Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Let me add to my last answer that the whole "leg" business in this
discussion started with posting #62 by "jonl," in case it's still not
clear.
  

    
Yes, Gary, it was 1966.  I played clarinet on one song ( I forget the
name ) and took the album cover photos.  Out of hundreds taken on the
road,  the record company art director chose some that were not in the
best focus.  I had mixed feelings.
  

    
Adding... I sure loved  their music though.  John's writing and his
singing and his harmonica.  The summer I was there was when he wrote 
"hot town...Summer in the City."  I remember that heat.  John could
only write his songs on shirt cardboard from the dry cleaners.   I
lived in Zal Yanofsky's spare room at his Greenwich Village apt...right
across the street from John's apt.  Zal called me his "boarder" & his
"prisoner" and was so exuberant that it came bubbling out of him with
laughter and fist shaking.  He once lite my toilet on fire in a
midwestern motel. 
  

    

>( I forget the name )

The song was "Bes' Friends" -- a gem on one of those rare albums that is
pretty much nothing *but* gems.

Kama Sutra was never the greatest record company when it came to art
direction, but the "Hums" package had a kind of rustic charm to it,
fuzzy focus and all.
  

    
Thanks for the kind words, Gary, I'll try to see it that way.
  

    
The past tense of light is lit...not lite, right? Good night!
  

    
Henry, I think you're right about the book. I was impressed with Heather 
wherever I saw her - I think the Larry King show while I was channel-surfing. 
She was saying, basically, that loss of a limb is no big deal. She had a 
great prosthetic, and part of her talk was about how really good prosthetic 
devices could and should be affordable and easy to obtain (if I'm remembering 
right). Reminded me of a guy I knew in junior high who wandered in one day 
and said, matter of factly, that his leg had fallen off... most of us hadn't 
suspected that he was missing a limb.
  

    
How did you like John Sebastian? I worked during the early '80s  at a
sculpture park, OPUS 40, in upstate NY, and we held concerts there in
the summer. John was the first big name we ever presented, and it
rained up to maybe 15 minutes before his performance. He was totally
mellow and kind about the whole thing.
  

    
Yes, John is a very mellow guy, in fact he's almost beatific.  He's
pretty much always been that way, at least since I've known him from
the early 60's.  Maybe it's from the same thing that made us all mellow
in the 60"s...and still does.
  

    
Tie-dye?
  

    
Ah Yes, Tony, tie-dye.  After the Lovin' Spoonful, John moved out to
California to record his solo album.  He settled down for a while in
the Hollywood hills above Burbank at a place called The Farm.  It was a
kind of creative commune made up of two houses, various sheds, and a
large teepee in the middle of a field at the end of a country road. 
John pitched a tent there on a place that was called "chicken flats."

Among the people living there, including members of the MFQ and the
Firesign Theater,  was a lady called Tie-Dye Annie who made the most
beautiful, colorful, bright tie-dyes, which she taught John to do.  He
got so into it that eventually he tie-dyed every piece of clothing he
owned, including his socks, his sheets and the walls of his tent.  You
should have seen his clothes line on laundry day.

There are photos of John wearing these clothes on his album, "John B.
Sebastian " on Reprise Records, including a picture on the back that I
took of him on stage at Woodstock.  When I saw John and his wife a
couple weeks ago in New York, they mentioned that the last of those
tie-dyed clothes had been stolen from a dryer in a laundramat recently.
 But I still have the pictures!
  

    
Henry, I'm so pleased that you've joined us here in Inkwell.vue, and I thank
you. Though we're launching a new interview today, that doesn't mean you
have to stop posting. We'd be happy to have you continue as long as you
wish, and this topic will remain open for more posting.

Which brings me to my question: What happened to The Farm in LA? I hung out
there a bit in the mid '70s -- Cyrus was living there, as were an interesting
parade of other rotating dwellers. Are there any remnants of the place
left or has it been torn down, subdivided and uglified?  
  

    
(Just want to thank marvy, aka Chris Carroll, for his great job leading the 
discussion with Henry. Hope you'll hang in, too. I think there's quite a bit 
more to talk about!)
  

    
Heck, I'll hang out here as long as need be...
  

    
No reason this party has to end!
  

    
I'm hangin' as well.  I am going to NYC sometime in the next couple
weeks, but before and after that I'd love to keep doing this.

In answer to your question about The Farm, Cynthia, it came to an end
sometime in the 80's when the Oakwood Apartments were built on Barham
Blvd. on the streetfront of the property.  I've gone to look for any
sign that it was there but nothing remains.  For a few years the giant
bamboo grove that I took many a picture in was still there, but that
has finally disappeared as well.  Pity!
  

    
Henry, I wondered who has surprised you most over the years? Wasn't
what you expected? Bore no resemblance to the impression that the
public has? Turns out to be very interesting?

Who are your favorites? 

BTW, nice Linda McCartney story, freemountain. Did you by chance use a
double album for the task? (If you haven't seen Henry's DVD, there's a
little mention of the adaptive use of double albums for rolling- had
to laugh, I'd forgotten and that was so basic for so many years!).
  

    
And some of us still have those double-albums with the tell-tale dust in the
fold.
  

    
you're right to chortle if you read the above and remember that
someenterprisingone marketed a plastic version of a double record cover
called a seed slide.
  

    
I believe that Linda and I were rolling (only joints, that is) in a
New York hotel room.  No double albums were available.  Most likely
used the tray under the ice bucket.  That was my usual M.O.  I had a
special method using two overlapped papers to make king sized J's. 

Ah!  Them wuz the dayz.
  

    
Sigh.. wuznt they, though?

We were blessed in a really rare way to be young when we were.
  

    
For me it was usually a shoe box lid and a playing card.
Crosby taught me that.  I love the seed slide idea, but surely
it couldn't work as well as the CSN double album with that 
rough finish paper.
  

    
We used trays from McDonalds. Silly but we were young. It was kind of
like a badge of honor because you had to, well, "borrow" them to have
one.
  

    
You just shook a memory loose:  Crosby and I sharing a joint in
Pasadena (wow, that had to be 1963!) at the Ice House - he and his
brother, Ethan, were in Les Baxter's Balladeers.  How far we're come.
  

    
Alas, I'm off for NYC for three days.  I shall jump back on here
at the weekend.  Looking forward to more looks back to the 
good old days...and maybe some thoughts about bringing them into the
present.  A lotta people around here could do with a little taste of
the 60's.