TravelStream™ news feed for member johnsinclair on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/johnsinclair en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:57:28 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1181965800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1181965800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1181965800/tpod.html Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:57:28 -0500 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Milano, Italy

<i>(Milano, Friday, June 15, 2007)-My people at c.s.o.a. COX 18 have brought me to Milano twice before, and this time I'm coming in to headline the Friday night show at their annual Free Festival. They've named the celebration "The Beat Goes On" with the title of my poem "We Just Change the Beat" appended in Italian: "abbiamo solo cambiato il ritmo," and they're staging it on the vast grounds of a former psychiatric institution operated by the Roman Catholic Church, abandoned by the Church some years ago and now converted into a sort of experimental arts center operated as the Museo Arte di Paolo Pini.Mark Ritsema and I arrive at Milano Malpensa airport without Dr. Dorothy Goodman, who's trying to catch another plane out of Amsterdam after leaving her passport at the apartment and missing our scheduled flight-the one Mark and I just took to make the gig tonight. A frantic exchange of phone calls ensues as soon as we reach Milano: she has to buy a full-price round-trip ticket in order to reach Milano today. The flight for 5:00 pm doesn't materialize and there won't be another for several hours. The last call comes just minutes before Mark and I have to go on-stage and uses up the rest of my pre-paid telephone minutes just after I suggest that it's too late to make the gig and the people who were going to pick her up at the airport are now working at the festival and can't get away, and why doesn't she go back into Amsterdam and meet me in Roma on Sunday?Now I'm out of telephone communication until (as it turns out) Monday in Roma, and that's the last I hear from Dr D until an e-mail is received a week later. It finds out then that she decided to disregard Italy altogether and fly back to the United States, and that's where she is for the duration. It was a beautiful and very deep and interesting thing we had between us for a year as two old people in love since we hooked up for real in New York City last June, but after today it will soon become clear that there's no way I can see any more of a future for the two of us together and I'll go on by myself again.Okay, so much for the soap opera of my love life. With only the two of us here to fulfill the engagements I've booked for the three of us, Mark and I determine to make the most of it, and our performance at The Beat Goes On is as precise and fully realized-and as well received-as it's ever been. It's always exhilarating to please an audience that had no idea of what would happen when we started, and although the idea of a music &amp; poetry performance is not a popular one, and certainly not what an entertainment audience is particularly looking for, we generally manage to win the people over, gain their applause and secure the opportunity to return to play for them again.I love being in Italy with the old-time anarchists and resisters like the people at COX 18. The massive structure that holds the COX 18 collective was taken over more than 30 years ago, and the community with its culture of resistance that's grown out of the original bunch of punks who took over the building in the 1970s has an enviable coherence that extends through at least two generations of cultural and political activists who remain centered there. Most of the COX 18 people seem to have day jobs of one sort or another, frequently centered in the graphic arts, communications and advertising industries, but they gather at COX 18 for nightly dinners from the communal kitchen, musical and cultural events, exhibitions and planning sessions for public activities like the Free Festival now underway at Paolo Pini. They're the same kind of people we were in Detroit and Ann Arbor in the 1960s and '70s: activists who share radical ideas and have developed the means to carry them out. They run a City Lights bookshop, are adept in staging shows with professional sound and lighting, know how to print a poster and place an ad for an event, and keep an effective list of people to reach out to for whatever may be required at any given moment.On hand at the festival are my friends Stefano and Giorgia from COX 18; my man Marco Lorenzin, who has organized my appearance there; my translator Guiseppe "Pippo" Pipitone, a noted author in his own right; the psychedelic artist, poet and historian Matteo Guarnaccia, who wrote the introduction for my Italian collection VA TUTTO BENE; and the great GianCarlo Mattia, whose mind-blowing Beat Hippie Autonomi Punk exhibit is on display on the grounds of Paolo Pini and who will introduce us on stage. It's been raining all afternoon and evening in a steady drizzle, but by showtime the night is clear and everything is lovely. Tomorrow night will follow a beautiful day and the place will be packed for the special offering by an all-star group of venerable British musical weirdos comprising Daevid Allen (Gong), Hugh Hopper (Soft Machine), and Chris Cutler (Henry Cow), whose performance offers disparate thrills from beginning to end. On the grounds cartoons and musical short films are bring screened from clumps of kids and other viewers, sausages and other food is being cooked and served, and people are having a ball well into the wee hours.Mark and I are staying in the spacious Ostella Olinda, the hotel conversion on the grounds that houses staff and guests. There's a restaurant across the promenade where we turn in our vouchers for meals, and on Saturday afternoon we sit down there with Marco and Pippo to record an interview that Pippo wants to use as part of the Italian version of THE DELTA SOUND. It came out so well that I added some music from the album and made in into an episode of my radio show:http://www.radiofreeamsterdam.com/audio/jsrshow138.mp3John Sinclair Radio Show #138Museo Arte di Paolo Pini, Milano<i>Saturday, June 23, 2007 at 6:00-7:00 pm [20-0718]The COX 18 Free Festival in Milano is staged this year on the spacious grounds of a former Catholic psychiatric facility that's been converted into an experimental arts complex now known as Museo Arte di Paolo Pini. COX 18 Press is about to bring out an Italian translation of my blues work titled THE DELTA SOUND, with the CD produced by Andre Williams glued in the back, and they've named the festival after my poem "We Just Change the Beat"-or in Italian, abbiamo solo cambiato il ritmo. My translator, Guiseppe "Pippo" Pipitone, and Marco Lorenzin conducted an interview about the book on the grounds of the Paolo Pini on Saturday evening with my guitarist Mark Ritsema chiming in from time to time, I recorded it on my little digital machine and, when I got to Rome, edited it together with some cuts from THE DELTA SOUND to make this program. That's Jeff "Baby" Grand and Everette Eglin on lead &amp; slide guitars, Bill Lynn on rhythm guitar, "Tricky Dick" Dixon or Mark Bingham on bass, Michael Voelker on drums, and the ladies from ELS on backing vocals with arrangements by my producer, the great Andre Williams.Playlist #138&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;[01] John Sinclair &amp; His Blues Scholars: We Just Change the Beat[02] Long Conversation with John Sinclair &amp; Guiseppe Pipitone re: FATTENING FROGS FOR SNAKES[03] John Sinclair &amp; His Blues Scholars: Cross Road Blues[04] Long Conversation with John Sinclair &amp; Guiseppe Pipitone re: FATTENING FROGS FOR SNAKES[05] John Sinclair &amp; His Blues Scholars: Pea Vine BluesHosted by John Sinclair for Radio Free AmsterdamRecorded by John Sinclair at Museo Arte di Paolo Pini, Milano, June 16, 2007Edited &amp; assembled by John Sinclair at Forte Prenestino, Roma, June 28, 2007Mastered &amp; posted by Henk BotwinikExecutive Producer: John SinclairSpecial thanks to The Beat Goes On Festival, c.s.o.a. COX 18, Guiseppe "Pippo" Pipitone, Marco Lorenzin, Mark Ritsema, Antoniello "Rent" &amp; Forte PrenestinoSponsored by Hempshopper, Eat at Jo's, c.s.o.a. COX 18 &amp; c.s.o.a. Forte Prenestino© 2007 John SinclairPodcast by www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com as #138 on July 16, 2007<i>-The Dolphins &gt; Katsu<i>Amsterdam<i>July 21-23, 2007
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1187028900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1187028900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1187028900/tpod.html Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:06:32 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Detroit, Michigan, United States

<i>(Detroit, Monday, August 13, 2007)-Detroit has been an extremely depressed community since the early 1970s when the price of gasoline suddenly doubled and then kept on increasing, and the Japanese and European auto companies started making the small, economical cars that the American automakers refused to manufacture. Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, things have gotten even worse, as evidenced by the following analysis recently offered by the Detroit <i>News:MICHIGAN MANUFACTURING JOB LOSSES PUT AT 170,000As the state continues to bleed manufacturing jobs, spurred by a decline in sales by domestic carmakers, Census data released today puts a number to the loss: an estimated 170,000 jobs from 2000 to 2006.Most of the decline is directly tied to the decline in Big Three auto sales, experts say. The loss of factory jobs has been a big part of the reason Michigan incomes have steadily dropped for the past few years.Adjusted for inflation, the state median income is down 12 percent since 1999, as well-paid factory workers are forced to take lower-paying jobs. <i>-Detroit News<i>, September 12, 2007It's hard to tell that there's a depression going on at Tiger Stadium, however. (They want you to call it Comerica Park, after the bank, but I haven't been offered anything to advertise for the fucking bank and it'll always be Tiger Stadium to me). Like they say in the 6th Ward, a lotta people don't know that I'm a big Tigers fan, but I've been with them ever since my grandma taught me how to keep score while watching the games on her little 9" TV set around 1952, and I'm following their struggle to repeat as American League champions pretty closely.Tonight I've got a night off in Detroit and Adam Brook has hooked me up with our pal Matt Abel so I can take in a game with the Oakland A's at the current shrine of truth and beauty on Woodward Avenue Downtown. It's great to be back at the ballpark even as the Tigers drop another game under the lights. After the game I walk over to Greektown to join the Milton Hale Monday night jam session at the Jazz Loft and have a great time, as usual.************Here's this week's podcast of the John Sinclair Radio Show from Radio Free Amsterdam:John Sinclair Radio Show #142Eat at Jo's in The Melkweg, Amsterdam<i>Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 3:00-4:00 pm [20-0720]http://www.radiofreeamsterdam.com/audio/jsrshow142.mp3Another brilliant summer Sunday afternoon takes us to Eat at Jo's for a new episode of the radio show where we get to broadcast out the front door onto Marnixtraat, talk with poets Joan Gannij and Ted Jackson, hear some poems from them and from John Sinclair &amp; Friends with Daniel Carter, Elliott Levin, Doug Lunn, &amp; Dee Pop 'live' at Jimmy's in NYC, plus some great tunes from New Orleans by the Li'l Rascals Brass Band, Treme Brass Band, Glen David Andrews &amp; the Lazy 6, Re-Birth Brass Band, Tuba Fats, Snooks Eaglin, Tommy Ridgley, and the New Birth Brass Band.Playlist #142[01] Opening Music: Li'l Rascals Brass Band: The Doe [02] John Sinclair ID, Intro &amp; Opening Tokes with Henk Botwinik[03] Treme Brass Band: Food Stamp Blues[04] Glen David Andrews &amp; the Lazy 6: Dumaine St. Blues[05] Re-Birth Brass Band: Tuba Fats[06] John Sinclair Comments &amp; Conversation with Joan Gannij[07] Joan Gannij: Walter Booker Solo[08] Joan Gannij: Wounds of Change[09] John Sinclair &amp; Friends 'live' at Jimmy's NYC: blue monk &gt; humphf[10] Tuba Fats: Didn't He Ramble[11] Snooks Eaglin: Boogie Rambler[12] Tommy Ridgley: Tra La La[13] John Sinclair Comments &amp; Ted Jackson Intro[14] Ted Jackson: Thoughts of Respectability[15] Ted Jackson: Talkin' Amsterdam Blues[16] John Sinclair Closing Comments &amp; ID[17] Closing Music: New Birth Brass Band: Smoke That FireHosted by John Sinclair for Radio Free AmsterdamProduced, engineered &amp; recorded by Henk Botwinik at Eat at Jo'sMastered &amp; posted by Henk BotwinikExecutive Producer: Larry HaydenSpecial thanks to Eric &amp; Mary Jo, Ted Jackson, Paul ValentiSponsored by Hempshopper &amp; Eat at Jo's© 2007 John SinclairPodcast by www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com as #142 on August 6, 2007<i>-Firenze<i>September 23, 2007
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/fall_2007/1189095300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/fall_2007/1189095300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/fall_2007/1189095300/tpod.html Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:37:05 -0400 TWENTY TO LIFE IN EUROPE & AMERICA: Taking my movie TWENTY TO LIFE: The Life & Times of John Sinclair, a film by Steve Gebhardt, On the Road in the Fall of 2007.

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Atlanta, Georgia, United States

(<i>Amsterdam, Georgia, Wednesday, September 6, 2007)-In order to show my proper trajectory from Detroit to Atlanta to Amsterdam for one day and then on to Rome, I'll start with this place-keeping entry set in Atlanta GA and start my reports with Entry #2 from&nbsp; Amsterdam. I left Atlanta on Tuesday evening and arrived in Amsterdam on Wednesday morning 5 September, but I'm making this entry to try to maintain my geographical continuity on the TravelPod map. I've been having a hard time while traveling this month to get and stay on-line for long enough to take care of all my TravelPod business, but I'm trying to catch up as always....<i>-Firenze<i>September 19, 2007<i>
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186442220/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186442220/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186442220/tpod.html Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:42:41 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Big Rapids, Michigan, United States

<i>(Big Rapids, MI, Monday, August 6, 2007)- Early Monday afternoon Celia and I pick up our rent-a-car and head north and west for Big Rapids, home of Ferris State University and the Erlewine compound where we'll be staying as guests of Michael Erlewine and his family until Thursday. It's great to be on the road again with my daughter and we're looking forward to a great time in Big Rapids.Erlewine is a devout Tibetan Buddhist and has named his current installation the Heart Center Library where I will be performing with Michael on harmonica, his daughter Daisy Mae on piano, Seth on guitar and his friends in the rhythm section. (This is where I must remind myself again to write down everyone's name on the spot so I can fill them in at times like this.)Seth and Daisy Mae have a terrific duo act and they start off the evening with some of their very moving music and songs. The Library is full of people of all ages, mostly mature though, and the band has studied my recordings so they are able to back me up to perfection. The concert is presented by a new Big Rapids arts collective called Tribe Life Productions which also operates the fine new recording studio Erlewine has installed in the basement under the direction of an enterprising young man called Ryan Williams.The local daily newspaper, the <i>Pioneer, has responded to my presence in this small town in a big way, starting with a pre-concert story on Sunday in the same issue that features Daisy Mae on the front page of the arts section, followed by an interview with me in the Tuesday paper and a rave review of the proceedings. On Wednesday Ryan takes me by the newspaper's offices to pick up some copies and we have a great time talking with the publisher and the editor as well as the writer, all of whom could well be described as fans.We also visit the premises of Galloup Guitars, a brilliant place where guitars are manufactured by hand, also restored and repaired, and there is a school in the back where some 72 new luthiers are trained by Brian Galloup each year to be able to construct four different guitars by hand in order to pass the course. Brian was trained by Michael's brother, the great luthier Dan Erlewine, and he has taken the enterprise to a whole new level.Michael has returned to his work in astrology and has been preparing a series of 16 e-books in which his vast knowledge of the subject has been collated and made available for students of astrology at justabout every level of expertise. (See http://www.astrologysoftware.com.) He's also returned to his first love, the blues harmonica, in my honor, has prepared well for our presentation and sounds as good as he did when he was the leader of the Prime Movers Blues Band in Ann Arbor in the mid-'60s and featured his brother Dan on guitar, a young James "Iggy" Osterburg on drums and the great Robert ("Blue" Gene Tyranny) Sheff on keys. Iggy's days with Erlewine and the Prime Movers are chronicled at some length in the Paul Trynka biography, <i>Iggy: Open Up &amp; Bleed.Celia and I enjoy our days off in Big Rapids and the incredible hospitality of the Erlewines and of Ryan Williams, who promises to set up a screening of TWENTY TO LIFE at Ferris State University in October when I'll be in Michigan again. While I'm at the compound Ryan also produces and engineers a Big Rapids edition of the John Sinclair Radio Show at Heart Center Studios, but as of this writing he still refuses to let go of it, much to my chagrin. This reminds me once again of the necessity of taking the masters home with me rather than waiting for them to be sent.For my next trip to Big Rapids to screen my movie, Erlewine also promises to convene a special edition of the Big Rapids Blues Scholars featuring his brother Dan on guitar for the first time in 30 years, his brother Tom on bass and Daisy Mae returning on piano, plus Seth our by now well-established rhythm section. And that's something to look forward to!<i>-Cabiria CafeFirenze<i>September 17, 2007&nbsp;
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186807080/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186807080/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186807080/tpod.html Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:41:38 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Saugatuck, Michigan, United States

<i>(Saugatuck, MI, Saturday, August 11, 2007)-I've always loved going to Saugatuck, the gay little artsy tourist spot on the lower Lake Michigan coast, ever since the triumphant appearance by the MC-5 at the Saugatuck Pop Festival in the early summer of 1968. That's a gig I'll never forget for a couple of good reasons: [1] Despite the several heavyweight acts of the time on the bill that day, to our utter amazement the crowd was there for the MC-5 and called out-actually chanted-our name during the breaks between all the acts on the show who played before our set. This totally blew our minds, because up to then we had been known to our fans in Detroit and Ann Arbor but were still strictly a "local act" which had in circulation only an A-Square 45 single, "Looking at You"/"Borderline," issued in an edition of 500 copies. True enough, our performances in the eastern sector of the state had become legendary for their excitement and high-energy dynamicism, but we had no idea that people on the West Coast of Michigan had any concept of who we were, let alone that they would be clamoring for our appearance at the Saugatuck Pop Festival.[2] There was a terrific scene backstage when I met with the management of the Frost, the Amboy Dukes and the SRC to hammer out the order of performance to close the show when nighttime arrived. Dick Wagner of the Frost, who gained fame later as guitarist on records by Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, was a venerable Michigan rock star who had pulled up in his black Cadillac limousine to show off his new aggregation, the Frost, on the festival stage. The SRC were releasing albums on Capitol Records after their local hit with the old Skip James song, "I'm So Glad," on A-Square Records, and the Amboy Dukes, behind the corny guitaristics of the dread Ted Nugent, had been riding high with their national hit single of "Journey to the Center of the Mind." All three Michigan bands were much better established than the 5, but then there was the matter of the frenzied chanting of the crowd all afternoon in their eagerness to be confronted by the power and beauty of the MC-5. The burning question was who would close the show, and while it seemed a cinch to me that the 5 should enjoy the honors, the other acts were invoking the traditional show-business rule that the bands with the hit records should be the ones at the top of the bill. My position was that it didn't matter to us where they put us, we would go out on stage and kill no matter what our position in the order of performance.So I was chuckling to myself as I went back to tell the band that we'd hit the stage just as the sun was going down rather than at the end of the night where we belonged, and this only further enhanced the 5's determination to blow up the sky and leave no audience members unmoved. The thing I loved most about working with this band was its single-minded commitment to total destruction-every performance was seen as an opportunity to raise the level another notch higher, and the intransigence of the other acts at Saugatuck really lit the 5 on fire. This was by far the largest crowd so far assembled to hear and see the awesome rock &amp; roll power of the MC-5, and when we were finished so were they-we leveled the place to the ground, and all of us in the MC-5 camp suddenly realized that things were going to be quite a bit different different from now on.In recent years I'd returned to Saugatuck several times in the company of Brian Bowe and the Blue Star 6, and while we weren't no MC-5 our offerings had been very enthusiastically received by a series of packed houses at the Sand Bar. Tonight was no different, with the extremely sympathetic backing of Vince Hayes and his tough rhythm section carrying the day for me, and I enjoyed a great night that was only slightly diminished by the $100 fee the management saw fit to pay me. Hey, if I was in this for the money, I'd never leave home to play a gig in the first place.In fact, I was so charged up by the evening's performance that Celia and I hopped in the car and drove the 3 hours back to Detroit in what seemed like the twinkling of an eye. For the rest of my stay I'd be based in Detroit with no more trips out of town, and that sounded mighty good to me.<i>-<i>Cabiria Cafe<i>Firenze<i>September 18, 2007
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186720500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186720500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186720500/tpod.html Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:38:14 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Traverse City, Michigan, United States

<i>(Traverse City, MI, Friday, August 10, 2007)-Vince Hayes had been trying to fill my open Friday night on the West Coast of Michigan for me on August 10th&nbsp; but couldn't come up with anything, so I was looking ahead to the dread Friday night off on the road when I went to see my boys the Howlin' Diablos play a biker party at a bar on Michigan Avenue in Detroit last Saturday night. In the course of things Showtime Johnny Evans mentioned that the Howlin' D's would be at the Loading Dock in Traverse City the next Friday, and when I bemoaned my absence of a gig for that night and my proximity to TC, Johnny offered me the opening slot on their gig and promised to back me up, so everything was solid.On Friday afternoon Adam Brook and my daughter Celia and I drove up from Steve Salter's place in Whitehall and enjoyed the cool lakeside ambience of Traverse City for a few hours, including a quite splendid dinner at a seafood palace near the water, before slogging over to the Loading Dock for the gig. My pal Jay Harrington, whom I'd seen in the springtime at the Culture Clash record and book store in Toledo, where he's finishing up college at last at the University of Toledo, was in the house to run the sound system, so I knew everything would be all right with that.The crowd was nothing to write home about in the first place, and the last thing they wanted to hear was a poet up on stage before the band, so I turned in a fast set, hung around long enough to catch a few tunes by the Diablos and then jumped in the car with Adam and Celia and drove back down the Lake Michigan coast to Whitehall with a few extra dollars in my pocket and the satisfaction of having had a Friday night gig after all. Tomorrow night in Saugatuck, where I'd meet up with the Vincent Hayes Project again, promised to be a bit more fun, and we'd get to hang around in Steve's juke joint garage with Salter and his people all day Saturday, so I crashed off to sleep at Steve's pad with something of a smile on my face.<i>-<i>Cabiria Cafe<i>Firenze<i>September 18, 2007
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186705920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186705920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1186705920/tpod.html Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:35:17 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Grand Haven, Michigan, United States

<i>(Grand Haven, MI, Thursday, August 9, 2007)-On Thursday Celia and I drive over to Grand Haven on the Lake Michigan coast where we meet Adam Brook and my accomplices for the evening, guitarist Vince Hayes and his men from the Vincent Hayes Project. I've played Grand Haven several times in recent years in the little downtown entertainment complex centered on the old DeeLite Theatre and the restaurants on either side of the theatre, and this time we're in the one on the right.On my previous trips to the West Coast of Michigan I've had the pleasure of being backed up by my pal Brian Bowe of Saugatuck on guitar and his fellow members of the Blue Star 6 blues band, but Brian has other commitments this time and he's lined me up with Vince Hayes, a fine guitarist and singer and a great guy. Vince and I and his bassist and drummer hit it off at once and have a great time playing for the nice crowd that's gathered to hear us.After the gig Adam and Celia and I drive up the coast a taste to the little town of Whitehall, where we will be the guests of the estimable Steve Salter and his wife for the next couple of days. Steve is a blues lover I've met on the road before when he'd set up his Killer Blues record operation at blues festivals all over the South and sell CDs to the multitudes. He's volunteered to put us up at his pad and we have a very comfortable and entertaining stay while I snarf up quite a few sides in his collection into my iTunes operation.We're sitting in his garage, which he's converted into a private lounge and social center modeled on a juke joint in the woods of Mississippi. It's a great place and sort of like an installation from another planet in the tiny all-white town of Whitehall, but he sure knows how to make us feel at home! Steve is running for the Whitehall City Council and I suggest that we hold a screening of TWENTY TO LIFE at the old municipally-owned theatre in town as a benefit for his campaign when I return to Michigan in October, but it turns out that the Campaign would rather not have this event associated with it in any way, shape or form, so please note that the screening of TWENTY TO LIFE on Sunday, October 7 in Whitehall is in no way whatsoever connected with the Steve Salter for City Council campaign. No way! And, man, is it a relief to learn that my name still seems to be considered anathema in the realm of everyday political life in Michigan!<i>-<i>Cabiria Cafe<i>Firenze<i>September 17, 2007&nbsp;
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1185924720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1185924720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1185924720/tpod.html Sun, 16 Sep 2007 13:42:02 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Detroit, Michigan, United States

<i>(Detroit, Tuesday, July 31, 2007)-Today's the day I was going to go to Ann Arbor to visit with Jeff Strouss for three days, but now he's left us and I'm sad to lose this beautiful cat who was so good to me in so many ways. Adam Brook and I end up driving to Ann Arbor anyway for a meeting that turned out to be canceled and then dinner with another old friend and counselor, attorney Dennis Hayes. I've known Hayes since he was in law school in the early '70s and a member of the legal team that was working on the appeal of my marijuana conviction.The last time I saw Hayes before the Jeffrey Strouss memorial service last week was in Amsterdam, where he's a fairly frequent visitor and celebrant. Hayes is another defender of marijuana felons and other miscreants who's been deeply rooted in Ann Arbor for about 30 years. He and Adam and my daughter Celia and I share a delightful repast at a place around the corner from his office downtown, enjoy quite a few laughs and exhume more than a few great memories before we say goodnight and drive back to Detroit.The next day is a social one, starting when Bruce Cohen picks me up for lunch, a few pleasant tokes on Belle Isle and our typical drive around the inner city of Detroit to see what landmarks of our younger days have been abandoned, destroyed or removed since our last investigation. Bruce is a native Detroiter from the old school who was a habitué of the Grande Ballroom in its heyday and a rabid follower of the MC5. When I first knew Bruce he was managing Mickey Shorr's car stereo operation on Woodward Avenue in Ferndale or Royal Oak. He spent quite a few years in Ft. Lauderdale and returned to Detroit in the early '80s, where he now operates a business that produces custom taillights and sound systems for motorcycles. In recent years he keeps close track of my proximities to the Motor City and delights in feeding me, getting me high and driving me around whenever we can find the time while I'm in town.Wednesday evening brings dinner with Matty Lee, another old friend since the early '80s and also my Detroit publicist whenever I can get a record company or publisher to engage one in my behalf. When I met Matty he was leader of a horn band called The Suspects that played all the places I was booking: B'Stilla, Red Carpet, Sully's in Dearborn, Mr.Christian's in Royal Oak and others. After the group disbanded, Matty spent several years in New York City, ran a used record store in Royal Oak and eventually gravitated to his present career as Detroit's hippest and most effective publicist with his agency called Drumbeaters.Thanks to the support of my man James Millard, we will soon be able to engage Matty Lee to promote the Michigan Premiere tour with Steve Gebhardt and myself in support of the MVD release of TWENTY TO LIFE in October, which is one of the principal reasons why I'm here in Detroit in August: to set up the dates in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Traverse City, Big Rapids, Whitehall (a campaign rally for Steve Salter for City Council) and my home town, Flint, Michigan, where the U.S. Premiere will be staged on my 66th birthday, October 2nd.So I'm working the phones, writing a million e-mails and doing some little gigs around town with a one-week tour of the western Michigan area set for next week. On Thursday I sit in with Larry Fratangelo's jam band at the Buzz Bar again and on Friday and Saturday I have the rare opportunity to hang out with my dear friend Maribel Restropo, better known now as Mary Ramirez of the Detroit Cobras. The Cobras are on the road for an elongated stretch continuing into September in support of their new album, <i>Tied &amp; True, but all their T-shirts have sold out and Maribel's back in Detroit for four days to get some more made.Friday evening I'm in Oak Park to visit my pal Cary Loren at his classic BookBeat bookstore, an innocuous-looking storefront in a shopping center at 10-1/2 Mile &amp; Greenfield that's a whole different reality inside. Last fall I wrote a little piece about BookBeat for a magazine that shall remain nameless since they've neither printed it nor paid me a kill fee as of this writing, and I think I'll attach it at the end of this entry to give you something of a picture of this great throwback to the days of real live bookstores operated by people who love literature and art.Cary was the founder (with Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw) in the early 1970s of the proto-punk Ann Arbor ensemble called Destroy All Monsters, but he's been running the bookstore with his wife for the past 25 years and shows no sign of slowing down. He's published facsimile editions of my mimeographed Artists Workshop Press books from the mid-1960s, THIS IS OUR MUSIC and MEDITATIONS: A Suite for John Coltrane, and resurrected my journals from 1963 from my archive at the University of Michigan to publish a book called PEYOTEMIND plus a CD of the text performed with his band Monster Island.On August 30th we'll stage a reading of MEDITATIONS in its entirety as a BookBeat homage to John Coltrane, where I'll be joined by Detroit poets James Semark and M.L. Liebler and guitarist Ron English for the evening. Semark and English and I were all active together at the Detroit Artists Workshop some 43 years ago and all are still going strong today (dare I say). Also, Cary is helping Adam Brook and me set up the Detroit premiere of TWENTY TO LIFE at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit (MoCAD) for early October, and next year he plans to issue my book SONG OF PRAISE: Homage to John Coltrane that contains all my poems and writings centered on the music of John Coltrane, so we've got a lot to talk about.Then it's time to catch up with Maribel. She's at the Slow barbeque restaurant on Michigan Avenue just west of the deserted train station catching up with her pal Ko, leader of the band Ko &amp; the KnockOuts and host of the weekly four-hour <i>Ko Show for Sirius Satellite Radio. We have quite a few laughs and then Maribel drops me off at Celia's apartment for the night.I've got the weekend off and cherish the rare opportunity to take my kids (and my grandkid) out to lunch and dinner together, enjoying some of our long-time favorite haunts like Armando's by Vernor &amp; Clark, Union Street on Woodward Avenue (where another dear friend I've known almost since he was born, the artist and poet Michael O. Michaelowski, serves as the day manager and gives us the Detroit Police Department discount on our meal tickets), Lafayette Coney Island (where I've been dining with some of the same staff members since I came to Detroit in 1964), the historic Marcus All-Steak on McNichols east of Mt. Elliott, the Plaka Café in Greektown, and our new favorite, Don Bailey's Butcher's Inn in the Eastern Market, where the John Sinclair Burger reigns supreme.Monday morning I'll get up and rent a car and drive Celia and myself up north to Michael Erlewine's place in Big Rapids. See you there....<i>-Roma, Italia<i>September 12, 2007************OUT OF CONTROL<i>Cary Loren &amp; BookBeatBy John Sinclair"Our bookstore's like a screaming little kid that's out of control," BookBeat proprietor Cary Loren confesses, looking sort of sheepishly around his overstuffed shop at the outer corner of a strip mall at 10-1/2 Mile and Greenfield in Oak Park, Michigan. He's got that right: "out of control" is the proper name for this perfect mess of a place crammed with books and visual curiosities of unseemly descriptions. True, the store presents a penetrable opening space sporting popular literary products from the present, and there's a recognizable counter with cash register and other expected signs of business activity, but past this navigable vestibule the books come stacked up thicker and higher with each step toward the rear.BookBeat isn't some dusty relic of the days of bookshop glory, although the shop is clearly the creation of serious modern intellectuals of the humanitarian persuasion. It's a bright, colorful, warm and welcoming place for intellectual stimulation, art and politics, with a parallel reality as a comprehensive source for state-of-the-art children's books, classic literature and progressive texts.Like all successful shops BookBeat pays close attention to the contemporary marketplace and takes great pains with its art and literary specialties and its treasured legion of readers. The store's regular reading series features the usual traveling authors and more idiosyncratic guests like Nikki Giovanni, Ira Cohen, Stanley Mouse, Faith Ringgold, Darlene Love, Anne Rice, Sonic Youth, Billy Name, Ultra Violet, Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw. They also host in-person writer events at nearby libraries and cultural centers and sponsor book clubs and book-related community events of many kinds.These crucial outreach activities have combined with the shop's extensive and eclectic inventory to anchor BookBeat firmly in the center of the local literary and arts community. "I think you can have a good bookstore with a lot of different things," Loren says, "but you still need literature, and experimental literature, so that's been a core part, and the photography's been a core part."But we're missing the auto repair section, and the computer books.... There's just whole wads of books that we just said, 'Fuck It,' you know. I wanna have certain books on my shelf and I don't care if it's there a year or ten years, it's still a viable thing."Loren's sensitivity to the needs of his clientele has paid off in the best possible way. "Our customers are very loyal," Cary says, "and they're voting with their feet when they come here instead of going to one of the chain stores. Those places are becoming more dominant and more controlling of the whole environment. "What worries me," he says, "is that I don't think there's another generation coming up that understands the value of independent bookstores and of independent culture in general, as opposed to the chainstore reality."He has every right to be worried, because without new seekers of wisdom and truth the independent bookstore as we know it is doomed to extinction. The converse is also true: Absent the classic independent bookstores like BookBeat, how will young readers ever understand the value of these places or be able to measure the hole left in our cultural life by their disappearance?So much of the world represented by places like BookBeat has passed on that their continued survival is a critical issue for the future. The great thing about them is that the mental world where I live and prosper still exists here. It's an environment specifically designed for those of us who have the mental patience to investigate and discover new realms of intelligence and creativity, and you can tell at once it's not run by someone who got an MBA in management and trained at Borders or Waldenbooks. In fact, BookBeat was created by a pair of young intellectuals from suburban Detroit as "something they could do" after college. "And, you know," Cary says, "I was not capable of doing anything else. When I was going to school I was working for other bookstores, so I knew I could do this. I wanted to go into arts, but I also knew that I needed to, like, make money. And I didn't want to stay in school and teach, and I thought, maybe I could do art and things on the side, and be supported by the store, eventually."Cary and his wife Colleen opened BookBeat in a former pregnancy boutique called the Purple Pickle in the summer of 1982. "I moved back into my parents' house when we first opened the store," Cary recalls, "to save money. Colleen and I both lived with our parents to save money. "But that was good to be able to put everything into the business for those two years, so we were able to expand. There was a Detroit Edison outlet next door, and three years after we opened we took that space."Why the strip mall in Oak Park? "We knew the area, because we had grown up around here," Cary says. "We started with really nothing-my own collection of books, beat literature and stuff, and we wanted to also relate to the community too, so we were stocking Danielle Steele and Stephen King and whatever people were buying, you know, at the time. "But our emphasis was on the arts, and children's books-those are the two areas where we wanted to start off, and we've stuck with that."The arts make a lot of sense, and popular releases, but what about the children's books? "There's a couple reasons for carrying the children's books," Cary says. "One, a lot of really great illustrated books started to happen at that time, and we also saw that future readers are children, you know? So we need to indoctrinate children early, because those are your future readers of adult material."Colleen's input has been really important," Cary adds, "because she's put so much into the children's side of the store, and it's been the money-maker part of the business, certainly of late. She works closely with parents and teachers-she reads a phenomenal amount of material, I mean thousands of books every year, probably three or four thousand books a year. "And so she has this vast warehouse of, you know, first-hand information from reading so much, and she can tell each teacher what to use for the class being offered, and she can come up with programs and books that not only affect the teacher but all the kids in each classroom. She's become a great resource for this area."How did a couple of nice suburban kids get into all this strangeness? "I was going to Eastern Michigan University, and I got through school by working in pizza places. But I was thinking of the bookstores in Ann Arbor. Borders had just started when we got to Ann Arbor, and there was Centicore, that was one of my favorite bookstores, and there was David's Books, a large store on Liberty, it had a lot of hip poetry."We met Andy Warhol at the Centicore one time," Cary laughs. "I was a real Warholite, following his films and stuff, and I used to write to him when I was a high school student, like, 'If you've got any job openings or anything,' you know, and he'd send back, like, a signed postcard or something."But the guy I corresponded with was Jack Smith, who wrote back and said, 'Come visit me. If you're ever in New York, I'd like to meet you.' So I did, and that's when, like-that's just before Destroy All Monsters was formed, and so my esthetic really came out of my time in New York with Jack Smith. He was my mentoring experience, and so I brought that back to Ann Arbor, and that became a part of the Destroy All Monsters thing. I was doing films, photography and collages that were in his vein of... camp and strange exotica, you know?"The lasting effect of Jack Smith's cultural tutelage persists in Loren's personal artistic output: Not just his long-standing participation in the pioneering out-rock ensemble Destroy All Monsters, but in films like <i>Shake a Lizard Tail or Rust Belt Rump, <i>Grow Live Monsters, <i>Strange Frut: A History of Detroit Culture (Part One), <i>Letters from the Dead House and <i>Fantomash, and CDs like the seminal <i>DAM: 1974-1976, <i>Backyard Monster Tube &amp; Pig, <i>Music is Revolution and Monster Island albums like <i>From the Michigan Floor, <i>Dream Tiger, <i>Swamp Gas and <i>Killing Me Softly. This is some pretty weird stuff.But Cary goes even farther back: "I'd also like to mention the influence of the [early '60s arts collectives] Once Group of Ann Arbor and the Detroit Artists Workshop on what our bookstore became, and also anti-art movements like Fluxus and Dadaism. "We also try to publish and try to get a few things out. We've done books with Lisa Spindler (<i>Perfume), a <i>Homage to Hans Bellmer, the Destroy All Monsters package <i>Geisha This, and the projects we did with you." [Full disclosure: Cary Loren and this writer have collaborated on several projects at BookBeat, including the books This Is Our Music and PeyoteMind and the CDs of PeyoteMind and Music Is Revolution.]"We started our little backroom gallery soon after we opened, and we've had exhibitions by James Van Der Zee, Weegee, Billy Name, Day of the Dead Mail Art, Bruce of Los Angeles, Jim Shaw Dream Drawings, Gordon Newton, Leni Sinclair, Haitian Voudou flags and objects, Alfred Steiglitz &amp; Cameraworks, Nina Glaser, and the group show titled <i>Women Photograph Mythology."Artist and curator Jon Hendricks is currently helping me with a project with one of our gallery photographers, Jeffrey Silverthorne. We published a little book of his photographs of Goth kids, you know, shot in Detroit, with little hand-tipped-in black-and-white contact plates. I related to the Goth kids because they were, to me, like the sub-culture of now, of the '90s, at that time. So we put this little book called <i>GOTH together and Jon sent a copy to the director, Lars Schwander in Denmark who became interested and is now publishing a catalog and traveling exhibition of Jeffrey's work."Some of the bizarrities we carry? A lot of experimental music, Sun Ra CDs and Sun Ra videos, Harry Bertoia LPs, miniature books, hand made artist books, original photographs, tarot cards and other odd sidelines some might consider 'out'."Finally, looking into the future after 25 years in the same bizarre location: "I don't know. Nobody's gonna offer me ten cents for this store. Economics could squeeze us out of it. I mean, it's gotten tougher-every year it's tougher-so the economics could really squeeze us out. "I'm know I'm not gonna get a buyout, but I gotta think of this in terms of my retirement, you know, and the thing is, I'll never get out of it! There's no leaving it. It's impossible...."<i>-The Dolphins<i>Amsterdam<i>October 1-9, 2006© 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.************Finally, here's this week's podcast of the John Sinclair Radio Show from www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com:John Sinclair Show #141LuveR.com Radio / Berkeley Public TV<i>Sunday, July 31, 2006 @ 8:30-9:45 pm [20-0724]http://www.radiofreeamsterdam.com/audio/jsrshow141.mp3Listening to episode #103 recorded with Frank Moore at LuveR.com Radio in Berkeley, CA I really enjoyed the dialogue but wanted to hear some music too, so I re-edited show #103 into two episodes. This is the second one, with music from the album Michigan Rocks by Bob Seger, the Stooges and Mitch Ryder. Frank Moore is an incredibly brilliant and creative man with missing legs and arms and an inability to speak words. In conversation he points out letters &amp; short phrases on an alphabet board with a pointer strapped to his forehead, then responds as his translator puts them together to form words and ideas and questions. Check out his website at www.LuveR.com to get a better idea of the scope of his work.Playlist #141[01] Cosmo G Spacely Intro &amp; Tokes[02] Bob Seger: Heavy Music[03] Frank Moore Translated Conversation with John Sinclair[04] Stooges: 1969[05] Frank Moore Translated Conversation with John Sinclair[06] Mitch Ryder: Long Hard RoadA Joint ProductionHosted by Frank Moore for LuveR.com &amp; John Sinclair for Radio Free AmsterdamEngineered &amp; Recorded by Mikey for LuvR RadioEdited, Assembled &amp; Produced by John Sinclair, Amsterdam, July 12 &gt; London, July 14, 2007Mastered &amp; Posted by Henk BotwinikExecutive Producer: John SinclairSpecial thanks to Jim Epstein, Joe Bryak &amp; Richard Krech©(P) 2006, 2007 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.Podcast by www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com as #141 @ August 6, 2006
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1185755340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1185755340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1185755340/tpod.html Sun, 16 Sep 2007 13:31:53 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Detroit, Michigan, United States

<i>(Detroit, Sunday, July 29, 2007)-Tonight's my first gig on this trip to Detroit and I'll be playing with my original ensemble, the Motor City Blues Scholars, including founding members Martin 'Tino' Gross on drums and 'Showtime' Johnny Evans on tenor saxophone, plus Jeff 'Baby' Grand on guitar and Mr. Phil Hale on keys and keyboard bass. We'll be at the tiny Your Place Lounge on the far east side, East Warren east of Cadieux, and all the surviving characters from my old neighborhood of the 1980s are bound to be on hand.Tino and Johnny are the leaders of the popular Detroit band called the Howlin' Diablos, but they've been backing me up for 25 years since I first assembled my own band at the end of 1982 and started setting my verses to music again after a 15-year layoff from composing poetry and performing it with musical accompaniment. Tino started out with the Brooklyn Blues Busters and played drums with Big Walter Horton &amp; the Rhythm Rockers, Willie D. Warren and Juanita McCray. Now he produces tracks and albums with R.L. Burnside, Kenny Brown and Nathaniel Mayer. Jeff Grand joined me in the mid-'80s and I play with him every chance I can get. He was featured on my blues album THE DELTA SOUND, the first volume (of four) of my elongated blues work in verse, FATTENING FROGS FOR SNAKES, and produced the second volume, COUNTRY BLUES, for No Cover Records. He's produced albums on Detroit bluesmen Uncle Jessie White and the Butler Twins as well as his own No Cover album, <i>Therapy.Phil Hale plays keyboards with the great Thornetta Davis Band, jazz with his brother, drummer Milton Hale, and any kind of music with notes in it. They call him Phil Harmonic, and he can make any musical situation sound good. He's especially valuable to my band in the low-budget situations where it's either saxophone or bass, and Phil can take care of the bass part with his keyboards and give us another melodic voice on top. Plus he's a beautiful cat and it's always fun to be around him.The crowd is another matter, starting with Rick Pinkerton behind the bar and Johnny Gianoplos on the door. Rick was one of the owners of the late lamented Music Menu in Greektown, where the kind of music we play and listen to was featured nightly for about 10 years in the 1990s. He and drummer R.J. Spangler initiated the Sunday night series at YPL so the musicians would have a place to get together on Sunday nights and blow to their hearts' content. Rick is also part of a band called The Brakemen, and I did a number with him on their album <i>Songs of The Brakemen.Johnny G and I have been pals since the early '80s when I was managing bands and booking music clubs in Detroit and he was working at a big club on Gratiot called Traxx. I'd moved to the east side in 1979 when Frank and Peggy Bach and I bought a house at 224 Lakewood, where the Bachs still reside, and later stayed in several places off of East Warren near Outer Drive, near the Red Carpet Lounge and B'Stilla Bistro. This was the G-Man's natural habitat, and we spent a lot of time together over there.In recent years Gianoplos spent some time managing a beat-up joint at the corner of East Warren and Bedford called Barbie's Bedford. Now he's moved a little farther east to Your Place Lounge, where he can be found at almost any time, and the fellas call him the King of East Warren. I love to see this incredible character with whom I've shared so many laughs over the years, and tonight will be a good one at the YPL.On the gig the band is in exceptional form and our opening set felt like one of the best we've ever played. The rest of the evening stayed on a pretty high musical level, and we were graced with a visit by Thornetta Davis herself, who sat in for a couple of numbers of her own. Except for the miniscule compensation afforded by a 50-seat emporium like YPL, everything was as lovely as could be.Monday night I went by the Jazz Loft on Monroe Street in the heart of Greektown for the Milton Hale jam session and sat in with Milton and Phil and the band for a number between spells of simply enjoying the straight-ahead, hard-cooking bebop being played by the cats on the stand. The Jazz Loft is an undeservedly obscure venue that still manages to draw a nice crowd of musicians, serious listeners, college students and young hipsters to Milton's sessions every Monday night. With its bar at the top of the stairs, a comfortable listening room with a spacious stage and attached open-air deck, this is Detroit at its best.<i>-Detroit<i>September 3, 2007&nbsp;
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1188260700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1188260700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/johnsinclair/summer_2007/1188260700/tpod.html Tue, 04 Sep 2007 03:49:46 -0400 On the Road in the Summer of 2007 in Milano, Roma, Italia, Amsterdam, England, Detroit & Michigan through Labor Day.

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Detroit, Michigan, United States

<i>(Detroit, Thursday, July 26, 2007)-My partner Adam Brook picked me up at Detroit Metro Airport and carried me over to the northeast side to my daughter's Sunny's house, where I spent the night after enjoying a warm welcoming meal with Sunny, her daughter Beyonce (now 6) and my daughter Celia. Today I'll move over to Celia's apartment in Woodbridge and stay with her until I return to Europe on September 4.My trip to Detroit has been sponsored by the Yippie Museum in New York City to enable me to attend and take part in the first national convention of the new SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] organization spearheaded by youthful members of a new generation of college students with a social purpose. I'd participated in a benefit show staged at the Yippie Museum Café by NYU SDS members in May, and I was eager to see what they were up to.When I got to Detroit, though, it proved impossible to make direct contact with the organizers. Adam Brook had attempted several times to try to work out the details of my appearance at the convention with the appropriate persons but had gotten nowhere, and now here I was-all the way from Amsterdam-without a clue as to what I was supposed to do. Nor could I locate any printed information about the event; although I knew they were gathering somewhere in Detroit for the weekend, I couldn't figure out where.A communication arrived from my old friend Alan Haber in Ann Arbor, an original SDS member and life-long peace activist who wanted to connect me with the convention people and help find a place where I could contribute to the gathering. They finally suggested that there might be a spot where I could read a poem on a program slated for the Trumbullplex theater space on Sunday night, but I already had a commitment for Sunday night and couldn't make their event, so the speculation ended at just about that point.It was sad to see this assignment turn into nothingness after so much anticipation on my part, but it made me remember how difficult it had always been to interact with the student radicals of the first SDS way back in the day, and now here it was again. But I'm like Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch when I get to Detroit, and I decided to make the most of my free ticket by enjoying the extra time with my family and friends and go on about my business, as always.On Thursday night I made my first of many stops this trip at the Buzz Bar in downtown Detroit. The Buzz Bar is in most ways the successor to my former Detroit stronghold, the Music Mednu in Greektown, which was doomed when the building's owners decided to replace the Menu and the Athens Bar, the extremely venerable cop hangout next door, with a huge upscale restaurant at the corner of Monroe and Beaubien.The Buzz has the R.J. Spangler blues jam session on Tuesdays, Ms. Thornetta Davis and her band or the Brothers Groove with Chris Codish, James Simonson and Skeeto Valdez on alternating Wednesdays, and the Larry Fratangelo jam session on Thursdays. Damn near everybody I hang out with in the Motor City congregates there on the weeknights to sit in or just hang around, and while I was hanging I got asked up on stage to do a number with the cats.Larry Fratangelo is a world-class percussionist who's been featured with George Clinton &amp; the P-Funk All Stars, Was (Not Was) and literally scores of Detroit recording artists going back 25 or 30 years now. For the sessions on Thursday nights he has Skeeto on drums anchoring a fine collection of skilled and very soulful players, and I had a ball sitting in with them.Friday night was free, and Saturday I rode up to Ann Arbor with my old pal VW Frank to attend the memorial service for our dear friend and counselor Jeffrey Strouss, who had passed away from a heart attack the previous weekend. I knew Jeffrey through VW in the first place; both had suffered massive strokes in recent years, although Frank is well on the road to full recovery while Jeff had been going downhill for quite a while.I guess I can say it right out now that he's passed on, and this is what I remarked at his service when asked to speak: Jeff was an attorney who could not only defend you on a dope beef but could also get you some pretty intense weed as well. He also grew some incredible plants in the basement of his house just outside of Ann Arbor, and he had one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know-and I know a lot of them. I called him my Brown Buffalo, and we shared a great many drug-fueled adventures over the years.I could talk about Jeff for a long time, but let it suffice to say that I'll always miss the hell out of him. In fact, it was my plan to spend the first three days of August visiting with him, his son Jamie and his companion Marilyn Richason at the house because I knew he was starting to fade and I wanted to spend some really good time with him before it was too late, but all of a sudden it was already too late, and I had to attend his memorial service instead.The memorial service was followed by a beautiful all-day party at the house that drew most of his closest friends, who were legion, and we had a ball enjoying Jeff's largesse even though he had already left us. He was a guy who was generous beyond measure, and his friends-like myself-are all better persons for having known and loved him. Rest In Peace, my Brother.-<i>Detroit<i>September 1, 2007
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