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Remembering Jerilyn

I first met Jerilyn Brandelius when she came to San Francisco from Southern California in, I think, 1969. Someone (she told me once, but I forget who) introduced her to Chet Helms who was, of course, in dire need of a personal assistant/factotum to ensure follow up and follow through on all manner of business items, and keep the office on track and focused.

This was right around the time Chet had acquired the lease on the old Beach Pavilion building out on the Great Highway, across the road from Kellys Cove and comfortably tucked between Playland at the Beach and Sutro Heights.

In the weeks before we opened, as we got the building ready to do service to Chester’s vision of creating a space somewhere in between a dance hall and house of worship where people, music, lights, the Pacific Ocean could all come together and create magic(k), I had managed to find enough ways to be useful to create a full-time job for myself as Head Hey–You. Did everything from take tickets at the door, to help with stage managing and sound, to cleaning out perennially clogging toilets in the restrooms and sweeping and waxing the dance floor after shows.

So, Jere and I were “work colleagues.” But of course, when you worked for Chet Helms, it was never “just a job.” We were all “family.” Mates in that same ongoing effort to help Chet create something special that might lead—well, who knew where? And I learned things about who I wanted to be in life, and made connections with people that would endure over the years (even when we found ourselves out of contact for decades).

Jerilyn was one of those people. I loved her to the bottom of my heart then, and always have. And she WAS one that I lost contact with for many years. After the Family Dog on the Great Highway went under, I moved on to work for several bands, one of the Bay Area’s few (at the time) sound reinforcement companies that had the equipment and knowledge to work rock and roll shows, and several clubs and other music venues.

Photo: ©Ed Perlstein

She, meanwhile, ended up in Marin County in a relationship with a musician from a well-known band, and got focused on raising her two kids, along with a tribe of other children associated with the “family” that surrounded that band—Oh, I’ll go ahead and say it. It is somewhat integral to the story, and no secret. After the Family Dog family broke up, she was absorbed into that vast amoeba which was the Grateful Dead family in the 1970s.

One of the reasons that becomes important at this point is that part of the legacy she leaves is a whole second generation of “Dead kids,” now in their 40s and 50s, who grew up more or less as a free range pack of young ’uns airing it out across the acres of various ranches and other properties scattered across Northern Marin County. In many ways, Jerelyn had stepped up into the role of fierce mama bear, not just for Creek and Christina, her two children, but for all the kids rattling around. More than one has told me that growing up in that somewhat ‘fluid’ scene, they always felt secure in the knowledge they could seek out Jere for her counsel and guidance; or just to have their backs. She became in some respects the most reliable adult in their world.

We didn’t have much occasion to connect, unless we happened to run into each other backstage at a show. While she had gone North, I had elected, post Dog, to remain in San Francisco and dig in to the more urban scene there.

Eventually I dropped out of the music business and moved down to Santa Cruz County, losing touch with her completely.

I later learned that after her relationship with that band member went the way of so many rock and roll pairings in that era where a good looking guy spent much of his time on the road being the center of the party while his “old lady” kept the home fires burning, Jerelyn easily transitioned into an office manager role for an East Bay chapter of the Hells Angels MC.

Because she was just that centered and secure in being Jerelyn Brandelius that there was never any doubt about her competency to take care of the myriad threads of necessary bank account management, tax reporting, regulatory compliance, and all the other things a fraternal organization that size is accountable for—especially one that’s a highly visible target for every investigator and prosecutor out to make a name for himself.

Photo: © Lilli Heart

Of course, despite the fact her romantic relationship had gone south, her ties to the Dead Family always remained strong. The relationship held value for her, and for them, and she could be found around band (and family) related events right until the end.
Jerelyn’s profile in the broader universe of Deadheads exploded after the publication in late 1989 of the Grateful Dead Family Album, a massive coffee table book with cover art by iconic San Francisco artist Stanley Mouse offering almost 250 pages of photographs, many of them behind-the-scenes candids shot by Jerelyn, accompanied by text of her reminiscences and often droll observations on the scene over the years.

But I’m getting too buried in the biographical minutia here. I need to circle back to how it is that she rests so deep in my heart, a half-century on from our first association.

I guess it was maybe 15 years or so ago that a young friend of mine from down here in Santa Cruz County—a second-generation Deadhead if you will, phoned me filled with excitement after a trip to the Bay Area for a show.
Seems he’s been manning the Wharf Rats table (a subset of Deadheads in drug and alcohol recovery) when Jerilyn stopped by. He’d heard me tell tales of our history when he’d gushed about the Family Album book, and he mentioned to her that he knew me.

Remember that, at this point, we’d probably been out of touch for a couple of decades. Well, she was apparently excited to reconnect, giving him her phone number to pass along to me. So the kid came home feeling like a minor rock star.

That’s how we finally got back in touch, so many years later. We managed to get together a few times over the next couple of years, but I wasn’t at a time in my life when I was getting to the City much and she only occasionally came south, usually to support friends playing a gig somewhere in the Santa Cruz area.
Then the damned liver thing happened. Among other qualifying hoops they make liver transplant candidates jump through is a requirement they abstain from alcohol and drugs. I was able to add my voice to others from within the family in assuring her there is, indeed, life after recovery. That doing this deal clean and sober actually turns out, in a lot of ways, to be the most colorful trip of all.

Scared the hell out of me when word came she was going in for her transplant; I’d had a few other friends receive organ transplants and knew, at least in a general way, what a major deal it was. Of course, if I allowed myself to feel concerned, I wasn’t reckoning with just what a badass Jerilyn has always been.

As expected, it was a long, difficult, post-transplant recovery period. But sooner than you’d think we were making the pilgrimage North, groping around Ft. Baker in the dark, trying to find the Presidio Yacht Club. Once we finally stumbled in, we found the place packed with folks, both famous and obscure, there to celebrate Jerilyn’s first return from the dead.

In recent years, it’s become easier to keep in touch with the rise of social media. And, as my life focus shifted, I began to make it up to San Francisco a bit more often.

Photo: © Rosie McGee

As it turned out, liver failure couldn’t hold a candle to the next gut punch the universe had lined up. In January of 2014, Jere’s daughter Christina (who I’d had the opportunity to amuse from time to time in the Family Dog days when she would hit that fussy spot little kids do when they really need some attention—just at the same moment her mom was engaged in an important long distance phone call nailing down next week’s booking) died far too young, succumbing to an asthma attack.

Possessing the terrible qualifier of having walked through the death of an adult child with my spouse, I like to believe I was able to be there for her in a way few others could be. We didn’t spend a ton of time together, and there wasn’t a lot of conversation. But our connection deepened in a way that’s beyond my ability to find words for.

This past half-dozen years or so, we stayed in consistent touch even though the 90 miles or so that separated us meant we still didn’t manage to get in the same place at the same time more than maybe three or four times a year.

Deborah Grabien, Sam Cutler, Jerilyn Brandilius Photo: Holly Howard

But I believe there remained a level of love and connection between us that continued to deepen, without the need to speak of it, on each and every occasion we spent some time together, whether she had drafted me for chauffeur duty, giving her a ride to or from a gig someplace or we turned up at the same soiree—more often than not one of the legendary get togethers at Chez Grabien, where the company, the food, and the music were always exceptional.

We could usually manage to get ourselves off to the side someplace for a while where we could just sit and share space and unspoken history. Might be 15 minutes; might be a couple of hours. Usually, little was said once the initial check-in business was out of the way. How’s your health? What are you listening to lately?

For several years, there would be the obligatory quick catchup on John Perry Barlow (songwriting partner with Bob Weir, and later in life the visionary who birthed the Electronic Frontier Foundation); she was principally responsible for his caretaking over several years at the end of his life.

Because, you see, that was a thing Jerilyn did. I think I mentioned her being the rock at the center of the world of a whole generation of Dead family kids. She did the same thing for Barlow. She had also spent a period of time back working for Chet Helms again in what turned out (to everyone’s surprise) to be the last few years of his life.

Jerilyn was fierce. Fiercely loyal. Fiercely protective. Fiercely supportive of those she loved. And if one of hers was in trouble she was there to hold steady with them in the storm.

Of course, that fierceness meant she could also be a world-class pain in the ass when she was fighting for something. That could, on occasion, rub ‘outsiders’ the wrong way. And, if I’m totally honest, it would on occasion drive those who loved her up the wall as well.

But it was never born of malice, always passion.

After her stroke a couple years back, Jerilyn once more pulled out all that fight and determination. It pissed her off no end to find herself physically compromised, and she threw herself into all the recommended physical therapy, dietary guidelines, and lifestyle recommendations (at least as best she could make them fit her world) to regain a huge percentage of her capacity.

I think she fatigued quicker. And I’m sure (though we never discussed it in detail) she was finding herself carrying a greater and greater pain load on a daily basis. Hell, we all live with chronic pain at this age; especially those of us who ran our bodies so hard when we were young and heedless.

But, as somebody pointed out the other day, there was a part of Jerilyn that never fully came back after Christina died. There never is really, is there? The death of a child cuts a chunk out of a mother that can’t be healed or filled in. And she loved as fiercely as any mother I’ve ever known.

It’s funny. There’s that word again. Fierce. Absolutely, Jerilyn was one of the most badass, determined women I have ever known. And she walked through enough shit for any three people in her life, with her head up all the way. So, yeah. Fierce.

And yet all my memories of her are tender, sweet, infused with love. No, we didn’t spend a lot of time together. We never had, really. But she has been a part of my life since the earliest days working for Chet, when I was beginning to figure out who I was going to grow up to be. How I would carry myself in this world.

So, going forward from here for as long as I remain, I’ll carry myself in a world now missing one of the touchstones of my life. We were never married; we were never lovers. I don’t think we ever even intentionally got high together. Dosed at a few of the same shows, I’m sure. But that hardly counts around that rolling circus.

I am grateful that the closest inner circles of family were able to be there as her body wound down and her spirit departed. I know that Betty was there. I understand Weir was able to come and sing her home as the machines stopped and it all finished.

I am going to miss the hell out of her. I already do. This has been such a bastard of a year, for everyone. I suppose it even makes a certain amount of sense that this would be when Jerilyn finally reached that point where she had to lay her hammer down.

I will get my head wrapped around accepting it, same as all the rest of this year. Because we have to, don’t we? But I don’t goddamn like it. And I shall, indeed, feel her absence the rest of my days.

“Fare you well. Fare you well. I love you more than words can tell.”

Photo: © Rosie McGee

Plans are in the works for a virtual gathering on line to celebrate the life and memory of Jerilyn. I will post an update here, and on my Facebook page when details become available.

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The Creatives

I was hunting for something on YouTube this morning that I never did find. But in that way that YouTube (well, all of the internet really) has, my search took me down a couple different rabbit holes, eventually landing me someplace that really got me thinking.

Among the body of film clips and audio files of The Beatles that float around out there in the wild these days (much of it material from the Anthology project, or bits and pieces that didn’t make the final cut for that compilation) there are a number of purported bits of “the boys at work in the studio.” Many of these informal scraps appear to be at least semi-staged, quite likely at the behest of some Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man (in his seersucker suit) who wanted something “special” to leverage.

But what I stumbled upon this morning seems to be authentic “fly on the wall” audio of the band sitting around in studio trying to find the pieces to fit a remarkable new song George Harrison had brought in. The tune eventually became the wonderful Something on the Abbey Road album, but it’s a long way from it at this point.

I listened in fascination for a good nine minutes as the boys stumbled and wandered around the fully formed melody line, searching for the lyrics. As I heard them chase down several false trails, then back up and restart, I silently thanked the studio gods that some assistant engineer in master control had the presence of mind to roll tape “just in case.” It’s a revealing glimpse at process.

I also realized, after a bit, I was getting a revealing look at myself as well. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked here before about my lifelong affinity for music, of all types. Really from the time I was old enough to begin generating fully formed* thoughts and feelings I was attracted to music wherever I could find it.

*hmmmm…”fully formed” may be overly generous, even now.

Whether it was strolling oompah combos at the County Fair, watching variety shows on the huge mahogany black and white Capehart, my folks’ old big band records, or afternoons spent peeking around the corner into our living room as the neighboring teenage girls brought their precious rock ‘n’ roll 78s over to play for my lonely and welcoming mother in the living room (they’d kick off their shoes and dance in their bobby sox all afternoon—nobody at home would permit them to turn up the volume on “that damned noise”), I was locked in by the time I was 6 or 7 years old.

Fast forward a half-decade or so. By the time the first stirrings of puberty were beginning to cloud my young mind, my horizons had expanded beyond pop deeper into the roots of blues, jazz, folk and more.

I even went through a brief phase when I was 14 or so when I saved up, bought myself a used acoustic guitar and some tab books, and worked on reinventing myself as a “folk singer.” But within a year or so, I had to confront the reality that I had absolutely no native talent as a musician.

You know how you hear stories about kids who pick up some cast-off junk instrument, teach themselves how to get a noise out of it, and within weeks are astounded the adults around them? And they then grow up to be famous players, in demand by audiences around the world? If there is a 180 degree opposite of that kid, I was him. I was never gonna “astound the guys and win the girls” with my guitar virtuosity. Eventually I came to terms with that truth and let it go.

But my hunger to find a way to be near the music, to be there for the transcendent moments I already understood it can bring, stayed with me. And it wasn’t long before I came to realize that for every lead guitarist and killer piano player up on stage there needed to be a significant number of “support troops” to make a space for the magic to happen.

And thus, as I came of age in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I found myself on stages and around clubs, dance halls, and bands. Not as a performer, but as one of those necessary crew people. It was in the intensified cauldron of that scene, in that moment, that I began my lifelong, still ongoing, admiration for and relationship with people I’ve come to call The Creatives.

I speak here about artists of all stripes, be they performers (musicians, actors, jugglers and dancers—even, to some degree, athletes and politicians) or practitioners of more solitary arts, such as writers, painters, and the like.

I found, almost subconsciously, that the role of “support” is a comfortable fit for who I’ve come to understand myself to be. I truly do not have that gift/curse of The Creative, whose mind and psyche contains the odd admixture of talent and inspiration that drives them to express something, and gives them access to the necessary skills to execute. But I do have skills, talent and intelligence. And I get great satisfaction in putting them to work in service of The Creative.

I did that for a number of years in and around music.

Also spent a good chunk of time in radio which, at first blush, might seem to run counter to what I just said. But really, in reflecting on my broadcasting career, I was always, again, able to make myself a useful and valuable “member of the team.”
And the nature of the medium means that still put me in front of a mic (and yes, I loved doing that work). But here too, I was never the most high profile personality on air. Most of the time I was “the news guy,” doing important work, but never putting myself in front of the story. And my stints as a music host were all relatively anonymous weekend shifts or fill in work for “the regular talent.”

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to apply that “support staff” mindset in work with two different authors; one working on an important biography, the other producing fiction pieces after decades of focusing her talents in completely different arenas.

In one case, I served (by remote electronic connection—the internet is a remarkable tool sometimes) as essentially a combination proofreading editor and beta reader. Devising and implementing a system for making notes and communicating them to an author several thousand miles away was an interesting challenge.

For the other, I’ve been more directly involved in virtually all the “non-creative” aspects of producing, packaging and taking to market, two books now, with more to follow.

In the latter case, it’s been a pretty intense learning curve in which I’ve had to bring many aspects of my skill-set to bear in new areas where I have limited, if any experience. Fortunately for me it appears I am, among other things, an autodidactic polymath. Which is, I learned this afternoon, a $20 way of saying  I am one adept at self-education “whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas.” Impressed? I was.

The thing I’m trying to say about this is that, once again, I find myself sliding easily into that “I’m the support guy” role for a new sub-category of Creative. And, once again, I’m deriving significant satisfaction and fulfillment from being the facilitator.

Look, I’ve come a long way ’round to get back home to this point: While initially motivated as a young person simply by a desire to be present and a part of what seemed to be important and exciting events, that yearning brought me to come to see myself as bringing value to life by applying my skills and talents in support of The Creative.

And, as a result of that, I’ve enjoyed more than my share of opportunities to stand close to the white hot energy of the Creative Crucible as much as anyone not endowed with the gift/curse themselves is likely to be able. Due to that, I believe I have come to have a certain familiarity, if not intimacy, with that process, and a number of people within whom it moves.

That close view has taught me some things over the years. Early on I absorbed the lessons, but did not yet have the life experience or perspective to put the education in context. With the more contemplative mind set this season of my life has brought comes, I think, a deepening understanding of it all.

In younger days, it was hard to get much beyond the basic transactional lessons. “I really love Xyz’s music, but geez he’s an asshole to deal with.” “What a delight it was to spend the evening with Abc. Supremely talented, and so easy to present. She just brings light to the entire building when she walks in.” Stuff like that.

Fairly quickly, because I did spend so much time “inside the bubble,” I also learned that, as a culture, we are damned hard on our artists. We bestow a certain celebrity upon them, but then make demands on their attention and activities that are, frankly, selfish and unreasonable. Then we resent them if they don’t accede to those demands, on our timetable.

But here’s the thing (and this is the piece I find myself coming to somewhat late in life). I  feel terribly grateful for the trust Creatives place in me when we take our respective roles and do the things we must. And I have ever-deepening respect and sympathy for those among us who carry the Creative gift/curse.

To be the individual who brings the magic is truly a remarkable gift from the universe, and the gods of the arts. But that gift comes with a heavy, heavy cost to those upon whom it is bestowed. Beyond the often terrible weight of the relationship with “fans” that I touched on above, the very act of creating often generates a staggering vulnerability for the Creative.

And the more profound and moving the art, the greater the extent to which it leaves the one who puts it out there naked before the world. Also, I’ve never known a truly talented individual who wasn’t wracked from time to time with agonies of insecurity and self-doubt; what some call “impostor syndrome,” regardless the level of their accomplishments. It seems an inevitable byproduct of the work.

Different individuals deal with it in different ways. As noted above, some create a deeply loving and supportive “family” among those they work with and all who surround them while others grow prickly and withdrawn.

It breaks a lot of people. That, along with the basic raw talent, is why the ranks of the truly magical are so small. Many, for one reason or another, drop out along the way. It’s also why we have so many tales of alcoholism and addiction, failed relationships, and deaths at age 27.

What I know to be true is this: Being a Creative is a damned difficult job, harder and more challenging than anything most of us ever have to bear and sustain. Thus, today I have deep, deep respect for the courage (even if it’s courage born of desperation) of those who do the work.

The human condition is enriched by the presence of these gifted ones among us. And to whatever small degree I have been able to ease the yoke of the gift for a few of them here and there, it’s a life well lived and it has been my privilege to assist.

Plus, I got to be present for a hell of a lot of cool stuff.

Oh, I expect I owe it to you to show you the video that sparked this almost 2000 words of rumination. Here ’tis.

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Just a little moment to share

Somewhere in a box of unsorted cassette tapes, stashed somewhere in my stuff, there is (I hope) still a tape I made of Elizabeth Cotten performing live in a tiny club (I can’t even remember the name of the establishment) on Upper Grant Avenue one night in the 1970s.
It was a magical evening for the 50 or so folks who were there.
I’ve spent a significant portion of my adult life in and around music and musicians; I can’t think of anyone more gracious, charming, and warm than Libba Cotten.
The woman (who must have been in her 80s then) just held the room in the palm of her hand all evening, exuding a center of love, peace and humility which was remarkable.
Oh, and yes. Even then, she could play and she could sing. In her simple, direct fashion, to be sure. But in a way that compelled respect; not by force, but by generosity.
One of the privileges of my life to have spent an evening breathing the same air as she.

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“Living in the Spaces Between the Music”

Renée LeBallister dancing with Quicksilver Messenger Service (John Cipollina, guitar) at Frost Amphitheater, Stanford University. 26 March 1970 Photographer unknown.

Had the chance Sunday to sit over a long, leisurely coffee with an old and dear friend from my sweet youth. Renée LeBallister, known to many Bay Area concert goers in the late ’60s through the mid ’70s as “Renée the Dancer”, or even just “That Amazing Dancing Lady” was passing through, and made time to get together.

We covered a lot of ground over the course of a two and half hour visit, from the night a grumbling Bill Graham swept the stage for her before a Quicksilver Messenger Service set because Cipollina insisted “she dances or I don’t play” to what it meant for a little lost girl to find her chance to “live in the spaces between the music” and create a way to hold fast and reinvent herself.
I came to know her first when I worked for Chet Helms at his Family Dog venues. She enjoyed a slot on the Permanent Guest List, a unique phenomenon of all Chester’s events and facilities.
The common oral history about San Francisco’s music scene of that time is that Chet Helms “was a horrible businessman” while Graham was the guy who always knew how to make the bottom line run in the black. Which is true, as far as it goes, but doesn’t really tell the whole story.

There are reasons that underlay Bill Graham’s reputation as a tough taskmaster and master negotiator, many of them good and honorable, and I expect I’ll explore them in another post at some point. For now, suffice it to say we did indeed need someone like him to keep the collective ship afloat. And the music scene has held far less texture since his death. Or, as the Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner is said to have observed in conversation outside Graham’s memorial service: “Bill was an asshole, but he was our asshole.”

Ultimately, Chet Helms never really saw himself as a “concert promoter” in the Graham mold. Chester (who was, by the way, a preacher’s kid) always was focused on evangelizing for the transformative possibilities we all believed  were inherent in the counter culture we were collectively engaged in inventing on the fly.
In that context, the Family Dog’s primary task was not to “entertain” or “put on a good show.” It was to provide the space, and the seed elements, to facilitate attendees/participants in creating an environment where unexpected, potentially spiritually uplifting, educational, and just plain ecstatic events might occur.
Chet relied on many tools to nurture that potential experience including immersive light shows, the best music he could book, what passed for state of the art audio systems in those days; all of it fostering an environment that strongly prioritized participation (especially dancing) over spectating.  Really any and every piece he could dream up and toss into the stew that was “a night with the Dog.”
Now this is where the Permanent Guest List comes into play. Because one of the factors that Chet had determined contributed greatly to fostering the  “vibe” he sought to create was seeding the crowd with folks who, in one way or another, added an element to the pageant (could be aural, visual, aromatic — any number of things). And he also looked for people who could function as catalyst, inspiring audience members to get more actively involved (for further reference, check any number of live Grateful Dead recordings in which Bob Weir implores: “Come on everybody, get up and dance. It won’t kill ya!”).

AC with Renée Berg (née: Leballister).
Aptos, CA 18 February 2018
Photo: Luther Berg

All of which, brings me back ’round to Renée. She fit the bill on both counts. Anyone who ever watched her on stage with The Dead, Quicksilver, or a number of other San Francisco bands will tell you, all these decades later, that they still recall her fluid and seamless connection with, and interpretation of, the music. Not to mention her trademark back bends that took  her to an almost horizontal position from the waist up, while continuing to dance and move gracefully in a manner that seemed to defy the laws of physics. It could be a hypnotic, almost other-worldly thing to witness.
And yet, simultaneously, Renée was also able to encourage mere mortals to move their bodies as well. Like many of the musicians of the time her goal, whether she was on stage with a band or down on the floor with the crowd, was to affirm and inspire participation. She got a hell of a lot of people on their feet who, objectively, were whole orders of magnitude less graceful than she but who, nevertheless, had a hell of a good time “shakin’ that thang.”

After we closed the Family Dog on the Great Highway, I worked for Chet’s old partner Bob Cohen, who had a semi-thriving live sound reinforcement business by then, renting PA rigs and crews to bands and clubs as needed through much of the ’70s.
But after a time, Bob grew frustrated when, on a couple live recording jobs, he couldn’t communicate between the truck and crew inside the venue due to the fact there wasn’t an intercom and headset system capable of overcoming the sound pressure levels of live rock concerts. So, trained engineer that he was, Cohen invented his own system because he needed it. It featured sealed headphones so the on-stage and front of house crews could hear, and a noise-canceling mic so our talk back transmissions would be intelligible to him in the recording truck.
That system eventually became the original ClearCom product and Bob soon found himself out of the sound business, keeping his workers busy assembling headsets for sale.*

That was my signal to move on, I transitioned to a series of jobs in clubs and supporting small to mid level bands on gigs. I continued to run into Renée  from time to time at events, but contact was sporadic.

Sometime around 1980 I moved down to Santa Cruz County and lost track of her completely, as I did many folks from my rock ‘n’ roll youth. It’s only been in the last decade or so, with the advent of Facebook, that I’ve reconnected with most friends, colleagues, and fellow cosmic warriors from those days.
And it was just a few years back that one of my dearest friends, still working and known in the circles where it matters as one of the best live sound guys in the Bay Area, told me Renée had relocated to Southern California and gave me her married name(!) so I could track her down.
Thus we got hooked up on The Facebook, did that quick two or three paragraph mini-biography private message thing that you do, and started following each other’s feeds. A couple years ago, she and Luther were passing through the area and stopped by for one of those somewhat stilted “getting to reknow you” visits.
But this trip up (they were in the area to support a daughter who is transferring from their local community college to Cal State Monterey Bay) we really had a chance to “set a spell,” comb back over our mutual inventories of bands, scenes, and and friends (living and dead), and compare notes about how each of us experienced that unique moment in space/time that was the San Francisco Music Scene in the Age of Hippie.

Looking back together from the vantage point of our current late season of life, with some understanding and perspective — and yes, some tender sympathy for those young, damaged kids who were trying to find themselves a better way — was a warm and mellow exercise.
At least for me, in light of my medical prospects, there’s a certain urgency to having these sort of conversations. But I think all of us in our age cohort, regardless of our health status or other factors, are pretty clear at this point that “leaving it for later” really means “it’s unlikely that’s actually going to happen.” We’ve all lost far too many people we love over the past five or ten years as the herd thins and we age out.

So it’s important for us to spend this time with each other when we can. Not just for nostalgia value, though that can certainly be pleasant enough at times. But to compare notes; to check each other’s  recollections; to share experiences and lessons learned.
Just one example: Much as it’s comfortable for me to self-identify as “a good ally,” supportive and always the guy who can be relied upon, it truly is stunning at times to realize the stuff I missed; just completely didn’t see, thanks to my unconscious privilege and sense of entitlement as a cis white male.
Listening to some of Renée’s tales of what she had to endure as a single woman making her way in the very male dominated and macho structure of the music scene of that time was a real education for me. The assumptions that were automatically made about who she was in that world, why she was there and what she ought to be willing to do to secure her place in it were, frankly, appalling.

Like so many of the “flower children,” Renée was working to shake off the scars and traumas of a difficult, abusive upbringing. And some of the coping skills that partially formed kid had come up with to find her place in the world were, ultimately, unhealthy and didn’t serve her well.
But she also had a remarkable talent, the motivation to develop it into a unique and beautiful performance art, and the grace, wit, and intelligence to learn to apply it, finding for herself room to live in the space between the music.
And all of us who saw her dance, danced with her, or had the privilege to share a little time found ourselves and our lives the richer for it.

It was such a delight to hang with you yesterday, Renée. I do hope the universe aligns such that we have the chance to do it again. And if not, I truly treasure the reconnection regardless.

___________
*After a few years, Cohen sold ClearCom to some corporate behemoth, netting enough money to ensure a life of comfortable retirement from that point forward. Sometimes, necessity is indeed a mother.

 

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John Perry Barlow

Word came yesterday that John Perry Barlow’s run is finally complete; the last several years have been a damned rough road for him and, in that sense, I’m grateful to hear he was able to just lay his hammer down and let go in his sleep.

I’ve said a little, and reposted some things over on Facebook. And I’m certainly gratified to see some of the “younger folk,” who know Barlow primarily, if not exclusively, from his terribly important work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the internet ecosystem in which we function and thrive today would, in many ways, not exist without the vision and labor of JPB and his cyber-compadres) posting up on the Twitter machine and vowing to continue to carry the fight forward in his memory. Aside: I think that’s so terribly important now. My cohort and I are old, with some hard earned life lessons but without the energy it always has and always will require to carry the fight to the entrenched power.

John Perry Barlow “back when.” Date and photo credit unknown.

But I wanted to take a moment here to recall, and pass along some thoughts he shared a while back.
See, my history with Barlow dates back  to when we were both young and frisky, running wild in and around scenes involving a gang of colorful outlaws that was becoming known, even then, as The Dead Family. I was never a fully pledged member of that brotherhood; I had an instinct for preserving my options and independence that kept me from completely buying in, at any level. But it’s fair to say I had a cordial and respectful “peer to peer working relationship,” if we can even try to characterize stuff that was happening in the 1960s and ’70s with 21st Century terminology.

Whatever you choose to call it, I knew Barlow when we were both playing the role of free-range, hard riding, young blood “neo cowboys.” It was a period when a lot of interesting exploration occurred, fun things happened, dangerous territory was occupied, and mistakes were made.
Some of us have survived. Some didn’t. Most of us who remained learned a lesson or two — some of us more slowly than others.

So, all of this is by way of getting around to sharing with you something Barlow posted up a decade or so ago, when he turned 60. To clarify, the introductory remarks are from that vantage point. They set up a list of, as he characterized them, “Principles of Adult Behavior” that he had first drafted half a lifetime earlier, when he hit the then overly mysticised age of 30. Took me a hell of a lot longer to get my brain lined up with all this (I started out with some damned screwed up ideas about what life is about — had a lot of unlearning to do first in order to make room to get my head screwed on properly). But I am comfortable today saying this reasonably well encapsulates a great deal of what I know.

So long, Barlow. Happy trails, and fair winds.

FINALLY, A LITTLE GIFT FOR US ALL…

I didn’t think I would live to 30 either. I was shocked, shocked I
tell you, to find myself on the eve of my 30th birthday, weirdly
alive. In this, I was quite out of step with most of my friends to
that point, more than half of whom were already back in the sweet realm of infinity and love. Chickenshits. If you’re going to
volunteer in the first place, go right into the Special Forces.

In any event, it occurred to me that, past 30, I could no longer
defend my peccadillos on basis of youth. I would have to acquire some minimal sense of responsibility. While I didn’t want to be a grown-up, I wanted at least to act like one in the less toxic and stultifying sense of the term.

So, I sat down around 2 am on October 3, 1977 and I drew up this list of behavioral goals that I hoped might assist in this process. Now, thirty years later, I can claim some mixed success. Where I’ve failed, I’m still working on it. I give these to you so that you can provide me with encouragement in becoming the person I want to be.
And maybe, though they are very personally targeted, they may even be of some little guidance to you.

Anyway, this is what I wrote that night:

PRINCIPLES OF ADULT BEHAVIOR

1. Be patient. No matter what.
2. Don’t badmouth:
Assign responsibility, never blame.
Say nothing behind another’s back you’d be unwilling to say,
in exactly the same tone and language, to his face.
3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble
than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the possible.
5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
6. Expect no more of anyone than you yourself can deliver.
7. Tolerate ambiguity.
8. Laugh at yourself frequently.
9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than whom is right.
10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Do not
endanger it frivolously. And never endanger the life of another.
13. Never lie to anyone for any reason.
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission
and pursue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
17. Praise at least as often as you disparage.
18. Never let your errors pass without admission.
19. Become less suspicious of joy.
20. Understand humility.
21. Forgive.
22. Foster dignity.
23. Live memorably.
24. Love yourself.
25. Endure.

I don’t expect the perfect attainment of these principles. However, I post them as a standard for my conduct as an adult. Should any of my friends or colleagues catch me violating any one of them, bust me.

John
Perry Barlow

October 3, 1977

Hold me to these please.

And thank you so much for all the love you’ve given me, despite all of my efforts to resist it.

May the Good Light shine on you,

The Ancient Barlow

—
**************************************************************
John Perry Barlow, Peripheral Visionary
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School

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The Magick’s in the Music — Part II

It’s worth noting, as an aside, that my obsession with music dovetailed nicely with my co-occurring fascination with radio. Once again, the happy accident of growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s and ’60s exposed me to some of the most wonderful stations and air talent in the history of broadcasting.
I’ll return to this later, because the unique and intersecting subcultures of broadcasting are another area where I was privileged to enjoy several decades of involvement that enriched me in ways beyond my wildest adolescent flights of fantasy. But, for the moment, let’s stay focused on the music, the musicians, and the scene in which it flourished.

As I touched on in Part I, music can play many roles for those open to it. Several approaches seem most suited to stimulate and challenge the intellect, be that through political and literary lyric themes, or the complex constructions of much modern jazz, classical compositions and yes, even some improvisational rock explorations.
Other music best serves to inspire emotional response of various sorts. That may be the lush and juicy love songs that serve as the sound track to so many romantic explorations, the exhilarating party themes that get rooms full of people on their feet dancing, the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes wry life stories rolled out in much blues and country, the pride and inspiration engendered by anthemic declarations or cherished cultural heritage music (be it Celtic, African High Life, sea chanteys, gamelan music, or any of a hundred other “outside the commercial mainstream” genres that each hold their own unique truth), or the transcendence of liturgical compositions and hymns.
Of course, there’s plenty of intersection, overlap, and multi-function stuff in play as well.
I’m just scratching the surface here; my point is that music can, and often does, play a significant role in what defines us as humans.

The place and time in which I began my transformation from childhood toward adulthood positioned me perfectly to satisfy my longing to get closer to that special space.
I was so young; in some ways I still could not know what I didn’t know, but I was acutely aware of my lack of specific skills. However, the ceremony requires more than the shaman to work its magick. And I was able to find a toehold as San Francisco (for reasons beyond the scope of our current discussion) made its transition from one of the country’s premier jazz towns to the epicenter of a massive existential pivot in the shape and scope of rock music and its place in the broader cultural context.

My first “job” in the music business?  I figured out that I could hang out around the corner on Cole Street, outside the stage door of the Straight Theater on the afternoon of a show, help load in band equipment from vans and trucks to the stage, and earn myself “free admission” to that night’s concert.
It was a small thing, but proved to be my foot in the door. That led to a semi-paying regular gig for a few weeks taking care of the dressing room for actors in an experimental play the theater mounted for a month or two.
A couple things happened as a result of this. First, I had the opportunity to be present, as “staff,” not just “audience,” at several events that eventually took on semi-legendary status in certain circles.
One such that comes to mind was the night I found myself “peaking” in the balcony when Neal Cassady joined the Grateful Dead for an extemporaneous stream of consciousness ramble while the band vamped behind him. Frankly, in my — ahem — altered condition, Neal’s exposition seemed to go on for hours, or perhaps months. I gather (based at least in part on this recorded fragment) that the objective elapsed time was somewhere around 20 or 30 minutes. So, that was a thing that happened.
Another was the night we hosted the American premiere of the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour film. The band had donated the loan of a print which was flown in from England for screening to benefit striking air talent and engineers at KMPX, the precursor to the legendary KSAN, and radio giant Tom Donahue’s initial foray into programming what came to be known as “underground radio” on the then neglected FM band of the broadcast dial.
In retrospect, a number of exceptionally unusual things happened in and around the Straight. But, perhaps equally important for me, my face became a “known individual” to a number of crew and musicians around town.

That made the transition pretty smooth when I fell in with the cleaning crew over at the Family Dog’s Avalon Ballroom. It had soon become clear, even to a rank rookie like me, that the Straight (interesting as the scene might be) was never going to become a stable venue, so employment prospects were shaky at best. At that point, the Avalon and the Fillmore Auditorium, Bill Graham’s venue, pretty much dominated the scene.
Of course, not much was required to get by in those days. Survival consisted of a few folks getting together and figuring out how to hustle up sixty or seventy bucks a month to rent a flat, scraping together enough food to keep going, and managing one way or another (often by “making little ones out of big ones” and engaging in a little retail activity) to keep the flow going in order to maintain our heads.
So, once again, my initial “foot in the door” at the Avalon consisted of working for free. The paid cleanup crew enjoyed the option of placing folks on the guest list (Chet was always pretty damned loose with the guest list; there were reasons which I expect we’ll discuss in the fullness of time) and I became a regular “guest” in exchange for being a reliable extra pair of hands after the show when it was time to sweep and mop.
That led to a “promotion” up to full membership on the paid cleaning crew, as more senior swampers either moved up or moved on. Hanging on to the edges as “staff”, I was able to stay with the Family Dog during the transition period after the Avalon closed and before Chet acquired the old Beach Pavilion venue out on the Great Highway. During that interregnum the Dog mostly subsisted on mail order poster sales, along with a modicum of band management and one-off gigs in various venues. But I was able to stick with the circus and ride the momentum out to the beach, where it became an “all hands on deck” effort, involving probably a couple dozen of us, maybe more, as paid staff and well over a hundred volunteers who pitched in to get the hall up and running while earning themselves some future show passes.
I’ll fill out more of that part of the story in the next installment.

 

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The Magick’s in the Music — Part I

Music always “loomed large” in my life and story.
From early on, it was far more to me than entertainment and diversion. It spoke to something deep inside me, reached and moved me in ways that few things did.

Some of that was an intellectual exercise, especially as I got into my teens and began to explore work outside the popular genres; blues and folk for the most part. The lyrics, and frank, often unpolished, performances spoke of truth to a boy who, appearance of privilege notwithstanding, felt himself an outcast, a stranger in his own land if you will.

Reading (be it novels, poetry, political polemics, or whatever came to hand) was a comfort in this regard as well; and the best writing brought at least momentary feelings of relief and transcendence. But there was all that and something more in the music.

By the time I was in my early to mid teens, I was slipping away many evenings to hang at the local folk coffeehouse, soaking up both the music and a social scene that seemed filled with other misfits. There was even a brief, abortive effort to learn to play guitar. I spent about a year transposing guitar chord charts (I was left handed), training my fingers into those awkward positions, learning to tune, and strumming my way earnestly through the simplest standards from Sing Out! magazine.

Eventually I had to confront the fact that I had no more aptitude for the guitar than I had found for the clarinet in 6th Grade Band Class when I tried to learn it in one of my earliest attempts to please my unpleasable father, who had played semi-professionally as a young man. I remember explaining to someone at the time: “I really love good guitar music. There is a lot of bad guitar playing in the world. I choose not to add to it.”

So, becoming a ramblin’ shamblin’ folk hero, nor a shredding guitar god were not to be my ticket out. Any more than I was gonna suddenly wake up one morning magically struck with physical coordination that would lead to a professional baseball or basketball career. But damn, I did love the music.

Lucky for me, the accident of birth had put me in the right place at the right time. Coming of age on the San Francisco Peninsula, just as the City’s folk scene was taking its first nascient steps toward transforming into the behemoth that became known within a few years as The San Francisco Sound.

Rock, folk, blues, a couple sprinkles of jazz (and even, in a handful of cases, classical training); it was all tossed into a blender along with the remnants of the North Beach “beat” culture of the ’50s and early ’60s, a significant dose of political thought provided by echoes of the civil rights movement and the inescapable fact that the Vietnam War hung over all our heads. Add some color and spice (provided in part by new frontiers in mind altering chemistry) and the sudden jolt of the Baby Boom effect — young people representing a higher percentage of the population than ever before and identifying themselves as distinct and apart from the broader culture. And wham, here I was, young and energetic, standing at the center of the whirlwind.

Take all of the above as setting, and it seems almost inevitable that a kid who’d been cutting school since sophmore year to hitchhike to San Francisco and spend his afternoons ensconsced in the basement of City Lights Bookstore reading material he’d never find in San Mateo, was bound to fall into the embryonic Haight-Ashbury scene and slip gratefully into the first environment in his young life where he didn’t feel like an outsider.

But let’s bring it back around to the music. Down on the Peninsula, bars that featured rock bands were beginning to supplant the folk scene, at least in my neck of the woods, and I found myself loitering outside the back doors of such establishments, hungry for the music. So hungry in fact that, at times, I’d slip into those back doors and join the folks a few years older who were clogging the small dance floor, free-form moving to the music. Of course, the bouncers were not amused, but damn I wanted to be there.

By 1966, something called “dance-concerts” were gaining traction in San Francisco. Events that did not rely on drink sales from a full bar to break even, and thus weren’t subject to strict “21 and over” requirements. I’d found my home away from home.

All this is by way of context and prelude to what I really wanted to talk about. That’s ahead in Part II.