Zeroth

libarry

Origin:    1895–1900;     zero + th

Zeroth can be kindergarten. It’s the 0th dimension. The ordinal number before the first.  The zeroth.

January 0th is another name for 31 December.

Clara Bellino and Charlie Watts

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Being numbered zero in a series; also : Zero 1 the zeroth power of a number.

Two blondes walked into a bar and started arguing about whether an order-of-magnitude estimate is sometimes also called a zeroth order approximation, and the bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?”

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Rearrange the letters to spell out an important part of the human body which is even more useful when erect.  PNESI  The people who answer SPINE will be familiar with the zeroth law.

The zeroth law states that if two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other.

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Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

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You’re supposed to respect your elders, but its getting harder and harder for me to find any now.

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A and C are in equilibrium following the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics.

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Irony is the opposite of wrinkly.

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Zero-based numbering is numbering in which the initial element of a sequence is assigned the index 0, rather than the index 1 as is typical in everyday circumstances.

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A rabbi was suddenly possessed by a wave of mystical rapture, and threw himself onto the ground before the Ark proclaiming, “Lord, I’m Nothing!”
Seeing this, the cantor felt profoundly moved by similar emotions. He too, threw himself down in front of the Ark, proclaiming, “Lord, I’m Nothing!”
Then, way in the back of the synagogue, the janitor threw himself to the ground, and he too shouted, “Lord, “I’m Nothing.”
The rabbi turns to the cantor and whispers, “Look who thinks he’s Nothing!”

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In some cases, an object or value that does not (originally) belong to a given sequence, but which could be naturally placed before its initial element, may be termed the zeroth element.

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There is a remote tribe that worships the number zero.   Is nothing sacred?

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What do you get when you cross a pigeon and a zero?  A flying none.

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In some mathematical contexts, zero-based numbering can be used without confusion, when ordinal forms have well established meaning with an obvious candidate to come before “first”; for instance a “zeroth derivative” of a function is the function itself, obtained by differentiating zero times.

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Nothing is better than this.

Zeroth:   The impression that you get from someone before you actually meet them, including impressions made by clothes, style, and rumors.

From what she was wearing and what I heard about her, the zeroth impression I got was that she was a hard case, but when I met her she was intelligent, decent and kind.

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Reince Priebus dismissed any controversy over Mitt Romney’s crack about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate as “nothing” and called on the political class to learn to take a joke.

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A zeroth law is usually so important that the other laws cannot function without it, yet so obvious that nobody thought it needed stating.

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Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of Robotics: A robot may not harm humanity, or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

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Good luck on that one. That’s a dream, and, I hope, a reality.  It’s only a matter of time before computers surpass us in intelligence and ability. We can only hope that they develop an equal abitlity in ethics and morality, although if they are copying our ethics and morality, we should shudder.

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Let us hope that the machines are kinder to us than we have been to each other, although, why should we deserve such treament?

Anyone who has read the slightest amount of our history knows that we have no basis for begging for mercy from a stronger power as computers will be, and sooner than we think.

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What may we offer up to the sweet goddess of the universe that she should assure us of any kind treatment whatsoever?  Can you think of anything?

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What did 0 say to 8 ?        Nice belt!

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How do you insult a mathematician?   You say: “Your brain is smaller than any ε > 0″

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Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.

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Why must President Obama prove who he is and where he was born?   Be honest and give your answer.

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If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

There are 10 kinds of mathematicians in the world.  Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

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Angles:   I’m not trying to be obtuse, but you’re acute.

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I am equivalent to the Empty Set when you aren’t with me.

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What is the shortest mathematicians joke?  Let epsilon be smaller than zero.

What caused the Big Bang?  God divided by zero.

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A mathematician is a blind person in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.

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A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer were traveling through Scotland on a train when they saw a black sheep. “Aha,” says the engineer, “I see that Scottish sheep are black.”  ”Hmm,” says the physicist, “you mean that some Scottish sheep are black.”  ”No,” says the mathematician, “all we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black.”

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How are dogs and marine biologists alike?   Dog wag their tails and biologists tag their whales.

Why can’t a gorilla play a guitar?  She’s too sensitive.

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She looked at the score and it said “tacet,” so she took it.

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How do guitar players generally greet each other?    Hi, I’m better than you.   (That’s supposed to be a joke.)

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What happened to the elephant who ran away with the circus?   The police made her bring it back.

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A museum visitor was admiring a tyrannosaurus fossil, and asked a nearby museum employee how old it was. “That skeleton is sixty-five million and three years, two months and eighteen days old,” the employee replied. “How can you know that so specifically?” she asked. “Well, when I started working here, I asked a scientist the exact same question, and he said it was sixty-five million years old—and that was three years, two months and eighteen days ago.”

A solar panel and a windmill walked into a bar full of oil men, and were never seen again.

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How do you feel about windmills?     Big fan.

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What’s worse than raining cats and dogs?   Hailing taxis.

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Why did the philharmonic disband?  Too much sax and violins.

Hey, this is in Seine!

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Fowl play:     How do you identify a bald eagle?   He has a comb over.

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What happened to the lab tech when she fell into the lens grinder?  She made a spectacle of herself.

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He stopped her because she was going too slow. “But, officer, the sign said 21.”  ”That’s the highway number, ma’am.”  ”Oh, I’m glad you didn’t see me five minutes ago. I was on 205.”

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Nobody is perfect until you fall in love with her.

Who was that piccolo I saw you with last night?   That was no piccolo, that was my fife.

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What’s the difference between an electric guitar and a chain saw?   Chainsaws sound better in small ensembles.

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These pots were smoked on the kiln floor.

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Hey, is that my cheese?   That’s nacho cheese!

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She worked hard all of her life to be known, and now she wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

For every truth there is an ear somewhere to receive it.  For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it. For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it.

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Our Lord was a shoving leopard, I mean, a loving shepherd.

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Then there was Pam, too smart to be a ham, too beautiful for Sam, could have kissed her, but I missed her, damn!

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Ham and Eggs: A day’s work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

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English muffins aren’t English, French fries aren’t French. Sweetmeats are sweet, Sweetbreads are meat.

A vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

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String quartet: a good violinist, a bad violinist, an ex-violinist, and someone who hates violinists, all getting together to complain about composers.

Guy can’t find the necktie he needs to get into the club. In desperation he throws a set of jumper cables around his neck.  Bouncer says, “Well, you can come in but don’t start anything.”

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You know you’re a roller coaster enthusiast when some guy screams “You S.O.B!” and You instantly think “huh, Son of Beast, where?

Much unnecessary labor is involved in the number of demisemiquavers.  We suggest that many of these could be rounded up to the nearest semiquaver thus saving practice time for the individual player and rehearsal time for the entire ensemble.

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Two things necessary to keep a redhead happy.  One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

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I hate those little Russian dolls.  They’re so full of themselves.

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A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.

“Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.”    – A film company’s verdict on Fred Astaire’s 1928 screen test.

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“Brain work will cause women to go bald.”      Berlin professor   1914

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I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go read a book

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If god had intended us to drink champagne, she would have given us stomachs.

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A kiss is persecution for the child, ecstasy for the youth and an homage for the old.

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in vodka.

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I always forget faces, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.

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A kiss is the contraction of mouth due to the expansion of the heart.

Harvard Business School announced that, in recognition of his massive tax cuts coupled with rising costs of war, they were awarding President Bush an Honorary Doctorate in Deep Doo-Doo Economics.

A kiss is a process which builds a solid bond between two dynamic objects.

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What do you call bears with no ears?   B.

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A Chinese man walks into a shop with a parrot on his shoulder, and the shopkeeper says, “Hey, where’d you get that?” and the parrot says, “In China. They must have a billion of them there.”

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Dick Cheney was riding on a camel and he stopped at a small oasis.  He got off the camel, lifted its tail and looked at the camel’s butt.  A guy comes over and says, “What are you doing?” Cheney replies, “About two miles back I heard someone say, ‘Look at the two assholes on that camel.’”

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Elephant to naked man:  How can you pick up peanuts with that thing?

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Two goats out behind a movie studio eating old movie film:   “Pretty good, huh?” says one to the other.  ”Yeah, but I prefer the book.”

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A thief held up a man at gunpoint:  Give me your money.   You cannot do this. I am a congressman.    Thief says:  In that case, give me my money.

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Give a man a fish and he will eat for a while.   Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

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I love you once, I love you twice, I love you more than beans and rice.

A kiss is the juxtaposition of two orbicularisoris muscles in the state of contraction.

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My husband and I married for better or worse.  He couldn’t do better and I couldn’t do worse.

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How do you make a hot dog stand?   Steal her chair.

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She walked up to the bartender and asked for a double entendre, so he gave her one.

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So, why was Wolgang Amadeus Mozart a little scratchy about his chickens?  They kept saying “Bach, bach, bach, bach, BACH!”

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The Pennsylvania Game Commission has charged a man with going deer hunting with a handgun in a Wal-Mart parking lot. He is being charged with reckless endangerment, but may plead guilty to the lesser charge of being a redneck.

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How many books have you read in your life?   How should I know?  I’m not dead yet.

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“The Beatles? They’re on the wane.”         The Duke of Edinburgh in Canada, 1965.       (His Grace was perhaps a few crumbs short of a crouton.)

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Ashley Judd announced she will not be running for Senate in Kentucky against Mitch McConnell. And Mitch McConnell announced he will not be co-starring in any romantic comedies.

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Remember George Bush’s plan to put a man on Mars?   Why not?  It’s not like we had an enormous debt or failing economy or anything like that.

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Collect stacks of paint brochures and hand them out as religious tracts.

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A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.

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The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

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VODKA :   It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

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Smile. It’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.

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I got this ukulele for my husband.      Good trade!

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A kiss is the shortest distance between two lips.

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Why do elephants drink so much?     To try to forget.

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North Korea is now threatening the United States with all-out war. What did Dennis Rodman say to these people? What did he do?

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Who wrote Huckleberry Locomotive?   ChooChoo Twain.

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They who drink beer will think beer.

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Cop:  How high are you?   No, no, officer, it’s Hi! How are you?

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What happened when the bomb detecting dog wrote her autobiography?  It shot to the top of the best smeller list.

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What’s harder to catch the faster you run?      Your breath.

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Come on, feet, start walking.

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Why is an elephant big, gray and wrinkly?  Because, if she were small, triangular and plastic she would be a guitar pick.

Melissa Etheridge

I have actually sung onstage with this estimable person.  She’s the one who should have played Janis Joplin in the film, but, alas and alack, it didn’t happen.

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Convincing my dog that I really threw the ball is the closest I will get to being a real magician.

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A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

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People smile in the same language.

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A kiss is the reaction of the interaction between two hearts.

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How can you tell the difference between an elephant and a grape?   The grape is purple.

Sam le Gueeque

We’ll see you next week.

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A Heterogeneous Assemblage

In Australia, the number-one topping for pizza is eggs.  In the United States, it’s pepperoni.  I like the one in Italy called Caprese, goat cheese and tomatoes.

Fanfaronade:  fulsomeness, from Spanish fanfarrón, a word that was probably an imitation of the blaring blowhardedness and braggadocio of  bigheaded braggarts.

Stop the presses!   Dirty Harry’s last name is Callahan.

Reading too many underground comic books?   The name of Jabba the Hutt’s pet spider monkey is Salacious Crumb.

The famous Dragnet theme was actually composed by Miklos Rosza for the 1946 film noir classic The Killers.

The total number of bridge hands is 54 octillion.

General Lew Wallace’s best-seller Ben-Hur was the first work of fiction to be blessed by the Pope.

Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel entitled Lassie Come Home, written by Eric Mowbray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Eric Knight’s real-life collie Toots.

People in Iceland read more books per capita than any other people in the world.

The book of Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not mention the name of god.

Arnold Schönberg was a triskaidekaphobe. He died thirteen minutes from midnight on Friday the thirteenth.

Tabloids, chronicles and gazettes were what they called newspapers in the 19th century.

The word is WAY older than that:  In Irish police stations in the nineteenth century, couples were charged with being Found Under Carnal Knowldege, which the police abbreviated calling it a F.U.C.K. charge.

A sultan’s wife is called a sultana.

The real name for lead poisoning is plumbism.

The word byte is a contraction of “by eight.”

Only words we use now that end in -gry are angry and hungry.

There are solid reasons for both of these facts:  Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish more easily than English.  Native speakers of English learn Spanish more easily than Japanese.

Give him 2.54 centimeters and he’ll take 91.44 centimeters:     10 October is National Metric Day.

A beverage in China called white tea is simply boiled water.

Ray Kroc bought McDonald’s for $2.7 million in 1961 from the McDonald brothers.

And just why would you want to do that?   Beer foam will go down if you lick your finger and then stick it in the beer.

Vegetarians make up four percent of the US population.

Bananas don’t grow on trees.  They grow on rhizomes.

Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world.  Statements like this drive me crazy, because then I always have to wonder what is the FIRST largest item of international commerce in the world.  You don’t know, do you?

Less than three percent of Nestle’s sales are for chocolate.

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma in an emergency.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Rice is grown on more than ten percent of the earth’s surface and is the main food for half of the people of the world.

Salt is the only rock humans can eat.

Playing cards in India are round.

More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.

A flush toilet exists today that dates back to 2,000 BCE.

Most people button their shirts upward. Not me, though.

Totally Hair Barbie is the best-selling Barbie of all time.

The yo-yo originated in the Philippines where it is used for hunting.

The side of a hammer is called a cheek.

The average lead pencil can draw a line thirty-five miles long or write approximately fifty thousand English words.

People in China sometimes leave firecrackers around the house as fire alarms.

It takes a plastic container fifty thousand years to start decomposing.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are blood donors.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

Most burglaries occur in the winter.

Abdul Kassam Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went.  The 117,000 volumes were carried by 400 camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

A golden razor found in King Tut’s tomb was still sharp enough to be used.

In 290 BCE, Aristarchus suggested that the sun was the center of the solar system.

Candidus is Latin for shining white. All office seekers in Rome were obliged to wear a certain white toga for a period of one year before the election. They were said to be candidati and one hopes that they were candid in their speeches, but, well, probably not.

Two dogs were among the Titanic survivors.

Robert E. Lee wore a size 4 1/2 shoe.

Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.

New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, in 1890.

The words of the Japanese national anthem, dating from the ninth century CE are the oldest of any nation’s songs. but the music is from 1880.

Built in 1697, the Frankford Avenue Bridge, which crosses Pennypack Creek in Philadelphia, is the oldest U.S. bridge in continuous use.

Printed on the book that the Statue of Liberty is holding is “July IV, MDCCLXXVI.”  The statue’s mouth is three feet wide.

The main library at Indiana University sinks more than an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

The Future’s Museum in Sweden contains a scale model of the solar system. The sun is 105 meters in diameter, and the planets range from five millimeters to six kilometers from the sun. This particular model also contains the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, still to scale, situated in the Museum of Victora, Australia.

The Angel Falls in Venezuela are nearly twenty times taller than Niagra Falls.

All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.

San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments.

The largest object ever found in the Los Angeles sewer system was a motorcycle.

If you bring a raccoon’s head to the Henniker, New Hampshire, town hall, you are entitled to receive ten dollars.

In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

I had no idea that I was ever that close to forty-seven czars.  Forty-seven czars are buried in the Kremlin which is just across the square from where we stayed when we played in Moscow.

“Czar” is the Russian rendering of “Caesar,” just as Kaiser is the German version. “Kaiser” is very close to the classical Latin pronunciation of “Caesar.”

Says here the Romans originated the practice of giving presents at Christmas, which was known to them as the Saturnalia, but the veneration of the Egyptian god Horus who was born on 25 December and who had twelve days of worship probably included presents too.  Horus was born of a virgin and he had twelve apostles.

Sister Boom-Boom was a transvestite nun who ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1982. S/he received more than twenty thousand votes, if you look closely she looks very much like the shemales linked here.

Hmmm.    Pope Adrian VI died after a fly got stuck in his throat as he was drinking from a water fountain.

According to the ceremonial customs of Orthodox Judaism, it is officially sundown when you cannot tell the difference between a black thread and a red thread.

Wives and husbands in India who desire children whisper their wish into the ear of a sacred cow.

A third of Taiwanese funeral processions include a stripper.

Not even real foam?   NERF, the popular foam children’s toy company, doesn’t actually stand for anything.

Ted Turner owns five percent of New Mexico.

Time to go online.   It takes about 63,000 trees to make the newsprint for the average Sunday edition of The New York Times.

The most dangerous job in the United States is sanitation worker. Fire fighters and police officers are a close second and third, followed by leather tanners fourth.

The sale of vodka makes up ten percent of Russian government income.

In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

Vanilla is used to make chocolate.

Sixty percent of big-firm executives say the cover letter is as important as, or more important than, the résumé itself when you are applying for a new job.

John Dillinger played professional baseball.

Anise is the scent on the artificial rabbit that is used in greyhound races.

It takes three thousand cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs.

Nearly all sumo wrestlers have flat feet and big bottoms.

Meteorologists claim they’re right 85% of the time.

Astronauts in orbit around the earth can see the wakes of ships.

A manned rocket can reach the moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England.

A neutron star has such a powerful gravitational pull that it can spin on its axis in one-thirtieth of a second without tearing itself apart. A pulsar is a neutron star, and it gets its energy from its rotation.

A full moon always rises at sunset.

The first computer ever made was called the ENIAC. A silicon chip a quarter-inch square has the capability of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.

The tail section of an airplane gives the bumpiest ride.

Gold was the first metal to be discovered.

One out of five trees in the world is a Siberian larch.

During the time that the atom bomb was being developed at Alamogordo, New Mexico, applicants for routine jobs like janitors were disqualified if they could read.

All organic compounds contain carbon.

Hydrogen is the most common atom in the universe.

One hundred seven incorrect medical procedures will be performed today.

Moisture, not air, causes superglue to dry.

The smallest unit of time is the yoctosecond.

A baby blue whale is twenty-five feet long at birth.

The only two mammals to lay eggs are the echidna and the platypus. The mothers nurse their babies through pores in their skin.

In 1859, twenty-four rabbits were released in Australia. Within six years, the population grew to two million.

Human beings and the two-toed sloth are the only land animals that typically mate face to face.

At least one species of lizard is known to reproduce by parthenogenesis.

A dragonfly has a life span of four to seven weeks.

A square mile of fertile earth has thirty-two million earthworms in it.

No wonder they put up the seagull monument.   A large swarm of locusts can eat eighty thousand tons of corn in a day.

There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas.

The poison arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.

Marine iguanas, saltwater crocodiles, sea snakes and sea turtles are the only surviving seawater adapted reptiles.

The tuatara lizard of New Zealand only has to breathe once an hour.

A chameleon’s tongue is twice the length of its body.

Snakes, like cows, cannot activate their vitamin D without the presence of sunlight.

A group of geese on the ground is called a gaggle, but in the air they are called a skein.

A group of goats is called a trip.

A group of hares is called a husk.

Kangaroos in a group are known as a mob.

A tribe of rhinos is called a crash.

A group of toads is called a knot.

A bale of turtles, a clowder of cats, a gam of whales and a streak of tigers.

A parliament of owls.

We’ll see you next week.

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part eleven. 1998. 17 june

1998  Kate Russo, Kacee Clanton, Andra Mitrovich, Cathy Richardson, Lisa Mills, Lisa Battle, Kathi McDonald.

23 January 1998   Six Rivers Brewing Company    McKinleyville   California

6  February 1998    Bay Brewing Company     Milwaukee   Wisconsin

7 February 1998   Marquette University  Milwaukee   Wisconsin

Margaret Gurley.

10 February 1998   Tuxedo Junction  Danbury Conneticut     “See ya, James.”   “Not if I see you first.”       Typical Gurley exchange.

20 February 1998    The Emelin Theatre   Mamaroneck     New York

Tom Finch, Carl Peachman, Catherine Cavalieri, Sam Andrew, Lisa Battle, Peter Albin, Dave Getz, Judy & Todd Bolton at The Emelin Theater.

Peter Albin.

21 February 1998    The Call   Providence    Rhode Island

22 February 1998  Bodles Opera House  Chester   New York          ”James, you’re a great guitar player.”   “Takes one to know one.”

26 February 1998  Manny’s Car Wash  New York City    Oh, man, I love being in New York and meeting people like Kate Russo.

27 February 1998  Mexicali Blues  Teaneck  New Jersey    Catherine Cavalieri and Carl Peachman took LSD tonight. That was interesting. We all drove home together. To show you how stoned they were, I was doing the driving. I performed admirably and noticed a still, meditative feeling in the car. Rather different from 99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall.

Having passed her acid test, Catherine begins booking the band.   Typical sweet, helpful note from her.

28 February 1998   Van Dyck    Schenectady   New York             Don Wilcock was a jazz writer attuned to the passing scene.

Lisa Battle.

1 March 1998   Khyber   Philadelphia

2 March 1998   Letter from Jack Ortman.

Jeannie Anderson     James Anderson     Elise Piliwale  Sam Andrew   Margaret Joplin

Dusty Street                Gilbert Klein

7 March 1998                    Bammies

Koko Dree.

14 March 1998  Cocodrie   San Francisco

22 April 1998   Dave’s CC Club   Tallahassee   Florida   This was a real juke joint out in the woods. The owner Dave is a good man.

24 April 1998     Ray’s Downtown Club     West Palm Beach

25 April 1998       Cheers       Fort Lauderdale

26 April 1998     Mr. Pub     Ocala    Florida

 

1 May 1998   Trader’s  Lakeland  Florida   May Day ! May Day !  This pilot’s distress call from World War Two was originally “M’aidez !”  Help Me !

2 May 1998   Sebastian Beach Inn    Sebastian Beach   Florida

12 May 1998

15 May 1998   President Casino   Biloxi    Mississippi

16 May 1998  Tipitina’s      New Orleans

The Mt. Tabor Theater was named after an extinct volcano located within the city boundaries of Portland. The theatre was operating prior to 1941 and was still open in 1950. Although it closed and fell on hard times, it still displayed the name on the marquee and some unique neon tubing. It is situated across and down S.E. Hawthorne Street from the Bagdad, which has fared much better.

12 June 1998     Mount Tabor     Portland      Oregon

The colorful gentlemen wh0 used to build, finance and own these places in the 1950s called them “carpet joints.”

13 June 1998   Reno Hilton      Reno

 

19 June 1998   Six Rivers   McKinleyville     California

Peter Walsh           Sam Andrew       George Michalski

20 June 1998  Altamont  Speedway  Livermore  Caliifornia     Speedway ?

25 June 1998     Manny’s Car Wash   New York City     Look at the people who played here in one month’s time: Kerry Kearney, Susan Tedeschi, Jimmy Vivino.

Talking to Daniel Aloi.

26 June 1998   West Strand Grill   Kingston   New York

Kingston is on highway 87 almost due north of Manhattan.  Woodstock is a little to the northeast of Kingston.

Buffalo is in the western part of the state between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, where the Falls are.

27 June 1998    Mohawk Place   Buffalo  New York   Someone made such a great recording of us here, including a fugue that Tom Finch and I played.

28 June 1998    Stanhope Blues Fest     Stanhope    New Jersey

1 July 1998   Kingsbury’s   Elmira   New York        Mark Twain’s wife Olivia Langdon grew up here.

The Clemens family lived in Hartford, Connecticut, but they summered at Quarry Farm, Elmira, New York.

Livy’s sister Susan Crane built a study in the form of a pilot house for the author. He wrote his best known books here. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and The Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. He would breakfast in the main house and then walk down here to the study to write all day.

…since we have perched away up here on top of the hill near heaven I have the feeling of being a sort of scrub angel & am more moved to help shove the clouds around, & get the stars on deck promptly, & keep all things trim & ship-shape in the firmament than to bother myself with the humble insect-interests & occupations of the distant earth.

Twain’s study in the form of a pilot house out in back of the main house where Susan Crane, Livy’s sister, lived.

3 July 1998   Godfrey Daniel’s      Bethlehem       Pennsylvania

4 July 1998       Burke Estate     Hastings-On-Hudson  New York

19 July 1998   Uncle Henry’s 90th Birthday Celebration   Guerneville   California       Peter played stand up bass, and I sang How Long Has This Been Going On at this event.

 

24 July 1998     Atom Club     Tokyo

26 July 1998   Shizuoka Royal Hotel    Shizuoka    Japan    Our hotel is at the ‘H.’

28 July 1998             Rag Club               Kyoto

31 July 1998     Casanova   Makawao     Maui    Hawaii

1 August 1998      Hapa’s        Kihei                Hawaii

2 August 1998     Anna Banana’s       Honolulu     This is Fort Street, about 1930.

Anna Banana’s.

15 August 1998    St. Paul’s River Feast    St. Paul    Minnesota

16 August 1998   The Twisters    Kenosha    Wisconsin

19 August 1998     Mad Frog      Cincinnati

20 August 1998  Wilbert’s  Cleveland    I liked this place. Friendly people

22 August 1998   B.B. King’s    Los Angeles

23 August 1998            House of Blues              West Hollywood

11 September 1998   Teatro Metopolitan   México, D.F.    One of the best gigs ever. Kate Russo came along and sang and played so beautifully.

I did several interviews in Spanish and they seemed to understand me, which is good, because they often don’t understand me in English.

Danny Uzilevsky came along and played some great guitar.

We were here with Fito de la Parra and his merry men, and that is always fun.

Elise was with me and she made everything so much more memorable, as she always does.

¡ Saludos a México !

Kate Russo.

9 October 1998   The Call  Providence     Geri Verdi sang these gigs with us.

10 October 1998              Harpers Ferry                 Boston

11 October 1998  Consolati Performing Arts Center    Sheffield    Massachusetts

14 October 1998    Ram’s Head   Annapolis    Maryland

15 October 1998      Friar Tuck’s      Norfolk     Virginia

16 October 1998      Jaxx    Springfield    Virginia

17 October 1998      Stanhope House     Stanhope     New Jersey

18 October 1998      The Schoolhouse   Croton Falls  New York

22 October 1998       Milestones      Rochester    New York

23 October 1998    The Van Dyck     Schenectady   New York

24 October 1998      Sandy’s    Glen Falls      New York

25 October 1998                Riverstreet Jazz Café              Wilkes-Barre              Pennsylvania

27 October 1998      Hard Rock Café    Atlantic City   New Jersey

This is when “the Carol guitar” entered the Hard Rock system. She now travels all over the world visiting all the Hard Rocks.

28 October 1998      Khyber                      Philadelphia

30 October 1998    Mexicali Blues Teaneck New Jersey    Kate Russo.

We did these tunes and many others as well.

With Jerry Miller and Bob Mosly at Wetlands, New York City.

27 November 1998  19 Broadway  Fairfax   California      I love the Russell brothers. These guys can burn the house down in fifteen minutes.

5 December 1998   Boulder Theatre   Boulder  California

Part twelve next week. See you then.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

_______________________________________________________________________

Big Brother history, part eight, 1990 – 1992

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Watching

janis arms raised explaining

1990 – 1992

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hermosa

de Young 1895

This is the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park 1895.  The Museum still looked a lot like this when I first visited there in 1960.

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SF plate

1990-1992    

janis not janis  

hawaii madeiran       

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Young Ethel Waters Wearing White

Michel Bastian and I did a lot of gigs together in Big Brother and also in The Sam Andrew Band.

chi chi club

ElizabethGeyer

24 May 1990   Chi Chi Club   San Francisco

Elise Wainani Piliwale.

25 May 1990       River Theatre      Guerneville  California

James Gurley always called me mon jumeau malveillant, or, when he spoke English, my evil twin.   When he broke out into German, I became der Übelzwilling.

James very modestly called himself Saint James.

In the 1960s, he called himself The Archfiend of the Universe, a much more interesting appellation, not necessarily more accurate, just more interesting.

26-27 May 1990      Caspar Inn      Caspar     California

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hawaii flower

Photo:   Polly Belinda Rendall

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28 May 1990   Live Wire  Grass Valley  California

Tara Coyote-Finch

Tara Coyote-Finch

CS

linda

Peter Albin

14 February 1991    Sam Andrew Band    Paramount Theatre    Seattle   This is a beautiful old theatre.

Our guitar player on this gig was Mick Taylor, and he did a great job. Veronica Vitti came and sang beautifully.

The always inventive Rob Moitoza played bass and Chris Leighton was on drums.

When Chris plays, I always feel like a Klieg light went on somewhere. It’s like, “OK, we’re in the big time now.”

Grauman's Chinese Theater

BL

23 March 1991

med span maura

family

Ggate woman

Kowboy

23 April 1991   I-Beam   San Francisco

parking lot band

21 May 1991

duffybishopbandPromoRE

eric burdon

Once when we were playing Piece of My Heart (Pizza My Heart?) in Lake Arrowhead, California, Eric Burdon came in, sat in the front row and ordered a pizza to be delivered. Here he is talking to an old friend of mine.

Vallejo Mason Taylor

1 June 1991              The Cannery              San Francisco

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20 July 1991                  I-Beam                  San Francisco

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hula hula

2 August 1991    Anna Bananas   Honolulu

honolulu theatre

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Elise’s aunt Shirley Piliwale’s stage name was Varoa Tiki.  She was a very good singer and she played every instrument.

Silver Piliwale is Elise’s grandfather. Many places in Hawaii are named Piliwale after him.

AM

The Queen of the Nile

27 September 1991           The Queens of Denial            Seattle

black-rose

blues

deena

24 October 1991      Rock and Roll Hall of Fame   Cleveland    Ohio

LAB

Nothing like misspelling a performer’s name on a poster.  It does make it extra collectible, I suppose.

Dusty Springfield Ronnie Spector

Dusty Springfield and Ronnie Spector

sam andrew coca cola

How many Cokes have you drunk in your life?  Can you imagine anything worse for you? Loaded with sugar and other harmful ingredients. Empty calories.

Janis?  Tom Weir

25 October 1991

bonnie

Todd Bolton.

PH

7 November 1991    I-Beam    San Francisco

chad sanjaya's mom

In Tacoma with Chad Quist who did some beautiful playing with us.

Hold Me cd

Especially on the Hold Me CD.

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Cheryl Little Deer made this business card.

Elise Piliwale with Sheba.

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13 April 1992   Sam Andrew Band     White Rabbit    Austin

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band lake

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16 April 1992

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23 April 1992

PV

crouch

sab all star utah

12 May 1992

chrissy

Blancanieves_poster

rock quarry different

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bandshell

9 October 1992     One Family Festival    Golden Gate Park   San Francisco

Gollum

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28 November 1992         An invitation.

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troub

The Little Willies

4 December 1992          Linda, an old friend of ours, introduced us to her husband at this event.

So, to celebrate the occasion, I threw a party at The Troubadour.

Adolfito de la Parra was the drummer.

Larry Taylor played bass.

Mark Riley played guitar.    And just to show you that he’s not always that serious, he also plays with hairstyles.

Our old road manager John Byrne Cooke came back for this one, and he made everything run smoothly.

Lotus Mahon was with me this weekend which made everything extra special.

Linda and David LaFlamme came to the party.

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Lester Chambers was there with his brothers.

Deborah Morrison sang back up with us.

Robby Krieger played.

Carl Gottlieb was there…

… and Howard Hessman.

And a cast of thousands.

Willie Chambers.

Darby Slick was there. Hey, he wrote a book and a song.  Well, many songs actually.

Peter Albin playing my guitar.    John Byrne Cooke took this photograph.

chris

31 December 1992   Pescadero   California    This was a fun gig. We had Peter Albin on bass and Spencer Dryden on drums.

Rich Kirch played guitar.

Peter Albin and James St. Pell.

syl

with Kathi McDonald.    Can a blue man sing the whites ?

Pentatonic-tab

Some people have made a career out of playing nothing but the pentatonic scale.

jenda

kelley

Alton Kelley, square deal, always real.

black sax

LR

Thank you and I’ll see you next week.

sam andrew janis joplin by gilar

____________________________________________________________

Big Brother history, part seven, 1972 to 1989

 1972-1989             

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I only have eyes for you.

Big Brother crashed in 1972 or 1973. I was the only original member in it for a long time, and finally Kathi McDonald and I decided that it was time for a break.

VF

Some of the grim events of the late sixties began to be repeated in a minor key in the seventies. In 1968, there were those horrible assassinations. In the 1970s, Lynette Squeaky Fromme (Manson family) and Sara Jane Moore (SLA)  make an attempt on Gerald Ford. Instead of Viet Nam, there’s the failed Mayaguez rescue operation. In place of the Moratorium to End the War, we had Chevy Chase on Weekend Update.

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My girlfriend Carol Cavallon decided to move back to the East Coast and attend Windham College in Putney, Vermont.

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I went with her and we lived in a little cabin in Grafton, near where this schoolhouse stands.

grafton

SD nat

Later, we moved to Manhattan, first on the Upper East Side with her parents who were wonderful people.

nyc flatiron

Later, Carol and I moved to 278 West 11th Street between West 4th and Bleecker Streets. I lived in that apartment longer than I have lived anywhere else in my life.

nyc bldg dress

The loudest sound I heard all day long was children playing in the gardens out in back, which was good because the time had come for serious study.

I went to the New School for Social Research over on Twelfth Street. I had always read music, but I mainly played by ear and wrote music intuitively. Now I wanted to study composition formally.

elizabeth

Frank Wigglesworth, winner of the Prix de Rome, taught me counterpoint, the art of putting two or more independent melodies together so that you can hear them all at the same time.

James Sam television

James Gurley and I had often played two different melodies over the same harmonic background but we had done this by trial and error, of course, notably on Summertime and Hall of the Mountain King, but generally throughout our playing. I now began a classical study of this technique.

The top line is the fixed song, the cantus firmus, the original melody, and then you learn how to put a second melody with the first, one note against one note.

Then, you move on to two notes against one…   (I see a “mistake” here, but let it pass.)

Then you learn to put four notes against one and so on until you arrive at a fugue with complex rhythms and four or five voices.

I used two classic works to learn counterpoint:  One was Fux’ 1725 treatment Gradus ad Parnassum. (In 1994, Big Brother were to go to Moscow to play an event called Steps To Parnassus, a translation of this title.) Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and many other composers used Fux’ book in their contrapuntal practice.

The second book I profited from in the study of counterpoint was by Knud Jeppesen who interpreted Fux and put him in a historical context. Just looking at this book takes me back to that intense time of study. I wrote hundreds of exercises in this discipline.

knud jeppesen

knud nude

This was a lot of fun and very educational. Something like three dimensional chess perhaps. Or four dimensional, because time, rhythm, is also an essential part of this technique.

The rules for counterpoint are like the rules for perspective in art. They can be a principal or an ancillary study. Some artists, some composers, will make counterpoint and perspective their main focus.

escher

Two of these counterpoint/perspective masters come to mind: J.S. Bach and M.C. Escher.

In 1975, I met Laura Gomez and my motto that year became “Alive in ’75.”

Laura and her daughter.

I was writing a lot of music at this point, inventions, fugues, string quartets, a symphony that I heard performed exactly once. (Too bad it wasn’t in the Royal Albert Hall where I could have at least heard it twice.)

Crosby

Sometimes I wrote cereal music, sometimes it was serial music and sometimes it was traditional music. Snap, crackle, pop.

ronny

I knew a lot of characters in New York. Ronny Sunshine was one of them. Here he is photo bombing the Pope.

4 February 1974    Café Wha ?   Ronny put me on the same bill with Richie and Yoko.

amram

David Amram, serious composer, showed up at the Wha? and played flute with me on this gig.

bean

Recording at Atlantic.

KerouacDodyMullerAmramNYC1959small

4 July 1976     The tall ships came sailing into the Hudson and I was there on a pier mere blocks from my apartment enjoying the spectacle along with thousands of other people. This was such a great moment.

25 July 1977      There was a blackout in New York City.  I walked the streets enjoying the silence. I could actually hear conversations four or five floors above me. It made me feel as if I were living a hundred years earlier. There was a camaraderie during this emergency, despite all the alarmist stories one hears.  You don’t realize how noisy modern life is until the electricity goes out for some reason.

keseyhelms

1 October 1978   Tribal Stomp    Greek Theatre     Berkeley

Judy Davis and Patrisha Vestey worked hard on this event.

Look at that phone. You did something called “dialing” with it.  Patrisha Vestey.

The Tribal Stomp was a big deal. I had been living in New York for ten years. Now I was coming home.

butter and bloomers

cstompers

Big Brother and the Holding Company would start playing again.

Kathi Sam shot in the dark close

We could work with Kathi McDonald and continue some of the good ideas we began after Janis left.

So, imagine my surprise when everyone said good bye and so long after the gig.  They were all going back to their private lives.

James was going back to the desert.   Peter was going back to his model shop.

There was no interest in doing Big Brother again.

TOM JONES BIRTHDAY 1974

I had finished my New York life and left my apartment on the East Coast. Now what to do ?

I had to learn how to paint, sculpt, play the saxophone and do a variety of other activities to keep busy for the next eight years.

19 April 1980           Snooky Flowers and I formed a band with a gay man Joey Amoroso who called himself Pearl.

Pearl had more than a little in common with Louis XIV.

19 April 1980       Pearl Heart        Oakland Auditorium

Playing with Frank Alsing from the Pearl band.

Pearl was very flamboyant. He sang Janis’ songs in the same key that Janis did, something that very few of the Big Brother singers have done since. Pearl was a natural contralto.

1980    We played the Gay Day Parade at the Civic Center.

seattle gay

I played clarinet in one of the gay day parades up in Seattle, but this one in San Francisco was a whole other thing.  We played on a stage right in front of City Hall to thousands of people.

Anita 1915

July 1980    I also performed with a band called Little Bumps Garden at The Haight Street Fair.         Jym Fahey    Lenny Kobiela

coffee

I miss New York.

November 1981         Bringing home the pumpkin.

bedroom real

I begin to sculpt some very large heads.

royrog

I was practicing the saxophone wherever I could. You have to play saxophone loud to learn it. With almost every other instrument there are ways to play quietly. With an electric guitar you can simply leave it unplugged and practice to your heart’s content. Even with a trumpet, you can mute it. Drummers can work with practice pads. Not saxophone. You can stuff a sock in the bell, but that’s about it and it won’t make it much quieter. You simply have to blow into it with passion and dedication for it to work, so saxophonists are notorious for playing in some strange places.

bb sonny

Sonny Rollins practiced on the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s perfect because the traffic seems to filter out the mistakes, and no one is complaining about the noise. It’s a bit like singing in the shower. Only bigger, louder, freer, more spacious.

TinyParham_408f3

So, I practiced anywhere I could that wouldn’t bother anyone.

duo sax

Empty buildings were good.

santa clara

Lots of space, natural reverb, freedom.

c melody

Playing saxophone seriously, scales, arpeggios, memorizing Charlie Parker solos.

This was a long saxophone meditation and it introduced me to some great players.

Players like Joe Henderson, Jack Montrose, Dexter Gordon, James Moody, Mel Martin and Cannonball Adderly who played with technical proficiency and intense emotion.

sunnyvale

cann

I loved Cannonball, his technique, his sense of humor, his precision, his soulfulness, everything about him. Still love him.

I started making assemblages and hope to get back to that some day.

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I decided to form a group of musicians to play some of these three or four hundred ballads and jump tunes from the 1920s, 30s, 40s that I was memorizing on the saxophone.

I had the opportunity to hire musicians who were a lot better than I was.

I learned that if you get the gig, you can get the musicians and the audience.

The gig comes first and everything else will flow from that.  It took me a long time to learn this. I thought that if you practiced real hard and seriously, then the gigs would come to you. Uh, uh. You get the gig and practice on the gig.

The Sam Andrew Quartet slowly morphed into The Sam Andrew Band and I switched between saxophone and guitar for a while.

silv

We played all over the USA, including many places where Big Brother would later play.

People seemed to like what we were doing.

Snooky Flowers, Peter Walsh, Robin Sylvester, Scott Matthews.

This was a good outfit, maybe the best ever.

Relaxed, swinging, accurate, sympathetic vibrations. Great players.

I was still sculpting, painting and photographing.

.

Not “finding myself,” but creating myself.

Let’s see, how can I get Big Brother and the Holding Company together again?

I know. I’ll build a rehearsal studio.

They’ll get a good laugh out of that.

1986   Then it happened. An agent called and asked if we would like to play again.

summer of love

The occasion was a special anniversary, the Summer of Love.

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The Summer of Love was always a rather suspect phrase.

sol

It smacked of commercialism.

love.burger.baron

They used to sell Love burgers on Haight Street as attested in this Baron Wolman shot.

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I wonder how the cows felt about those Love burgers. Did they feel all that Love ?

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Anyway, we decided not to play that Summer of Love gig, but it started us to thinking, Maybe we should get together again.

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luk

Willa

cot

20 August 1987      Cotati Cabaret     Cotati    California

couple beau

27 August 1987   New George’s     San Rafael     California

I loved her singing, and her mom’s, and her aunt’s.  In fact, I used to rehearse down the hall from Dionne Warwick in New York.

29 August 1987     Fillmore Auditorium    San Francisco       Our new singer’s name is Michel. That’s the name she likes and that she was born with.

2 September 1987    WOW Hall      Eugene    Oregon

3 Septembeer 1987    Pine Street Theatre     Portland   Oregon        She is Michel Bastian. She has a warm gospel voice right out of Oakland.

4 September 1987     Seattle Center Exhibition Hall    Seattle

5-6 September 1987    Alaska State Fair     Borealis Theatre

9 September 1987     Parker’s    Seattle

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12 September 1987   Twentieth Anniversary Summer of Love  Polo Field  Golden Gate Park    San Francisco

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24 September 1987     Sweetwater      Mill Valley      California

17 October 1987       The OMNI     Oakland     California

horn st

I was once playing saxophone in the Omni with a cordless set up and I wandered off the stage out into the traffic at this intersection, blowing away. That was fun.

Rhea

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ved

20 October 1987  The Church San Francisco

Sam Andrew Band, Texas division. Lips played bass. Gloria Meehan sang backing vocals. Good band.

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margaret

9 December 1987    Palace of Fine Arts    San Francisco

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sarah

old p of a linaji

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palais

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12 December 1987      Cotati Cabaret      Cotati     California

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austin

1988     With my brother Dan in Austin.

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seaside

Badrina, Studentin beim Arbeitseinsatz

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schiele

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19 February 1988       Catalyst       Santa Cruz

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hippie hill

21 May 1988      Golden Gate Park       San Francisco

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althea

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alfa

22 July 1988        The Backstage       Seattle

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23 July 1988      Pine Street Theatre    Portland    Oregon

portland

beauty

contrast

7 August 1988      Molson Park    Barrie      Ontario

8 September 1988  Alice’s Champagne Palace   Homer  Alaska

kenai

The Kenai Peninsula is a beautiful, beautiful place.

a triangle

18 November 1988     “Living in Seattle is like being married to a beautiful woman who is sick all the time.”

herb

Herb liked that.

PAFD 1912

19 January 1989         Port Arthur     Texas

houston

20 January 1989   Rockefeller’s     Houston

Debbie-Harry-IV

27 January 1989   Psychedelic Summer of Love  Universal Amphitheatre  Universal City California   I was trying to chat up Debbie Harry at this gig and a very persistent fan came between us.

debbieharry

The moment was lost.

santa rosa

April 1989    Luther Burbank Center for the Arts    Santa Rosa    California

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Sam Andrew  Joe Healey

With Joe Healey

gish

23 April 1989    IBeam    San Francisco

MDolgushkincropped

Michael Dolgushkin did that poster.

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22 April 1989      Club Lingerie     Hollywood        with Vala Cupp and Michel Bastian

loretta

Sam Andrew Band     Washington chapter     KK Ryder    Mark Riley   Todd Zimberg

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7 June 1989        Rexville Grange     Washington

shoes

Bainbridge Island        Washington

Big Picture: woman cycling whilst holding an umbrella

GAMH

27 July 1989       Great American Music Hall     San Francisco

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viviane

wetlands

18-19 August 1989        Wetlands       New York City

Vivien

scalzino

lana

sbar

26 November 1989       Earthquake Benefit    Kaiser Auditorium    Oakland

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Downstairs at The Fez under Time, New York City, with David Peel, Dorothy Rothschild and Lenny Kaye.

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carole

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The Four Stooges at four in the morning.      New York

Sam Andrew

_______________________________________________________________________

Big Brother history, part four, January to June 1968

Happy-Vintage-Cigar-Box-Label

This is the story of Big Brother and the Holding Company.

January to June 1968

 

Linda McCartney took this photograph when she was Linda Eastman.  Linda and I and quite a few other people became vegetarians at this time, not for our health, as Isaac Bashevis Singer might say, but for the health of the chickens.

Hey, I get to be Kermit the Frog.

5 January 1968   Rainbow Ballroom    Fresno     California

6 January 1968      Sacramento State College       Steve Brown captured this lovely image of Janis.

12 January 1968           Shrine Auditorium      Los Angeles

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13 January 1968       Barnes Park Bandshell         Monterey Park          California

a plea

GB

16-21 January 1968     Golden Bear Club    Huntington Beach    California

ANTI-VIETNAM WAR PROTESTERS

25 January 1968      Fillmore Auditorium     San Francisco

parade

26-27 January 1968  Winterland  San Francisco    John Byrne Cooke, son of Alistair Cooke. John studied Romance Languages at Harvard. He was our estimable road manager and has remained a good friend.

I don’t want to say that John is tall, but here he is hovering over Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Mimi Fariña and Joan Baez.

65-18-c5

John writes western novels, he’s a photographer, he sings Louvin Brothers songs and he introduced us to a whole new world.

John is now writing a book about his days with Janis in Big Brother, the Kozmic Blues Band and Full Tilt.

John took this photograph of Debbie Green and Mimi Fariña.

rock tangerine

28 January 1968       Avalon Ballroom     San Francisco

We’re playing Oh, Sweet Mary.

Chet and Lori Helms with Bill Graham.   Bill is doing the talking. Imagine that.

rain

2 February 1968     The Cheetah    Los Angeles

3 February 1968     Earl Warren Showgrounds     Santa Barbara

azalea

9 February 1968      Santa Clara County Fairgrounds        Santa Clara      California

old-books

10 February 1968       Community Concourse Exhibit Hall  San Diego

16 February 1968  Palestra  Philadelphia

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A palestra was originally a wrestling school in Greece (palaistra). In Italian, the word now means gymnasium.

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17 February 1968   Anderson Theatre  New York City

This restaurant was right next door to where we played so we spent a lot of time there.

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Tastes, feelings, colors, smells, enthusiastic people who were personal, direct and kind, the people we encountered were the opposite of the stereotype of New Yorkers.

Ukrainian easter eggs, Afghan coats, secondhand shops, it was like a giant bazaar.

Skateboarding in NYC, 1960s

23-24 February 1968   Psychedelic Supermarket Boston     I walked into a store in Boston, asked for yoghurt and the grocer almost spat at me. Yes, folks, there was a time when yoghurt was seen as exotic, something that only a Democrat would eat.

25 February 1968  Rhode Island School of Design  Providence  Rhode Island

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I lived in Paris 1962-1964 and a friend there was feeding yoghurt (yaourt) to his baby. First time I tasted it. Delicious. Tastier then… and there. We often had it with meals in the student cafeteria at the Sorbonne.

1-2 March 1968      The Grande Ballroom    Detroit   Michigan

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8 March 1968   Fillmore East opens.   Linda Eastman (McCartney) made this poster.

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We were living in the Chelsea Hotel.

Jane Fonda lived in the Chelsea at that time. So did Julie Christie.

Combination of the Two

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9 March 1968      Wesleyan University     Middletown   Connecticut

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15-17 March 1968   Electric Factory   Philadelphia

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22-24 March 1968     The Cheetah       Chicago

Sam Janis James bed

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© Jim Marshall Photography LLC

2-6 April  The Generation  New York City

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7 April 1968  Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield. B.B. King inspired us that night with his sacred words and music.

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10 April 1968             Anaheim Convention Center

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11 April 1968       We play Summertime on ABC-TV Hollywood Palace.

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11 April 1968             Fillmore Auditorium with Booker T and the MGs and Iron Butterfly

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12-13 April 1968     Winterland    San Francisco

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14 April 1968             Carousel Ballroom

19 April 1968                   Selland Arena             Fresno

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20 April 1968    University of California     Santa Barbara

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24 April 1968            Straight Theatre          San Francisco

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26 April 1968      Foothill College      Los Altos      California

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27 April 1968     San Bernardino    California

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1 May 1968   College Field   Chico State College   Chico  California

2 May 1968                 Carousel Ballroom                San Francisco

1968   3-4 May   The Shrine Expo Center      Los Angeles

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3-6 May 1968

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10 May 1968       Cal-Poly State University     San Luis Obispo     California

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Sam Berdofsky

Sam Berdofsky drew this poster for our gig in Santa Rosa.

11 May 1968

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12 May 1968    San Fernando Valley State College     Northridge    California

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15 May 1968

Fairly typical set list at this time.

16 May 1968    That doesn’t look like one of James’ usual guitars.

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17 May 1968    Freeborn Hall   University of California at Davis

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18 May 1968   Santa Clara County Fairgrounds  Santa Clara   Northern California Folk Rock Festival

This was a special gig, quite memorable.  The weather was beautiful and there was a spirit of togetherness.

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19 May 1968      Civic Auditorium  Pasadena   James singing Easy Rider.   “And I will even buy you some cardboard fruit.”

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21 May 1968        Bermuda Palms     San Rafael    California   One dollar seemed to be the going rate for these Angels affairs.  Would be about $10 now.

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I used to play saxophone in this building with a big band.

Five errors ?   Dave, Janis, Sam, James and Peter.  That was easy.

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24-26 May 1968   Carousel Ballroom with the Clara Ward Singers

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31 May 1968

Whisky

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9 June 1968   Whisky-A-Go-Go    Hollywood

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13 June 1968     Fillmore Auditorium

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14-15 June 1968     Winterland      San Francisco

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16 June 1968      Fillmore            Matrix Benefit

22-23 June 1968        Carousel Ballroom

Owsley Stanley put us on tape many times. SONY released his recording of this engagement.

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24 June 1968      Burlingame Country Club     Burlingame  California

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26-29 June 1968                   Denver

Janis Joplin

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See you next week?

Sam Andrew

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Big Brother history, part three, July to December 1967

July to Decmber 1967

1 July 1967     Avalon Ballroom    Big Brother and the Holding Company   Quicksilver      Mount Rushmore      Horns of Plenty

“Big Brother and the Holding Company ?”        How did you get a name like that ?  Well, on a beautiful spring day in 1965, Chet Helms held in his hands two legal tablets full of quirky, eccentric, purposefully puerile names.  Names like Tom Slow and his Sarcastic Grand Mo. Or Country Schmo and The Knish. Or Quicksilver Military Service. The Grapefruit Head. The Jefferson’s Bear Pain.

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On one legal tablet, Chet had the name “Big Brother,” no doubt prompted by a recent reading of  Orwell.  On another legal tablet page, Chet had the words “The Holding Company.”   ‘Holding ?’  Why Holding ?  “Holding” was slang at that time for “possessing,” as in, “Hey, man, are you holding any drugs ?”

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So, on one yellow tablet Chet had “Big Brother” and on the other he had “the Holding Company.”   “Big Brother ?”   “Holding Company ?”  “Big Brother” was big government. “”Holding Company” was corporate government. Corporations weren’t people yet. Their ‘free speech’ hadn’t yet become protected by the Supreme Court, which was still an honorable institution.

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“Big Brother ?”     “Holding Company ?”      Very political.  Country Joe and The Fish were a political group, but their name was non political. They should have had our name and we should have had theirs.  Country Janis and The Fish would have been something to consider, even if we didn’t have Janis yet.

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James Gurley said, “Hey, how is a name like Big Brother and the Holding Company going to fit on a marquee or a record label ?”

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And I thought, “You mean there’s going to be a marquee… and a record label ?”

2 July 1967         Mount Tamalpais          Marin County, California.

I had a difficult time driving down off Mount Tamalpais after this gig. We had a 1955 Cadillac hearse which was unwieldy anyway, and I didn’t know Marin County yet, and especially Tamalpais, so I had a fun time negotiating all those curves, peaks and valleys after cocktails and cannabis.

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4-6 July 1967         Fillmore              Bo Diddley        Big Joe Williams     Quicksilver       Big Brother

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Circle bill

7-8 July 1967    Circle Star Theatre     San Carlos    California    Theatres in the round, such as the Circle Star, can be quite tricky. Westbury Music Fair on Long Island is another one. When they begin revolving there is a slight jerk that you should be ready for or otherwise you could spill your Bombay martini.

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14-15 July 1967               Continental Ballroom grand opening.

We’re playing Cuckoo here, a song that became Oh, Sweet Mary on Cheap Thrills.

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20-21 July 1967  Avalon Ballroom      Big Brother and the Holding Company     Mount Rushmore

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23 July 1967   Straight Theatre    San Francisco  Grand Opening   Big Brother and the Holding Company  Freedom Highway    The Phoenix    Wildflower    The Grateful Dead  Mount Rushmore  Quicksilver Messenger Service   New Salvation Army Band   Mother Earth  Country Joe and The Fish   The Charlatans   Blue Cheer

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28-30 July 1967     California Hall      San Francisco

Eddy and Josie

Josie and Eddy

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31 July 1967        Haight Ashbury Free Clinic Benefit

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8 August 1967  Denver Dog   Denver    Colorado  A band at this event played Bye, Bye, Baby. The guitar player even copied my mistakes. First time I heard that.

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10 August 1967  Kaiser Dome San Bernardino

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11-12 August 1967  Continental Ballroom   Santa Clara   California

13 August 1967  Avalon Ballroom

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16 August 1967  Golden Gate Park

Sharrie Gomez and I doing a Macy’s ad.

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Bo and his balalaika

24-27 August 1967           Avalon Ballroom          Big Brother    Bo Diddley        Bukka White        The Salvation Army Banned

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28 August 1967  Lindley Meadow   Golden Gate Park

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Hunter S. Thompson

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We had a shoot in Sausalito at the Heliport with Irving Penn.

This is the way Irving Penn’s portrait of us and the Grateful Dead looks on the wall at The National Portrait Gallery, London.

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artists

1-3 September 1967     Straight Theatre    Haight Ashbury             San Francisco

La Dolphine 1760 Manor Drive

4 September 1967   La Dolphine Estate  Debutante Party   Burlingame  California

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6 September 1967

8-9 September 1967  Family Dog  Denver

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Truth in advertising

You probably cannot see that Janis and I are committing some kind of nefarious act over there under the tree.

15 September 1967         Canceled

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September 16, 1967     Monterey Jazz Festival    Big Brother  T-Bone Walker   B. B. King   Richie Havens   The Clara Ward Singers    Afternoon Blues Show

T-Bone Walker was my guitar hero since I was 14, so I was very excited to see him here.

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Huntington Beach Realty - 1906

19-24 September 1967       Golden Bear       Huntington Beach   California with Big Mama Thornton.

5  October 1967   The Matrix  San Francisco

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6 October 1967  The Ark   Sausalito   California

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7 October 1967      Avalon Ballroom

8 October 1967             Santa Clara Fairgrounds              Santa Clara          California

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13-14 October 1967     Eagles Auditorium      Seattle   This engagement was canceled, I believe, and we played at The Ark instead.

15-16 October 1967                Avalon Ballroom

20 October 1967           Contra Costa College     San Pablo    California

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27 October 1967   Cal State    Hayward    California

28 October 1967        McNear’s Beach             San Rafael         California

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28-29 October 1967       Peacock Country Club            San Rafael

31 October 1967   Trip Or Freak  Hallowe’en Ball    Winterland    San Francisco

2-3 November 1967      Fillmore          San Francisco            with  Richie Havens

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November 1967           Golden Bear Club            Huntington Beach          California

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4 November 1967           Winterland             San Francisco           with Richie Havens  and  Pink Floyd

James Gurley plays an F# minor.

4 November 1967    The Ark         with Baltimore Steam Packet and  Moby Grape

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Sally Mann photographed by Rosie McGee

Way Beck when

Way Beck in the old days

13 November 1967         Avalon Ballroom           Big Brother and the Holding Company     The Grateful Dead        Quicksilver Messenger Service

16 November 1967           Cubist stock certificate

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This event never happened.  In any year.      I wish it would have.

23-25 November 1967     The Family Dog presents Thanksgiving Turkey Strut and Trot at The Avalon.

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24 November 1967   California Hall           San Francisco

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25 November 1967          Avalon Ballroom           Mount Rushmore

1 December 1967   The Matrix    San Francisco    with Sandy Bull  and  Dan Hicks

2 December 1967          1st L.A. appearance, it says.  I didn’t realize that.

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17 December 1967

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18 December 1967             California Hall

19 December 1967       Shrine Auditorium      Los Angeles

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20 December 1967            Whisky-A-Go-Go              Hollywood

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22 December 1967             Turlock Fairgrounds             Turlock           California

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25 December 1967                   Sokol Hall                Christmas Party

26-31 December 1967                    Winterland              San Francisco

Happy New Year !          31 December 1967

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See you next week?

Sam 1967 TV shoot

Sam Andrew

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