Sunday Is Random pick and random read day….

Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

~Arthur Koestler

Humid and a belly filled with coffee on a Sunday while kids are playing their games; I find that I am OK! I look to see that the cats are OK too. Youngest is silent as oldest is screaming at his friends as he games online. An easy Sunday in my cave, then all of a sudden like a flash of lightning from yesterdays storm, my imagined sharp arm reaches through the air pulling me, with eyes-closed, to the books on the brown shelf. I know, I just saw the cult classic Equinox* last night. All about a book and a Demon…Yes a book can change ones perspective about life. Here this reading of some random video promotion… moves us to something musical…

“To the Minutemen, the world was divided between two things-gigs and flyers. Everything was playing shows or getting people to the shows. The rest was not reality.”

~ A History Lesson Part One Synopsis by Dave Travis

This small paragraph can’t be the motif of Punk Rock… but it is…, riding the wave with many guys who were at that place from “one note to the next,” I am glad that this random pick helped me to let go of my grieving process. What I feel for my punk-rock-youthful days, and when life really was only “gigs and flyers!”

Until next Sunday….

http://sugarbuzzmagazine.com/bands/davetravis/davetravis.html

*Equinox 1970 Film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067055/

SO CAL PUNKROCK REUNION

I have learned one thing. As Woody says, “Showing up is 80 percent of life.” Sometimes it’s easier to hide home in bed. I’ve done both. – Woody Allen

I saw the invites to this event and they stirred me up. I ignored it. Then my brother asked if I was going. It stirred me up again. I love Griffith Park yet I was in a lazy mood. With conflict and debate the kid and I decided to see what was up. We printed the directions to the event and then we were off.. Son is my car-copilot so he had to tell me where to go…ah how to get there.

“You sure we don’t get on the 134 east to get to the 5?” I asked.

“No just go straight on the 101 until you get to Los Feliz exit!”

We ended turning around near the Hollywood Bowl back on to the 101 heading towards the 134.

“Mom you have gone too far we are already past the Bob Hope Airport.”

I knew what was going on but I wanted him to get an idea and learn ‘ the dance of the 134, 5 and 101.’ Once we worked it out he knew where he goofed up and that we were now heading in the right direction and soon turning off towards Crystal Springs Griffith Park.

We found the place where the event was. I saw Ed Colver who was the tallest one there. So we set up our chairs at a distance and enjoyed our subway sandwiches. I was feeling the vibe. Getting an outside view and enjoying the park and my kid. He was eating and looking at the little pedal chopper bikes that some kids were riding. So we took a spin on a couple and had a hell of a time for an hour. I had so much fun. Don’t think we laughed like that in a long time.

I realized, as I walked closer into the crowd of punkers, what was pulling them together was not the sound of loud music. It was a buzz like bees around honey, friendship.

“Ok, I am ready to move in.”

“You don’t have to Mom.”

What use to draw me to these rebels like a moth to a flame was the sound of loud music. I was not picking up any on my antennas and they were up. We moved on in like it was the most natural thing to do. Colored hair, tattoos and life was there. A lot of happy faces and talking all-round made it a good place to be. It was darn good to talk with some of my ol’punk buddies and say hi to friends. I then got a couple looks from son and we were off.

He keeps me balanced. One foot in the music scene and one in a mama / kids world. I like it that way. I am happy we went. It seems like it was a very successful event!!

Crystal Springs Griffith Park

https://www.facebook.com/events/265388110267998/

Blissful Heart : Sonic Reducer

“Lots of people I know have bootlegged tapes of performances and if they play it I will be transported back sometimes with happiness, sometimes with horror.” ~ Chris Bailey,The Saints

This image takes me back to when I was 17. My eyes are closed with an inward feeling-look upon my face. It is the feeling of a blissful heart. This picture was taken by my first boyfriend who was a semi-professional photographer, graphic artist and print man. It became a romantic nuance when he took my picture. At the time I was young, foolish and in love with him. Looking at the image my face shows reflection, mockery and beauty. Time has taken its toll. I am a survivor of one crazy life, but with continuity I can still call upon the youthful and blissful heart of my youth.

This picture takes me back to a time during the 1970’s when mom and dad were alive. This is when taking a walk with your boyfriend meant something special. I was an open blossom of life fresh as a daisy, rose or yellow dandelion.

I threw away most of all the pictures Mike took of me. This particular image was rolled up in a paper towel container. My mom saved it for me. I found it recently due to spring cleaning, thank you mom. My wild ways and rebellion, that came a few years later, did not get to this image. I destroyed all images from high school and my school books. Today I am glad to see how I once was. My body has changed and beauty has faded but I still feel the same in my heart. A blissful heart is still youthfully present. I don’t deny that anymore, not now, not ever again. As I have learned recently this is the relationship between my Maiden and my Crone.

The song below is what Mike and I listened to at that time with a little help from our friends. In the 1970s pot was everywhere and mostly free. (ya… I am not talking to my generation here but for the youngsters who may not know this..)

As you may well know…this song came later… it was fun too. Maybe punk rock was or is a kinda rebirth or something!? Yet now I can blend both parts of myself together.

Banners from Kubrick’s exhibition or glorious rebellious madness.

Now some 30 years later his face mocks me.

Alex: What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful, portable picnic players. Come with uncle and hear all proper! Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited.

My first printing project was with a hand mechanical printing press. I took print shop as one of my class electives: leading me on to West Valley Occupational School to take a paste-up class. This training got me a job working for a short time at a local adult book publisher on Venture Blvd. I pasted page numbers on each page. They were small paperback adult books.

But, back in high school the image I printed for my first project was the face of Alex from the film A Clockwork Orange. My project was stationary with Alex saying,

“Hello my little droogs”

With all of his glorious rebellious madness.

Now throughout the valley I am haunted by banners all over the place advertising the Los Angeles Museum of Art Stanley Kubrick exhibition, as I drive along the same streets where I grew up; there is Alex’s face grinning down at me with all of his glorious rebellious madness.

Everyone in the print shop class did not have a clue to who this character was: not even the teacher. Now some 30 years later his face mocks me. He takes me back to those beginning days of the 1970s ; to the place of that transforming rebellious power that stirred my soul.

Now I hold up a challenge. I am thinking of all the banners I now viddy around the San Fernando Valley .

I am saying this,

“Would you or could you rip-off one of these banners for me?”

I will make you a home cooked spaghetti dinner.

No lie… or maybe I will buy you a brew from my favorite pub.

The point being I would do it myself but my back is not what it was, so late one night if you find yourself under such a banner of Alex… it could be done.!?

Just climb up the pole and pull it down.

Regardless I find the whole thing pretty ironically & mockingly…weird.

Hold Your Head Up

In Jr High I had a certain kind of power that I never really accessed. Call me stupid or that I had a common unconscious decency, I never used it like some women did and do. Purple bell bottom hip huggers and waffle-stomper boots with a pretty elastic top gave a clear view to my exercised midriff. We were innocent and happy adolescents. One day while walking through the school yard towards the auditorium this song by Argent played on the school radio before a dance. I looked around and Brad Hodges was laying back looking at me. His mouth was open. He was in a trance. I walked by and felt the power I had to arouse a man. Even with all the complications of peer pressure, low self-esteem, and pre-teenage confusion, I will never forget this song or the power that Brad awoke in me that night.

Jenny Lens Punk Photographs

If you are into the early evolution of punk rock you have to view these images taken by Jenny Lens. The feeling from her pictures jump out at you and it is all about those crazy wild punks.

This is the root system of the LA punk rock scene and it’s amazing history. Jenny Len’s images yell out loudly about the history of punk rock and the continuity of a music scene in general.

The women of punk rock may have to fight a lot harder to push their way in and Jenny’s photography needs to be proudly displayed in the “herstory” of musical museums as well.

http://jennylens.net/

Conscience the blood of a living anarchist

I shall now be a little more free and open with you than I was before. I wish we were all true-hearted, and that we did all carry ourselves with integrity.

~ Thomas Rainsborough

Anarchy seems so often clothed in the rebellion and intellectual dress of its followers. When I was younger we had the familiar old image of the Dove sign of two fingers held-up and apart as the symbol of peace. In the punk rock years of the late seventies and early eighties that symbol metamorphosed and became the “V” of vice, vandalism and violence. I am sure from the outside this seemed radical and rebellious and it was, but within my community of friends it stood for something more. To me personally it stood for freedom from cultural and religious accountability, but not from what lived at the root of its meaning,

“all true-hearted, and that we did all carry ourselves with integrity.”

It was not laws and dogmas that guided us but a true creative spark to change what pissed us off. It was the Governments that lied to us and the dogmatic churches that belittled and brainwashed us with visions of hell and damnation. The worst characters to this abomination of their creation being Saint Augustine and the first Christian king from Constantinople, Constantine the Great.

Putting the blame aside, I understand that culture and religion breeds morals and ethics. The most powerful being how we learn these ways of being as an oral tradition passed on from mother to child. The ethics and morals of what is right and wrong nurtured by love, and this is the best scenario which is based on the bond between family and loved ones. The goal is to break the bonds of family and so move out into the world as a whole individual filled with integrity.

The above quote from Thomas Rainsborogh’s mouth states clearly the knowing experience of the true anarchy experience. This is the freedom to make the best choice for all concerned. This is not because we have to, or because of peer pressure. It is because we are true-hearted, and that we carry ourselves with integrity as a single individual , with or without government, but hopeful that others will follow on their own accord.

In Aurora, Colorado James E. Holmes killed and it is still a mystery why he killed. My focus is not on him. He is an insane young man who because of his lewdness reveals to us a darkness, a shadow that this country must now face. This is not Anarchy! It is something else and it is as dark and opaque as the sucking under-world. Yet, within this tragedy and drama is the extreme anarchy of a few individuals that cared more for another than they did for themselves.

I am speaking of the ones that died that day to save another life. I am not a political fool for this country, it is nothing like that. In the chaos of this a hope shines forth …can you see it? This hope best shows us what the anarchist experience looks like. This is defined as an act for another that is based on the statement, true-hearted, and that we did all carry ourselves with integrity. I am not saying that one should die for anarchy or die for another to experience this anarchy experience because it can be viewed and achieved in the smallest of choices or actions. I am saying that my heart is honored to know that within humanity there are individuals that have a conscience and this is the blood of a true anarchist. In these dark times I am often in a daze of overwhelmedness, today I cried and my heart-felt freedom.

Hold up the beam of light called conscience, hold it up to the Big Wigs, the Corpocracy, the Illuminati, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve… they don’t have a chance.

This is the blood of a living anarchist !!!

… I shall now be a little more free.

I feel love: RIP Donna Summers

When I think of music and the late 70’s and early 80’s, I think of crashing rogue waves against me of all types of music. There were the discotheques and rock clubs to dance at. Most importantly there were the punk clubs to pogo at… the moving levels of sounds and adventure filled my every cell and heartbeat. The changing styles and then the big watery push to Hollywood High School to see Elvis Costello and then the Clash at the Santa Monica Civic. Donna Summers is part of this experience. I can still taste the sound of her music as a teenager during the 70’s when I engaged in the fright of local and east coast born serial killers, and films such as Looking For Mr. Good Bar.