as one, to have been married, whatever happened , and she, hell, she sent that Dear John letter about her and some old flame rekindled about three months after he was in-country, jesus), just out of an unsettled love with a woman, Abigail, whom he had met in Cambridge (rebound short love all tied up, and all mixed up with, his public anti-war G.I. stance, his veteran for peace stance, and all tied up with her trying on a peace soldier boy for size and then back to some up and coming professor where she came from, him, like he said, just a rebound love and he had smoothed, he thought when they parted, too many things over that didn’t click to make the rebound work), just out of dough since his savings had been depleted to nil (trying, if you can believe this, not to seriously work in the system that “fucked” him over and finding little dough in the off-hand dishwasher, store clerk, bracero-like day labor that had previously kept him afloat), just out of luck, good luck anyway since he got back to the “real world.”

He decided he had to drift, drift west into that good night. Drift west in search of that almost childlike belief in what he called the blue-pink Great American West night. The night when he could rest his mind and his dreams out there maybe in some pacific coast cave around Big Sur playing mad hatter hermit, some Steppenwolf (not the death to American war murder rock group, Herman Hesse’s), filling up his lungs with fresh pacific air, some books, and a little acapulco gold to keep the blues away (and the food hungers down, a little, at least for expensive food), north up the Pacific Coast highway to the heaven-bound cliffs of Mendocino and some friends doing bracero work, good paying work they said, in wine country, or some ghost chance thunder road (maybe down Joshua Tree way that some freaked-out ex- Marine who had been stationed at Twenty Nine Palms had told him about, and about ghost dances coming out of the caverns so that wasn’t some metaphor stuff about the damn thunder road). The vagaries of the road would determine where he fell off first when he hit the coast (hell, no vagaries b.s., just who, mainly lonesome long-haul trucker s looking for white line lonesome road company, and where they were headed with those overloaded sixteen billion-wheeled semi’s).

In 1971, however, the roads west, the main highways and back roads too, were clogged full of lonesome pilgrims seeking their own blue-pink nights. And so he found before he was long out of Boston where he started his trip that he was among kindred angels more often than not on the great hitchhike road dream brought by forbears like old okie hills Woody Guthrie and Lowell mill boy Jack Kerouac. So he walked roads, grabbed rides, got picked up for “vag” a couple times (including a couple of days courtesy of Yuma County out in the Arizona zombie night with bologna sandwiches and bilious water three times a day, Christ), went hobo jungle railroad tracks more than once (and worthy of recounting although not here , here we speak of heroic roads west, grail- seeking roads west)headed south a little to avoid the cold, then west landing just off Indio next stop in sainted ghost-ridden Joshua Tree on some wayward sixteen-wheeled giant green monster explosion.

Carrying his life-line (and life’s full possessions at just that moment) bed-roll knapsack combination Adam headed into the park. Walked some dusty stone-etched miles to one of the camping sites expecting to find some more kindred and stews against some hunger. Sundown was approaching as he fixed up his assigned site when he heard a loud blast of Bob Dylan’s youth nation national anthem, Like A Rolling Stone, coming from, coming from somewhere. Maybe it was the dust of the road, too many roads, maybe it was his time, maybe it was some tumbleweed passing by remembrance, but at first he could not fathom where such music would be coming from in the high desert.

Then he saw it. Saw the biggest yellow brick road school bus now all painted in the six hundred swirled asymmetric colors of psychedelia (metallic purples as if to mock purple, mauves, fruit-tasting oranges, seven sun yellows all aglow, sea blues, sea-green blues, sea- blue greens , none mocking King Neptune for fear of bad karma, no, better, bad vibes, ordinary blues, vanilla whites, and death blacks) with a huge speaker mounted on its top and about sixteen crazed lunatics (although that information was only confirmed later) dancing in various conditions of dress, and undress. He approached, someone passed him a joint, good stuff fresh from a Mexicali run, another some cheap ripple thunderbird boone’s farm wine, and another pointed him to the fireplace stew broth. All without a word. Home, home among the rolling stones.

Later, after he bid good-bye to those fellow-travelers who were heading south to Mexico, down Sonora way and cheap, cheap everything and sun but mainly cheap and righteous herb (ganga, mary jane, sister, marijuana whatever you call it in your neighborhood), after he had moved on from that site, the park, and finished that last leg to the ocean, as he settled into oceanside LaJolla working his way up the coast, as he settled in on this “new groove” (ancient hippie word, quaint, quaint even then), and as the day’s smoke ( stash provided by that strange yellow brick road bus, and still primo Mexicali stuff too) went all up and down his brain and some music came booming out of the magical yellow brick road bus, some Doors cry from the thunderous heavens about shamanic nights, incest, death, and westward ho, get here and we’ll do the rest, and snuggled (quaint again) against some serape-draped dark- haired, dark-skinned, dark-eyed mex girl who made eyes, made sparkling dancing eyes at him (made eyes she said later because she had in her brown world never seen such fierce blue eyes, such anglo blue like the pacific azul eyes even on that damned anglo “bus,” north from Tijuana, and he let her see them up close, real close, and she shuttered a little nodding softly that they could either be devil fierce or gentle good night fierce and she wasn’t sure which she preferred) he proffered (nice, right) the following story to her about the road west as he had travelled it and about what happened one night out in Joshua Tree :

Enough of muddy, rutted, always bum-busting rutted, country back roads, enough of breathless scenic vistas and cows, enough of trees dripping sap, rain, and bugs, strange bugs, not city bugs, that was for sure, but biting frenzy worthy anyway. Enough of all that to last a life-time, thank you. Enough too of Bunsen burners (last seen in some explosive chemical flash-out flame out in high school chemistry class and, maybe, they have rebuilt the damn lab since then, maybe though they have left it “ as is” for an example), Coleman stoves (too small for big pots, stew worthy, simmering pots to feed collective hungry bus campers and hard, country hard, to light) wrapped blankets (getting ever mildewed ), second-hand sweated army sleeping bags (in desperate need of washing after a month) , and minute (small, not speed in throwing up, especially when rains came pouring down and he was caught out without shelter from the storm, a metaphor maybe) pegged pup tents too (ironic army surplus although World War II, not his war, ‘Nam poncho stuff, no way). And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated eastern mountain stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights (okay, not enough), and nature in the raw. Cities, please. Large Pacific-splashed roar of ocean cities with life in sheltered caverns and be quick about it. This was after that Yuma County courtesy “vag” bit of the road, cleared the dust and stink of that dead-ass town heading up to Flagstaff and ways west.

Right then though he had sighted his first connection hitchhike ride heading out of Flagstaff and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses, and lost loves names, truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and would wind up talking a blue streak was heading to some motorcycle jamboree, heading to Joshua Tree in California, Adams’s want to west destination since he was this far south (although the trucker did not call it a jamboree and I had better not either as I write this unless I want to risk offending the entire Hell’s Angels universe at one stroke. Let’s call it a tumble-rumble-stumble and be done with it. They’ll like that.).

All Adam wanted was to have silence, to be silent company on the ride that day and think unfettered thoughts of that Cambridge woman, that Abigail, who he had smoothed over some rough spots with and was thinking about more frequently, especially about how he could have played it differently, or better, but he knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such companionship. See, some guys, some trucker guys like Denver Slim, who had left him off at some long ago (or it seemed like long ago, really only a couple of months) Steubenville truck stop on his way American south one time wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as Adam reminded him of his errant (read: hippie –swaying) son. Other guys were happy for the company so they could, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and their take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Yah, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” would stand you in good stead and you could nod out into your own thoughts. Forlorn sunshine and downy billow Cambridge woman thoughts, Abigail thoughts.

And that was exactly where he wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. Just then Adam though was thinking about what Aunt Betty, sweet Neola (Iowa)cornfields grandmotherly Aunt Betty (everybody called her Aunt Betty, even guys who were older than she was, after the name of her sweet Neola diner), said a month or so back when he had pitched his tent for a few days in her backyard, he did some chores in kind, and she fed him, royal Midwest fed him, still rung in his ears when he told her his story (or the latest part of it, the after ‘Nam part ). He was good for Abigail. Hell, he knew he was. Hell, if he had had any sense he would have admitted what he knew inside. She, Delores, ’Nam rebound or not, was good for him too.

But see the times were funny in a way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say [those are the specific numbers he gave according to my notes although the importance of those dates in now unknown], that Adam would have run into a Cambridge upscale kind of straight-laced woman. In those earlier days he had been strung out, strung out hard, on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, he said half-laughing , bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. He said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereal, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls so you’d know what he meant. As a kid he was cranked up on pale, hell, wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and he meant hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and chaste lust in their hearts like his ex-wife Delores. So when Cambridge woman Abigail’s yankee goodheart number turned up, he was clueless about how to take a just plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, Adam said he couldn’t explain it, and he doubted that he ever would. Just say, like he told it to me, he was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and be done with it.

Here is where things got kind of screwy though. He had put many a mile between him and Flagstaff and was well clear of that prairie fire hellhole bologna sandwich Yuma madness and well into sweet winter high desert night California (still hot during the day, jesus, one hundred at Needles, although not humid, thank Christ) had encamped at his site, and met up with the yellow brick road school bus which both were not far from some old run down, crumbling Native American dwellings on Joshua Tree reservation that keep drawing his attention (and the mad lunatics on the bus as well).

Sitting by Joshua tree night camp fires casting weird ghost night-like shadows just made his new Abigail hunger worst. And old “on the bus” well-traveled fellow ex-soldiers turned “hippies,” Jack (something out of a Pancho Villa recruitment poster and, in another age, the look of a good man to have beside you in a street fight) and Mattie (some Captain America easy rider poster boy brimming with all that old long gone Buck found ugly in his America although Mattie did two hard tours in ‘Nam), playing their new-found (at least to him) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone. Jesus, and here they were only a few hundred miles from the ocean. He could almost feel back to eastern seas, atlantic swirls-clutching, could almost smell, smell that algae sea churned smell, and almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys , golden boys a decade or so ago, as if from another time, eden time, looking for that perfect wave. Yah, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Abigail (or name her, or him) plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only made the Abigail hurt worst as he remembered that she had never seen the Pacific Ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that Adam went on and on about and he was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world.

And so here he was making that last push to the coast but not before he investigated those near-by Native American lands that, as it turned out, he, Jack and Mattie had all been interested in ever since their kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know the Lone Ranger, Hop-A-Long Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.

Earlier on this day Adams was referring to they had been over to Black Rock (still in the high desert but only reachable by some forsaken road although every Native American seemed to know how to get there, and get out of there too, no mean trick when whiskey or peyote high, for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely across the west not all that long ago but who were now mere“cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as the collective warrior nations pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of their own (Jack, Mattie, Adam) warrior shaman trances were still in their heads on that now blazing camp fire night. Adam was still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as the modern warriors drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who had broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but the trio had scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and the buttons had started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old jerry-bilt bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes as well).

Just then in this dark, abyss dark, darker than Adam had ever seen the night sky in the citified East even though it is star-filled too, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Abigail he was embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if his ears didn’t deceive him, and they didn’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle he heard, and heard plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.

And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, Adam swore,, swore on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls he saw the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that he had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, the trio, the three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so they were actually out of synch with the wall action, to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya...until they sped up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity they were ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices.

But then just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame went out, or went to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors were gone and they crumbled in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance and revenge. They, after regaining some strength, all decided that they had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, would do them in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment they, or at least Adam knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-When Bob Dylan Ruled The Folk Rock Universe, Circa 1965

CD Review

The Essential Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 2000

Peter Paul Markin was restless, restless like he had never been before. Just out of the military service (Army, ‘Nam, 1969-70), just out of a war marriage not made in heaven, just out of love with a woman he had met in Cambridge, just out of dough since his savings had been depleted to nil, just out of luck, good luck anyway since he got back to the “real world” he decided he had to drift, drift west into that good night. Drift west in search of that almost childlike belief in what he called the great blue-pink Great American West night. The night when he could rest his mind and his dreams out there maybe in some pacific coast cave around Big Sur, north to Mendocino, or some ghost chance thunder road.

In 1971, however, the roads west, the main highways and back roads too, were clogged full of lonesome pilgrims seeking their own blue-pink nights. And so he found before he was long out of Boston where he started his trip that he was among kindred more often than not on the great hitchhike road dream brought by forbears like old okie hills Woody Guthrie and Lowell mill boy Jack Kerouac. So he walked roads, grabbed rides, got picked up for“vag” a couple times, went hobo jungle railroad tracks more than once , headed south a little to avoid the cold, then west landing just off Los Angeles in sainted ghost-ridden Joshua Tree National Park on some wayward Volkswagen minibus explosion. He bit good-bye to those fellow-travelers who were heading south to Mexico and cheap, cheap everything and sun but mainly cheap and righteous herb (ganga, mary jane, sister, marijuana whatever you call it in your neighborhood).

Carrying his life-line (and life’s full possessions at just that moment) bed-roll knapsack combination he headed into the park. Walk some dusty stone-etched miles to one of the camping sites expecting to find some more kindred and stews against some hunger. Sundown was approaching as he fixed up his assigned site when he heard a loud blast of Bob Dylan’s youth nation national anthem, Like A Rolling Stone, coming from, coming from somewhere. Maybe it was the dust of the road, too many roads, maybe it was his time, maybe it was some tumbleweed passing by remembrance, but at first he could not fathom where such music would be coming from in the high desert.

Then he saw it. Saw the biggest yellow school bus now all painted in the six hundred colors of psychedelia with a huge speaker mounted on its top and about sixteen crazed lunatics (although that information was only confirmed later) dancing in various conditions of dress, and undress. He approached, someone passed him a joint, another some cheap fine wine, and another pointed him to the fireplace stew broth. All without a word. Home, home among the rolling stones.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-When Bob Dylan Ruled The Folk Minute, Circa 1962

CD Review

Bob Dylan: The Best Of The Original Mono Recordings, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 2010

“Hey, Peter Paul, help me out tonight will you? Jenny’s cousin Joslyn is in town. Lynette promised her she could go with us to the Oleo Coffeehouse tonight and she needs a date. She is supposed to be nice and since she is from New York City she knows all about the folk scene there and about all the latest folk singers and poems and stuff,” Jeff Murphy quick-talked (the only way he knew) over the phone to his high school friend Peter Paul Markin. Peter was intrigued by this prospect for he had over the previous several months got caught up in the emerging folk wave then splashing through young 1962 America so he said sure.

Peter Paul, as was his way in those days around girls (and around his more intellectual friends) dug into his pile of folk music, folk records and folk newsletters in order to be able to carry on a civil conversation with Joslyn that night. He was especially nervous that he know every arcane fact in the folk world to impress a New York City girl who had actually been to Mecca, the Village, his idea of folk chic. Funny, he thought to himself,a year or so before he used to laugh at what he called “beats,” guys with beards, bad hair, bad breathe, baggy pants and brown flannel shirts when he took his midnight swings through Harvard Square.

He was strictly a rock and roll man, or maybe a little, be-bop blues as they filtered out of Mister Lee’s Blues Hour from Chicago on the radio on Sunday nights when the wind was right. One Sunday he was trying to get that station (always a fickle proposition on his transistor radio) when he heard this gravelly-voiced guy singing something out of some old mountain hollows or something like that, a song called Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies. The guy singing it, whom he later found out was Dave Von Ronk from Brooklyn, sounded like some latter day Jehovah calling his flock home. Peter Paul was hooked and listened to the whole show. He didn’t remember all the names of the songs or performers but the next day he went to Charlie’s Records over in Adamsville Center and picked up what that shop considered folk, some Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie stuff and he was double-hooked.

That date night he went with Jeff, Lynette and Joslyn and had a good time. Although she was indeed as nice as advertised she had a problem, a Peter Paul eyes problem. She was way too knowledgeable about the folk scene for Peter. At one point he was sitting there in silence as she went on and on about the Village. Mostly what she said was that a new wave was coming, we, meaning them, the kids then, were ready to bust out and make a newer world and folk music would be the cement that united us. Powerful stuff.

She said that a young guy, a young guy hanging around the bars and coffeehouses, places like Geddes Folk City, was writing up a storm, a storm to make a storm. She asked Peter Paul if he had heard Bob Dylan ‘s latest Blowin’ In The Wind that was becoming a national anthem for the youth who wanted to change the worldand change it now. Peter Paul blushed, blushed crimson red or redder maybe. He had never heard of Bob Dylan. Next day though he was at Charlie’s Records .

P.S. Peter Paul and Joslyn would meet again a number of times over the next several years, dated sometimes, lived together a couple of times, and each time she got the chance Joslyn would “remind” Peter Paul of that first Oleo coffeehouse date and his lack of knowledge ofBob Dylan then. Later Peter Paul lost contact with Joslyn after she went underground with the Weathermen in the late 1960s to try to create her version of that newer world she talked about that first night.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Endless Bob Dylan Bootleg Series - With “Boots Of Spanish Leather” In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his classic early lament, "Boots of Spanish Leather.”

CD Review

Bob Dylan: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964, The Bootleg Series –Volume 9, 2 CD set, Bob Dylan, Sony Records, 2010

I have often joked with other early 1960s folk revival minute Bob Dylan aficionados that, now past seventy, he continues on a never-ending concert tour that will only end, and maybe not then, when his voice that gave out decades ago (that fresh twenty-something gnarly voice anyway), leave him whispering, or some such thing. Apparently the same fate is in store for every known song that he has written, stolen (that’s okay in folk land), duded up, or changed a word here or there too. And copyrighted too. Well, okay Bob.

And like the never-ending concerts and song transcriptions it has become obvious that the Bob Dylan enterprise will keep endlessly releasing items in the bootleg series. So by the time it is over, in our grandchildren’s late adulthood by my current projections, we will have been subject to every creative cough, hum, retake, out-take ,remake, can’t fake, sour note, beautiful note, gussied up lyric, and breathtaking lyric too that he ever touched . For those with less than 1% resources this will mean going hungry, going on welfare, going to the streets, selling the children into indentured servitude, and whatever other demon demands an aficionado can place on others to get his or her “one last fix.”

Funny though this Volume 9 –Witmark Demos bootleg actually has some very good versions of his classics (without coughs, hums, etc.) like Boots Of Spanish Leather, and a reworking of some traditional tunes like Leaving of Liverpool (here called Farewell). And then there is some stuff that is of historic interest like Masters of War and his Ode to Emmett Till that are always welcome. And, of course, stuff that in cinema is called “better left on the cutting room floor.” Overall though this two CD set is one of the better bootlegs. So start hiring out the kids so you can get it for your now overflowing collection.

Where Were You On May 10, 1963? - Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963- A CD Review (Of Sorts)

Click on the headline to link to a review of “Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis University 1963” so I can move on to the more “pressing” issue of answering the question posed in the above headline>

CD Review

Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, Bob Dylan, Sony Music, 2011

“Where were you on May 10, 1963?” bellowed a voice from the crowded back of the room of the conference, another one of those “save the world” gatherings that I was attending recently.

“Well, who is asking and why?” I replied, turning around to see who posed that odd-ball question.

Jesus, of course it was my compadre, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the old- time radical journalist who has fouled up the left-wing and radical public prints of this country for the past forty years (until he recently, praise be, retired), a man who I met back in the summer of love, 1967 version. And a man who has asked me more silly questions like the one above than I can ever come close to recalling. So my answer to his question is a simple “I don’t’ know.”

Except old Josh (everybody calls him Josh, not that nonsensical Joshua Lawrence Breslin breeze publication by-line thing , except in that very brief summer of love night when he went, un-self-consciously, under the name The Prince of Love. But that is a story for another day.) had some ulterior motive, knowing my history, knowing where I was raised, knowing that I was just enough older than him to have been somewhere other than at home in 1963, and knowing that I had immersed myself in that Harvard Square-etched 1960s folk revival minute.

Of course he did have his motive, having recently purchased a copy of the elusive, rare, Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, and so he wanted the ‘skinny’ on my doings or not doings at the time. Needless to say he did not want, after him and then I listened to the thing later, to know what I thought of the CD. Frankly the material in the album recorded live in some fiendish college gym cum folk club was done in other early Dylan studio- produced albums much better at the time. No, what he wanted to know is why I was, or was not, at the concert (or really at the Brandeis Folk Festival) that weekend.

Well, number one, I was not just at that faux beat checked flannel shirt, black chino, chuck taylor sneaker (with genuine logo, thank you) midnight sunglasses high school moment familiar with the local folk scene beyond Back Bay and Harvard Square. Number two I had not the faintest notion where Brandeis was, or the city where it was located, Waltham, although it was only about seven or eight miles from Harvard Square. And as part of number two I had no way, no way in hell, to get there if I had known since being strictly from hunger over on the North Adamsville side of town I had no wheels, no prospects of getting wheels, and just then was in a dispute with Frankie Larkin, the one guy I knew who had wheels. And number three, well, let me explain number separately, okay?

Josh-jogged memory reveals that I knew exactly where I was on May 10, 1963 (or that weekend anyway). I was sitting at the Joy Street Coffee House on Beacon Hill in Boston (another budding, if less well-known, folk revival hang-out spot). And I was sitting with one, Diana Dubois, a fellow junior classmate of mine at North Adamsville High School trying to “convince” her that this new guy, Bob Dylan, was worth listening to if she wanted to get an idea of how we could get out of our fix. That fix being, we both agreed,
that we were growing up in a world that we had not created, had not been asked about, and had no apparent way of changing. Enter Bob Dylan (and others but everybody, including me, called him our muse).

See Diana and I had a "Problems in Democracy" class together and I, naturally, was all over the current events of the day and stuff like that. Sincerely, no question, but mainly acting “smart” to impress the girls, and to impress one Diana Dubois, in particular. And I did, did at least get her attention, after about two weeks of talks and walks and, finally, finally a date. Of course a no dough guy could go pretty far with a cheapo coffee house date. A little carfare from Podunk to Boston, a couple of bucks for coffee and cakes (she had tea, mint tea, I believe, but don’t quote me on that my memory is NOT that good). And a fist full of coins to play the jukebox at Joy Street. See the other beauty of the place, unlike the Harvard Square clubs was there was no “live” entertainment so there was no cover charge. Just a jukebox, juiced up with nothing but folky stuff. And the king pin max daddy of the box was one Bob Dylan with almost all his stuff on the playlist.

Naturally that playlist included “Masters Of War” that I played a few times for Diana, giving my interpretation as the lines flowed by. See, just then I was in the throes of a high anti-war dudgeon. No, not Vietnam like you might think, that was nothing on my radar except maybe we had to stop the commies, but nothing very deep. What was deep (and impressed the hell of Diana) was my opposition to nuclear weapons, especially as just a few months before we were on the edge, the deep edge, with the Russians. From there I worked my “magic” going on endlessly about the John Birch Society and its threat to democratic practices that Dylan lampooned in “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” and then on to “Bob Dylan’s Dream.” I made her laugh like crazy when I parodied his voice on that one.

Now to the big moment. There was more calculation that I let on before about why I invited Diana out to this coffeehouse. See what I was really angling for was a date the next week-end to the North Adamsville High Spring Swing (name going back to some hokey, then hokey, Benny Goodman thing, when the school first opened I heard). It was a big junior bash and I had heard through my grapevine (finely-tuned to such intelligence, after all what was high school except to learn these social arts) that Diana was not dated up. So I asked her, and she said, she said, well, after this big build-up you know it was yes.

So you might as well say that Bob Dylan got me that date with Diana (and some more too but that is not part of this story). And so how do I know where I was on May 10, 1963? Well that Spring Swing was held on May 17, 1963. I have saved the ticket up in the attic. Do the math. Thanks, Bob.

***A British Guy From Texas, Okay- The Music of Doug Sahm-CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Doug Sahm performing back in the day, his British invasion day.

CD Review

Dough Sahm: Juke Box Music, Doug Sahm, Antone’s Records, 1988

A British guy from Texas? Oh, ya, that. See one Doug Sahm, a mad monk, a Texas-bred mad monk, of musical talent wanted to ride the wave, the 1960s British invasion wave led by the Beatles that changed the face of rock and roll more than somewhat. Just like Elvis, Chuck and Jerry Lee did a generation before, a rock generation that is, and , strangely, brought blues, big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues via Chicago and Memphis and country harder life acoustic blues via the Delta cotton field broiling sun sweats and Saturday night no electricity jukes, mainly, back to America. So ride the wave, take the ride and pay for the ticket, to paraphrase the late gonzo journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson a kindred, here comes none other than the Sir Douglas Quintet no less high and hard in the 1960s American post-invasion hip-hop night.

Well that bluesy rock minute passed but Doug Sahm’s attachment to music, to roots music, apparently never vanished as this CD testifies to in a big way. So back in Texas he made something of a legend for himself in the emerging Austin musical scene. And while I don’t know the all the particulars of the late Brother Sahm’s later career I know two things, well, actually three things. When Bob Dylan wanted to taste, musically taste, all things Texan, particularly that Tex-Mex roots sound that permeated some of his music during his “western outlaw” period (hey, maybe his whole career, at least in his mind) he slip-shot himself by Brother Sahm and they became fast friends.

And Dough Sahm was instrumental in preserving that Tex-Mex sound as it got preserved in old Antone’s, a blue club very closely associated with the blues in Texas and, well, that big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues Chicago too, as that storied (and chronicled, on film chronicled) barroom locale provided a final home for many of the Windy City blues greats as they fell on Maxwell Street hard times. And lastly, well lastly Brother Sahm KNEW, knew in his bones and deep in his musical soul, just like Dylan, the American songbook, the generation of ’68 section that he is paying tribute to on this album. Feast on.

***In The Time Of Your Parents'(Ouch, Maybe Grandparents') Folk Moment, Circa 1955-“Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three”

CD Review

Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999

Yes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.

Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.

But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.

***Those Oldies But Goodies- Folk Branch- Bob Dylan’s Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues- In Honor Of His 70th Birthday

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you.

Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got.

Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon.

Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same.

Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost.

I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.
******
“United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and not longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.

Fritz thought again, this time with easier breathing, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell, except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.

Ya, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell. And maybe, just maybe, it was even earlier than Clintondale high school days, and the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.

But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was every going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about the get to easy street, not only was it to get some tea delight to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every women-loving guy, even honest women-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman. Hard-hearted Irish Catholic Cecilias like he knew, backwards and forwards, from kid time or some other combinations foxed out later but a woman, no question. Although not always about a woman named Juana, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should be a little less forgiving. Ya, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy.

Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance she always wore (and don’t tell her if you run into her, and you will if you are looking for grade A dope for sure, drove him as crazy as a loon), that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, ya, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.

Ya, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the world and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.

See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep herself in style. Fritz never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by Fritz but Juana was also “connected,” connected through some cousin to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Colombian Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night. So Juana was to good tea like Owsley was to the acid scene, the maestro.

Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Ya, it was the Columbia Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got “religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.

To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tea leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tea leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But Fritz had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.

And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the cartelization of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk, and later Fritz and Tommy risk (rest his soul down in some Cuernavaca back alley). And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for christ sakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.

This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. Fritz didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right this minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.

And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And here he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh soap. And as he got off he staggered for a minute, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled”, smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. Fritz said to himself, ya, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you see her tell her Fritz said hello.