1971: The Second Explosion-Marvin Enters My Life

Over the years, I've had many watershed moments occur in my life. They signalled major shifts in my development in profound ways. When I look back on the many different moments, I can think of no one other occurance which hit me as profoundly as the one I'm about to describe to you now.
This was the second musical explosion. Of all of the musical moments I've ever gone through in my life, this is the one that hit me with the greatest impact.
It was cold at the time of year I first heard Marvin Gaye's new single in early 1971 called "What's Going On". The song really struck me as being very different. It also had an urgency and emotional depth that lured me in completely. The voices you hear at the beginning of the song are those of Lem Barney and Mel Farr of the Detroit Lions defensive backfield. They speak in the vernacular of the day and I identified with it right away. And then the saxophone kicks in before Marvin starts singing those opening lines. It was so incredibly dramatic to these young ears. I began to carry the song around with me to school over at St. Paul's in very heavy rotation in my head. Though other music was always in my head (even during this time), I really began obsessing over it. I didn't know it at the time, but I was unconsciously working out what the song really meant to me even though it was obvious. It's just that the moment of clarity hadn't quite come yet. I needn't have worried. It was coming.
I can still clearly visualize and feel the day it happened. I can still feel the moment of impact when it all came together for me.
It was during a morning recess at St. Paul's. I decided to head out to teh area of the schoolyard where the swings were. I guess I decided that I didn't need to communicate to anybody at that particular moment in time. It was damned cold outside and I was bundled up. As it turns out, the weather was appropriate to the song. I noticed that there was a swing open to me and that it was at a comfortable height for me to be able to just hop on and work things out while I was on it. When I got there, I had a choice of either sitting on it facing the school or looking out the other way. I chose to look out the other way. That way was in the direction of the Coburg Hills. It gave me an expansive view. This too was appropriate. I was about to undergo a revolutionary expansion of my mind.
So there I was. I was swinging on the swing and getting the desired height I wanted from the force of my going back and forth. The cool air was hitting my face. And then it happened. "What's Going On" popped into my head. When it did, I was listening to the song straight through as if I was at home on Fir Acres Drive on my radio. It was playing with ease in my head. All at once, as I was thinking of the song, I began to remember thinking about all of the times I had been watching the news with any interest (going back to 1968 on the old Lorane Ranch and on up to the then present day) and seeing all of the reports on the latest casualty figures coming from Vietnam. I was also having visions of the past and present film coverage of the war in the field. It completely fucking hit me at that moment with tremendous force that I did not like the fact that people were being killed. I did not like the fact that there was war. I also realized that this song was really important. This song was telling me that all music was important even if it wasn't about war. As a young child, I became my own little activist as I swung on that swing and looked out at the Coburg Hills. I began imagining that the Coburg Hills were the hot valleys of Vietnam and that there were people with guns killing each other while I was freezing in the cool weather.
What "What's Going On" did for me was encapsulate all of the music I ever heard before that moment and all that I would ever listen to in the future in state of forward progress in my thinking. My own personal evolution had just taken a tremendously great leap. From here on out, my connection was going to grow more personal and also more interconnected with what was going on around in the real world and with how human beings related to each other in so many different regards.
I have spent many years telling people about my love/hate relationship with Oregon and how I commonly refer to myself as a misplaced Californian in having lived here over the past little over 30 years. But I can honestly say that the greatest moment of an event having an impact on me happened right here in Eugene. It is the one I just described to you.
Marvin continued my expansion with the follow-up single that came out later in 1971. That was "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)". The Back To Earth movement was getting into major gear as the disillushionment of the '60s was setting in further within the collective consciousness of all of us living through the times. Marvin Gaye set a tone of seriousness that was on a different level than anybody else and it cut right through me so clearly with straight ahead vision.
Marvin Gaye and the "What's Going On" single changed my life. It also altered the course of my life as well. I carry it with me. For all of his troubles he had in his life, I carry this moment of impact as a tribute to him for getting it all rolling for me. "What's Going On" made the impact of what I had felt with George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" in the Fall of 1970 on my way to Valley River Center seem so much more clearer to me. It even made me realize why "Hey Jude" from The Beatles hit me so hard. I understood now. My intuitive voice that doesn't always speak in words as we know it became much more developed as a result of "What's Going On". From here on out, my sense of sophistication with music was only going grow even deeper. I learned that music isn't background entertainment. It's a front and center, demanding of your full attention cultural barometer of what is happening in your life as you are living it.
It is here that I want to take a moment to urge all of you to please consider getting yourself a copy of the What's Going On album and listen to the whole thing yourself. It is a 5-star album. Every track on the album is strong and profound. It is an album that is universal to all of us. It is also unique to the Black experience as well. It is an album that should be a lesson to white people like myself to learn from. For those of you who have standard CD players, please go out and buy the 2-CD Deluxe Edition of What's Going On on Universal. You can hear the original album mix as well as the mix Marvin envisioned it having before it was changed to become what we would know as the album. You will also hear the original single mix of "What's Going On" that I heard before the album even came out. You will also hear an unreleased live performance from 1972 of Marvin performing the entire album. For the record, I never owned a copy of the full album until the early 1980's. The rest of the album would have hit me like a ton of bricks had I bought a copy and brought it home with me.
This is a landmark album which needs to be required as being in anybody's music collection. It radically altered the musical landscape for everybody-to say the least for Soul Music. That's the other thing. Listening and taking in these precious singles of Marvin Gaye fully legitimized that Soul Music was vital and definitely great music for me to be listening to as well as Rock and Roll.
For those of you fortunate enough to have Universal or SACD players, I encourage you to pick up another copy of What's Going On to supplement the 2-disc Deluxe Edition from Universal Music. I highly encourage you to get the Gold SACD hybrid of What's Going On from Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. Though it is only a 2-channel mix, the SACD will bring out elements as only SACDS can. If you are capable of having both kinds of systems, I highly encourage you to get two of the copies I have mentioned. They can also be found at online retailers as well.
In closing this post for now. I just want to say that What's Going On as we know it came from a very troubled soul in Marvin. A late friend of mine who played in the NFL in the '50s and '60s discussed Marvin a few times. One of the teams he played for was the Detroit Lions. He used to hang out at some of the watering holes that a lot of Motown people used to go to to unwind. The word going around about Marvin back then was that Marvin was an incredible talent and that people were blown away by that talent. Unfortunately, they were also saying that he was a very disturbed man who had very deep moods. The story is well known among music fans, but Marvin once tried out for the Detroit Lions because he had an obsession with wanting to do it. That's how Lem Barney and Mel Farr became associated with Marvin. They became his friend while the Lions players were trying to get down to the serious business at hand of trying to prepare for another season. They had to do this while this great singer had it in his head that he wanted to be an NFL football player. My friend used to tell me that that people in the Lions organization thought the poor guy was a little nuts. But that was Marvin. Bless him for it. I can't imagine "What's Going On" without Lem and Mel being on the track.
For all of my friends and classmates in California that I wouldn't get to see again until the Fall of '72, the changed person you saw when I walked into the schoolyard across the street to start 5th Grade was so changed because of the event I have just described to you. If you want to know why I took to music as my identity and when you communicated with me, I point you straight to this moment. That's the one that did it for me.
To those people whom I know at this current moment in time, I say the same thing. Look to that moment on a cold day in 1971. That's the one. That's the epicenter of my personality.

The First Expansions: Third & Fourth Grades Fall of 1970-Late Summer 1972

Dad drove me up to Eugene in the late Summer of 1970. Instead of taking the usual route to the Lorane Ranch to spend the Summer like I did back in '68 and '69, we headed straight to Eugene and the place I would call home for almost the next two years. Little did I know of the impending musical explosion which was going to occur for me. In hindsight, the elements were definitely setting themselves in place.
You, the reader, are going to have to keep in mind that I had finally been on a path of somekind of social normalcy by the time 2nd Grade was nearly through. The shell which was surrounding me as a result of all of the health matters was beginning to break down. So, when my parents decided to move up to Eugene, the forward progress was halted. Since I was being thrown into a new situation, I went in reverse. I went into the private world mode that I had been used to since kindergarten.
This section of time will take me more than one post to cover. I also consider the 3rd and 4th Grade period of my life here to have been almost one continual school run instead of being totally distinguished from the other.
I arrived at the new house on what used to be 180 Fir Acres Drive. The house is still there, but it is now part of Bond Lane. When I lived there, it was a gorgeous tri-level home built by a couple from Kansas (if I'm recalling correctly). It may well have been the most perfectly built house that I've ever lived in. It had, among other things, laundry shoots you could throw your clothes in that went straight to the laundry room downstairs. It also had a radio/intercom system throughout the house so that all my Mom had to do to call us into dinner was to alert us on the intercom. The house was set on at least a half an acre of land. The backyard was spectacular. Back when I lived there, there was a piece of property in front of us with a field where there was a horse living in it. On the other end of Fir Acres Drive, there was the old Fir Acres Market which is now a Dairy Mart.
Almost immediately upon my arrival at the new house, I set up shop in what would be my bedroom for a short time. I had my record player and my Monkees & Herman's Hermits records all set to go. I also had a radio set up as well. When my Dad left to go back to Santa Clara to proceed with the rest of the move up, I was left alone in the house with my Grandfather. It was during this time that the role of the radio was going to grow in great significance. I can still remember hearing Stevie Wonder's cover version of "We Can Work It Out" on the little radio as I was hanging out in the red carpet of the room.
Once Mom and my brothers came rolling in with my Dad, my room got set up and that's when things began to take off for me. The first big explosion of my mind happened. It took place in September of 1970 as Dad loaded all of us up into the station wagon and took us over to our first trip to Valley River Center. The radio was on in the car. It was up loud enough for me to get a qaulity listen in to what was being played. And then it happened. I heard the beautiful acoustic guitar opening. And then came the great electric guitar accompaniment. Right afterwards came a familiar voice that I knew from the late '60s so very well. "My Sweet Lord/Omm My Lord/I really want to see You/". We all knew that The Beatles no longer existed as they had actually broken up in early 1970 even though the Let It Be album was still up in the charts competing with Simon & Garfunkel's last album Bridge Over Troubled Water. It was when I heard "My Sweet Lord" on the radio that evening that something got set off inside of me. My sensitivity towards music got raised up quite a few notches more. There was an emotional depth that I was jumping towards. That jump made it so that when I happened to hear "Let It Be' and "Bridge Over Troubled Water", I was really getting into the music and the words of what was being said. I may not have understood the literal meaning of some things, but my intuitive musical voice was accelerating.
This trip to Valley River Center was centered on us three boys going to Crystal Ship Records for our first time to get our first Oregon records-at least it was for me. I don't know about my brothers. I came away with buying the American version of The Beatles-A Hard Days Night soundtrack album. It was also the first time I would ever lay my eyes on the coolest purchase bags I've ever laid my eyes on. Crystal Ship made the coolest bags on Earth in my eyes with the big Crystal Ship on it. I was always very reluctant to part with my bags. In fact, I kept most of them for a very long period of time and I kept them in great shape too. This wasn't to be my first trip to a Crystal Ship store, It wouldn't be the only particular one either. I would discover the one downtown.
Because of radio, this was also the time when I began to expand my musical vocabulary beyond the records I happened to have. I was being opened up to more than one kind of music. Hearing Stevie Wonder's version of The Beatles "We Can Work It Out" opened me up to Soul Music. But I also started to learn and actually remember one-shot artists. The earliest one I recall wrapping myself around was R. Dean Taylor's "Indiana Wants Me". Another familiar voice opened my eyes to another form of music I was to be exposed to. It was dear Mike Nesmith of my beloved Monkees (who had also essentially broken up) with his new Country single "Joanne".
More Soul Music was beginning to jolt me awake into a new form of taking in information to my heart and soul. Two great Motown singles nailed my attention when we all first moved in. I learned that guitars weren't the only thing which could make me open up to hearing somebody else's sadness and pleading. "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)" from Jr. Walker & the All-Stars snuck into my heart and affected me. I identified with the song because I wanted a girlfriend too. Walker's sax playing spoke volumes to me-such Soul, you know? Speaking of Soul, I got laid out flat by the urgent in your face vocal delivery of the post Diana Ross Supremes doing "Stoned Love". I was in the early stages of realizing that Black people carried a message I needed to hear.
An occurance happened during the early morning of September 19th, 1970 which would set into motion something which would become a watershed even for me when I had moved back to Santa Clara. I went downstairs with my brother Mike (who slept in another room upstairs) to go and get something and my brothers met up in the downstairs hallway (John slept in a bedroom downstairs). I was standing right next to them and I was able to hear their conversation perfectly because they were speaking up more than was normal for them. On their radios, they both had started getting into FM. They had KZEL on. And then they began to talk in front of me. "Did you hear the news?" "Did you hear about what happened to Hendrix?" To the both of them, this was big news. I picked up on it and really zeroed in on it. This was a musician and they really cared about the news on this guy. This musican died and my brothers heard it on their respective radios before they got up. The name Jimi Hendrix stuck in my head like glue. It was not to be until 1973 that Jimi was to really make his way into my life. But I suspect that my angels wanted me to take stock of other music before I took the step towards Jimi. They wanted to set me up for maximum impact later on and that other impacts were necessary for me to be experienced beforehand.
My Dad really liked the fact that I took to Nesmith's "Joanne" as he liked the song a lot. He was one of the typical parents of the time. To do Country music idioms was to be respectable and a sign that you were moving up in music sophistication. I was also being exposed to his other favorite at the time-Jerry Reed. My Dad had a thing about his two big singles from back in 1970. He absolutely loved "When You're Hot You're Hot" and "Amos Moses". Well, I liked them too because they were making my Dad happy. A happy Dad made me feel comfortable. So, I could dig it.
There was another Country song that I bet my Dad thought might have been a little weird and couldn't figure out just what the hell they were really suggesting. I couldn't make heads not tails of what the song was about either. What had me convinced was the music itself and the genuine delivery I was getting from Roger McGuinn. My first Byrds single I ever fell in love with was "Chestnut Mare". It was a Country/Folk song about a man's love for a mystical horse. The part about when the singer finally manages to ride on the horse and then goes off the cliff with it just captivated me. Unfortunately, I could not figure out most of the words, but I knew something big was happening in the song and that they both went over the cliff. Dramatic imagery was setting itself into my life.
I had all of this music and much more going on inside of me as I entered a new school. It was St. Paul Elementary. I made it to 3rd Grade and was presented with a whole new set of people I had never even known existed before. It was downright shit-inducing. At least one nice thing was the fact that my new teacher was Mrs. Conte. I recognized right away that she was pleasant to look at. The only thing with her is that I don't remember much about her at all. As a result of going backwards in a socail way, I don't think I interacted with her a whole hell of a lot. I think I also reverted back to my intuitive method of learning all of my lessons again. It was almost all book learning all over again. I can't even remember where I sat in 3rd Grade. I can't recall if Mrs. Conte was a stationary teacher or if she walked around much when she was teaching. Really, I don't know how the hell I got through it at all. Apparently, I was doing something right. I didn't know it until 4th Grade, but Mrs. Conte and others were noting that I was a great reader.
For as young as I was, I can only remember two things-maybe three about Mrs. Conte which stands out to me. If she's still alive, I hope this doesn't embarrass her, but it's human and honest. It's also something that young boys have had happen to them throughout the ages. 1)Mrs. Conte was the first teacher I ever had with whom I developed a bit of a lust for even though I still didn't know about sex yet (although I had a bit of an idea based on watching horses screw on the Lorane Ranch LOL!) 2)The one interaction with her that I most definitely recall with calirty concerned the time that I chose Matt A. to have the honor of being locked up in the boy's bathroom with me so that he could listen to a tape recording I made of a horror movies I taped off of our t.v set. Mrs. Conte got mad at me for turning the bathroom into my private room away from home and not being able to allow the other guys to go and take a leak when they needed to. Mrs. Conte took away my tape recorder from me for about a week or 10 days as punishment. I was bummed out although I didn't mind being chewed out by a pretty lady. 3) I can't recall if this actually happened or not, but I could swear that, on Halloween of 1970 or 1971, I got some candy from her at her place and that I got to see her husband very briefly for the one and only time.
Now I can make a little sidenote. I mentioned the tape recorder just now. Well, you see. I was developing an artistic and bootlegging side to my personality at an early age because of my hearing. It was up here in Eugene that I began to make my first tape recordings. I developed a love of taping shows so that I could listen to them again later on in order to really get a flavor for the episodes I was watching. This would be where images began to grown in importance to me.
My music world was beginning to grow immense and intimate at the same time. My mind was ripe for further expansion. Another mega-ton explosion was not too far off. This next one was going to radically change things for me. I always point to this particular one as being exceptionally important to me as it influences me to this day. I will post more about this period time soon. It is going to take me a few posts to tell you about 1970-1972.

Two More '60s Incidents of Importance

Before I start jumping off towards the time I moved up to Eugene in 1970, I have a few loose ends I wish to tie up. There are two memories that I can think of that really stand out to me.
I can't seem to pin down exactly when it was. It was either 1968 or 1969. I was walking down Franklin Street in front of my house. I was getting ready to go back into my house when some older gentleman approached me on the same sidewalk to my house as I was on. I didn't quite to know what to make of this as this person saw me and started to slow down. He looked down at me and he said that he had something to give me. He pulled it out of one of his pockets and he then pinned this thing on my shirt. It was a red, white and blue peace sign medal that was made up just like a real veteran's war medal. I still have it and I wear it on my jeans jacket that I usually wear in the Spring, Summer and early Fall. This was very likely my real one true '60s moment although I'd like to think that the music I was listening to and being exposed to was also part of the real deal as well.
I never saw that guy again. My Dad did once tell me that there was a house down the street from us and set across the street that I was to avoid going near. I'm wondering if the guy who gave me the medal came from that house? My Dad also use to half-jokingly/half seriously tell me that I was going to get sent to a hippie house across the street if I didn't behave every so often. The liklihood is that my Dad knew of the people who lived there and either knew as fact or strongly suspected that a young person there was dabbling in the drug culture. This was one of the reasons why Dad used to haul me and my brothers up to the old Lorane ranch every Summer back then. He just didn't want us kids to get involved with anything drug oriented.
In fact, as a favor to my late family physician, Dr. Kirschner, his son came up to our ranch one Summer to do hay work and generally get the ol' Conservative work ethic thing going in him as a way of breaking him of the temptations of the drug stuff. I think he had begun dabbling. Probably as far as he ever got was pot. A lot of people don't realize that things got scary in the late '60s as it was no longer just pot and some LSD. Every person I've ever spoken to from down there who was old enough or have read about in interviews all tell me or say the same thing. The real Summer of Love was in 1966 up in San Francisco-not 1967 when it was practically an advertisement. By 1967, the major creeps who didn't care about human beings at all started moving into the area to pedal the harder stuff which would create major problems. That's when heroin and angel dust, among other things, began to take over. I suspect that my Dad knew all of this based on what he was hearing from the Chief of Police.
The other thing which really stands out to me which I have forgotten to mention in other posts is the fact that the Franklin Street house that I lived in was a block down from a Carmelite Monastery. It was a walled Monastery that you could not see into. It had a large gate where you had to gain permission to enter. All you could see from my house were all of the huge trees growing in the practically block-long square.
I would hear the nuns ring the bells there everyday a couple of times a day. I was lucky enough to be able to go into the hallowed ground a few times when I lived down there. Since my Dad loved to fish and counted numerous priests among his friends, he used to like to drop off donations of black bass that he used to catch at Calaveras Lake to the nuns in there.
I never got to actually get out of the truck to walk into the residence there. Dad did. But I can tell you that I was awestruck, even as a young child, as to how beautiful it was in there. There was so much lush greenery in there. Plus, it was so serene as well because I guess the nuns were of the type of order where talking was held to a bare minimum.
Even though I have problems with organized religion as an adult, I actually have pleasant memories of the Monastery. I should also say that I've always held an intuitive greater esteem for nuns than I ever did for priests in general. I'll be explaining more of the reasons why I've felt this way when I get around to typing about the big '72-'76 years.
I've been tempted to write about my '60s sports experiences, but I think I am going to put them in a separate post one of these days. For all of my great ability to remember things, I am hazy on when I actually played my first season of Little League baseball. I can't recall if I played in 1969 and did not play in the Summer of '70 because of my impending move or if I actually played in the Summer of 1970 and then moved right up to Eugene shortly afterwards.
Then came the move to Eugene and the big changes. It included two definite early explosions that set off a revolution in my way of viewing the world.

The State of My Health

Before I go on telling more stories and covering musical ground, I have to get this off of my chest. I feel the need to let people know about the state of my health. I am having days where I could swear that when people ask me if I'm doing o.k., they are really saying "How bad off are you?" This is getting really annoying because I've gotten pretty adept at hearing the way people use their voices to ask me something as simple as this.
For the record, I am not on my last legs! I am not in bad physical shape. I was given the clean bill of health for my heart back in 1974 when my last angiogram was performed on me. Yes, I deal with severe Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I have not had any flareups in quite a few months. In fact, I don't think I've had any bad shitting attacks at all this year that I can recall. Having Bowel Syndrome forces you to become very diligent and disciplined as far as what you can eat. It will scare the shit out of you people when I list my daily food intake for you in a post coming fairly soon from now. I've been dealing with IBS for the past little over 15 years since I was diagnosed. It took me 2 years to figure out what I could eat after I lost being able to eat everything under the sun for all of my life up to the early '90s.
Now, what some of you people need to get over is that, yes, I am thin. Get over it! Do I dress up like Nanook of the North in the Fall, Winter and a chunk of Spring? Yes. Get over it! Skinny people get cold. Do I look like death warmed over when I come in to work out in the morning? Sometimes. It's probably because I slept warm and stayed up too late the night before. I get a little grouchy when I haven't slept enough. Get over it!
I sometimes get to feeling like people are being nice to me because they see me as this fragile little guy. Have they bothered to check out the weight that I do on some of the machines at Oz Fitness? Yes, my workouts are very short-15 minutes tops if nobody is talking to me. Would I like to do more than one set on the machines? Yes. If only my Bowel Syndrome would allow me to eat more. But what some of you don't understand is that, of the food that I can eat, I can't pig out on it. I have to eat the same amount of the same food everyday in order to not throw my system out of whack and feel like shit-literally and figuratively. This is what forces the diligence and discipline upon myself. You also don't see the fact that I take my wonderful dog out for a 20 minute walk every morning of everyday, rain or shine, in order to keep up my cardio and bowel health. After I come home from Oz, I take her out for the walk. Then, on the mornings I don't go to Oz, I take her out at almost the same time as when I come home from a workout. I am not on my last legs, people. This leads me to my next point. You will have to forgive me for my crudity, directness and being straight to the point. This is directed at the ladies. I am putting it in the next paragraph so that it will stand out and that you will understand it very clearly. O.k., Here comes the next paragraph.>>>>>>>>>>>
I am not in such bad shape that I can't fuck!!.
Instead of some of you people just talking to me like a normal person, I think you are guarded against wondering if everything is physically o.k. with me or not. What is happening, as a result, is that I am getting isolated even more and more. When you do that, it gets me to feeling like I'm ugly (as in unattractive), have done something wrong to displease people and it causes me to get a little defensive. Add to that, like everybody else in life, I deal with a few dickheads here and there who piss me off because they are what they are. Understand where I'm coming from. o.k.?
In something which I will write about one of these times, I went to Nevada back in 1989 and 2001. I did not go to Las Vegas to gamble. My isolation made me finally have to go to brothels in order to even feel like I was having anything even resembling the experiences you were. For each time I went to the houses out in the desert, I spent at least two hours with the ladies I chose to be with. In a few cases, they could have gotten in trouble with their house madames because they spent longer than the two hours we booked ourselves for. Trust me when I tell you, the two hours were not spent talking (with one exception). They were spent having sex. If I'm supposed to be in such bad shape, then why did I spend two hours with these women and doing the wild thing? In one case, I spent two hours with two ladies at once.
If you want to talk about my psychological health, I think I can easily say that I'm confused in a lot of ways and hurt in others. I'm now in my late 40's (48 to be exact). I don't think things are ever going to be fully normal for me. But I'd like to think that there are some women out there who can help me to catch up. I have never wanted kids. My dog is my kid. That's enough for me to handle. An animal will always be my kid. They aren't as full of shit as kids anyway. I don't care how old you are (be legal please-I don't do that underage shit), but your maturity is the key. Please be mature so that you can break through a lot of bullshit.
The other part of my psychological health is based upon embitterment. Don't put me through things I've been going through since Grade School and had repeated in High School and College. Don't play on the stereotype that, since I'm thin, wear hearing aids and have never had a girlfriend (ie-a lover; I've had plenty of female buddies-only friends), don't assume that I'm going to roll over easily and accept your introducing me to some obese, Rubinesque women or substance absuing loser or some kind of religious reborn again nut-job. Set me up with someone that you yourself would want to be with or associated with.
Isolation is a weird thing. People say that you must have a moral structure. Isolation doesn't allow me to have much of one with the way things are going. I have my idealizations of what I'd like to see happen. I'd like to be with a woman in the regular way. She's single or just divorced. But if I can't have things happen in the normal way, then I can't rule out the possibility of being in a not so entirely ideal situation if only because I'm human and have needs too. I don't believe in having affairs with women who are in happy marriages. If they are in open or convenience marriages, then I can see myself with a woman for a short time in that situation if I am forced into it and have no choice. If things are going badly in a marriage, I can see a short fling happening as well. But it's not something I want to have to be caught in a cycle over. If I'm allowed to live in a normal fashion, then I stand a better chance at a relationship in the more relatively normal way. I'll end up meeting a single woman and we proceed from there. I came close to having an affair with an older woman a few years back, but I decided she was too old for me and I got the impression that she was too unstable psychologically-in other words, she was a bit of a nut. I walked away from it.
I don't want to go back to Nevada ever again. I've been there and done that. It's time for me to experience things that everybody else does.
I also have other pressures I'm dealing with which I will not discuss on my blog as of yet. It invovles family and I consider it too dangerous to be posting about. I have about 3 really close friends who know what I'm talking about and are kept very closely informed of the situation as it happens. I am in great hope that this situation will be of considerably less stress to me within the next year to year and half. By then, I hope that a few cycles I've been put through will have been mostly broken by then. I am aware of them. I have been aware of them for a long time. That awareness has helped me a lot.
I am generally doing fine. Yes, I'm a bit eccentric. I think outside the box in some areas and I've lived a life off of the beaten path. Please don't hold my health against me. I would like for it to be better, but I am not some ambulance case. I'm doing fine with the cards I've been handed. I don't work. I don't think I was ever meant to. But I'm fully functional. So please, allow me to live a normal life. It causes a person to live inside their head too much.
We now bring you back to your regular programming...

More Early California Remembrances & Thoughts

I have more thoughts which came to me after leaving my last post. I'll leave them in random thought order as they come to me...My brother John used to have a friend of his named Gary Yoshino. I miss him and have become curious as to what has become of him. My brother only used to know hima nd talk to him back during the early days of my being in Santa Clara and before the move up to Eugene in 1970. He used to live towards Cupertino towards the Homestead Road area (if I'm recalling street names and areas correctly. I remember going to Gary's house a couple of times and having to climb up the steps to get to his front door. I also have remember the inside of his house and the sliding glass door area that led to his backyard. When I look back on him, I think it was really good for my brothers and myself to have been exposed to some diversity back in the '60s. I wish I could see him again because I have a fascination with people of Japanese ancestry. I tied to see if I could find him on Facebook. I found a Gary Yoshino. I e-mailed this person, but I never got an answer back. So, I'm pretty certain that this was not the Gary Yoshino I once knew. Gary, if you are out there, please say hello. I'd love to reconnect...Speaking of that area out near Cupertino, that's the area where my Mom would take me to get swimming lessons. I can still remember being in the station wagon with her on our way out and I would have the radio on while taking in some music. It seemed like everytime we would go out there, somebody would be playing Herb Albert & the Tiujuana Brass. Come to think of it, Mom bought me an album from them back then. Anyway, what I remember from the swimming lessons was that the swimming part and having to get used to putting my head underwater part wasn't very fun, but the phenomenon of being handled by a nice female instructor in the water was a new feeling. I quite enjoyed that...I can still see myself on the upstairs landing of the Franklin Street house and the day that my Mom spent quite a bit of time trying to get me to learn how to tie my shoes correctly. I drove her absolutely bananas. On top of it, when I finally did catch on, I developed a variation to tying my shoes which I still do to this day. My Mom was so fascinated by this development, she made sure that Father Mei (a dear family friend of ours from the University of Santa Clara) got a demonstration from me about how I tied my shoes. Father learned my technique and he was fascinated as well. Well hell, I was a screwball even back then...Franklin Street was where I had my first pets. I don't remember it, but my parents had a Beagle when I was still in the rug-rat stage and when I was starting my first attempts at standing up. According to my Mom, the damned dog used to love to come up and steal my cookies from out of my hand. He was supposed to have been pretty agressive that way. After too much stealing on the dog's part, Mom informed my Dad that the dog had to go. I was not to have a dog until I got my true first dog on Christmas Day 1969-my buddy Chainsaw...I did however, get along with a cat we had. His name was Sylvester. We got along because fine because of the fact that I was scared to death of his needle-like claws. Since I hated needles from all of the heart problems and doctor work being done on me, I wasn't getting anywhere near those claws of his. When I did have occasion to actually pet him, I always petted him from behind and never too far up front of his back and his face. I just didn't want to risk getting nailed. But basically, he was a pretty good guy. We inherited him from some neighbors who had to move out of state. Slyvester had a major run-in with a Mockingbird who took to dive-bombing him every chance it had to make life miserable for the poor cat. Sylvester finally couldn't take it anymore and decided he needed to get some revenge. He took to climbing up into a small tree we had in the backyard (I can't remember what kind of tree it was) where he would wait for long periods of time before he would give up. He would then go back up at other times and wait a long time. Finally, the right day arrived and everything fell into place for him. He got up into the tree and waited very patiently. The Mockingbird made a landing into the tree not knowing that he had company. Slyvester waited for the right time and then he pounced on the bird and finished him off for good...The Franklin Street house was a really cool old house, but there was one part of the downstairs I never really liked. In front of the bathroom downstairs that I used to use frequently (and was next to my Grandfather's room), there was metal/steel (?) grate that must have been where some house heat must have come through that I hated to walk on for some reason. I grew to tolerate it, but I never cared for it. I was always worried that I'd fall in it or trip over it in some screwball fashion...I was always around older people. I've always been endeared to maturity. I still consider maturity to be an incredibly important factor in choosing friends and also in wishing I could choose women...My first friend was my next door neighbor Tommy. We are still friends to this day. Tommy must be about 5 or 6 years younger than I am. I had a late start on having friends who were kids like me because of all of the heart stuff I went through...I used to hang out on the top part of the barbecue grill made out of brick outside and look into Tommy's yard when he was taking a nap or when he was gone. I spent a lot of quality time up on top of that thing. Sometimes Mrs. Rudd would see me up there and tell me if it was o.k. to come over to see Tommy and his brother Jeff or not... Nancy Rudd is a special person. Whenever I was over and Tommy happened to be taking an afternoon nap, she would let me go in front of her stereo console she had in the living room where she would play her Ray Charles and Nat King Cole records for me. Whenever I hear Brother Ray, I always think of her. Her husband, Bob, is a fantastic person as well. He used to play in the PCL back in the '50s...I will always identify my dear friends, The Rudds, with the two vehicles they owned. They had a Volkswagen Bug and a green Chevy truck...Across the street from the Franklin Street house was my Dad's place of business. He owned the Santa Clara Sports Shop. He fitted people like Dan Pastorini and Dennis Awtrey with with tennis shoes. He was the best tennis racquet stringer in the Santa Clara Valley. He probably single handedly gave Converse a huge lift by the number of their shoes he sold in the store. He once had Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees as a customer in the store. He knew when the La Cosa Nostra guys were coming in to buy handguns. They would buy more than one and they always paid for them with cash and then he'd let the late Frank Sapena (the Police Chief) know about it. I will always remember that store for the two bears and the wolf mounts out in the front of the store that were donated to the store for viewing purposes by Chick Karahawa (I think that is how his name was spelled). I can still remember Mom pressing up uniforms and numbers for the Santa Clara Westside Little League teams upstairs. I can still see my Grandfather and my Uncle George bullshitting their way through an afternoon in the two chairs that were in front a of Levi's jeans bin we had that up near a pillar...I still remember a horrible auto wreck in front of the store one day and all of the glass that was everywhere...Back at home, we had fish tanks in our television room. In one of the tanks, we had black bass in it. One of my Dad's favorite things to do was to bring unsuspecting people over to the house for a little bit of fun at their expense. He'd open the tank up at the top and he'd say for them to stick their finger into the water and then one of the bass would try to bite their fingers...We had a parakeet that we all loved very much. His name was Pete. We'd leave the cage door open during the daytime and he would occasionally take a quick flight around the television room and go right back into his cage. Then, we would close his door for the night and put the cage cover on over him so that he'd have some nice rest...When I think of that t.v. room, I think back on all of the Looney Tunes, Popeye and Hanna-Barbera cartoons I watched there as wellas, Godzilla movies, Ultraman, The Green Hornet, Batman and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. I also used to watch the Jackie Gleason Show quite a bit...Probably the most innocent thing that ever happened to me when I was at the Franklin Street house and the most telling of the kind of kid I was occurred the day that I noticed that I was taking pity on both of brother's pet horned toads (lizards) they had in a dry aquarium. I said to myself, "Man! That has got be a pretty cramped thing living in there." So, I decided they could use some exercise. I grabbed them out of their aquarium so that they could stretch their legs out. I took them way out towards the back garage area where there was white concrete laid out and right next door to a neighbor's house. I was hanging out there with them and watching over them when something hit me. I had this sudden urge to have to go pee. So, me and my trust I placed in animals at this young stage of my life, I told the horned toads to just stay put and that I'd be right back because I had to go to the bathroom. I got done going to the bathroom and I felt much better. When I returned to the place where I had set them down, they were nowhere in sight. I looked for them everywhere. They really let me down. Although I felt pretty good after having taken that piss, I didn't feel so good knowing that I lost both of my brother's horned toads. After all of these years of jealousy among them towards me, I sometimes wonder if the roots of some of that jealousy goes back to when I lost those horned toads?...One of the greatest musical moments occurred at an Altar Boy Picnic in what have must have been 1969. In the area over by the pool at this place we used to have to travel to every year (in May-If I'm recalling correctly), I witnessed the galvanizing eeeffcts of what music can do in bring people together. There was ajukebox next to the swimming pool there. From a distance, I saw my brother drop some money into the slot and then my brother John and George Migliaccio led the whole camp in singing along to "Hey Jude" from The Beatles. That moment has stayed with me always...I remember my oldest brother (John) playing his CCR records in his bedroom. There were actually times when he let me listen to them with him...I also remember the time when John and I were hanging out on his bed and listening to a transistor radio while listening to a report of the coming breakup of The Beatles. I can still see my brother looking over at me and saying "Paul is a baby." Little did any of us know that Paul was the one who was right in seeing that Allen Klein was ripping off the band and that it was John, George and Ringo who were making the wrong move when it came to Klein. They should have listened to Paul and got the Eastman firm to take on Klein for all four of them...There are more memories I can recall, but I have run out of time for now. I will tell more Franklin Street stories later.

St. Clare's-2nd Grade-Fall 1969-Spring 1970

1969 was a big year in many ways. It was the year of the the Apollo 11 moon landing, Woodstock, The Who release the rock opera Tommy, The Rolling Stones fire Brian Jones and then Jones dies essentially a month afterwards, the Mick Taylor Era of The Rolling Stones begins which will include 2 shows in one night at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (the 2nd show of the evening being immortalized on the famous bootleg Live'r Than You'll Ever Be), Jimi Hendrix played at the Oakland Coliseum as well which is immortalized on a Hendrix Family Dagger label release and a little band known as Led Zeppelin began to venture out in earnest on the road to conquer all. Not very well known is that they played a gig here in Eugene.
And so, 2nd Grade started for me. In my mind, music was setting in motion some of my dya to day feelings. At this young age, I had the music of Herman's Hermits and The Monkees on constant rotation in my head. It was the year that I would invest in a copy of The Beatles Yellow Submarine album and be exposed to their incredible psychedelic side with songs like "Hey Bulldog", "It's Only A Northern Song" and George Harrison's mindblowing "It's All Too Much". I was also letting Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme album dominate inside my head as well. I owned a copy of this album and it wasn't uncommon for me to have songs like "Cloudy", "The Dangling Conversation", "Homeward Bound" and the title track going on in my head.
If I can say anything with certainty about 2nd Grade, I can, without hesitation, say that I was blessed to actually have a teacher who had my best interests at heart teaching me that year. Mrs. Kaiser was a wonderful woman who knew I had hearing problems and that I had fallen behind in my math skills. She wasn't just a teacher. She was my first mentor. She also made me feel like I had a friend in her. I didn't sit completely up front at her desk that year. She liked to move around when she taught. So, she had me sit in an area where I had a good enough chance to hear her as she was moving around. The clincher for me was that, on one of the first days of classes, she took me aside after school was over one day and she told me that I was to let her know if I didn't hear anything. She would personally see to it that I would understand what I had missed. I finally had a teacher I could trust. For pure teaching ability, she may have been the best teacher I ever had at St. Clare's. She got points home to us in a non-intimidating or detached manner. She really wanted us to learn.
2nd Grade was also where the ham side of me got to reveal itself for the first time. There was to be some sort of presentation at the end of the year where every class was to present some kind of musical number at the 5th-8th Grade yard across the street that the parents were to see. I can still very clearly visualize the day Mrs. Kaiser and some other teacher were privately scouting out our class when she put some music on for us to see who had a musical apptitude or enthusiasm. They were trying to be sneaky about it. I caught her and this other teacher looking in after she had walked out of the room and told our class to listen to this music. I knew that she was gauging us for this paegent that would take place in the Spring. Well, I listened to this music and I started really getting into it because I could see the both of them peeking in. I hammed it up in a big way and was also trying my best to make it look natural. Little did I know what was going to be planned for me as a result!
Well, Spring rolled around and school was starting to wind down. This presentation by all of the classes finally came around. Now, I can't recall if we practiced for this thing or not. I could swear that we had to have done so. My hamming it up earlier in the year came back to me. When our class did the presentation, everybody stood together as a group and played along to the music except for one guy (and I very slightly recall that there was a girl who was chosen as the female big music appreciator of our class). Well, the guy was yours truely. I recall very clearly being given a percussion instrument that I could bang away on to my heart's content. When we were up there, I just gravitated towards it. I loved it. I felt like I was a star.
On the same day, I ran a race in that very yard and I recall that I ran so hard in trying to win the race that I fell down and cut myself pretty well on the cement. That resulted in a trip across the street back to the office of Mrs. Cintas (perhaps?was she there at this point yet?) to get bandaged up and taken care of.
2nd Grade was also a time where I started being more sociable with my own classmates. I think it was 2nd Grade, but I recall that we had gotten the news that Danny H. had broken his arm and that we wouldn't see him for a while. Shortly before he came back for school after he had his arm in a cast, I remember that I suggested to the class that we go over to where his Dad would rop him off and that we should cheer him when he got out of the car. He arrived and we did, indeed, cheer him back to school as if he was a returning warrior.
The whole social situation seemd to improve as a result of another year of our having to play kickball again. We pretty much knew who was a good player and who wasn't. My left foot was getting great results on the field which helped matters.
I have to say that I have a specific memory which always stays in my mind of the first two years I spent at St. Clare's. There were times when Mom and Dad might drop me off to school in their car-especially if the weather was horrible. But most of the time, I used to walk to school. It was when I used to make my turn towards the area of the Santa Clara Public Library that I used to walk by a house everytime in the mroning and afternoon where I could smell fish coming out of it. This was the old-time Portuguese influence of Old Town Santa Clara in full-force in my life. For as long as I shall live, I will never forget that smell.
It was during this particular schoolyear that I discovered that I liked other females as well. Specifically, that I liked older girls who were ahead of me in school. For starters, at that early age, I discovered that I like a classmate of my oldest brother from a distance. Does anybody remember Shelly Burns?
There was also a time when my Mom dropped me off for an afternoon to be babysat by two girls over on Hilmar Street (a street which would a few years laters frown in importance to me and be only a block away from the next Santa Clara house I would live in.). Mom dropped me off at the home of Mr & Mrs. Bob Fatjo where I was to be looked over by Lolita Fatjo and her friend Laura Preppeira (sp?). This was very confusing to me as I developed a crush on two girls all at once. As far as I was concerned, they were both beautiful. I still chuckle about this to this day. I can clearly remember the laundry room they had and how I hung out next to their washing machine for a while.
2nd Grade was also the time when I got to see Donna C. perform a number at a school gym show of some kind. She was sitting under a table and was singing about a song about getting into trouble. I remember I once talked to her about The Monkees and she told me that she really like Davey Jones. All the girls liked Davey Jones. Yep!
This was a year where I got to know the friends of my older brothers a lot better. I really liked them a lot. There was George Migliaccio (sp?-someone whom I will write about more as he is a very special person to me), Paul Gleason and the late John Perry. I must make mention of John Perry here. It was just a word association thing I was starting to develop, but I started calling him Prarie Dog because of his last name. I can still visualize the time he came over to play basketball at our house on Franklin Street. I can still recall going over to Paul Gleason's house and seeing my first picture of The Rolling Stones on his wall there. I looked at it and it left an impression on me although I didn't make any connection then.
There was a day when both of my brothers friends came over to play records in John's bedroom. The record, that I believe Paul Gleason brought over, was a copy of Through The Past Darkly from The Rolling Stones. There was also the time that a group of John abd Mike's friends came over, locked themselves up in his room and ran a tape recorder and taped themselves doing a spoof on Star Trek which I attempted to listen to with my ear pressed up against the door as hard as I could so that I could hear them. I got to hear them do their sendup of the opening song and their calling Kirk Twirp and Spock something like Shlock.
2nd Grade was where my parents were getting a little desperate in knowing that my math skills were falling way behind. They got some studnet from the University of Santa Clara to come over and try to get math to sink into my head. His name was Greg. For the life of me, I could swear that this was the same Greg who would later be a P.E. teacher to us guys in 7th or 8th Grade. I'm not positive on this. The poor guy tried his best. It just wouldn't sink in.
Towards the end of my finishing up 2nd Grade, I knew that my family was going to be moving up to Eugene. I can still see that last day of school and saying goodby to Mrs. Kaiser and the huge bear hug I got from her.
I recall my First Communion and not being very impressed with the whole thing. After it was over with, I wanted to get back home and watch cartoons.
One of my great regrets is that I was asked to come up to a basketball game in Oakland with my parents and my brothers to go and see the Oakland Oaks play. I passed. I wanted to watch television. I shouldn't have done this as a couple of years later (and even now), I would come to worship this league with an almost religious fervor because of all of the things I would hear and read about it-the ABA (American Basketball Association). I could have seen Rick Barry when he played with the Oaks. What was I thinking?
I want to write about it in another separate post, but I got my first dog on Christmas Day in 1969. It started a lifelong affinity that I developed with animals. He was a special little guy.
The end of 1970 was going to be a big time for me and filled with big changes. I was also going to start taking some big leaps in other areas of my life.

Music Sweet Music # 2

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't left a post here in a while. I've been busy. Though I can't make any guarantees, I am going to try to leave more posts over the course of the weekend. I also want to catch up on some reading as well. Now, on to business. Before I start going off on one of my various tangents, I have some hard news to actually report that I have not seen over at the Hoffman Forum and IMWAN.
Some great old music from Africa has just been released (and in one case was released earlier this year) and will be released in 2010. I have been pushing the Soundway and Analog Africa labels very hard for the pst almost two years. Well, here's what's new that's been released
-Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-81-Soundway-Now Available.
-Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo De Contonou-Echos Hypnotiques Vol. 2-Analog Africa-Now Available
-Legends of Benin-Analog Africa-(released earlier this year)
On top of this, Rolling Stone magazine made mention of an Ethiopian Jazz compilation that appears to be essential to own. It is:
-Mulatu Astatke-New York-Addis-London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975-on the Strut label.
In a label-releated note (though it does not have to do directly with Africa), the Soundway label has also just released a title called:
-Tumbele: Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds From The French Caribbean 1963-74.
To go along with all of this, the big news is that a label known as Knitting Factory is going to be releasing new reissues of all 45 albums from the great Highlife artist Fela Kuti during the course of 2010 as well as albums by his '60s Highlife band Koola Lobitos. You can Google Fela/Knitting Factory and you can see the beginning phases of the website getting everything ready. You can also Google Analog Africa's blog site and read up on their releases as well as commentary from supporters there. I'm very glad to see that more music of this nature being released. The Fela Kuti reissues have me a bit intimidated. I am going to try to put in for the stuff from the '60s all the way through at least 1974 or '75. It would really be nice if you guys over at both Hoffman and IMWAN would pick on this and spread the word around. Soundway and Analog Africa are small independent labels and they deserve being supported so that they can continue with their crate digging efforts and find these gems that they've been doing such a consistently splendid job of doing. I don't give a shit if you steal the information from here or not. Just get the word out, o.k.?
Speaking of IMWAN. You people over there have probably noticed that I haven't posted over there ever since the latest huge wave of anti-Hoffman fever broke out there after the problems Audio Fidelity had with The Doors-Morrison Hotel disc and the Lynyrd Skynyrd-Second Helping as well as some of the mastering issues some of you seem to have. I left a post over there where I mistakenly put out the possibility that perhaps industry people might have had it in for Hoffman and intentionally screwed things up at the plant. I was wrong. It really came down to some quality control issues that they are now dealing with and that I have no doubt that they are dealing with in earnest. What got me pretty upset is how I got lambasted for expressing an opinion over at IMWAN. This is an attitude that I have seen cropping up ever since the board has been taken a harder edged turn which has it's roots in the old political threads (and music threads which turned political). It is pretty ovbious that IMWAN has become a soundboard (though it has toned down lately in the music area) for Republican views there and a general overall change in tone that I have found disheartening. For the record, I am not alone in having gotten political over there. In my case, it was because I fall fairly hard to the Left (and am a Socialist on some issues) and I put out my support for Obama back in the election.
I think what's being overlooked by the people at IMWAN is the fact that a ton of the artists that they love came through and are practicing liberals themselves (with exceptions-Joe Perry of Aerosmith being one). Guys, your're discussing Conservative politics in a music forum? Are you picking up on your own disconnect? Why are you bothering to even be there in the first place? This is why I have made the decision to not leave any posts there any longer. On top of it, the egos over there have gotten out of control. You say the Gorts are heavy-handed at the Hoffman Forum. I've never really had a problem with them. I may have had a post removed because it was part of a thread that got removed. I get along fine with the majority of the people there. I've had problems with a couple of smart-asses over there from time to time, but they were only isolated incidents which may not have been directly target at me. The people that I like over there are older than myself. Some of them have not left posts there lately, but when they do, I enjoy their posts immensely because of the knowledge they bring to the table and also the way that they present themselves theere-as civilized human beings with manners. I don't get this from people at IMWAN anymore except for a couple of people. I can't take that anymore. I will continue to read information there, but I will no longer post there. My health means too much to me (as precarious as it sometimes is) to get stressed out over leaving information and opinions there and running the possibility that I'll get ridiculed or made fun of after all of the help I've given you over the last few years. It's not fun there anymore. It no longer has the wonderful feel that used to permeate the community there when it was still Pete Howard's ICE magazine board. The egos weren't out of control and the only attacks came from trolls who would inhabit the site every once in a while. So, for all of the imperfections of the Hoffman site (and there are imperfections-younger members getting a little too cocky, a few who are too possessive of generally well-established ideas that have been passed around for years and some elitism based on equipment and strict adherences to waveforms), it is not nearly as bad as what some of the IMWAN people would attempt to demonstrate. If you have a problem with Steve Hoffman with him himself, take it to him if you can. I just want the music. I post over at Hoffman now.
I have one regret. That is that I once referred to the Gorts and some of the people at Hoffman as jackboots in a post over at IMWAN. Nobody is a jackboot. It's just a goddmaned music forum and nothing else. It's what IMWAN should be and isn't any longer by my way of seeing it. It's now a bashing board. If you get a post removed at Hoffman, or banned if you go too far, it's not the end of the world people. It's just a music board. And if you don't like the fact that music artists, for the most part, are liberals by trade, then you need to get out of of music forums and start your own forum where you can shout out your conservative political ideas to your heart's content. You'll likely also have to gut the vast majority of your music collections as well (a little sarcasm to throw back at you over there).
I started this blog partly (though not exclusively) for the purpose of expressing my love of music and tying in the personal elements of why it means so much to me in the first place. I am also in the process of withdrawing little by little from the Hoffman Forum as well. I don't see posts from some of my favorite people like RobertKaneda and brainwashed there as much lately. I also enjoy the Gorts Gary and Lord Hawthorne too. I think they must be feeling that the music forums are starting to become a little too heated as well. Some of you IMWAN posters might want to take a look at posts by people like them and learn from them as far as how they present themselves. You might actually like yourself better instead of hiding behind your personas that are guarded by the anonymity of a keyboard. Thank God that IMWAN has nice people like Federico and NoURider over there. I suppose it's not a complete loss.

Starting St. Clare's-1968-1969-Part 2

Out teacher for 1st Grade was a nun named Sister Sheryl(sp). If I am recalling correctly, she was from Australia or had been there. My classmates are going to need to clarify something for me. I understand that you would later have a Sister Sheryl teach you when you were either in 3rd or 4th Grade. Was she the same one we had in 1st Grade or not? I was not in California for 3rd or 4th Grade and that's why I'm asking.
When we began our classes, the word was passed to Sister Sheryl that I was hearing impaired and that I needed to sit up front. Unfortunately, people got their signals crossed when it came to understanding which of my ears was the worse ear of the two. It was my right ear which was the one that had the most amount of loss. Somebody must have said my left was the worst of the two. Even though I sat in the first row of desks in front of Sister Sheryl's desk, guess where I was placed? When you faced the chalkboard and her desk, I was placed on the left side. What this accomplished was that my bad right ear blocked out any clarity of what she would be saying if she turned part of the way around or when she faced the blackboard completely and with her back turned to us. For the most part, I got along pretty well when she spoke. I lost a lot when it came to math. This was something I was to pay a dear price for. I started the process of not comprehending and falling behind on my math skills. I have never been able to overcome my math problems and I consider myself to be essentially mathematically illiterate. This was to become a big obstacle in my schooling clear on up through college and even to this very day. It wasn't until the second half of the year, after I told my Mom about where I had been, that my seat was changed to being in the front row on the right side of Sister Sheryl's desk so that I could hear her more properly. I still couldn't figure her out whenever she turned her back to us even from there.
However, I did develop quite an apptitude for English skills and reading and essentially anything that didn't have to do with numbers. My ability and advancement in reading skills at an early level came about by accident. And yes, my hearing was the big factor. I recall very clearly that Sister Sheryl gave us a reading assignment out of our reader. She told us verbally first. Then, she wrote it down (the one or two chapters we were to cover) on the blackboard. Before I was able to write down what we were supposed to read for that night, she erased it off the board. When I got picked up by my Mom in her car, we went off to somewhere on the El Camino Real (I believe-I can visualize it, but I could never remember the street names down there) to stop by at a fabric store that my Mom needed to go to. Just before she got out of the car to go in, she told me that she was going to be in there for quite a while and that I should lock up the car and just stay until she was done. I had nothing better to do, so I started to read out of my reader. Mom was gone for so long that I just kept reading beyond the first couple of chapters. What ended up happening was that I read the entire book in that one sitting. Whereas I fell far behind in math, I ended up jumping ahead in a huge gain on my reading and English skills.
What I remember of Sister Sheryl is that she was a small woman and that I barely communicated with her at all even though I was starting some very important schooling. In fact, the only time I recall interacting with her in class was because I didn't realize that I was flirting with getting into some kind of trouble somehow. I recall something of her pointing me out in class and saying something about getting into a doghouse and I pretended I was a puppy a kind of barked something back at her. I couldn't figure out a damned thing she said or was referring to. From having to sit up front, I do recall that Ana V. sat right next to me or in the very near vicinity.
I also have a memory of a time when Sister Sheryl took us all outside to the yard one afternoon to talk to us about something she was trying to teach us. I don't know if it had anything to do with Science or not because I allowed myself to stand too far behind to hear her clearly. I can still see myself facing off to the left and behind you guys on the Santa Clara Street side of the yard while she was speaking. Instead of attempting to listen to her, I became fascinated by something else instead which caught my attention. The moon was up in the sky behind her. I just looked at it for a long time. By this time in my life, I was already a big fan of the Apollo rockets and the NASA space program. I looked at it and I realized, in a childlike way, that I was developing an emotional attachment to the moon. To this day, I still have a great affinity for the moon. Whenever I see it, I always blow a kiss to it. I think you can pretty much trace the origins of my doing that to that particular day.
I don't recall that I got very close to any of you except for Johnny M. I don't if the early workings of Social Darwinism was already at play or not. It wouldn't be until 2nd Grade that I would start the process of communicating with more of you on anything resembling a consistent basis.
I do recall the last day of school of our first year together. I remember very clearly the look on Danny Amaral's face when he was told that he was being held back for a year. It really gutted him and I remember feeling so very badly for him. I hated to see it happen.
On looking back on this time, an event happened in San Jose that I wish I was old enough to have gone to because he would become a subject of conversation among us hip kids later on. Playing at the Santa Clara International Pop Festival at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose on May 25th, 1969, a certain Mr. Jimi Hendrix performed an outdoor show there which is immortalized on a wall tapestry that I have hanging in the room where I do my headphones listening.
I recall that we had outdoor monitors who used to make sure everything on the schoolgrounds went by smoothly. We were told by monitors not to ever talk to anybody who was beyond the fence which surrounded our yard. We were told to be careful of the hippies who might try to give us drugs and also not to talk to anybody from the University of Santa Clara as well. So, I guess the idea of us being used as mules by those dastardly hippies was pretty much part of the conservative paranoia going around at the time. Hell, none of the monitors had any idea that our being the in Catholic system was planting the seeds of our becoming rebellious hippies ourselves once we got over to 5th Grade and into the other yard facing the University.
Another thing you guys are going to have to clear up for me because I'm foggy on it is the whole corporal punishment thing. I do know, for a fact, that our Principal, Sister Eileen, was still meting out ruler on knuckle lashings for the especially naughty kids when they got sent to her office. I believe that when we entered 1st Grade, this was the final year that corporal punishment was to be employed. Am I correct on this?
Inevitably, I will recall something else from that first year of school and I'll put it into some other post somewhere down the line. I'll do that for all of my recollections. I forgot to mention at the beginning of my last entry (Part 1), that we also suffered the terrible loss of Martin Luther King in 1968 as well. I wish to dedicate this post in memory of two great Americans with whom I've come to hold very dearly in my heart. I speak of MLK and Bobby Kennedy. We were greatly blessed to have had them in our lives. After 1st Grade was done, I don't believe that I ever communicated with Sister Sheryl again. I wish I could talk to her now if she's still alive.

Starting St. Clare's School-Fall 1968

For my classmates, just think of the times we were in when we started 1st Grade at St. Clare's. We had lived through or were going to live through the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (and really turned the tide of opinion against the war), The Beatles-the white album, The Rolling Stones-Beggar's Banquet, the assasination of Bobby Kennedy, student riots in Europe and the Democratic Convention in Chicago that turned very ugly and the full rise of Richard Nixon. Amid that chaos, we started school and began a journey together.
On the first day of school, I spent a short time choking up, like so many kids do on their first day of school, after being dropped off for the first time in the older schoolyard. When I was in the yard, I met a kid named Raymond. He was a few classes ahead of us. During the course of overhearing kids talking to him and then my eventually getting involved int he conversation myself, he told me that he was the fastest kid on that side of St. Clare's (meaning among the 1st-4th Graders). I found this interesting. So much so did I find it interesting, that I innocently asked him if we could race each other. He took me up on it. A bunch of kids lined up and we got ready in the side of the yard where the old covered bench area was. The time came and we lined up. I think it was a girl who actually called out the Get on your mark... Get set...GO! call. Off we went. In what seemd like a whir, we both ended the race at the other end of the bench. It was discovered that this new little skinny kid was fast as well. I finished in a dead-on tie with Raymond.
Either on that day or within the first literal couple of days of my attending school there, I also learned about something unique about myself that I wasn't fully aware of. I knew that I could throw a ball with my right hand, but I was never aware of my feet and what I could do with them. When our class played kickball for the first time, I witnessed many kids kicking with their right feet. I tried this my first time I ever came up for kicking a ball. It just didn't feel right at all. I remember very clearly that I barely kicked it towards the pitcher. As a result, the next time I came up, all of the fielders moved way up figuring I was an easy out. I decided to try my left instead. A-ha! I got better results. I kicked the ball past the outfielders and they respected me from then on. When we used to play kickball, I remember being really fascinated by two people because of how small they were and the fact that they could generate so much power. I remember the little redheaded kid, Mark Zente, and how he could really pound a ball. And then there was this girl with a really long ponytail which hung down to her butt. I was to discover that she was a classmate of mine and that her name was Donna C.
Funny thing about Donna C. and girls in general. They acted differently than guys and I learned that very quickly when I embarrassed her a few times in a short span. I learned that you couldn't get away with attempting to rhyme names with things that are shocking-like when I yelled out to her one time "Donna marijuana". I would also learn about Donna's very famous shin kicks. I tried to hug her once and she turned around and popped me one on one of my shins with her foot. The pain was esquisite in it's brutality and I didn't care because I found a new girl to have a crush on. (I have been asked to take a phone call.). I will finish my story of 1st Grade later on-likely this evening.

Music Sweet Music # 1

I've been a fan of The Rolling Stones since late Summer of 1972. I knew that they existed as far back as at some point in early 1970 when I was still living on Franklin Street in Santa Clara. It was just before I was to move back to Santa Clara in 1972 that I was hanging out at the house of my Dad's Best Man when I made the discovery. I was in his youngest son's room (who was in High School) and I was deciding what I wanted to listen to. When my friend's family moved up to Eugene in 1971, he was always very generous in letting me play stuff from his record collection. I was sorting through his albums when I saw this album called Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out. I looked at it and I thought it looked like something cool. I put the record on and the stars aligned and I had one of those times of clarity when your senses get lit up like a Christmas tree. As soon as I heard "Jumpin' Jack Flash", I became a huge fan. When I made the move back to Santa Clara in the Fall of '72, I had my Mom take me for a run over to The Wherehouse and I made a beeline to get my first copy of Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out. Not long afterwards, I had her take me back (when I had saved my money) and I splurged on getting a copy of Hot Rocks. I now sit here on the day that the 40th Anniversary Edition of Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out has been released to the public. My copy is in the mail and I'll be diving into it next week. Though I am older and I am aware of the fact that there are vocal overdubs and some studio doctoring on the album, it's going to nice to have this. I just wish Jagger and the people at ABKCO could sit down, work things out and get some full undoctored 1969 shows released. I'll tackle this subject in a post very soon as it is something I'm very passionate about. We need Taylor Era shows to be released. I will mention that the album was recorded at the Madison Squuare Garden shows in late November of 1969. You should know that "Love In Vain", with the incredibly beautiful guitar solo from Mick Taylor, is actually from Baltimore. This particular track is also essentially undoctored...Though I'm still a huge fan of The Rolling Stones, how I view them has changed over the years. I really miss when they were considered a dangerous band in the eyes of a lot of people. I viewed them that way from their beginning all the way up through the '78 Tour in support of the Some Girls album and including the tour that Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards did as The New Barbarians in 1979 when they were touring in support of Ronnie's great Gimme Some Neck album. But once Mick Jagger decided to accept the Jovan sponsorship of the 1981 North American Tour in support of the Tattoo You album, things began to change for me. Instead of becoming a dangerous band, they became a big corporate entity. Also, if I'm recalling correctly, it was to also be their last association with Bill Graham as the guy they put in charge of running the tour. They would eventually go on to let Michael Cohl (sp?) run their tours which put another corporate spin to how they operated. I haven't stopped enjoying the music even though a lot of the post-'78 material has been a roller coaster and not altogether consistent...Over the last couple of years, I have developed a great love for Highlife Music from Western Africa. I am finding that, much like some music I love, the period I like the most is from the late '60's-mid' 70s. The late '70s Highlife gets a little too much on the Funk side due to the influence of dance/Disco material from here in the U.S.. The reason for how I got into this music is twofold. In 1973, there was a great little single which hit Top 40 radio when I was living on Camino Drive from a gentleman from Cameroon named Manu Dibango called "Soul Makossa". It is a song that is of Afro-Jazz sensibility and I loved it. It stayed with me through all of these years. I've had it on one of my Rhino Soul Hits of the '70s series. To go with my memory of loving the song when I was growing up, I read an article in Rolling Stone by David Fricke in his column about a then new compilation from a label in Brighton, England called Soundway with various artists from Nigeria on it called Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6. If you pick this up as well as another compilation called African Scream Contest: Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds from Benin & Togo 70s on the Analog Africa label, I swear to you that your world will be rocked and that you will thank me for having picked this stuff up. To go with the African elements, you get a mix of Soul, Funk and Jazz in various forms for an incredible blend. I just wish this stuff had been more popular here in the United States. It is as if a spirit had remembered me for remembering Manu Dibango and I was being rewarded many years later...Though I don't have much time to expand upon it now, I have gotten into Jazz over the last decade. John Coltrane has been a particular revelation for me as well as pre-Fusion Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. I also dearly love Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. I will post many more music items as time goes on. I will also talk a lot about my love of Soul and Blues as well. I will combine the personal with the musically analytical in future posts.