[Landline] Pass It On
1. (WHAT IS THIS EMAIL?)
Landline is a free email newsletter sent by me every once in a while to just over 4,000 subscribers, a to-the-point epistle intended for friends, colleagues, food bank workers, old heads from the days of Arthur Magazine (which I edited), pastoral people, dharma bums and other curious sweetfolk, made up of ideas, nudges and announcements that hopefully form a small bailiwick outside the cruddiness at large. An archive of previous Landlines exists here. And here is my personal Linktree
2. TRUSTED GUIDEBOOKS Two music books came to me in the mid-'90s that significantly expanded and improved my listening and worldview. Maybe they'll be of use to you when looking for guidance on music you can take refuge in. In 1996 I utilized my access as RapPages copy editor to take home the office review copy of Rickey Vincent's FUNK: The Music, the People and the Rhythm of The One after everyone else was done with it. For obvious reasons, in the last few weeks I've been drawn back to this book for the first time in eons. And I am delighted to report that almost 25 years after publication, Vincent's survey stands up... and then does the Funky Worm. Followed by the Troglodyte. And the Bertha Butt Boogie. Just magisterial stuff: the work of an opinionated, learned enthusiast who has your best interests in mind, which is basically my favorite kind of music writer (or person, come to think of it). What a trip it's been to revisit this ridiculous, righteous, profound music "genre" from the 50-years-later vantage point of our streaming era, when almost all of the hundreds of albums discussed by Vincent are now easily and instantly heard—so I've been checking out all the stuff I'd never been able to get to years ago due to rarity and/or limited personal fundage. And there is so much; for me, the Pointer Sisters' first four studio albums have been a special, timely revelation recently (RIP Bonnie Pointer). But so has Bernie Worrell's poignant solo acoustic piano album, Elevation: The Upper Air; two weeks ago, The Commodores' Machine Gun; last week, Stanley Clarke's School Days; this morning, Ramsey Lewis's Don't It Feel Good. Just on and on. In short, Funk is still available. As a book, as a weekly radio show, as a deep, invigorating, probiotic approach to being. Sometime in 1997 (I think—memory is patchy and fogged), in a moment of severe generosity/far-sightedness, writer/poet Peter Relic passed me a copy of Julian Cope's KRAUTROCKSAMPLER: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik—1968 Onwards. It's rarely been beyond arm's reach since. Krautorcksampler — featuring Can, Faust, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Ash Ra Tempel, Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream and many other sublime German geniuses of the 1970s — is now 25 years old. Doesn't matter, this thing is timeless —timely — because, somewhat like Rickey Vincent, Julian Cope is a high-order, dependable, thorough scholar-enthusiast doing cultural missionary work in a digestible format. As the wrapper says, this is not a definitive encyclopedia, it's better than that — Krautrocksampler is a sampler of the best stuff, educating and advocating via storytelling, analysis, personal reminiscence, and a terrific, nearly minute-by-minute exploration of 50 great Krautrock albums. Cope's retelling of the utterly inspiring/delusional/visionary Cosmic Couriers/Rolf Ulrich-Kaiser saga is on its own worth the cover price....not that'll you be able to find a copy at that price, as Krautrocksampler has been out of print for decades now — the third and apparently final edition was published in 1998 and Cope said back in 2000 that it's not in need of further revising or publication. A mostly legible scan has been circulating online as a PDF for years now. If you can't locate it, get in touch. I know a guy...
3. GOING FOR THE DOUBLE WAVE
A guy called Ogmios has been posting sublime 10-minute dashcam videos where he narrates his inner thought process as he drives around London. Every frustration (nighttime moped riders clad in black, oblivious texting pedestrians, lane-blocking delivery trucks and raucous street festivals, etc.) becomes an opportunity to get better at exercising patience, good humor and compassion — and sometimes there's even a chance to receive the coveted double wave from a grateful traveller. Great, chill-in-motion stuff.
Episode 1 is here:
Episode 2 is here:
I learned about these chill-in-motion videos from The Social, who interviewed Ogmios back in May. Sasha Frere Jones has also interviewed this wise teacher.
4. INSIDE THE SAN FRANCISCO DIGGERS, PART V
Vicki Pollack, age 25, San Francisco, 1968.
As I got deeper into the process of interviewing members of the San Francisco Diggers, one name kept popping up that hadn't been on my radar. "You've got to interview Vicki Pollack," I was told repeatedly. I didn't recognize the name from any of the primary or secondary texts I'd come across regarding this mysterious, somewhat anonymous group of 1960s acid-fueled street anarchists, but, following up at the insistence of multiple Diggers, I got in touch with Vicki. Within minutes of sitting down for an interview with her, I was in tears. The other Diggers were right; I did need to interview this humble, righteous woman who'd led an extraordinary life.
Today Vicki is known as the legendary founder and director emeritus of the San Francisco Bay Area-based Children’s Book Project, the non-profit organization that has provided over 2.9 million “gently used” books to local kids since 1992. But in late 1967, she was a directionless, 25-year-old college graduate and Civil Rights activist who’d left her welfare worker job in New York City to move to the Bay Area in pursuit of something... more.
She found it in February, 1968, when she walked into an old Victorian house on Willard Street in San Francisco. "It was like I had entered a Technicolor movie," she said. "I couldn’t believe how beautiful everything was. I got there, and I thought, Oh this is my home. This is where I belong. I said, I don’t care if you’re filled up, I belong here. I moved into the house and I became the dishwasher because I didn’t want to cook. We made dinner every night for maybe 40 people. It was unbelievably exciting. I’d lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a little while in 1966 and thought, If I’m going to do something like this, I’m going to do it in my own country. I wanted to see what was possible. And now, here I was, doing it."
Commune life, Diggers "Free" actions and thought, Beat poets, Hells Angels, nude poolside baking, bellydancing on a flatbed truck driving through the Financial District at lunch hour, Woodstock, Altamont—it's all here. Read: I TRULY BELIEVED: An in-depth conversation with Vicki Pollack of the San Francisco Diggers
Please note: I have incurred not insignificant expenses in my Diggers research through the years. If you would like to support my work, please donate via PayPal. All donations, regardless of size, are greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Fondly, Jay Babcock Joshua Tree, California