You’ve heard of a countdown, but a meltdown is a little like a countdown to the weekend but more like you’re giving yourself aural permission to melt down the walls.
In the style of Murray Saul of WMMS FM Cleveland, where I cut my rock’n'roll teeth, I offer the first (very long) playlist. Subsequent Meltdowns will only be three hours long.
wordpress won’t let me embed the playlist here, so here is the link: http://lala.com/zK8y
I can upload 14 tracks per month, and this is going to take some fine tuning, but here is a “Best of …” collection meant to showcase my music — stepped up efforts, etc. Wish me luck.
Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks are playing the KTAO Solar Center Sunday, June 28. You do not want to miss this show.
Hicks is a master of a thoroughly American musical form – folk-jazz. Or is it maybe cowboy Latin swing with a little chipotle seasoning? Sounds like a curious hybrid, que no?
Curious and musically adventurous, Hicks also has a sense of humor – evident by his chord changes, quirky, yet natural phrasing and harmony choices. This guy is more than cool. In fact, he is so cool he is hot – and vice versa.
Like country swing fiddle master Johnny Gimble said, it’s hard not to listen to swing music and not smile a little.
Likewise, you are challenged to hear Hicks signature classics like “Walkin’ One and Only,” or the driving emotional recklessness of “I Scare Myself,” and not smile a little – if not from ear to ear.
The man is undeniably hip. Cool as a moose, etc. Performers like Rickie Lee Jones and Elvis Costello credit him with being a huge influence. Through his decades-long career he remains one of acoustic folk’s true treasures and true eccentrics.
Part of the psychedelic rock scene of San Francisco during the late 1960s, he played drums and a little guitar with the Charlatans, a band that has either been blamed or credited (depending on who you’re talking to) with the whole freakin’ Haight-Ashbury scene. They are also credited with being one of the first acts to play famous Family Dog.
“It’s not like I found myself in the middle of this heavy rock scene and decided to do something different,” Hicks said in a phone interview – I was in the Charlatans from ‘65 to ‘68, playing drums and some guitar,. Some folk stuff too – acoustic folk. I just started adding to that – added the upright bass, the fiddle and the girl singers – we started playing out and after a while I quit the Charlatans,” he recounted.
“I was more of a jazz guy anyway. So I got gigs. It was independent – a natural evolution. It’s what I like. I like acoustic ‘cause you can hear the singing,” he said.
So, besides being a counter-culture icon, he’s got a quirky, bad-boy reputation, that follows him to this day. On his website’s home page there’s a photo pf him from back-in-the day, flipping the bird.
I asked him about a story I had heard back in the early 1970s – about how he flipped off a Cleveland audience and walked off stage because the audience threw things at him and the band.
“I remember the incident you’re talking about. There were four bands on the bill at the Cleveland Auditorium. Steppenwolf, an all-girl band called Fanny, and the Native American band Redbone. It was kinda the wrong place for us. It was before [electronic] pick-ups were used. Since we just had acoustic instruments – playing through the PA – we were quiet. We were unknown too. We were in the middle of this big electric scene, and the audience started throwing ice cubes. Heckling is one thing but ice cubes are little hard things. We were ducking and dodging – we got through five songs and I told the audience off and we left the stage. The next day we went on the local FM rock station [WMMS,] and talked about the incident,” he said, laughing about the memory.
Hicks’ latest release, Tangled Tales,” is like chomping into one of Mante’s Chow Cart chile relleno specialties, and biting into a particularly hot and juicy pocket of goodness. And perhaps it’s a bit spicier than expected.
One big surprise is his buttery rendition of the classic Horace Silver / May Ellen Shashoyan Bossa Nova, “Song for My Father,” where his voice sounds like the most tender horn solo ever played.
His new album lineup of side men is certainly an unexpected treasure. David Grisman, and Charlie Musselwhite are just two of an incredible list of players joining him for this release.
On YouTube.com there is a video for the title track that is a total crack-up. It features his infamous finger photo with moving-mouth Lo-Fi animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TnjPYyzwvM
On Hick’s website, under the bird, it says,
“In an era dominated b snot-encrusted bellybutton-gazing, semi-literate, mirror-fixated, testosterone-deprived, over-medicated, self-appointed prophets of a particularly lifeless strain of homogenized, lyrically depraved, self-indulgent faux-poetic songcraft, Dan Hicks stood out from the crowd. If the 1970s singer-songwriter scene had a single saving grace, musically, it was Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks”
– The Irate Pirate, Wrath of the Grapevine
Arrr! And a flip of the bird to ya, cultural icon, bad boy, hep cat and snappy dresser – Dan Hicks. I’ll be there or be square.
He’s traveling with a six-piece combo. That’s a lot of ways to split the money, I remarked.
“Split the money? What do you mean?” He laughed.
Advance tickets for Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks are $10 in advance. Children under 12 are free. Doors open at 6 p.m. the opening act, yet to be decided, will start at 7 with Hicks starting at 8 p.m.
Taos Spring Clean Up, 8 a.m. to 12 noon, Saturday, April 25: Keep New Mexico Beautiful Litter Clean up of Taos. Dumpsters will be available at the Town Public Works yard on Dea Lane (near Walmart) for all residents to bring green waste from their yards for free disposal. White goods may also be disposed of for free that day at the Public Works yard from 8 a.m. to 12 noon – refrigerators (remove freon first), stoves, washers, dryers, etc. This saves a trip to the land fill plus disposal fees. Tires will also be accepted for free — but only 4 per person. That same day the Town of Taos sponsors groups to pick up litter roadside (vacant lots, etc.) throughout the Town. Questions? Contact Dennis Martinez, Parks Supervisor, dmartinez@taosgov.com, 758-8234. The week following the April 25th Taos Spring Clean Up Day, Monday, April 27 through Friday, May 1, the Town of Taos Streets Div. will have complimentary curbside pick up of bundled yard (green) waste throughout the Town limits – contact Joseph Valerio, Streets Supervisor, for details and to schedule your curbside pick up, jvalerio@taosgov.com.751-2047.
– Town of Taos News Brief 4.23.09
For the last year, Tempo readers have been without a regular artist profile column since Betsy Carey passed away. Her “Local Color” column was a local favorite and once a year, there was even a show at the Taos Country Club celebrating each of the artists that had been covered.
I’ve been given the opportunity to write this much-needed column for Tempo by my husband, Rick.
To assure those out there who might be concerned that I might not be the best choice for this bi-monthly column, I think it’s time to honk my horn a little and remind folks that writing about Taos artists goes way back for me.
Besides having been Tempo editor myself from 1988 to 1990, I also wrote articles and maintained calendars for Tempo, Taos Magazine, Southwest Art, Art Talk and many other publications in the region.
It’s a pleasure to be back writing about all the creative people who call this area home. The new column, called “In the Studio With,” talks with the artists in their studio and enters a discussion of how place is a large component of the creative process.
The first column features jewelry artist Clemmie Watson, who shows at The Grand Bohemian Gift Shop at El Monte Sagrado on Kit Carson Road. You can see a little preview of the article here, where I’ll be posting each column as it appears in Tempo.
If you’re an artist (or represent one) working in the Taos area, and you’re represented by a gallery here (in other words, if people can easily view your stuff), contact me at melodyromancito at gmail dot com and we’ll discuss the possibility of featuring you in an upcoming “In the Studio With” column.
www.thetallyletters.wordpress.com, Letters between Tally Richards and Fritz Scholder, Taos, New Mexico: TRANSCRIPTION OF CORRESPONDENCE, 1969-1993, is a new blog I’ve begun.
The letter offer a unique glimpse into time, the art world of Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the contemporary art world divided between the East and West Coast.
Tally left me this file of letters and clippings when she left Taos for Palm Springs before she passed away earlier this year (2008).
She said she wasn’t sure if the letters were worth anything, and she also left my husband, Rick, and I a copy of one of Scholder’s American Indian lithograph series, “American Family,” and a copy of a huge art book that mentioned the lithograph.
I was sorry to see Tally leave Taos. She’d been my friend for nearly two decades, but I understood why she was leaving, and I knew it was for the best – as hard as it was to see everything either given away, sold or packed.
But while Tally lived here, she lived a rich life. We get a little peek into how the world was for this beautiful, elegant woman, whom, it’s been said, could negotiate an expanse of desert sand and powdered clay while holding onto a Gucci clutch as if she were in the urban canyons of New York City.
My friend, my fan, my dear Tally is gone now, but she’s forever in our memory – a well-organized woman with a meticulous and keen eye for what was important as it unfurled.
I promised Tally I would do something with these letters. I’ve approached a couple of publishers, but without photographs or paintings, none have expressed interest. But I can’t help but think the letters themselves must be available to read – even without the pretty, varnished, reproductions of art from our past. These letters are about art, business, and people during a time in Taos that was exciting, vital and relentlessly fresh.
I’ll be doling them out – three or four at a time. I will try and keep them in order. Many thanks to my good friend Marisha Breslow, whose flying fingers made publicizing these letters possible.
Review: The 99th Monkey
By Eliezer Sobel
Santa Monica Press, California $16.95
There are books that have managed to distill a generation’s longings and desires into their pages. A simple children’s tale may have summed up my generations longing for answers long before we even knew we were on the road to find out.
P.D. Eastman children’s classic, published in 1960, sums up this longing for warmth, shelter and protection. “Are you my mother?” the baby bird asks, again and again.
In many ways, this yearning for the guidance and unconditional love of a teacher, the safety of their shelter and the longing for a guru, sums us up – a generation of self conscious and selfish seekers who roam the world looking for answers.
But unlike Firesign Theatre’s spoof on the self-help and human potential movement “Everything You Know is Wrong!” It’s no joke. It’s true.
There’s a new book, “The 99th Monkey,” by Eliezer Sobol, that also sums up a generation’s longing for answers. The name recalls a famous, yet repudiated, story of Japanese island monkeys that made an evolutionary leap in a short period of time. The 100th monkey, stands for a critical mass in human spiritual evolution. A generation has prayed for a 100th monkey that could help us make that leap. Sobol knows it’s not him.
Sobol has led intensive creativity workshops and retreats at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., The Open Center in New York City, the Lama Foundation in New Mexico, and similar venues around the United States.
As a freelance journalist, Sobol had the unique opportunity to serve as a human guinea pig for many of these cutting-edge New Age human potential and spiritual experiments of the past few decades. His book “The 99th Monkey” recounts his exploration of some of many significant communities, ashrams, gurus, shamans and conscious-raising seminars during this time.
Sobol describes an encounter with Ram Das, feeling his heart open
“… with great love, bordering on ecstasy, and so I decided to wait in line after the event in order to greet him personally, and to ask him what I thought was a vitally crucial question:
“Are you my guru?” I asked when I got to the front of the line. Now a less scrupulous New Age teacher might have taken the opportunity to say “Yes, my son” and quickly scooped up another unsuspecting seeker/sucker and added him to his devotee list. But Ram Das gave me a gift that night. He just looked at me somewhat scornfully and said:
“Grow up.”
To which I responded, perhaps demonstrating the truth of his answer, with my own erudite, philosophical retort:
“Fuck you.”
And so, it seems, we all have our little bird stories.
There are the obvious places people of my generation have looked for answers, but in Sobol’s book there’s a notable absence of explorations into neopaganism or nihilism, other paths of spiritual expression (or lack of it) with high demographic percentages in my particular generation.
Sobol may have experienced his own need to get back to his roots with something historical, documented and real – something cellular like Kabbalism, rather than the more improvisational and cafeteria-style observances of present-day Wicca or modern paganism.
In “The 99th Monkey,” Sobol describes his sampling of a little bit of everything – from Primal Therapy, est and Ram Dass. His book covers as much ground as he obviously did – traveling the world as editor and writer for various publications, with spiritual forays into India, Brazil, and Haiti – as well as brushes with cults and wild experiments with sex and psychedelics.
Spoiler alert: Sobol’s observations are infused with a quirky and self-effacing style. His irreverent humor is side-by-side a nearly lugubrious longing for answers – so much so he’ll try nearly everything once.
He describes a sex workshop he took with 30 other men and when it was all over, he concludes:
“Apart from my father and the Dalai Lama, I don’t think I have ever met a man that isn’t, on some level, basically a pervert. It’s just that some of us can fake normal, mature adulthood around women better than others.”
Bada bim!
The book is very enjoyable, and oddly a bit of a page-turner because I kept waiting for him to get to the punch line. As someone who has chased my own rabbits and sought answers to age-old questions, I could definitely relate.
There is one jarring anecdote, told late in the “journey.” Sobol has sprung for a swim with dolphins in the … wait for it … Burmuda Triangle. He’s puzzled by how the ones that swam nearby did not acknowledge him.
He tried to explain the dolphins ignored him, an enlightened being, by mentioning researchers have noticed dolphins are beginning to display anti-social behaviors. That sort of inflated view tells more about Sobel than it does about dolphins.
We don’t really matter — not even to dolphins in the Burmuda Triangle. This is the punch line.
The search is filled with paradoxes and conundrums, koans and proverbs. Once we are enlightened we must still haul water and chop wood. We get our answers faster if we quiet our mind and don’t ask questions. No matter where you go, there you are. We always find what we’re looking for in the last place we have looked.
*An edited version of this review by Melody Romancito was published in the Oct. 30, 2008, edition of Tempo, The Taos News.
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Taos on the Net:
Don’t speak
Posted in Taos Commentary, The Taos Experience, The Wide World, Uncategorized on March 19, 2009 by Melody RomancitoLiving in a small town like Taos, you’d think it would come in handy to be able to read people without them having to open their mouths — but it can harsh your mellow faster than a call from the school principal (if you have kids).
I’ve been addicted to the Fox television show “Lie to Me,” with Tim Roth. There have been precious few episodes, what with all the hoohaw about American Idol, and I watch them, often twice or more times after their airing on hulu.com. What I love about this show is its about stuff I’ve been studying for decades.
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