I’ve been a Rolling Stones nut for practically my entire life, and have dozens and dozens of hours of Stones bootlegs, but for whatever reason this awesome live take of Lady Jane, performed during their fourth appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967, seems to have slipped right past me. YouTube has been very kind to Rolling Stones fans!

Dig Brian Jones on dulcimer as a cheeky Mick Jagger sings of being an Elizabethan-era kept man. After Jones died, they dropped this song from their stage repertoire. Lady Jane, taken from Aftermath, was a 2-sided single, sharing the A-side with Mother’s Little Helper. The Italian picture sleeve is seen above.
 

 
If you’re like me, your atheism has been challenged by the sheer force of certain metaphysically oriented artforms. One of those forms for me is African-American gospel music. One of the greats of that genre, the Grammy-winning Rev. Walter Hawkins, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer. Hawkins had plenty of Billboard chart success leading his Love Center Choir. Significantly, he’ll also be remembered as head of an Oakland, CA church that wholly embraced and was supported by folks like disco singer, drag queen and gay icon Sylvester.

Hawkins’ initial success came as part of his brother’s group the Edwin Hawkins Singers, which had a crossover hit with 1967’s “Oh Happy Day.” According to Joshua Gamson’s The Fabulous Sylvester, the Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco:

Hawkins was one of those who left church, but as he grew older he started looking for a way to bring together “all those young people who I knew could not survive in a traditional church setting.”

One of those was the young Sylvester James, who was a well-known child gospel singer in his LA hometown before running away and eventually moving to San Francisco. By the time he’d arrived at Hawkins’ Bible study group-turned-church the Love Center, Sylvester had already done a short stint with local psychedelic drag performance group The Cockettes and performed with the then-unknown Pointer Sisters. When he tells the anecdote about Love Center members’ jaded acceptance of a prostitute into their ranks, Gamson notes: “They took the same attitude to Sylvester. His strangeness, when it was even noticed, was beloved.” In fact, the Love Center Choir would appear on numerous mid-‘80s Sylvester tunes, including “Call Me” and his cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City.”

When Sylvester died of complications from AIDS in 1988 at age 41, his memorial service was held at the Love Center. According to J. Matthew Cobb of Prayzehymm Online, the gospel industry and the black church in general has a lot of work to do with regards to its gay membership. 

Hats off to Reverend Hawkins. 
 

 
Get: Walter Hawkins and the Love Center Choir: Love Alive - 25th Anniversary Reunion, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 [CD]
 
Get: Sylvester - Mutual Attraction [CD]

 
“We expect to be back in about 1 million years. Thanks for your patience.”
 
(via Super Punch)

 
A sad day for American literature, writer Harvey Pekar has passed away at age 70. My first thought is that it’s great that he lived long enough to see his work embraced by a large audience due to the success of the American Splendor film but it’s hard to swallow the loss of another singular and utterly unique American voice. Bon Voyage, Harvey.

(Cleveland) - Famed Cleveland underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar has died at the age of 70.

Cuyahoga County Coroner’s spokesman Powell Caesar confirmed the news to WTAM 1100 Monday morning.

Pekar was found just before 1:00 am by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their home in Cleveland Heights. The cause of death is not yet known.

Coroner: Harvey Pekar dies (WTAM Cleveland)
 
thx Ned Raggett

Alden Van Buskirk and his girlfriend Freddie
 
Alden Van Buskirk is the lost angel of Beat poets. He died at the age of 23 in 1961. His only book of poems, Lami, was published posthumously in an edition of 1000 copies.

It is a visionary book, ahead of its time, written while Alden was living in Oakland and experimenting heavily with drugs, including, pot, LSD and morning glory seeds. In theme and style, he draws inspiration from Blake, Whitman, the French Surrealists and Allen Ginsberg. In fact, Allen wrote the introduction to Lami.

There is virtually no information on this brilliant young poet other than some anecdotal musing by the poet David Rattray who died in 1993 while working on a Buskirk biography.

In his introduction to Lami, Ginsberg writes that in Van Buskirk’s verse “all sorts of weird electronic references, images of robot paranoia, city impulses of supersonic nerve thrill are recorded. What a lovely companion he would have been to talk to on top of roofs and bridges, or sitting with a bottle of wine or delicate martini in the middle of a living rm. floor at 3 a.m.” Indeed.

Van Buskirk should be a legend among devotees of the Beat movement. That he isn’t, astonishes me. His poetry and prose incinerates most of that written by poets far better known. His writing is as edgy and uncompromising as anything being written today. And it is time for you to check it out.
 

Van Buskirk wrote the following while tripping on four packages of blue morning glory seeds and a few hits of pot:

LAMI IN OAKLAND
9/17/61

I am ready to come back to you. I’ve lived my life a million times over in a few hours, seen everything, known too much, & now I’m burnt out, want only love & peaceful madness of America seen & shared with your eyes.
Last night I saw my whole life illumined over & over.
Each time one image/hallucination set it off. Nuance of a line on the gold/black statue tells all childhood sorrows, a tracer on the shell curving through past of dream & real life
too much for anyone, I will burn up, pray for God or codeine pills (I left them behind in Oakland) to stop them, the endless picture/ideograms that spell all knowledge, unlock forgotten nightmares, diabolic comic strip of old illusions running on the wrong reel too fast.
Don’t take It unless you want to know everything simultaneously, hell & heaven, terror & ecstasy -
to be Faust too & endure the humility of weeping repentence for what your life or the distorted images that say this is your life & you believe it helplessly,
perfect knowledge - its terror - wild hallucinations, but hallucinations that won’t stop, but devour time & leave you hung up for eternity;
to take yr imagination out on the straightaway & see what it’ll do
but some other foot steps on the gas:
IMAGES: I wanted to see them all : dig my own mind-movie - hungry-eyed poets of the universe live it all so you can die in an armchair in Oakland,
loose wires burnt out & still sputtering -
clenched jaws, mouth aches today from it. Teeth grated & startled me from Dali comic movies of Mickey Mouse war, troops, guns, explosions, loves in toppling picture puns -
unclench, relax the mouth, dig it, get in there, don’t back off, it’s what you always wanted, all the perfect gestures, classic dada poses of the diabolic genius, angel-monster showman, the stage, its depth - curtains drawn back reveal the scene, but its background unfolds: another universe of actors - they play out in the skull-theater, more rooms, each more painful than the last, one life lived over & over each time triggered by an image whose colors/lines stretch tentacles of remembered sensations into the past, a million deja vues , no one can stand this I say, this is the entire scene, no THIS is,
each image perfect & bottomless, the pain of each registering -
O sleep, blankmind, a drink, imagine blankwall but it breaks open into new shapes more revealing than the last…
is this what you want?
Sure, I dig pretty pot dreams, geometric puns, abstract poem-memories gentle & easy they unfold, body warm, high, a new chevrolet purring easily, not
madmind rocket acceleration at speeds of 4 universe-lives per second, pain of too many mental G’s the take off continues, never levelling out…
apocalypse is a barrage of milleniums / continual explosions of death / birth death / birth, lives
illuminated in the flame.
When I tell you to try it it is afterwards in a room with solid furniture, remember that.

 
You can read Lami in its entirety at the following link: The Lami Book

 
Heartbreaking news has come out of the death at 54 yesterday of the well-loved reggae singer, songwriter, producer and promoter Lincoln Barrington “Sugar” Minott. Born and raised in the ghetto in Kingston, Jamaica, Minott spent his teen years in the city’s sound system scene and recording for Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s legendary Studio One label. The albums he released at this time, like Live Loving, Ghetto-ology and Roots Lovers—along with singles like “Herbman Hustling” and “Rub a Dub Sound Style”—laid the groundwork for the gritty, soulful dancehall sound that reggae would work into for the next 20 years.

Minott was best known for breaking with Jamaica’s soul-singer tradition, which saw many crooners brandishing a refined style that aped American artists. Sugar was sweet, but not slick. Minott would eventually leave Studio One to start his Black Roots label and Youthman Promotion sound system in order to help out young singers also coming out in Kingston’s ghettos. He’s responsible for early recording or performances of legends like Ranking Joe, Barry Brown, Tenor Saw, Little John, Tony Tuff, Barrington Levy, Horace Andy, Nitty Gritty, Junior Reid, Yami Bolo, Daddy Freddy and Garnett Silk.

You’ll see evidence of his popularity below, as Minott can’t get through his first tune at his first Reggae Sunsplash in 1983 without the crowd demanding he pull up and bring it again.
 

 
But you got the best of Sugar in his element, singing with the youths in the dancehall—or in this case, Maxfield Park in Kingston, where his Youthman Promotions sound regularly performed:
 

 
Dolly Parton’s heartbreaking Daddy Come and Get Me, a 1970 performance on The Porter Wagoner Show. Truly this woman is an all-American treasure. When most people think of Dolly Parton, they think of the hair and the boobs and the plastic surgery, but she’s one of the most talented performers who has ever lived. This performance is amazing.
 

 
(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)

 
As someone who works in the mainstream media myself, believe me when I tell you: This is 1000% on the money. Hilarious, but all too true. No really!

 
Orchid Removal points us to this lovely and unexpected steel band cover of the subtle and melodic Alberto Balsalm by the venerable Aphex Twin as performed by members of the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.

 
Dutch filmmaker Jan Kounen, primarily known for his ultra-violent gangster flick Doberman and El Topo-esque western Blueberry, spent several months in the Amazon with Shipibo Shamans experimenting with Ayahuasca, a psychoactive infusion prepared from vines and plants containing DMT (Dimethyltryptamine). Ayahuasca is a holy sacrament which the indigenous people and Shamans of the Amazon have known as a powerful holistic purgative medicine capable of great healing and transformation for thousands of years.

While in the Amazon, Kounen made the documentary Other Worlds. The film depicts the Shamanic culture and their underlying belief systems which stem from their knowledge of the Invisible. According to Kounen, the objective of the documentary “is to impress upon viewers that these little-known Indians developed veritable cognitive technology through their own sciences of the spirit, thousands of years ago. To me, these men are warriors in the battle to unlock the mysteries of consciousness. Shamans consider the greatest ally and the worst enemy of every individual to be one and the same… himself or herself.” In the film, Kounen primarily shows the therapeutic power of the Shamans and their plant teachers. This power is a type of ancestral psychoanalysis or human psychotherapy backed by 4,000 years of experience and practice.

Inexplicably, Other Worlds made in 2004 has never been released in the United States. It is only available on import DVD.

In this excerpt from the film, we see night vision shots of Kounen after he has ingested Ayahuasca followed by CGI images the director created to replicate his visual experiences during his “trip.”
 

 
In another excerpt from Other Worlds, Nobel Prize winner Kari Mullis, DMT cosmonaut Rick Strassman (author of The Spirit Molecule) and artist Alex Grey

Meher Baba at Paramount Film Studio, London, April 1932
 
Funny thing about silence. Humorist Josh Billings called it “one of the hardest arguments to refute” and the Slits called it a rhythm, while Francis Bacon called it “the virtue of fools” and six gay activists in New York in 1987 equated it with death. John Cage wrote a famous composition about it to show how much noise can be made at a concert with nobody playing their instruments.

Followers of Meher Baba have made a holiday out of it. On this day 85 years ago, the Indian-born mystic Baba went voluntarily silent at the age of 31. He would stay that way for 42 years, until he died in 1969. Funnily enough, no-one saw it coming. Born in the cosmopolitan Indian city of Pune to part-Zoroastrian-part-Sufi Persian parents, Baba seemed to have had it going on before his transformation to mysticism, according to Wiki:

His schoolmates nicknamed him “Electricity”. As a boy he formed The Cosmopolitan Club dedicated to remaining informed in world affairs and giving money to charity — money often raised by the boys betting at the horse races. He had an excellent singing voice and was a multi-instrumentalist and poet. Fluent in several languages, he was especially fond of Hafez’s Persian poetry, but also of Shakespeare and Shelley.

Baba’s persona, work and metaphysics enrapture lots of folks in the West, many of whom celebrities ranging from Gary Cooper to Pete Townshend. As you can see below, though a silent man for most of his life, Baba was a chatty bastard.
 

 
The great inventor Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856.

 
Louisiana swamp rocker Dale Hawkins proves in this video that punk rock was around waaaay before The Seeds, The Germs or The Ramones. With his sneering vocal style and Pork Pie hat, Hawkins looks like a low rent Frank Sinatra (or a member of The Specials) and sounds like a Bayou version of Johnny Rotten. Yeh-Yeh (Class Cutter) is a wiseass classic and juvenile delinquent’s dream. Sadly, Dale died of cancer in February of this year. But he never stopped rocking, performing until shortly before he died. He left behind several dozen recordings, most of which are still in print. His biggest hit was Suzie Q and that song alone places him among the immortals of rock and roll.
 

 
Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you, the newest member of the Dangerous Minds team, Marc Campbell:

Marc Campbell was the lead singer and lyricist for THE NAILS who recorded two critically acclaimed albums for RCA records. He’s best known for the cult hit 88 Lines About 44 Women. Later this year, Campbell will be releasing his first solo album, Tantric Machine. He is also working on a book, 44 WOMEN, an erotic memoir spanning the 60s and 70s, from the hippies to the punks. “Having been passionately involved with the social and artistic revolutions of those decades, I see many connections between the two and how one grew out of the other. 44 WOMEN pays tribute to the power and glory of sex, drugs, rock and roll…and LOVE. It is dedicated to the women in my life who did their best to keep me human.” Marc currently lives in Austin, Texas with his beautiful Turkish girlfriend and his chihuahua, Freddy. He likes good wine, rock and roll and hardboiled detective novels. He agrees with Timothy Leary that “intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

I’m sure Dangerous Minds readers will enjoy Marc’s eclectic pop culture postings. As some of you have probably already noticed, we’ve often linked to some of Marc’s Facebook posts here and think he’s the perfect addition to the band. Welcome Marc!