Photo by Vanessa Kaukonen
Just doing things that must be done here at home. I’ll be on the road with Hot Tuna soon enough and life will fall into a different kind of rhythm as it does when on the road. Indeed, it’s been an amazing week for glorious moons!
Photo by Vanessa Kaukonen
This summer so far has been a season of passing. Of course, passing is not designated by season. Living and dying are manifested and regulated by their own transcendental clock that we can only observe from a distance. As a survivor who has made it thus far the ranks of my peers are thinning. Now I don’t live in the past and I am not burdened by euphoric recall today, but every now and then it doesn’t hurt to indulge in a little things that might have been moment.
For a number of reasons I found myself watching Laurel Canyon: A Place In Time on Epix. Now, Jefferson Airplane was a San Francisco band and the San Francisco scene was an entirely different animal. All that being duly noted, I remember in 1964 my friend Steve Mann (Great guitar player… sadly departed) enticed me and my former wife, Margareta, to come down to LA for a week. I knew Crosby from the folk scene in San Jose and he put us on the guest list at Ciro’s to see the Byrds. Steve took us by Ry Cooder’s apartment late one night and we thwacked away on unplugged electric guitars so as not to disturb the neighbors. Before Wally Heider’s opened in San Francisco the Airplane recorded at the RCA studios at Sunset and Ivar. We were not Canyon dwellers, but we were ‘guest’ locals for a time.
Photo by Jorma Kaukonen
When indulging in memories of distant universes the terms ‘young’ and ‘youth’ must not be ignored. Things are only new once and the blessing of being young in a time where almost anything seemed possible cannot be overstated.
Anyway, for me… Laurel Canyon: A Place In Time was a wistful zeitgeist and I will probably watch it again.
The River Of Time flows on…
You and your drone flights, Jorma – have you got behind the stick, or studied toward same? Fixed wing, powered or other – not the rotary craft.
Only quad copter… the drone is a flying camera for me. That said, I do love flying it!
When I was around fifteen, I never bought any albums of the artists depicted in Laurel Canyon. I did buy Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead albums. I remember my girlfriend bought one Janis Joplin had out.
Growing up in the middle of nowhere, my friends and I didn’t really know about the San Francisco scene. That it was “An entirely different animal” I say, thank God!
Glen Campbell was a good guitarist…He played a Telecaster and had good licks…
I like top photo, especially. Long time since I’ve seen a sun-moon, or whatever those are named. Blue cheese. Wonder if any ball breaking buddies of Collins asked him if he remembered where he was when Neal Armstrong stepped down.
I always worried about the guys getting home.
Laurel canyon video is a great chronicle ,full of angels and reprobates .
Fascinating interplay and some great footage ,the Wrecking crew as a backbone is like the Memphis horns or Muscle Shoal gang .
Did you ever play with Duck Dunn or Steve Cropper .
If you like the Canyon ,there’s a video on Glen Campbell that all might fight equally entertaining .
Check it out
Yessir, glorious July full moon and hot summer days!
Some of your elder, wiser, more reminiscing posts, like this one, fit so beautifully with that picture you once posted of your little self watching in awe as your mom made bubbles, if I might be so bold as to say so.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot
(thanks for the movie tip too)