Poppa John Creach plays "Over The Rainbow." I always loved his fiddle rendition of the tune. Poppa John played for both the Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna in the 70's. This is an audio YouTube, with a slideshow. . .the only way we can put songs up here without a lot of hassle.
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Thursday, September 13, 2007
Happy Birthday Moochie!!!
Happy Birthday to Claire Curran Brummet a/k/a Moochie, who turns 22 years old today.
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Poem: Alkyvision
At Stage One, you see round
Out of one eye
And square out of the other—
It's disquieting, but you shake it off
And pour down an encore,
A crooked smile still plastered
On your ragged visage.
At the next stage, it's double trouble—
You see döppelgangers.
At Stage Three, you see triple.
Closing one eye leaves you still seeing double
And the spinning begins.
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Hollywood Squares answers
I don't remember ever enjoying any of the quiz shows except Hollywood Squares. It was always interesting to see all these B list celebrities, and the screamingly campy, gay men that Americans hadn't even realized were gay. This show was tawdry, and depressing if you were a glass half-empty type, and hilarious if you could just accept it for what it was: good, clean knucklehead fun. The show, and the celebs liked to claim that their answers were completely spontaneous and unscripted. It's clear they were not. Here are a few of the gems that have surfaced on the 'net.
Peter Marshall: Paul, can you get an elephant drunk?
Paul Lynde: Yes, but he still won't go up to your apartment.
Peter Marshall: In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say "I love you"? Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty.
Peter Marshall: According to Cosmo, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think he's really attractive, is it okay to come out directly and ask him if he's married?
Rose Marie: No, wait until morning.
Peter Marshall: Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
Charley Weaver: My sense of decency.
Peter Marshall: Prometheus was tied to the top of a mountain by the gods because he had given something to man. What did he give us?
Paul Lynde: I don't know what you got, but I got a sports shirt.
Peter Marshall: What are "Do It," "I Can Help" and "Can't Get Enough"?
George Gobel: I don't know but it's coming from the next apartment.
Peter Marshall: What are "dual purpose" cattle good for that other Cattle aren't?
Paul Lynde: They give milk and cookies...but I don't recommend the cookies!
Peter Marshall: If you find someone lying unconscious in the street, should you do anything?
George Gobel: I'd probably crawl around him, I guess.
Peter Marshall: Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.
Peter Marshall: Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during your first year?
Charley Weaver: Of course not, Peter. I'm too busy growing strawberries!
Peter Marshall: In bowling, what's a perfect score?
Rose Marie: Ralph, the pin boy.
Peter Marshall: Eddie, according to the Institute of Motivational Research, a wife should be beware if another woman takes an interest in a certain item of her husband's clothing. What item?
Ed Asner: Well, shorts immediately springs to my mind...
Peter Marshall: It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps. One is politics. What is the other?
Paul Lynde: Tape measures.
Peter Marshall: True or false...a pea can last as long as 5,000 years.
George Gobel: Boy it sure seems that way sometimes...
Peter Marshall: Is there a weight limit for bags on airline flights in this country?
Charley Weaver: If she can fit under the seat, she can fly.
Peter Marshall: During a tornado, are you safer in the bedroom or in the closet?
Rose Marie: Unfortunately, Peter, I'm always safe in the bedroom.
Peter Marshall: Can boys join the camp fire girls?
Marty Allen: Only after lights out.
Peter Marshall: When you pat a dog on its head he will usually wag his tail. What will a goose do? Paul Lynde: Make him bark.
Peter Marshall: True or false, George...experts say there are only seven or eight things in the world dumber than an ant.
George Gobel: Yes, and I think I voted for six of 'em.
Peter Marshall: If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?
Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.
Peter Marshall: According to Ann Landers, is there anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?
Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army!
Peter Marshall: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body; what is it?
Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused but it certainly isn't neglected!
Peter Marshall: According to Movie Life magazine, Ann-Margret would like to start having babies soon, but her husband wants her to wait a while. Why?
Paul Lynde: He's out of town.
Peter Marshall: Dennis Weaver, Debbie Reynolds, and Shelley Winters star in the movie "What's The Matter With Helen?" Who plays Helen?
Charley Weaver: Dennis Weaver - that's why they asked the question.
Peter Marshall: Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant?
Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant?
Peter Marshall: When a couple have a baby, who is responsible for its sex?
Charley Weaver: I'll lend him the car. The rest is up to him.
Peter Marshall: Jackie Gleason recently revealed that he firmly believes in them and has actually seen them on at least two occasions. What are they?
Charley Weaver: His feet.
Peter Marshall: If you're going to make a parachute jump, you should be at least how high?
Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it.
Peter Marshall: Do female frogs croak?
Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water.
Peter Marshall: You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake!
Peter Marshall: In a very famous movie who said, "God, what a dump?"
Paul Lynde: Dumbo.
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
A Blog for Phil Kendall
One of my best friends. Phil Kendall, drowned under tragic and mysterious circumstances (e.g., he was being chased and jumped from a bridge into a canal) when he was traveling in Amsterdam in 1974. He was twenty years old. I became fast friends with him when he was a freshman at Western Washington University, and frequently traveled up to Bellingham to visit, talk, and "party" with Phil, Kevin Curran, and Jerry Melin.
This trio was responsible for introducing me to Keelin Curran, noted attorney, and my wife, best friend, and partner of 34 years. Yeah, they hooked me up with a righteous babe, but our friendship(s) transcended that even, and became the touchstone of all my loves and friendships since.
Four of Phil's sisters—Becky, Claudia, Kacia, and Kathi—recently decided to start a blog honoring his memory. Claudia contacted me a week ago and since then, I have been beating the drum for all our friends to contribute stories, photos, and memories of Phil. I am still contacting people. It has been wonderful to touch base with Claudia again, and go back and forth on our now somewhat hazy memories. Their blog is here. I am going to reprint our first contributions on All This Is That. After this, we'll just have a link to their blog, because this should be about Phil, and them. For you rockers, think of it as a very important side project.
Pat Spurgin remembers...
Pat Spurgin (a roommate of Phil's at 1721 Iron Street in the fall and winter of 73/74) wrote in an email to Keelin Curran:
"I am a little astounded because I have had a picture of Phil in my memory (I can't retrieve a nickname) and that blog pic is exactly what I had in mind, frozen from 1974 when I left Iron Street in my deep funk about pointlessness and distractedness.
Phil's sister (maybe it was Claudia) was quite wise one night back in '73-74 to not loan me her car after I drank the better part of a bottle of tequila and sailed off into the Bellingham night. It's an old story. I wound up laying in some front yard, sans glasses and one shoe, rescued by Bart & who? Imagine me driving. Wasn't it Phil who bought the Savoy Brown albums that stuck in my head for so long that I downloaded selected cuts off of i-tunes?
I must join in the wonderment and grief over things having gone so wrong.
Jack Brummet responds to Kevin Curran with a couple of Phil stories of his own
How moving. . .and loving. . .and your remembering is of such great clarity and depth and warmth. If you don't mind, I want to throw this on the Phil blog, and maybe this too.
Maybe this is perfect to set things in motion.
I knew Phil in high school--we were slight friends. But when I started coming to Bellingham, it was maybe after only one or two trips that I became fast friends with both Phil and Jerry. You and I were at that point old friends, and knew each other's families, and by then had a pretty long history (well, four years, say). Not surprisingly, Phil and I became friends sooner than Jerry and I did. In most ways, Phil was much more ebullient, and more open. Mel, as you remember, could also retract into toxic silence. Especially in the morning.
One other connection with Phil was books, Shakespeare, and poetry. Somehow you guys sucked me in to the point where I've been writing poems for like, what...35 years?
I agree with you on Phil's poem on the blog (See Sept. 7, on this blog). Startlingly mature. As Phil himself was easily the most mature of all of us. And yet he mostly always forgave our knucklehead ways. I think what Phil liked were my jokes, you know...my schtick...not jokes, but bent stories. I remember how much I liked telling him jokes, and stories of my hillbilly upbringing. He would just get the crazed look and howl and nearly fall to the floor. I can't remember his laugh exactly, but it was infectious and Falstaffian. It was such a great laugh that I always felt compelled to summon it up.
We got to know each other pretty quickly, and it wasn't very long before we were hooking up in Seattle too, even when you weren't around. And then, one day, something totally clicked between me and Mel. Or many things. One of us must have said or done something so funny and warped that it endeared us to each other forever.
So now, all of a sudden I had three brothers I loved in Bellingham, while I was stuck in Kent, at the Crisis Center. It was good work and important work, but at some moment in early 1973, I knew I had to go to college, and hang and create and party with you guys full time. This was not exactly easy for a poor hillbilly kid to do. In my entire family, only my mother had even graduated from high school. And my widowed mom had nary a nickel to contribute. Obviously scholarships were out. And my high school records screamed UNDERACHIEVER and rabble-rouser. It's another long story, but I was able to wheedle a letter of recommendation from both the Governor and the Mayor of Kent, and I was provisionally admitted to college in the fall (I was rid of the provisional part after my first successful quarter).
In the interim, the focus of my life became to hang with you [Kevin], Phil, and Jerry. I charged up to Bellingham every chance I got to drink it in. One of my favorite and most vibrant memories of those days were road trips to Seattle.
I especially remember the first road trip the four of us took after we were all living together. That car had a fog like Jeff Spiccoli's van as it rolled up to the prom. We were racing down to Seattle in Mel's still gleaming Pontiac, blasting the Stones' brand new Sticky Fingers, and rounding those looping I-5 turns, wending our way through the mountains with their sporadic clear-cuts, and digging "Can't You Hear Me Knockin."
And we played all our current favorites: The Dead's Europe 72; the Kinks Celluloid Heroes; Deep Purple; and Humble Pie's Rockin' The Fillmore. I don't know what we even did in Seattle, where we stayed, or anything. I do however most explicitly remember all four of us digging life to the max, and actually saying "this is the life. Whatever happens from here on, it won't get any better than this." We knew it for a fact. It was stew of friendship, being in college, being 20, and being free. And at that moment, on that road trip, we achieved a shimmering moment of eternal friendship.
As for Bleak House...it was a rathole, but I had so much fun and was so happy there that it shimmers in my memory. And that fun was all based on proximity to you, Phil and Mel. It became bleak later, I think, for outside reasons and the fact that Mel recruited a new roommate who was certifiably insane (and who, I heard later, would pick up the wedding cake at his brother's wedding and lob it at the bride and groom!). More about Bleak House next time. Maybe next time, we should delve into the pizza trick heist.
The Popcorn Story by Kevin Curran
Here is one of my favorites. While living on Humboldt Street Phil would suggest that we make some popcorn to enjoy during a bone head session. He always recalled that he had made the last batch and would insist that I had to prepare the next batch. I would agree and set off for the kitchen and as I created a racket pulling the oil, popcorn and pot onto the stovetop he would amble in and quietly take over. It was downright comical because it happened over and over again. He would suggest popcorn, make a big stink how he made it the last time, insist the it was my turn, and then as I had barely started he would gently push me out of the way and take over.
Eventually, I'd just raise a clatter and sure enough he'd show up to take over. I couldn't help but tell him, and while he smiled at me with that crooked grin he never again interrupted me during my popcorn turn. I wished I had kept it to myself not because I was getting over but because he just couldn't help himself and he was so glad to be hanging out making fun with a friend.
Kevin Curran Remembers Phil (installment one)
Kevin Curran writes from New York City:
The Phil blog touched me. I loved the pics and wonder if Phil in an apron was from our stay at bleak house. Here are my first thoughts.
I loved Philip. Our friendship lasted four years and yet I think of him frequently still and recently told Kris how much I miss him, even now. For a few years after his death I regularly dreamt that he had come home with some wild explanation for his absence. I would awaken flooded with joy until it sank in again with aching clarity that he was really gone.
I don't remember the exact moment we became friends. It may have occurred during high school football since we both played, though he was a year behind me at KM, surely our connection to Tom Brush was a factor. We may have attended the same writing class my senior year. I enjoyed rereading the poem that Phil’s sisters posted to the blog, it is really sweet and better than anything I remember writing then.
It was no accident that Phil and Jerry were friends. They both were athletic and smart and hilariously rebellious but I would say Phil’s brand was slightly less edgy and more prone to giggling than confrontation. I know that I met Jerry through Phil. I remember our friendship was well on its way during my stint at the Robo CarWash which began no later than early 1971. Phil would often pick me up after my shift on a Friday or Saturday evening. We hung out regularly after I graduated. I know that we shared in weekend shenanigans after I took up residence with BM, Smoothie and the monkey at the Comstock bachelor pad.
Phil purchased a small sports car around 1972, his senior year, (an MG midget maybe) which was toward the end of my year at the dog hospital.
I remember Phil driving up with the top down one sweet summer afternoon. He was brimming with a kind of Route 66 brio just as the car conked out in the parking lot. He fussed with that car throughout the summer and struggled to keep it on the road. He got the car to Bellingham in the fall of 1973 but I don't know how. He may have towed it behind a U HAUL. I remember it parked outside the Humboldt Street house for awhile but I don't remember that we ever took a ride in it that year. He either disposed of it or returned it to his family's home and I don’t think he had a car when we moved into bleak house on Iron Street the next fall.
Do you [Jack] remember your first trip to B’ham? It must have been winter quarter 1972-73. I remember that you and Milo made the trip and arrived after dark. I think that was that the first time you met Phil and Jerry. Our years on Humboldt and Iron Streets were full of stooges moments. I will put them together over the next few weeks. [to be continued]
An amusing (and shocking story from The Phil Zone) [another story from Jack Brummet]
I do remember one incredible and improbable story about Phil. Incredible, because, well, you'll see. Improbable because Phil was one of the smartest people I've known.
Kevin, Jerry, and Phil were sitting around their house on Humboldt Street one day, doing what we usually did (because it was cheap): talking. Eventually the talk somehow turned to amputations. I think they were talking about digital a/k/a finger amputations. Phil looked at them and said: "I know it hurt, but it will grow back, you know."
He was dead serious. When they finally realized he was serious, they, of course, howled and pounded the floor in mirth.
Sometime early in life, one of Phil's parents had told him that if you lost a finger or toe, it would grow back. And in the interim years, he had never seen or heard anything to ever make him think twice about that. Until that night in Bellingham. It was the most endearing thing he ever said.
I know this is hard to believe, but Phil confirmed the story to me not long after it happened. And I loved him all the more because of it.
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The Making of The Old 97's Satellite Rides (By Rhett Miller)
click to blow up...
If you have stop here often, you probably know that I have become a huge Old 97's fan over the last year. Some of you are saying "what took you so long?" and the rest are saying, huh? All I can say is go out tomorrow and buy Satellite Rides and Too Far To Care for starters.
When the Old 97's created their fifth album, it was their third after signing with Elektra (most famous, probably, as The Doors label). Elektra commissioned a making of piece from the band. Rhett Miller, singer, songwriter, front-man, and heart-throb wrote the following for Elektra:
Hi.
I’m tempted to tell you how good our new record is, but that sort of thing is hard to communicate – like describing a card trick. I will instead tell you WHY it is so good.
In early 2000 it came time to get to work on what would become Satellite Rides. I thought about it and realized that the Old 97’s function best in close proximity. Four interdependent pieces of a larger whole. For example, when we first formed the band three members lived in the same apartment building. When we made our second album (1995’s Wreck Your Life), we slept on the floor of an attic recording studio in Chicago’s Wicker Park.. Our best music is bred by living like a litter of puppies, all over each other.
On the other hand, Fight Songs (our 1999 record, and second Elektra release) was a geographical nightmare. By then, we lived apart – the band in one city and me in another. During the pre-production for that album, I flew to Texas one week a month for two months in order to rehearse with the guys. That’s a sum total of a mere two weeks preparation. And, we’re slow-learners! I’m proud of Fight Songs, but it was a hard record to make.
So for Satellite Rides I came home to Texas. Abandoning LA for the spring. The idea was to be intimate enough with these songs to cut them live if we so fancied. To achieve that level of comfort we spent three months working. Working! Everyday. Like regular working stooges. Granted we took long lunches and left early sometimes, but come on… We started in Ken’s guest bedroom with acoustic guitars and Philip playing drums on a cardboard box.. We wound up at Universal Rehearsal, punching the clock like we had years before in my mom’s garage. I’d already lived most of these songs while writing them, and I needed the guys to love them and believe in them also. It was easy to get excited about the great tunes Murry brought to the table. “Can’t Get A Line” was the highlight of every rehearsal for me – there is no song that is more fun to play (it’s in C if you want to try it at home). Our spring was spent in a fugue-state. Mantra-like repetition of these songs (“Rollerskate Skinny”, “King Of All The World”, “Designs On You”, “Up The Devil’s Pay”, “Nervous Guy”, etc. ad infinitum) until we lived inside of them – we are after all very much a live band.
In August we disappeared into the Texas hill country. Willie Nelson’s studio outside Austin. Unfortunately Willie (whom we all count among our heroes) was out of town for the duration of our stay – probably not a bad thing since the “Oh-my-god-Willie-is-in-the-next-room” factor could have wrecked the whole session. His recording studio suited our needs perfectly, set as it is atop a hill overlooking the studio’s two swimming pools and below, Lake Travis. I was born in Austin, and we’ve all lived there at various times in our lives, so we truly felt at home.
We invited Wally Gagel who’d produced our Elektra debut Too Far To Care and is, like me, a transplanted Angeleno (though he is native to Boston). Also from the LA area we recruited the freakishly-nimble-fingered engineer Robert Carranza. And we started laying tape. Even though I caught myself knocking wood 50 times a day, I had no doubt these sessions would yield the best Old 97’s album yet.
The daily regimen consisted of some music, a lot of swimming, an hour or so of sloppily but heartily played tennis, shooting a BB gun at some cans we hung in a copse of trees, and at least a quarter hour counting falling stars at the end of the night just to wind down. At the risk of mixing metaphors, I must tell you that this litter of puppies was in hog heaven.
When the grueling experience of recording was over, we took the tapes to the Sunset Sound Factory in Los Angeles where Tchad Blake performs his particular brand of magic. He panned left. He tweaked right. He did a little dance in his chair. He mixed the album. Mixed it up good. Somehow made it squishy and warm and at the same time architecturally precise. This man’s genius is his intuition and it was a joy to listen to him assemble our Satellite Rides.
Hooray for the Old 97’s! I’m proud of us. Why is Satellite Rides so good? It’s simple. We took a batch of killer songs and played the hell out of them. What more can you ask of a rock band?
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Seattle Times forgets about 9/11
In their "today in history" feature, there was no mention of 9/11 at all. You think one of their sharp editors might have glanced at the date and put two and two together?
This gaffe reminds me that the only reason I even subscribe to the Broad Street Fish-wrapper is that the New York Times doesn't cover Seattle well, and I can't bear to watch the local news "telecasts."
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John Sebastian Plays Younger Generation At Woodstock
John Sebastian was wandering around the Woodstock festival digging the scene and completelty blitzed on LSD when he was recruited to play for half a million people or so. Due to the traffic jams, etc., the headliners weren't able to get there in time, so they recruited John and Richie Havens to play. John was just about to release his post Loving Spoonful albun "John Sebastian" and had some great new tunes to roll out. His addled patter became one of the highlights of the Woodstock documentary. Younger Generation appears on his first solo album.
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Jerry Garcia and Ken Kesey Discuss LSD And It's Effects On Creativity, Music, And Writing
Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia discuss LSD and creativity with the late, great Tom Snyder (includes some other video clips of Kesey)...
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Monday, September 10, 2007
Four more images of Kent, Washington in the 40's and 50's
This is perhaps the most ignominious picture of Kent, Washington to have ever appeared. The photo was taken days after the Pearl Harbor bombing, and shortly before the entire Japanese population of Kent was rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps (a/k/a relocation centers) in Idaho and California. I do not know who the moron pointing to the sign is, but I suspect he was still around when I was young and roaming the streets of Kent. I have seen this photo on more than one blog and web site. It is often used on sites about the internment camps, and about discrimination against the Japanese.
Click to enlarge this photograph of a pond and house 24804 128th Place SE in the middle 1950s. This site is very close to where my Uncle Romey's doomed "farm" was, and not far from my Great Aunt Ruth's place (about which I remember little except for her amazing fields of blueberries). It is also close to where my fabulous friends Dave Hokit and Maureen Roberts live, near Lake Meridian (which was ringed with one room cabins and fishing shacks when I was young). In his memoir of growing up in West Seattle, the poet Richard Hugo wrote about going on vacation to Lake Meridian every year, renting a cabin, and fishing for trout.
This is what the area surrounding Kent proper looked like when I was growing up. It does not look like this now, even as far out as Cumberland, Black Diamond, Ravensdale, Enumclaw, Lester, Four Corners, or Hobart. Those are the Cascade Mountains in the distance. One thing that hasn't changed: the pale grey to leaden nimbostratus clouds that have hung over my head most of my life.
Another flood in the Green River Valley. When I saw growing up, we had floods in the Valley every year. The valley was fed by several rivers. The White River and the Green River flowed out of the Cascade foothills to the east, and joined in a confluence near downtown Auburn. From there, the river traveled north and was met by the Black River (an outflow from Lake Washington) near what is now Tukwila. The combined rivers formed the Duwamish River which flowed (and still does) north into Elliott Bay.
South of the White/Green river confluence, was the Stuck River which flowed to Commencement Bay in South Puget Sound. The Stuck and the White rivers flowed so near to each other that during spring floods, the two rivers would sometimes merge, spilling water far to the north and south.
I grew up two blocks from the Green River. The floods never reached our house, but usually came right up to the block before ours. I do remember seeing moving vans roll up and haul people's furniture away when a flood was about to strike. That would be for people who could afford it. Most of us poor folk couldn't. We hung in, got out our prams and dinghies, and crossed our fingers. The floods ended in 1962 when the Howard Hanson dam was built upstream:
The Howard Hanson dam. The dam was built to save the farmers, and us, the hapless lowland residents of Kent. What really happened was that the valley was now safe for industry. And the rest, as they say, is history.
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