Our debut performance was a great success!
]]>Our debut performance was a great success!
]]>My wife, who was an original Beatlemaniac (age 14 when they played the Sullivan show), really loved this program, and said it not only enriched her knowledge of the Beatles, but also improves her understanding of music in general.
The program is airing at various times around the country on PRI (Public Radio International) affiliates. Check your local listings, and demand that your local PRI affiliate put Everything Was Right: The Beatles’ Revolver on the air if they haven’t already.
Paul’s web site includes extended interviews with many of the participants, including Beatles historial Mark Lewisohn, musician Shawn Colvin, author and critic Jim DeRogatis, myself, and others.
There’s also a brilliant “Revolver” montage created by Douglas Grant.
]]>
An Evening with DAVID GANS
Thursday, June 29, 2006
9:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.
The Happy Dog
5801 Detroit Ave., Cleveland OH
216-651-9474
No cover charge!
]]>I’m in the middle of an online interview at www.well.com/inkwell - talking with Gary Burnett and other interlocutors about my adventures in the music bizniz, the mysteries of creativity, and various other subjects. You can contribute to the dialogue by sending email to inkwell@well.com
There are some samples of my new recording work at www.dgans.com/private-tunes.html . The new CD will be called Cloud Surfing; I had hoped to have it ready in time for Grateful Fest, but these things take time, and it’s better not to rush. I have been working with two brilliant sound designers - Jeremy Goody and Jim LeBrecht - and I’m just delighted with the work we’ve been doing.
This month has been a tough one on a personal and professional level. My dear friend Tina Loney, who was the “best man” at my wedding and was my close friend and most trusted counselor for twenty years, lost her long battle with lung cancer on June 8. You’ll find a picture of her and a few words at gdhour.com/logblog/?p=126
And before we lost Tina, on June 2, Vince Welnick took his own life. Vince was a member of The Tubes for 20 years and the Grateful Dead for five; in the decade following the end of the Dead, I had many opportunities to play music with him, each of which was a great pleasure and a learning experience to boot. I also worked with Vince on Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead, which I co-produced with Jerry Lawson. Vince and Jerry hit it off during those sessions and remained friends from then on. You’ll find a lot of music, and numerous tributes to Vince’s soulful nature and musical brilliance, all over this site.
I stayed home for most of the month of May in order to spend time with Tina, and I experienced a great burst of creative energy that I’m sure was fallout from the powerful emotions surrounding her passing and Vince’s. The music I play this summer will reflect the energy that came through our lives through these experiences.
—
Here’s what I know about the summer as of now:
Sunday, June 25: Far West Fest in Olema, California. Benefit for community radio station KWMR, with Alison Brown, The Mother Hips, Hot Buttered Rum, et al., plus local organic food and beverage, crafts, etc. I play an unamplified acoustic set at around 4:30; Aaron Redner of Hot Buttered Rum will sit in on fiddle.
Thursday, June 29, 9:30pm: The Happy Dog, 5801 Detroit Ave., Cleveland OH. 216-651-9474
July 4 weekend: GratefulFest at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, Garrettsville OH. Dark Star Ochestra, Hot Tuna, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Zen Tricksters, and more! DG plays Friday, Sunday, and Monday
Friday, July 14: Master Musicians Festival, Somerset KY. (Festival is July 14-15). Donna the Buffalo headlines Friday; others TBA
Saturday, July 15, 7:30 pm: DG opens for The Waybacks at The Dame, 156 W. Main Street, Lexington KY. $5. 859-)226-9005
Wednesday, August 9, 7:00 pm: Songs to Fill the Air - A Tribute to Jerry Garcia. DG, Alligator, and the Chickenstand Throwdown Band. (DG plays at 8:40). Makor, 35 W 67th Street (between Columbus Ave & Central Park West), New York City. $15. 212-413-8809
Saturday, August 12, 8 pm: DG and the Shockenaw Mountain Boys (members of Railroad Earth) at the Fountain House, 439 Rt. 94 South, Newton NJ. 973-383-7976
Fri-Sun, August 18-20: Gathering of the Vibes, Mariaville NY. DG plays Saturday, August 19
September 22-24: Terrapin Hill Festival, Harrodsburg KY
October 19-22: MagnoliaFest, Live Oak FL. Donna the Buffalo, Sam Bush, New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Duhks, Peter Rowan & Tony Rice, many more!
—
More dates will be added for July, August, and September. Stay tuned.
More information, web links, etc., at www.dgans.com/gigs.html
]]>I’ve got three Bay Area gigs this weekend, and I hit the road next week for my first festival of the season.
The in-between gigs are still being confirmed; please see http://www.dgans.com/gigs.html for the latest.
I’m in the middle of an online interview at www.well.com/inkwell - talking with Gary Burnett and other interlocutors about my adventures in the music bizniz, the mysteries of creativity, and various other subjects. You can contribute to the dialogue by sending email to inkwell@well.com
There are some samples of my new recording work at www.dgans.com/private-tunes.html . The new CD will be called Cloud Surfing; I had hoped to have it ready in time for Grateful Fest, but these things take time, and it’s better not to rush. I have been working with two brilliant sound designers - Jeremy Goody and Jim LeBrecht - and I’m just delighted with the work we’ve been doing.
This month has been a tough one on a personal and professional level. My dear friend Tina Loney, who was the “best man” at my wedding and was my close friend and most trusted counselor for twenty years, lost her long battle with lung cancer on June 8. You’ll find a picture of her and a few words at gdhour.com/logblog/?p=126
And before we lost Tina, on June 2, Vince Welnick took his own life. Vince was a member of The Tubes for 20 years and the Grateful Dead for five; in the decade following the end of the Dead, I had many opportunities to play music with him, each of which was a great pleasure and a learning experience to boot. I also worked with Vince on Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead, which I co-produced with Jerry Lawson. Vince and Jerry hit it off during those sessions and remained friends from then on. You’ll find a lot of music, and numerous tributes to Vince’s soulful nature and musical brilliance, on the logblog
I stayed home for most of the month of May in order to spend time with Tina, and I experienced a great burst of creative energy that I’m sure was fallout from the powerful emotions surrounding her passing and Vince’s. The music I play this summer will reflect the energy that came through our lives through these experiences.
—
Here’s what I know about the summer as of now:
Friday, June 23, 7:30-9:30pm: With Mario DeSio and Jeff Pehrson at the Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Avenue, Oakland CA. No cover, but you have to buy some coffee and/or food
Saturday, June 24, 9:30 am to 1:30 pm: Grand Lake Farmers’ Market, at Lake Park and Grand Avenues in Oakland CA (across from the Grand Lake Theater). Excellent produce (organic!), prepared foods, and crafts. Free!
Sunday, June 25: Far West Fest in Olema, California. Benefit for community radio station KWMR, with Alison Brown, The Mother Hips, Hot Buttered Rum, et al., plus local organic food and beverage, crafts, etc. I play an unamplified acoustic set at around 4:30l Aaron Redner of Hot Buttered Rum will sit in on fiddle.
Thursday, June 29: The Happy Dog, Cleveland OH. Details TBA
July 4 weekend: GratefulFest at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, Garrettsville OH. Dark Star Ochestra, Hot Tuna, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Zen Tricksters, and more! DG plays Friday, Sunday, and Monday
Friday, July 14: Master Musicians Festival, Somerset KY. (Festival is July 14-15). Donna the Buffalo headlines Friday; others TBA
Saturday, July 15, 7:30 pm: DG opens for The Waybacks at The Dame, 156 W. Main Street, Lexington KY. $5. 859-)226-9005
Wednesday, August 9, 7:00 pm: Songs to Fill the Air - A Tribute to Jerry Garcia. DG, Alligator, and the Chickenstand Throwdown Band. (DG plays at 8:40). Makor, 35 W 67th Street (between Columbus Ave & Central Park West), New York City. $15. 212-413-8809
Saturday, August 12, 8 pm: DG and the Shockenaw Mountain Boys (members of Railroad Earth) at the Fountain House, 439 Rt. 94 South, Newton NJ. 973-383-7976
Fri-Sun, August 18-20: Gathering of the Vibes, Mariaville NY. DG plays Saturday, August 19
September 22-24: Terrapin Hill Festival, Harrodsburg KY
October 19-22: MagnoliaFest, Live Oak FL. Donna the Buffalo, Sam Bush, New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Duhks, Peter Rowan & Tony Rice, many more!
—
More dates will be added for July, August, and September. Stay tuned.
More information, web links, etc., at www.dgans.com/gigs.html
]]>Will we still need him, will we still feed him after tomorrow? That’s when Sir Paul McCartney fulfills the destiny of the worst song — “When I’m 64” — from the Beatles’ best album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
8. George Harrison died of throat cancer at 58.
Deep, ain’t it?
]]>The adventure is under way. First strip in the story line is here.
P.S. The dog in the strip is named Grisman!
]]>I have heard the arguments in favor of increased prisoner abuse. This is a new kind of war with an enemy that kills civilians without mercy. This enemy has bombed the World Trade Center; it bombed nightclubs in Indonesia when the discos were crowded; it bombed subways in London at rush hour. It has bombed busy intersections and markets and even mosques all over Iraq. Its own record of prisoner abuse is horrible; it even kills its own people if they fail some ethnic or religious litmus test.
This week’s suicide at Guantanamo has given the Bush barbarians another opportunity to display their pathological personalities, calling it “a good PR move” and an act of “asymmetrical warfare.” The collective narcissism, the sociopathic self-interest, and sheer inhumanity of these bastards becomes more manifest every day. Not only are they incapable of admitting error, they are incapable of recognizing the ugliness and immorality of their souls.
A* C* and Michael Savage are not as extreme as we’d like to believe; I fear they are expressing the true souls of the administration. I feel increasingly desperate for a way to make the sleeping middle of America awaken to the viciousness of the leaders they elected. If we don’t turn this around soon, it will be too late.
More from Jon Carroll:
I do not think we should be fighting the war in Iraq; I’m not sure there would even be a war if we had not declared it; still, I loathe the tactics of the militant extremists. I loathe the tactics of the militant extremists so much I want to make sure my side, the one supported by my money and representing my country, does not fall into the same pit of barbarism.Torture — and let’s call it by its right name, because that’s what the Defense Department wants: the freedom to torture — does not just harm the tortured; it injures the torturer as well. If you listen to interviews with the men and women who were at Abu Ghraib, they were stunned by what they had done. They felt at though they had been reduced to beasts.
Debra J. Saunders, in today’s Chronicle, parses carefully the words of Al Gore and attacks his character in an attempt to sidestep the overwhelmingly persuasive facts adduced in An Inconvenient Truth:
Gore was wrong in 1992 when he wrote that 98 percent of scientists agreed with him on global warming….Now he is wrong when he argues in his movie that there is a complete consensus on global warming today. As proof Gore cites a 2004 study that looked at 928 climate abstracts and found none that refuted global-warming dogma. That says more about the researcher than the scientific community.
There are a number of well-known scientists who don’t believe that global warming is human-induced, or who believe that if it is, it is not catastrophic.
How has the compassionate, liberal America I grew up in become such a vile, destructive (and ultimately self-immolating) hell? How is it possible for so many to remain willfully ignorant of reality and actively hostile to humanity?
Is there a way out of this lethal spiral?
Back to Jon Carroll:
Restraint and generosity do not seem to be hallmarks of this administration. Already, after unrestrained bombing in the early days of the war in Afghanistan, we were pulling troops out and reneging on our promises to rebuild Afghanistan so it no longer has to rely on the opium trade. We’ve decided, heck, let ‘em grow it; we’ll handle the problem later when the refined product gets to our borders. Yeah, that’s worked.Oh, wait, there’s another difference between then and now. During World War II, war profiteers were frowned on. It was not considered cool to make billions off misery and death. Today, war profiteers run the country. One might make the case that this administration is so busy figuring out how to reward its friends and campaign contributors with pieces of the war pie, it hasn’t spent all that much time coming up with innovative plans for fighting a war of attrition in a desert half a world away.
It seems pretty obvious to me that war profiteering is the number one motivation here. It is not a coincidence that the oil industry and Halliburton are the principal beneficiaries of this administration’s policies.
From the LA Times:
A rule designed by the Environmental Protection Agency to keep groundwater clean near oil drilling sites and other construction zones was loosened after White House officials rejected it amid complaints by energy companies that it was too restrictive and after a well-connected Texas oil executive appealed to White House senior advisor Karl Rove….In 2002, a Texas oilman and longtime Republican activist, Ernest Angelo, wrote a letter to Rove complaining that an early version of the rule was causing many in the oil industry to “openly express doubt as to the merit of electing Republicans when we wind up with this type of stupidity.”
“Supidity” = “affecting my profits.” Fuck everyone else. Fuck the planet. GIMME!!!!!!
]]>
And Ric also told me where he got it: The Church Sign Generator, of course!!
]]>Being in Congress is not like living in America. You have a hired car and driver, and you don’t carry money. You don’t buy groceries and you don’t pay plumbers. You spend every day raising money so you can go back to Congress, where you will raise more money. People want to buy you dinner, take you golfing, give you … what do you want? There are people who will give it to you, and other people who make it look OK. Unless you do something dopey like keeping cash in your freezer, you’ll never get caught.You are supposed to represent the people in your district, but you don’t live like the people in your district. Hell, most of the time you’re not even in your district. You live in a bubble, and you take seriously stuff that other people find silly, and you ignore stuff that other people find important. Tim Russert: important. Working two jobs while trying to find health insurance to cover your pre-existing condition: not so important.
People in Congress do not speak the way other people speak. Have you ever listened to a congressional hearing? Congress members do not ask questions when it is time to ask questions; they make speeches. Sometimes they pretend it’s a question by starting with “Wouldn’t you agree… ?” — but that doesn’t make it a question. They seem to be utterly indifferent to their routine pomposities. They frequently call themselves “the American people,” as in, “The American people are shocked by midnight break-ins at congressional offices.”
And:
Basically, we’re screwed. The Congress was supposed to save us from the executive branch, and the Supreme Court was supposed to save us from both, and now all three are playing some game that does not involve protecting citizens, spending money wisely or making sense.]]>
The question was, “Ever say anything on the phone you don’t want the NSA to hear?”
My favorite answer was from Jo-Anna Pippen:
I’m sure in the last four years I’ve said: “Michael Moore, shotgun, Internet, ACLU, Berkeley, indicted, Hillary, drugs, cell, data, gay marriage, SpongeBob, peace, France, oligarchy, bomb, cell, Cheney, contraception, AT&T, Democrat, 29 percent, White House, turd blossom, tequila, Jeb, firewall, NBC and New York Times.” I’m probably on a watch list already.]]>
C.W. Nevius writes about Wavy in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. Compassion comes easy to this clown
A few excerpts:
….this has been a remarkable run, from making announcements atop the stage at Woodstock to having Ben & Jerry’s name a flavor of ice cream after him.It was tasty, too.
With no visible means of support to speak of — Gravy calls himself “an activist, clown and former frozen dessert” — he’s not only lived a life in full, but filled it with an extraordinary zest and good deeds.
[…]
And then there’s the time he was poetry director at the Gaslight in Greenwich Village.
“I convinced the owner to bring on a kid named Bob Dylan.”
Dylan, by the way, wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” on Gravy’s typewriter. So says Gravy, who says Salvador Dali stopped by and “made a salad.”
Is it any wonder that documentarian Michelle Esrick is on the Gravy train? Her film, “Saint Misbehavin’: The Life and Time of Wavy Gravy,” is due in 2007. Good luck. Editing his life into feature-film length won’t be easy….
I’ve had many opportunities to hang out with Wavy over the years - I’ve played festivals where he emceed, for example - and I’ve produced radio announcements for his various events over the years. I refer to him as a “regional saint,” for some reason. He’s a great character, and he’s done a hell of a lot of good in the world.
Happy birthday, other boss. I hope you have a great party tonight.
]]>Y’all have probably heard about this dispute surrounding Plan B, the so-called “morning after” pill ….Plan B is a contraceptive, and there are people who don’t like contraceptives….
Janet Woodcock, who is the deputy operations commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, apparently told a group of agency employees, according to a memo written by one of them, that “we could not anticipate or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B.”
So now we come to a phenomenon called “projection.” The most common way that we explain human behavior is to use our beliefs, motives and behavior patterns as a template. If I tell you, for instance, that all women hate men, I am really telling you that my life experiences so far have not been satisfying and that I have developed a theory about why that is true, and I have projected that theory on reality….
So if I tell you that a “morning after” pill will lead to sex-based cults, I am really telling you that a candid examination of my inner motives reveals that I would most likely start a sex-based cult if I could, and that urge scares me, so I will project my urges onto young people and their pharmaceutical choices, and announce that I have discovered reality and this is what it looks like.
It is my belief that projection plays a larger role in public life than is generally acknowledged — although, of course, I could just be projecting. I think that people who really fret that gays are going to “recruit” heterosexuals see in themselves worrisome urges that mean that they themselves might want to enlist in the gay army. I think if you look at the attitudes of the Catholic Church about sexuality and set them against the behavior of a number of supposedly celibate Catholic priests, you can build a case for large-scale, long-term institutional projection.
I’ve been raving about the Projection Party for years. These fuckers are constantly accusing their enemies/victims of doing exactly what they themselves do or want to do. It’s pathological, pathetic, and destructive. It pollutes the public discourse.
]]>Please join
pianist Pete Sears (Hot Tuna, Starship, Flying Other Brothers, etc.)
singer Spencer Day (Decca recording artist)
Paul Stubblebine (Coast Recorders)
for an opportunity to meet and mingle with Steve Thomas, candidate for Congress in the 11th Congressional District.
This district is important to all of us, whether we live and vote in that district or not. It is currently represented by Richard Pombo, who is (in my opinion) the posterboy for corruption in Congress, and the leader of the charge to remove all environmental regulation, among other troglodyte positions.
Friends, we have an opportunity to replace Pombo with someone we’ll actually enjoy supporting. No need to settle for a Hold-Your-Nose-and-Vote-For-A-Democratic nominee, no need to settle for a Demopublican nominee… there’s a genuine, progressive, back-to-the-future New Deal Democrat running.
Check Steve Thomas’ website to get a taste of what he’s about. Then come on down to Coast Recorders, San Francisco’s historic recording studio, on Saturday May 20th and meet him! Drop by any time between 4 and 7 PM. We’ll have the welcome mat out, and Steve will be happy to talk to you about his vision for a better future. Bring your checkbook - you just may want to help his campaign after you hear him speak. And at the very least, you’ll be able to say, “I knew Steve Thomas before he was co-opted.”
Coast Recorders
1340 Mission Street, between 9th and 10th, San Francisco
415-863-6009
Plenty of parking, either on the street or in the lot behind our building, accessible from either 9th or 10th Street.
Now, courtesy of Bob Delaney, I have news of an actual blue rose.
But: it looks pretty damn PURPLE to me.
]]>