Big Brother and the Holding Company, part one. 1965-1966

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1965 – 1966

Since I was 14 or so, I have been in one kind of a musical group or another. Guitar groups.

Vocal groups.

The Cool Notes              Okinawa                  Japan.

At the University of San Francisco I played trumpet, saxophone and a lot of typewriter, because I edited the literary magazine.

Things were coalescing.

We were listening to Skip James, Ma Rainey, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Victoria Spivey, Mance Lipscomb, Bessie Smith, Mississippi John Hurt, LaVern Baker, Joe Turner.

           And Peter Albin was playing like John Lee Hooker.

Big Brother and the Holding Company             1965-2012    …and counting…                Golden Anniversary soon.      This is our history.

Peter and I started playing as Big Brother in this house… 1090 Page Street          San Francisco.            1965.

The image below might be the earliest photograph we have of all of our friends. See anyone you know there ? If you know everyone there, call me immediately.

People I know in this photograph: Peter Albin, Sam Andrew, Rita Bergman, Mike Ferguson, Dave Getz, Martin Gorak, Hongo Gurley, James Gurley, Nancy Gurley,  Phil Hammond, Chet Helms, Lori Helms, Dan Hicks, David Homage, George Hunter, Janis Joplin, Alton Kelley, Mortimer Lindner (veterinarian),  James Moylanin, Richie Olsen, Paula Preston, Sancho (the family dog), Mike Wilhelm.

Chet Helms, our big brother.

Our first promotional photograph. We are in the cable car barn.       San Francisco, 1966.

        Chet Helms, Sam Andrew, Peter Albin, Chuck Jones, James Gurley.

November 1965               We play a gig on Clement Street, but we are not called Big Brother yet.

Later in November 1965           We play in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park as Big Brother and the Holding Company.

     Mike Ferguson and Lynn Hughes.

10 January 1966                We held auditions at The Matrix on Fillmore Street, San Francisco.

15 January 1966             Our first public performance.        Open Theatre              Berkeley.

      Lynn Hughes actually auditioned for us at one point. Here she is with Jesse Cahn.

21-23 January 1966             Longshoreman’s Hall               San Francisco

12 February 1966                Fillmore Auditorium              San Francisco

19 February 1966

     George Conger, Ritchie Olsen, George Hunter.

26 February 1966                  The Family Dog at the Fillmore.

Darby Slick wrote this. I was TEACHING the lesson. Jerry Garcia and I were both guitar teachers at this point.

Chet Helms and James Gurley in one of Herb Greene’s beautiful photographs.

One of our glamour poses. Not glamor, glamour, please.

1=6  March 1966                The Matrix      Chet was our brother and the Matrix was our mother.

12 March 1966                    The Matrix

18-20 March 1966                Fillmore Auditorium        San Francisco

     

19 March 1966         The Firehouse

     James Gurley.

1 April 1966          Harmon Gymnasium           Berkeley          Delano Grape Strikers Benefit

2 April 1966

2 April 1966                  Geary Temple

4-6 April 1966                  Matrix

9 April 1966                                       Longshoreman’s  Hall.

       

29-30 April 1966                     Avalon Ballroom

Peter Albin learning his craft.

6 May 1966

6 May 1966

It was a big thrill to see our name in the San Francisco Chronicle.

13-14 May 1966                 Red Dog Saloon                  Virginia City             Nevada

21 May 1966                  Muir Beach                 Marin County

That was fun, to be finding our way, not sure of where we were going.

Janis was a trouper. She was a real musician and she supported the band as much as we supported her.

         

21 May 1966                     Avalon Ballroom

27-28 May 1966                Red Dog Saloon            Virginia City               Nevada

Hairy ?

30 May 1966                  Winterland                San Francisco

3-4 June 1966            Avalon Ballroom

10-11 June 1966                  Red Dog Saloon                  Virginia City

     Janis and Dorothy Joplin.

19 June 1966               Timothy Leary Benefit at the St. Francis Hotel             San Francisco

24-25 June 1966  Avalon Ballroom  Janis Joplin’s first engagement with Big Brother unless Chet made a special place for her at the Avalon on 10 June. I can’t remember.

We did all kinds of gigs. This one was for our friend Dennis Nolan.

Dennis drew this poster.   One of my favorites.

I’ve done a few paintings of this band.

1 July 1966                            Fillmore Auditorium               San Francisco

Rodney Albin, another big brother. Rodney once asked us to turn down… at gunpoint. The only way you can make guitar players turn down, despite an old joke that says otherwise.

2 July 1966              Monterey Fairgrounds

8-9 July 1966                   Red Dog Saloon            Virginia City

14 July 1966                  Fillmore

15-16 July 1966                This one didn’t happen.

                          

Nancy Gurley and her son Hongo who grew to be a fine man. Nancy was a free spirit.

22 July 1966

Lisa Law did some plein air photography of  Big Brother out in the San Geronimo Valley of Marin County.

                

28 July 1966                 California Hall                   San Francisco

29-30 July 1966                Garden Auditorium          Pacific National Exhibition         Vancouver       British Columbia

29-30-31 July 1966

Ken Babbs in control at The Trips Festival.

Playing in Golden Gate Park.     It always seemed to be sunny and blue.

2-3-4- August 1966                    Losers South

5-6 August 1966        Avalon Ballroom

       Sancho, often misspelled “Soncho,” put his pawprint on this poster.

Keeping an eye on things at The Mojo Navigator which was the first psychedelic rock magazine.

7 August 1966               with Grateful Dead, Grass Roots, Sunshine, Jook Savages, PH Phactor, Si Perkoff Jazz Quintet, San Francisco Mime Troupe.

                                 

12 August 1966    afternoon show in the Park.

12-13 August 1966           Avalon Ballroom

Figuring out what we’re going to do when we sign with Mainstream Records.

Chicago !                 Our first big road trip. We were there from 25 August to 19 September 1966.

16 September 1966      Chicago Sun Times

I saw Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters, and a lot of other good people up close and personal. Wolf said to me, “You have more soul than I have on my shoe.” First time I heard that expression.

                                    

19 September 1966

Stanley Mouse did this beautiful work on my guitar.

23-24 September 1966              Avalon Ballroom.        Wolf canceled this gig, so Grass Roots replaced him.

Another beautiful work by Dennis Nolan.

6 October 1966        The Ark      Sausalito, California.       We also played in Golden Gate Park that afternoon.

The Ark              Sausalito, California

The Charles van Damme, alias, The Ark a few years later.

7-8 October 1966             Avalon Ballroom          Sutter and Van Ness, San Francisco, California.

13-14 October 1966

15-16 October 1966

Backstage in our elegant dressing room.

22 October 1967                  Winterland              San Francisco

On one of our pilgrimages to Fritz Maytag’s Anchor Steam Brewery in San Francisco.

We played 1-6 November 1966 at The Matrix.

and 4 November 1966 at The Ark, Sausalito.

Drinking Champagne and being happy backstage.

The artists then were so exuberant and industrious that they would often do two, three or four posters for the same event. The creative juices were flowing.

11 November 1966               We taped a “POW” TV show in San Francisco and played the Trip Room in Sacramento.

We always had a lot of fun at Sokol Hall which was right down the street from 1090 Page where Peter and I started the band.

12 November 1966          Sokol Hall       739 Page Street         San Francisco.

Peter Albin wears satin.

13 November 1966   Avalon Ballroom

19 November 1966               The Barn          Scotts Valley            Santa Cruz

23 November 1966          California Hall    625 Polk Street       San Francisco, California.

                                   

25-26 November 1966            The Avalon Ballroom             Isn’t this a beautiful poster ?

3 December 1966                  Wilbur Hall       Stanford University      A Happening in the Wilburness

9-10 December 1966            Avalon Ballroom

 

16-17 December 1966              Winterland          San Francisco

18 December 1966           We played the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

25 December 1966               We had a Christmas party at our house in Lagunitas. Lisa Law took this photograph of us by the kitchen door.

26 December 1966                The Ark          Sausalito

27 December 1966                  Avalon Ballroom

31 December 1966              Kezar Pavilion        Golden Gate Park

Next week, part two. See you then !

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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April Fools.

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1 April 2012

But if you had been able to anticipate the grand march of human progress and poetic feeling by fifty years, and asked her to sing

You made me love you, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it,

she would have asked a policeman to remove you to a third class carriage.      (George Bernard Shaw, writing about his mother).

 

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

     1090 Page Street         San Francisco

     This was what it cost to see Peter Albin and me play in 1965.

When I first walked into 1090 Page Street in the spring of that year, these are the lines that I declaimed from the staircase down into the Victorian gloom of the foyer:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

And smale fowles maken melodye,

That slepen al the night with open ye,

So priketh hem nature in hir corages:

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

What do you want ? I had been an English major and was now studying linguistics in graduate school at UC Berkeley.

When this prologue is pronounced more or less the way it would be spoken in the fifteenth century, the rhythm and the music of the lines can be overwhelming.

In 1582, Charles IX, king of France, introduced the Gregorian Calendar into his country, and New Year’s Day was moved from 1 April to 1 January.

Many people, even in France, only learned of this change years later. Some are still not sure about it.

The first day of April seems like a far better time to start a new year than the first day of January.

Actually, to me, the first day of September would be best. This is the beginning of the year in many cultures.

The people who were too ignorant or too stubborn to accept 1 January as the  new new year were labeled “fools” by everyone else and were mocked with fool errands, fool invitations and fool parties.

The butts of these pranks were called “poissons d’avril,” April fish.

A young fish is easily caught.

So, on the first of April, it was common to hook a paper fish on the back of someone as a joke.

  You think he noticed it ?

In the 18th century, this lovely custom reached England, and was introduced into the American colonies by the English and the French. Here is a visual and literal pun on “poison” (poison) and “fish” (poisson).

Below is a ticket to see the “washing of the lions,” something that never happened, so this is an April fools trick in earnest.

In Scotland they take “butts” of jokes literally, so April Fools is devoted to spoofs involving the buttocks and is called Tally Day.

The origins of the “Kick Me” sign can be blamed on the Scots.

In Rome, this holiday was called Festival of Hilaria and it celebrated the return of the god Attis on 25 March, which was also called Roman Laughing Day. Hilaria was also called Cybele.

Another Hilaria in South America: OK, children, tell this pupil Aldo what are the requirements for being a congresswoman? To be Peruvian by birth and older than 25.

The Huli Festival in India comes on 31 March and is a celebration of Spring. People play jokes on each other and smear colors on their friends.

Perhaps because the cold winter is ebbing and the beautiful spring is springing, in many cultures there are lighthearted feasts around this time. One of them is the Jewish Purim which fell on 7 March this year at sundown.

Queen Esther Palin… April Fools !

Japanese style:

Things that happened on April first:

On 1 April 527, Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinianus became the emperor of Byzantium (Constantinople, Istanbul), the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

In 1578 on April first, William Harvey discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was born.

The ruins of Pompei were found on 1 April 1748.

On April Fools Day 1778, so the story goes, a New Orleans businessman Oliver Pollock created the $ symbol.

Another possible and much more interesting and ancient origin of the dollar sign is a kind of map made by the Phoenicians of the Pillars of Hercules. This was the Greek name of the promontories on the entrance to the straits of Gibraltar. When the Lebanese traders sailed by these eminences on their way out into the giant Atlantic ocean, the map they made of their threading the pillars was like a dollar sign. The Phoenicians were nothing if not a commercial race, so they took this map to heart.

King Ferdinand was able to make Gibraltar part of the Spanish estates in 1492 and he adopted the symbol of the pillars of Hercules. Later, King Charles V used it in his coat of arms and the symbol in combination with two hemispheres was printed on coins made of the silver and gold that was brought from America by the counquistadores. These coins then spread to America and Europe and the symbol adopted as a currency symbol.

Edmond Rostand who wrote Cyrano de Bergerac was born 1 April 1868.

Paul Gauguin the painter left Marseilles for Tahiti on 1 April 1891.

One fool that should have been kept in jail: 1 April 1924 Hitler was sentenced to five years labor, but General Ludendorff, a coconspirator in the Munich Putsch was acquitted. Herr Schickelgruber used his jail time to write a book.

Louis Marx introduced the Yo-Yo on April Fools 1929, the same day that Luis Buñuel released Un Chien Andalou. By the way, “yoyo” spelled backwards is “oyoy.”

Some other YoYos.

On 1 April 1930, the film Der Blaue Engel (Blue Angel) premiered in America.

Jimmy Cliff first saw the beautiful light of Jamaica on 1 April 1948.

 

Hey, it looks as if he is playing my Hummingbird… and right handed too.

Big Brother and the Holding Company played a Delano Grape Strikers Benefit on 1 April 1966 with The Great Society and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

     Three Slicks.

1 April 1967, we played at The Avalon Ballroom with The Charlatans and Blue Cheer.

April Fools Day 1973, John and Yoko perpetrate the hoax that they are having dual sex change operations.

2003, April first, Big Brother and the Holding Company play at Musiktheater Rex, Lorsch, Germany.

The President playing Peoria.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.                   George Bernard Shaw.

I will see you again on 8 April when the first chapter of my history of Big Brother and the Holding Company will appear.  All the best to you.

Sam Andrew.

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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The Dog Blog.

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25 March 2012

The word dog goes back so far in English that there is really no other word that it came from, and it is a peculiarly English word.

Other languages have borrowed the word “dog,” but English hasn’t borrowed the word from any other languages.

I love dogs and love to paint them. I know I’m not alone in this, and you should take a look at these ready made dog kennels if you’re looking to bring one of these furry companions into your home.

In Anglo Saxon the word was “dogca.” The last syllable was a diminutive, so the effect was something like “doggie.”

People on the continent used some version of “hound,” for dogs in general.

The earliest known mention in print of the animal is a Dutch/French sentence: “een dogghe, vn gros matin d’Engleterre, canis anglicus.”

Canis lupus familiarus is the formal designation for the domestic dog.

Janis and George.

All dogs came from the wolf, canis lupus, a member of the Canidae, Carnivora.

The dog I have my hand on here is Sancho. Many people thought of him as THE Family Dog. Sancho was preternaturally clever and stories of his exploits often strained credulity. Mouse and Kelly made this poster for the Avalon and they put Sancho’s footprint on it.

The dog might be the first domesticated animal. We love having them in our homes as our loyal friends. We even use a dog carrier so we can take them with us on our adventures. Protecting their health is something every owner is concerned with. Use petinsurance.review to find the best pet insurance provider for your dog.

Domesticated dog skeletons have been found in Siberia and Belgium from about 33,000 years before present.

These early skeletons show shortening of the snout, widening of the muzzle and crowding of the teeth, all of which differ them from the wolf.

DNA evidences a split between dogs and wolves about a hundred thousand years ago, but no examples from before 33,000 years ago have been found.

Canis lupus familiaris can refer to the dog we know, but also to the wolf, coyote and jackals.

It can refer to members of the tribe Canini, the African wild dog, foxes, bush dog, racoon dog.

The word “hound” was used for all domestic canines up to the 14th century.

But in the next two hundred years, “dog” became the usual word and “hound” referred to hunting canines.

“Hound” came from Indo-European “kwon,” dog, and this is the word that survived in Latin canis and, for example, Welsh ci (plural cwn).

If you go to the Westminster dog show, you will hear a male canine called a “dog,” and a female a “bitch.” Standard terminology.

This is a rhyton in the shape of a dog’s head made by Brygos in the early fifth century before the common era.

It is difficult sometimes to believe how much a dog or a cat can love us and put up with our silliness.

I am eternally and necessarily grateful for the nonjudgmental aspects of our cat and dog here at home. We owe them a comfy time in exchange, maybe by reading some reviews of dog beds to keep them soft and happy as they sleep.

This is a handsome dingo. Chet Helms’ brother John had a dingo once and we all lived together. Very educational.

Dingoes are the aboriginal dogs of Australia.

Dogs can see better at night than we can.

And they smell with more acuity than any other creature on the planet.

You probably have noticed things like this.

Egyptians loved dogs too.

Many are the saints who claim to be patrons of dogs.

Saint Roche, or San Rocco as he was called in Italy, is a dog patron saint candidate.

Saint Francis, or, more properly, San Francesco d’Asissi, was another.

Last Spring a couple of foxes tried to make a den under my painting studio. I store my work there, so it is a quiet place, but I must have spooked them when I finally emerged from winter hibernation, because they left and haven’t returned. The male was quite aggressive and he would run up the driveway and growl at me in a surprisingly loud, low voice for a creature of that size and delicacy.

Standard Poodles have a loyal devotee coterie, you see.

A dog from Gilgamesh.

Another Standard Poodle lover.

Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote beautiful music for the guitar and other instruments. His surname means “Wolfville.”

A wolf has recently made an appearance in California, the first one in a hundred years.

The Inu, which merely means “dog” in Japanese has a somewhat wolflike demeanor, but is very smooth and, oh, you know, Japanese.

“Inu” is written like this. You can see that the shell and bone form was a drawing of a dog. Later the character becomes more stylized on bronzeware. The seal inscription style has evolved to a more abstract form and the contemporary kanji is on the bottom left.

Inugami, the dog god. You can see the word “inu” there. The second character is “kami, gami,” god. Similar to “kamikaze” which meant “divine wind” or “god wind.”

Isabella Rossellini, fairly divine herself, looking quite a bit like her mother here.

Christopher Guest’s mother in law.

This was a fine dog. Smart and alert like most Border Collies.

I always like Jean Arthur’s voice. it had an interesting edge. Her dog has spots on his ears.

Two very likable creatures. Or should that be lickable ?

Joel Hoekstra’s puppy, probably huge by now. Joel and Antonia live on the upper West side, Manhattan, and they are beautiful people. So is their dog.

Josie is a pussycat and she loves her best friend.

Kathryn Adams and her, is it?, Boston Terrier.

Dog spelled backwards is God. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

What may make you think even more, is that “wolf” spelled backwards is “flow.”

Or that pup spelled backwards is pup.

Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon. Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Sacco’s name will live in the hearts of the people and in their gratitude when Katzmann’s and your bones will be dispersed by time, when your name, your laws, institutions, and your false god are but a dim remembering of a cursed past in which man was wolf to man. Bartolomeo Vanzetti 1888-1927.

I like the way their eyes tilt upward.

Louise Brooks was from the Midwest, but she had a career in European cinema, much like that Ohio woman Jean Seberg who starred in À Bout de Souffle with Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Mad-dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun; the Jappanese don’t care to, the Chinese wouldn’t dare to; Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one, But Englishmen detest a Siesta.

Noël Coward.

In 1987 a German Shepherd won Best in Show at the Westminster.

Dogs turn around before they lie down in order to flatten the grass and drive away any small vermin that are there.

Though, as we know, she was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their advances. George Eliot.

A pug is more closely related to a wolf than a German Shepherd is.

When a dog chases a car, the car generally speeds away. The dog thinks he has been successful in chasing it off, so he will repeat that behavior over and over.

The Basenji is a unique dog that originates in Central Africa. They don’t bark, instead emitting a high-pitched “yodel.” Their behavior has been described as cat-like; they groom like cats and they are known to climb trees. My wife Elise is obsessed with rescuing basenjis. She looks at their animal care sites as avidly as some people look at e bay.

En quoi un homard est-il plus ridicule qu’un chien…ou toute autre bête dont on se fait suivre? J’ai le goût des homards, qui sont tranquilles, sérieux, savent les secrets de la mer, n’aboient pas et n’avalent pas la monade des gens comme les chiens, si antipathiques à Goethe, lequel pourtant n’était pas fou. Gérard de Nerval 1808-1855.

How is a lobster more ridiculous than a dog…or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I like lobsters. They are peaceful, serious, they know the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark, and they don’t try to eat your balls the way dogs do. Goethe had an antipathy to dogs and he wasn’t crazy. Gérard de Nerval explaining why he walked a lobster on a leash in gardens of the Palais Royal.

The most intelligent dogs are said to be the Border Collie and the Poodle.

Re vera, cultor denuo renatus deorum Romanorum antiquorum sum. Actually, I’m a born again pagan.

Intense grief over the death of a dog is normal and natural.

The more I see of men, the better I like dogs. Madame Roland 1754-1793.

A dog we met on Okinawa.

Turbane magna vehiculorum obviam erat tibi venienti huc ? Run into much traffic on the way over ?

Thirty-three percent of dog owners admit they talk to their dogs on the phone or leave messages on the answering machine while they are away.

For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. Revelation.

All dogs can be traced back 40 million years ago to a weasel-like animal called the Miacis which dwelt in trees and dens. The Miacis later evolved into the Tomarctus, a direct forbear of the genus Canis, which includes the wolf and jackal as well as the dog.

Ad venatum vadamus. Let’s cut to the chase.

A bear grabbed her dog. She ran after the bear, punched it in the face and snatched her dog back. Don’t make a mother mad.

Aka inu. Red dog.

Small quantities of grapes and raisins can cause renal failure in dogs. Chocolate, macadamia nuts, cooked onions or anything with caffeine can also be harmful.

Avocado, mushrooms and seeds of any type aren’t good either.

Shi dog made by a commercial art studio on Okinawa. People put these dogs at corners of their house on the roof to keep away evil spirits, or maybe just because they like them.

Tuesday Weld was married to Rip Torn. I once sang country songs all night with Bobby Nieuwirth and Kris Kristofferson at Rip Torn’s house. Mr. Torn narrated our video 900 Nights.

Guarding a house across the street from our hotel on Okinawa.

Players, Sir ! I look upon them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs. Samuel Johnson 1709-1784.

Shiba no inu. Is EVERYTHING the Japanese do cute, or does it just seem that way ?

Imagine if there were this much variation in humans. What if dogs bred US ?

Shiba inu.

And daun Russell the fox stirte up atones. Chaucer.

Ozzy Osborne saved his wife Sharon’s Pomeranian from a coyote by tackling and wrestling the coyote until it released the dog. Talk about a hero.

Any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad. W.C. Fields.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matthew, probably talking about TV evangelists.

Nunc, vero inter saxum et locum durum sum. Now I am really between a rock and a hard place.

The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweet-heart, see, they bark at me. King Lear.

A dog’s life. He lives in Athens, visits the Acropolis daily and is constantly photographed. Well, okay, the being photographed may be a little disturbing, but…

Yvonne de Carlo.

Sometimes, most of the time?, the worst thing about parting from someone is that you have to leave her dog too.

Woof. Arf. Wag.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

__________________________________________________________

CATS.

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18 March 2012

Did you know that cats, the ones who aren’t agnostics anyway, have a patron saint?

She is Gertrude de Nivelles and she is also the patron of gardeners.

Yesterday 17 March was her Feastday. You have to wonder if Santa Gertrudis cattle are named for her and, you know, they probably are.

Gertrude who was born in 626 of our era is often invoked against rats and mice, particularly field mice, so she is the protector of cats.

In my halcyon days, I often liked to take LSD and study the world around me, particularly cats who were near to hand and always fascinating.

They seem to study me too.

Cats are so well engineered and seem to fit in their life niche better than many, many other creatures. Although they sometimes do suffer from anxiety issues and other health problems (like any other animal) and might need CBD products for cats to help them cope. But overall, cats are good at what they do – being cats.

This cat is Jazzy. He lives in San Anselmo.

We brought Lizzy home when she was a baby and in two days she knew how to go the bathroom, clean herself, climb, no, run, up and down the spiral staircase, things that our eight year old dog still has not learned. She seemed that advanced that we thought she would be able sort her own cat insurance out!

I love dogs and indeed plan to write about them soon, but a cat will run circles around a dog when she isn’t actually jumping circles around him.

Notice that I have unconsciously ascribed a gender to each of these animals.

Women are cats.

Men are dogs. Take that any way you want to.

No stereotyping here.

Big Brother and the Holding Company played in Central Park in the summer of 2003. One of our singers was Chan Marshall.

Chan sometimes calls herself Cat Power.

When she was onstage with us, when we were actually playing Down On Me, Chan held a tape recorder to her ear, listening to Janis Joplin sing Down On Me. This was such a post Modern approach to learning a tune that I have never forgot Chan.

Ernest Hemingway was one of the more famous lovers of polydactyl cats.

He was first given a six-toed cat by a ship’s captain.

As provided in his will, his former home in Key West, Florida currently houses some fifty descendants of his cats. About half of them are polydactyl.

I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course. Mark Twain.

Mark Twain was asked: “What is better than a cat?” To which Twain replied: “Two cats!”

Fitting thing for a man named Twain to say.

Motto: Momma loves morals and Papa loves cats. Susy Clemens.

Sir Isaac Newton loved cats. He invented the cat door.

Edgar Allan Poe used cats as symbols of the sinister in several of his stories, although he himself owned and loved cats. He used his tortoiseshell cat “Catarina” as the inspiration for his story ‘The Black Cat’.

T.S. Eliot was a cat lover and he wrote an entire book of poems about cats, that ultimately became a rather well known musical.

Nostradamus (1503 – 1566), the prognosticator of prognosticators, had a cat named Grimalkin, which, with a capital letter or no, is a name used generically for a cat, especially an old one.

Monet loved cats and depicted them in several paintings.

Florence Nightingale owned a large Persian cat named “Bismarck”. She owned more than 60 cats in her lifetime.

Then there’s Kat Patterson who has many feline characteristics.

So does Peggy Pettigrew Stewart, gifted glass artist, here in her natural habitat. Elise and I are going to Arizona to see Peggy this week.

Catalina and Albert.

One of our very early songs in Big Brother and the Holding Company was Faster, Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill. I never saw the film, but the tune was fun to play faster and faster.

Robert Crumb said he felt terrible about creating three things because he was ripped off on each of them: 1. the Keep On Truckin’ logo. 2. Fritz the Kat, and 3. the Cheap Thrills album cover because Columbia paid him a small fee and then years later his original drawing was sold at Sotheby’s for some ungodly sum.

I have said so often that Crumb is the greatest artist of our time that I am beginning to believe it.

Why no one in the art world will even try to pronounce “Brueghel” correctly is a bit of a puzzle. Everyone says it as if it were German and written Breugel, but it’s not. It’s Dutch and it is the very devil to pronounce. In Haarlem, I once asked a docent how to pronounce it. I had to ask him three times and I still didn’t get it. It is SOMETHING like Brew hull where the r is said with a flap as in Spanish or Italian and where the h is pronounced as “ch” in German or Scottish. It is definitely not “Broigull,” as Robert Hughes and even Robert Crumb pronounce it.

“Gattare” are Roman women who feed and care for the feral cats of that city.

Edward Gorey and his grimalkin.

Yoko, John and Pepper.

George definitely seems like a cat person.

As does Stan Laurel.

Gato Barbieri was the happening Latin musician when I played with Cubans in New York in the 1970s. Gato is Spanish for “cat,” from Latin “cattus.”

The Classical Latin for “cat” was “felis,” but people in the street said “cattus.” Think of when we say “feline” in English and when we say “cat.”

I once had a cat named Felix, not for “felis,” but for “felix,” happy. Compare Spanish “feliz” and Italian “felice.”

In Greek there was also a learned word for cat (aílouros) and a street word (káttos).

From the word “aílouros,” we get ailurophilia and ailurophbia and you can probably guess what those are. I have a cat who sticks her tongue out just a little bit as this one does. She will leave it there until you call her attention to it.

Ailurophobes are immediately detected by cats who then shower their attention on them… sometimes quite literally.

The poet Martial used the word “catta,” and modern Greeks say “gáta” from Italian “gatta.”

In Catalan, they say “gat.” I think Pablo Picasso may have frequented a café called Quatre Gats (Four Cats) when he was a young man in Barcelona at the turn of the last century.

The English seem to love cats a bit more than the rest of us.

Bowie and Purrie.

Writers like cats, maybe because they are sedentary and soft, or maybe because cats just seem to be wise and comfortable.

I have spent a lifetime drawing and painting cats. I put Mr. O’Reilly in here. He is nothing like that bully on Faux News.

Interspecies love affair, courtesy of my friend Filia Franco.

If you want to draw a kitten, you have to move quickly.

An ailurophile’s bass guitar.

Notice that cats walk on their “fingertips” and that their thumb has migrated up into their inside “forearm” area. You only see four digits in the footprint. Shakespeare called the feline/canine thumb a “dewclaw.”

These thumbs have not migrated yet.

But, hey, they may.

This man loved cats.

Socks also knew his way around the White House.

“I have seven lives. Help me to live at least one of them well.” (I thought they had nine lives.)

Zappa means “hoe” in Italian. No, not that kind of hoe. The other kind of hoe.

I knew this cat well.

Two rather handsome cats.

He assumed the name “Capote” from where I don’t know. It means a big cape or a cloak.

It may even be a top for a convertible.

They visited Minden, Nevada, together.

Drew is a true blue ailurophile.

I love it when cats stick out their arms like this.

Thereby hangs a… oh, you know, a big sweeper.

Cats are as varied in their character and personalities as humans are. Maybe more so.

Some decisive, chiseled.

Others a little softer around the edges.

Ready to go with whatever.

Orange tabbys are always fun.

Love and happiness. (Hey, good idea for a song title.)

Meow.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Starfinder and Larry the Hat at The Sweetwater.

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Monday 12 March 2012

Monday night in Mill Valley, California.

Tony Saunders and  Starfinder Stanley in the green room at the new Sweetwater.

Everything felt right. The vibes (and vibes are very important in California), the vibes were right. Pete Sears, Inez Garcia and Kurt Huget.

We were all there to celebrate the release of Owsley Stanley’s Carousel CD. Robert Altman always in good spirits.

This man is a star, so Starfinder should find him. I don’t know who he is, but he’s a star.

Joli Valenti turned in a great set, and then Lynn Asher, Peter Albin, Terry Haggerty, Kurt Huget, Paul Revelli and I did Down On Me, Bobby McGee, Call On Me and Piece of My Heart.

The beautiful Elise and the not so bad looking either Jesse.

Alzara Getz and Lynn Asher. Lynn did such a good job of singing.

Elise Piliwale and Peter Albin.     You have to walk across the stage in front of the band to get to the dressing room. Good planning.

This was such a great night. Thank you to everyone, but especially to Larry Lautzker (Larry the Hat) and Starfinder Stanley for making it happen.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Saint Patrick

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11 March 2012

 

Patrick was born sometime in the fifth century of our era at Kilpatrick, Dumbartonshire, Scotland.

The Antonine Wall had its western terminus near Kilpatrick in West Dumbartonshire, so this was Roman territory. It would be like a military post or base today.

The Antonine Wall was farther north than Hadrian’s

Patrick’s name was most likely Patricius since his father Calpurnius was from a patrician family and served as a deacon (decio) in the church.

In Irish Patrick is Pádraig.

Patrick’s grandfather was a priest. (This is long before the Church, in her wisdom, decided that priests should be celibate.)

Two authentic letters from Patrick survive and we know most of his life from these.

His mother Conchessa was from the same family as Martin de Tours, the patron saint of France.

Martin is so often depicted with a sword seemingly aimed at a near naked man on foot, that one could not be faulted for thinking that he was about to impale the poor beggar.  Martin was, however, using his sword to cut his cloak in two to share it with the man..

.

Irish adventurers abducted Patrick when he was sixteen and he was sold into slavery.

His new owner Milchu of Dairiada in Antrim, Ireland, made him a shepherd and Patrick led a lonely meditative life of prayer for six years.

Milchu was a Druid and thus Patrick came to have a thorough knowledge of the native Irish religion and the Celtic Irish speech.

The study of druidism was his apprenticeship into Irish ways.

At the end of his six year slavery, Patrick escaped traveling west 200 miles to Westport where he sailed for Britain and was soon with family and friends.

He then went to his mother’s family in Gaul, to the monastery at Tours and he also studied at the island sanctuary of Lérins.

Patrick felt insecure about his education and his rustic Latin.

Hearing that Saint Germain (Sanctus Germanus) was preaching at Auxerre, Patrick went to him and after much study became a priest.

Germain was called to Britain to combat the Pelagian heresy there, and Patrick went with him.

Then he began thinking seriously of returning to Ireland.

He began to hear voices calling him back.

Saint Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, commended Patrick to Pope St. Celestine I who gave him the mission of bringing Ireland into the Church.

The Pope now named him Patercius or Patritius to indicate that Patrick would become the pater civium, the father of his people.

Thus, in 433 Patrick landed at the Vantry River close by Wicklow Head.

He made his way to Dairiada and payed the price of ransom to his former master.

Before contending with the Druids, he rested for a while off the Skerrie Coast.

A chieftain named Dichu at first tried to stop Patrick, but Dichu gradually became a friend and gave Patrick a sabhail (barn) which became the first patrician sanctuary in Ireland.

“Sabhail” is an Irish word meaning “save, preserve,” in one sense for the saving of crops. Over time the word became “saul.”

A monastery and church were built there and the place is still known as Sabhail (Saul). This is where Patrick died many years later.

Patrick’s former master Milchu, rather than be converted by his former slave, burned all of his (Milchu’s) possessions and threw himself into the fire.

Fire was sacred to the Irish.

Patrick used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish honored their gods with fire.

Patrick understood the power of symbolism.

He made the Irish cross by superimposing a sun, which the Irish worshipped, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross.

When he returned to Saul (Sabhail), Patrick heard that there was to be a special gathering of all the chieftains at Tara on 26 March Easter Sunday 433.

All the chiefs and Druids came.

Patrick performed many great works at this festival and the people of Ireland understood that he was a messenger to them.

All the chieftains, all the bards and all the people understood Patrick’s special clarity and holiness.

It was here that he showed them the shamrock and explained the triune godhead.

On that Easter Day at Tara, the triumph of Patrick was complete.

The sacred fire now kindled by the saint would never be extinguished.

Patrick died on 17 March 493.

He is said to be buried at Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, County Down.

By the way, there have been no snakes in Ireland for ten thousand years.

No snakes either on New Zealand, iceland, Greenland, Antarctica or Hawaii and probably many other island places.

The shamrock was sacred in pre-Christian Ireland. It represented rebirth and eternal life.

Religious life in Ireland is very old… at least six thousand years old, but probably even more venerable.

Be sure to wear green this Saturday.

See you next week.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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In the land of the Maidu: 3-4 March 2012

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4 March 2012

Feather Falls Casino                 Oroville               California

Check the calendar, change strings and listen to the tunes.

These are Elise’s handwritten directions.  She writes down the route and says, “Hey, it’s near Chico,” and I reply, “Yes. Paradise.”

Our room in the Feather Falls Casino hotel.

The hallway, such a familiar scene for someone who travels a lot.

The minute we get in the room, Elise starts making the magic happen.

I turn on the television. Have you googled “santorum” lately ?

I’ve played this guitar for a long time now. Paul Reed Smith gave her to me. She’s been a good one.

Donna Patterson and Tom Finch in the green room.

Donna always knows how to answer my questions about Twitter, Facebook, Google. You Tube, My Space. The woman is a cyberencyclopedia.

Peter making the sets. There is a certain sense of déjà vu here.

Peter, Sam, Stefanie, Tom.

This is who made the escalator in the casino. They’ve been around for a while.

Srefanie and her husband David.

Peter, Donna, Mike, Tom, Elise.

Donna. Hey, I could paint this and make it the Donna Lisa.

Peter playing It’s Cool…Baby.

We did two one hour sets.

Stefanie, Tom and Peter working on their dance steps.

Tom Finch. He’s getting a little frisky.

It can be so surreal backstage.

Thinking about Ishi.

This is a real Native American.

So we wake up the next morning and I pack the car, all the while thinking about Ralph, an unreasonable man. This sticker is on the back of Elise’s car.  She’s voted for him in every presidential election since 1996.

Elise leaves our room neat and clean for the next guests.

Says a prayer of thanksgiving and farewell.

And drives us down highway 70 south to Sacramento.

We decide to stop in Davis, California, near Sacramento. I have played in this town, but it seems to me that I have never really been here before.

We have a little vacation, very interesting, visiting bookstores and other interesting places. Beautiful day.

I bought this book and Elise read it to me.

We thought about going to this China restaurant, but it felt so good just being outside.

I am doing a painting of Lady Marchmain and the border will be very elaborate, but I am doing it in subtle colors so I don’t overpower her face.

Elise delighted in the metal sculpture on this Davis dumpster.

Art and ice cream… what’s not to love ?

I went into another bookstore and saw this image.

Is nothing sacred ? I mean, legendary pizza. Well, I hope it is.

What would she think of that ? She’d probably be amazed that anyone would care enough to name a shop Woodstock.

Things weren’t weird enough. We had to walk by this building, and Elise said, “Hey, it’s Barry. What’s he doing here ?”

What indeed ?

My main memory of Barry Melton is from when he looked a little more like Harpo Marx.

Such a great guy. We played together in Scotland a few years ago when Carla Piliwale and Edd Hart came over to be with us.

So, Elise and I said goodbye to Davis,  a charming little town.

We drove west on Highway 80 and took the 37 highway across the top of the bay. There was Mount Tamalpais at last, welcoming us to Marin.

Home to San Geronimo.

Thank you always for being here, and I’ll see you next week.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Chime Children

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22 January 2012

 

Alan Merril wrote I Love Rock and Roll… and then he retired. He’s truly a gifted singer and a good friend.

J.K. Rowling’s books, targeted for their sorcery, were banned by some American libraries and burned in some cases. Shame, shame. You are the followers of Qin Shi Huang, Diocletian, Savonarola, the Nazis, Republican senator Joseph McCarthy and other ignorant book burners throughout history. Have you learned nothing? Of course not. You are book burners.

With Susan Zelinsky.

La bellissima Arianna Antinori, Roman by birth, and now she lives in Vicenza.

Ben Nieves, a real, true musician, born that way, and has studied since.

Lani from New Orleans, love you, Lani.

Herb Caen, what is there to say? He was Mr. San Francisco for fifty years, even though he was a suburban kid from Sacramento.

He did what he called “three dot journalism” EVERY DAY for years and years. Item, item, hoosegotta item?

Carmine and Kacee, Hawaii.

Chad Quist, a Berklee product, although I knew him before he went to Berklee and he was very good then.

Cher and Gregg Allman in their funky southern phase.

Cher in her earlier Sonny and Bob chapter.

Don Graham with Chloe, who was our singer that night, but she has since moved on, with Joel Hoekstra, to the Trans Siberian Orchestra.

Danny Dastrup at Aroma Café. There was a big hole in our lives when Danny moved on, as we knew he would.

Dava’s lower half. And her upper half is even better, but we’re not going to see it today.

David Peters is in Uganda now, filming in Ginga, helping people become better, as he is wont to do.

Don’s party.

And, then, a little later in the evening…

Dylan.

Eartha Kitt and James Dean in a dance class. Now, you don’t see that every day.

You are what you think.

Engrid Whisenant, scholar, partisan, Renaissance woman, PhD.

Ezio Guaitamacchi, Italian talk show host, researcher, media personality.

Franco, Szilvia and Veronica.

Fred lives across the street from where I paint.

George Michalski and Chet Helms. George has the money and Chet has the time.

Szilvia when she was a beautiful baby.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. Don Aters took this photo.

Amazing Grace, how sweet that face.

Musicians on the big island, Hawaii.

Szilvia, all grown up.

… and her beautiful friends.

Jackie and Steve.

Jane and Freddie.

Janis and James.

Joel Hoekstra.

Jennifer, the goddess, Espinoza.

She can really sing.

She’s 18 now.

Not bad looking either.

She’d be a good model for a Madonna.

Jimi in Little Richard’s band.

With Bobby Womack and Wilson Pickett.

Quanked: overpowered by fatigue. From Anglo-Saxon cwanian, to be weary or faint, and cwencan, to quench.

Chirology: the art of conversing with the hands or fingers.

Pythonic: pretending  to foretell future events; from pythoness, the female or priestess who gave oracular answers at Delphi.

Things to say while driving:

Thou damned tripe-visaged rascal. Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-catch.

Lifelode: the leading of one’s life (Middle English). So much prettier and apt than lifestyle, isn’t it?

Gommacks: tricks, mischief, foolery, from Gaelic guaineach, giddy, sportive, frolicking.

Millefleurs: a perfume distilled from flowers of different kinds; formed on the French eau de millefleurs. The equivalent Italian millefiori is a glass sculpture.

Ensorcell: to enchant, bewitch, fascinate. Adapted from French ensorceler, from sorcier, sorcerer.

I wrote many songs with Kim Nomad. Only now are some of them being recorded. She has a beautiful way of singing.

Kristina Kopriva and Liam Hanrahan.

(Book title, 1672)

New Instructions unto Youth for Their Behavior: A Discourse upon Some Innovations of Habits and Dressing, Against Powdering of Hair, Naked Breasts, Black Spots, and Other Unseemly Customs.

Lucubrator: a person who studies by night, or by candlelight.

La Città della Pieve, Umbria, Italia.

Linda LaFlamme.

This was fun.

Snickersneeze: a term without meaning used to frighten children, “I’ll snickersneeze you, if you don’t.”

When at Niagara Falls, I was escorting a young lady with whom I was on friendly terms. She had been standing on a piece of rock, the better to view the scene, when she slipped down

and was evidently hurt. “Did you hurt your leg much?” She turned from me, evidently much shocked, “The word ‘leg’ is never mentioned before ladies. I am not so particular as some people are,

for I know those who always say ‘limb’ of a table, or ‘limb’ of a pianoforte.”   I then recalled seeing a pianoforte in a “seminary for young ladies” whose four legs had been dressed by prudish

residents in modest little trousers with frills at the bottom.”          Frederick Maryatt, English army captain, 1837.

Lunarian: an inhabitant of the moon.

“I abroad with my wife and little Betty Mitchell…to show them a play, The Chances…The whole play pleases me well, and most of all the sight of many fine ladies, among others

my Lady Castlemayne and Mrs. Middleton. The latter of the two hath also a very excellent face and body, I think. Thence by coach to the New Exchange, and there laid out money,

and I did give Betty Mitchell two pairs of gloves…I was troubled with my pain, having got a bruise on my right testicle, I know not how. But this I did make good use of to make my wife

shift sides with me, and I did come to sit avec Betty Mitchell, and there had her hand which elle did give me very frankly, and did hazer whatever I voudrais avec la, which did plaisir

me grandement, and so set home with my mind mighty glad.”                            Samuel Pepys          5 February 1667.

Navvy: a toiler, principally with a spade, short for navigator, but a navigator of the land, day laborers without benefit of bulldozers, backhoes, computers.

Chantepleure: she that sings and weeps both together.

Napiform: having the shape or appearance of a turnip (Latin napus, turnip).

Bezaubernde: German, bewitching, charming, ensorcellating.

Norton and Lisa Buffalo. Norton was a prince among men and a real musician. Lisa is a high quality person, and I wish her well.

Shana rhymes with Anna, Savannah, or, if you’re loose, with Shannon. Kat rhymes with “Who dat?”   Naturally.

A missed opportunity. To paint a portrait is a knack I possess, which many artists, far better than I, lack. I painted hers, but then was asked to do it again for a fee, and I could not.

When money is involved, I immediately lose interest, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Shrumpsed:  beaten in games.  I’m sure Rachel could shrumps me anytime in any game.

Fragor: a strong or sweet scent.

Saltation: the act of dancing or jumping.

Sasha and her beau.

Dowsabell: a common name in sixteenth-century poetry for a sweetheart, especially for an unsophisticated country girl.

The word means “sweet and beautiful,” from French douce et belle.

Today is the birthday of William Smith, an English admiral who compiled the rich and varied glossary of nautical terms Sailor’s Word Book, 1867. His famous grandson Robert Baden-Powell

founded the British Boy Scouts in 1908.

One of Admiral Smith’s words was “mallemarocking,” the visiting and carousing of seamen in the Greenland ships. This word came from the Dutch “mallemarok,” a foolish woman,

a tomboy, from “mal,” foolish and “marok,” adaptation of the French “marotte,” an object of foolish attention.

Carfuddle: to discompose, to rumple, synonymous with carfuffle, to disorder. Also spelled kerfuffle.

Susan Zelinsky and Ruby who has grown to look exactly like her mother.

Galericulate: covered, as with a hat. (Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, 1755)

Lycanthropia: January was called wolf month because people are always wont in that month to be more in danger of being devoured by wolves than in any other.

Just last week the first wolf in a hundred years crossed into California. We welcome this creature now and wish him well. Some of us do anyway.

Szilvia.

Drury: gallantry, courtship, love, delight (from the French drue, a mistress). I have often walked Drury Lane in London.

In the days before motels and hotels, travelers often stayed anywhere they could, and sometimes slept in the same bed as their hosts. Husbands and parents  frequently permitted these guests

to “bundle” with their wives and daughters. Prudent mothers gave daughters approaching the bundling age a “courting-stocking” completely covering the girl’s body from the waist downwards,

with room for both legs within it. Such stockings were often heirlooms.

Veronica Farnetani and Andrea Zurli. I met them in Umbria.

Vicki is from South Africa. Her accent is soft and beautiful, just as she is.

Wassail Eve, also known as Twelfth Night was the evening when the Three Wise Men came.

“Wassail” was derived from the 13th century Norse toast Waes hail. (Be thou healthy.)

Crazling: a person affected with a craze or mania.

 

See you next week !

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Janis Joplin, First Person, by Sam Andrew.

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8 January 2012

I spent a lot of time with Janis Joplin. I played more nights with her than any other musician in her life. She had a colorful, picturesque way of expressing herself, and I have tried to remember everything that she said exactly the way she phrased it. Of course, she later delivered many of these things in interviews, but she used me as a crash test dummy to practice on, to hone her words till they were perfect. I was happy to perform this function, and, as friends do, I used her for the same purpose. I liked Janis a lot. We had fun. Here she is:

 

1958

We were fifteen years old, couldn’t drink in Texas.  We always used to go across the Sabine River to Louisiana where we wanted to boogie and where they didn’t care.  All those honky-tonks, down-home juke joints, mixed drinks, smoke, French kisses and alligators.  Man.  What a stew, what a brew.  If you could reach over the bar they would serve you.

We used to go crabbing over there.  The smell of crabs and crawdads on the barbecue and cold beer to drink I’ll never forget.

We would go to Big Oaks in Vinton, Louisiana, to hear Percy Sledge way back then…

…and Jimmy Reed too.

Under those mossy magic trees we would sing everything we knew and a lot of things we didn’t.

God, it was heaven.  All those old houses crumbling apart and the stillness of the bayous.

Whole families would be in those roadhouses dancing for their lives, all the bitty children and the mama and the papa.  The little girls would slide across the floor barefoot, squeal in sheer ecstasy, and chase each other into the night.

The things I could tell you about when we drove home sometimes at a hundred miles an hour along those country roads with the bumper of the car leaning over to catch the gravel if it could, and with turning out our lights so we could see if a car was coming the other way and with getting that special kiss whenever a one-eyed vehicle approached.  Why are we alive to remember this?  It was heaven, yes, and there were angels watching over us.

I remember one night when those angels were working overtime.  We were in some clip joint just over the river and we were wet behind the ears.  Might as well have swum over.  Innocents abroad, ha, ha.

There were these guys there and I was fascinated with them.  They were tough, they didn’t give a shit.  I was dancing with them, having a good time.  Then this one guy started grabbing me, man, shoving me around like he thought he was King Kong or something.  I got mad.  I hit him with a bottle.  We were lucky to get out of there alive that night.  Alive and in one piece.

1959

I read, I painted, I thought.  I’m still thinking. (laughs.)  And I can’t even talk about singing.  I’m inside of it and it is inside of me.  I can’t know what I’m doing.  If I know it, I lose it.  I sing and push that sound out and that’s the best feeling.  It hurts so good, like first time love.  It’s so strong and so right.  It’s goes beyond a sexual thing although that is certainly there.

1960

I’ve got a special friend.  Really cool, good man.  He knows about  Bessie Smith.

He’s got their records.  He knows Ma Rainey’s music, Leadbelly’s too.

This kind of music is definitely not on the radio.

Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey, Bessie, they were like a lifeline.

And then I found some books about these people, books about the blues.  They aren’t quite what you would want but I can read between the lines and it is so good just to know that anyone else knows.

I can sing just like Bessie Smith if I want to.  Well, almost anyway.  She’s so good, kind of scary.  She has this loud,  strong voice that just reaches out and grabs you whatever you’re doing.  That voice won’t let go of you.

1961

You know it’s hard when you’re a kid to be different.  There’s no perspective.  You don’t know that there may be other people like you.  There’s a strong possibility that you’re just a loser, a freak, a dog.  The whole environment seemed weird to me when I was growing up, as if all the trees lit up and said “go home,” and I said, “Where is home?”

We just started hearing about the beat generation, the dharma bums, Kerouac, Snyder, Ginsberg.  It was exciting.  They were cool, they had something.  Hey, at least they’re trying to have something good and not common.

Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik though they didn’t know what a beatnik was.  Neither did I but I was damn sure going to find out.

I started singing a lot of folk music and blues in coffeehouses and bars around Austin and I met a wonderful man, Ken Threadgill.

He had a little place that was all wood and felt good inside and he believed in what we were doing.  That place used to be a gas station.  Funky and earthy.

First time I played at Threadgill’s with Powell and Larry Wiggins I won two bottles of Lone Star and three dollars and thirty-three cents.  Now you know that’s going to turn a young girl’s mind.  I’ve never been the same since.

This is when I met Chet who was a beatnik from Texas just like me.  We headed for San Francisco.  I was at a very young and fucked-up stage along here.

I had a chance to be a real beatnik not a hippie.  You know the difference?  Hippies are technicolor, hopeful, naive, they believe the world can be a better place if we all hold hands and chant for peace and love.

Beatniks are all black, down, cynical, on the fringe, wise to the ways of the world.  They say the hell with it.  Stay stoned and don’t let the bastards get you down.

1962

You know how some little girls want to be flight attendants?  Well, I wanted to be an artist.  Always.

That’s what I was doing in Venice and North Beach.  I was being an artist as hard as I could, hanging out, bumming around, finding out, changing.

1963

I’m all I’ve got.  I can’t compromise that.  It’s the only unique thing that I have.  That is the real thing that I get from reading the beats, a sense that I had better develop the sincere part of myself because that is what I have to offer.  Hell, for all I know even some of the beats don’t know that.

Port Arthur is a tacky town.  I hated it.  Those square people.  Only later did I find out that everywhere is tacky.

Vancouver, Canada, for example, was not that cool and it’s a beautiful place with no excuse for being tacky.  They were not ready for Big Brother at all.  We were the first longhaired people they saw and they threw us out of a restaurant called the Jolly Roger without so much as a by your leave.  It’s funny now.  Not then.  Everywhere is tacky if you let it be.  Down On Me?  You bet.  Da-yum raght.  OK, boys, let’s go rehearse.

You just have to make your way.  I wanted those people at home to love me and they didn’t care, didn’t even know.  You have to come to terms with that.

1964

Oh, no, I don’t play like that.  Being that chickenshit is tacky.  I told ya, I told ya.  Ya gotta take a chance, know what I mean?  Well, then, get outta the way.

(singing and talking on a beach, the Gulf of Mexico)

Lay me down, lay me down by the sweet sea.  Tell me that you care bout no one but me. You’ll do that, wontcha?  Pretend this is beautiful and that you see the moon shining between us.

1965

I didn’t start out to be a singer.  I started out to be just a person on the street like everybody else.  But suddenly I got swept up into this singing thing.  And after I got involved in it, it got really important to me if I was good or not.

You know why I sing?  Why I started to sing?  It was to be with my friends, to be in the scene, to give something good and get something good, to hang out, to have a reason to be.  I sort of backed into it if you must know.  Course then if you sing you got to sing loud and I could do that.  It surprised me as much as anyone else.

I said, hey, I can sing, and then I could  sing.  Damndest thing ever.

I couldn’t make it in San Francisco anymore, least not the way I wanted to.  I had to go home, get a job, straighten out, go back to college, God, even maybe get married.  It was an insane time.  I was at the bottom.

1966

A lot of young people now look at their parents’ lives and see how they gave up and compromised and wound up with so little.  I mean, if you have to sell out at least get something for it.  I’ll sell out.  Just show me where to sign and how much I’m going to get.  Now, not later when I won’t know how to use it.

Right now is where you are.  How can you wait?  Why should I hold back and sound mediocre just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now.

That’s what I said to Travis anyway.  I’m not sure that I meant it, but he took me at my word and practically kidnapped me, abducted me, I mean, it was, well, it was good is what it was.  He was really good that night and the next thing I knew I was next to him on the shotgun side and we were headed for San Francisco again.  Chet put him up to the whole thing.

Some story about a band out there that needed a singer because some other band had one.  You should hear their names.  Grateful Dead.  Jefferson Airplane.  Quicksilver Messenger Service.  The Flaming Groovies.  Outlandish, aren’t they?

This is a brave new world.

Welcome to the Matrix and we are proud to be here.  Usually someone else does the announcing but tonight…it’s me!  Ta da. (She sticks out one foot in an exaggerated glamor pose.)  So here’s my message to you.  Get off your butt and feel things.

Hey, I’m twenty-three.  I got time to be crazy and, guess what?.  I’m going to be crazy.  Let me worry about restraint and holding back and having taste a little later.  Now I’ve got the energy.  Let me use that and stop telling me what to do.    Just relax, give it a chance.  Y’all paid a dollar to get in here so we’re going to do this song for y’all, even you, man.  Sit down, you’re not ready to leave yet.

Hey, let’s do that song by Powell Saint John.  Bye, Bye, Baby?  Powell’s creative; he’s into a lot of things.  He something?  He always writes things like that.  He’s a beautiful man, hey, don’t you think so?  I think so.  Look at this drawing he did, so delicate, refined, you know?

(after the set)

Shit, man, that was fun.  My mama used to say, “Janis, why do you scream when you have such a pretty voice?”  I can sing like Mimi Fariña if I want to or like Joan Baez but they did it first.  Why shouldn’t I do my own thing first, make sense?  I’m all I got, honey.

(Cackles maniacally and whirls around, a spinning top gone wild, the way Thelonius Monk used to do in airports.)

You know, those first times with Big Brother, that was the best time I ever had in my life, man, cause it was so new, you know?  I’d never even seen a rock concert before and now here I was in the middle of one.  Too much.  All that throbbing beat which is the main thing.

You ever notice?  When you’re two blocks from where a band is rehearsing all you hear is the bass throbbing out a steady pulse.  Get a little closer and the drums appear.  And you have to be almost there before you hear the melody instruments.  It’s the drums and bass, yes, they are the foundation.

I got so stoned just feeling all of that in our first gigs together.  After the night was over and we would be idling at a stoplight I would hear everything throbbing again.  It would all come back again in a rush and there was a visual part of it too.  I would see patterns in the night going with the sounds that would not stop. That energy field of spiralling feelings, that vortex of emotion, whew!  Beats watching TV, I’ll tell ya.

I couldn’t stay still.  Could you?  I started moving and jumping and I couldn’t hear myself the way I could in the coffeehouses so I sang louder and louder and louder and it went somewhere else, another place beyond what words could do.  When it’s the way it’s supposed to be I feel chills up my spine, ideas made physical,  and emotions slipping all over my body like scales on a butterfly’s eye.  It’s a supreme emotional and physical experience.

Taj Mahal says to me.  Come and join our cool Los Angeles band.  We are professionals.  We know what we are doing and you can come and sing back-up for us.  You’ll get a steady paycheck and a Cadillac.  What more is there for someone like you?  This is serious business.  You know you’ll have money in the bank and tell your mama too.   Well, I mean, could I turn that down?  Sounded good to me, Jack.  These guys have been around.  You know how Taj got his name?  He was in a band in LA with Ry Cooder called The Eight Wonders of the World and they each had a name after a wonder.  I wonder who was The Hanging Gardens?  Heh, heh.

(One of Big Brother lodges a protest against her leaving the band so soon right on the eve of a Chicago tour.)

God damn it, don’t bandy words with me, motherfucker, I mean, shit.  (She slaps the side of the redwood deck with her open hand.)  They’re not asking yew.  I have to think about this.  (Her face whiter and whiter, movements more agitated, she knows it’s a moral dilemma and a moment of truth at least for this time around)  What would yew do?

Well, I know what I did.  I went to Chicago with Big Brother.  It was probably the right thing for me to do but that was a grueling trip and we signed a disastrous recording contract there really just to get enough money to get out of there which they then didn’t even give us.

They hated us in Chicago.  One reviewer said we couldn’t play, we were out of tune, and we were all ugly.  And plus we smelled bad.  I’m sure we did.  You can’t have everything together at once, you know?  Yeah, and it may have been patchouli.  You haven’t smelled patchouli before?  Well, it’s like curry or like Indian music or like eating a chapati, or like having your ashes washed away in the Ganges.

(back in San Francisco at a concert in Golden Gate Park)

Now, these are our people!  Great to be back.

1967

Why do those country club chicks in their panty girdles always have to be sitting in the front row.  They’re probably tied up so tight they couldn’t move if they wanted to.  And those gawky, geeky men they’re with, gechhhh!

You know, you can be yourself and it’s OK.  They can be really who they are, and win.  If you start thinking that  way, being that righteous with yourself, you’ve won already, babe.  No problem.  Got it made after that.

How did we get this gig anyway?  Oh, yeah, I remember.  We went on Public Television and auctioned our services to the highest bidder in a benefit for the station.  Herb Caen was at this coming out party.  I had read him for years and I thought this was my big chance to be in his column.  I talked to him all night, told him every one of my favorite stories, plied him with martinis and did he come across?  Hell, no.  There was nothing in his column the next day.  NOTHING.  I couldn’t believe it.  What was he thinking?  How could he have ignored me?  Jyanis?

Well, the Burlingame Police Department didn’t ignore us, I’ll tell you that.  They must have been watching closely.  As we were leaving town they stopped us and checked all of our identification.  Made me so mad.  Everyone else’s stuff was in order but I had a lot of parking tickets outstanding and they said pay up or go to jail.  I said I would happily go to jail if they had the nerve to arrest me and one of our equipment people did something that make me really upset with him.  He paid my tickets off!  I didn’t forgive him for a long time.  Here it was my big chance  to go to jail for three days or something trivial like that and he spoiled it for me.

Whether or not to walk through that door…

This success if it is success and not just a bunch of hype is less and less like I thought it was going to be.  It started, if it started, I mean, at the Monterey Pop Festival and it’s a gas.  I can’t believe it.  Not bad for a chick who used to hustle drinks, eh?

And how about what I’m wearing?  Gold lamé (she pronounces “lame” to rhyme with “fame.”).  You like it?  It was hard for me to buy something like this at first.  I mean, look at these shoes.  These are golden slippers, man, like in the song.

I love these golden shoes.  I went down to I. Magnin’s one day and sat in their special winners circle where only the winners go to shop.  Society women, models, the few who made it honestly in business, like me, and I bought some golden shoes.  Two pair actually and it’s a life affirming thing to do something like this.  Maybe only a woman would understand it.  It’s like shifting a gear inside.

Here’s how they would put it in a book.

(she speaks in a theatrical, Orson Welles voice.)

Aging opera star Maria Callas drags beau Aristotle Onassis backstage.  Says. (now, a Mediterranean-Dracula-like tone) You give me everything. (she rolls the ‘r’ in “everything.”)  Jewels from Tiffany.  Caviar from Maxim’s.  Well, look at this.  Dramatically with a flourish she pulls the curtain back.  There are thousands waiting for her to sing the slightest syllable.  Can you give me that, darling?

That story means something to me.  I know it’s true even if it’s not.  It sounds corny, right?  It’s true, man, believe it.  It’s true.  I know no man ever made me feel as good as an audience does.  I know  it.  I’m committed to this, this is a higher calling.  Scary, isn’t it?

(Staying in the Chelsea Hotel, waiting for the right moment to get a cab over to the Fillmore.)

What do you think I should be doing?  I mean, is there anything else to do in this town?  There’s Tubby The Tuba up in the penthouse or at least the guy who wrote the score.  There’s Salvador Dalì. There are The Ramones, for Chrissake, this little band down the hall with a lot going for them.

There are the Preludin that Marvin brought me from the West Coast.  HE was entertaining. They say you can get anything in New York so, yeah, they still bring their Left Coast things here and I take them.  That is our contract, our agreement.  They make it and I take it.

I read but don’t tell anybody.  I used to like F. Scott Fitzgerald a lot but it’s hard to separate someone from their work.  I’ve been reading a lot about Zelda Fitzgerald lately and she was fucked over by him.  I mean really.  She was as talented, did as much, wrote more, drew as much, said as much, cooked more, made up the beds more, more on top of things in general, more evolved, more this, more that, more everything, and what did she get?  Jack shit, that’s what.  Same thing they always get.  Not a goddamed nothing.  Something like that could make you mad.

I was good, right?  I mean, you know it, I was really good.  Tell me so then, don’t stand there, sit down and tell me what you thought about the set.  It sounded good, right?  Well, I think it was good.  Don’t you?  You thought it was good?  Did you?  Did you really?  It was good, I know it.

Hey, the people who make Southern Comfort ought to send me free whisky.  I’m the best advertisement they got.  I know, I’ll write them a letter saying I drink their product a lot in public.  A LOT.  And then they’ll send me a free case of booze.  Yeah, it’s a hustle, I’m still hustling free drinks, man, the way I did when I was a beatnik.  You got something better?  When I get scared and worried, I tell myself, Janis, just have a good time.

1968

You know, it’s a good thing people like me the way I am cause I damn sure wouldn’t know how to change.

I’d rather not sing than sing quiet.  Don’t ask me to do that.  Doesn’t make sense at all.  Get somebody else.  Sure, Billie Holliday could do that.  She knew how to crawl around inside a melody just like a snake  Me, I stomp on the tune like an elephant.  It’s exciting.  I’m going for it.  Billie was subtle and refined.  I’m going to shove that power right into you, right through you and you can’t refuse it.  I’m going to give it all I got and you know what?  Why don’t you do the same?  Scream, yell, howl at the moon, man, tear it up, kick the door in, pound the walls, I’ll be there doing it with you.

The kids today want real feeling, they want something real and not just the usual TV humdrum mediocre bullshit.  They want something larger than life, the hell with facing up to things, with being “realistic.”  They are my friends.  We are in this together and they know it.

It’s funny being on the road.  You know how I can tell I’m in Cleveland?  The walls at the Holiday Inn are green.  The ones in Pocatello are gray.  That’s it.  That’s what I see.  It’s a series of one-night stands.  There’s that little period on the stage.  Then we rehearse sometimes when we’re lucky.  Then there’s television flat on our backs at the motel.  Downtown nowhere.  Checking in, checking out, lots of strange dressing rooms, too early at the airport, too late at the party.  Glamorous, isn’t it?

Guys on the road at least have girls they can pick up, but who comes to see me?  These little blonde androgynous fifteen year olds, man.  They’re so cute but, I mean, what are you going to do with that?  You got any ideas?

(Newport Folk Festival, August 68)

Eighteen thousand people, whoooowhee.  This might be the largest crowd we’ve played to, eh, boys?  Too much.

Back in Texas I was always looking for someone to hitch with me to Newport.  I could never afford it and now the first time I’m here, I’m the star.

Remember when I was telling you about Southern Comfort sending me a case of whisky for publicizing their product?  Well, they went for it.  I had the chick in my manager’s office photostat every goddam clipping that ever had me mentioning Southern Comfort and I sent them to the company, and they sent me a whole lot of money.  How could anybody in their right mind want me for their image?  Oh, man, that was the best hustle that I ever pulled.  Can you believe that shit? I got paid for passing out for two years!

We worked a lot, maybe two much.  For two years now we’ve been playing almost every night and catching a lot of planes, doing the same old material.  It gets harder to feel when it isn’t fresh anymore and there’s no time to write new stuff.  Who wants to get paid ten grand for acting like you’re having a good time?  It kind of goes against everything we set out to do in the first place.  The difference between me and them is that I saw it first.

I love those guys but if I have any real sense of myself as a musician I have to move on. They weren’t helping the words.  They were fighting them or just clamming up like cold fish.  I got out there and tried and those guys weren’t even trying.  Real feeling like Otis Redding had, like all those great soul bands.   I want a band with horns and a keyboard, higher highs, lower lows, an incredible amount of that way down deep swamp bass pounding your chest kind of thing, know what I mean?

This music writer asked me if I sang from my diaphragm.  I thought that was pretty funny since I been having a lot of trouble with one this week.  The doctor showed me how to put it in but it’s weird.  If you hold it the wrong way it’ll slip out of your fingers and sail across the room.  I don’t know where the fuck I sing from.  I sing from my mouth, I guess.  Yeah, that would be my theory on the whole matter. Anything’s better than an IUD though.  Those things hurt.  It felt like I swallowed a rusty nail when I tried one of those.  Every time I would try to shake anything on stage I could feel it stabbing me.

You ever notice?  There’s about twenty-three people wherever you go.  It’s the same people.  Los Angeles, New York, London.  I mean, here’s Seideman and Mouse, there’s Annie, there’s Eric, there’s Moskowitz, there’s that sweet pitiful mother of three on the corner, begging for mercy and a fix, looking white and like she could use a break, God.  They’re the same, the same.  It’s the same damn twenty-three people it’s always been.  Hey, honey, come over here, you need a break? I’ll break you, man.  (She cackles that special Texas laugh and stomps her foot for emphasis.)

1969

I LOVE it when I give it a kick or shake my ass and the drummer hits a rim shot without any arranging or anything said beforehand and it’s intuitive and from the heart, man, that’s the way it should be.  I am so lucky to be with these guys.  They paid their dues.  This ain’t some hippy band.  These guys played their hearts out on Broadway where there’s no room for error, backing strippers and rehearsing once a week if they’re lucky.

I just want to say one thing on stage.  Let yourself go and you’ll be more than you ever thought of being.  You know?  You can be musical and go to Harvard and major in music but there is a special gear that all musicians must hit when it gets really good and goes beyond any kind of meaning you could put into words.  Feeling.  That’s what it is.  Do the audience like it?  Do they really like it?  If they do like me that liking comes into themselves and they become it.  It is a certain gear, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.  God and the Universe, man.

What are you doing sitting in your seats?  This is a rock and roll concert.  I was in Ballamer, Merlin once (imitating W.C. Fields) and they told me three things and only three that I couldn’t do.  No dancing.  No getting drunk.  No taking your clothes off.  Well, we’re going to have a lot of fun tonight, honey.

I was going to be on the cover of Newsweek and maybe even Time.  Did you see that?  Everything was all set.  The photo was taken and it was good too , man.  We were ready to go with it and then President Eisenhower dies.  Fourteen goddam heart attacks and he has to die in MY week.

(at rehearsal, to the bandmembers)

Hey, hey!  Listen, I’m singing here.  For Chrissake, pay attention, you’re moving around, jacking off and talking while I’m trying to do this.  It’s distracting, goddamit.  Listen, man,  I’m the one out front.  I’m the one they’re going to blame if we don’t have a decent set and look good.

Roy, I don’t need you upstaging me just because you can.  It’s my show, you got it?  I’m the one they put on the poster, dig?  I don’t want to get heavy but what have we got?  A couple of weeks till we’ve got to sound like the Second Coming and now we sound like sick and tired of being sick and tired.  We don’t even have one song really down.  I’m scared if you really must know.  Let’s get it together.

1970

Yeah, he was a silver tongue devil, I’ll tell you that.  It was his phrase, he used it a lot, I’m talking about the phrase, and it described him perfectly, know what I mean.  He probably believed it all himself.   Kris wrote the tune but HE was the devil moonman, I mean, he was.

I try to hold back.  It’s never any fun.  It feels like cheating.  I start thinking of something else.  Even at rehearsals I still have to sing as hard as I can or it just doesn’t come through the way it should.  If you ACT like you’re having a good time, everything gets weird.  It’s such a turn-on to go for it in a real way.  It’s another level.

Everybody’s got pain and joy.  Even housewives in Podunk, Texas.  Especially housewives in Podunk, Texas.  Everybody’s got soul if they give into it.  It’s hard, it’s scary, and it ain’t all pretty when you let it out.

There was a time when I wanted to know everything.  I read Time Magazine cover to cover every week, I really did.  I guess you could say I was an intellectual.  Your head can be filled with ideas and your soul can be running on empty.  At least, that’s what I saw.  Maybe I’ll change as I grow older.  When it’s late at night and nobody else is there, then what do you do?  Sometimes ideas aren’t enough when there is all of that power and feeling inside that must be handled somehow.

You should see what Bobby did in Stockholm.  He and Sam went out, got drunk with the mayor and then wandered all over town.  They came back to the hotel and Bobby made it all right with me about that horrible Rolling Stone article.  It sucked but not enough to get me off.  Ralph Gleeson said I should go back to Big Brother if they would have me.  He hated my new band (pronounced ba-yund).  I was crushed. CRUSHED.  (She mocks herself for feeling so deeply but feels deeply anyway.) It was so mean and heartless, I mean, he could’ve given us a chance.

When Cheap Thrills came out Rolling Stone devoted eighteen pages to killing me, you know, in public.  They’ve always dealt with me very tacky for some reason.  They’ve always dealt with me and Big Brother very shabbily, I don’t know why.  They’ve never liked us.  They’ve always treated us bad.  And now they’ve done it again.  They didn’t like me with Big Brother and now they’re saying I should go back with them.  And every now and then some writer from Rolling Stone has the nerve to call me and ask for an interview.  Can you believe that?

But anyway Bobby came back, put in a call to Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone and just consoled me in a really good way.  He’s a good dude, good dude.  Crazy though.  I saw him shoot up once right through his clothes.  Unbelievable.  He had the works loaded and he just jammed it into his thigh, right through his pants and everything.  Later Andy Wahrhol told me that some of his people did that and I would have thought it was just talk if I hadn’t seen it.  I mean what is the point of that?  If you’ll pardon the expression, heh, heh.

Hey, I went to Rio.  It was a throbbing, pulsing good time, let me tell you.  We did the city thing and the in the jungle thing.  Hitchiking and riding on the back of motorcycles just like in the beatnik days.  Good for the soul, you know?

I got a couple of tatoos, see?  I drew this one myself.

The one on my heart is for the boys.  We had a party at my house in Larkspur and I invited Lyle Tuttle king of the tatoo artists to come and decorate everyone.  He tatooed eighteen people.  That was one party it would be hard for some people to forget.

Playing for the Angels is crazy, man.  On one level they’re a class act.  The money is always straight, the sound system is good and if they like you you are family.  But if something goes wrong they will express themselves physically.  I’ve had to fight them for a bottle of whisky more than once and they are touchy, whew!

We were playing in this place in San Rafael out by the freeway and it was a scene.  It was my new band on the same bill with my old band Big Brother so everyone was on edge anyway.  We were all getting stoned to beat the band you might say.  Nitrous oxide, pot, lots of smack, crank all washed down with more alcohol than was strictly sane.  It was like battle of the bands.  How is Big Brother going to look compared to my new band?  And we’re even doing some of the same songs.  There was more tension than there should have been in a love crowd.

One of those Angels up and punched me, man, can you believe that?  I hit him with a bottle and then everybody jumped in.  It was a little Altamont.  The times were turning ugly.  Onstage I was drunk and punchy and I felt like a parody of myself that day.  It was sloppy.  Oh, well, that’s over and gone now.

I don’t want to have to sing Down On Me when I’m eighty years old.  It might be fun every now and then.  People say I’m singing great.  San Francisco, which was a little miffed at me at first for breaking up their happy home, has come around now.   And anyway with Full Tilt now it’s more of a family thing than it was with the Kozmic Blues Band.

Ooooh, I was feeling so good last night with this gorgeous dude.  Now, that was a party…best one in my life, no shit.  So, we’re going to do this number we just got together and we hope you like it cause we worked really hard on this, I mean, you’ll like it, won’t you?

Don’t mess with me now.  I was once the eight-ball champion of Sixth Street and Avenue A in Manhattan and I can beat you too if it comes down to it.

I’m not losing my voice.  It’s actually better than it’s ever been.  If I don’t have to sing seven nights a week I can last forever.  Hey, nothing’s going to happen to me.  I’ve got good genes, man.  My people were pioneer stock, good, solid, strong people.  It may get other people.  It’s not going to get me.  I’ll be around.

Note from Sam:

I want to thank all of the photographers here, friends of mine for years now:

Don Aters

Richard Avedon

Jay Blakesberg

Bill Brock

Dale Burkhardt

Max Clarke

Linda Eastman

Herb Green

Lisa Law

Jim Marshall

Irving Penn

Bob Seidemann…

OK?   See you next week.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The End Is Near.

Posted on by tagged.

1 January 2012

 

Behind every successful woman there is a man staring at her ass.

Graceful Janis.

Elise and Dario Darold.

How odd that Mitt Romney should compare President Obama to Marie-Antoinette, who, by the way, said something like, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.”

Is this the same Mitt Romney who said to a group of unemployed persons in Tampa, “Hey, I am unemployed too.”   Monumental insensitivity. Jobless Mitt.

 

From the church bulletin:

We are starting a New young Mothers’ Group. Anyone desiring to be a new young mother is to meet with the pastor in his office.

 

Elise Piliwale, Boxing Day, 26 December 2011.

 

Actual courtroom dialogue:

Is that the same nose you broke as a child?

 

Now, doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn’t know anything about it until the next morning?

 

Q:  What happened then?

A:  He told me, he says, “I have to kill you because you can identify me.

Q:  Did he kill you?

 

Ask for what you want. Let us be clear. No subtle hints.  No strong, blunt hints. No overly obvious hints. Just say it.

 

In the courtroom again:

Were you alone or by yourself?

 

Do you have any children or anything of that kind?

 

Q:  I show you exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture?

A:  That’s me.

Q:  Were you present when that picture was taken?

 

Donna DiBasilio.

 

Were you present in court this morning when you were sworn in?

 

Susan Zelinsky, singer, actor, woman extraordinaire, is one of the organizers for this breast cancer benefit every year.

 

Mary and Frank Bertolli.

 

Q:  Do you know how far pregnant you are now?

A:  I’ll be three months on November 8.

Q:  Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8?

A:  Yes.

Q:  What were you doing at that time?

 

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Athena.

Athena who?

Athena flying saucer.

 

Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. Yes is the answer.

 

Woman to naked man:

Are you cold?

 

I want to achieve immortality, not through my art, but by not dying. So far, so good.

 

Sam Andrew, Shiho, Woodstock)

 

How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?

One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

 

It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

 

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.

 

Samantha took us all to Paris.

 

Being American is about driving a German car to a Palestinian liquor store to buy Russian vodka and then stopping by a Thai restaurant before going home to watch a British comedy on a Japanese television.

 

Talent hits the target which no one else can hit. Genius hits the target which no one else can see.

 

Spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.

Always remember that you are unique… just like everyone else.

 

Utility is when you have one telephone,

luxury is when you have two, and

paradise is when you have none.

 

Keep in mind that if the world didn’t suck, we would all fall off.

 

Monti singing us a song at Dario’s party.

 

A conservative is a worshipper of (long) dead radicals.

 

How do you expect me to remember your birthday when you never look any older?

 

My dog went to a flea circus and stole the show.

 

A lot of my misspent youth was spent here.

 

A adult is a person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.

 

Father to son:  Lot was warned to take his wife and flee, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt.

Son:  What happened to the flea?

 

Elise Piliwale and Sam Andrew.

 

Tom Jones and Janis Joplin.

 

Darian Gray and Nathalie Delahousse.

 

 

Moby Grape with Sam Andrew, Santa Rosa, California.

 

A fine is a tax for behaving badly.

A tax is a fine for doing well.

 

Alton Kelley, one of the good people.

 

Teacher:  How many animals went into the Ark.

Student:  One mail and one e-mail.

 

French Canadian visiting Edmonton, Alberta, calls the hotel desk:

I need some pepper.

Black pepper or white pepper?

Toilette pepper.

 

Susan Royce and Shahram Ghodsian.

 

Alessandro il Stitico.

 

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

 

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don’t have batteries.

 

24 hours in a day. 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?

 

What’s the speed of dark?

 

I played with many of these people in New York: Pepe Aparicio, Pepi Gennerelli, Bob Steeler. I love them all.

 

Forget shampoo! Get the real poo.

Forget champagne! Get the real… oh, never mind.

 

Something vaguely familiar about these peter peppers. Jessie, thank you.

 

I had amnesia once… or was it twice?

 

When I read about the evils of drinking, I quit reading.

 

Gene DiBasilio was our milkman when we lived in Lagunitas, probably the last milkman in the western world. Gene has had a misspent adulthood. He quit delivering milk and founded a company which he later sold for several million dollars, poor guy.

 

World’s shortest book:

My Christian Accomplishments And How I Helped After Katrina               by George W. Bush.

 

You know you’re a nurse if…

You’ve seen more penises than any prostitute.

 

Peter Albin and Arianna Antinori.

 

Christianity? You mean the religion of the Prince of Peace?

 

The easiest way to find something you have lost around the house is to buy a replacement.

 

When you have paint or gesso all over your hands, either your nose will immeidately begin to itch, or you will have to pee.

 

Ben Nieves, Stephen Long, Sam Andrew. Mostar, Bosnia, 2011.

 

Only an artist would look at this and think of Matisse.

 

Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says, “Dam!”

 

Plastic surgeon’s sign:  Hello, can we pick your nose?

 

Why do we press harder on the remote control when we know that the batteries are going dead?

 

Lawyer:  Are you sexually active?

Witness: No, I just lie there.

 

Chris Madding and his daughter Amélie.

 

Flight attendant:  Would you like dinner?

Passenger:           What are my choices?

Flight attendant:  Yes or no.

You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

 

Black eyed peas loom large in the legend of the South. In Civil War days, some planters had nothing to eat but black eyed peas at a certain New Year’s dinner. They were lucky enough later that year

to regain their fortunes, and they somehow connected their New Year’s dinner menu with their new success. Thus, in many places, black eyed peas are a good luck meal on New Year’s day.

 

Silence is often the best answer.

 

Change is inevitable except from a vending machine.

(Woman on the métro)

My husband and I divorced over religious differences.

He thought he was a god, and I’m an agnostic.

 

Happy New Year to you, and I’ll see you next week.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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