Alarm clocks sometimes work their way into your dreams, but the sound of breaking glass seldom does. A slumbering Judith Kuntz of Indialantic found the sound to be an invigorator of slack muscles, a sharpener of sleepy mental faculties, and a honer of visual acuity.
She was able to grab her revolver and fatally nail an intruder from ten feet as he came through her bedroom door.
Not bad for an old lady.
Thanks everyone for joining us at the debut of the Cotillion. It was successful beyond any of our imaginings.
You've become acquainted with us, and I do believe we offered something for just about everybody.
Be sure to come sit down by us during the week via the blogroll -- you never know what little interesting things we might have to say.
Ethics.
Supposedly even criminals have something resembling them that they've cobbled together.
For those of you fretting about perfectly good embryos going for begging, when they could be used to further stem-cell research and possibly even better people's lives, remember these batches of perfectly good scientific data that most researchers wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.
Merely because of their ethics.
This data has not gone unused by all. I'm sure those researchers felt they were doing the right thing to further science and possibly save lives.
And perhaps they thought those other researchers were being just a litte bit silly about the whole thing.
It's something to think about.
Thirty female bloggers.
One page.
Mass synchronized ovulation.
Be there.
What kind of boy grows up to be a Medal of Honor recipient?
As an update to last year's tribute to Lee County Medal of Honor recipient Nick Cutinha, his friend Mike Williamson was kind enough to respond to my e-mail with some of his rememberances of growing up with Nick:
I went to Alva High School for a year. Thats where I met Nikki. He was the type that was always happy to see you. Never ever saw him mad or even down. We got along great. We even skipped school a couple of times together. You might say we werent good boys. Always looking for fun, even if it meant trouble. Nikki didnt care who you were. I only got to be his pal for about a year, then we moved again. His Mom was amazing. Everyone called her Mama Bean. She owned and operated a shrimp boat. The Cutinha's had plenty of money, but still lived in a small trailer. They just didnt need anything fancy. After we moved, Nikki and I lost track of each other. He went to Vietnam, and so did I. About a year ago, I got a notice of our class reunion for Alva High. By the way, shoes there were optional, so few wore them. HA. I saw the name of an old girl friend, so I contacted her. Pretty good. Then I decided to see if I could find Nikki. Cutinha is an unusual name. I typed it into a search engine (Google) and came back with 96 hits. To say the least, when I saw that he had died in Vietnam, I was crushed. When I read he had gotten the MOH, I knew why. That was Nikki all the way. Always looking out for others. He loved to make people smile. Never a harsh word from him. You should look up Cutinha. They were from a special part of India. Nikki looked 100% American. His mom did too. He had just about no enemies. He loved everyone. Even the bullies at school liked him. Rare. We were like brothers for the short time we knew each other. I miss him. I must go find his grave before I die. Just so I can tell him thank you Nikki, for being a great friend.
I hope this helps with your blog. Nikki army unit was called the Manchusson's. Their motto, "Keep up the fire". He faced the devil, so his brothers might live. God Bless you Nikki.
Sgt Mike Williamson Task Force Alpha Nakhon Phanom, Thailand 1967-68
Thanks for sharing that, Michael. I'd always looked at Nick's picture and wondered about him growing up in our midst.
I wish I could have met him.
Any hecklers out there?
Anybody? Anybody?
Memorial service for shipmates lost near Guam, USS South Dakota.
Burial at sea, off Gilbert Islands, from aboard Coast Guard-manned assault transport.
Marine memorial mass for those lost during initial invasion of Saipan.
A buddy's tribute: crossed rifles in the sand, Europe.
The Houston Chronicle has a would-be moving story about a Texas unit taking the Nazi flag from over the Reichstag on May 28, 1945. Trouble is, it's common knowledge that the Russians took Berlin. They hoisted their own flag over the Reichstag on April 30, 1945.
You'll find this article right next to the one on high self-esteem being no substitute for study.
UPDATE:
The author of the article has now been made aware of the outcome of WWII.
No word yet on whether anyone's broken the news to the Chronicle's copy editor.
UPDATE II:
The retraction.
(Via Lucianne.)
What's up with St. Jacques?
He's sitting over in Afghanistan without a lawyer. It appears there are only a couple of them working Courts Martial there and they're both busy. They're going to see about bringing one in from Kuwait.
It's kind of difficult to have a sword hanging over your head and not even have your own counsel.
For those of you who've never served and think I'm raining on the military parade, I'm not. You usually pay dearly for mistakes when you're wearing the uniform, one way or another. That's just the way it is.
One of the joys of being a civilian means never having to go to prison for giving another adult a beer.
A Cub Scout and a Tiger Scout salute after helping put in the flags at the Los Angeles National Cemetery.
What has Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir been up to? Looks like he's been helping out the bad guys. That's very naughty.
The Feds arrested him on a terrorism charge yesterday in Palm Beach County.
UPDATE:
More on the life and crimes of Rafiq Sabir.
He was nabbed just before he headed out to start his new practice as doctor to al-Qaeda.
He was an American who grew up Catholic, then converted to Islam during high school.
Just for this, go Danica Patrick:
Robby Gordon accused Danica Patrick of having an unfair advantage in the Indianapolis 500 and said Saturday he will not compete in the race again unless the field is equalized.
Gordon, a former open-wheel driver now in NASCAR, contends that Patrick is at an advantage over the rest of the competitors because she only weighs 100 pounds. Because all the cars weigh the same, Patrick's is lighter on the race track.
"The lighter the car, the faster it goes," Gordon said. "Do the math. Put her in the car at her weight, then put me or Tony Stewart in the car at 200 pounds and our car is at least 100 pounds heavier.
"I won't race against her until the IRL does something to take that advantage away."
The IndyCar Series does not consider the weight of the driver in its race specifications. The car has to weigh at least 1,525 pounds before the fuel and driver are added, and teams in Indy have estimated that Patrick will gain close to 1 mph in speed because of her small stature.
Shut up and drive, Robby.
(Via Fark.)
Some environmentalists in Arizona decided to attack a cowboy. They're still trying to figure out how they ended up hogtied:
Jim Chilton doesn't just admire cowboy values. He believes in them. And, like any true believer, he's eager to share the gospel in well-rehearsed sound bites, whenever the situation allows.
Ask him, for example, why he decided to sue one of the West's most prominent environmental groups. "I laid in bed at night, wondering if I was a cowboy or a wimp," he'll reply. "If you're a cowboy, you stand up and fight for truth, justice, integrity and honor. If you're a wimp, you lay there and go to sleep."
Or, ask about nature. "For a cowboy," he'll tell you, "every day is Earth Day."
That's why Chilton got so mad at the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center tried to make him the bad guy when he, the cowboy, was supposed to be the hero. And that was an attack no cowboy could forgive.
(Via Lucianne.)
Lance Corporal Tony Stevens has been honored by the Florida Senate.
Tony is the Jacksonville Marine who set a new record by going through ten separate bomb attacks during his two tours of Iraq and still hanging out on this side of the grass.
Way to go, Tony.
My old Army buddy Mike is still in Afghanistan, and it looks likes he's in some terrible trouble. They want to send him to Leavenworth.
After the sorriness of Abu Ghraib and the "Girls Gone Wild" shenanigans of Camp Bucca, what could be so awful?
Beer.
He got his guys, ten in all, who had not even been out on a pass for a year, two beers each to celebrate their final patrol.
Not a good decision, but I do believe our troops drank their way through the wine country of France during WWII without a mark being placed on their honor.
The punishment hardly fits the crime. Unless, of course, it's OK to punish the guys harder because of our enemy's religion.
You know, because it's so much holier than ours.
You could practically start a new drinking game with the number of times they say the word "holy" on the news these days.
UPDATE:
Below, I've decided to include the letter he sent to the Washington Post. He's pretty upset:
I am a soldier currently serving with 3-116th Infantry on Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. I am currently under investigation for violating one of our general orders and one of our specific, yet unspoken, orders. I will explain why I am writing this and why this would be of interest to you and anyone else with a conscience in the following paragraphs.
My entire squad went out on an “anti-rocket” patrol and were supposed to look for possible sites from which an individual could fire a rocket. We were told to do this at night when such sites were not evident to the naked eye. We were also told to do this in an area which is historically heavily mined with both anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, so the ability to go off road is there, but is suicidal. So, we drove from the start point to the end point several times and stopped several times as we normally do. This was supposedly our last patrol, however, and as the command had not left us with enough manpower at Bagram to do our mission to the fullest of our capabilities, none of my soldiers had been allowed to go on pass for the entire year, although we were authorized by the theater command to go two times per person. Our troops regularly work twelve hours on the perimeter towers and are required to show up 45 minutes before their shift starts and sometimes don’t get back from the towers until half an hour after their shifts.
Regularly working 13-14 hour days without a day off is grueling. We routinely work 65-70 hours per week. The days that we are not actually standing towers are called amber days and we are subject to half an hour recall at any time, so it is not really a day off. We must be ready to go at any time, whether asleep or awake, on these amber days and not making it to our appointed place of duty within 30 minutes with all of our mission essential gear ready for three days in the field is a punishable offense.
Because of this and because of reasons that I shall explain later, I made the decision to break the first general order that we were given in theater (which was the prohibition of alcohol due to our location in a Muslim country) and give my guys two beers each. Our Muslim, local national interpreter not only told us where we could purchase said items (there were several sites around Bagram), but told us he had purchased it before with and for the Military Police. He also handled the transaction for us and consumed several bottles himself. After sitting in one place, consuming the beer, and waiting several hours before we drove we returned to Bagram without incident. The command somehow found out about the incident and called everyone in for questioning two days later. I have been informed that all members on the patrol will be severely punished and my fate hangs in the air but is probably destined for something very, very bad. From what I understand, I and another sergeant stand to face court martial.
But here’s why I am writing you. I wish to inform you of blatant inequality with regard to punishment, reward, and treatment in general. The first case I would like to bring up concerns how the command handled, or should I say failed to handle, a similar but more egregious case. A First Lieutenant in our Battalion did the same thing with his troops, but instead of ten people like I had, he had an entire platoon with him. And instead of being two kilometers outside of base, he was in Kabul which is three hours away from his Forward Operating Base (FOB). And instead of just allowing his troops to drink beer, he was having sex (another violation of general order number one) with a foreign national woman who was not his wife (which is adultery and punishable under both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Islamic law that governs this country). And while my squad was based out of that FOB we took contact from the enemy and got into a fire fight. Our back up took three hours to arrive… and his platoon was our back up. His sector was adjacent to our sector, and he left his sector on several occasions to go to Kabul (which was adjacent to his sector opposite our sector) to see this woman. I can’t say for certain that he was in Kabul at the time of our fire fight, but the long wait and the pattern of behavior do seem to fit. When the command found out what he was doing, he was transferred from that FOB and his platoon to a staff job at our battalion headquarters. He was then PROMOTED to captain. No charges were filed. That being the case, why shouldn’t I take the chance to do the same, (but to a lesser degree) with my troops? According to the officer paradigm, the worst thing I had to risk was nothing.
The Second instance occurred a year ago. While we were at Ft Bragg training for this mission, we were under orders to not leave our immediate battalion area and were also restricted from alcohol. Another platoon in another company within our battalion not only left their respective company areas without permission, but left the base and consumed alcohol in masse. Letters of reprimand were given to the senior leaders, but other than that no charges were filed, nor was any other action taken. I know this because one of those involved is a friend of mine.
The third instance is very similar. We did a rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Ft. Polk, LA. The same rules of lock-down and alcohol intolerance were in effect as they were at Ft. Bragg. The medic platoon leader not only allowed his troops to go off post, meet with family, and drink alcohol… but he allowed it to happen in an Army ambulance. Again, nothing happened to him.
Another interesting incident that happened is a pair of fights that happened at FOB Ghazni. One fight involved a pair of officers (captains) and one involved two enlisted soldiers. Both were similar in damage and violence, but the captains received letters of reprimand while the enlisted soldiers received non-judicial punishment. Again, the battalion chose to go light on the officers and burn the soldiers. Yet another officer (a 2nd Lieutenant) was relieved of command and sent to a remote FOB to serve as a liaison officer. When he went on leave he was asked not to return to that FOB by its command. I’m not certain if he was asked not to return because he was incapable of handling the job or because of the allegations that he had been having some sort of affair with a junior enlisted female. Again, nothing has happened to the officer.
We have complaints of racism that have not been dealt with but go on unchecked. We have drinking which is rampant in our camp and on Bagram in general that is unchecked. There are more instances of sex happening on this base than on most college campuses, and all of it goes unchecked. The Base Defensive Operations Sergeant Major toured several of the camps (before our incident) and said that there was too much drinking and sex going on, but if it is against the first general order, isn’t one case too much? And if that is the case, how did he find out and what is being done about that? Our camp is almost entirely male, so it would be pretty difficult to make a charge like that stick against us as the comings and goings of a few lone females would be noticed rather quickly. The mistakes I made, I made at the end of our tour. We have less than two months left here and we have been in country for ten months. It took me ten months to screw up… it only took four months in country before the misconduct started for the officer corps. As a matter of fact, it only took a few months into the training before the bad conduct started. All of this was swept under the rug at the higher levels yet the lower enlisted were summarily and regularly crucified for infractions that ranged from showing up late to formation, to not wearing their body armor on the towers (the towers are bullet-proof, by the way). Runners are allowed to run by the towers in shorts and t-shirts, in full view of the locals (who regularly assemble by the fence to ogle the women), but if the tower guards take off the body armor that they have been wearing for ten hours they are subject to UCMJ action.
Where is the parity? Where is the equality? Where is the justice here? I know for a fact that congress writes the Army regulations and that it is based on the Constitution. If that is truly the case, why are some treated like royalty and others like peasants? Why are some automatically guilty and others automatically innocent? Why is there a social caste system instead of a rank structure as there should be? Since we have been in country, I have seen punishment after punishment after punishment handed out to the enlisted, yet I have never seen them rewarded. The only medal that I have seen awarded since we have been in country is a Purple Heart and that was to an officer. Awards that were submitted in November for soldiers have yet to appear and I often wonder if they ever will. The only tool used to influence enlisted soldiers here is punishment and fear of reprisal. I have no problem being punished for mistakes I have made. I DO have a very big problem with being punished for something that is going on rampantly around us when very few others are being punished. I have a HUGE problem when an officer commits the same misconduct and is, not only not punished, but PROMOTED. Officers are supposed to be held to a higher standard, not shielded from reproach by their station. I have no issue with military justice as long as it is just. What I have seen here is not justice or good military order, but a travesty. If a child is a delinquent, we regularly blame the parents. Here, the parents blame the siblings, punish the children, and pay the babysitter extra for their lack of supervision so that they don’t have to admit that they are bad parents.
Sincerely,
SSG Michael St. Jacques
High-climbing killer longs for Cody Jarrett style points; merely looks like dork.
I thought I was picking up a serious book, but it opened right up to this comedy gem:
Every day bloggers churn out postings by the hundreds and thousands, and some of us will post a dozen times a day, each one of which is worth reading.
Farce had gone out of style as a comic genre, but it looks to be making a comeback.
Here's Duane at the Layla sessions with a homicidal maniac looking over his shoulder.
Wail on, Skydog!
You've heard tell of many a crazy musician, but Jim Gordon is the genuine article.
Gordon, the drummer in Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes, and the most sought-after drummer of his era, is an insane killer.
This is his story.
By Barry Rehfeld Rolling Stone- June 6th, 1985She wanted him to kill her. The voices - her voice - has said so.
It was her voice that helped him pick out the eight-and-a-quarter-inch
butcher knife, and had him sharpen it. And he would do what the voices
told him to do because he always listened to them, even though they had
ruined his life.
It was some life.
James Beck Gordon had been, quite simply, one of the greatest
drummers of his time. In the Sixties and Seventies he had played with
John Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, the Everly Brothers, the Beach
Boys, Judy Collins, Joe Cocker, Frank Zappa, Duane Allman, Carly Simon,
Jackson Browne and Joan Baez. But the gigs had long since come to an end,
and on June 3rd, 1983, there was nothing on his mind except killing his
mother.
The voices told him what to do next. One said to hit her with a
hammer first, so she would not suffer when he stabbed her with the knife.
He would obey. He packed the hammer and the knife in a small leather
attach case and that afternoon drove his white Datsun 200SX the five miles
from his Van Nuys condominium to his mother's small North Hollywood
apartment. When he got there, she was not in, so he went home and waited.
At about 11:30 that evening he returned. A light was on inside, and when
he knocked on the door, he could hear Osa Marie Gordon shuffling across
the floor in her slippers.
When his mother opened the door, the six-foot-three Gordon stared
down at the heavyset seventy-two-year-old gray-haired woman for only an
instant. "Jim", she said, in that eternally irretrievable moment before
he hit her. As she screamed, he struck her with the hammer three more
times, then as she fell to the floor he plunged the knife into her chest
three times, and left it there - dead center.
At his trial in Los Angeles last spring, James Beck Gordon was found
guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to sixteen years to life.
The defense had argued insanity - but a tough new California law makes it
almost impossible to prove that anyone is legally insane. Still, noone -
neither the prosecution nor the presiding judge - disagreed with the
diagnosis of the five defense psychiatrists that Gordon was an acute
schizophrenic. No one, that is, except Gordon.
"They call everybody that", he said last August in a heavily secured
prison meeting room at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo.
While talking, Gordon, 39, had trouble getting the hang of rolling a
cigarette, and he smiled at his frustration. It was a warm, ingratiating
smile that was as much a part of his being as the fact that he had
brutally murdered his mother.
"I really don't feel that crazy", he added. "I get along with
people. I think I'm pretty normal."
Gordon spoke softly and calmly. He was taking a powerful
antipsychotic drug daily, and it seemed to help him feel better about
himself, but he also appeared to believe what he said. It was, of course,
all part of the delusion. So much had happened that it spilled out in
great torrents from fellow musicians, friends, doctors, and Gordon
himself. The murder of his mother was only the final act of madness.
Throughout his life there had been a series of disturbing eruptions that
gave clear signs of the psychosis destroying his mind. And yet many of
them were minimized or overlooked by those around him. The business of
making music had much to do with it. In that maddeningly creative,
nomadic world where geniuses, superstars, impresarios, fakers, freaks and
free spirits vie for the spotlight, Gordon's was just another act. That
no one cried out before the disaster was just one of the many tragedies in
a life that was, for a long time, "pretty normal."With his curly blond hair and beefy build, James Beck Gordon was a
California golden hunk in an Ozzie and Harriet family. Home was a small
house in Sherman Oaks, a quiet bedroom community in Los Angeles' San
Fernando Valley. It was a neighborhood where boys like James and his
older brother, John, mowed the lawn, shined their father's shoes and
minded their manners. When either brother spoke, it was always "Please,"
"Thank You" and, on the phone, "Gordon residence."
When the decorum was shattered, it was in gentle Fifties sitcom
fashion. At age eight, Gordon made a set of drums out of trash cans and
held his musical debut in the room he shared with his brother. But,
instead of throwing the cans out, his parents paid for music lessons.
Both parents were solid breadwinners. His father was an accountant, while
his mother was a nurse in the maternity ward of a local hospital. By
twelve, 'Gordon had his own set of drums, and after additions to the
house, a room of his own to play them in.
There was only one stain on this picture-perfect scene from suburbia,
and it was hidden from view. When Gordon was a boy, his father was an
alcoholic. It was his mother's strength that held the family together
until the children reached adolescence and her husband joined Alcoholics
Anonymous, stopped drinking and became a full-time father again, happily
managing his sons' Little League team and playing the role of neighborhood
chauffeur.
"They were good parents", Gordon says simply.
Yet, even within the relative tranquillity of his family circle,
there were warnings of the nightmares to come. Although he played
frequently with his brother and was treated as the baby of the family by
his parents, he says he felt left out. Eating made him feel better, but
it only added to his insecurity; he was heavy, and sensitive about his
weight. There was only once comfort to which he could turn; the voices.
He seemed to need them. They were his friends, a child's companions -
someone to talk to - safe, loyal, kind.
"Those voices were totally within the realm of reality for a small
boy", says Dr. William Vicary, one of the defense psychologists, "but they
were also indicative of the paranoiac insecurities he would fall prey to
later."
Whatever insecurities he felt as a child, they were not easily
justifiable for the teenage Gordon. Tall, husky, handsome and winsomely
shy, he was elected class president in junior high school. His rising
popularity paralleled his increasing devotion to music.
While in high school, he played with the Burbank Symphony, toured
Europe one summer and performed in the Tournament of Roses Parade with a
youth band. With a fake ID, so he could work as an adult, he took on jobs
at weddings, bar mitzvahs and small clubs. Soon he was working weekends
as part of a group called Frankie Knight and the Jesters. They played the
clubs in Hollywood and West Los Angeles for five or ten dollars a night.
It was barely spending money, but Gordon got more out of it than cash.
The insecurities and the voices receded as though overwhelmed by the beat
of the music.
His parents wanted him to go to college, and he considered becoming a
music teacher. UCLA offered him a music scholarship, but he turned it
down. Too much was happening in the industry for him to spend four more
years in school.
The Los Angeles studio scene was the place to be for a talented young
musician in the early Sixties. It was where the best and highest-paid
sidemen came to do their most creative work, laying down track after track
until they had the perfect sound. Producer Phil Spector, with his Wall of
Sound, was a one-man hit factory, rolling out gold records for the
Crystals, the Ronettes, and the Righteous Brothers. Keeping time with
Spector was surf music, as epitomized by the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean.
Gordon pounced on whatever work he could get. A friend who played
saxophone for Duane Eddy heard Gordon play with the Jesters and
recommended him for a demo, the raw recording of a basic song. It was the
lowest-paying work, but for Gordon it was a great start. That and his
Jester gigs were the best ways to get himself noticed. Everyone was
hunting for talent, and the clubs Gordon played were crawling with scouts.
One who spotted him was a bass player with the Everly Brothers.
Rock's premier duo was gearing up for a summer tour of England in
1963, and after Gordon auditioned, the Everly Brothers wanted him to be
their drummer. Although his parents disapproved, his pay would be low and
his toehold in the studios would be lost, it was one spectacular
graduation present, and Gordon jumped at the opportunity.
The tour was a success (he joined them for another the following
year). When Gordon returned home, he was excited about making performing
his career. It was slow going at first. He even had enough time on his
hands to attend Los Angeles Valley College. Yet, if Gordon was learning
anything that school year, it was not in junior college but in the A&B
Corned Beef restaurant. There the great studio musicians hung out during
their breaks, talking music and industry gossip. Gordon's club dates,
demo work and Everly Brothers credit made him an accepted member of the
club. Whenever he could, he grabbed a sandwich and picked up some
impromptu lessons by watching the great sidemen play. He was a quick
study. Within a year, his formal education was over, and he was headed
for a class by himself as a drummer.At thirty-five, Hal Blaine was the most respected session drummer in
Los Angeles, with more work than he could handle, when Gordon arrived on
the scene. Blaine says, "His name was on everybody's lips." Including
Blaine's = and that was better than a meal ticket.
"When I didn't have the time", he says, "I recommended Jim. He was
one hell of a drummer. I thought he was one of the real comers."
Word spread that there was a hot new drummer around. Gordon was the
"only living metronome" and had a "knack for hitting the sweet spot."
Soon, like Blaine, he was handling two or three recording sessions a day,
sometimes six, seven days a week and charging double time for it,
something only the best could do. At that price, producers were also
getting the drummer's own set, instead of jack-of-all-beats student skins.
The meticulous care Gordon gave his own kits made producers eager not only
for his talent but for his sound. The big Gordon beat was soon a
record-industry standard. From a session with the Righteous Brothers, he
and a set of his drums might travel to a date with Judy Collins while
another set was being shipped to the day's final session with Bobby Darin,
Gordon Lightfoot, Glen Campbell or Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. Almost
overnight the money was rolling in, and he handled it well. After all,
his father was an accountant, and proud of it, too.
In 1964 Gordon married an attractive, vivacious dancer whom his
mother had liked ever since he had begun going with her during his
youth-band days. In many ways, Jim and Jill Gordon were an ideal couple.
Music continued to be a bond in marriage, as both landed jobs on the
prime-time-television rock show "Shindig". Together they bought a
Mercedes 220S and a Spanish-style two-bedroom house in North Hollywood.
It was not far from Gordon's parents' house, and they dined there
regularly.
As the Sixties raced along, the times-they-are-a-changin' energy made
Gordon restless. He tried to break with his routine by forming his own
group, but they made only one album before splitting up. He then grew
closer to Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge, who had recorded a popular album
with the white soul duo Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett.
Delaney and Bonnie were getting set to tour England in 1969 and had a
drummer, Jim Keltner, but Gordon wanted to go. "He traded me some studio
gigs for a chance with Delaney and Bonnie", recalls Keltner, who worked
with John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Randy Newman. "He became
the main guy because he was better."
Shortly before Jim left for England, Jim and Jill were divorced.
Their marriage had lasted five years and produced one child, a daughter.
True to his paternal roots, Gordon made sure he was paid more than any of
the sidemen. But Delaney and Bonnie could afford to pay him a little
extra. The tour was almost guaranteed to be a success. The duo was far
more popular in England than in the States, and with the addition of a
couple of unemployed guitarists named Eric Clapton and George Harrison,
the tour took on superstar trappings.
"He was gentle", says Bonnie Bramlett about Gordon, "sincere,
considerate, brutally handsome, charming as a snake, and could he play!
He was right on the money. I could do whatever I wanted. I was really
enjoying myself. We all were. And it showed."
Audiences everywhere caught the spirit. The tour sold out, and a
live album was a critical and financial success. Delaney and Bonnie
thought they had the makings of a long and fruitful collaboration, but
they were wrong.Nearly everyone from the Delaney and Bonnie ensemble left to join
Leon Russell for Joe Cocker's soon-to-be infamous Mad Dogs and Englishmen
tour. "When they left", says Bramlett in a bittersweet voice, "we were
the last to know, and it broke our hearts."
The tour had been Leon Russell's idea, with a little help from a
canine friend named Canina. The show had everything: not only Canina but
booze and drugs, a menage of groupies, wives and children, a live-record
contract and a film crew taking it all in for a feature-length movie.
Sheer genius, total decadence, utter madness and knockout showmanship
mixed in equal measure. Cocker led by example. Alternating between
performing brilliantly and forgetting the words to his songs, he could be
an inspiration on the tour one day, then throw up in public the next. All
the while, drink and drugs were the red and green lights directing the
action onstage and off: heroin, mescaline, speed, MDA, cocaine, acid.
"The real decrepit things went on", says Keltner, who came along to
play double drums with Gordon. "Sharing girls. Screwing every chick in
sight. Most were there for that purpose. The drugs were just as easy to
get. I wasn't a stranger to them myself. Now I feel like I'm lucky to
have survived them."
Gordon seemed to more than survive drugs then. He was a superman.
For a young man who had never before done anything stronger than grass,
Gordon did drugs prodigiously. Before one concert in Seattle, Gordon got
Keltner to drop acid with him. During a rendition of "Bird on the Wire",
Keltner was unable to continue. Gordon tried to coach him, to no avail.
Keltner left in tears, while Gordon powered on.
It went that way the whole tour: Gordon playing at the top of his
stroke while he swallowed, smoked and snorted anything he could get his
hands on. He was trying to keep the demons at bay.
"I had a feeling I was being watched", he says, "but it was all in
the background."
The voices were pattering - they did not like the drug business - but
there were mere murmurs then, perhaps no more than childhood memories or
his conscience. Gordon ignored them. Everything was going along so
smoothly. He avoided the groupie scene in favor of a steady relationship
with Rita Coolidge. They spent nearly all their spare time together. He
bought her a fox-fur coat. They collaborated in writing music and laughed
over who was the poorer piano player. But it all came to an abrupt end
one afternoon in a room at the Warwick Hotel, in New York, where the band
was hanging out.
"He asked me to step out into the hall", Coolidge says, "I thought he
wanted to talk; instead he hit me."
The blow sent her sprawling and left her with a black eye for the
rest of the tour. It was then, as now, inexplicable. It appeared simply
to be the first chapter of a paranoid madness. Gordon is sheepish about
it now. He was apologetic then. He left books of poetry for Coolidge,
but she would no longer have anything to do with him. In a madmen's tour,
the incident was quickly buried by others, and Gordon continued on a roll.
When the tour ended, Gordon got a call from George Harrison in
London. He wanted Gordon to join him as well as Clapton and Phil Spector
in making his first solo album, the landmark "All Things Must Pass".
After they finished, Clapton asked Gordon if he wanted to form a band.
Gordon said yes, settled in a Chelsea flat and bought a Ferrari. Together
with Bobby Whitlock, Carl Randle and Duane Allman, he and Clapton formed
Derek and the Dominos.
It was an unparalleled combination of creativity and star-crossed
lives. Clapton was the Mozart of rock, a man of seemingly limitless
talent nearing ruin. He was not alone: heroin was a favorite drug in the
group. Still, the music fell into place. Gordon and Clapton wrote the
classic "Layla", the title cut of the group's only studio album. Clapton
wrote the driving first half, and Gordon added the inspired piano melody
on the haunting second half, one of the products of his work with
Coolidge.
The group broke up acrimoniously after its only tour in 1972, citing
differences over money and artistic direction, but the drugs had had much
to do with it, too.
"The producers wouldn't pay me for Layla", Gordon recalls, "because
they said I would be dead in six months anyway."
As sobering as that may have been - especially given the drug-related
deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin as well as Duane Allman's later
fatal motorcycle accident - Gordon kept doing drugs, graduating from
snorting to mainlining heroin. And he kept up his feverish work pace.
John Lennon brought Gordon aboard for his solo album "Imagine". (They had
played together when Gordon, Clapton and Harrison joined Lennon's Plastic
Ono Band for a UNICEF concert in London in 1969.) Next he took over the
drumming for Traffic on "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" and the tour
that followed. When he returned to London, he did studio sessions for
producer Richard Perry, including Carly Simon's "You're So Vain." Then he
was ready to go home to California. He was tiring of the cycle of drugs
and work, and he had just received his own warning of the damage they
could do. Driving on a rain-soaked road, his mind had drifted and he had
totaled his Ferrari.
Word of how he had changed - the drugs and alcohol, the accident and
his treatment of Coolidge - preceded Gordon to L.A. He was labeled
another drugged-out superstar casualty, unable to deal with the pressure,
the work and the drugs. Yet, when he got back, it was as if he had never
left. Gordon was in such demand that he could pick and choose his
recording dates.
The music industry was booming. There was a feeling that the
impossible could be done every day, and new groups and sounds were being
tried out everywhere. Although the risks of failure were high, so were
the payoffs. The record companies made sure they had a safety net. When
a band got in the studio, a new range of high-tech equipment as well as
sidemen like Gordon were waiting there to prevent any bad recording cuts.
"In most cases", says producer Michael Omartian, "drummers in a group
had to get used to the fact that when they got into the studio, they were
going to be replaced by Jim."
He never let up. He was working in studios constantly, with Steely
Dan ("Rikki Don't Lose That Number"), Johnny Rivers (L.A. Reggae), Maria
Muldaur ("Midnight at the Oasis") and many others. Any doubts about the
staying power of his talents quickly disappeared. He had gotten away with
it.
Excepting his father's death in 1973, Gordon remembers the period
following his return from England as one of the best in his life. He
bought a house in Sherman Oaks and a new Mercedes 450SLC, saw his daughter
again and married singer and songwriter Renee Armand. For a time, he also
stayed away from drugs. Still, he was not entirely clean.
"I guess I was an alcoholic", he says now, contemplating the slide
from drugs too booze. "Before, I was drinking every night, but I wasn't
getting up in the morning for a drink; I would put a needle in my arm.
When I stopped taking the heroin, I began to drink all day."
He didn't stop doing drugs for long. Speedballs - cocaine mixed with
heroin - became his passion. Still, he was always there when a record
producer needed him, and he was one sideman who never excused himself
during a session to do a line. His reputation was so solid that even
those who took no part in the drug and alcohol culture, like the Osmonds,
were glad to have him play with them. Nevertheless, there was something
churning up Gordon's insides.
It was as if there was a struggle for control over him - and he was
slowly losing. He went from warm to polite; from friendly to pleasant;
from quiet to uncommunicative. During session breaks, he would stand
alone in the corner mumbling to himself. He told a friend not to give out
his telephone number - he didn't want to talk to anyone.
"He was always a quiet guy", says bass player Max Bennett, "but the
quiet became very loud, and everybody left him alone."
Gordon gradually retreated, like someone with a terrible secret.
Sometimes he would disappear for days, isolating himself in some
out-of-the-way hotel. His old childhood insecurities returned, but they
were grown up now, into full-blown paranoia. He felt unwanted and unsure
of himself. Life atop the drummer's pedestal was shaky. He had an
irrational fear of the latest crop of drummers who were swarming all over
Los Angeles. When the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band was forming in 1973,
Gordon surprised Chris Hillman by quietly asking for an audition when the
job was his without question.
This was not the Jim Gordon anyone knew, and few knew who or what was
taking his place. In a business where so many had an intimate
relationship with drugs and booze, there was an unquiet feeling that
whatever was wrong with Gordon, it bore little resemblance to anything
they had ever seen at the end of a needle or at the bottom of a bottle.
"The paranoia", explains Dr. Vicary, "was just one symptom of his
illness. It is often one of the earliest signs of schizophrenia. 'I'm
okay', he might say. 'They're all just out to get me.' The 'they' are
often real people in the beginning. When more advanced symptoms turn up,
delusions and hallucinations, they can become imaginary voices and
people."
Gordon's wife Renee was perhaps the first to glimpse the otherworldly
horror in his soul. Theirs had always been a mercurial relationship,
certified by an overnight trip to Las Vegas and held together by their
mutual love of music. Gordon played the drums, guitar and piano on her
solo album, The Rain Book, and arranged and wrote some of the music. But
whatever the difficulties that arose in their marriage, Armand was not
prepared for the violence.
She was just coming home from shopping one afternoon, hadn't even put
the groceries down, when Gordon confronted her. He looked down at her
with a menacing stare, his eyes narrowing. It was a look that would chill
many over the next decade.
"I know what you're doing," he said.
She said she didn't know what he was talking about. He pointed to
three objects on the floor.
"The magic triangle," he said. He accused her of being responsible
for evil spirits in the house. She denied it, and then he punched her,
cracking several ribs.
"I loved him very much," says Armand. "I didn't know what had
happened to him, but I couldn't stay after that."
His marriage was over after only six months, but Gordon did not
remain alone. The voices kept him company. They were back. He doesn't
know how, why or from where they came, only that they were back. Of that
he was sure. He was stone-cold sober and straight when he heard them. No
more murmurs hiding in the background. They were everywhere. As the
became part of his daily life, they took on real identities. There was a
family of voices, with faces he could see in his mind but whose names he
did not know. The leader was a man with a white beard, and the group
included a young blonde woman and another who was dark and Greek. Some he
knew well: his brother, his aunt and, most of all, his mother.
"The voices started out friendly," he says. "They were giving me
little pointers. How to take care of myself and the house. How to shop.
I was glad for the help. I was getting ready for the rest of my life. I
thought it was pretty strange, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I heard them all the time. They would tell me if I was doing right or
wrong. And I took it in like a fool. They said I had some kind of
responsibility to God and country. I was the king of the universe, they
said. I had to make sacrifices, and I had to do what they said. That's
when my mother started making me eat half my food."
There was no more reason for eating less than there was for the
existence of the voices. But however many calories he lost in food, there
were more in the alcohol he consumed. He could drink a fifth of scotch or
vodka a day and still work. No one knew about the battle raging for his
mind. He was still the king of the calfskins, with all the privileges
that went with it.
If one woman left him, there was always another one eager to take her
place, though there were now few women part of the social swirl who did
not know the risk they were taking. One was a secretary named Stacey
Bailey, who got to know Gordon while working for Bread. She moved in with
him and for a long time beat the odds. In fact, there were times when
Gordon was quietly at peace with himself. He earnestly recited passages
from the Bible and was often a warm, sensitive person. He brought her
breakfast in bed, got her a seat next to Bob Dylan at a Joan Baez concert
and took care of her dog and its newborn puppies when she went to visit
her parents.
But there was also ample reason to be on guard. A dangerous Orestes
was on the prowl, stirred on by fear and insecurity and the voices. He
shared the secret of the voices with Bailey and complained about his
mother. Although he made no link between the two, his complaints about
his mother were the same as those about the voices. He tried so hard to
please his mother, he told Bailey, but that was not enough for her. His
mother wanted to control his life, as all women did.
Bailey was sleeping one night when she woke up unable to breathe.
Gordon was choking her.
"God, did I talk!" she says. "I don't know what I said. I said
whatever came into my mind, and I tried to stay calm. I knew I just had
to convince him that he had to stop."
She was on the verge of passing out when he loosened his grip. He
repeated the cycle again and again. Finally, he released her and fell
back on the bed laughing. It was all a joke, he said.
Hysterical, Bailey ran to the neighbors. He cried. "I just wanted
to see if you really cared about me," he told her.
"His violent feelings toward women," says Dr. Vicary, "probably could
be traced to the fact that his mother was the strong parent, perhaps the
one responsible for discipline. It's not much to hang your hat on, but he
didn't need much. He was - is - crazy."
The violence Gordon committed against women was his personal affair,
and as long as he kept it that way, no one in the business - virtually all
of them men - said anything. Yet for Gordon every day was becoming a
struggle. The voices were tormenting him now to the point that it made it
harder and harder for him to control his rage. His main defense was his
politeness and keeping his distance from people.
Gordon's defenses were damaged, and the emotional wall was not going
to hold. He had to patch it up. He gave up drugs for good and, with his
mother's help, went on the wagon. It was only a band-aid solution,
though. Gordon needed the drink to fight the relentless voices, and in a
short time he was drinking more than ever. The madness was winning, and
soon everyone would know it.The first time most people in the L.A. music scene remember hearing
about Gordon's deteriorating mental state was after the recording of
Johnny Rivers' "Outside Help" in 1977. During one session Gordon suddenly
stopped playing. The whole studio grew still as Gordon glared at
guitarist Dean Parks.
"You're messing with my time," Gordon said, rising to his feet
menacingly.
Parks denied it. He and Gordon had done a lot of work together,
including Baez' "Diamonds and Rust" and "Gulf Winds", and nothing like
this had happened before.
"You're moving my hands," Gordon continued. "I want you to stop it."
Parks assured him that it was impossible for him to do anything from
across the room. Gordon grudgingly began playing again, but a few
sessions later he railed at someone else. Gordon was becoming a
liability. Record producers would not hire him anymore. With few
recording dates being offered, Gordon wound up doing lower-paying work,
like television, movies and commercials.
He had become the industry's quiet embarrassment, but he made it
easier for everybody else by making himself less available by touring and
recording in Canada with Burton Cummings. But the change in atmosphere
did him little good. There was just no escape. The combination of work,
drink, the voices and life on the run was killing him.
"I couldn't cope with being outside anymore," he says. "The voices
were chasing me around. Making me drive to different places. Starving
me. I was only allowed one bite of food a meal. And, if I disobeyed, the
voices would fill me with a rage, like the Hulk gets."
By 1977, his mother's voice all but consumed his every waking hour.
He told her to leave him alone. When that did not work, he telephoned his
mother and told her the same thing. Naturally, she did not know what he
was talking about.
"She said I needed help," he says, "so I went to Van Nuys Psychiatric
Hospital." It was the first of at least fourteen times that he would
check himself into a hospital over the next six years.
He told doctors that he couldn't sleep, that he heard voices,
including his mother's, and that he felt guilty about taking drugs and
leaving his former wife Jill. His mother visited, and he told doctors
that she was "the only friend" he had. Allowing for his ambivalent
feelings toward her, the doctors gave their permission for him to go home
with her on weekends. Even then he would hear her voice tormenting him,
and again the cycle of accusations and denials would begin. After only
two months, he checked himself out of the hospital, against his doctor's
advice. But Gordon agreed to see a doctor as an outpatient.
On September 3rd, when he did not show up for an appointment, his
doctor called Gordon's mother. She found him at home, unconscious. He
was rushed to the hospital, suffering from an overdose of the sedatives
prescribed by his psychiatrist. At his next meeting with his doctor he
apologized for attempting to commit suicide. The voices, he explained,
did not care if he killed himself. As serious as his condition was, he
would not continue therapy. The rage inside him made it impossible for
him to keep his appointments. So he reluctantly went back to work, doing
mostly commercials and movies. Then a friend recommended him to Jackson
Browne, who was going on tour. It was the spring of 1978, and Gordon saw
it as a chance for a comeback.
The tour was uneventful for Gordon, just as he wanted it. He jogged
and played racquetball with Browne.
"We played all the time," says Browne. "It was pretty well known
that he had had a breakdown, but I wanted him on the tour. You just
wanted to root for him. He cut such a gallant figure, with his open white
silk shirts and felt Borsalino hat, and he was such a good drummer. He'd
get my attention with this great fill, really imaginative. He just rose
to the occasion."
Yet, when Gordon got back from the tour, he saw that little had
changed. If anything, things had gotten worse. The music business was in
a profound slump. Record sales were nose-diving, and artists were having
a tough time getting their records produced. Sidemen were suddenly
expendable. With Gordon's emotional state as well as his talents and
dependability suspect, few record producers called.
Frequently out of work, Gordon would go on drinking binges for months
in an effort to drown out the voices. But it did no good. Nor did calls
to his mother and even to his brother, John, a bank executive in Seattle.
He was falling totally under the control of the voices. They would not
even allow him to accept all of the few jobs he was offered. When Bob
Dylan called late the following spring to talk about the Slow Train Coming
tour, the voices - his mother's voice - forced Gordon to say he was not
interested.
Hanging up on Dylan hurt Gordon terribly, and he was determined not
to let it happen again. A short time later, when Paul Anka offered him a
job in Las Vegas, Gordon accepted. Then his mother's voice delivered the
most crushing blow.
"I flew to Vegas," Gordon says, "played a couple of notes. My mother
said to leave, and I had to obey."
He returned severely depressed and in November checked himself into
Valley Presbyterian Hospital. It was one of his worst stays. He was so
upset that he threatened to kill a nurse. He doesn't remember threatening
her, but he remembers the incident.
"She wouldn't leave me alone," he says, "and my mother was working on
me. The nurse told me nothing was wrong with me. I had a pain in my
back. It was a psychological pain. I broke a potted plant. I ran down
the stairs yelling, 'Let me go. Let me go.'"
Again, as he did over and over, he checked out against doctors'
advice. It was all over, though. Whatever jobs followed were of little
consequence, and by 1980 he was, for all practical purposes, no longer a
professional musician.
"He couldn't function in the normal everyday world," says guitarist
Larry Rolando, one of the few friends Gordon saw then.
With substantial savings, smart real estate investments and royalty
payments coming in steadily, he could still afford to do anything or
nothing. He stopped playing his drums. There were periods where he would
not bathe, shave or change clothes for days, and others where he would
dress up and go to church. He spent much of his time sleeping, watching
old movies on television, writing songs he would never finish, playing the
same song endlessly on his piano late at night and drinking more than he
ever had. When he checked into the hospital again, on June 5th, 1980, he
had already consumed two-thirds of a bottle of cognac and half a gallon of
wine during the day.
He was gaining weight, and the doctors warned him that he was
destroying his liver. This time, the next day. The doctors never helped
him, he thought. He only went because he had to play his mother's voice's
little games.
"She liked hospitals because she was a nurse." He says, "and her
torture things were based on what they do in them, like eat part of your
food, sit up, lay down."
And yet he would turn to her when he got out. That, too, was part of
the game. He had to see her or suffer the consequences. The line between
mother and voice grew fainter until it did not exist. She was the voice,
and the voice was her.
His obsession with her voice was becoming his whole life. She was a
woman of unspeakable evil. He thought - still does - she killed Paul
Lynde and Karen Carpenter. At times he figured that his mother wanted him
to die, because his purposefulness - whatever that was - was over. At
other times he thought that she would rather torment him until the day she
died.
"She knew what she was doing," he says. "She was ruining my life.
That's what she wanted to do."
Nothing was right or even safe for him. He stopped going to a bar,
he told Rolando, because there were evil people in it. He was
uncomfortable wherever he lived, so he moved from one place to another.
No car suited his needs. Within two years, he went from his Mercedes to a
Capri, a Scirocco, a Volkswagen van and finally Datsun.
Gordon prepared for the worst. He rented a storage garage and packed
it with freeze-dried food in expectation of the world's end. His record
of child-support payments was unblemished, and he paid his bills on time:
if he died suddenly, he would not owe anyone any money.
Every so often he would make an attempt to break out of his
depression. Reminiscent of his Jester days, he played the Los Angeles
club scene for a while, at spots like Chadney's, O'Mahoney's and the
Century Club. He talked of forming a band with Rolando.
"What could you say?" asks Rolando. "Who had any experience with
whatever was wrong with him? He wouldn't talk. Then there was that look.
He didn't trust anyone. One morning, at seven, he called about the band.
'I can't do this,' he said in a very cold voice. 'My jaw, my shoulder.
You don't know the pain. If I picked up my drumsticks, it would kill
me.'"
Toward the end of 1982, the pain had become unbearable. On October
22nd, he checked into the hospital and told the doctors that he felt he
was dying of "hate" and that his "world was falling apart."
There seemed precious little left that he could do to end his misery.
He could kill himself or he could kill his mother. Both ideas wrestled
viciously for dominance.
In the spring of 1983 his mother decided to write him. She had not
seen her son in two years. He had avoided her, and she was often out of
the city. For a time, she lived near Lake Tahoe, and although retired
from nursing, she worked part time as a physical therapist throughout the
state.
In a letter dated May 23rd - but never opened by Gordon - his mother
tried to reassure him that whatever was going on in his mind, she was not
the cause.
"I think of you so often and wonder how things are going for you,"
She wrote. Then she told him of her plans to move to Seattle in a month.
Part of her reason for moving was to get a safe distance away from her
son, but of course she did not write that. She told him only that she was
going to live with John and his family. They had a large house. It would
allow her plenty of privacy and at the same time give her the security of
having family around if she needed it. She finished the letter by
writing, "I love you, Jim, more than you know. Just remember, I am as
close to you as your phone."
She had mentioned her plans to him previously over the phone, and he
says now he thought they were "great." But that is the son talking. The
schizophrenic was hearing a different message. "She wanted me to throw my
drums away, do all these impossible things. We'd been over the same
ground so many times that I knew what was expected of me. She said,
'You're going to kill me,' or something like that.
It was 9:30 p.m. on June 1st when her telephone rang.
"You're bugging me again," Gordon told his mother, who was by then
writing everything down. "I'm going to kill you."
As always, she denied his accusations. After he hung up, she called
the Medical Center of North Hollywood and asked a nurse if her son had
been there. She was told that Gordon had been admitted that day. He had
been drinking and he said, "I want Thorazine [an antipsychotic drug]. I
am feeling very violent." ("Agitated," Gordon recalls.) But the doctor
was not in yet, and Gordon angrily left. Osa called the local police.
The desk officers on duty at the time said there was nothing that they
could do and suggested that she leave the lights on in her house. He also
wished her luck. She next tried John, but no one was home.
At 11:40 p.m. Gordon called again, and the conversation was a repeat
of the previous one, but there was nothing more she could do. She decided
against calling John again because it was too late. The following day,
Thursday, she called the city attorney's office about having her son
served with a restraining order. She faced a formidable bureaucracy,
though, and hung up.
Osa Gordon didn't call anyone after that day or the next. She had,
after all, been dealing with her son's illness for a decade and had to
manage only a few more weeks alone. Although it was necessary to treat
her son cautiously, he had never raised a hand against her, and no doctor
had ever warned her that he might. It was perhaps with these thoughts in
mind that she opened her door to her son when he suddenly appeared late
that fatal Friday night.
There were no witnesses to the murder, but neighbors heard the
screams and called the police. When they went to Gordon's apartment early
the next morning, it was to notify him of his mother's death. The police
found Gordon moaning and sobbing, face down on his living-room floor. He
had been sober when he killed his mother, but afterward he had been to a
bar and to Chadney's, where he had several double margaritas, penrods,
Long Island iced teas and them, once home, a fifth of vodka. Still, he
was coherent, and as the police lifted him to his feet, he confessed.
"I had no interest in killing her," Gordon says. "I wanted to stay
away from her. I had no choice. It was so matter-of-fact, like I was
being guided like a zombie. She wanted me to kill her, and good riddance
to her."His mother's voice is gone now, but Gordon still hears the others.
The psychiatrists can shed little light on the origins of his illness.
"He was strongly predisposed to becoming a schizophrenic," says Dr.
Vicary, "and without that, it just won't happen. The stress of working in
a highly pressured, idiosyncratic business like music was a contributing
factor, and the drugs and the alcohol, used as self-medication, didn't do
him any good."
The doctors are not optimistic about his recovery, especially since
he is behind bars instead of in a hospital. He will continue to suffer
delusions and paranoia and to have intensely ambivalent feelings toward
himself and those people whose voices he hears.
His brother's is the most prominent now. Gordon generally gets along
with the voice except when it starts to nag him. The voice says he cannot
eat desserts. But that is all right, too, even though he has lost more
than enough weight to assuage the guilt of the boy drummer inside of him.
Far blacker thoughts have crossed his mind since he killed his mother.
Gordon attempted to commit suicide but slashing his wrists while he was in
the Los Angeles County Jail. Now, at San Luis Obispo, one gets the
feeling that all he wants to do is fit in.
"They have a band here," he says, with a smile. "I'm going to try to
get into it."
If the voices let him.
There are about a hundred pics of happy dogs in wheelchairs at this manufacturer's photo contest site. Dogs are natually good-natured, but I think the main reason they look so happy is because they're all with families who love them enough that they'd be willing to buy them little custom-made wheelchairs.
Freedom of Speech for me but not for thee.
Next up: The Napa High Art Critics go on field trip to National Gallery of Art; are shocked to find it absolutely filled with religious-imagery; start petition.
North Korea missed the memo on the Newsweek Koran retraction. The Norks are in high dudgeon over the supposed situation and state that unlike us, they thoroughly heart Muslims, and could any of them spare a few chickpeas, as the only thing left to gnaw on in the whole country is the grout between the bathroom tiles.
I had my ESL class read about Audie Murphy tonight.
After finishing our reading of all his death-defying exploits, all the students really wanted to know was "Why do girls always think big, strong guys are the ones to pick?" (It was an all-guy class this evening.)
Audie was 5'4" and 112 pounds, and we were all in agreement that looks are an inaccurate indicator of the more important aspects of a man.
Of course, after the war, Audie had poontang coming out his ears.
Audie Murphy: Got a lot of tail.
Hurray for Sergeant Mike Hall of the Lake Worth Police Department.
I've said before that the people whose job it is to bend down and look in the window of an overturned car, or open up closed things they find on sides of the road, are doing something I could never do. I couldn't deal with the lows, so I'll never feel their highs either.
Sergeant Hall opened a closed container in a dump and found a live little girl.
The girl's kidnapper, a Bahamian who lived in the same house as the girl, is now in custody.
Although the kidnapper had claimed the little girl had been abducted by white males, I won't get huffy and demand an apology because that would be, you know, stupid.
People who harm little children are animals. What does it really matter if they're racist as well?
There are scary wives as well as scary husbands.
When Scott Thomas went into a coma from fractures to his skull received in September from a supposed fall, it wasn't two months before his mother had to seek emergency temporary guardianship of him.
Why?
She said his wife was planning to put him in a hospice and pull his feeding tube.
Scott is out of his coma and living with his mom, whose guardianship expires in June. The wife isn't saying what her plans are for her brain-damaged husband.
He has no living will.
Harper Lee, the reclusive author of the Pulizter-winning novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," came out of decades of seclusion to attend an awards dinner to benefit the Los Angeles Public Library. The dinner, where speakers extolled her book, raised $700,000, not a penny of which will go towards the purchase of an actual library book.
The infamous photo highlighting Cheney's eponymous appendage once more rears its head; this time as a counterpoint to a recent pic of Saddam Hussein.
Oh, the humanity!
What a scary headline: "Protestors Mob Laura Bush in Jerusalem."
Turns out the mobbing was done by "dozens" of protestors for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. "Some local reporters" also get thrown into the protesting mob mix for some strange reason:
Dozens of protesters stood nearby, shouting, "Free Pollard now." Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who is serving life sentence in a U.S. prison for spying for Israel, was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy.
The first lady was mobbed by protesters and local reporters, and Secret Service agents and Israeli police had to physically hold back the crowd as she approached the wall.
As security-conscious as the Israeli government is, for them to barely even clear a space for her to walk tells me something. They treated my girl in a shabby fashion.
After she left the Western Wall, she went to the Dome of the Rock. A site also described by Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler as "chaos." Her definition of "chaos" is up for grabs, though, as all she decribes is a lone heckler:
She then went to the Dome of the Rock, a mosque on a hilltop compound known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount. As she left the mosque, one heckler yelled, "How dare you come in here?" and "Why do you hassle our Muslims?"
Our Muslims? Not a Muslim himself, then.
Inside the mosque, some women "clearly looked annoyed," and "waggled their fingers." Whatever that means. Doesn't sound too terribly volatile or chaotic.
For a report that heavily stressed anti-American sentiment in the Middle East because of that Newsweek Koran business, it didn't live up to its billing.
A contrast:
In Jericho, which is under Palestinian control, security was tight and no protesters were evident when Mrs. Bush visited the ruins and met at a hotel with leading Palestinian women.
So don't tell me this wasn't done to Laura on purpose. What I don't understand is why.
There's so much about the Constitution I didn't know! Many thanks to Liberal Larry for quickly (and vividly) bringing me up to speed:
Despite what Bush and the repugs want us all to believe, the Constitution is not a lifeless, inanimate object, but a great big living, breathing forest, with a little bubbling creek that trickles through a pretty meadow. Our Founding Fathers left all sorts of wonderful critters in our happy forest, and you can see them if you're a progressive judge, and you squint really hard.Look! There's one! Can you see him? It's a happy little squirrel! His name is "Freedom of Choice", and he's right there where Thomas Jefferson put him. Hello, Freedom of Choice!
I get it! The name of the little angry squirrel with the vein bulging in his forehead must be "The Right to Not Be Offended."
An assessment mandated by a congressional inquiry gives a breakdown of how FEMA allowed so much cash to slip through its fingers. "Tough neighborhood syndrome" is a new one on me.
Inspectors wouldn't have had to be dispatched to the ghettoes of Dade County where they had to worry about "hurricane mugging" if those higher up had not erroneously declared Dade a disaster area in the first place.
FEMA's Baghdad Bob, Director Michael Brown, is still in complete denial about the whole situation.
Karzai has always been way cool, but he's managed to kick it up a notch:
When Afghan President Hamid Karzai visits the city this weekend, he wants to do what countless politicians before him have done: throw out the first pitch at Fenway Park.
Karzai, who will speak at Boston University's commencement on Sunday, has asked to throw out the first pitch during Saturday's game between the Red Sox and Atlanta Braves. But a spokesman for the Afghan embassy in Washington acknowledged that the security logistics could make it difficult.
How awesome it would be it he got to do it. I don't think any foreign leader has ever asked to do such a thing.
Well, this is vile. It's from several years ago -- not exactly hot news -- but it did happen.
I haven't seen it reported which MP unit this was, but something tells me it's going to turn out to be a bunch of Reservists.
Congratulations to Birgit Smith, wife of Medal of Honor recipient Paul Smith of Tampa, on taking her oath of citizenship.
Her mother-in-law attended the ceremony with her and Birgit lead the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Her husband would have been very proud of her.
The Keetoowah band of Cherokee Indians would kindly like to set the record straight in regards to the Indianness of Colorado Professor and Professional Indian Ward Churchill: He's a fraud:
All of Churchill's past, present and future claims or assertions of Keetoowah 'enrollment' written or spoken, including but not limited to; biographies, curriculum vitae, lectures, applications for employment, or any other reference not listed herein are deemed fraudulent by the United Keetoowah Band, and should be respected by all media, government and private institutions to be so.
Furthermore: He makes them sick:
The United Keetoowah Band has no association with Churchill in any capacity whatsoever and considers his comments offensive. His remarks in no way reflect the true compassion for the victims of the World Trade Center and their families that is felt by the United Keetoowah band of Cherokee Indians.
Gig's up, Paleface.
(Via Lucianne.)
UPDATE:
Ward Churchill says the Keetoowah Indians speak with a forked tongue and all that's necessary to be an Indian is to "self-identify" as one. He states he's been an Indian since 6th grade.
I know exactly how he feels because I too have jumped off of high places while yelling "Geronimo!", worn mocassins, braided my hair, and made war-whoops.
If that's all it takes, we should do ourselves a favor and get in touch with our inner-Indian when filling out applications for college, financial aid, and employment. It would definitely be worth our while.
Duane's throwing a little unwanted sugar on his baby brother.
Wail on, Skydog!
Below the jump, Jim Shepley, the fellow who taught Duane his first licks, recounts wild tales of Duane the juvenile delinquent. I bet y'all will like this one better than last week's article:
I met Duane in a pool hall in Daytona Beach when I was about 14. I was shooting pool, and he saw me and came over and started talking. I learned that he had just moved down from Tennessee with his mother and his brother. We lived close to one another - he was in Daytona Beach Shores - and that's how our friendship started. Over the years we rode motorcycles together, we played together, we partied together. We were definitely the best of friends back then. I really liked the guy.I was about four years older than Duane and had been playing for a while when I met him. Duane was the kind of guy where if he saw something he liked and wanted to do, look out! I always had a lot of respect for him, because he had the energy to do what he wanted. He just said, "I want to play the guitar," bought a cheap Sears Silvertone electric, and started playing. I knew a lot of Jimmy Reed licks, which Duane had never really heard, and he flipped out and immediately wanted me to show him all that stuff. Duane was good from the day he picked up a guitar, and he learned very quickly. We were always jamming. I showed him B.B. King songs. But what he really liked was my fingerpicking blues. Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters - that's what I grew up playing, and he was always in awe of that.
See, Duane's father had been killed in a bizarre accident in Tennessee, so if he looked up to someone a little older than him, he kind of latched onto him. His father had picked up some hitchhiker on Christmas Eve. According to Duane, the guy had escaped from jail or a mental institution. He just jumped into the car, pulled out a gun, and blew his father away. His father was a serviceman who played guitar and sang a little bit. He liked music. Duane would say, "Gee, Jim, I remember my dad picking and singing. That's kind of where I always got my interest in music."
The funny thing is, when Duane first came into town, nobody really liked the guy. He had a cocky attitude and was an aggressive, brazen type. He wasn't your social personality kid that was going to kiss everybody's ass to make you like him, and that's what I liked about him. I appreciated his honesty and raw personality. Duane boiled everything down. He'd say, "Jim, you're too complex. You think too much." To him, it was, "There's good people; there's assholes. I'm gonna be with the good people." He had a hell of a sense of humor and was an astute, articulate, highly intelligent person. And Gregg totally idolized him.
From the first day I showed him Jimmy Reed licks, Duane knew that he only wanted to be one thing: a rock and roll star. Duane was in ninth grade at Sea Breeze High School, but he had found what he wanted, and there was no stopping him. He said, "To hell with it. I'm quitting school and getting a job in music, and that's the end of it." And that's what he did. Duane had a lot of nerve. He was a little guy - 5'8" or 5'9", tops - but he had a lot of charisma. The minute he came into a room, you knew he was there. He had presence, and you knew the guy was gonna be a big star. But he was a punk rocker in the early days, to say the least. He started growing his hair long even before the Beatles did. He was just an outcast type, somebody who was always taking a lot of chances.
You know how they put a Christmas tree at the top of a new building for good luck? One night we went to the top of the Towers Apartments in Daytona Beach, which was about a 30-floor unfinished building at the time, and Duane said, "Hey, man, let's hang off the tree." So he climbed up and started dangling, which pulled the tree over to the edge of the building! That was Duane.
The first time Duane got loaded was unbelievable. We drank beer together, and then we decided to try marijuana. Back in the early '60's, the only place you could buy any marijuana was in the black part of town. So we went down there and met this guy named Available Jones. We bought four joints for four dollars. We went back to the white part of town and each of us smoked two joints. I was high as a kite, everything was funny, and Duane kept saying, "Ah, this sh*it's no good. This stuff doesn't work." At one point, he got heavy into sniffing Testors airplane glue. He abused his body. It was like, let's get high and go play music. And that's what we did.
Duane and I got busted together three times. Once another guy and I were driving around with Duane in the back, and Duane yells, "Turn there!" So I made a left turn and clipped the back of an oncoming car that happened to belong to a black sheriff. Duane said, "Drive away! Let's try to get away from this guy." The sheriff blocked our way, and I got out. Then he opened up the back door, and out falls Duane onto the pavement in a big clattering racket with all these beer and wine bottles. Duane stands up and says, "What the hell you want, you son of a bitch? I'm gonna kick your ass, and I know the mayor of this town!" He was about 16, and we were taken off to jail immediately. We got out on probation.
The most outrageous thing Duane and I ever did was a heist at a little beer joint. The guy had coolers outside of his store, and we went over one night and hacksawed off the locks. We ripped off about 15 cases of beer and put it in the back of the car. Then we buried the beer in some brand-new garbage cans, so we'd always have a place to get beer. The cops found it, but they didn't find us. I went up north, and Duane headed for California for the first time. This was way before he was ever in a band.
Duane and Gregg were definitely influenced by the black musicians in town. There was a black group, the Lindsay Morris Band, that played in the white part of Daytona at a beachside club called the Surf Bar. This began around 1963, and all the musicians in the area came there to sit in. The band was doing soul, Ray Charles. This is where we all got schooled in music. We were underage, but we had no trouble getting in. This is where Gregg heard Charles Atkins and Floyd Miles sing. He idolized them and tried to sing and act like them.
Duane's first band was called the Escorts. This was 1964, I believe. Gregg was originally the guitar player, and then Duane convinced him to get a Vox organ and become a singer. Duane played guitar, and Van Harrison played bass. The drummer was Maynard Portwood, who played in the Allman Joys and worked with Duane for quite some time. They were doing Beatles, some Ray Charles, the Engllish rock thing. They were a high school band and they all wore the same uniforms and were starting to grow their hair long. They were pretty popular; they played dances. I think Duane was playing a Gibson ES-335. He later moved over to a Telecaster and then to a Les Paul.
Back in the early '60's Bob Greenlee was a friend of Duane's who started an integrated band. The black singers were called the Untils, and the House Rockers was the white band that backed them up. I was the original guitarist in the group, and then Duane and Gregg were both in the House Rockers. Duane had a lot of respect for Greenlee, but he and Gregg quit because they wanted to play rock and roll. They didn't want to play R&B and back up singers.
After that, Duane and Gregg started the Allman Joys. This was still in Daytona, but they were getting ready to leave. See, Duane was smart. He realized they were not going to make it out of Daytona, so he immediately put together the club-band kind of image. They went to Birmingham, Montgomery, Pensacola. They started travelling into the Southeast, doing mainly R&B. The band was based around Gregg's singing and Duane's guitar playing. Duane was playing a lot of riffs, and they were doing three-and four-part harmonies.
The band did a stint at Trudy Heller's in Greenwich Village. They had met the Blues Magoos up there, and they were thinking of changing their name to the Black & Blues. They definitely had been influenced by the Blues Magoos. They thought they were a great group: Duane spoke highly of them. They had it rough in New York. They were living in one room, sleeping four in a bed, but that's the way they were. Those guys were so dedicated to their musical desires, they could live anywhere and do anthing. I remember getting them from the airport, and I could see Duane was affected by New York City quite a bit. They were very high about the music. They had been very succesful at Trudy Heller's, and they felt like good things were going to happen. They went to St. Louis after that and then California, where they became the Hour Glass. That's when Duane got into slide playing. He became so much better within the next four years. His music suddenly came to fruition, and his genious just emerged.
But every few weeks the brothers were back in Daytona, because they wanted to see their mother and they just enjoyed coming back home. Every time they'd come back, we'd get together and jam, drink whiskey and do other things. I noticed later on that Duane was smoking quite a bit of weed and taking a lot of speed. That was one of Duane's favorite drugs. I hate to say it, but it didn't surprise me when Duane was killed on a motorcycle. All along, I had a bad feeling about how his life would turn out.
His guitar playing was great, but his slide playing was exceptional. That's what made him what he was. His slide playing was just like his personality. You hear this very heavy, thrusting playing with these outrageous, crazy riffs, and it's just the way Duane was. Nothing personified Duane more than his slide, and he was the happiest man in the world when he was playing the guitar. That's all he cared about, really. Like he said, "Rock on and have a good tiime."
Have they found a practical use for The Vine That Ate The South?
ZZ, by the hairy butt of the prophet, I wish to jam with you!
Throw me keys to magic Cadillac!
Take me to LaGrange!
Infidels!
Now that I've brought down Newsweek with my mighty post, I'll tell you that I came home tonight to a strange car in the driveway. Mr. Cracker had gone shopping and brought home another guy car -- something to haul around kayaks, dogs, and the occasional wife. There's no accessory I could actually reach if I were driving, but it's neat to ride in.
He may like a vehicle with rubber flooring, but he sleeps in something like this.
These are those little tradeoffs you make to maintain harmony.
Englishman Lesley Burke, in decline from a neurological disease, went to court to make sure that as his condition worsens and his speech becomes impaired, that doctors would not deny him food and water. He won his case.
The General Medical Council is now appealing, as treatment, otherwise known as "food and water," is their call.
The lengths that some people will go to to hang on to their undignified little lives is really quite shameful.
Looks like Saddam is going to have a New York Times bestseller on his hands.
If there's one thing more cathartic than blogging, it's spending lots and lots of money. This weekend I'm expressing myself with new home furnishings.
Except for saying that Newsweek kills. They should stick with Angelina Jolie gossip and leave news reporting to those who can do it responsibly.
UPDATE:
"This was reported very carefully, with great sensitivity and concern, and we'll continue to report on it," said Newsweek Managing Editor John Meecham. "We have tried to be transparent about exactly what happened, and we leave it to the readers to judge us."
Done. You used an unconfirmed report from an anonymous source and got people killed. You also put our troops in harm's way with your recklessness.
This reader judges Newsweek to be the bottom feeder of the news business.
Remember the old public service announcement that said "When you're busted for drugs over there; you're in for the hassle of your life"?
Here's an Australian lady who's become acquainted with that truth:
Schapelle Corby's looking at life in prison or the death penalty for bringing nine pounds of pot into Bali. She maintains her bags were tampered with.
That's a lot of tampering.
I hope she gets to keep her life.
As a devoted collector of Americana, I would really love to have this $35 million dollar Durand hanging behind my dog-chewed sofa. It grieves me to the core that dimestore slut Alice Walton beat me to it. It's so beautiful.
I'll keep saving my money and try to get in on the next round.
Or I could hang this lovely Jimmy Carter quilt on my wall instead.
Or, as has been suggested, a magnificent velvet Elvis.
Some people witnessed Picasso create masterpieces, as he touched paintbush to canvas with beauty in every stroke. We can witness a man Photoshopping a man's head onto an alligator's body.
Who's to say who's luckier?
Maxed Out Mama refutes a very strange column in the WAPO about Lynndie England as victim.
As a matter of fact, she does such a good job that I can only think of one thing to add: prisons are full of the weak and characterless followers of various bad leaders. For years my brother worked at a prison water plant with prisoners for crew. It wasn't what he expected, as he said he was expecting a population of alpha males yet never saw such a stupid bunch of sheep in his whole life. He characterized them as dumb, weak, and mean. When a leader presented them with a plan to do something awful, they chose to go for it.
That's Lynndie England. Not a victim; just a dumb, weak person with a mean-streak a mile wide.
Kinky Friedman's platform for his run for Texas governor is shaping up nicely:
DE-WUSSIFICATION
Our icons are being demeaned. Cowboys are no longer heroes for our children, but subject to derision. We are being laughed at instead of respected in the rest of the country. What has happened to our glorious heritage? This is the great state of Texas! We are not wusses, we are Texans. "We will beat back the wussification of Texas if we have to do it one wuss at a time." - Kinky Friedman.
His plan to team up with Willie Nelson and a pile of rutabagas doesn't really fire my imagination, but it always has been hit-or-miss with the Kinkster.
One thing's a certainty ... he's going to make this a fun election to follow.
Looks like Pat Buchanan is freaking people out again.
Isn't it nice that people can hold different opinions without being called Nazis?
Oops.
UPDATE:
Opinions galore right here.
UPDATE II:
Some of those commenters must be Nazis, as all are not in complete agreement.
It would be a lot easier to "bring blessing" to tsunami-ravaged Indonesia if the government there would stop acting like highwaymen. Charging 40% duty on aid containers at the port is governmental thuggery.
It's too bad that the only way they'll let you help lift their people out of misery is if they can get a cut.
The slideshows will continue until morale improves.
Found: a new ending for Rosie O'Donnell's character in "Riding The Bus With My Sister."
Per request, here's the infamous Rolling Stone article on the Allman Brothers.
UPDATE:
Bird, who worked at Rolling Stone during Grover Lewis's time there, writes her thoughts on the article.
Hitting the Note with the Allman Brothers Band by Grover Lewis
Shortly before Duane Allman's fatal motorcycle accident on October 29th, Associate Editor Grover Lewis spent a week on the road with the Allman Brothers to do an article for this issue. He turned it in a week before Duane's death. His candid account of the band's life on the road, and Duane Allman's final days follows.---Editor
There are 16 seats in the first-class compartment of the Continental 74 flight from L.A. to El Paso, and the tushy blonde stewardess greeting the boarding passengers beams the usual corporate smile until she does a fast snap and realizes that a full baker's dozen of the places are being claimed by this scruffily-dressed, long-haired horde of...Dixie greasers. Her smile congeals, then goes off like a burnt-out light bulb when one of the freaks asks her matter-of-factly- for a seat-belt extension and starts placing guitar cases - seven of them - upright into Seat 1."Well, now, wait, I don't know," she stammers, fidgeting from foot to foot. "Who are you, anyways?"
"We're the Allman Brothers Band from Macon, Gawgia," Willie Perkins, the band's road manager announces in a buttery drawl. He searches patiently through his briefcase and produces a round-trip ticket for the seat in question. "It's OK," he assures her, "we paid cash money for it. It's the only safe way to transport our git-tars. We do this sometimes six days a week. Now would you please get the extension, please, ma'am?"
Reluctantly, the stewardess fetches the cord and Willie finishes lashing the vintage Gibsons into position. Then just before take-off he does a quick head count of the entourage to be certain that no one's been left behind. The members of the band - Duane Allman, Greg Allman, Dicky Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, Jai Johanny Johnson - are all present and accounted for. The three roadies - Joe Dan, Kim, and Red Dog - and the sound technician, Michael Callahan - are aboard. The proud bird with the golden tail lifts skyward to Texas.
By the time the NO SMOKING sign flashes off, both of the Allmans are fast asleep, their mouths characteristically ajar. Duane, whose nickname is "Skydog" but who resembles a skinny orange walrus instead, looks bowlegged even when he's sitting down.
Dicky Betts, alternate lead guitar to Duane, whiles away the flight swapping comic books with the bassist, Berry Oakley. Butch Trucks, the group's drummer, pores over a collection of sci-fi stories by Philip Jose Farmer. Jai Johanny Johnson, the black drummer who's also known as "Frown," stares somberly out the window the entire trip.
Willie Perkins, wearing a faded Allman T-shirt, offers a fellow traveler a filter-tip and concedes that yes, there're quite a few hassles involved with being on the road almost constantly. "Coordination is the key to the whole thang," he says as if it's just occurred to him. "Gettin' all the people and the equipment to the right places at the right time. Then, too, I've got to mess with gettin' us paid, all that sh*t. These days the band averages about $7500 a gig, and we don't ordinarily have no trouble gettin' our money. When the band younger, though, playin' smaller clubs, sometimes I had to...well, lean on some of the shadier promoters.
"Sure, there's a bunch of headaches. Me, myself, I wouldn't do my part of it if it was just a pure-dee ol' gig. I wouldn't do it all unless I really dug the band. Business-wise and musically see, the boys are all equals. Unofficially, Duane is the leader - everybody looks to him for makin' the major decisions. Family is an over-used word , I reckon, but here it fits just fine.
Page 2
While a second, less nervous stewardess serves lunch, Willie points out the three married members of the group - Greg Allman, Berry Oakley, and Butch Trucks - "Greg just got married two weeks ago, was you aware of that? Yeah, sweet little ol' girl, too. But the wives don't travel with the band 'cept on special occasions. Everybody has purty well adjusted to the situation, you might say." Willie signals the stewardess that he needs some help with his tray. "Would you fix this doohickey for me, ma'am?" he asks pleasantly.
"You bet," she says, bending to the job. "Did you fellows play someplace last night? Everybody looks pretty sleepy."
Willie grins. "Naw, we was up all night, but we wasn't workin'. Truth is, we up all night purty near every night."
From the seat behind, Red Dog reaches forward to tap Willie on the shoulder, jostling Greg awake in the process. "Hey, brother," Red Dog asks excitedly, "is that snow down there on them hills?" Greg squirms angrily in his seat. "Kiss my dyin' ass, brother," he mumbles. Willie peers out the window for a second and shakes his head at Red Dog: "Naw, brother, that's the desert. That's a right smart of dust down there."
As the plane makes the descent to El Paso, Berry Oakley squints down at the brown, hilly town. He nudges Butch Trucks: "Hey, my man, this is where the Kid got it, you know that?" Butch dog-ears a page in his book and yawns: "Billy the Kid?" "Naw, brother, that cat in the Marty Robbins song. Marty Robbins is my hee-ro, man."
Inside the terminal, after Willie and the roadies have rounded up the group's 30-odd pieces of luggage, Joe Dan rubs his palms together in a parody of lustful anticipation. "Man," he crows to Michael Callahan, "I can't wait to put skates on the ass of some of these nice Texas ladies." Callahan tells him that the night's gig is in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and that they won't be in Texas more than a few minutes in transit. "Well, Joe Dan says philosophically, "they got nice ladies in New Mexico too, I reckon. We'll put skates on their asses."
Under a lowering sky, the entourage crowds into two Hertz station wagons for the 60-mile drive to Las Cruces. During the ride, Jai Johanny plays lacy Afro jazz on a cassette machine, frowning, saying nothing. At the wheel, Willie reminisces to the fellow traveler out the band's gig on the last paid-admission night at the Fillmore East. "Oh, my God, the boys was hittin' the note for sure, brother. They smoked up the place till seven in the mornin'. That was a great place to play. The World Series of rock and roll."
In the back seat, Duane leafs boredly through a copy of Cycle magazine and grumbles about the group's travel arrangements. "It's a drag not to have your own plane, man. That way you could go where you wanna go when you wanna go. Jesus, I'm wasted." He falls asleep almost instantly, as does Berry Oakley. The wasteland miles roll past and the first quarter-sized spatters of what will turn into a furious rainstorm blur the windshield.
Las Cruces is the kind of vanishing Western town where you can leave your motel room safely unlocked, except almost no one ever does because most of the people in the motels are from places where you can't leave anything unlocked. At the Ramada Inn, where the Allman menage disgorges for a rainy afternoon of sleep, TV viewing, card-playing, comic-book reading, coke snorting, and pure listless boredom before the evening's concert, there is a stenciled sign on the door to the hotel's cocktail lounge. It reads:
N. MEX. LAW
ALL CUSTOMERS MUST WEAR
SHOES AND SHIRTWearing neither, Dicky Betts sits in his room just before the show, strumming his guitar and softly running through the lyrics of "Blue Sky," a muted country-style air he's just written in honor of his Canadian Indian lady friend, Sandy Blue Sky. Joe Dan, one of the roadies, sits hunkered on the carpet across the room, sipping a can of beer, and when Dicky has finished singing, Joe Dan nods and murmurs respectfully, "That's hittin' the note, brother." Betts acknowledges the tribute with a sober bob of his head; he has just cut his hair short, and he has kind of bony, back-country face that calls to mind the character Robert E. Lee Prewitt in James Jones' "From Here to Eternity".
"Hittin' the note," Betts muses, cradling his guitar against his bony chest. "It's kinda hard to explain to anybody outside the band. It's like gettin' down past all the bullshit, all the put-on, all the actin' that goes along with just bein' human. Gettin' right down to the roots of the music. Lettin' it happen, lettin' that feelin' come out...
"See, we got a lotta blues roots, the old-timey blues players - Robert Johnson, Willie McTell. Myself, I do a lot of the white country players like Jimmie Rodgers, some of those fellows... Hell, I'm a big fan of Merle Haggard. The truth be known, I bet ol' Hag set down with his manager and schemed out 'Okie From Muskogee'...
"Ten years from now? Well, I'll still be playin' music. That's just in me to do. Where I'll be at or what kinda music I'll be playin'...shit, I don't know. Naw, this band won't be together by then. I don't see what point there'd be in tryin' to keep it together that long. Everything's got to change. The times'll be completely differernt. But I'll still be playin' somewhere or other."
Page 3
But it doesn't happen this night. At the Pan American Center of New Mexico State University; a caverous, sweltering-hot, gym where the concert is scheduled to begin at 9:45, there's a 45-minute delay while Greg Allman's rented organ is located and installed on stage. During the wait, Greg and Duane Allman and Dicky Betts sprinkle out little piles of coke on a table in the backstage locker room where the band is sequestered and sniff it through $100 bills. Duane calls it "Vitamin C," and after his second snort, he buttonholes the fellow traveler in expansive praise of Bett's guitar-playing: "Brother Dicky's as good as there is in the world, my man. And he's gonna be smokin' tonight. Listen to him on 'In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.' Fuck, he wrote that fuckin' song after he fucked this chick on a fuckin' tombstone in a fuckin' cemetery in Macon. On a fuckin' tombstone, my man!" The other members of the band sprawl listlessly about the room on wooden benches, drinking Red Ripple and reading comic books in a tableau that will be ritually repeated every evening for the next six days.
When the band finally files on stage and Duane kicks off "Stateboro Blues" to a scattering of applause, the principal revelation of the occasion is that Greg Allman is not, after all, a stone catatonic, as he appears to be everywhere except in front of a microphone. His voice rises and swoops, circles and jerks the old blues staple to frenzied, hair-raising climax that's explicitly sexual enough to be rated "X". The usual contingent of snowbirds and total-loss farmers, massed ten-deep in front of the towering amps, howl their pleasure - "Boogie my mind, motherfuckers!" a pudgy cockatoo in head-shop plumage screeches as the band runs through its more or less standard repertoire: "Elizabeth Reed," "Please Call Home," "You Don't Love Me," "Stormy Monday," "It's Not My Cross to Bear," "Dreams," and "Hot 'Lanta."
But the crowd in the farther reaches of the hall seems considerably less enchanted. For one thing, the sound is soggy at the rear, and a long-haired kid who says he's majoring in Police Science (yes) estimates the crowd as "25 percent freaks, 25 percent cowboys, and 50 percent who don't give a fuck." The band manages one encore, "Whipping Post," but halfway through the number the audience is busily streaming toward the exits.
Afterwards, back in the locker room, Greg Allman morosely doles himself out another dollop of coke. "I couldn't hear shit," he snorts, and snorts. "Sounded like we'us playin' acoustic," Dicky Betts chimes in disgustedly. "Coulda been a dynamite gig, too, man," Berry Oakley laments. "Coulda been, but it wadn't," Duane snaps. He sinks down on one of the benches, frowning. "I thank mebbe it was the audience," he sighs, "but then again...It coulda just been too much fuckin' coke. You know what I mean?" He snuffles and reaches for the coke vial.
Off to one side, Red Dog is whispering in the ear of the lone groupie who's shown up, a big-nosed redhead with deep acne scars. The girl listens expressionlessly, then finally nods yes to whatever, sucking on a joint as if it were the last sad drooping cock in the world.
Under Willie Perkin's persistent proddings, the Allman retinue is out of the Ramada Inn and settled on a flight back to L.A. by noon of the next day. Again, most of the boys spend the travel time dozing or poring over comic books.
Page 4
Before zonking out on the plane, Duane shows Berry Oakley a crumpled letter he's just received. "Know who this from, brother?" he crows. "Ol' Mary. You 'member Mary? Man I hitchhiked 2500 miles to see that chick one time, and then her daddy caught me fuckin' her in the garage and throwed me out. Sheeit, I'm still in love with that chick, man...I...thank." Within five seconds, Duane is snoring, and when a saucy-hipped stewardess stoops to pick up his letter from the aisle, Red Dog leans over and says to her conversationally, "Honey pie, you got the sweetest lookin' ass I've looked at all year. Lawd, I wish you could sang. We'd take your sweet-lookin' little ass right along with us." "Oh, I can't even carry a note in a church," the stewardess sings out, flustered and flattered.
Red Dog is the undisputed king of the Allman roadies. He's been with the Allman Brothers Band since its earliest permutations - first with the Allman Joys in 1965; then with the short-lived Hourglass, a West Coast-based studio group in '67; still later, when the present band was formed, principally from the personnel of the earlier groups, from '69 on. Red Dog was there toting instrument cases when the Allmans cut their three LPs to date - "The Allman Brothers Band", "Idlewild South", and "The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East"- and he'll likely be around as long as there are any Allman instrument cases to tote.
Right now, he winks slyly, orders three cocktail-sized bottles of Jack Daniels Black label from the sweet-assed little stewardess, serves himself one and pockets the other two. "Gawddamn," he cackles to the fellow traveler, "I gotta whole suitcase full of these leetle fuckers. Why not? They free when you fly first-class."
"Rubbing his back, he complains that he feels achey all over: "See, I tuck and fell off the fuckin' stage. And I got a pimple on my ass, too, man. Hurts like hell. This just ain't my trip, brother."
Teasing his scruffy red beard with a swizzle stick, Red Dog remarks that the band's success has brought some changes: "Aw, it's still fun awright, but not anywheres the way it used to be. Time was, we'd blow our last five bucks on a case of beer in Flagstaff or someplace. Now it's big bid-ness." He makes a face, then laughs aloud: "I still get off behind the chicks, though. Man, we get ckicks ever'where we go. What really knocks me clean smooth out is to get head. Did I tell you? This weird chick was eatin' me on stage at the last Fillmore East blast. Naw, the audience couldn't see it, but all the boys could.
"Another time, in Rochester, I was standin' against the sttage wall while the band was hittin' their note and some chick come up and unzipped me and started gobblin' me alive, man. The cat in the booth saw what was happenin' and he flashed a spotlight on us. Shit, man, I didn't know what to do. Three thousand people out there, see, but goddamn, it felt so good. I thought well, fuck it, and I grabbed her ears and said 'Let it eat!'
A black-suited, middle-aged limo chauffeur named Artie, self-styled "driver for the stars," meets the band at L.A. International Airport, helps Willie round up the mountain of luggage and drives the boys to the Continental Hyatt House high atop Sunset Boulevard. During the ride, he prattles on cheerily about what groups are playing in Vegas and Tahoe and he looks away discreetly as Duane snorts coke through a short-stemmed surgical straw.
At the hotel, Bunky Odum greets the group with bear hugs for all. A bluff hairy grinner with a build like a crocodile wrestler, Odum books the band in the East and South and serves as second-in-command to Phil Walden, the Allman's sharp young mamager. In a poshy suite on the fifth floor, he seizes the fellow traveler's hand and pumps it like a hydraulic jack, "Gawddam, boy," he booms, "you gonna have to come down to Macon and get laid back with us when this bid-ness is over. We'll take you ridin' on our motors and get you laid and feed you some down-home collard greens."
In another suite on the same floor, Berry Oakley orders a meal from room service, then kicks off his boots and plops heavily on the bed. "Tourin'," he grimaces, "I'm gettin' just a little tired of it, but that's what I been doin' ever since I could do anything on my own. Started playin' gigs eight, nine years ago when I was about 15, and I been more or less livin' on the road ever since.
"I can't say what's gonna happen with the band. It could be somethin' great, and then again it might just go away like all the rest of 'em. We could do ten times more than we do, acutally. There's so much that's in us that we haven't played. We're gonna have to start rationin' ourselves out, like goin' on the road and then goin' home and workin'. Lately it's been just goin' on the road.
"All of us like to play to an audience and get response back. That's what we call hittin' the note. How should I say it...Hittin' the note is hittin' your peak, let's say. Hittin' the place where we all like to be at, you know? When you're really feelin' at your best, that's what you describe as your note. When you're really able to put all of you into it and get that much out of it. We just found it out along as we did it. We learned some from the audience, and they learned some from us, and things came together that way, It happens, I'd say, 75 percent of the time. There's some special places we play where we've done it before, and every time we go back, the vibes are there and it ends up happenin' again. We'll end up playin' three or four hours, and when we finish, I'll be so high I can't hardly talk. When you start hittin' like that, the communication between the members of the band gets wide open. Stuff just starts comin' out everywhere."
Stuff stars coming out everywhere that evening at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, beginning with the little white piles of coke backstage. This time around, though, the acoustics of the hall are crisper, the audience is more responsive, and the band's music flows more smoothly, although there's little if any variation from the previous evening's program. The crowd bawls its approval, but begins to disperse after one encore.
Afterwards, there's a party like an open running sore in Phil Walden's tenth floor suite at the hotel. The booze flows, the smoke blows, the coke goes up, up, and away. Around midnight, a trio of female freaks, including a Grand Guignol-painted dwarf, crashes the festivities, chanting gibberish, doing stylized little dance numbers, groping cocks. Somebody says they're part of Zappa's grass menagerie. When the hotel manager finally flushes them out of the room, Dicky Betts nudges the fellow traveler and guffaw: "Haw! You better get out yo' pen and pencil and write down their names, my man!"
The next morning, while Artie and Willie Perkins are loading the black limo with luggage and instruments, Greg Allman sidles up to the fellow traveler in front of the hotel and palms off a plastic vial containing a quarter ounce of white powder. "Hey, brother," Greg mutters, "hold these goods for me till we get to Frisco, will you do that? I'm scared of them fuckers at the airport, man. They got them gun detectors and all, and they down on people that look like hippies."
On the way to the airport, more comic books and boredom. As the car passes the Super All Drugs, Butch Trucks cranes around to stare at a flamboyant leather dyke. "Well, theh's ya big city," he philosophizes. Willie is fascinated by the dizzying onrush of traffic. "These California people all got to be good drivers," he drawls, "or they'd all be dead by now."
At the airport, Duane draws Dicky Betts to one side. "Did you hear them tapes of last night, brother?" he asks, shuffling excitedly from foot to foot. "Man I was inspahred. Listen, we got to get at least six more killer tunes right away. My composin' chops are gettin' rusty. What say when this tour is over we woodshed and write for a coupla weeks?" "I dunno," Dicky says, looking dubious. "I was thankin' about goin' to Canada to see Sandy." "Aw come on, man" Duane groans.
Page 5An hour and a half later, in a rented station wagon headed for what turns out to be a fleabag tourist warren near San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, Dicky is reading aloud the marquee billing along Broadway in North Beach:"Cal Tjader, hmm... the Modern Jazz Quartet...hey Mongo Santamaria. Shit, I thank I'll bop in there and ast ol' Mongo when he's gonna record 'Elizabeth Reed.'" He double-takes at a sign above a topless joint that reads NAKED SEDUCTION, "Crap on that stuff," he wheezes. "I druther do it than look at it."
Pausing at the hotel only long enough to drop their gear, Duane and Greg and Berry Oakley race back to North Beach on a shopping binge. In a super-expensive leather shop, Duane freaks over a handtooled shirt with a colored panel on the front that resembles a drive-in theater facade in, say Ponca City, Oklahoma; he eagerly pays $200 for it. Within minutes, he and Greg have dropped over $500 for a few shirts and trousers, and then Butch Trucks, accompanied by his slender, shy wife, Linda, briefly joins the group and buys a cowboy-style coat. Then Dicky shows up, looking for a maxi-length white leather dress for his Indian lady friend. After Butch and his wife have paid for the coat and drifted on to rubberneck the bizarre upper Grant Street mise en scene, Greg curls his lip derisively: "Shit, you see that ratty-lookin' coat ol' Butch bought? Fucker didn't even fit him." Duane shrugs contemptuously: "His ol' lady probably put him up to it. She don't know shit. She made him buy that Dee-troit car, man, and he coulda bought a fuckin' Porsche for the same bread. Shit, man." "Yeah, shit, man," Greg agrees.
The band plays for a near-capacity audience at Winterland that evening. Before the music starts, while Bill Graham's rent-a-goons are nastily hassling reporters on what seems to be sheer lunatic principle, Greg draws on a joint backstage and mumble-explains his concept of hitting the note: "Uh, achievin'...the right...frame of mind, man. You smoke enough grass, you'll get there. Uh...three joints, maybe."
Ten minutes later, Greg is squalling out the opening lines of "Statesboro Blues," and joy-transfixed chickie in the balcony shoots to feet in a writing dance. "Oh, baby," she screams, joy up and jump on me!"
Early the next afternoon, enter the photographer, looking cheery. An easy-going zaftig lady, she's been promised a 2 o'clock shooting session with the band, but whatever else they're doing, the boys are not hitting the note today. Half of them, in fact, are still asleep at the appointed time, and to a man they resist being roused. "Aw, Duane and Greg'll do that, you know," Willie Perkins explains sheepishly. "They'll stay up for three, four days, and then crash like they'us dead."
Bunky Odum promises that he'll deliver both Allmans to the photographer's studio before the evening's concert at Winterland. "Gawddamn, honey," Odum booms, "you gonna have to come down to Macon and git laid back with us when this bid-ness is over. We'll take you ridin' on our motors and...uh...feed you some down-home collard greens."
But Odum fails to deliver on his promise that evening when both the Allman brothers balk at the notion of being photographed apart from the rest of the group. They seem, in fact, outraged by the notion. "Fuck, man, we ain't on no fuckin' star trip," Duane snarls. "Naw, man, we ain't on no fuckin' star trip," Greg echoes. Trying to smooth things over, Odum arranges for the photographer to join the group's swing back to Southern California the next day.
Exit the photographer, looking addled.
Exit the fellow traveler, looking for a movie far from the madding goons at Winterland.
Page 6
Sleepy and hanging over, the group assembles in the hotel parking lot the next morning for the drive to airport and an early flight to Santa Barbara. Only Dicky Betts seems in high spriits; after last night's gig, he'd gotten a new tattoo at Lyle Tuttle's south-of-Market studio - a dove entwining the name "Sandy" on his right bicep. "Ever'body in the band got one a these, too," Dicky says proudly, pulling up his pantleg to show a tattoo of a mushroom on his calf. Willie Perkins nods shortly: "It's the band's emblem. We all got one, and we use the same design on all our litachoor, too."
Dicky catches sight of Duane and guffaws: "Hey, brother you got coke all over in your muss-tache." Peeved, Duane rakes the white grains out the hair on his lip and glares steadily at the photographer, who's snapping individual candids of the band members. When she moves in toward him, he turns his back with a growl.
On the drive to the airport, Berry Oakley is literally holding his head with both hands. "I run into this ol' girl last night who had a whole purseful of tequila," he groans. "Then when that run out, we got into some Red Ripple. Jesus."
On the flight south, Butch Trucks reads the opening chapter of D.T. Suzuki's "Zen Buddhism". "You read this un?" he asks Dicky Betts. Betts' eyes flick over the title. "Yeah, good, ain't it," he grunts. An hour later, one of the stewardesses remonstrates repeatedly with Duane to return his seat to the upright postion for landing. Irritably, he complies, but when the stewardess moves on, he reclines the chair again, muttering balefully under his breath. "The boys are gettin' pretty tahrd," Willie Perkins sighs.
The band puts up for the night at the Santa Barbara Inn, a plush beach resort for the middle-aged rich, where, once again, Duane refuses to show up for a picture session with the photographer. Looking positively shell-shocked by now, she pleads her case to Bunky Odum. "Goddamn, honey, he booms, "you're gonna have to come down to Macon and git laid back with us when this bid-ness is over. We'll take you ridin' on our motors and feed you some down-home collard greens."
That night's concert is held in Robertson's Gym at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The band plays a tight subdued set that sets a gaggle of bra-less nymphets near the stage to jiggling like fertilized eggs frying in the ninth circle of hell, but the general ambience in the hall - high humidity, surly security guards, a surfeit of bum acid - gives the evening a jagged unpleasant edge, and streams of people begin leaving before the set is done.
Duane and Dicky lope backstage afterward to "do some sniff," as Dicky terms it. Duane grabs a towel and mops his streaming face while Dicky spoons out the coke. "Goddamn, I'm sopped, brother," Duane complains. Dicky snorts the powder and bobs his head in pleasure. "Sheeit, my man, I druther sniff this ol' stuff than a girl's bicycle seat." Jo Baker, a black singer with the Elvin Bishop Group, hovers nearby, eyeing the coke. Duane fixes her with a cold stare. "Look-a-here, sister," he says loudly, "I'm sorry, but I got just a little bit of this shit left, so I can't give you none." "Oh, that's all right," Jo says, looking embarrassed. "Sure, as a musician, I understand."
Early the next morning, "Frown" - Jai Johanny Johnson - is living up to his nickname in the hotel restaurant. Slurping a triple Gold Cadillac, which is a positively depraved concoction of liquor and liqueurs, he growls, "Bullshit, my man. I'm into playin' music, not this sittin-around-bullshit. Seems like when we was unknown, all we did was play. Now all we do is get publicity...Ten years from now, if I be livin' I expect to be playin' music...Naw, not with this same band...I got my nickname, the full thing of which is 'Jaymo King Norton Frown,' from drinkin' Robitussin H-C, that cough syrup. It makes you nod and frown. All the cats in the band used to drink that shit, so they finally got me to drink it too...Shit, I don't know what my attitude is towards dope....I don't guess they ever gonna stop it comin' in the country and all that shit. Sure has caused a lot of hang-ups, if you can dig what I mean...Hittin' the note is - well, that don't be nothing' but a phrase. What the cats in the band mean by it is...gettin' out of it whatever you're lookin' for..."
Bunky Odum has again promised the photographer that he'll line up the boys for some shots when the group checks out of the hotel, so she stations herself near the parking garage and nervously waits for them to show up. Soon, Butch Trucks and his wife join her, and Butch apologizes to her for the runaround she's been getting. "Aw ol' Greg and Duane don't mean no harm, I reckon, but they still ortn't to act that-a way," he mutters, looking pained. "We been on the road too long, I guess. It's been five weeks now, and you get awful tahrd and wore out bein' out that long, playin' the same tunes every night and all. It gets to where sometimes it ain't any fun. And this definitely ain't the kind of business to be in if you ain't havin' no fun."
One by one, the boys straggle out ot the cars, again looking sleepy and hungover. When they've assembled in a loose semi-circle, the photographer explains that she'd like to get a group shot showing the tattooed mushrooms on the calves on their legs. Then Duane shakes his head angrily and stomps out of camera range. "This is jive bullshit, man," he rasps, it's silly." "Yeah, silly," Greg echoes, and follows suit. "Jive bullshit," Dicky Betts agrees, stuffing his pant leg back into his boot. At the fellow traveler's teasing suggestion that it's no sillier to shoot a picture of everyone's tattoos than it is to have them put on in the first place, Duane coldly offers to punch him on the spot. Well, what the fuck, hare krishna; Duane is, after all, the walrus.
The entourage crowds into two rented cars for a tensely silent ride down the coastal highway to L.A. Along the way, Duane gruffly agrees to stop for a last try at the photos on a beach road. When the photographer tries to position the group around the cars so all their faces will be visible, Duane goes out to lunch entirely. "Fuck it," he bellows at her, "either take the fuckin' picture of don't take the fuckin' picture. I'm not gonna do any of that phony posin' shit for you or nobody else."
He's still grumbling and snuffling when the cars swing back onto the highway. "I don't like any of that contrived shit, man. We're just plain ol' fuckin' Southern cats, man. Not ashamed of it or proud of it, neither one. Ain't no superstars here, man." When he finally shuts up and falls asleep, his fellow traveler gladly crouches down toward the floorboard so the photographer can shoot both the Allmans with their mouths agape in the rear seat. It's uncomfortable for a few miles, but it beats the hell out of getting punched.
Quartered once again atthe Continental Hyatt House on the Karmic Strip in L.A., the Allman group whiles away the afternoon snorting coke, reading comics, mounting a seek-out-and-buy raid on Tower Records, and watching "The Thief of Baghdad" on color TV. When it's time for the evening's gig, Willie Perkins rounds them up and herds them toward Artie's black Cadillac limo for the half-mile ride down Sunset Boulevard to the Whisky-a-Go-Go. "C'mon, brothers," Michael Callahan, the sound man, calls out as the band mills about the driveway, "they gonna eat you alive at the Whuskey-a-Dildo."
In the upstairs dressing room at the Whisky, amid the usual groupie babble and turmoil, the photographer determinedly tries to shoot some final pictures. Politely, she asks a busboy to replace some burnt-out light bulbs in the ceiling. When the busboy fetches a ladder and the bulbs, Greg Allman saunters up and mumbles, "Don't screw that bulb in, my man. I like it in here the way it is." "Please screw the bulb in," the photographer entreats. "Don't screw the bulb in, man," Greg says to the busboy stonily. This happens a few times. "Oh, screw it," the photographer says finally in exasperation, and leaves.
When the band's set gets underway downstairs, the usually-comatose Strip crowd yells its lusty approval from the first chorus of "Statesboro Blues." By the time Dicky Betts thunderballs into his solo jam on "Elizabeth Reed," people are standing on their chairs yodeling cheers. As the band jam-drives to a sexy and demonic close, sounding not unlike tight early Coltrane, a flaxen-haired waitress is passing out draughts of beer to the screaming patrons in the second-story gallery. The beer is streaming amber and glistening down her bare arms, and the Allman Brothers Band from Macon, Gawgia, is - what else- Hitting the Note.
Annie Leibovitz gets a good photo of a bunch of irritated musicians.
Wail on, Skydog!
Just the other day, Butch Trucks (foreground) wrote an illuminating letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review regarding the photo session that this pic came from and the infamous Grover Lewis Rolling Stone article in which it appeared:
Paper: New York Times Book Review, The (NY) Title: 'Whipping Post'! Date: May 8, 2005 Section: Book Review Desk Page: 6To the Editor:
I am a founding member and am still the drummer for the Allman
Brothers Band. In 35 years of playing music for the public, and especially
because of the nature of the music we played and the time and origin of
our group (late 60's, the Deep South), we have had more than our share of
controversy and criticism. I realize that this comes with the territory
and accept it for what it is. In these 35 years of criticism I have
read reviews and articles that run the gamut, but there has always been
one article that stands above all the rest as being the single most
meanspirited piece of fiction ever written about us. It is to journalism
what an ant is to an aardvark. That is the Rolling Stone article about the
Allman Brothers Band written by Grover Lewis, which is referred to in
Roy Blount Jr.'s review of "Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover
Lewis Reader" (April 3).First, let me state unequivocally that Duane Allman was one of the
most powerful, charismatic and trustworthy men I have ever known. I would
use the word "messianic" to describe the impact he had on the people
around him, and his influence on music today runs much deeper than all
but a very few even begin to know. He was a man of the highest character
and principles, and for Blount to refer to him as "one of these churls"
is inexcusable. Blount also quotes Lewis's article about us: "At my
teasing suggestion . . . Duane coldly offers to punch me out on the spot."
To put things in their proper perspective, I will tell you exactly how
Lewis, our "fellow traveler," came to be threatened.Lewis joined our tour in 1971 at the insistence of our management. We
were a very close-knit group of musicians and had little use for all
the interviews, photo shoots and other such nonsense that went with the
image building that made for big-time rock 'n' roll success. I am sure
that our fellow traveler was used to bands falling all over themselves
at having one of the great writers from Rolling Stone magazine around.
He was somewhat taken aback by our lack of interest in his presence.
What he wound up writing under the guise of journalism could have been
humorous satire, at best, if it weren't for one very tragic fact: it was
published within weeks of Duane Allman's death, and the people at
Rolling Stone had time to pull the article but did nothing.Lewis writes at one point about a conversation between me and Dickey
Betts about a book on Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki. I asked Dickey if he
had read it. He said that he had and that it was too academic an
approach to a subject that had to be felt and experienced. Dickey and I went
on to discuss the book and the topic for some time. Lewis's version was
that I asked Dickey if he had read the book and Dickey's response was,
"Yeah, good, ain't it." There actually was a conversation that went
somewhat like this later in Lewis's stay with us. I had just bought a copy
of Saul Bellow's "Herzog." I asked our fellow traveler if he had read
the book. His answer? "It's a good book."In Lewis's article, all the dialogue among members of our group seemed
to be taken directly from Faulkner. We are from the South. We did and
still do have Southern accents. We are not stupid. The people in the
article were creations of Grover Lewis. They did not exist in reality.Finally, Rolling Stone had sent Annie Leibovitz to photograph us. As I
said earlier, we were busy playing music, and photo sessions just got
in our way. We all had tattoos of a mushroom on our right calves. The
reasons for getting these tattoos were personal and had deep meaning for
us. Somehow Leibovitz had heard of them and asked if we would all pull
up our pant legs and line up so that she could shoot a photo of the
tattoos. We looked at one another and started to comply when Dickey Betts
pushed his pant leg down and said, "No, this is silly." Our fellow
traveler's "teasing suggestion" was, "It's no sillier than getting a tattoo
in the first place." This was the final straw for Duane. That was when
he looked Grover Lewis in the eye and said, "One more crack like that
out of you and I'm gonna knock your block off."Butch Trucks
Palm Beach, Fla.
I typed out the RS article a couple of years back for another board. I'll post it if someone would like to read it.
What started with tomatoes ended with homicide in this sad case of the sexual exploitation of a young immigrant maid by her brutal lesbian boss. [Captured in graphic slideshow realism.]
Pretty hunkalicious, huh? He just married Texas actress Renee Zellweger.
Nah, my bad. It was Kenny Chesney she married.
Gotta remember to look for the cowboy hat.
I had the same problem with that Julia Roberts deal.
Man, those Georgians know how to show a guy a good time:
After a day's activities in Moscow, the Bushes were scheduled only to take a short stroll around Tbilisi's elegant old town with Saakashvili and his wife and then retire for the night. Bush is known not to enjoy sightseeing and often finishes such events early. But Saakashvili arranged for an elaborate series of dance shows. Every time one ended, another began and the boyish 37-year-old Georgian president kept glancing over to see if Bush was enjoying himself.
It seemed he was. Bush ended up clapping enthusiastically, bobbing his head to the beat and finally gyrating his hips. He got so excited that he jumped onto the stage and posed for pictures. "Yeah! Yeah!" he yelled, cheering a 6-year-old boy who danced with furious energy.
The Georgians made the most of the opportunity. They're a new democracy and have a scary neighbor to the north who worries them. One banner in the crowd read "Mr. George W. Bush, you can save Georgia.":
George Bush stopped by here last night and the whole country came to an expectant halt, its gaze fixed on the "great guest" from America. As Mikhail "Misha" Saakashvili, Georgia's irrepressible president and leader of the country's democratic Rose Revolution, has pointed out, "[The Bush visit] offers final proof that Georgia is an independent state with inviolable territory, that our land and freedom are indivisible." Embedded here, too, is a message to Russia and Vladimir Putin--Hands off Georgia. Stay out!
Worse than the ordinary pompous rock star is the pompous Irish rock star.
Enjoy a refreshingly honest review of a U2 concert. With Cheese's commentary isn't bad either.
Nothing says "Cold War victory celebration" like the U.S. Army band playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever" inside the Kremlin.
I wish President Reagan could have been there. He would have gotten such a kick out of it:
When someone called to strike up a stirring military march for a parade through central Moscow, hardly anyone ever imagined it would be "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Or that the Stars and Stripes itself, hoisted aloft by an Army sergeant, would lead the U.S. Army Europe Band up the Russian capital's main thoroughfare, past cheering crowds, to greet a train full of Russian war veterans.
What's going on in the news today? Damned if I know. Probably something outrageous. For instance, somewhere a writer is tappedy-tapping up a headline that shows he has absolutely zero knowledge of the topic he's expounding upon.
But that can wait as there is outrageous behavior going on in my own home. Despite the fact that this afternoon my dogs had a baked chicken breast each and a saucer of ice cream, a short while ago they converged upon me at their normal supper hour demanding to be fed. It's impossible to type during the converging as there are dog heads coming up from underneath the table, then between my arms to repeatedly knock them away from the computer. If I delay they add sound effects that grow progressively louder and louder until it's a solid wall of shrieks and bobbing, knocking heads.
I re-fed them.
I hope all of you had a peaceful and happy Mother's Day.
Today it was announced that a respected Shi'ite official, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, has been named Iraqi oil minister.
Upon hearing the news, Lady Tee-Hee, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd crumpled to the ground shouting, "God, no!" and wailed the name "Chalabi" over and over again.
Ahmad Chalabi is a frequent subject of Dowd's columns. Her outrage at his being acting oil minister had been the topic of a recent Dowd column, and confident he had a lock on the job, she'd readied at least 27 more outraged columns on the same topic for future publication.
I guess the self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks of England and Australia have spoken then, haven't they?
Regarding the boy who got suspended for going off on administrators after they interrupted his cell-phone call from his mom in Iraq:
As a former military brat, I'd suggest the mom call her kid at the house and not on his cell phone in the middle of the school day. Everybody has a job to do; the kid's is going to school.
Furthermore, that school is outside Benning. There's no way those teachers don't know and understand kids whose parents are deployed. You really think the kid said, "I'm talking to my mom in Iraq," and this teacher who works with a zillion other kids from Benning ruthlessly ripped the phone away? I doubt it. It sounds to me like it's a case of cursing first and answering questions later.
The kid totally went off and kept going off. You throw a bunch of effs at a teacher, and keep it up; he's not going to give you milk and cookies, no matter how understanding he is.
Kiddies, if you want an "A" from Mr. Cliatt, I'm afraid you'll have to work for it.
There's no sexy female teacher doing the molesting here, so this'll probably stay in the state & local news.
Unlike some people, I am not obsessed.
This pretty much says it all, doesn't it?
If I had ever felt a hankering for bringing home Top Secret documents, there were MPs standing there ready to take me OUT.
So how did it happen that Larry Franklin had them piled up to the rafters in his house? And what prompted Franklin to spy? Was it money, ideology, compromise, or ego? We shall see.
At Goodfellow AFB, my friend Paige made the mistake of stopping to get a coke before returning her materials to the vault. She started drinking her soda, forgot what she was carrying, then tried to head out through the checkpoint of 'the Secret Square.'
The SPs took her down to the ground and locked and loaded in her face. She screamed and screamed and screamed. They took her away to wherever bad MI'ers get taken and I've not seen her since.
The Pentagon might look into hiring these guys. They do good work.
What's with these little kids doing such wonderful, generous things? They all founded charities that have provided thousands of police dogs with bulletproof vests.
I could count on one hand the useful things I did as a child. When I was their age, I mainly just waited for the latest issue of Creem to come out. Overachievers!
President Bush has signed off on the paperwork to demote Abu Ghraib warden General Janis Karpinski, effectively ending her military career.
Good riddance. Her incompetence cost us dearly.
While she didn't try the 'deprived of oxygen at birth' defense, she tried every other excuse to explain why she didn't stick her head out of her office door and find out what was going on in the prison she was in command of.
A code compliance officer for the city of Cape Coral tried to remove every single fluttering yellow ribbon adorning the path of returning soldier PFC Amanda Smith. Luckily, the busy bee bureaucrat found pulling up the knee-high stakes exhausting, and had to call it a day before totally ruining the returning soldier's welcome home.
Although the mayor finds the situation silly, others in city government do not. I've offered to start a fund for them to have a group-visit to a proctologist for the purpose of having the large insects lodged in their rectums removed. That's how giving I am.
As for PFC Smith, she's off to get a pedicure and her hair done.
Welcome home, PFC Smith!
UPDATE:
It's a little hot over at City Hall.
The mayor is now doing the damage control that the city councilwoman and police spokesperson should have done when originally questioned about the story. Their anal 'rules is rules' response made things worse.
Here's Duane jamming with an unknown fellow in some fringed leather hippie get-up.
May it never come back in style.
Wail on, Skydog!
If Laura Bush is at Wonkette level then I must be riiight about here.
Southern ladies do loosen their corsets from time to time; it's so refreshing.
UPDATE:
A baseball card to capture the moment?
UPDATE II:
Bill of INDC Journal is thoroughly milking analyzing the whole situation.
By the way, I heard the horse joke in elementary school, (it was right up there with "Wanna hear a dirty joke? A white horse fell in the mud") and thank God I did, as its hideous farm-life vulgarity steeled my delicate nature for having to stand at a supply sergeant's desk and ask him for one of these.
A Mexican man offering to share his burrito with a local high school girl got a backpack in the face for his trouble as fallout from the Minuteman Project spreads to South Florida.
Mexican President Vicente Fox said the incident represents a "furthering of the 'Malkinization' of US-Mexican relations."
Creatures have invaded a campus. They hate men and feed on fear. A small group of students try to fight them, but their hopes are dashed when the creatures take over the school's administrators. While trying to flee campus to safety, the group members are picked off one by one and eaten.The end.
I know it's kind of dark, but I feel there's a market for it.
Permanently blinded in the November slaughter at the Radioshack were he was working, Tampa Bay man Jamie Dolan got a little gift from the home repair show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and their sponsors: a custom-made mansion for him and his family, scholarships for his children, a car, retirement money, a guide dog, and everything else they could possibly think of to pile on. They took a look at Jamie's old house, decided it was best to demolish it and build a new one, and the whole thing just snowballed as more and more sponsors signed on and added things. It's Queen for a Day to the nth degree.
Jamie had gotten the extra job at Radioshack to get money to pay for repairs on his house.
You wish every victim of senseless violence could get such treatment, but you have to take what you can get.
Lots of video and pics of people doing nice things and being happy.
Get out your tissues; you'll need them.
The multimedia section of this excellent page has six film clips of Duane Allman soloing at Fillmore East and Love Valley for your viewing and listening pleasure. Unfortunately, it's only from those two venues that we have footage of Duane performing.
The dude just didn't stick around long enough.
Weird, weird, weird.
Read it and be confounded by the human mind.
