- January 2009 -

Other Fein Messes

Now Playing: Nolan Strong & The Diablos : No Matter What You Say

1st Record/1st Concert

In the early 70's, when I was barely in grade school, I was fascinated by those little pieces of plastic with the big holes in them. Now what speed did you play them at? For the bigger discs that my parents had, I finally figured out were played at 33 RPM but my little record player with the built in speaker didn't have any to play. That is until my mom and aunt took me to a department store where they had a little section in the back for albums. Couldn't have been more than fifty of them there. With the small space, they could only stock the hits so the Beatles were an obvious choice. 
 
And there was a strange record which had them on the cover but with no writing that said it was in fact the Beatles. They were all dressed in long black suits with big beards, except Paul. They might as well have been from my synagogue with those outfits but they still looked so freaking cool. I had to have the album. I didn't care what it sounded like. 
 
"Hey Jude" turned out to be a wonderful mish-mash of singles, covering most of their pro career. You had the lovely title track whose out-going chorus seemed to go on forever (not that you wanted it to stop) plus the desperate "Don't Let Me Down," the cheerful "Can't Buy Me Love," the dreamy "Rain," the revved up version of "Revolution" and the lost Harrison rocker "Old Brown Shoe." 
 
How could you listen to that and not be a Beatles fan? I was hooked and spent the next few years gobbling up their albums. And later, albums in general. And later, CD's. And later, MP3's. And later... 
 Judy Collins & Arlo Guthrie at Tanglewood Music Festival, Lenox, Mass., July 1978(?) 
 
I was with my family and all of 12 years old at the time. We were on vacation there for a week and my rock-hating dad wanted us to see the Boston Pops, which ain't exactly every kid's dream. My memory's kind of vague but I do remember that it was a nice summer there and you got to squat outdoors to see the shows (I'm guessing that we were on blankets). 
 
I noticed something intriguing on the schedule there. Arlo Guthrie was also playing. That meant something special to me at the time. 
 
Back then, I grew up on AM radio, specifically WABC with Harry Harrison in the morning. It was a top 40 station that our bus driver would play every day on the way to school so I had to sit though hundreds of doses Bee Gees going disco, "You Light Up My Life," Barry Manilow, etc.. Even in my brainwashed kid state, I got sick from all the dreck. 
 
Once in a while though, one of the older kids would bring on a cassette player (how's that for dating me?) on the bus and let us hear something else. That's how I got my first taste of the Doors, the Stones and other classic rock. One particular favorite of my friend Elliot Semet was Arlo and especially the live "One Night" album. On that record, Arlo went through a long, rambling humorous story about giant clams terrorizing settlers, which was part sci-fi, part Hee-Haw hockum but for a pre-teen, it was a great novelty- the full title was "The Story of Reuben Clamzo and His Strange Daughter In the Key of A." While I couldn't remember the 14 minute story intro, the song itself was a nice sing-a-long that was easy to remember: 
 
Oh poor old Reuben Clamzo 
Clamzo boys Clamzo! 
Oh poor old Reuben Clamzo 
Clamzo me boys Clamzo! 
 
You can see/hear the whole tale in its glory live here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo9TxeqeDCE 
 
So with that particular song and album stuck in my head, I begged my dad to let us go see Arlo. He and my mom probably didn't know who he was but he did know about the headliner, Judy Collins, and she seemed safe enough for us kids so we could go to the show. 
 
And such is life that Arlo didn't do the clam routine. Instead, he played piano and started out with a gospel number. My dad wasn't too impressed- "he's stealing someone else's number," he told me, though I can't remember who he was referring to. 
 
As for Collins, she was... OK. I knew who she was too and was never particularly a fan but we were there for the show so there was no reason not to see her play. She did have a lovely voice and a really good guitarist with her, who she let do a solo turn. 
 
But it was exciting to me then- I had actually gone to a show! I saved the ticket and since then, I've piled up hundreds of other tickets from shows I've been to- part of it is nostalgia but truth be known, it's also now done to jog my memory about what the hell I've seen. 
 
One problem though- I can't place the exact date of the show. The ticket stub (an eye-sore of 70's day-glo) is torn so that the year appears as 197-. So when was it? "One Night" came out some time in 1978 so that would leave that year or maybe 1979 for the date of the show. Either way, it's history for me. 

Jason Gross is the founder of Perfect Sound Forever, one of the first online music publications (1993). He's produced reissues of Delta 5, Kleenex/Liliput, Oh OK, DNA and Essential Logic, and writes for the Village Voice, Time Out, Spin, MOJO and the Wire.  

Another Fein Mess
AF STone’s Monthly
January 2009


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Elvis Show News - check back

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Late

This is very late this month. I think the wind was kicked out of me by the realization that the tv show is gone. Also, the Elvis show eats up the first week in January. Excuses, excuses - but THIS show must go on.

Memoria

I went to Forest Lawn for the memorial service for Delaney Bramlett. Bonnie wasn’t there. The place was filled with middle-aged men with long hair so I assume every country musician and sideman in L.A. was present. The service was very sweet, with many people sharing remembrances. He had a great voice and never stopped making music. And I’ll never forget that he called his home recording studio Carnegie Hole.

Delaney was on my show once, in 1992. With his whole band. When they arrived with all their equipment the first question was “where are your monitors”? It was public access. So it was just an interview show.

Also I had Sam Taylor Jr., son of Alan Freed’s bandleader, on my show in the mid-1980s. He, too, passed away, in January. He was a great singer and songwriter - among the best. Tragically, Sam's son Bobby, here, predeceased him by about 15 years.

Sam & Bobby Taylor Jr

Just Not In the Nick Of Time

One of my youtube postings is a series of black & white tv clips I took off tv in early 1965. While I thought the Bob Dylan one would get all the attention - this performance on the Les Crane show was erased the next day and no film or photos exist - I’m getting a lot of inquiries about the Jerry Lee Lewis clip, which shows him pounding the piano and singing for 8 seconds. “What show is that from?” ask Killer fans from around the world.

Darned if I know. But Killer scholars have suggested that it might have been the Lloyd Thaxton Show. And since my friend Paul Surratt of Research Video was very close to Thaxton I could have asked him. But with Thaxton’s death in October, that chance passed.

Surratt, by the way, was in the band Shiloh with Gram Parsons. My first question upon meeting him was “Any relation to Mary Surratt?”, the Lincoln assassination conspirator. “She got a bum rap” he said.

Chicago Stuff

Two rich-suburb kids two years apart at New Trier High School in Wilmette - Ann Margret (the elder) and Mike Bloomfield. One played with Paul Butterfield, one with Elvis.

Auto Response

Have you gotten a cellphone call rejected “The person is not accepting calls”? No offer to take a message. Cellphones CAN be used for rudeness, but this feature was designed for it.

AOL offered this ‘feature’ from Askmen.com: “The Ten Worst Auto Values,” about cars that flopped. They showed a 1959 Edsel and wrote “1959 was bad year to come out with a semi-luxury car,” as there was a recession. I guess just being MEN does not guarantee accuracy about cars. The1958 Edsel came out in the fall of 1957, and was good-looking 1. The 1959 model, pictured, was worselooking and the 1960 model was hardly manufactured (it was a Ford with different trim). The model was supposed to equate to the GM Buick or Olds slot, as Mercury filled the Pontiac slot. But the accepted-target Edsel makes great fun for moron writers.2

Then in the L.A. Times (12-10-08) a girl wrote that newspapers are going the way of the Edsel. Newspapers are in production for only two years? The silly-millie might have said the way of the Packard, for example, which lasted 30 years, or the Studebaker. But then she’d’ve had to know what she was talking about. Or maybe she asked Askmen.

1 Another car inevitably knocked was the Yugo “a rebadged Fiat.” So ... a Fiat is a bad car? I had a Yugo, I loved it til the timing belt snapped and the engine broke. But it wasn’t the Yugo’s fault. It all depends on the pistons’ position when the engine stops. Just recently the timing belt broke on my Volvo and I escaped with just a repair. Yugos are an accepted punching bag, for writers with no imagination.

2 Newspaper writers and comedians thrilled to attack Edsel features. One was the transmission buttons mounted in the steering wheel. “BUTTONS instead of using a lever?” they screamed. Just like the entire Chrysler line of the time. And they knocked the upturned rectangle in the grill. “Is the car sucking a lemon?” asked the prigs and prudes whose descendents still schrey. Yes, a shield type grill like Jaguar and Mercedes and many sport cars. Ugh.

70’s ... whatever music

When the 60s turned to the 70s I was in Boulder, which was turning hippie.
In November 1970 I moved to Santa Cruz, which was more so.

I was a fish out of water. I drifted in the hippie direction but never was really involved, owing to my disinterest in drugs and lack of activism. I liked granola, though. And it was in Santa Cruz that I heard the new music.

That music has no name. It came from a generation raised on rock turning to country. The bands were all similiarly constituted: tall guys in cowboy shirts with long hair, three girls banging tambourines, performing trad and not-so (often dope-referencing) country songs with black gospel overtones. Every concert ended with “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.”

It wasn’t Southern Rock based on soloing. (Personally, I’d had a lifetime of that during at the Fillmore - the first time.) It was music for partying. Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen come to mind, with their revival of “Hot Rod Lincoln.” But no girls in that one. Stoneground, with Sal Valentino, from San Francisco embodied the mold. And Buckwheat, from Nashville, did it perfectly. Many others were around, but I only focus on the ones I knew.

Hippie country-rock? Sounds disdainful, but what else is there to say?

I (Don’t ) Loves You, Porky

In 1975 and 1976, Doug Fieger of Skye (1969) played bass for Triumvurat, of Germany. When the leader dumped him and his girlfriend at a hotel in Germany and disappeared, Fieger was left without money or means to get his equipment back to America. The girlfriend’s father, who was connected to the Israeli army, flew in some commandos and escorted the couple and the equipment out of the country. Then, in October I finally, after 9 years, sat down for a get-acquainted talk with my neighbor Mike Andreas (Cold Blood, Beach Boys brass, others) He told me he played with Triumvurat in the late 1970s until the leader failed to pay him. Sounds like a pattern.

(The aforementioned Doug Fieger is now recuperating at home from a new episode of cancer surgery.)

Words

Every once in a while you hear something wrong used rightly. During the October 13 wildfires here in L.A., the news guys referred to two reporting entities, people in helicopters and others “on the ground.” This is the rare, one in a million correct usage of “on the ground.” The other 999,999 it is simply flapdoodle ... Many microphone holders still “ramp up” their questions by adding “at this time.” Nobody ever asks me anything, but if they did I would say “What? The time you spoke, or the time I am speaking? Both are gone already.” (Thanks to George Carlin, who thought this the same time as me) ... Can we can pundit? ... In the L.A. times, a pic of a 1986 home-run hitter is tagged ‘Iconic Image.’ Nope. Image not famous at all, home run is. And it wasn’t iconic in 1986 - that word wasn’t a cliche yet ... I would blame the current craze for “gone missing” on Sarah Palin if she hadn’t just arrived. What happened to ‘is missing?’ or ’has disappeared’? GONE missing sounds like Grandma Elsie at the butter churn ..

The Critic and the Damage Done

At the opening of a movie of W. Somerset Maugham’s 3 short stories, the author enumerates each decade of his career and recounts the critics’ dismissal of his work.

He was wealthy, and successful, but the slings still stung. I think of the musicians I know who were hurt by mean and unnecessary drubbings from unaccomplished pishers.

Rejection, anywhere, lasts. I think of John R. McDonald, whose Travis McGhee novels and others were best-sellers, saying “Yes, that’s all grand, but all I can think about are the rejections I got when I was starting out.”

I think, too, of William Shatner, on his new show, interviewing Valerie Bertinelli. When she said proudly that now that she’s turning 40 she can put aside all the struggles and mistakes and injustices of her 20s and 30s, Shatner leaned into her and said solemnly “You never will.”

3 Many of my reference points have been damaged by Grump magazine, to which I subscribed in the mid-1960s. They offered disguised book titles and authors in Grump-O-Grams. Double Your Summers At Mom has stuck with me all these years, and I cannot shake it.

Gags Realized!

There was an old joke that when the doctor told the kid he’d go blind if he masturbated, the kid asked “Can I do it til I need glasses?” Now it has been established that overlong use Viagra fogs your vision. Ha! (This has nothing to do with my recent purchase of specs.)

Another one was the kid who killed his parents asking for mercy because he was an orphan. That was used in the trial of the Menendez brothers.

We’re All Equal

On the Oxygen network there’s a series called “Snapped,” about women who killed, men usually. The title says it: they were pushed over the edge.

At Xmas, a guy in Covina had just lost his house, his bank account, his dog in a divorce and killed his wife and her family and then set the house afire and killed himself. It sounds like this guy was pushed to the limit too. Will Oxygen will do a story about how the strain overcame him?

Or will they investigate what did the wife do to make him so unreasonable? When a woman drowned her 3 kids the media jumped on the husband for not forseeing it, not locking her up, impregnating her - somehow causing it. It would be startling to see a story sympathetic to a staffed malefactor.

Other People’s Lives

Most people I know are past oriented.That’s natural, I am too. After all, the past is understandable. What is going on now? Does anybody know?

But I find it odd that I am interested in everyone’s life but my own. I cannot give a tour of my former dwellings, schools, love-nests, etc. The thought of it repulses me. Yet when I went to Sonoma I drove by where my friend Gene lived when he was a high school Goldwater supporter (He’s the Johnny Ramone of our crowd), and I’ve gone to other people’s former dwellings with great interest, not looking for ghosts but adding their past to my own, which apparently I consider inadequate.

Recently Dave Gold, 80, drove me through his old neighborhood in Boyle Hts. Now wholly Latino, it is known to me as a former Jewish enclave because a lot of BHts Jews went into the music business. But it was polyglot in the late1930s - the names were varied as he pointed at houses and said the Stranges lived here, the Kellys lived there. In one house lived Bernice Pearl, and she married Bob Wolf a few doors down - so then why was their son named Randy California? And here lived the Zeidlers, whose kids founded Zeidler & Zeidler, the popular clothing store of the 60s. “One son hung around with that comedian, what was his name?” “Lenny Bruce” I said.“And here’s where our house was, but now it’s an apartment complex.” I marveled at the name: Casa De Oro. A tribute to Dave, if inadvertent.

Dave used to cross Ramona Blvd before it was the 10 freeway, walking to school and occasionally getting jumped by Mexican kids. Then when we drove to Hollywood he recalled his father’s tailor shop which would sit on the bridge atop the 101 overpass at Hollywood Blvd. if it hadn’t been torn down. And he recalled the radio-tube store at Franklin & Western whose owner was approached for a $500 loan by a guy who repaired radios at Sunset & Vine. “I’m starting a record company and you can be a partner.” No, said the proprietor, just repay the $500.

He got his money back, but maybe should have ‘let’ it ride,’ as the borrower, Glenn Wallich, used it to start Capitol Records.

Elvis Stuff

I’m glad I run that bday shindig every year. By now it has smoothed out so that only the reckless call to complain about their time slot. Newbies do that, and get shoved to worse slots. You get that way after a while.

I recently picked up a 1994 UK book, “Aspects of Elvis,” wherein fans and experts dissect facets of His Nibs. Some things were informing, some raised a chuckle.

* I’d always heard the name Presley was Welsh, but didn’t know there was a Presseli district there, in Pembroke. To the west, near the coast, is the St. Elvis Farm, another name carried over from the Old Country.

* Elvis paralelled Mario Lanza. Both were on RCA, both became badly overweight, both recorded versions of opera, and both died young of drug-related causes. 4

* Glen Campbell cited a faux pas he’d made. Introduced from the stage at an Elvis show, Elvis warned him not to do too many Elvis songs in his show, lest he become an Elvis imitator. Glen said “I’d have to put on some weight first” and the audience turned on him.

* Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires told Elvis they were singing backups for Tab Hunter and Elvis got peeved. Stoker did not understand this, but the writer says that since Elvis and Tab were both the most eligible bachelors in Hollywood “a woman was probably the cause.” Mmm, probably not.

* The day the Elvis stamp came out, returned mail jumped tenfold as people mailed letters to fictitious addresses so they could have their envelope stamped “Return To Sender Address Unknown.”

* When Elvis’s father Vernon was sent to Mississippi’s Parchman Farm for check-forging, Bukka White was already there.

* Of the wayward solo in “Too Much,” Scotty Moore said “I got lost but we didn’t stop playing” and I “somehow managed to come out on the letter A.” When Elvis heard the playback he turned to him with a smirk and said “You’re gonna have to live with that for the rest of your life.”

4 My life is so glamorous. A Mario Lanza bio on PBS shows photos of him lifting weights on a rooftop. I recognized it as the top of the laundry room at my old apartment on El Cerrito Place! (The roof is also famed for a shot I took up there in1983 of the Cramps posed against a very-low wall.)

News Round Here

* The L.A. Times ran a good feature about the demise of Public Access tv. Seems the city and state colluded to help Time-Warner ditch their responsibility to the citizens (for running cable under and over public ground) so that the cable franchise will be more attractive (i.e. no millions $ draining every year for Public Access) for them to sell it for a grander profit to an even bigger monstrosity, the phone company. And to think, ‘liberals’ call this gangsterism.

* Speaking of gangsters, the city traffic bureau has added movie-cameras on photo-corners to catch cars not stopping 100% dead when the arrow left-turners go. “California stops’ are indeed against the law, but to pay cops to watch videos all day to post-ticket miscreants causes immense damage to society. How much more can people take? My friend living with his mother in near-poverty slid through a red-stop and now is faced with a $381 ticket. It’s an outrage. When will we storm the local Bastille?

* The single-story business at the NW corner of Hollywood and Vine has long been in the shadows of the eight-, nine- and ten-story bldgs on the other three, but since this has long been a somewhat slummy corner the owner never had a reason to burn the place down. However, with the other three sites turning to high-priced condos, the owner decided to - I mean a mysterious fire burned the place to the ground. Ya think another single-story bldg will replace it? The L.A. Times, in reporting its demise, gave it the only respect its writers knew telling us that Kanye West and Lindsay Lohan had, at some point in time, “partied” there. L.A. Times - the paper for pinheads.

Reading

Ben Ratcliff, in the 12-18-08 NY Times, opens thusly about Tony Bennett:
“Poise in the wind of uncertainty is a very old idea in American pop.” Say what? He goes on to describe how Tony uses his hands, sometimes, when singing. Ya gotta fill that space ...Sarah Lyall, in the same ish, proves the old saw that each generation thinks they invented sex. Lyall, perhaps a newborn, writes that prior to “The Joy Of Sex” in 1972 “sex was supposed to take place in the dark and under sheets.” From her forthcoming book, The Joy of Knowing Nothing ... Diana B. Henriques and Alex Berenson in that paper 12/13 wrote that Madoff’s clients face “an abrupt reversal of fortune that is the stuff of nightmares.” Perhaps each wrote one cliche ... And when Jodi Kantor and Javier C. Hernandez combined to open a (NYTimes 12/7) story with “One quiet Friday,” where did they mean that it was quiet? In the library? People talk there now. But really ...In both the L.A. Times and the other, Beverly Garland was called a B-movie actress. Who are the giants who hurl this distinction? Garland was in fucking movies! Unlike the pen-pushing nobodies who write obits ... Ann Powers, 12/8 L.A. Times, snearing at AC/DC fans, noted the words of a “fortysomething rock chick” disingenuously disincluding herself under that mantle ... Mary McNamara, 7/8 L.A. Times, opens a - surprise! - condescending article about Miley Cyrus with “Miley Cyrus doesn’t look like a mouse. Or a befuddled bear.” Now THAT’s putting her in her place. McNamara, to Jack & Jill magazine ...

Elvis Sociology

The Elvis show went swimmingly as ever. But the turnout was low. I could attribute it to the economy - “Twenty five dollars?!” - or the lack of a star to draw people, but it’s really demographics.

When it started in1987 or so, young new rockabilly acts were burning. Dwight Yoakam was established, James Intveld growing, Big Sandy, The Rockin’ Rebels, Rosie Flores all were upcomers on an active local scene. None of them were at this Elvis show: only Rip Masters and Ray Campi have soldiered on from those days. This degeneration gap struck me when I announced from the stage that Canye Kane had to cancel because of a car accident. Barely a murmur from the crowd: they didn’t know her.

You put up a Elvis Birthday Bash sign and a lot of people show up who first bought his records; also Elvis show regulars. Beyond that, young people think “There’s just gonna be a lot of old people,” if they think about it at all. The young rockabilly scene here is dominated by psychobilly. Those kids, whose ranks substantially are Latin and Asian, have high Mohawks and punk-rock energy. They don’t know from “L.A. Rockabilly” and the white-bewhiskered Elvis Birthday Bash.

So the kids of 1987 are settling into middle age and the youngies are gone to psycho pasture, leaving us with a bunch of people who’ve kept their Elvis flame alive their entire life. And we like it just fine.

Louis Jordan

Putting on a vidtape to half-watch while writing, I chose the 48-minute Louis Jordan documentary Five Guys Named Mo, and then went into a trance. If he isn’t the greatest musical force of the twentieth century, who is?

I stared, hypnotized. I’ve heard all of his 200 recordings for Decca, but hadn’t connected them to a corporal person. The spirit of the man shone through the music and that was enough. But here he was, jiving away for his audience in the 1940s and the idea that I was actually staring at the source of all this wonderfulness sent me into a state of semi-shock. He lived!

In half of the soundies his darkness bled nearly to ink-black, so in others they powdered his skin with slightly-darkened pancake flour. Weird, but it helped with the facial nuances.

Previously my only facing acquaintance with Louis Jordan came in 1974 when I was canvassing nightclubs in the Valley for a weekly paper. I saw this guy tooting a horn at a club on Ventura Blvd and snapped a couple of pictures and left. Then the pictures were stolen in 1983.

Yoga, It’s a Bear

Yoga is not a mixed-sex sport. Women have the advantage. For one thing, you are asked to reach behind, one over your head and another from below, and clasp your hands. The gals go right into it. Why can’t the men do it? Well I for one have never taken off a bra. From myself. And the ones where they say “Now spread your legs 180 degrees” ...

But primarily, yoga involves standing peacefully in one position.
The motto is “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

- 57 -

Mark On The Move

Al Kooper has revised and updated his very entertaining “memoir of a rock ‘n’ roll survivor” Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards, which settles a few scores, gets the historical record straight, and tells a rousing story of how chutzpah and being in the right place can lead to a life of adventure. (Al will be at McCabe’s in L.A. Jan. 11 and signing books at Book Soup Jan 13th. In both places he will do audio illustrations of how Gary Lewis & The Playboys - and Snuff Garrett - wrecked “This Diamond Ring,” which he co-wrote.)

In the book, Kooper recounts his teenage songwriting days, his work with Dylan (most sensationally his off-the-cuff organ part on “Like a Rolling Stone”), Mike Bloomfield, The Blues Project and “Super Session” friends, his various production jobs (The Tubes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Thelonious Monster), music supervision and record company gigs, and the sad tale of how he founded Blood, Sweat & Tears with a strong vision and had the rug pulled out from under him after their first (and best) album. Al was supposed to issue a new album in ’08 called “White Chocolate” (following his great 2005 CD “Black Coffee”) but no sign of it yet, despite Gene Sculatti playing a tune from it on his Luxuria Music internet radio show a few weeks ago. C’mon, Al!

I’m hoping that Lovelace: A Rock Opera, will have a longer life than the recent short run in L.A. at the Hayworth Theatre, because it’s one of the best new musicals I’ve seen in a long time. Book, music and lyrics are all by Anna Waronker (of local band That Dog) and Charlotte Caffey (ex-Go-Go), telling the tale of overground porn movie Deep Throat. It’s a “sung-through” musical with echoes of “Tommy,” “Chicago” and “Jesus Christ Superstar,” befitting the time-frame covered, and there’s not a bad number in the bunch, from the slimey arias of Linda’s abusive husband Chuck Traynor to the pathos of Linda’s song “I’ve Done Things I Would Never Do.” I hope the subject matter doesn’t limit the show’s prospects. It deserves at least as much attention as “alternative” hits such as Hedwig And the Angry Inch or Rent.

The show is an examination of celebrity, co-dependency, feminist responses to porn, and a tale of redemption, which manages also to remain resolutely sex-positive and show how simple victimization is not the entire story to be told. The production, including an inspiring lead performance from Katrina Lenk, manages to fit into a tight hour-and-a-half the salient details of Linda “Lovelace” Borman’s life, how she got into the porn game (and failed to make a dime from the most financially successful film ever made), and how she eventually re-started her life as a wife and mother.

In Dec. I also managed to make it over to Chico, CA to see Richard Thompson perform at the Sierra Nevada Brewery’s “Big Room.” I’d never been there before, and it’s quite a place, holds about 300 people, cheap eats & drink, terrific sightlines from every seat, and tickets for RT’s usually stunning 2-hour show were a reasonable $30.
-- Mark Leviton

(Mark’s sixties-themed radio show Pet Sounds can be heard alternate Mondays 10pm-Midnight PST on KVMR-FM 89.5 in the Sacramento area and streaming at http://www.kvmr.org )

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