My Carpe Diem Moment

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

I never planned to become a teacher.  It was thrust upon me when I found myself in Bangkok with nothing much to do.  A British monk suggested I speak to monks who were studying English at a temple across the river.  That visit led to an offer to teach a course in "Listening and Speaking English" (an ungrammatical title I've struggled with) and I continue to do so six years later.

In the 1989 film "Dead Poet's Society,"  an English teacher at a private school, played by Robin Williams, quotes from Robert Herrick's 16th century poem "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time," and tells his students that the first line should be translated by the Latin expression carpe diem, "seize the day." The reason, he says, is that one day they will be dead and fertilizing daffodils like everyone that came before them. Live to the full now, he urges his students, and "make your lives extraordinary."

I had no clue how to teach young Thai monks anything, much less English.  But I'd been impressed by the attempt of that cinematic teacher to inspire his students to learn.  It's certainly impossible to open up a student's head and pour knowledge inside.   My own long academic career taught me the importance of going out and seizing it.  I treated the university as a candy store and spent nearly 20 years sampling and nibbling all the goodies.  In Thailand, I'd been told, the educational system is hierarchical with teachers, treated with the utmost respect, dictating what their students must learn (in most cases, memorize).  Critical thinking and curiosity were in short supply.

Armed with a textbook from Oxford for a model, I designed lessons that tried to strike a happy balance between studying and practicing English grammar. All of my students were raised in small villages where sending a son to the temple sometimes was the only way to feed him. They came from every Southeast Asian country and becoming a monk was probably the only way for them to get a university degree.  Though an Australian had taught at the school the year before me, I was usually the first native speaker my students, all majoring in English, had ever met.

Since I spoke almost no Thai, and, as I soon discovered, the English my students had so-far learned was very basic, communication in the beginning was not easy.  Added to this was the limited English of the faculty members who were teaching it.   Thai was used to teach the English majors, even the students from Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar who had to learn Thai first in order to study English.  Consequently, their pronunciation was primitive.  There was a sound lab for practice, but it had been "broken" for years (I later was told the same about the brand new lab at the Ayutthaya campus where classes were moved in my third year). Countering these difficulties was the enthusiasm for English expressed by my students. One reason was their passion for English football and pop singers like Michael Jackson.  Some would probably disrobe after graduation to become guides or open a business while many others told me they wanted to teach English at the temple near their home village.

My first classroom had fans but no air conditioning. And it had a microphone.  Besides enabling me to better hear my shy students speak, it encouraged me to become a standup comic.  I turned the chairs in a circle seminar style and prowled the room with the mic looking for ways to make them talk and laugh.  The latter wasn't difficult because Thais love to turn anything into sanuk, "fun." My lectures were usually punctuated with laughter, even on exam day when I wrote rules on the board which included "no electronic devices, no peeking, no dancing & no singing."

Speaking before the class was a different matter.  My students lacked confidence in their English proficiency and were hesitant to do anything that might result in a mistake, a consequence of their rigid training.  I told them making mistakes was the only way they could learn; if they didn't, there was nothing I could teach them.  Asking for volunteers to speak was a non-starter, so I learned to pick the first speaker and go around the room.  Each term there was usually one student who couldn't stop.  "Thank you for the microphone," they would say and would be off and running.  My job then was to give them the hook amid much laughter.

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," goes an old expression (my students love learning English idioms and maxims).  Teaching these Thai monks has been my carpe diem moment.  I tried teaching in California after getting my Ph.d. in environmental history, but I found most of my students more interested in partying after class than doing their homework than exhibiting even an iota of intellectual curiosity.  I quit in order to travel instead of pursuing what as a less than promising academic future, never imagining I would find myself in front of a classroom again.  But it's become the most satisfying work of my life in a varied and spotty job resume.

In addition to teaching 3rd and 4th year students, I have also lectured in a graduate linguistics program and taught a few basic English classes to students in MA programs of education and public administration. For several years I've presided over competitions organized by students in the English Club with other schools. And I've given a talk on the importance of English as the working language of ASEAN, and assisted at a weekend English camp at another school in Bangkok where learning games were played by giggling undergraduates.  While coming as a surprise late in my career, I've done my best to seize the day with gusto.

This past week, however, I met my Waterloo.  I had been asked nearly two months ago to teach a 10-week, 40-hour class for university staff members during lunchtime.  Though I was not given much time to prepare, it seemed like a wonderful challenge.  I designed a series of lectures around the basics, from parts of speech to sentences, clauses and building a vocabulary.  My iPod Mini has the capability of showing YouTube videos and PowerPoint presentations and I gathered a cornucopia of slides and clips to enliven the two-hour proceedings.

Some twenty students, monks and laypeople who worked at the school, were expected and most came to the first meeting.  I was at my best, strutting around the room with the mic and exhorting my students to think, speak and laugh about the language they all knew a bit about (it was an "intermediate" class).  My timing was precise, knowing they all had jobs to do and were sacrificing their lunchtime to learn, and I ended each class with a music video and an exercise in which they filled in the blanks in a lyric sheet of words they heard sung. Everyone seemed pleased.

Attendance began dropping about week three.  Last week at the halfway point in the series, the class on Monday had only two students, one of them arriving an hour late.  Nobody came to last Friday's class, except for a couple of staff members from the Language Institute who had proposed the class in the first place and who now felt sorry for me.  Afterwards I went to see one of the missing students, a librarian, and he was most apologetic but said he needed to remain at work. The cause of the failure seemed simple enough: either these staff members decided they could not take time away from duties to brush up on their English, or my teaching was not appealing to them.  My wife suggested that since the course was free and voluntary, there was nothing to keep them coming. Paid class for credit have more incentives to continue.  Thais would never criticize my teaching for fear of causing me to lose face; all, therefore, had other things to do.

After Friday, I cancelled the remaining classes.  Even if a few attended, the continuity of my review of English grammar was broken (later topics depended on a familiarity with earlier ones). And it's much harder teach two students than it is a full classroom where I can interacts with a couple of rows of them.  

Part of me is happy that I no longer need to complete the lessons for classes 12-20.  I've had little free time for the last month because of the work load and the deadlines I imposed on myself. Now I can swim, read novels, and surf the web to my heart's delight.  But I already miss those moments when I stood before a roomful of students holding the mic and doing my English rap. I'm not sorry I seized those days, but I just want there to be more before I'm fertilizing daffodils.

Freezing in the Tropics

In the days when I echoed the wisdom of environmental philosophers, I hated air conditioning. It was dangerous, releasing chemicals into the atmosphere that tore holes in the ozone layer and threatened the future of the planet. The A/C in my Toyota truck remained off. Of course, living on the fog-shrouded central California coast required heat more than additional cooling.

Air conditioning spread like wildfire in the years after WWII when the portable unit was invented. If the desert heat was good enough for Lawrence of Arabia, what need did the wimpy residents of Los Angeles or Morocco have for a modern technology that poisoned the earth and destroyed the ability of humans to adapt to climate change?

And then I expatriated to Thailand where A/C units grow like mushrooms on every building no matter how humble. The three seasons here are hot, hotter and hottest, and humidity creates the atmosphere at street level of a sauna.

These days I try to avoid using the air conditioning in my apartment only because it's an electricity drain and raises my monthly bill dramatically rather than for its contribution to global warming (the air released from the device on my balcony while on is quite warm). I have 2 fans which are almost always on. When I'm working at my desk, though, they tend to blow papers around the room, so I activate the A/C as a way to keep order.

Thais, at least in the big cities, are used to extreme changes in temperature. I learned quickly that cinemas are all cooled to icy temperatures after freezing through several films in my tee shirt and shorts. Now I take a blanket with me. Most taxis, the Skytrain, and the more modern buses are cooled to an extreme degree, as if moderation is an unknown Buddhist precept. My wife always takes a shawl or a long-sleeved sweater with her on cross-town trips. Being old, I usually forget.

My image of the tropics was forged during films by Somerset Maugham when you saw white-suited colonialists sitting under slow moving overhead fans while drinking something refreshing and alcoholic. Sidney Greenstreet would never have plopped down in front if a hulking A/C machine. Wimps.

I got a taste of winter last December in Seoul and I don't miss it. The ache that sub-freezing temperatures bring is not pleasant. Walking into any upscale mall in Bangkok will bring that memory back. But the real pleasure comes when walking out into the heat of the noonday sun outside the air-conditioned pleasure palaces. Schizophrenic? You betcha!

Do you think Nora is too young for Willie?

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She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

Though the hose should eliminate the use of toilet paper, it's not all that efficient. But because most toilets outside the West discourage disposal of paper, etc., in the toilet, because of insufficient plumbing, there's the ubiquitous bucket at the side. I've learned to observe excessive use and careless tossing of toilet paper as a moral failure.

Squat toilets still abide in older buildings or where patrons demand them out of a love of tradition. But they scare me. I first encountered one in India and found my legs could not assume the position. So I sat atop it in a humiliating and not entirely sanitary compromise. Asians learn to squat about the time they learn to walk which is why they can do it, as well as sit on their ankles, and those inculturated with chairs cannot.

My wife does not understand why I use the hose from behind. She does double duty from the front. I have to demonstrate that my parts get in the way. And when I stand to pee I don't need to hose off. But she says I should.

There is no window to the outside in my toilet (or hong nam, water room, as the Thais logically call it), but only a small window high up over the tub-shower overlooking the sink in our small kitchen. When Edward comes to visit he always slides it shut, fearful that some stranger might see his pre-pubescent body. At least no burglars can crawl into the shower. They'll have to get to our 9th floor balcony first.

The upscale malls in Bangkok, like Terminal 21, have super modern toilets that feature warm seats and water from several directions. They're made in Japan or Korea and threaten the fading tradition of squat toilets. I go out of my way to make use of them.

Something should be done about toilet paper. I believe it still owes its existence to trees, an endangered life form. Perhaps the Japanese or Koreans will figure a way to make it out of reusable plastic, but I expect to be flushed away long before then (my ashes at least).

A note about my throne shown above: I still like to read there but now it's with my iPad. The plunger is a recent addition and has come in handy several times. I don't know why so much hair accumulates in the pipes below the sink and shower. It can't be from my thinning head of grey hair.

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Ecstasy, or the Laundry?

Jack Kornfield assumed in his book, After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, that ecstasy came first. But what if it never comes? What if there's only the laundry, nothing more.

For me, ecstasy these days comes with the dawn that I greet on this balcony nine floors up on the west side of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. Even without the stupendous sunrise shows, the view is awesome. In my five years of looking, it never ceases to please me.

You'll notice the ancient washing machine and the laundry drying on the rack. Maybe the rich have automatic dryers, but everyone else in this city hangs their wet clothes out to dry in the sultry air. It's so hot that they'll dry despite the frequent squalls during this monsoon season.

Washing the clothes had been my wife's job. But now that she's working six days a week, I've had to learn how to handle the temperamental machine. It's been repaired twice and is on its last legs. The only road block is my distracted mind which tends to forget simple instructions. There's no hot water in our apartment other than the on demand heater in the shower so water temperature is no problem. Remembering where to turn the dial is. But I think I've mastered it now.

I used to think another kind of ecstasy besides the morning show was possible. I read books, sat on the cushion, attended retreats and lectures. I could almost construct a moment of bliss from the various instructions. Visions of leading seminars and writing self help books danced in my head. For what is one to do once one has experienced such thusness?

But awakening has not come and now that I've exceeded my sell by date I doubt that I'll have that experience before shuffling off this mortal coil. I'll leave it to others with the time, expertise and, dare I say it, the luck, to report back on their moments of ecstasy.

For me, then, there's only the laundry, and the myriad of other duties that are difficult only if you fail to give them your undivided and undistracted attention. Yes, the shit work that must be done by those with no time or talent for enlightenment. I suspect that's most of us.

 

 

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My Breakfast

Drop your shrink, and stop your drinkin'

Crunchy granola's neat

"Crunchy Granola Suite," Neil Diamond

I've been eating this breakfast for several years, the same breakfast most mornings: granola (purists may describe it as muesli) from Tesco Lotus, blueberry yogurt, and a cut-up Fuji apple drowned in milk (usually low fat), accompanied by a cup of drip coffee (Tesco's Arabica Royal). An hour earlier, I greet the dawn with a glass of orange juice.

Some mornings my lovely wife makes me American Breakfast No. 1, a cheese omelet with toast (occasionally French toast). My American Breakfast No. 2 which I make consists of 2 soft boiled eggs mixed with pieces of buttered (fake) toast.

For any searchers who stumble across this blog, these are my new minimal life posts. Hopefully they will deepen as I become accustomed to blogging on an iPad Mini.

But maybe not.

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Bus Stop

We have a refurbished bus stop by our condo. One morning the old one had been brutally demolished. A couple of mornings later this new one with comfortable seats (the old version had benches) took its place. Bangkok must have roving teams for this kind if work. The bus stop up the street was also renewed and one across the highway got a face lift two weeks ago.

While chaotic and overblown, Bangkok takes care of its people, even when floods, like the one two years ago, make life difficult for many. A few months ago new trash cans sprouted like mushrooms all over the city. At night piles of trash accumulate that miraculously disappear. I hesitate to imagine where it all goes.

Very few western expats or tourists take the bus. Learning the routes of buses with few signs in English takes hard work. Some of the older vehicles are pretty well trashed and traffic is unpredictable and time consuming. Most foreigners stick to the flashy Skytrain and the neighborhoods it serves.

I love traveling by bus even when delays are frustrating. People watching is fascinating and I learn more about Thai ways and customs from watching the passengers act and react than I would reading books or strolling through super malls.

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Daily Cappuccino

 

This is my latest experimental blog post, this time with Blogsy.

Friends know of my addiction to cappuccino which nowadays is available in all parts of the world, even the most undeveloped.

Several weeks ago my university opened a new espresso spot and I can drink my cappuccino coming and going from class.

This is very civilized..

 

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Every Day

Every day is a gift from the universe

This is an experiment, not yet successful.  Now that I'm using my iPad Mini for showing PowerPoint presentations and YouTube videos in my classes, I want to also be able to use it to post to this blog with photos and videos.  The Blogger app doesn't seem much help.  Blog Docs, which I purchased, might do the trick but it has a steep learning curve (at least for me). Though I have a YouTube app, I've yet to learn how to link videos without going through my MacBook Pro at home.  Still working on it...

What's It All About?

What's it all about, Alfie? 

 Is it just for the moment we live? 

 What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie? 

 Are we meant to take more than we give 

 Or are we meant to be kind?

"Alfie" written by Burt Bacharach and Hall David

When I first began writing this blog seven years ago, I chose a name to indicate the controversial waters in which I wished to swim.  I was in my mid 60's, a worldly traveler with some trash in my wake, and enough confidence to sink a ship.  Blogs were a relatively new social medium and promised new horizons to a writer past his prime who had yet to make much of a mark. I told myself I needed no audience bigger than a small circle of friends, and that it was enough to sort out my thoughts in public to better make sense of my existence. Sometimes they did.

Bloggers are an opinionated bunch and I have had enough idiosyncratic thoughts and views to fill 520 posts to date with words and photos.  Since Blogger provides analytics, I know my most popular writing was on the sin city of Pattaya, Richard Gombrich's controversial perspective on Buddhism, a faux farm in the hills of Thailand, and the ethics of internet piracy.  Only the piece on Pattaya received more than a thousand hits.  But I got enough comments from close friends and Facebook acquaintances to produce the illusion of readership.

Another reason for my blog was to tell the stories of my late life adventures to family and friends in a convenient forum rather than collective or individual letters or email.  Early on I learned that this was not personal enough for a child or too, and in recent years the breaking of many family ties made that goal illusive.  Despite the ease of internet communication, most of my old friends back in the states have drifted away.  With those that remain I trade posts and comments on Facebook which has become the go-to medium of social choice.

As I entered the era of elders, it occurred to me that I might make stabs at a user's manual for ageing.  This, however, required the conceit that I knew what I was doing and could make generalizations that the Baby Boomers on my tail might find useful.  But I'm as stupid and as blind now as when I turned 18, 21 and even 30.  And besides, my ability as a thinker has usually been to see differences (nitpick, as some would see it) rather than similarities.

I should add that I also remain mostly ignorant of the topics I picked to write about: religion, sex and politics.  I've said less about sex than the others because of my late father's injunction that "men should never kiss and tell."  But the fact that I've been married three times is revealing.  Of course there is more to relationships than sex, but it can really throw a monkey wrench into the mix. After forty-plus years of trying to sort out religion and religions, I know even less about the meaning of the words and the importance of the activities and beliefs they represent for living a life.  And politics, pshaw!  What else can you say besides the world is going to hell in a handbasket?  Even my expressions are out of date.

The compliments I've received for my writing have usually focused on my "honesty," or what to me have been confessions of failure in the assigned duties of life.  This has always been easy for me.  Many men dislike talking about themselves.  In the discussion groups to which I've belonged over the years, I have learned to provoke responses from others by relating my most personal details.  I wouldn't call this "honesty" because the worst memories invariably remain secret, and a good story can always sound better with little additions for dramatic effect.

 In May I wrote a three-part post on my life in and out of music.  And then the thoughts dried up.

When a friend encouraged me to continue writing, I told him "I think I've shot my wad."  This expression can cover a multitude of sins.  For me, it just meant that the urge to continue writing this blog had evaporated.  Facebook, and to a lesser extent Twitter (not to forget Line, the popular Asian app), now satisfy whatever need I have to express myself.

For a few weeks I've been wondering what to say as a swan song, or whether I should just let this blog die a natural (virtual) death (nothing disappears from the internet).

Last week I entered my 75th year (a friend from junior high school dislikes this way of describing our 74th birthday, but it's true).  Nan and I celebrated with a delightful three-day and two-night holiday in Singapore, an Asian capital I visited for the first time (checking it off on my to-do list after Hong Kong and Seoul).  It was a dual celebration because a few weeks ago Nan had graduated from university.  We viewed Singapore high up from the Skypark atop the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the Singapore Flyer, and a cable car ride to Sentosa Island, and we walked enough around the city to accentuate the age gap between my young wife and I.  It's time to slow down, slowly.

This may be my last blog post, and then again it might not.  I'm not waiting for a final hurrah from the few readers that find me.  I love taking photos and posting them here as well as on Facebook and Flickr, and I'm on the lookout for a new DSLR camera. My photos have often allowed me a secondary way to comment on events for which words are not enough.  Today I think I'll leave Alfie and his dilemma (which I share) alone.

The Memory Lingers On

Stan Kenton and his orchestra

The song is ended but

The memory lingers on.

Irving Berlin, "The Song is Ended"

The philosopher in me resists simply saying "I love music."  Even plants love music and reportedly grow faster when the greenhouse is wired for sound.  I was raised on a musical diet of "Warsaw Concerto" and George Clooney's aunt singing "Come On-a My House."  My genealogy contains no musicians, my DNA is bereft of tonality.  There is no charisma in my off-key voice. The clarinet attracted me because to my 10-year-old mind it looked and sounded cool.  Practice and performance early on generated praise and encouragement.  I opened my ears. As a teen my favorite songs included "One Mint Julep" by the Clovers, "Lullaby of Birdland" by Ella Fitzgerald, and "My Funny Valentine" by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker.  I hated hillbilly, Hawaiian and classical music.  The counter-cultural aspects of being a musician appealed to me, as well as the possibilities of fame and fortune.  I got a tiny taste of it before deciding I could never make the cut, and got rid of my clarinet and alto sax.

Me and Peggy Lee

As a reviewer of records in a local newspaper, I valued the tangibility of free LPs and 45 rpm singles almost as much as I appreciated the sounds of music they contained.  Discs could be treasured, or traded and sold.  Seeing my byline over a column of judgements that might induce or dissuade a consumer from a purchase gave me a sense of power.  Musical criticism, while always subservient to the performance, had ample rewards: free tickets to concerts, backstage passes, the best seats in clubs, and a way to meet and play like friends with the famous.  I was courted by record companies and press agents looking not for my opinions but for unpaid promotion for their artists.  It was a slight seedy game.

Mike Ochs and I at the Whisky A Go Go

The last act of my musical life took place in the 1970's when I became a rock and roll press agent in Hollywood.  For five years I worked for Atlantic, Fantasy and MCA records, as well as the hip PR firm of Gibson & Stromberg. Only in my early 30's, I consumed copious quantities of alcohol and drugs in pill, smoke and powdered form.  My marriage foundered and I neglected my kids.  Access to rock stars was almost unlimited and I watched concerts by The Who, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young from the side of the stage.  It was a non-stop express of a life that required uppers to wake up and downers to sleep.  I smoked dope with Willie, Jerry Jeff and Waylon in Austin, inhaled a speedball before flying first-class across the country with Al Kooper, took acid with guitarist Lenny Kaye in a Vermont stream, watched the Stones record in Jamaica, celebrated Atlantic's 25th anniversary in Paris where Stephane Grappelli played dinner music, and got thrown in jail with The Who in Montreal after my hotel suite was trashed by Pete and Keith.  In the end I was unceremoniously fired by the gold-chain wearing head of Atlantic's west coast office and told to turn in my company credit cards. I fled to Northern California to nurse my wounds, and it took me a year or more to recover from the cocaine-fueled fantasy years.

David Geffen and Joni Mitchell

In my experience, there were two classes of blood suckers in the music business who clustered around the famous and wannabe entertainers.  On one side there were those who saw an opportunity to become rich off someone else's creativity.  David Geffen is the ultimate representative of this breed. Making money off those you supposedly served usually required lying, stealing and cheating, all at the same time.  On the other side were dopes like me who loved the sound of the music as well as the spark of excitement caused by proximity to power and fame.  While I had a sizeable expense account, and could host press parties that cost thousands of dollars, I spent all my earnings and left the scene almost penniless.

Aretha and Wexler

Atlantic's office when I started at the beginning of 1970 was on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood. I introduced myself to Jerry Wexler, the label's celebrated producer, with a letter describing the role his work (Ray Charles, Aretha, the Drifters, Wilson Pickett) had played in my musical upbringing; he liked it. In my first month the company's annual convention for record sellers and DJs was held in Palm Springs and the headliners were Delaney and Bonnie and friends featuring Eric Clapton. It was the era of "house hippies" when longhairs were hired to keep the record companies hip, or at least give the illusion of it. In that role I was sent to Goddard College in Vermont, in June to represent Atlantic at the now-infamous Alternative Media Conference.  Our artists Dr. John and J. Geils Band performed, Ram Dass and Jerry Rubin talked, and on the last day everyone took acide while Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm rode around the campus in their bus throwing vegetables to the crowd.

Crowe at left, Led Zep in SF, 1973

My job was to cultivate the press. As a house hippie, I refrained from hyping the company's schlock and fortunately there was only a little of that (Iron Butterfly was the most successful). My tribe consisted mostly of other rock and roll flacks and we shared records and invited one another to our functions involving music and booze.  Among the young writers I encouraged were Lester Bangs and Cameron Crowe, two kids from San Diego.  I accompanied King Crimson to their city and Cameron introduced me to the girl who would became Penny Lane in his film "Almost Famous" about the years I knew him.  Lester, like another San Diegan, Tom Waits, whose first bio I wrote, arrived in Hollywood not fully formed and took on a new persona; it killed Lester but made Tom famous.

Bette Midler and Ahmet

Occasionally I accompanied Atlantic's president Ahmet Ertegun around town to meet and listen to aspiring recording artists.  I recall one trip in his rented convertible with the top down, and a singer whose specialty was unrecorded Dylan songs.  I was one of Ahmet's "ears" on the coast but rare heard anyone he might find interesting other than a retired Monkee looking for a resurrection and a scary drummer who played his knees.  Another of his ears was Diane, a publicist friend who was also Chuck Berry's main squeeze.  At the Palm Springs conference I tried to put her in a room with John Carpenter, scene maker and music editor of the Los Angeles Free Press, but learned quickly that he was gay, an alcoholic and a drug addict.  John was a much loved, larger than life character who ended up living near me in the Santa Cruz Mountains and he was killed one night while walking drunk down the center of the highway.

Jann Wenner in the early years

Not long after joining Atlantic, Jann Wenner offered me the job as Los Angeles correspondent of Rolling Stone.  Legendary critic Ralph Gleason, who had helped start the magazine, had recommended me because I got to know him while taking dictation at the San Francisco Chronicle when he was covering the Monterey Jazz Festival.  Carpenter had been the first LA editor and Jerry Hopkins, the second, was leaving, but I had to turn Jann down.  Dave Felton, who accepted, had written about comedy with me on the teen section of the Star-News.  He got to cover the Manson trial and later helped start MTV. Rolling Stone was then in San Francisco and when our acts played the Boarding House or one of Bill Graham's venues, I visited their offices often to talk with John Burks (a colleague from a few years earlier on the Daily Cal), Ben Fong-Torres or Ed Ward.

Music critic Ralph Gleason

Gleason called me again after I'd been with Atlantic for a couple of years and offered me a job as publicity director with Fantasy Records in Berkeley, the label made rich by the success of Credence Clearwater Revival.  During negotiations, I was guiding Wexler through interviews around Aretha's appearance at the Fillmore (a fantastic show in which she was joined onstage by Ray Charles), and he never forgave me for dealing with the competition.  Fogarty and company were embroiled in lawsuits with company head Saul Zantz when I arrived and he was laying plans for the film company that eventual produced a string of critically acclaimed films. Gleason, it turned out, had little interest in publicity.  I became friends with Tom Fogarty and went to hear him jam at a small club with Jerry Garcia and keyboard player Merl Saunders. My greatest accomplishment at Fantasy, however, was starting a poetry magazine with Pat Nolan who worked in the warehouse, and we printed it secretly on the company's mimeograph machine.

A younger, less flashy Elton

During the music daze of 1970-74, I worked only six months for Fantasy and an equivalent time with MCA Records which included The Who's Quadrophenia tour of the U.S.  I also traveled briefly on the Starship with Elton John whom I'd first seen at his American debut at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, before the costumes and huge glasses.  I fell for "Your Song" which is now a staple in elevators.  Elton's British LP had made legions of fans before it was ever released in the U.S.  After resigning in exhaustion from MCA, I took a gig with Atlantic following the British group Yes to several concert auditoriums and taking DJs and record store owners for a ride in a hot air balloon decorated with Roger Dean's famous art work.  Either high winds or too many obstructions in parking areas made the project impossible. So I went back to doing PR out of the Hollywood office.

Not hip enough? Barry Manilow

In addition to publicity, I was also assigned A&R duties, which meant recommending to the powers any potential money makers for the record companies that I heard, at Troubadour's "Hoot" night or elsewhere.  Quite often artists on the labels I preferred, like my favorite singer Judy Mayhan, were not commercially successful.  While traveling with Ahmet's discovery Bette Midler I got to know her pianist and musical director Barry Manilow.  He'd made a pile of money writing commercials for McDonald's and other brands, but he wanted his own career.  I really liked "Could It Be Magic" which he played in Bette's show.  When Barry brought me a completed record he'd paid for on his own, I sent it back to Jerry Greenberg, then heading the company, with a strong recommendation.  His response?  Not hip enough for Atlantic.  Although he's ertainly no Otis Redding, Manilow has done quite well since then.  Another discovery was Holly Near, an actress in several films and a spokeswoman for feminist issues.  Our west coast office went to see her perform her songs at the Ash Grove and tried to get the company to sign her.  She was rejected, however, and went on to establish her own company for artists considered marginal.

Me on the verge of R&R blowout

During my final days in the music biz as the songs were ending, I locked myself in my office,, which contained only a couch and coffee table rather than a desk (a style perfected at Gibson & Stromberg) and played my favorite music at aircraft volume.  This noisy retirement resulted from a combination of too many drugs and an aversion to the new boss, brother to the New York toad who had rejected Manilow as not hip.  Bob, with his string of gold chains, was the essence of not hip, and a sure sign of Atlantic's decline from the peak of hipness. I went home to pack and a week later was traveling with my girlfriend up to the Santa Cruz Mountains to begin a new life.  We broke up a month later.  I went back to Hollywood one more time, but after three days of debauchery, I woke up to realize that getting out of Dodge was my only survival strategy.  It worked.

With Roberta Flack

My career in and around music ended in 1975.  A good many of my friends on Facebook today were my companions in the music business during the early 1970's, so the memories linger. My closest friend in Bangkok, in fact the reason I came here almost 10 years ago, is Jerry Hopkins, chronicler of Elvis, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and more.  Often we reminisce about the glory days.  His biography, which he refuses to write, would be much more interesting than mine.  Before I left America, I gathered together on an iPod all of the music that was memorable in my life, from jazz to rock, country to classical, and all of the hybrid genres in-between.  My eldest son sometimes clues me in to the latest of his musical finds, but for the most part I'm ignorant of the current scene, other than icons like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.  I bring YouTube videos of some of the newest stuff Thais like to my class so the monks, students of English, can write down missing words in the lyrics of the song as it plays.  They like this teaching exercise. And so do I.

My Post-Musical Life

When I was 10, mesmerized by the movies, I wanted to be an actor.  "Drown him," advised Uncle Ted, my father's twin who had acted on Broadway in Jose Ferrer's 1952 production of "The Chase" (Jason Robards was his understudy).  So I turned my attention to the clarinet and decided to become a musician (my second instrument was the alto sax, not the tenor pictured which I borrowed for a jam session at Guitar Player Magazine).  My career goals were never very practical.  In the years before rock and roll, I was devoted to jazz and my ambition was to play in Stan Kenton's band.  He released an EP called "This is an Orchestra" in which he introduced the members of his band, all well-known jazz musicians on their own.   I wanted to hear myself included among their number.  In my teens I had some success, playing in a dixieland band and winning a contest with my own jazz combo. But, as I wrote in my last post, after a car accident the first week of college, I was confined to my bed with a broken leg for six months.  In some respects, this was the best thing that could happen to me.  I discovered a love for for solitude, for reflection and spiritual speculation, and for reading and writing.  I concluded that I would never be as good a musician as I wanted to be, and put my instruments up for sale. These are the stories about what happened after I gave up my musical ambitions.

Kingston Trio

My new ambition, after having written about music for a teen section in the local newspaper, was to pursue a career as a writer.  Music would be my initial vehicle.  The field was changing rapidly. In the beginning of my trajectory it was Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole (whom I interviewed at his home). Folk music entered with the Kingston Trio (interviewed at  TV station) who built on the accomplishments of the Weavers and Pete Seeger.  Rock was evolving through the popularity of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley (who I did not initially appreciate) in the encounter of white musicians with black rhythm and blues, the music I had listened to in high school. Jazz, too, was changing with the atonal sounds of Ornette Coleman (I had the same reaction to Coleman as with Presley). I loved most forms of contemporary music and particularly liked the free records my status as a reviewer allowed me to accumulate.

Phil Ochs

After going through a train crash on the Texas-Louisiana border and watching the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination on TV at my parents' house in North Carolina, my first wife and I finally made it to New York City.  Our possessions included a record player and Bob Dylan's 2nd LP.  One night we listened to Dave Van Ronk and Mississippi John Hurt at the Gaslight in the Village and found ourselves afterwards in the Kettle of Fish next door where Phil Ochs was holding court and telling stories.  Jack Elliott needed a place to stay and we offered him our couch.  He left his guitar at our apartment for a week.  I wrote a series on folk music for my employer, Radio-TV Daily, and got press credentials to the 1964 Newport Folk Festival where we rubbed elbows with the leading lights. From the press section in front of the stage we saw Seeger, Dylan and Baez, and Peter, Paul & Mary up close and personal (it was the year before Dylan went electric and everyone was still friends). One night at our friend Alicia's apartment we watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.  Seeing "Hard Days Night" soon after, it was obvious that the musical world was changing.  In high school I'd had a pen pal in Scotland who'd sent me tapes of "The Goon Show."  In many respects, the Beatles were the Goons put to music (Monty Python is the end result of the Goons).

Donovan

The following year, in search of adventure, we moved to London where I persuaded the journalist's union to give me a work permit to write for TV World, the program guide for commercial TV in the Midlands around Birmingham (but published from London offices).  I wrote about American TV shows syndicated in England, like "The Fugitive,"  and also covered the music scene with another journalist. At the taping of one show, I met Donovan who had been hired to write an original song each week about the hit parade even though he'd not yet released his own record.  I thought he was trying to imitate Dylan too closely. Written on his guitar was "This Machine Kills."  I pointed out that Woody Guthrie's guitar had "This Machine Kills Fascists" on it.  Donovan told me he thought there were no more fascists.  I wrote a short piece about him in my magazine and invited him to dinner at our apartment near the Portobello Road where we talked about folk music and the story I was writing about Rambling Jack Elliott for Sing Out! in the states.

Jack Elliott and Derroll Adams

Jack rambled to England in the 1950's and invited his friend, banjo player Derroll Adams, to join him.  They busked around the continent for food money and recorded a couple of now classic albums.  When Jack returned home, Derroll stayed on and became a legend.  My wife was pregnant with our first child when we crossed the channel and we eventually tracked him down at the Welkum Cafe off the main square in Brussels.  The writer of "Portland Town" (copyright stolen by John Stewart when he was with the Kingston Trio, who then sold it -- he told me -- to a mafia music publishing company) Derroll spoke and sang in a soft voice surrounded by admirers.  We strolled in a group around the city to different bars and several performed for drinks.  Not long after we returned to London, Derroll showed up on our doorstep, hungover and destitute.  He lived with us for a period of time and we tried to help him get back on his feet.  Alcoholism was his Achilles' heel.  He got together with Donovan and they can be seen in one scene of Dylan's film "Don't Look Back."  Derroll was drunk.  Before he returned to Belgium, I wrote about his life for Sing Out!  After meeting his wife Danny and settling down in Antwerp, Derroll straightened out his life and was highly acclaimed for his influence and inspiration by musicians everywhere before his death in 2000.

Colin Wilkie and Shirley Hart

The British folk scene in the mid-1960's was booming, with clubs, usually connected with pubs, on every corner.  Paul Simon, on the verge of success with his recording partner, performed solo at the Troubadour in Earl's Court.  We became friends with Colin Wilkie and Shirley Hart, a popular folk team and they introduced us to their crowd, including Alex Campbell from Scotland, and Guy and Candy Carawan from Georgia.  Through Derroll I met the Pretty Things as well as Alexis Korner who was an influence on the Rolling Stones. Other friends included an Australian duo, Lyn and Graham McCarthy, who had recorded several LPs. Folk singers from America came over to appear on TV and I interviewed Buffy Sainte-Marie, Carolyn Hester and Julie Felix, among others.  Weston Gavin, who'd sung with Woody and with Derroll in Topanga Canyon in the 1950's (his name before Subud was Jimmy Gavin), became a close friend.  He had a bit role as a villain in the first Superman movie.  I wrote about folk music for English publications.  Attending rehearsals for music TV shows, I got to listen to the Byrds and Sonny and Cher who had taken London by storm, somewhat reversing the influence of the British invasion of the U.S. But one day I wandered into an art gallery (owned by Marianne Faithful's husband, the exhibit where John met Yoko) and saw a copy of the Los Angeles Free Press and learned about the hippie revolution in California.  A few months later we returned to the U.S. with our newborn son.

I imagined a job in the movie business but I ended up in public relations.  The first firm had an office on the Sunset Strip at the same time as the riots, sung about by the Buffalo Springfield in "For What It's Worth," were taking place.  With one child and another on the way, I felt on the other side of the generation divide from the hippies whose presence was growing stronger every day.  I wore a tie and made up words to put in the mouths of our celebrity clients.  Because I had lived in Pasadena, I was given the Art Museum as an account and told to provide a Hollywood gloss for the opening of a show by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.  The firm had the bright idea of unveiling a billboard for TV cameras on La Cienega's art gallery row which I had to oversee.  Roy and his manager Leo Castelli were gracious but I felt mortified.  Not long after I quit the PR company with a dramatic "fuck you" letter and went up to the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco to spend time with the hippies.

Fatherhood kept me from running off permanently, and I resumed my job as a reporter and music columnist at the Pasadena Star-News.  I covered acts at the Ice House and reviewed shows at a converted ice rink featuring groups like Strawberry Alarm Clock and Alice Cooper.  The Grateful Dead played the Civic Auditorium and marijuana joints flew through the air; it seemed like they only played one long song. The studios of KPPC, one of the pioneering FM stations, was in the basement of a church next door to the newspaper and I interviewed musicians that visited the radio station.  One day I had an appointment with the British group Ten Years After.  But they came instead to the editorial room, leader Alvin Lee and his British band along with a couple of scantily clad groupies.  We huddled in a corner of the City Room but all activity around us stopped, the normally noisy typewriters silent.  The press liaison for a festival at Woodstock called one day and tried to cajole me into coming east for what she said would be a memorable event.  I laughingly declined and will eternally regret missing that defining moment of my generation.  After writing about a forgettable British group with a record on Atlantic Records, I got a call from the company's head of publicity in New York.  Would I be interested in a job as Atlantic's west coast publicity officer?  It was the last month of 1969 and my life was about to change.

Peter Wolf of J. Geils Band greets me and my friends

A life in (and mostly out of) Music

"I could have been a contender.  I could have been somebody." 

--Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" lamenting his failed boxing career.

I fell in love with the clarinet when I was 10 and saw one played by a boy who lived up our street in Greensboro, North Carolina. The following year we moved to the small town of Lenoir in the foothills of Appalachia where the high school marching band had won a state championship.  I was in fifth grade at the elementary school where the music department was the farm team, and interested students were given free instruments.  I picked the clarinet and became a student of George Kirsten, the brother of operatic soprano Dorothy Kirsten who was world famous in the 1940's and 1950's.

Kirsten loved music and gave me a firm foundation which I took to Atlanta where I joined the marching band at Henry Grady High School.  The school's colors were red and grey and the band's uniforms were spectacular.  I particularly remember the white buck shoes which were awesome.  Learning to read music attached to the clarinet while performing intricate marching moves was a bit of a challenge, but I looked forward to the bus trips to away games.  Years later when I worked for MCA Records I went to a club opposite the field where the band practiced to hear one of Al Kooper's southern discoveries (the other was Lynyrd Skynyrd).

I had my first glimpse of fame in Atlanta when Johnny Ray, famous for his passionate songs about crying, came to perform at the Fox Theater, a large hall known for the stars and clouds that moved across the ceiling.  I went to see him on my own, an independent 12 year old.  Inspired by such diverse influences as Kay Starr and LaVern Baker, Ray moved his fans like Sinatra before him and Elvis after.   His first big hit in 1951 was "The Little White Cloud That Cried,"  and he was probably touring after his first LP when I saw him. Ray has been viewed as a possible bridge between late 40's pop and rock and roll.  Somehow I ended up backstage after the show and I remember seeing an adoring woman remove one of Ray's cigarette butts from an ash tray and wrap it in her handkerchief for a souvenir.  Ray, who was mostly deaf and wore hearing aids, was not exactly a matinee idol.

In Southern California where we moved next, there was no marching band but I played in the junior high school orchestra where I studied theory and harmony.  I soon met a drummer who was organizing a dixieland band.  We met regularly at his house and were taught the ropes by a music veteran paid for his efforts (it must have seemed like a real come-down to him).  We debuted at the Youth House and played a series of dances over the summer to some acclaim.  My father, who'd played the drums in his 20's, used to stand at the back of the hall to listen (I only learned this many years later).  Sadly, there were no groupies at this venue so I remained a virgin well into my music years.

For my 14th birthday in 1953, I was given an RCA Victor 45rpm player and my next door neighbor gifted me with "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley.  Friends introduced me to rhythm and blues and I listened to Huggie Boy and Hunter Hancock's late-night shows in bed on my transistor radio (the double-meaning lyrics were verboten during daylight hours). I added "Gee" by the Crows and "Earth Angel" by the Penguins to my growing record collection.  My first job was sweeping the floor at a local record store and I got to know the stock, particular the jazz LPs (then mostly 10-inch) like Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic series.

At John Muir High School in Altadena, I joined the marching band but my heart was no longer in martial music.  Another drummer, this one from the tony suburb of San Marino, invited me to join his band, and he got us a few gigs at college fraternity parties.  At one we shared the bill with a comedy duo called the Smothers Brothers.  In order to get to the dates he arranged, I had to sneak away from the band after the halftime show.  Eventually I was caught and received a grade of F in band, the only class I ever failed.

At some point I acquired an alto sax and tried my best to play speedy bebop jazz solos.  But I was no Charlie Parker just as my clarinet playing fell far short of Benny Goodman's standard.  Still, I put together another combo and we won a Battle of the Bands contest at my high school.  the master of ceremonies was John Tynan, west coast editor of Downbeat magazine.  Coming in second was a group that included the 17-year-old vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson who went on to fame and fortune beyond my wildest dreams.  If truth be told, Bobby's group was much better than mine and only lost because there were more white parents clapping in the audience than black ones.  A few years later, someone I knew burned down a garage containing his vibes and Corvette because he was dating a white girl.

The prize for winning the contest was several appearances on a radio show for teens that had been started by two high school teachers.  Soon I was reviewing records with a soon-to-be Rose Queen, giving them a "hit" or a "miss" like the popular Jukebox Jury TV show.  When the teachers started The Teen Scene, a weekend page in the Pasadena Star-News, I wrote a record review column called "Tracks on the Wax" and cultivated industry contacts who would send me free records. My mentor, a seasoned reporter who reviewed jazz, told me he had a collection of over 1,000 LPs, none of them paid for.  The humor column in the teen section was written by David Felton who later covered the Manson trial for Rolling Stone and was a founder of MTV. On the radio I interviewed musicians like Bud Shank and Red Norvo and in the paper I ran columns from interviews with the Kingston Trio and Nat King Cole.  Performing began to take a back seat to writing.

The newspaper reporter and I started a jazz club that met Sunday afternoons at Zucca's Cottage in Pasadena when underage kids could attend.  In addition to Shank and Norvo, I recall seeing Chico Hamilton there.  The reporter had a late night show on the all-jazz radio station KNOB in Long Beach and one night I accompanied him in his convertible with the top down.  On the seat was a book he had just bought called "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.  When my family went to visit my uncle up north in Tiburon, one evening we drove down Grant Street in San Francisco past Coexistence Bagel Shop and the infamous club with the swing in the window.  My mother kept the doors locked and the windows shut for fear beatniks might run into the street and attack our car.

I tried to see as much live music as possible for someone not yet old enough to drive.  Sitting in the last row of the last balcony at the Shrine Auditorium, I saw Ella Fitzgerald, lit only by a candle, sing "A Foggy Day."  Older friends took me to Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse down in Hermosa Beach which held Sunday jam sessions, and I went to clubs in Hollywood to hear Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton and the Jazz Messengers, all before I was 16.  I also went to rhythm and blues shows at the Shrine where I saw a young B.B. King while outside the hall customized cars cruised the sidewalks.

During my first week at Pasadena City College, I got drunk at a fraternity rush party and passed out at the wheel of my car on the way home while negotiating a turn.  I drove into a candy store and broke my right femur.  The result of this mishap was two months in traction at the hospital (back before medical costs hit the roof) and four months in a half-body cast in bed at home.  My world changed forever.  I read voluminously and wrote letters to friends on a portable Smith-Corona.  I collected college catalogues (which used to be free) and travel brochures, and at some point decided to sell my clarinet and alto sax.  Playing in Kenton's band no longer seemed a realistically goal (though my friend Keith joined his trumpet section a few years later).  I decided I would become a writer, and among the topics I would write on was music.

Recovering from the accident, I reenrolled at PCC and quickly became an A student.  In a music appreciation class I remember the teacher played Bach's "Air for G String" and wept while the class listened.  She instantly converted me to a love of classical music.  It took a little longer to appreciate hillbilly and Hawaiian music, among the many genres out there.  This was the era of the folk music revival, and at Berkeley I started a folk club with guitar teacher Barry Olivier while working on the Daily Cal.  Olivier opened a nightclub in Berkeley where I saw Jesse Fuller, the one-man band.  I wasn't ready to study however and dropped out of school, twice in fact, and got a job as a copy boy at the Star-News, working my way up to city desk reporter and feature writer. I wrote a record column called "Jazz, and All That" to fuel my record collection, and covered acts like Hoyt Axton and Barry McGuire who played the Ice House in Pasadena that had just opened (and is still going nearly 50 years later).  I promoted a concert with Mike Seeger, brother of Pete, and met Jim Kweskin, later of the jug band, and David Lindley, just getting his start with the Mad Mountain Ramblers, at my roommate's coffee house, the Cat's Pajamas in Arcadia.  Later Lindley would form the band Kaleidoscope with some of my neighbors in Sierra Madre Canyon.

Looking back on this period, I often wonder if I might have succeeded as a performer had I tried harder, practiced more diligently, and cultivated ambition.  Music was my second career goal (the first had been acting, pretty much a non starter), and writing was the third.  What if I had not sold my clarinet and alto sax?  What if I had applied myself to writing songs?  All of the great names in popular music today were cutting their teeth during these early years as musical styles in America changed dramatically (from Lawrence Welk and Perry Como to the Grateful Dead and Lady Gaga).  So while I gave up any dreams of performing, I turned my attention to listening to and writing about music, but always as an outsider.

In my next blog post, I'll tell the story of my encounter with folk music in New York City and London where I lived for two years, and the glory days of the 1970's when I worked as a PR man for several West Coast record companies and went on the road with Led Zeppelin, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, The Who and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.