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The Steve Miller Band

2 Jul

Steve Miller 2003 #1 

I was sitting in my archive room lined with shelves containing boxes of slides, negatives, prints, and digital images from my entire 67 year life. On July 4th I’ll be 68 years old and currently spend more time reminiscing past events than I do participating in new ones. I’ve spent a lifetime collecting images taken of me and my family as well as ones that I took of them along with everything that took place around me. So if I don’t make use of them at this stage in my life, I never will. This blog is dedicated to Jesus Music and the 2 volume book that I wrote about it, which Praeger published in 2012, but at the same time, I write about secular issues and artists that I classify as spiritually important for one reason or another.

Steve Miller 2003 #4

Today, I want to talk about Steve Miller, the baby boomer musician that is a seminal baby boomer rock star. He was one of those guys who happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right interests and mentors to nourish him. By the time that the San Francisco sound, via Haight Ashbury through the Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms along with the Monterey Pop Festival, made headlines across the country he had his foot in the door. Miller grew up in Wisconsin where he was exposed to Chicago blues and the guitar, before his doctor father moved the family to Texas. Les Paul, the guitar genius, happened to be a family friend who gave Steve lessons.

Steve Miller 2006 #1

Steve met Boz Skaggs in Texas and they ended up forming the Steve Miller Band that played in San Francisco with Miller, Skaggs, Jim Peterman, Lonnie Turner, and Tim Davis. They gigged for the hippie crowd and ended up backing up Chuck Berry at the Filmore, after Jefferson Airplane, the headlining group failed to cut the mustard, according to Miller. The Steve Miller Band got a recording contract and began to produce albums. The first was “Children of the Future,” which was a spacey psychedelic album that could accompany an acid trip. The next album was “Sailor,” which was a harder rocking album that included the radio hit, “Living In The USA,” along with some psychedelic numbers. If you want to hear a concert from this era in 1968 click on this link:
https://youtu.be/YqmOkKdW-rc (1968)

Steve Miller 2006 #3

By 1969 I was out of the army, after being drafted in 1966, and was attending college on the GI Bill. Since college was the breeding ground for all aspects of the counter culture, I had my opportunity to decide which faction to join. The SDS (Students For A Democratic Society) were declared illegal and outlaws, so I never considered them, but instead fell in with all the other returning veterans, that were embracing the hippie movement. Ironically the hippies were also involved in illegal activity, but it wasn’t destructive, but simply mind expanding. Easter weekend 1969 I was off from school so I drove to Chicago, which was under 300 miles and took less than 5 hour to drive to, on the I-94 expressway. When I arrived, I stayed with my army buddy, Bob Duran, who was discharged a month before me.

Steve Miller 2006 #4

On Saturday night we smoked some weed that I brought with me and hit the blues clubs in the Chicago Old Town area. In the window of one of the clubs was an advertisement for a concert at the Aragon Ballroom on Easter Sunday afternoon with the “Iron Butterfly” headlining and the “Steve Miller Band” opening. We talked about it and decided to check it out the next day. I had already seen the Iron Butterfly at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, around Halloween 1968 and was somewhat impressed by their performance.

On Easter Sunday, we headed to the Aragon Ballroom, with Bob’s friend driving. When we got there, it was an hour before the concert started, but there were tickets available and it was first come first serve concert seating. We got in line, behind about 30 or 40 people and while we waited I pulled out 2 capsules of mescaline that I told my friend Bob that I had. He already told me that he would take a hit and his friend would be our chaperone and designated driver. So we each took one and swallowed it, using a stick of chewing gum to provide the saliva. Normally, it would take about 90 minutes for the peak of the trip to happen, but I knew that we would be seated in about 45 minutes.

After we were seated and got situated there was an announcement that there had been a bomb threat and everyone was to immediately evacuate the building. People immediately got up and began to quickly walk to the exit. Bob, his friend, and I sat there and since 2 of us were starting to get stoned, we weren’t that concerned and besides we’d seen live artillery fire in the army and weren’t that worried about some amateurs, who were probably bluffing. So when everyone left, we stayed and moved to the first row, center stage. After about 10 minutes everyone returned and sat in all the seats around us, but nobody ever said anything to us about where we were sitting.

Steve Miller 2012 #3

By the time that the Steve Miller Band began their performance, we were peaking on the mescaline and their performance was augmented a thousand fold. There were only 3 members of the band at this time, who were Lonnie Turner on bass guitar and Tim Davis on drums. Their performance was tight and their musicianship was phenomenal. The power trio was popular at the time with bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience topping the charts. After we were completely blown away by their hour long performance comprised of songs that I had never heard before, other than “Living In The USA,” the Iron Butterfly took the stage.

Steve Miller 2012 #4

The Iron Butterfly was good, but I enjoyed the Steve Miller Band more and since we attended a matinee, there was going to be an evening performance also, which immediately followed. Almost everyone got up and left after the Butterfly played their 17 minute long hit, “In A Gadda Da Vida.” Their act had a gimmick, which was an early pyrotechnic grand finale at the conclusion of their signature song. the front of the stage burst into flames as they concluded their set and we sat in our seats, still numb from the mescaline.

Nobody asked us to leave, so we sat in our front row center stage seats, as a new crowd began to fill the chairs that were set up in front of the stage on the dance floor. We were blown away a second time by the Steve Miller Band’s incredible performance. Steve talked about their upcoming new album called “Brave New World,” and played songs from it,. The ones that I remembered at the time were “Kow Kow,” “Seasons,” “Mercury Blues,” and “Space Cowboy.” When I got back to Detroit, I went to the record store and bought all 3 of Steve Miller’s albums.

Over the next 3 years I saw the Steve Miller Band perform another half dozen times at various venues around the Detroit area including Meadowbrook, the Eastown theater and University of Michigan. Then in 1971 I moved to Los Angeles, California from Michigan and became a born again hippie Jesus freak and broke all ties with secular music, which I now viewed as a tool of Satan. I destroyed or sold all my secular albums. Ironically, the last secular concert ticket that I purchased before destroying my collection of 300 record albums, was for Steve Miller at the Palladium on Sunset in Los Angeles.

Steve Miller 2012 #7

The night of the concert, my wife Kathy and I went to the Palladium, but were convicted, so we sold the tickets to someone for half price. When the guy we sold the tickets to heard the reason, he tried to give me back the tickets and told me that I was being too extreme in my Christian belief. I stuck to my views and after we left, we attended a Friday night home church that I knew of, run by some Jesus freaks. For the next 15 years I only purchased and listened to Christian rock music and sometimes even questioned that.

Steve Miller 2012 #8  Steve Miller 2012 #9

Over the years, I would hear new Steve Miller songs, playing over PA systems, that I immediately recognized, even though I never heard them before. By the late 1980s, I was living in Salem, Oregon and my views on music had mellowed enough to allow me to attend an occasional secular concert. In 1988 Steve Miller came to the newly constructed L. B. Day Amphitheater in Salem, so I attended with a friend that I worked with. After that I took my oldest son, Michael to see Miller at Portland State University In 1990. By the mid 1990s, ironically I was a freelance rock and roll photographer photographing everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Rolling Stones for Ticketmaster and a variety of music magazines. I covered many Steve Miller concerts and reviewed them for a variety of publications, including Blues Revue and Blueswax during its publication life.

All in all, I’ve probably seen more live Steve Miller performances than any other artist, and have turned many other people on to him. He isn’t a gospel or Jesus music artist, but he has done as much to propagate joy and love as that genre has. If you want to see some performances of the band click on the links below. The photos were taken at 3 different concerts. The first was in 2003, at the Waterfront Blues Festival, in Portland, Oregon. The second was in 2006, at L. B. Day Amphitheater, that I took my oldest daughter Rachel too, who later fronted a blues band.

The third was the last time that I saw the Steve Miller Band, in 2012 when I covered the Portland, Oregon Waterfront Blues Festival for Blues Revue and Blueswax. Coincidentally, my army buddy Bob Duranl who moved from Chicago to Post Falls, Idaho, was visiting and attended the Blues Festival with me. That year Steve was wearing a white shirt and the guy that we were standing next to was passing around joints of marijuana that were as large as cigars, as soon as the concert began. I became so intoxicated by the fumes that I flashed back to that first concert back in 1969, and I began to hallucinate, as tears rolled down my cheeks and I had to dry my eyes so I could focus my camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfsxwUBQfz8 (1989)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkVjAEHcsvs (1974)

How The Jesus Movement Really Began

14 Apr

Bob Gersztyn 1978 #2

Way back in 1978, when I was the associate pastor at the Highland Park Neighborhood Church in the North East Los Angeles barrio known as Highland Park. It was home for the Avenues Mexican gang that sprayed graffiti in the alley behind the church, but we also had Jesus music concerts in the pioneer Agape Inn coffee house. Then in 2008, when I was still a contributing editor and staff photographer for “The World’s Only Christian Satire Magazine,” the legendary “Wittenburg Door,” I began writing a history of “Contemporary Christian Music,” for Praeger publishing Co. This is how it developed as I wrote and communicated with my editors, until 2011 when I completed it.

Table of Contents:

Preface: What Is CCM? An essay that explains what CCM is to readers who may not be familiar with the genre, and brings them up to speed.

Part I: Prelude – Setting the Stage.

Chapter One: The Baby Boomers 1946-1964. This chapter sets the stage for the birth of the counterculture, and the coming of age of the first batch of Baby Boomers, as they graduate from High School. It covers all the significant cultural, political, religious, and social issues that made up this time period.

The first of the “Baby Boomers” were born in 1946 to returning World War II veterans. Those same soldiers fought Germany and Italy in Europe and Africa, along with the Japanese in the South Pacific. Harry Truman, the man who okayed the nuclear annihilation of two cities in Japan, was president. The returning veterans were happy to find work, after living through the joblessness of the “Great Depression” prior to going off to the work of war. From the auto plants of Detroit, to the steel mills of Pennsylvania and the oil wells of California, Oklahoma and Texas, there was plenty of work. For those that preferred a pastoral setting to that of a bustling city, there was an infinity of fertile farmland in between the coasts to feed and employ the growing population.

The first memories of that early batch of “Baby Boomers” were formed through the lens of a new technological influence, the television set. President Dwight D. Eisenhower expounded on the Communist threat and the American Dream, while Walt Disney marketed everything from Davey Crockett to Mickey Mouse and taught the young sponges to dream. Most everyone had Sunday off from work, and all but drug stores, movie theaters, bars and businesses related to the recreational industry were closed. For most citizens of the USA, Sunday mornings were either spent in church or watching religious programs on television.

UFO sightings, beginning in 1947, were part of early childhood memories. From flying saucer crashes in Roswell, New Mexico, to floating lights in Adrian, Michigan, earth’s attention was drawn to the sky and the possibility of extra terrestrial life. Movies like “This Island Earth,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” and “I Married a Monster From Outer Space,” and authors like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlien speculated the ramifications of human encounters with alien life forms and space travel.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD), was first discovered in 1938, at the beginning of WWII, by Albert Hoffman, a chemist, working for Sandoz Laboratories, in Basel, Switzerland, on a cure for morning sickness during pregnancy. The psychedelic mind expanding entheogen was used by the US government in mind control experiments under the CIA’s MKULTRA program, during the 1950s and into the 1960s. The drug played an important part in shaping the Boomers’ vision of reality and spirituality. Especially after receiving positive endorsements by recognizable members of society, like the actor, Cary Grant and the publisher of Time/Life, Henry Luce.

Pope Pius XII led the Catholics while Billy Graham donned the Protestant leadership mantle and ultimately became the Protestant counterpart to the pope. War broke out again, this time in Korea, with our new enemy, the atheist Communists, who now controlled North Korea with the help of the Chinese hoards, led by Mao Zedong. The hot war in Korea ended, but the cold war with Communism continued and Nikita Khrushchev led the USA’s second arch enemy, the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” (USSR), and pounded his shoe on a desk in the United Nations assembly.

A new musical form was born in the early 1950’s known as rock & roll. Pioneers like Ike Turner and the “Kings of Rhythm” along with Bill Haley and the “Comets” recorded the first 45 RPM records of the new genre. The sound was derived from the merger of White country and bluegrass music with Black blues, gospel and R&B. It was hard to distinguish whether the performers were Black or White by just listening to the recordings. Some of the early Black pioneers were Little Richard Penniman, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Bo Diddley.
Bo Diddley (Ellas Bates), like so many of the pioneers of rock & roll received his early musical training in the church. When Bates was asked about why so many of the early rock & roll artists were involved in churches when they were younger, he responded with “That’s where we learned how to do something…but I wasn’t playing no Rock ’n’ Roll in it then. My pastor of my church was Reverend Smith and the man who took care of the music part was the professor O. W. Frederick, Oscar Frederick, and he taught me violin, so I played classical music for twelve years. Nobody influenced me to play classical music. I saw a dude with a violin and a stick and that looked really cool, you know? And my church got together and took up twenty-nine dollars and that’s what it cost back then. Twenty-nine bucks was a lot of money back then. You could get a sack of potatoes for like damn near ten cents.”

Their White counter parts, like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and Dion Dimucci came out of their respective churches. Dimucci was one of the early White rock & roll stars. He was raised a Roman Catholic, in New York city, where he formed Dion and the Belmonts, after Belmont Avenue, in the Bronx. The style of rock that they performed was doo wop, the vocal harmonizing style of Black music that originated in Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia , and it was 1957. He narrowly avoided death, by passing up on the opportunity to fly with Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper on their ride to eternity in 1959. In a 2006 interview about the different messages of Blues and Gospel music Dion explained –

“A lot of Blues music seems like it’s moving away from God, or the center, and Gospel music is moving towards it. It’s embracing a higher reality. When you look a little closer, the way that I define it or explain it is that the Blues is the naked cry of the human heart, apart from God. People are searching for union with God; they’re searching to be home. There’s something in people that seeks this union with their creator. Why am I here? Where am I going? What’s it all about? Who am I? All this kind of stuff, but the Blues is a beautiful art form. It’s incredible that you could express such a wide range of feelings. You could use it to sell hamburgers or cars, or to cry out in sorrow, or joy. You could express yourself totally within the Blues. So there’s some kind of connection, but if you ask me exactly what it is, I think that it all comes out of the same place, so to speak.” (1), (2).

Christian recordings were a marginal esoteric branch of the music industry produced by Christian record companies, like Benson Records. In 1951, Jarrel McCracken, a graduate of Baylor university, in Waco, Texas began what was to become an important record label for the Jesus movements music – “Word”. Southern Gospel was the dominant form of Protestant Christian music at the time, in White society. Christian music was just as segregated as the rest of society, so Black gospel had its own record label, “Vocalion”. Most Christian music was marketed by Christian bookstores. In 1950 the Christian Booksellers Association was born, and included about 2 dozen stores.

Racism was the law of the land, in the form of Jim Crow, and enforced segregation. It existed throughout the country in one form or another. Some states, like Oregon, simply made it against the law for Negroes to move there, while others like Michigan, simply designated what areas they could live in, or gather. The Southern states, like Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi had perfected segregation, and had separate facilities, including restaurants, bathrooms and drinking fountains for Negroes. The mixing of the races in the music bled over into other areas. After education was integrated, in 1954, through Brown vs. the Board of Education, in Kansas, the floodgates were opened.

Elvis Presley was the breakthrough act for rock & roll to hit the mainstream. After being televised on some of the top TV programs in the mid 1950s, including “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” “The Milton Berle Show,” “The Steve Allen Show,” and finally, “The Ed Sullivan Show,” he became the most popular entertainer in the USA and ultimately the “free world”, during the last half of the 20th century. Interestingly, Presley was a frustrated Southern Gospel singer, who signed with Sam Phillips and Sun Records, after failing an audition with Jim Hamill and Cecil Blackwood’s Southern Gospel group, “The Songfellows”. At one point Presley’s popularity even eclipsed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s National Communist witch hunt headlines.

The fear of communism and nuclear war were further exacerbated by films like “Invasion USA” and “On the Beach”. One of the pop culture trends in the 1950s was to build a bomb shelter for the family. Using the same technology that launched destructive nuclear warheads, the USA and USSR began a space race, in 1957, after the Russians launched Sputnik 1. Soon the space race escalated from launching dogs and monkeys to humans, into orbit around the earth.

Beatniks and the “Beat Generation”, in the 1950s preceded the counter culture “Hippies” of the “Baby Boomers’ ” 1960s revolution. Two of the leading literary icons of the “Beats” were poet Alan Ginsberg, the author of “Howl,” an epic poem about man’s disconnection with his environment, and his novelist compatriot, Jack Kerouac, author of “On the Road”, and other equally hip tomes. They wrote about the rift between the human soul and the industrialized world that the 20th century had produced.

Preceding the Beats were the Industrialized Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies. They were union activists, who used literature, folk music and blues to carry their message. One of the martyrs of the movement was an immigrant named Joe Hill, who was executed in 1915. Singer songwriter, activists like Woodie Guthrie sang about Joe, and the plight of the working man. Even authors like James Jones wrote about economic injustice forcing the poor to join the military as their only option to poverty, in his novel “From Here To Eternity”.

By the 1950s the big three auto corporations, GM, Ford, and Chrysler, along with major supporting industries from the rail road and trucking to steel production, were unionized. This resulted in wildcat strikes that sometimes turned violent, as the unions demanded better wages and working conditions. As wages got better, the rural Southerners, both Black and White began immigrating to the larger industrial cities, like Detroit and Cleveland, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Although the cities were segregated, there was a mixing of the races at the workplace, and sometimes in recreation.

The Civil Rights movement began with the passing of “Brown vs. the Board of Education” by the Supreme Court, May 17, 1954, calling for the desegregation of public education. In 1955 Rosa Parks started the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, that brought Rev. Martin Luther King to his leadership role, as co-founder of “The Southern Christian Leadership Conference”. In 1960 Ella Baker founded “The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee” (SNCC), which was the beginning of an expression of what became known as “Black Power”.

American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark in Philadelphia, via the television set, became the first national TV show to showcase rock and roll and its culture, in 1957. By the end of the 1950s, Elvis was drafted into the army, and a tragic air plane crash claimed the lives of three early rock stars, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper. In 1960, Chubby Checker released a cover of Clyde McPhatter’s song called the twist, which initiated a dancing craze, that got unhip white people shimmying and shaking on the dance floor. It was even reported that President Kennedy did the twist in the White House. One of the major unexpected results of this new musical phenomenon was the integration of American society.

If rock & roll was the soul of integration then folk music was the mind. By the early 1960s the Black rock & rollers were marginalized, and top 40 AM radio stations played pop rock that had lost its earlier edge. Fabian and Franky Avalon replaced Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. As rock & roll was on the descent in the late 1950s, folk music began its ascent. Folk music was inspired by Woody Guthrie and his student, Pete Seeger, whose career was put on a temporary hiatus when he was blackballed by Senator Joseph McCarthy as a Communist.

The Kingston Trio was the first major act of the new folk genre, to receive national recognition and air play. After them came the Limelighters, The Highwaymen, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary. The music was acoustic in instrumentation, and used guitars, mandolins and banjos. It employed a wide range of vocal styles, both solo and in harmony, and its lyrics dealt with gritty subject matter. Topics like adultery, exploitation, murder, robbery, swindles, extraordinary exploits, and broken promises told stories that captivated its audience.

Peter, Paul and Mary were made up of Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers. Their debut album in 1962 was inspired by the same social, cultural, and political tradition that Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger followed. Their first hit off the album was “If I Had a Hammer”, by “Weavers” Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, who first recorded it in 1949. They represented the musical conscience of the nation, supporting the struggling civil rights movement and the anti-Viet Nam war faction.

At one point folk music so upset the status quo, that the city of New York banned folk singing in Washington square, which precipitated a protest that successfully, reversed the decision. Popular folk singers of the day participated in the civil rights movement, and sang about it’s struggles. The biggest folk ensemble of the 1960’s, the “New Christy Minstrels” performed at the White house for president Lyndon Baines Johnson.

This thought provoking music reflected the mood of the country, as it continued in the Ideological war with the Soviet’s. There were multiple Cold War confrontations with Communism, in the early 1960’s, from the Marxist conversion of Cuba, the crisis with Russia, over nuclear warheads in Cuba, the “Bay of Pigs” fiasco, the invasion of the Dominican Republic and US military involvement in Viet Nam.

Barry McGuire began a solo career in 1960 after he purchased his first guitar. He spent some time in the Navy, and got into Woodie Guthrie, Ledbelly and Pete Seeger until he started gigging at Santa Monica bars, until Peggy Lee discovered him, and got him a recording contract. In 1962 he joined Art Podell’s group, the “New Christy Minstrels” as the lead singer. He wrote and sang lead on the group’s biggest hit 45 rpm single, “Green, Green”, and eventually went solo again, which produced the biggest his of his career, when he recorded P. F. Sloan’s song “Eve of Destruction, in 1965.

Black music groups began receiving more air play, on White radio, after groups like the Mills Brothers and the Inkspots broke the ice, back in the 1930s. By the 1950’s when Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry came on the scene, the White market was being integrated by Black music. Columbia records producer, John Hammond signed a Black Gospel singer from Detroit, Michigan, named Aretha Franklin in 1960. At the same time Detroit produced the most important Black record label of the 1960s, when Berry Gordy established “Motown” records with Smokey Robinson singing “You Got To Shop Around“.

Sam Cooke was 1 of 7 children born to a Baptist minister in Clarksdale, Mississippi. After the family moved to Chicago he became part of the family’s singing quartet, and by 1950, at the age of 19, joined the “Soul Stirrers”, a black gospel group. Through his success with the “Soul Stirrers”, on Specialty records, he achieved fame and fortune within the gospel community. He signed as a secular artist with Keen records where he had his first hit, with “You Send Me”. He started his own record label, SAR, and finally signed with RCA, where he had a string of hits, until his death in 1964.

In an interview in 2002 Clarence Fountain, leader of the “Five Blind Boys of Alabama”, who was a contemporary of Sam Cooke, explained – “We had plenty of chances to go with rock & roll. We had plenty of chances for doing the things that all the rest of the people had done. We could have did that too, but we didn’t want to. I was in the studio with Sam Cooke when he signed his contract. The man offered me one just like he did him. But I turned it down because that ain’t what I told the Lord I wanted to do. I wanted to sing gospel.” (8)

After his discharge from the army, Elvis Presley became a movie star, only singing songs in his own films, that he starred in, with titles like “Blue Hawaii”, “Follow That Dream” and “Kid Galahad”. His impact on music now wasn’t from his style and manner of performance, but from the direction that he took. Music films, featuring artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan would soon begin to make their way to the screen, as an important way to satisfy and create fans.

The 1950s ended on a sour note, as Fidel Castro established a Marxist government in Cuba, after taking power, and became an ally of the Soviets. The next conflict with the Communists occurred when U2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers was shot down over Russian air space. Everyone was ready for a change, when a youthful looking John F. Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic president elected, and ushered in an era of optimism, along with the Peace Corps. Kennedy’s inaugural speech in January 1961 set the tone of his administration when he said – “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Mylon LeFevre was a member of his parents Southern gospel music group, “The Singing LeFevres”. “The LeFevres” were pioneers of Southern gospel music, and owned their own recording studio, as many of the early groups did. They also embraced the potential for ministry using the new medium of television. While Mylon was in the army he wrote a song titled “Without Him”, which was recorded by Elvis Presley, and over 100 other artists. (2), (3), (4) Mylon formed a secular Southern Gospel Rock group named after himself, and spread the gospel in secular venues, through his music, in the late 1960s.

The next major breakthrough that would change the social structure of country was the advent of the FDA approved birth control pill, which began the sexual revolution. Sex of course had always been popular, or there wouldn’t be a human race, but sex without the consequence of pregnancy never had been readily available before. This liberated women, as they never had been before, which in turn augmented the women’s rights movement.

The Roman Catholic Church convened Vatican II, in 1962, to discuss the birth control pill among other issues of the day. Pope John XXIII was in office at the time and at least four future popes were council members. Some of the key issues that impacted church members were, no longer requiring them to abstain from eating meat on Friday, allowing the mass to be spoken in the language used by attendees and economic justice.

In an interview in 2006, Bruce Cockburn explained the impact of Vatican II on the world in general: “I think that there is, but it’s hard to access. One of the things that happened in the 1960s was Vatican II, in which Pope John XXIII convened all the bigwigs of the Catholic church to decide what the destiny of the church should be and what role it should play in the modern world. It was decided at that time that the church would be the church of the poor. It was decided that I think because the vibe of the sixties, the kind of philosophy and energy that was flowing around. It flowed through the clerics as much as it flowed through everybody else. I mean it was just in the air. It touched everybody, whether they wore the uniform or not…of the hippie movement I mean. As a result of Vatican II the church began to teach people in Latin America to read. As a result of people in Latin America learning to read they started trying to overthrow the governments that were keeping them poor and malnourished and not getting medical attention and all sorts of stuff. Many church people became supporters of that kind of social change, and we’ve been living with the result ever since.” (6)

Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth, as the Berlin wall was erected. Freedom riders descended on the segregationist South, from Washington DC, as students begin protesting everything from nuclear testing to the escalating war in Viet Nam. The CIA conducted experiments, under the code name MK Ultra, to find out the potential of psychedelic drugs like LSD, for mind control. Ken Kesey, a Stanford graduate student in creative writing was given LSD and wrote “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

At the turn of the decades, with Elvis in the Army and rock & roll on the decline after the payola scandal ruined the career of New York DJ Alan Freed, and nearly derailed Dick Clark’s American bandstand, squeaky clean Pat Boone was the top pop star in the US. Boone was a descendent of American frontier pioneer, Daniel Boone. He began his singing career in the 1950s, when he was a college student, and recorded sanitized versions of what was then called race music. He had hits on the radio with songs like Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Fruiti.” He drew criticism from both sides, when some accused him of trying to pollute White society with Black music, while others claimed that he was exploiting Black songwriters by capitalizing on their compositions.

The human space barrier was cracked for the USA, when John Glenn orbited the earth in 1962, and the first communications satellite, “Telestar” was launched by AT&T, which producing a radio hit for the “Ventures”. “Silent Spring” one of the first books, voicing concern for the environment was published by Rachel Carson. Students begin protesting more loudly, as they supportted the civil rights movement, and began speaking with a louder voice, through the Free Speech movement in California and the forming of “Students For A Democratic Society” (SDS), in Michigan. At the same time Bob Dylan released his debut album.

Another genre of music, who’s popularity was waning in the early 1960s, was known as doo wop. Groups like “Little Anthony and the Imperials,” “The Drifters,” “Dion and the Belmonts,” and “The Coasters” were some of the top groups. The Castells, with lead singer Chuck Girard, had a couple of top 40 hits with “Sacred” and “So This Is Love”.

“I was pretty much a straight-laced young guy. I was into the music thing. I wasn’t really much of a student but I wasn’t really into religious activity or spiritual curiosity in those days. I was more into the music thing, I got bit with the music bug about junior high school years, and by my senior year in high school I had put together a little vocal group. I’m old enough to where I go back to the doo-wop days in 1961.” (7)

Soon afterwards Girard began working as a studio musician. and collaborated with Beach Boy producer, Gary Usher, and sang lead on Brian Wilson’s hit composition about a motorcycle, called “Little Honda” by the “Hondells”. Motorcycles would play an important part in the 1960s, through the “Hells Angels” motorcycle club, led by Sonny Barger president of the Oakland, California chapter.

Civil rights was the dominant issue during much of the early 1960’s, along with the escalating conflict with Viet Nam. Bob Dylan wrote and recorded “Blowing In the Wind”, which not only became a top 40 hit when Peter, Paul & Mary recorded it, but an anthem of the civil rights movement. Pop art took the stage and graphic television images of self immolating Buddhist monks in Viet Nam burnt themselves into the brains of the beholders. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were fired from Harvard, after their research with mind expanding drugs like psilocybin, mescaline and LSD got out of hand.

President Kennedy’s proposed civil rights legislation is punctuated by violence, including the death of Medgar Evers whose murder Bob Dylan wrote a song about, and four black girls that were killed in an Alabama church by a bomb blast. At the same time the UK, US, and USSR sign an above ground nuclear test ban, as women officially find out that they are discriminated against, through a commission’s finding and a US supported coup condones the murder of president Ngo Dinh Diem.

President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald, who in turn is assassinated by Jack Ruby, and Lyndon Baines Johnson is sworn in as the new president. President Johnson declares an “unconditional war on poverty”, and signs into law, the “Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Dr. Strangelove” is released and the Beatles come to America, appear on the Ed Sullivan show, while “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is number one on the radio charts.

Chapter Two: From Jesus Freaks to Jesus People (Both Secular and Christian Counter Culture). Chronicling the birth of the Hippie counter culture in Northern California and how it affected a revolution of thought among all the youth of America, through drugs, music, politics and religion. Pioneers like Chuck Girard, Phil Keagy, Mylon Lefevre, Barry McGuire, Larry Norman, and the Talbot Brothers performed music in secular venues that reflected their spiritual quests.

Part II: A Historical Overview of Contemporary Christian Music.

Chapter Three: The Birth of Jesus Music – The late 1960s to 1971. The Edwin Hawkins singers, Norman Greenbaum and “Jesus Christ Superstar” producing top 40 secular radio hits about Jesus, making Jesus cool. The birth of Christian coffee houses and night clubs, Ralph Carmichael’s Light Records, and Andrae Crouch.

Chapter Four: The Birth of Contemporary Christian Music – The early 1970s. Independent record labels, church becomes a venue (e.g. Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa) and the first Christian rock stars – Children of the Day, Love Song, Randy Matthews, Larry Norman.

Larry Norman and his contemporaries, like Mylon Lefevre, Chuck Girard, and Randy Matthews, did for the Christian Church what Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones did for secular society. They introduced their audiences to the Black influence in White music. The church was being integrated, from the inside out.

Chapter Five: The Floodgates are open 1972-1979. More Christian rock stars come on the scene – Daniel Amos, Amy Grant, Keith Green, Mustard Seed Faith, Petra, Phil Keagy, Second Chapter of Acts, Randy Stonehill, John Michael Talbot, Terry Talbot, etc., etc.

Chapter Six: Conversions and defections from secular music validate the genre – Bruce Cockburn, Richey Furray, Al Green, Barry McGuire, Van Morrison, Leon Patillo, Dan Peak, Noel Paul Stookey and Bob Dylan. The Jesus movement is buried by the Moral Majority.

Chapter Seven: The Maturation of CCM – The 1980s. Contemporary Christian Music produces its first crossover superstar – Amy Grant. The multiplication of the genres within the genre – The Alarm, The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Call, Dion Dimucci, Benny Hester, Kings X, Newsboys, Twila Paris, Undercover, U2 etc.

Chapter Eight: CCM Becomes Mainstream – The 1990s. Carmen, Steve Curtis Chapman, dc Talk, Kirk Franklin, Jars of Clay, Rich Mullins, Point of Grace, Michael W. Smith, Jaci Velasquez, delirious?, and worship music.

Chapter Nine: The Expansion of CCM – The New Millennium. The Blind Boys of Alabama, Family Force 5, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Kutless, Lifehouse, MxPx, P.O.D., Six Pence None the Richer, Switchfoot, and Third Day. CCM magazine stops hard copy publication and redefines what Contemporary Christian Music is.

Chapter Ten: Jesus Music Festivals. Just as Jesus music groups followed on the heel’s of secular rock, so did Jesus Music festivals. The ICHTUS festival in 1970 was a direct reaction to the Woodstock festival in 1969, and today there are hundreds of Christian music festivals all over the world featuring every genre and catering to every spiritual taste.

Part III: Interviews with ten CCM pioneers, legends and stars.

Chapter Eleven: Andrae Crouch.

Chapter Twelve: Chuck Girard (Love Song).

Chapter Thirteen: Randy Stonehill.

Chapter Fourteen: Marsha (Carter) Stevens-Pina (Children of the Day).

Chapter Fifteen: Pete Furhler (The Newsboys).

Chapter Sixteen: Dion Dimucci.

Chapter Seventeen: Clarence Fountain (The Blind Boys of Alabama).

Chapter Eighteen: Barry McGuire.

Chapter Nineteen: Bruce Cockburn.

Chapter Twenty: Charlie Lowell (Jars of Clay).

Amazon link for “Jesus Rocks the World: The Definitive History of Contemporary Christian Music” https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Rocks-World-volumes-Contemporary/dp/0313377707/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ESINQQLT4199&keywords=Bob+Gersztyn&qid=1636164130&sprefix=bob+gersztyn%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-1

Smashwords link to Bob Gersztyn’s Kindle electronic books: https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Bob+Gersztyn

“Blues Rock Review Link to Bob’s articles and interviews about Blues Rock. https://bluesrockreview.com/author/bobgersztyn

Link To Jesus Rock in Perfect Sound Forever. http://www.furious.com/perfect/christianrock.html

Spirit: One Of The Greatest Hippie Rock & Roll Bands of the 1960s.

5 Mar

All Photography ©Bob Gersztyn

Spirit 1976 #1

The first time that I saw Spirit was on Halloween, October 31, 1969, at the East Town theater on the East side of Detroit, Michigan. I had heard their radio hit “I Got A Line On You,” and I knew that they had a bald headed drummer, but other than that I didn’t know anything about them. The headline band that I had come to see was Canned Heat another L.A. band, along with Spirit, who was appearing as a special guest. Spirit blew me away with one of the most infectious, high energy, and original performances that I had seen up to that point.

Randy 1976 color solo

Then as a resident of the Greater Detroit Michigan area for 22 years, at the time, I’d seen all the Motown artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and major rock groups ranging from Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd to the Iron Butterly to the Mothers of Invention and dozens of others. So I wasn’t that easily impressed. In fact I had just seen Grand Funk Railroad perform at the East Town in July, before their appearance at Woodstock, and I was not at all impressed.

Cass

The band was comprised of skinhead Ed Cassidy on a super-sized set of drums, Guitarist Randy California in a black leather jacket and sunglasses with curly black hair and a short beard, lead singer and tambourine twirler Jay Ferguson, bass player Mark Andes, and keyboardist John Locke. They were so tight that they squeaked and proceeded to blow the roof off the place. They were playing songs off their new album, along with their 2 previous releases. Their repertoire was as impressive as their performance was awe inspiring with a stage presence that completely controlled the audience.

Ed Cassidy

I saw them in a variety of states since this was back in hippie times. Most of the time I was just smoking grass, but the second time that I saw them I was on mescaline and it was a very freaky experience. I saw them at a place in Birmingham that was called the Factory or something like that. It was a square box of a place with I Beams for rafters and absolutely no acoustics. I experienced Spirit in a totally different way than the last time. Plus I now owned their first 3 albums and was familiar with all their songs. However, I was so stoned that their set was nearly incoherent, but then it was a real trip.

Spirit Randy b&w Spririt Randy Teeth

At one point I remember Randy California telling a story as a lead in for playing Foxey Lady. It was about a guitar duel between the devil and some hick from down South. Randy played a searing guitar solo representing the devil and then he vamped up a notch and the hick played his explosive solo that blew the devil away.

Spirit #3

I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out that Randy California was a name given to him by Jimi Hendrix and in actuality Randy Wolfe was his name. The story according to Randy goes like this; when he was 16 he was living in New York City and was a member of Jimi James and the Blue Flames, Jimi Hendrix’s band in Greenwich Village. This was in 1966 before Chas Chandler of the Animals discovered Jimi and whisked him off to England. Randy told the story many times about how he was in Manny’s Music store, in Manhattan, when he saw a black guy playing a fender Stratocaster who he asked if he could look at it. The licks he played impressed the black guy enough to ask him to join his band that was currently playing at the Café Wha?, in Greenwich Village. While he was a member of the band there was another Randy in the band who was from Texas, so to avoid confusion he named one Randy California and the other Randy Texas.

Randy color 1995

I saw the original 5 members perform a total of 4 times over the next year and every show was great. Then after they released their 4th album, “The 12 Faces of Dr. Sardonicus,” they began to tour and broke up in the middle of the tour. I cried and moved from Detroit to L.A. a few months later. Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes formed a band called Jo Jo Gunne and I saw them perform at the Golden Bear, in Huntington Beach in June 1971. I photographed them, but was not a very good photographer at the time, so all my images were taken at a slow shutter speed and blurred.

Jo Jo Gun #1

Randy 1976 color solo

Then in 1976 I was attending Bible college to become a minister, but attended a Spirit concert at the Golden Bear. I brought my camera and got shots of the concert with Fuzzy Knight on bass. At the same time Jay Ferguson had a solo career that made him a album oriented FM station top 40 radio star. Mark Andes began playing bass for Northwest sister’s band, Heart and Spirit continued in its many incarnations with Randy California and Ed Cassidy at the center and a variety of sidemen. It was a father son venture. Folk Singer Steve Forbert Opened the show and I accidentally did a double exposure of him and Randy.

Spirit & Steve Forbert

By 1984 I had moved back to Michigan after 13 years on the West Coast, for a couple of years. While I was there Spirit was doing their 1984 tour, based on their radio hit “1984” from 1970. They were playing at a new place that opened while I was gone, called Harpo’s. It was on the East Side of Detroit, on Harper, like the East Town theater, but was more of a night club, like the Golden Bear. They had guards in the parking lot and I enjoyed the show. The band was made up of 4 people.

Cass Sunglasses

Then in 1995 one day I was looking in the entertainment section of the Oregonian and saw that Spirit was going to be playing at a club in Portland called Bojangles. I bought 2 tickets and took my just turned 21 year old son, Michael with me. I called ahead of time to get permission to photograph the show. They connected me with Randy and we became Spirit’s guests. I shot the show and after the show I talked with Ed and Randy and they wanted me to photograph them for an upcoming promotional poster. I invited to come to my house the next day and gave Randy my address and phone number.

Randy test strip

The band was a 3 man group made up of keyboardist Scott Monahan, Randy and Ed. Ed Cassidy was 72 years old when I photographed the show and then the next day. He became the oldest performing rock drummer. Cass, as Ed Cassidy was called, was originally a jazz drummer and was in his mid 40’s when he formed Spirit with his stepson and his friends. Originally they were the Red Roosters and won a battle of the bands contest.

Spirit & Bob

They came and I photographed them on 5 rolls of black & white film that I gave to Randy for the cost of the film. Since they were bulk loaded film they only cost about $2.00 a roll, including the cartridge, which was reusable. Randy let me take some color shots of them with and without me in it for my collection and even signed a model release along with Ed and autographed my Spirit compilation album. I told them that they could use the shots any way that they wanted. They would give me credit and that was all I wanted. Randy tragically drowned in 1997 at the age of 45 and Ed Cassidy died of cancer at the age of 89 in 2012. You can still get their music and even some videos on utube, but as any experienced rock concert goer can tell you seeing a great group perform live in their prime is something that recordings and films can only present a limited representation of. They were great and if I only had one band to be on a desert island with it would be the original 5 man Spirit of 1969.

Spirit signed album reduced

“I Got A Line On You 1968 & 1984 Spirit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aKNhvMd_5U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en55_U3sKAM

“When I Touch You” Spirit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z_e17GJ_Ao

Entire album: “The 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus” by Spirit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXXdZjispHs

Run, Run, Run by Jo Jo Gunne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqYYhbDbnsI

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0SO8wv74QBVnDEAEiOl87UF;_ylc=X1MDOTU4MTA0NjkEX3IDMgRmcgNzcGlnb3QteWhwLWZmBGdwcmlkA2RvbGk4MC40UUsySHV0WkN2VzBRQUEEbl9yc2x0AzAEbl9zdWdnAzUEb3JpZ2luA3NlYXJjaC55YWhvby5jb20EcG9zAzEEcHFzdHIDUnVuIFJ1biBydW4gam8gam8gZ3VubmUEcHFzdHJsAzIzBHFzdHJsAzMxBHF1ZXJ5A3J1biBydW4gcnVuIGpvIGpvIGd1bm5lIHlvdXR1YmUEdF9zdG1wAzE0MjYxMjEyNjY-?p=run+run+run+jo+jo+gunne+youtube&fr=spigot-yhp-ff&fr2=sa-gp-search&type=903578&iscqry=
https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0SO8wv74QBVnDEAEiOl87UF;_ylc=X1MDOTU4MTA0NjkEX3IDMgRmcgNzcGlnb3QteWhwLWZmBGdwcmlkA2RvbGk4MC40UUsySHV0WkN2VzBRQUEEbl9yc2x0AzAEbl9zdWdnAzUEb3JpZ2luA3NlYXJjaC55YWhvby5jb20EcG9zAzEEcHFzdHIDUnVuIFJ1biBydW4gam8gam8gZ3VubmUEcHFzdHJsAzIzBHFzdHJsAzMxBHF1ZXJ5A3J1biBydW4gcnVuIGpvIGpvIGd1bm5lIHlvdXR1YmUEdF9zdG1wAzE0MjYxMjEyNjY-?p=run+run+run+jo+jo+gunne+youtube&fr=spigot-yhp-ff&fr2=sa-gp-search&type=903578&iscqry=

Thunder Island by Jay Ferguson
https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrTHQor4wBV6hQAyc.l87UF;_ylc=X1MDOTU4MTA0NjkEX3IDMgRmcgNzcGlnb3QteWhwLWZmBGdwcmlkA0NZRFA3RWhCUVl5X0xrdlppX2ZBQ0EEbl9yc2x0AzAEbl9zdWdnAzEwBG9yaWdpbgNzZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tBHBvcwMxBHBxc3RyA2pheSBmZXJndXNvBHBxc3RybAMxMQRxc3RybAMyNwRxdWVyeQNqYXkgZmVyZ3Vzb24gdGh1bmRlciBpc2xhbmQEdF9zdG1wAzE0MjYxMjE1NDI-?p=jay+ferguson+thunder+island&fr=spigot-yhp-ff&fr2=sa-gp-search&type=903578&iscqry=

Shake Down Cruise by Jay Ferguson
http://www.last.fm/music/Jay+Ferguson/_/Shakedown+Cruise

Martin Luther King, Jr.

20 Jan

Mavis Staples #1

Yesterday was the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. So, in keeping with it, I wanted to post something that was related. I may be a day late, but the entire week is a commemoration.

Mavis Staples #2 I photographed one of the most important musical contributors to the Civil Rights movement from the beginning, who was then but a teenager, Mavis Staples. She was the lead singer of her father’s family group, “The Staple Singers.”

Mavis Staples #4 I shot these images of her around 2004 at the Aladdin theater, in Portland, Oregon. I ran into a DJ that I knew and met Mavis backstage and even had someone photograph me with her using my camera.

Mavis Staples #5 Over the years I’ve personally met a couple dozen rock stars and other famous people, but the thought never occurred to me to have my picture taken with them, because I was on assignment at the time and was trying to do my job as a freelance journalist.

Bob & Mavis

Interview with Ralph Sonny Barger of the Hell’s Angels

23 Sep

Book Cover Hell's AngelSonny's autographHells Angel Bodyguard Sonny signing a book Sonny Barger Sonny & Door Magazine

During the 20 years that I was a rock and religion journalist I did well over a hundred interviews with everyone from rock icons like Bo Diddley to members of the legendary intellectual hippie comedy quartet the Firesign Theater. Many of them were published in one of three publications that I worked for, The Wittenburg Door, Blues Review/Blueswax or Folkwax. However, there were some interviews that were never published for various reasons, like the magazine or ezine ceased publication. So I decided to publish them on my blog. I want to start with Sonny Barger the president emeritus of the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels. Back in 2000 when I interviewed him it was during a signing of his then just published autobiography. Since then he’s written and published another 5 books and is celebrating his 75th birthday on October 13, 2014. All the information about Sonny can be found on his website located at: http://sonnybarger.com/

Happy Birthday Sonny.
RALPH “SONNY” BARGER INTERVIEW

August 26, 2000

Ralph “Sonny” Barger helped start the Oakland, California Chapter of the “Hells Angels” motorcycle club back in 1957. He and the other wild bikers that he rode with decided on the name “Hells Angels”, from a patch that Don Reeves, A.K.A. Boots found. By 1958 Barger took over as President. His administration both consolidated and expanded the club by absorbing, dismantling, or driving rival clubs out of the state. At the same time the Angels were granting prospect charters to existing clubs, as far away as Australia. By the mid 1960s Sonny was the #1 Hells Angel of the world’s largest outlaw motorcycle club. He hung out with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead. He was present at historic war protest rallies in Berkley, where he and other Angels beat up protestors. Barger has been charged with murder, kidnapping, income tax evasion, gun possession, drug possession, and conspiracy. He’s served 13 years in prison, and he co-wrote a book with Keith and Kent Zimmerman, a British bestseller team. The autobiography bears the title “Hell’s Angel” (The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club), published by William Morrow / Harper Collins.

Mr. Barger was doing book signings over the weekend at two Borders book stores in the Portland, Oregon area. Since I was the staff photographer for the Wittenburg Door magazine (Pretty Much The World’s Only Religious Satire Publication), which the store carried, I decided to try to get an interview with Sonny. I called Borders and gained permission to enter the store on Saturday with my camera gear and to plead my case when Sonny arrived. By the time I got there the parking lot was cordoned into two sections, one for motorcycles and the other for cars. The bike section was nearly full. By the time Barger arrived with his entourage there was a line outside the front door. After being introduced to Sonny by the store manager I gave him a copy of the magazine and asked about doing an interview with him. He told me that he would give me a 10 minute interview after everyone had their books signed, and I could take all the photos I wanted while I waited.

During the next 2 hours a non-stop line made up of everyone from hard core bikers to middle-aged housewives purchased anywhere from a single copy to a stack of Sonny’s books, and he signed each one, posed for photos and politely conversed with everyone. He advised one pre-teen girl not to smoke, and pointed to the gauze covering the hole in his throat, where his vocal cords were removed. He speaks without any mechanical aids, so his voice is hoarse and raspy. His bodyguards were from the Washington State and Arizona Chapters, since there aren’t any “Hell’s Angels” chapters in Oregon. According to Barger, after the Hell’s Angels ran the Gypsy Jokers out of California, they gave them the state of Oregon. After the last person left I was directed to the table that Sonny was sitting at. After we shook hands I asked him if he would sign my book, which he did, I took a few pictures of him holding it.

BOB GERSZTYN: Thanks for agreeing to do the interview Sonny, I just interviewed Mickey Hart, from the Grateful Dead a few weeks ago.

RALPH “SONNY” BARGER: Okay, I know Mickey. The only thing is this, let me tell you first, we don’t make fun of our club. We don’t joke about it. If you’re gonna do a satire it’s probably better we don’t do it, because we just don’t joke about our club. You know what I mean?

BOB: Yes, I understand what you mean, but I’m not going to satirize the Hell’s Angels. The interviews are dead serious.

SONNY: Okay. I just wanted to make it plain that we don’t do that. We have too many people dead and in jail for sticking up for the club name when it was made fun of in an article.

BOB: There would be nothing insulting, we guarantee. In fact we’ll even include what you just said in the interview so we can start off with the right understanding right up front.

SONNY: They had me booked to do a program called Politically Incorrect. I went down there, but after talking to those guys I walked out. What they wanted me to do was really stupid.

BOB: The magazine has interviewed everyone from Billy Graham to Anton LaVey.

SONNY: Gee, I haven’t heard that guys name since the 70s.

BOB: Anton LaVey?

SONNY: Is he still around?

BOB: No, he died. In fact, another journalist did a postmortem interview with him. Now what I’d like to talk to you about today is the place that God, religion, or anything of a spiritual nature may have in your life. This would be both within the context of your involvement with the Hell’s Angels and in your personal life.

SONNY: With me it’s very simple. I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God per se. I feel something’s happening and I don’t know what, and I really don’t even care. But people can put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger and live and other people can fall down at 10 MPH and die. So I personally don’t believe that you can make it happen until it’s your time. However, you can mess yourself up really bad and wish you had died by trying, but unless it’s your time it isn’t going to happen. What causes that I don’t know and I don’t care. When it’s my time they’ll tell me. I’ve had a heart attack, I’ve had cancer, I’ve been hit by a pick up truck and I’m still here. Other people fall down on the sidewalk and die. You know what I mean?

BOB: Yes.

SONNY: There’s something there that says when it’s your time, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t even care what it is.

BOB: Was there ever a time that you attended church, even as a child?

SONNY: When I was a child I used to have to go to Sunday School at an Episcopalian church.

BOB: I take it you don’t attend anymore. At what point did you quit going?

SONNY: When I got old enough to turn the corner the other way when my Dad wasn’t looking.

BOB: How old were you then?

SONNY: Probably 7 or 8.

BOB: How about psychedelic drug experiences? Did you ever have any spiritual trips?

SONNY: I had out of body experiences on mescaline. I was sitting in my front room on mescaline and all of a sudden I realized that I was looking down at everything instead of looking out straight. I looked up to see what was looking down and my brain was on the rafter looking down at the conversation.

BOB: Did any of these experiences prompt you to contemplate things like God or open the door to any sort of spiritual thoughts?

SONNY: No.

BOB: Let’s look at the moral code of the Hell’s Angels organization for a moment. People who are involved in Judeo-Christian faiths will use the 10 Commandments as a guideline. Is there an equivalent to this for Hell’s Angels?

SONNY: Well yeah, our thing is we treat everybody the way we want to be treated. Then if they don’t treat us back that way, sometimes they’re very sorry.

BOB: I see.

SONNY: But the 10 commandments are basically a good example. We don’t lie to each other, we don’t steal from each other, and we don’t fool around with each other’s wives. You know what I mean?

BOB: Yes.

SONNY: We live a very moral life when you get right down to it, within ourselves.

BOB: That’s with the club members?

SONNY: Yes.

BOB: So then anybody outside of the club is fair game?

SONNY: They get treated the way they treat us. I mean there’s always the exception. Maybe one time out of a thousand some guy might get beat up or treated bad that don’t have it coming, but normally I think I can say in all honesty, I’ve never hurt anybody in my life that wasn’t trying to hurt me or mine.

BOB: In your book you have a story about the first time that you were arrested in a motorcycle incident. It was after a party and you tried to drive your motorcycle home drunk. You cracked up into some guy’s parked car, and when he came out and was concerned about your condition, you blamed him for the accident because of where he parked his car, and beat him up.

SONNY: No, I didn’t beat him up. I tried to but I could hardly even get up.

BOB: You’ve recovered from a heart attack, throat cancer, and being broadsided on your motorcycle going 70 MPH by a pickup truck. Have any of these life-shattering events ever prompted you to think about your mortality?

SONNY: No, it just wasn’t my time.

BOB: So it just goes back to what you’ve already said.

SONNY: Exactly.

BOB: You were in the middle of some of the greatest turbulence and nation changing historical events of 20th century America. How would you describe the 1960s in a nutshell.

SONNY: I don’t know? That’s very hard to sum up, but it was like the sixties were just a good time. They’ll never happen again. Nobody in the world will let happen what happened in the sixties happen again. I was a very fortunate person. It would be nice if I was only 25 or 30 years old again, but I lived through some really good times.

BOB: Do you think what happened in the 60s produced a better world today?

SONNY: I’m not sure how to answer that, but I think every life experience makes you better.
BOB: Do you think that the way people thought changed because of the 60s.

SONNY: Oh, I’m sure it did. Yeah.

BOB: From what you’re saying it seems that you just took one day at a time.

SONNY: Everyday of my life has been one day at a time.

Broken Arrow Review of Waterfront Blues Festival

2 Sep

DSC_0568DSC_0625

 

Broken Arrow was the only music magazine that I was still working with and it just went on Sabbatical for a year, so the last article that I wrote for it probably won’t get published. Therefore, I will publish it on my blog and here it is Courtesy of Broken Arrow.

The Portland, Oregon Waterfront Blues Festival took place for the 27th year over the July 4th weekend on the West Coast of the U.S.A.. The festival featured over 100 different acts, that raised over 1 million dollars for the Oregon Food Bank. It’s the largest blues festival West of the Mississippi and it lasted for 4 days beginning on Thursday, July 3 and ending on Sunday, July 6, 2014. The festival features acoustic blues, electric blues, gospel, R&B, funk, Zydeco, and a variety of headline acts that may not be in the blues genre, but whose output consists of the blues both in content and influence.

When Dylan made the public transition of folk, from acoustic to electric at the Newport Folk festival in 1965, he was backed up by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, one of the first American Babyboomer blues bands to hit the scene. The Newport festival regularly featured some of the seminal blues artists that established the genre like Sleepy John Estes, Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt, right alongside Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger.

When electric folk rock hit the airwaves it exploded in a dozen different directions with the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield spearheading a couple of them that later morphed into Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, along with Poco and a solo Neil Young. Like Jimi Hendrix, Young came from an R&B background with a folk influence, especially through Dylan’s mid 60’s output. Blues is one of the oldest genres of American pop musicSo it is seemed logical to check out the biggest Blues Festival West of the Mississippi and enjoy some of the acts that had evolved out of the same influences.

Los Lonely Boys and Los Lobos played on Wednesday night both separately and together creating a total guitar assault on everyone attending the festival. Los Lonely Boys is a family band made up of 3 siblings, that includes Henry Garza lead guitarist extraordinaire as well as lead singer, Jojo Garza on bass and Ringo Garza on drums. They learned their chops by playing with their dad as his backup band, for the same reason that Pops Staple formed his children into the Staple Singers. Both had problems with undependable band members so they replaced them with their own children. The last band of the first night that closed the festival that night was Los Lobos. As usual they were tight and hot, although David Hidalgo was absent because of surgery for a hernia, so Cesar Rosas and Louie Perez recruited Henry Garza to fill in for the absence for much of the set.

The artists from the other days of the festival were comprised of everyone from Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen to Maceo Parker and Charlie Musselwhite. One of the big treats as well as the biggest disappointment came on Sunday, when Joan Osborne and Boz Skaggs played. The disappointment came from Greg Almanns cancellation because of a medical condition. The afternoon was ablaze with everything from Louisiana Zydeco to Gospel from the deep South in the form of the Holmes Brothers, who began their set with “Amazing Grace.” After they performed a few songs alone, co-headliner, Joan Osborne came out in a flaming red dress and wowed the crowd with her amazing voice, as she became part of the band, whose last album she produced, as well as performing her own material with them backing her. One of the highlights of the set was when Osborne sang “One of Us,” her 1996 Billboard top 10 hit, with only a keyboardist accompanying her.

Since I was covering the festival for Broken Arrow, I looked for a connection with Neil Young through every artist that I saw. I figured that someone would eventually do a blues or R&B version of “Keep On Rockin’ In the Free World” or “Down By The River,” but it never happened. By the time that Boz Skaggs took the stage early Sunday evening, I gave up hope, when suddenly I saw an apparition standing before me that told me not to loose heart. Boz Skaggs did all his radio hits from “Lido” to “Brother Can You Lend Me A Dime,” but I kept seeing Neil Young performing them. Sure it was an optical illusion that was exacerbated by my desire, but what about the photos that I was taking. The final straw came when Boz put on a Panama hat to shade his sunglass covered eyes from the blinding sun setting in the West sky directly in front of the stage. Skaggs looked like Young on the poster for Jonathan Demme’s documentary “Heart of Gold.” Maybe next year Peter Damman, the festival music coordinator will invite Neil to perform as the Sunday night headliner.

http://www.waterfrontbluesfest.com/
http://nyas.org.uk/
http://nyas.org.uk/brokenarrowhome.htm
http://nyas.org.uk/brokenarrowcovers.htm

John Sinclair

29 Apr

If you don’t know who John Sinclair is, you should. This is an interview that I did with him a while back.

http://johnsinclair.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123:bob-gersztyn-portland-or&catid=77&Itemid=113

Rock & Roll and Religion

19 Mar

Sister-Rosetta-Tharpe-Cache-Agency

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xzr_GBa8qk

Rock & roll and religion is like oil and water to some, who see foot tapping beats as the entrance of the highway to hell. Then to others the combination is as natural as peanut butter and jelly, as mega churches build massive cathedrals with worship bands that have recording contracts. Ever since Alan Freed coined the term rock & roll and Ike Turner and Bill Haley recorded “Rocket 88” and “Rock Around The Clock,” there has been controversy about the place that rock & roll should have in the life of a Christian. One guilt-ridden musician once asked me if I could see Jesus playing an electric guitar, to which I answered, “Yes, He could have put the parables to music and sung them to the crowd.”

Before there was rock & roll there was Black gospel which was the flip side of Blues. Many of the early gospel singers during the early and mid 20th century played both genres and in some cases were even ministers with churches. One of the earliest gospel rockers, and certainly the most successful was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was born in Arkansas in 1915 and her mother was a COGIC (Church of God in Christ) minister. She began performing in church services at the age of 4 and continued to do so in a traveling gospel show. She married a COGIC minister named Thomas Thorpe in 1934 and after divorcing him, used a variation of his name for her stage name.  She was signed to Decca Records and in 1938 she performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City as part of John Hammond’s Spirituals To Swing concert. Her performance was controversial, since at the time women didn’t play guitar and gospel had never been incorporated with blues and jazz in public performances before secular audiences previously. Then she regularly performed at Harlem’s Cotton Club with Cab Calloway. Sister Rosetta’s popularity continued to soar and she was remarried before a crowd of 25,000 people in Washington D.C.’s Griffith Stadium in 1951. Afterwards she performed a gospel concert in her wedding dress.

 

Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s popularity continued to soar until she recorded a blues album in 1953 and then fell out of favor with her main audience, church going Christians who considered blues the Devil’s music. Her popularity rose again by the time the 1960s brought the rock revolution and a fascination with its primitive music roots. She performed with both gospel and blues stars like James Cleveland and Muddy Waters. Tharpe continued to perform until her death in 1973 at the age of 58, but her legacy lives on in her recording and the proliferation of her performances on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeaBNAXfHfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xzr_GBa8qk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR2gR6SZC2M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOrhjgt-_Qc

http://www.biography.com/people/sister-rosetta-tharpe-17172332

http://www.amazon.com/People-Get-Ready-History-Gospel/dp/0826417523

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Rocks-World-volumes-Contemporary/dp/0313377707

The LGBT Jesus Music Chapter

17 Feb

children-of-the-day-r-r

            The first well known lesbian Christian to come out of the closet was contemporary gospel music singer Marsha (Carter) Stevens-Pino. Marsha had been a member of one of the earliest pioneer groups of Jesus music, which was a fusion between gospel and rock music in the church in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “Children of the Day” was a quartet comprised of Marsha, her younger sister Wendy, Steve Jacobs, and Marsha’s husband, Russ Stevens. They had been friends in high school and were all involved musically since they were children. Marsha went her separate way, while still loving Jesus as much as when she wrote the Jesus Movement anthem, Come To The Waters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np8GJGZ3Vv8  

Marsha’s Website: http://balmministries.net/home

Other YouTube videos of Children of the Day and their songs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXOiWZonUcQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXmMUvWaT4g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUzJebUhiyg

 

When I wrote the chapter on LGB&T contemporary Christian music in my book, Jesus Rocks The World: The Definitive History of Contemporary Christian Music , I wondered if it would make my book unpopular with Evangelicals, but so far I’ve only heard from one. 

Yahweh Loves Allah or Jesus Loves Muhammad

6 Jan

Image

  One day I was thinking about the current ongoing war on terror that world civilization saw begin on 9/11. It was a far cry from the anti-Communist war in Vietnam that precipitated a cultural civil war in the USA back in the 1960s. The current conflict is an ongoing event that generates casualties, on a global scale specifically targeting Western Christian civilization. The same guerrilla tactics that the Viet Minh confined to its borders in Vietnam are now being used by Al Queda and its allies on a world wide scale. Communism was a political ideology with a religious fervor that promoted atheism, while Islam is a fully developed world religion that has been around for 1400 years.

            Islam, like Christianity, contains a variety of different factions that differ from each other on a variety of issues. However, the thing that they all hold in common is a belief that the Koran is the the received revelation of God through the prophet Muhammad, just as Christians believe that the Bible is God’s revelation received through its apostles and prophets. Neither Muhammad nor Jesus ever wrote one word of the scriptures that carry their messages, but their words and stories were recorded by their followers.

            Over the centuries that Islamic culture has existed it’s expanded its borders from Saudi Arabia to every part of the earth, just as Christianity has done from Palestine. Sometimes the religions have been at odds with each other to the point of war. So, from the beginning there has been tension between the two faiths; however, most of the time they have managed to co-exist without incident.

            After 9/11 it seemed like all the information that the news reported about Islam was about how blood thirsty and intolerant it was. The central teaching of the Koran that was pointed out by all the Western non-Muslim news pundits was Jihad. To me that was like pointing to the central teaching of the Bible being genocide based on Israel’s directive from God in the Old Testament to cleanse Palestine of everyone who lived there, tribe by tribe. I’ve read the Koran, but I don’t even begin to claim to be an authority on it. At the same time I have a degree in the Bible from a conservative Bible college and do know that the central teaching of Christian scripture is love. God is love and Christians are admonished to love others as God loves them.

            The New Testament book of 1 Corinthians contains the most famous of all Christian teachings on love in the 13th chapter. The apostle Paul wrote a detailed explanation of exactly what love is and how it works. Since the New Testament was written in Greek, and Greek is a very exact language, having different words representing each aspects of a subject. In the case of “love” there were four common Greek words that could be translated as love. The first was “Storgē,” which is familial love, the love of parents towards children and children towards their parents. The second is “Phileo,” which is translated as brotherly love, that is the love of one human being for another. Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love was named after the word. The third  is “Eros,” better known as lust or sexual love. The fourth word is “Agapē,” which is the pure unconditional love of God that gives without any expectation of reciprocation. Agape love is what 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is all about. It’s the love of mankind that Jesus Christ demonstrated by His death on the cross.

            If all this is true, then God loves Islam and followers of Islam as much as Christians. If this is the case then why doesn’t the Christian church express this? Over the years that I was totally committed to Christian evangelism during the 1970s, one of the primary tools used in its implementation was bumper stickers for vehicles. We had everything from “Honk If You Love Jesus” to “I Found It” the slogan that Bill Bright and Campus Crusade were using for their goal of evangelizing the entire world. I think that the Christian church has completely missed an opportunity to demonstrate agape love towards our Muslim brothers and sisters who already respect the person of Jesus Christ. The way to do this is very simple. Just use the same tactics that Bill Bright used in the 1970s and then expand it into the 21st century. What we need today are bumper stickers that read “YAHWEH LOVES ALLAH” or “JESUS LOVES MUHAMMAD.”