20 February 2011
No bit of doggerl could do this photo justice.
Canis meus litteras scriptas meas comedit.
My dog ate my homework.
Love is a disease and she is the nurse.
La scala sociale di Hollywood è lunga e vertiginosa.
The social ladder in Hollywood is high and it can make you dizzy.
(Beth Hart learning lines.)
John Byrne Cooke, in his first month with the band, pouring champagne for Janis, New Year’s Eve, at Winterland.
Thelma and Louise. Louise had a Bas Mitzvah in Saint Louis where my friend Ann Rinehart knew her in high school. (Janis & Myra)
Time Is A Foolish Fancy (18 February 2011) Photo: Max Clarke.
“Spain” in Hebrew is “Sepharad.” Yasmn Levy is a Ladino scholar and singer. Ladino is to Sephardic Jews what Yiddish is to the Ashkenazim. Yasmin is related to my accountant and she wants to combine Ladino and Flamenco influences in her music.
Living out loud.
Cavalieri quidem artem amatoriam invenerunt.
The Cavalieri invented the art of love.
Comedy is not an escape from reality. It’s an escape from despair.
(Slick Aguilar & Tommy Smothers)
Riderà bene chi riderà ultimo.
She laughs well who laughs last.
She’s not an organ donor, but she once gave an old piano to Goodwill.
I told Sophia Ramos that this woman got two, TWO, pages in The New Yorker, and Sophia replied (with a little pout), “Well, I got four.” And she did too. I checked.
Good thoughts are like money. Earn them, keep them and that will be your final balance in life.
You can always tell a Texan, but not much.
Labra lege.
Read my lips.
With Bonnie Tyler in Moscow:
Communism is like Prohibition. It’s a good idea, but it puts too much of a strain on human nature.
Darby Slick wrote Somebody to Love and I hope it’s making him rich.
South ? 69 ? Do you suppose that…oh, never mind.
Per quanto sia divertente, non lo è come ai vecchi tempi. Ma a sessantanove anni, che cosa è divertente?
As fun as life is now, it’s not like in the old days, but, at 69 years old, how much fun are you going to have?
Believe me, she’s a metsieh!
(Hebrew “find” A bargain, a lucky break)
Think with the heart and feel with the brain. (With Aviva, great sax player.)
All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year. (Gloria Swanson)
Mulier iucunda intellegensque vult obviam convenire alicui sexus adversi qui lingua Latina utitur.
Attractive and intelligent woman wishes to meet a Latin speaker of the opposite sex.
Che palle! (Thank you, Trina.)
What balls!
A poet is a passionate lover of the language of dreams.
(Elise Piliwale, Tony Seldin, The Theatre of Light)
Bach in an hour. Offenbach sooner. (sign on a music store)
Oh, so you think that’s corny? How about
Bach in a fugue minuets. (Right now I’m playing Haydn seek.)
Photo: Jack Bawden
Life is like learning how to play a musical instrument in front of thousands of people. (Hey, wait, I had to do that too.)
Peter Tork and Bill Laymon, and Snooky’s red hat, with The Sam Andrew Band at Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow. We opened for Big Brother! I felt like The Folksmen opening for Spinal Tap.
Sometimes zaftig, sometimes not.
Energy, talent? She had a lot.
Elise in a B movie. Or maybe even a C movie.
Playing a colorful C# diminished chord.
James Gurley, Michel Bastian, Babeth Chosson, Moscow, 1995.
“There is something of a kerfuffle going on over a recent edition of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.” (I love this word “kerfuffle.” For one thing, it’s got the always funny ‘K’ in it, and it’s meaning is rather indeterminate.) Chaos, quarreling, quirky quixoticism, quackery, queer querulousness, kvetching and kvitching). Kerfuffle. That’s my definition.
Here’s what The Oxford English Dictionary has to say on the subject:
[Variant of Scots CURFUFFLE]
First citation in English: 1946. (F. Sargeson That Summer)
“I bet it (sc. the domestic row) ended up in a good old kafuffle.”
Nicole Álvarez between time and money.
Elaine Mays took this noirish shot of Janis.
With Janis on Mount Tamalpais, Marin County,1967.
Milini Khan and Simone with Simone’s daughter, Central Park, 2003.
I love the expression on Simone’s face.
I was involved in the Great Folk Music Scare back in the sixties, when it almost caught on. (Martin Mull)
What Elise had to wear to get into Thailand.
I played more nights with Janis than any other musician in her life.
Kate Russo and friends. Dallas.
Couple number one. (The Sam Andrew Band played a benefit for The Haight Ashbury Medical Clinic and these two won the dance contest.)
Janis in a cape and fishnet stockings. This outfit was much copied when we did the play Love, Janis.
Now Ben Nieves and I routinely use only the smallest amp you see there, the Fender Twin Reverb and the amps are already there in the venue when we arrive. To think that Big Brother used to carry these all amps all over the country. Finally someone figured it out. “Ahhhh, backline! If we had amps everywhere musicians wouldn’t have to bring all that heavy equipement on the airplane. An ecological and environmental win/win game.”
Lisa Mills in Pascagoula, Mississippi. I’m going to try to get her to sing with us in California in June, 2011. I hope it happens.
Cycads by the road to Kayauchi-banta, Okinawa, Japan. This was a coral road, probably paved now.
I’m not sure we played this gig. In fact, I’m fairly sure that we did not. Too bad. I went to high school here. Part of it anyway. And then my family traveled to Okinawa, where I graduated from Kubasaki High School. Janis came from Port Arthur, of course, near Beaumont and Houston. We may have missed that stop also. For some reason my memory is fuzzy here. Maybe she was ill and we had to cancel? Hey, you can’t remember them all. That was 42 years ago. What were you doing 42 years ago on 21 November? Were you born yet?
Elise, Albuquerque, New Mexico, New Year’s Eve, not last one, but the one before that. So, 2009?
Time Is A Foolish Fancy: This is the small version in its drawing stage. Peggy Pettigrew Stewart. Peggy is doing a glass sculpture of Elise and me, and I am doing three portraits (at least) of her. For me, Peggy is difficult to depict. I think I have her essence here. Typically what happens at this stage is that I then proceed and completely destroy the drawing. Then I’m horrified and despressed and then I continue and slowly, slowly regain the original idea, and almost get the painting back to as good as it was on the second day.
There are painters who work alla prima. That is, they begin and finish a painting in one sitting. I am in awe of these people. Work done this way has a freshness that I admire. Virgil Elliott did this painting alla prima.
Lotus Mahon winning the dance contest. Snooky Flowers is doing the solo right now and Scott Matthews is just about to begin his. Can you hear it? The Sam Andrew Band at University of California San Francisco. A good night. Go, Lotus!
This is my niece Emily Rollins and her brand new baby, Kieran, one day old and fully formed. Most new babies look like Winston Churchill. I admit, I’m a proud grand uncle.
Kate Russo playing with Peter and me. Not sure where.
Thank you and I’ll see you next week.
Sam Andrew
Big Brother and the Holding Company
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