1989 By the time I graduated in 1989,
the hair and the beard were gone. I had settled
down considerably (though I still did Monday
nights at Penny Lane.) I had begun working at
the Boulder County Rape Crisis Team and was
doing groups there. I had been on a stake with
a detective on the University of Colorado
campus, walking the neighborhoods looking for
a serial rapist. I was about to start work in
Denver, setting up trauma groups for crime
victims in their neighborhoods under the
Reagan-Bush Crime Bill. I was recruited to
work in Hawaii in 1991 from a National
Coalition Against Sexual Assault Conference
where I met Fannie Flagg in the parking lot.
She was another of my heroes. It was yet
another blessing, another karmically charged
moment that seemed to push me down my new
path as a crime victim/survivor advocate and
therapist.
I arrived in Hawaii in August of 1991 to start my
new life working on the west coast of the island
of O'ahu to work with a primarily Native
Hawaiian population. My boss told me I'd be
doing therapy in pigeon English.
I stood in the front room on that first day when
a beat up car pulled off the highway.
The couple inside began to fight, the man was
beating the woman with his fists as she cover
her head and screamed.
I started out to the car.
The two local nurses who worked in the clinic
with the elderly literally tackled me.
"Don't ever interrupt a domestic fight" they told
me.
Even though the women on the coast were like
women all over America. They were out there,
doing their best to break up violence and
provide alternatives for the community's
women.
I settled in to do the sex abuse work.
the hair and the beard were gone. I had settled
down considerably (though I still did Monday
nights at Penny Lane.) I had begun working at
the Boulder County Rape Crisis Team and was
doing groups there. I had been on a stake with
a detective on the University of Colorado
campus, walking the neighborhoods looking for
a serial rapist. I was about to start work in
Denver, setting up trauma groups for crime
victims in their neighborhoods under the
Reagan-Bush Crime Bill. I was recruited to
work in Hawaii in 1991 from a National
Coalition Against Sexual Assault Conference
where I met Fannie Flagg in the parking lot.
She was another of my heroes. It was yet
another blessing, another karmically charged
moment that seemed to push me down my new
path as a crime victim/survivor advocate and
therapist.
I arrived in Hawaii in August of 1991 to start my
new life working on the west coast of the island
of O'ahu to work with a primarily Native
Hawaiian population. My boss told me I'd be
doing therapy in pigeon English.
I stood in the front room on that first day when
a beat up car pulled off the highway.
The couple inside began to fight, the man was
beating the woman with his fists as she cover
her head and screamed.
I started out to the car.
The two local nurses who worked in the clinic
with the elderly literally tackled me.
"Don't ever interrupt a domestic fight" they told
me.
Even though the women on the coast were like
women all over America. They were out there,
doing their best to break up violence and
provide alternatives for the community's
women.
I settled in to do the sex abuse work.
Kris Kristofferson
1987 The Kris Kristofferson article was
problematic. It had a crazy lead. Kristofferson and I
had just met. He said "how quickly can we do this?"
I said, "If we are sharp in about forty-five minutes."
"Let's be sharp then," he said. We did it. Afterward
he invited me to the sound check. There were just
a few of us in the big auditorium. He did "Sunday
Morning Coming Down."
When He got to the part about the smell of fried
chicken, the microphone sparked and burned his
lips. After he recovered he mouthed "fried lips"
into the Mic and finished the song. Then he
segued into the "Pilgrim Chapter 33." It was
awesome. It was one of my favorite songs from one
of my favorite performers.....and I got chicken skin
from head to toe.
Later my friend and folk singer Bill Sell showed up.
I had tipped him off about the interview. It was a
once in a life time shot and Bill tried to give him a
tape of songs, much in the same way the
Kristofferson had plagued Johnny Cash with his
tapes.
He didn't take it.
"If I listen to it, you could charge me with
plaragerism later, saying I got my song off your
tape...."
He was polite, but on.
I muffed the lead.
1987 The Kris Kristofferson article was
problematic. It had a crazy lead. Kristofferson and I
had just met. He said "how quickly can we do this?"
I said, "If we are sharp in about forty-five minutes."
"Let's be sharp then," he said. We did it. Afterward
he invited me to the sound check. There were just
a few of us in the big auditorium. He did "Sunday
Morning Coming Down."
When He got to the part about the smell of fried
chicken, the microphone sparked and burned his
lips. After he recovered he mouthed "fried lips"
into the Mic and finished the song. Then he
segued into the "Pilgrim Chapter 33." It was
awesome. It was one of my favorite songs from one
of my favorite performers.....and I got chicken skin
from head to toe.
Later my friend and folk singer Bill Sell showed up.
I had tipped him off about the interview. It was a
once in a life time shot and Bill tried to give him a
tape of songs, much in the same way the
Kristofferson had plagued Johnny Cash with his
tapes.
He didn't take it.
"If I listen to it, you could charge me with
plaragerism later, saying I got my song off your
tape...."
He was polite, but on.
I muffed the lead.
Tom Waits 1977 If you download Internet explorer7 from Microsoft (it's free) the
browser has an enlarge feature that makes everything easier to read.) But what I want to show you here is the photograph. The article
itself is fun, but obviously shortened to fill space. It doesn't read as well as some of my later pieces. It is one of my first entertainment
pieces. I wanted to put my whole night in the article. I wrote it that way. There wasn't room for it.
The late Mark Billingsly was the photographer on this article and did some fantastic portraits as well as concert shots. We hung out back
stage after the show. There was a big ice filled chest filled with Hieniken on the floor for the crew. Waits didn't drink. We talked for about
an hour. At one point a women came in dressed to the nines. He said "I don't usually get them like that."
He asked her if she'd like to come to California with him. She said yes. The next album was "Blue Valentine." It was full of images of a
Nebraska girl lost in the big city who got abandoned, robbed and got put on the streets.
The mind does fill the gaps, doesn't it?
I think she was a ringer.
I don’t know how I started doing the present-tense style that I built my career on. I never worked less than three jobs in Lincoln while I was
in school. Most of the time over night on the radio. All the writing I did was single draft and intense. It’s a blur.
I didn’t think about it, I just did it.
The style is part radio, part writing fiction and part rock journalism. I never missed an issue of Rolling Stone Magazine and the Village Voice
in the 1970-1980s.
I'd spend all day Saturday reading.
I'd had everything Tom Waits had recorded at this point. I was listening to "Foreign Affair" Non-stop. That and Joni Mitchell's "Hegira," Bob
Dylan's "Street Legal" and Van Morrison's "Common One."
Arlo Guthrie was my first big interview. I'm still looking for that article. And Waits was number two.
browser has an enlarge feature that makes everything easier to read.) But what I want to show you here is the photograph. The article
itself is fun, but obviously shortened to fill space. It doesn't read as well as some of my later pieces. It is one of my first entertainment
pieces. I wanted to put my whole night in the article. I wrote it that way. There wasn't room for it.
The late Mark Billingsly was the photographer on this article and did some fantastic portraits as well as concert shots. We hung out back
stage after the show. There was a big ice filled chest filled with Hieniken on the floor for the crew. Waits didn't drink. We talked for about
an hour. At one point a women came in dressed to the nines. He said "I don't usually get them like that."
He asked her if she'd like to come to California with him. She said yes. The next album was "Blue Valentine." It was full of images of a
Nebraska girl lost in the big city who got abandoned, robbed and got put on the streets.
The mind does fill the gaps, doesn't it?
I think she was a ringer.
I don’t know how I started doing the present-tense style that I built my career on. I never worked less than three jobs in Lincoln while I was
in school. Most of the time over night on the radio. All the writing I did was single draft and intense. It’s a blur.
I didn’t think about it, I just did it.
The style is part radio, part writing fiction and part rock journalism. I never missed an issue of Rolling Stone Magazine and the Village Voice
in the 1970-1980s.
I'd spend all day Saturday reading.
I'd had everything Tom Waits had recorded at this point. I was listening to "Foreign Affair" Non-stop. That and Joni Mitchell's "Hegira," Bob
Dylan's "Street Legal" and Van Morrison's "Common One."
Arlo Guthrie was my first big interview. I'm still looking for that article. And Waits was number two.
| The Poets Of Penny Lane 1987, Boulder Colorado By early 1987 I was working on my masters degree. I was enmeshed with Buddhist psychology, meditation and performance art. Dancers, poets and musicians were everywhere. Everyone smelled like incense or of mountain air. The tempo had picked up considerably. I remember the thrill of fast cars running down the mountainside beside fast streams. The blind twists and turns of the mountain roads. In town, the flat irons loomed in the background in the foothills like chunks of milk chocolate cleaved by a butcher knife for the kettle melt. After the wide pallet of the prairie, the mountains were i another planet. I felt a lot like the guy in the song "Renaissance Fair" by the Byrds. "I think maybe I'm dreaming....." At free-form dances on the floor with dancers in scarves doing dervish like spins and at coffee house performances I was flooded with new images and people. My senses were alive. One night I saw a grunge band doing a song called "Giget Goes To Hell." The lead singer was sounding a lot like Jim Morrison and apologetic about it to. "I can't help it if I sound like Jim Morrison" he whined. That was Tom Peters in a vulnerable moment. Usually he was up front and in command. He looks like Erol Flynn and has that swashbuckler persona when he's not thoughtful and withdrawn. He runs a book store called the Beat Book Store. He a tremendous writer. His memory for the poetry and prose of other people is voluminous. Well read, good looking, and mysteriously informed about everything that was going on, he was like God's Gabriel. Out there on bronze edges, belly aching and praising the ongoing. I hooked up with Tom and Penny Lane where I offered to tape his open mic poetry readings. And that's what I did every Monday night for three years. I watched the poets come and go. I pressed record and pause. That was the job. Record and pause. I watched Tom watch the poets. He kept things moving. Kept people to their time limits. Acted like papa. Everybody got to read. Nobody was left out. He'd shoot me amused smiles every so often to see if I caught what was going on. I usually did. It was all peak. I share a love of live performance with Tom that goes back to my own garage band days those rare basement parties where we played to a small crowd, or the church social where we got paid in Orange Crush and hot dogs. One big wild aside, the scenes. The "So You Think You're a Poet" tradition continues at the Laughing Goat Coffee House in Boulder, Colorado soyoureapoet's Calender Sep 4 2006 8:00P Annual Labor Day Open Poetry Reading @ The Laughing Goat Sep 11 2006 8:00P 5th Annual September 11th Memorial Reading & Presentation @ The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse Sep 18 2006 8:00P Junior Burke, Steven Taylor & Todd McCarty @ The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse Sep 25 2006 8:00P Laura Wright & Daron Mueller @ The Laughing Goat Oct 2 2006 8:00P 1st Annual Yom Kippur Reading of Allen Ginsberg's KADDISH @ The Laughing Goat Oct 9 2006 8:00P Jeff Chester & Michael Price @ The Laughing Goat Oct 16 2006 8:00P Niko Murray & Michael Wojczuk @ The Laughing Goat Coffehouse Oct 23 2006 8:00P 19th Annual Jack Kerouac Memorial Reading @ The laughing goat Oct 30 2006 8:00P Devil's Night Costume Poetry Reading @ Laughing Goat Nov 6 2006 8:00P 19 Year Anniversary of "So, You're a Poet," Reading Series @ Laughing Goat Nov 13 2006 8:00P Joe Richey, Sue Rhynhart & Gary Allen @ the laughing goat Nov 16 2006 8:00P Tom Peters @ Lyons Itinerant Poetry Society (LIPS) |
