moon traveller herald

My brother Mike steps in here to share some thoughts on that long ago time that is still with us - the time of the death of John Kennedy which comes up now for its 50th anniversary. I was home from school, sick, up stairs, when it happened on November 22, 1963. As I recall, yes, it was as my parents were at Zayres on the following Sunday morning that Oswald was shot. Back at home we heard that news on NBC Monitor radio reports. - J.V. Invented Memory, Irrefutable Truth, Unknowable Truth - I was living in Racine, Wisconsin and had just turned three when President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. While I don’t remember that day specifically, the story is that my brother, sister, and I were watching Bozo’s Circus, a TV show on Chicago’s WGN that always came on at noon. Though I was small, I somehow still remember the time as very sad for Americans. For my parents, both Irish Catholics from Boston, it was extra devastating. With Kennedy being the first Irish Catholic pres...

I did this before, but the widget expired...so .. once again... Oh Let us live in Joy. When I first got to Las Vegas I wondered from casino to casino until there was no alarm. Now years later I could be anywhere. No matter where, ever pulling levers, Augustine come to heaven and hell. It was easy enough to keep drinking there, where tremendous illusion was rapping. We shared a table with L.A. grandma and her granddaughter to see the Tropicana floor show. Granma remembers the big lobster, the coldest coke, the dancing girls with the most perfect bodies. And we went from show to show and store to store until there was no alarm. Just thunderbird trinkets and cold chandeliers making the noise of coins in the fountain. Oh Let us live in Joy.

First heard the Paul Butterfield blues band early in the summer of love 1967. We lent the record among our crew. For us they were something of a sleeper among the tremendous abundance of creative bands at the time. Certainly different in that they were closer to the roots of street expression - more so than some of the crimson and chiffon butterfly "psychedelicists" that were about. That year I caught on to Taj Mahal, Canned Heat, the Dirty Blues Band and the Butterfield Blues Band, whose lead guitar player, Mike Bloomfield, was a very big notch above anyone else on an instrument that was coming to define the era. He was the first rock guitar hero, ahead of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and held the mantle, Mickey, at least for a while. When I re-imagined Black Orpheus ( itself a reimagining of Orpheus in the underground) I imagined Mike Bloomfield as the Pan-like protagonist, probably having learned by then that his guitar was the transcendental and evocative...

From the late 1940s until 1974, Moondog lived as a street musician and poet in New York City, busking mostly on the corner of 53rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. He was not homeless however, or at least not often—he maintained an apartment in upper Manhattan for most of his life.[3] In addition to his music and poetry, he was also known for the distinctive fanciful "Viking" garb that he wore, which included a horned helmet. He partially supported himself by selling copies of his poetry and his musical philosophy. Because of his street post's proximity to the famed 52nd Street nightclub strip, he was well-known to many jazz musicians and fans. (From Wikipedia)

For R. i saw a rainbow doughnut floating down in the cloud wisps streaming over the superstition mountains flying into phoenix looking for a sign of you one sunday morning. -Jack Vaughan, Nov 3, 2013