Too Many Mornings

Bobby Jameson 

Rest In Peace

I first heard Bobby Jameson when I picked up an LP about 15 years ago called Songs Of Protest And Anti-Protest by Chris Lucey. I knew nothing of Lucey, but was intrigued by the title and cover-photo, which oddly enough is a live shot of Brian Jones. Songs is an excellent dark folk album — with hints of Latin jazz and the occasional out-right pop-psych number like "Girl From Vernon Mountain" — at times reminiscent of Arthur Lee and Love, as well as Phil Ochs, Fred Neil and other tragi-folk go-nowheres. It turned out that Lucey was in reality the singer/songwriter Bobby Jameson who put out a string of fantastic 45s, highlights being his 1963 debut "Let's Surf" (released under the name Bobby James), "I Wanna Love You" b/w "I'm So Lonely" (ethereal Buddy Holly-eque weep), the classic "All I Want Is My Baby" (co-penned with Andrew Loog Oldham and Keith Richards, and rumored to feature Jimmy Page on lead guitar), "Reconsider Baby" (arranged and produced by Frank Zappa), and the absolutely scorching two-sider "Vietnam" b/w "Metropolitan Man," which Jameson recorded with garage-punk legends The Leaves.

Jameson also released two other LPs, and recorded intermitdedly throughout the '70s and '80s, but drug and criminal problems — as well as thieving record labels — kept him from achieving any semblance of success (he was even homeless at one point). Seek out any of his songs on YouTube, and you'll see how history overlooked a real gem of a songwriter/performer.

Quote Of The Week

"Because we don't know, do we? Everyone knows… How what happens the way it does? What underlies the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs? Nobody knows. 'Everyone knows' is the invocation of the cliché and the beginning of the banalization of experience, and it's the solemnity and the sense of authority that people have in voicing the cliché that's so insufferable. What we know is that, in an unclichéd way, nobody knows anything. You can't know anything. The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning? All the we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing."

Partin' Time

Riley "Blues Boy" King

Rest In Peace

I only saw B.B. King live one time, back in 1990, but I remember it perfectly. Before the show me and my boys were drinking at the old P&G bar on 74th Street watching news footage about the Gulf War, which was not exactly a great warm-up for the night ahead. At the show, B.B. commanded the stage like no one else I had seen — it felt intimate despite being in a massive theater — transporting the entire crowd to a loving place.

B.B. King was an unparalleled performer, a fantastic guitar player, and true American icon. He also seemed like a really good person. His loss is hard to calculate, but the thrill is surely gone now.

Quote Of The Week

"The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus Paine was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First' — the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has — from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness."

No Justice

Photograph by Ron Frehm

Quote Of The Week

"I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy—who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity—only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart—does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles."

Like Song Birds On The Wing

Guy Carawan

Rest In Peace

"Heed the call, Americans all, side by equal side.

Sisters, sit in dignity, brothers sit in pride."

Among many other things, Carawan founded the Highlander Research And Education Center, marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Selma, and is responsible for introducing "We Shall Overcome" to the Civil Rights movement back in 1960.