Alone Inside My Shadow

Tonight my thoughts lead me to a place where I am wondering within my shadow.  In a way, I might describe it more as having two central nervous systems inside one mind.  There is the one nervous system that celebrates an ordinary schedule and is happily capable of performing it all.

Then there is this underlying electricity of the immediacy and urgency of everything, as if  one has just bumped the trashcan off the end of the world.  It’s this staring mortality in the face which is in a very real way the only time we are really alive.

Although I think that times when I’m mindlessly walking around holding my baby to keep her from crying, might be more the thing I’ll think about on my death bed.  I think I will remember the experiences givin by the first nervous sysem in my mind which happily and quite by rote, has me doing the glorious task of living, raising a baby and a prescooler, making videos, albums, teaching people how to play guitar…I only accomplish these things by the Under Control nervous system, not the Face Of Death one.

The problem is The Face of Death makes the muscles twitter while the happily In Control nervous system moves me, so I never qiute know where it’s at, man. It’s like two separate realities taking place in one mind at the same time.

Can anyone out there relate?

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John Lennon Saw The World

Yes, John Lennon saw the world.  He was a musician of the street.  As is perhaps too obvious to say, it is the musicians who live on the street and what happens to musicians effects the music. I hope you would forgive me if this is just too obvious to be said. …but I think it has to be said.

I heard a radio interview when I was a child.  John Lennon said that on his acid trip, he was driving a submarine and kept ascending toward the ceiling and then down.

Again, as all you friends of mine know, I am mot a historian and I can’t remember what form of radio network would have aired that.

That’s just one of my memories of what John Lennon said. I am a psychedelic musician who remembers hearing Ringo Starr report that the song “Rain” was his best drumming performance with The Beatles.  Ringo, if you’re reading this, blessed be thou for reading my humble ramblings of thought.  But, Ringo, is that true or is that just something that I might have misheard?

But again, I am not a member of the liberal media. I am a member of the set of psychedelic rock musicians for which I do not even claim to be the legitimate spokesperson.

I heard John Lennon tell all about the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. and Communist China under Chairman Mao.  He was speaking of the insanity of these superpowers of the day.  Through his long beard he said that he thinks they have no end goal.  He said (and I do remember this verbatim) “If they have one, I would love it if they would write it down on a piece of paper and send it to me.”

Again, John Lennon saw the world.  And what kind of submarine operator am I?  Well, if I the sort on The Beatles “Yellow Submarine,” I am a submarine operator of the diesel motor variety. Hard to believe that you follow A guy like John Lennon who sees the world and then, obtusely, it ends up all being about submarines.

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Our Health Care System Is Broken

Our health care system is broken and the “for profit” people are in charge.  Health insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies have all been digging deeply into our pockets to the point where tens of millions of us can’t get medical attention.

I am on several medications and I have to buy insurance to even dream of being able to afford them. Not only are the premiums and co-pays high, but the coverage only goes up to a certain amount that they will pay each year.  Unfortunately for me and many people like me, that means my insurance coverage caps out in August.  That means that I cannot afford the $600 every 30 days  for only one of the prescriptions I take, not to mention the cost of the others.

Honestly, even if I said I’ll bite the bullet and go into credit card debt to get my medications, I would be in bad credit card debt at the end of the year. So I go without my meds for 4 months of the year which creates health risks for me.

Why does my insurance policy crap out in August of each year? Well, as my doctor told me, “the drug companies insist on charging these outrageous prices so the insurance companies pass the outrageous costs on to me, the average working, tax-paying American.

Drug makers are putting out all their propaganda to keep Americans from having our own health care system because they want to rile up a bunch of ignorant people to go to city hall meetings and bitch about how wrong it would be for the government to step in and regulate them. 

Of course!  They don’t want to lose their profits.  However, they aren’t concerned in the least about  free enterprise when it comes to my right to purchase my drugs from Canada.  They have Washington all wrapped around their dirty little fingers. Its the law, I am not free to buy my drugs from their competitors.

Not only do I have to put up with getting my meds just part of the year, but I could get arrested if I buy the same drugs cheaper from a foreign drug company.  THAT’S NOT FREEDOM!!

If the “for profit” system is going to work, then what are the insurance providers and drug companies willing to give back in order to prolong their profit system?  The people who want to protect corporate profits don’t seem to have any real solutions for a  profit system that is feasible. At least not that I’ve heard.

If there is a “for profit” solution to our medical crisis, I’d love to hear it. And what other options are there besides Obama’s plan, anyone?…anyone?

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No One Should Profit off Others’ Illness

I’ve been reading a bit about Obama’s plans to overhaul health care in this country.  Now for those of you who are checking out our site for the first time and are reading this post, no, I am NOT a member of any liberal group.  I am an independent thinker who likes to look at numerous sides of every issue. 

I am not aligned with any particular wing of politics be it left or right.  I believe in freedom and upholding our constitution. I am a free writer who is writing my thoughts separate from the Big Media Dogs who are constantly throwing propaganda at us to tell us how to think and celeb gossip to anesthetize us with  glitter.

I was reading an article on Obamas health care plan and I don’t know that he has done any kind of brilliant job designing it, but here in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a staggering number of people do not have access to doctors.  That is unacceptable.

If the private health care providers were charging reasonable rates and covering the claims that come in, then maybe America wouldn’t be having this discussion about an overhaul.

But a corporation can’t be expected to have morals. All any corporation has is its bottom line. That is why they charge outrageous premiums that most families can’t afford and they don’t pay their claims justly.

I’m not against free enterprise in and of itself, but the profit system doesn’t work for all American institutions.  America has never been 100% privatized.  We’ve always had a government-run military, public schools, state and federal law enforcement, a postal system, etc.

Even though government systems are often less efficient than private companies, that doesn’t not mean that the for- profit system is always the best application.

I was reading some dumb comments  someone wrote on AOL last night.  This person said, “Most Americans don’t want health coverage.” WHAT?  I don’t know where some of these radical right-wingers get their notions but unless you have some kind of evidence that shows U.S. citizens would rather die from thier ailments that accept health care, than don’t make a dumb statement like that.

In reality, health care reform was part of Obama’s election platform and he won both the electoral and the popular vote. Obviously a lot of Americans want health care.

I have a close friend, Mark, who just died of prostate cancer.  He didn’t have health insurance because he couldn’t afford it and was trying to hold out until he was 62 to get Medicare.  He didn’t make it. My sympathies to Mark’s family. I have no sympathies for insurance companies.

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The Electric Marmalade New Stuff

High, Everyone,

It’s Friday night, actually it’s Saturday morning. I am looking forward to a nice weekend after having shot some live footage for our new video.  Larry Robinson of the L.A. based ’60s psychedelic act Thing To Come, sits in with us on drums.  And Micky Saunders plays bass.

Devin plays keys and, being the video production whiz that he is, has already started working with our production people on the editing and psychedelisizing of footage for three songs.

That’s what’s going on with The Electric Marmalade right now. We are also in production of some new recording projects.  Micky has volenteered her bass and vocal skills to upcoming sessions.

What’s up with these guys around the world who collect vinyl? We keep getting requests for our old vinyl records from the ’80s. Which means that we are on the map of rare collectable vinyl.  That’s a nice honor that we are on the map out there from Europe to Japan with requests.

Although thoses old records are out of print, we are working on restoring some rare and live recordings from the old days as The Wail and The Electric Marmalade.

We’re really excited about these vids. Also, a bunch of new studio tracks to be released, well, in a while.

I hope the weekend finds you in complete happiness my friends.

Peace and Love.  And as Sabrina Saxon wrote to me, “Love. Love, Love”

Robin

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My Clock And This Modern World

High, Friends,

I was just staring up at my bedroom ceiling from down on my pillow. Except for the darkness in the room, the feature presentation on my ceiling is the soft red time which is projected from my clock on the night stand.

As much as I like to celebrate the artists of the late ’60s and early’70s for bringing open-minded experimentation into the lime light of pop culture in a very modern-world way, I am mainly fascinated by the future because the modern world is always the one were going to be in, (dumb as that may sound).

Well, I know.  Here I go delving off the deep end again and just getting ridiculous with rhetorical meandering, never getting to the point, and then probably a multitude of sins in the scope of the editorial critique.  But my question is this: Would that be a Psychedelic editor or just a plain old literary editor? 

Dear Reader,

If you are a literary editor, please see my poetry blog. You will find poems written more for the editor’s ear. If you are not an editor of literature, please read on.

On this blog you will find anything from a news item to just me rambling, maundering to myself.  But alas after many shooting lights from my wild wondering eyes, I shall at last come to a point of some sort, (well, kinda).

At least I’ll return to the original thought about my clock. This IS the future we’re living in and my clock is proof. When I was a kid they only had those digital or, I suppose, quasi-digital clocks. The numbers were on little plates that would flip on per minute, exposing the next printed number.

At least that was the mod clock my grandfather had on his desk.  Most clocks just hung on the wall and if you wanted to know the time you had to turn the light on in your room.

This clock I have, I bought at Target for about $20. I just plugged it in and it knew automatically what time zone I’m in and it set itself to the correct time. It projects the time onto my ceiling and I have the choice of 3 colors.

I wonder how much my grandfather payed for that clock he had on his desk. I bet it would have been expensive for the day. In today’s world I got a clock that does tons more, tons better for the price of lunch.

Look how far into the future we already are.

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Psychedelic Defined More Closely According to Me

High Everyone, well a couple of entries ago, I set out to define the word psychedelic. Athough it is hard to put a definite answer to what experiences, perceptions, feelings and emotions actually constitute psychedelic and which ones don’t, it is at least safe to say that psychedelic is a state of mind.

But how can one say that certain perceptions are psychedelic and others aren’t? It seems absurd and even silly to tell some one, “Oh, what you’re feeling is psychedelic.” or “What you’re feeling is not psychedelic.”

I did give the dictionary definition of psychedelic in my last blog on the subject.  But even the Dictionary.com definition is elusive at best.  If I am experiencing feelings of euphoria for example, for whatever reason, who is to say that it is or is not part of my psychedelic life?

One thing for sure, if psychedelic is a state of mind, who is to say that it has to be brought on by a chemical? It doesn’t. Maybe my feelings of euphoria come from holding my baby daughter. –what a joy!!  Who would argue that euphoria resulting from a situation of love for my daughter is any less of a psychedelic experience than if I had the same euphoria sparked by a drug?

Wouldn’t that be kind of a silly argument? It doesn’t matter what the catalyst is for a psychedelic experience. 

Carlos Castanada, in his writings, the most famous of which is probably, his book “The Teachings of Don Juan,” explores the American Indian rites that include the use of peyote.  Peyote is a part of a cactus that causes psychedelic experiences.

He uses the drug to find a certain truth and reality that he is searching for. But even Castanada learns at the end of it that you really don’t need the drug to arrive at what you are searching for. Although peyote did serve as a catalyst for him, it really was not the answer in and of itself , only a vehicle for the “Separate Reality” of which he wrote in his book, “A Separate Reality.”

As John Lennon sang in The Beatles ‘ song, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” on the Revolver album, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.” I heard John Lennon say in an interview that he got that line from Timothy Leary.

But you can turn off your mind, relax and float downstream by kicking back with an herbal tea and just being at one with your environment.

That’s why we have designed this web site. –to be an open forum for any one who embraces, Peace, Love and the Psychedelic. When you log on, you can communicate with others who embrace the same.

Whatever your vehicle for getting to that state in your mind, you can be at one with other like minded people here. Enjoy Friends!

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July 12 As It Has Gone Down In The Past

Well, here in Los Angeles, California, the the date is Sunday, July 12, 2009.  It is 12:22 a.m. 

On Saturday, July 12, 1969, Led Zeppelin was the top bill for the Philadelphia Summer Music Festival. Also on stage that night were, Johnny Winter, Al Kooper, Jethro Tull and Buddy Guy’s Blues Band.

But this concert wasn’t free. No, my friends. Far from it.  In order to see these wild, long haired bands, one would have to raise $3.75 in cold, hard cash!  That’s right, fellow hippies, beatniks, advocates-for-the-greater-cause, but that was only general admission.  A really awesome seat would set you back a whopping $6.75.  The main bills for nights one and two were James Brown and Sly and The Family Stone, respectively. Same prices.

Call me a big spender or call me foolish, but I’m going all three nights in the $6.75 seats. Can you imagine seeing all those acts for a three night total of $20.25? You pay for gas and I’ll drive.

In pop news, Time magazine released an issue on this date in 1967.  The cover was a psychedelic collage of arms and legs popping out of a TV screen along with various products of the day. The headline offered the best and worst of commercials. From reading the article it appears as though dealing with endless television ads was the new annoyance that people had to deal with.

I remember it too. When I was a kid, the cigarette commercials…This article didn’t publish an itemized list of the actual best and worst commercials.  In some cases, it seemed to quote only part of a jingle  or did not seem to want to name the product being advertised.

I wonder if corporate lawsuits might have made Time a bit reluctant to be more bold in its praise and criticism of particular commercials.  Maybe the U.S. was sue-crazy back then too. Does anyone know?

This article  seemed to be more just an essay on the good and bad points of mass commercialism itself. I would love to see some of those ads they talked about especially Salem and Benson & Hedges cigarettes,  just because it was so weird how they tried to sell all of us that crap.

Another article in the same issue mentions a huge hippie love-in  at the Boston Commons which the writer hails as “…the flagging flower-world’s last great love-in.”

I’ve been to the Boston Commons and it is a beautiful place. I can see why the hippies would want to have a love-in there.  Although the city had to deal with all the usual problems of large crowds.

In not so cool news of the past, the Newark, N. J. race riots were touched off on this day in 1967. The spark that set it off was an incident in which a cab driver named John W. Smith was pulled over by police officers simply for passing them on 15th street. The two officers apparently went way too far off the deep end and brutalized Smith. In the ensueing riots, 49 were killed on this day in history, 1500 injured, over a 1000 arrested.

That was one of the worst parts about the 1960′s: the civil rights  and racial injustices that were utterly unspeakable.  We still have a long, long way to go even now, 42 years later.  Hey, hippies, beatniks, advocates, everybody try to love one another.

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Sky Sunlight Saxon, A Legend Passes

It may just be the fact that I was just listening to The Seeds playing in my changer, but the death of Sky Saxon hit me really hard last week.  I was commenting on how tight the band was.  A friend of mine who had played gigs with The Seeds back in the late sixties, said, “Yeah man, tight was the order of the day.” And they were really tight.

The Seeds’ recordings transefer well onto CD unlike some records that still only work on vinyl.  I was listening to “Pushin’ Too Hard” coming off a CD and through my Harman/Kardon power amp and all I was thinking was, “This band is a tight band and this IS a hit record.

Then, a few days later, well, June 27, 2009, Sky Saxon passed away. He was one of the kings of Garage-Punk Psychedelic.  We have lost some of the legends of the 1960s lately and with every passing goes a part of the original roots of the rock and roll era.

If you are on this site, it is probably safe to assume you’ve read all the little snippets about him in the obituaries everywhere, but I am not writing as a columnist.  I am a psychedelic rock musician in Los Angeles.  This death of Sky Sunlight Saxon hit me hard.  Here’s a guy with a legenadry band who’s played the Sunset Strip in Hollywood in the 1960s.  

We played The Whiskey and Gazzarri’s among other clubs in the mid 1980s, but Sky Saxon was there when guys like Jimi Hendrix or George Harrison would drop in. (after dropping out).

The blogs about him were mostly obituaries about when The Seeds formed (1965) and some of the commercial highlights of Sky Saxon’s career like his hits “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine” and “Painted Doll.”  But I think his greatest contributions were probably in the clubs of Hollywood just playing to hippies coming in off the street.

It’s the musicians of the street singing the songs about life on the street at the time.  Which is where he was center stage, influencing the giants of rock and roll in that era.  That makes Saxon a giant too.  He preserved that mind-set of what was happening on the streets with the younger generation.  That also makes him a giant.

I remember Disc Jockey Rodney Bingenhiemer who was doing his “Rodney on the Roq” show every weekend. Rodney was playing The Wail singles we had released at the time which was around 1983. We were in the back of our vans waiting to get into what ever club we were playing that night just tuned into KROQ F.M. 106.7.  Rodney was doing an interview with Sky Saxon.

Saxon said he was living in Hawaii and that he worshipped dogs because “dog is “God” spelled backwards.  Does anyone remember that interview? That’s what I remember hearing him say.  Anybody know any more about his dog thing?

Rodney spun our song 45 degrees (ILove You) during his show and we always loved him.  So thanks to Rodney Bingenhiemer for doing an interview with a guy I wouldn’t ordinarily hear a lot about in the mainstream media. –even if it was twenty-some years ago.

But anyway, that’s how the death of Sky Sunlight Saxon hit me.  And I’m sure it hit a lot of people hard, especially those who were on the scene in 1965 and those like me who carry that spirit of the garage psychedelic movement on in my heart.

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Michael Jackson, (my humble thoughts)

Michael Jackson, as a child, left very cool images in my head and great sounds in my ears. He was a couple years older than I, so I suppose I was watching reruns, but I remember being a kid and watching those old videos of The Jackson 5.  They always had great tunes. My personal fav’: “I Want You Back.”  I had the 45.

Those performances were golden moments, the kind that could never be done again (or manufactured like so many pop acts today).  The Jackson 5 was the real deal, baby.  Armed with day-glow jumpsuits, high healed shoes, and really cool instruments of the late 60’s and early 70’s, they were psychedelic before the average middle-American household even knew what psychedelic was. And then of course, there was this little kid who could belt out lines and dance around on stage like he did. 

I think most average Americans were intrigued, excited, maybe a little shocked at what was on their TV on the nights those videos were first aired. I know I was and I was only watching reruns.

Everyone is talking about all the mystery Michael Jackson left behind. But I think the charisma and charm with which he sang those great old hits like “ABC,” gave us Wonder Year kids something really hip. And the cool style of the Jackson 5 gave us a really far out way to groove and dress.  After all, what kid in the 60’s wouldn’t want to be as cool as Michael Jackson?

I feel sorry for him and any suffering that was caused by the lack of a regular childhood.  It isn’t the norm for a child to have a life like his and undoubtedly that  had an effect on him as it would for any person.  But then again, you can’t hold back that kind of child talent no matter how hard you try. 

I don’t know why his appearance changed over the years.  I don’t know why he wore surgical masks.  That stuff doesn’t interest me.  What interested me were those cool 45′s and cool videos of little Michael Jackson and his brothers, decked out with their groovy gear and attitude. I’ll still watch a clip.

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