Music When I Was A Kid

In terms of music, I was one very lucky teenager. If I liked a musician or a band, I would book them to play my college, Stony Brook. I was chair of the Student Activities Board and much of the music we brought to the school was fairly unknown but on the verge-- like Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Four Tops (they were already famous), Big Brother, Grateful Dead, Otis Redding, the Blue Oyster Cult (the Soft White Underbelly then), Ravi Shankar, Joni Mitchell, Smokey Robinson, The Band... Bands were so inexpensive to book back then and I had what appeared to me to be an unlimited budget. $400 for the Doors, $1,500 to $3,500 for bands from England, $50 for a random folk singer who had nothing better to do that night.

Me then-- 1965 on the left, 1969 on the right, after 4 years of drugs

Besides the ones who became famous there were lots of others that never became really broke through but who I thought were fantastic and worthwhile. Some I booked as opening acts-- like two kids I met at a Velvet Underground performance in Manhattan, Tim Buckley (for the Doors) and Jackson Browne (for Judy Collins)-- and others I booked to play informal pop-up concerts in the dorm lounges, like The Fugs and Tom Rush.




I spent a lot of time listening to bands in New York and asking them to play my school, an hour away. It's how I met Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, neither at all really known at the time, as well as Eric Anderson, Tim Hardin and Richie Havens, dozens more. And I'd get everyone out to Stony Brook. Some of the students loved what I was doing and some hated it and hated me for it. Most of the kids were too busy studying to notice.





I met John Hammond at the Cafe Au Go Go and talked him into coming back to Stony Brook and play (for $50). When I was driving him down the Long Island Expressway, his fingers were so steady that he found stations on my car radio that I never knew existed. I had seen him when Jimi Hendrix's band (Jimmy James and the Blue Flames) was his backup band. This is the album he released while I was a freshman:





The bands that were always playing at the Cafe Au Go Go all played Stony Brook-- Paul Butterfield, the Blues Project-- and any band that came to the East Coast I'd co-book with Howard Solomon, the guy who ran the place, like the Youngbloods and Love. And you know what made me think of spending tonight on music? Sandy Bull. I was just in Thailand last week and Sandy Bull's music popped into my head while I was meditating in a Vietnamese temple. The music that was playing just brought Sandy Bull up. Give him a listen. He never got real famous but he was an inspiration for me:





One more thing. I was on acid one time and someone turned me onto an album, The Classical Music of Pakistan by Salamat and Nazikot Ali (usually called the Ali Brothers). I wanted to book them to play so bad. I would listen to that album whenever I got high (basically everyday). But I could never find a way to get in touch with them. I played the album for the Jefferson Airplane when they stayed at my house before a concert. The next album had a song clearly influenced by the Ali Brothers. In 1969 I bought a VW van in Germany and drove to Pakistan to find them. When I got to their small rural village in the mountains I found out they were playing in India. Bummer! A few years later I was working in the restaurant at the Kosmos, the meditation center in Amsterdam. I had just finished washing up and was dead tired and couldn't wait to get home and go to sleep. A friend came down and said, "There's this great band playing upstairs you have to see." I whined about how tired I was and he said I should go to sleep on the floor while listening to them. I didn't have the strength to resist and he dragged me upstairs. It was the Ali Brothers. It was magic.

Come On A Little Musical Trip With Me

I was a drug taker when I was a kid. College is one big drug-haze. I smoked weed every day and did most everything else whenever I could get my hands on it. Acid was special though. I didn't just drop acid willy nilly. Acid was always a very special experience for me, every single trip, something between 30 and 50 in all. And music was always a very important component of every acid trip I ever took-- and beyond just the Airplane, Dead and The Byrds. I certainly nearly wore out my copy of The Classical Music of Pakistan by the Ali Brothers, the most accomplished of the qawwali, singers, Salamat and Nazakat Ali Khan. Many wonderful, insightful trips listening to this, my friends:



I got so into it that I bought a VW van in Germany and drove to the Punjab to look for the Ali Brothers in the Lahore area, where there was a whole village of musical Ali Khans. They were away when I got there and I didn't get to see them on their home turf. However, a few years later I was working at de Kosmos, Amsterdam's meditation center. I was tired and eager to go home when one of my co-workers insisted I come with her to see some band from India playing upstairs. I was too tired but she talked me into it. And, as it turned out, it wasn't "some band from India." It was Salamat and Nazakat Ali Khan... what luck!

But that isn't the only music I listened to when I was stoned. My favorite band in the mid-'60s before I left the country, was the Rolling Stones. A new album release was always an occasion for an acid trip. And when Between the Buttons came out just before my birthday in 1967, I couldn't resist. I remember it well for many reasons. Recently a friend asked me if I felt weird with a shaved head. "No," I laughed. "I started shaving my head in 1967. I came off a fantastic acid trip in a tree next to an open window listening to Between the Buttons over and over for hours. I climbed down from the tree and went directly to the campus barber shop and had my head shaved." For me The Stones ended when Brian Jones was kicked out of the band and mysteriously died a month later. But he was in top form on Between the Buttons and "Ruby Tuesday," probably the best song on the album, was one of the only songs he ever wrote-- although he didn't get the credit.



The next year I ran into the Stones at Brad Pierce's new club at One Sheridan Square; Salvation was the name if I remember correctly. There was a very narrow, steep dark staircase going down into the club and I recall Jones was leaving as I was arriving. He gave me a long, wet kiss on the staircase and handed me a long-stemmed rose. I had never kissed a guy before. I kept the rose in a shoebox under my bed until I left for Europe in 1969.

One album-- or at least one side of one album-- I listened to on quite a few trips was The Missa Luba, a Congolese mass performed by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin. It was originally recorded in 1958 and came out in the U.S. in 1965. The side of the album was six short songs. Whether you're tripping or not this Christmas evening, I hope you enjoy them:

Kyrie



Gloria



Credo



Sanctus



Benedictus



Agnus Dei



And speaking of the beauty of the Catholic Church and some of the good stuff it has offered-- and is offering right now-- to mankind...

Is It Safe To Fly on Delta?

I'm sure there's a totally reasonable explanation for why all the U.S. carriers now offer the worst service in the skies and why Delta is even worse than the other U.S. airlines. I've long given up on Delta-- and even hesitate to use the American Express credit card that is attached to it's frequent flyer program-- and always look for an alternative when I'm flying. After Friday's blatantly bigoted outrage in Memphis, I would think a lot more Americans will stop flying Delta as well.

I suppose if you're some provincial, bucktoothed bumpkin who's never seen a Muslim cleric, one look at the two Muslim scholars boarding the Delta flight to Charlotte would be enough to ensure a panic attack. Fortunately the pilot restrained himself from shooting them and merely kicked them off "his" plane (before it took off). It didn't matter that they had been searched and body-searched not once, but twice. They had Muslim beards and hippie clothes.

Masudur Rahman, a professor of Arabic at the University of Memphis, and Mohamed Zaghloul, Imam at the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis, were asked to deplane Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 5452 from Memphis to Charlotte. They were subjected to additional security checks after the plane had pushed back from the gate, Rahman told Reuters by telephone.

After additional screening, the two men were cleared by Delta representatives to re-board the plane, but were then told the pilot would not take them, Rahman said.

Rahman said both men had been cleared for check-in and boarding by airline and Transportation Security Administration officials during normal pre-flight procedures.

According to a TSA spokesman, the decision to remove the two passengers was made by the airline.

Delta apologized-- to the passengers who were inconvenienced by the delay. The two Muslims were, ironically enough, headed for a conference on Islamophobia, where they were scheduled to lead prayers. They were 9 hours late for the conference. Delta couldn't be doing a better job if they were being paid directly by al-Qaeda. In fairness, I need to point out that Delta doesn't just discriminate against Muslims; they hate musicians (especially violinists) as well-- and musicians have joined the Delta Boycott. I hope the world's 1.5 billion Muslims do as well.

The American Federation of Musicians, the largest union representing professional musicians in the United States and Canada, is calling on its 100,000 members to boycott Delta Airlines over the airline's refusal to let musicians carry their instruments with them on board flights.

...The AFM has worked with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and U.S. airlines to educate them on the need for musicians to be able to carry fragile, valuable and sometimes, historic, instruments with them in the cabin, instead of leaving them with baggage handlers untrained in the care of such valuable cargo. Indeed, U.S. law limits the amount that airlines can be held liable for damaged, destroyed or lost luggage-- limits set far below the value of even low-grade, factory violins.
The TSA has written a letter, distributed by the AFM to its members, requesting that airline personnel accomodate professional musicians travelling with their instruments. But Delta's employees routinely ignore that request and the airline's policy has been to check all musical instruments, regardless of the airline's inability to care for them properly in the baggage hold.

In an article in the June 2006 issue of Internation Musician, AFM President Thomas F. Lee wrote, "The Federation has spoken with Delta's representatives, but without success. It appears that Delta has no concern about instrument damage. As a result, the AFM, its members, and all musicians must take a different approach to this problem. We must publicize this unfair treatment."

I don't even want to think what they'd do if anyone like these guys showed up at one of their gates!