I’ll drink your health, share your wealth, run your life, steal your wife. Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.

Oh dearie me it’s the year of the Dead and From the Mars Hotel seems appropriate on a rainy blustery, well typhoon like apparently, Oregon fall day.

Not much to say but after watching Trump all over the TV I was moved to hear US Blues as that is how it feels right now, the blues have set in. The corruption intrinsic in the current political situation has bubbled to the top and the ideals of peace love and lets all get together in the country are long behind us. It is ironic that the generation of Woodstock are the aging politicians of today.

It’s a beautiful album however, and you should take the time to revel in the lazy daze that is the Dead. I love the bass work on this album, Phil never get’s the dues he deserves, praise is heaped on Bobby’s odd chords and Jerry’s playing but where is the love for the piece that holds it all together.

I want to hear Cheech Marin or Tommy Chong telling everyone that “when they go low we go high,” many apologies to the first lady but come on it’s an opportunity too good to miss

Goin’ home goin’ home…

There are those albums that take you back to a time and space that is comforting, late at night it’s time to pull them out and rock your soul. Or as sometimes has been the case in the early mornings as well. The great albums of you life fit you like a glove, they remind you of the past and prepare you for what’s ahead. They can be gentle or raucous, loud or quiet but they always take you back and ease you forward.

Terry Jacks Seasons In The Sun alway transports me back to Liverpool in the 80’s when it was guaranteed to get a reaction from the clientele in many a seedy bar and club as you snuck it on the jukebox. This was in the days before irony when the wrong song was cause for beer to be spilled. The secret was to hit them with Psychedelic Warlords by Hawkwind and The Seeds Pushin’ Too Hard before the final knockout of Terry and his tale of death and loss. In this way a false sense of security was achieved, drinkers nodding along to anthems of psychedelia and discontent to be cruelly knocked down by the middle of the road. At that point it was essential to head for the ditch and vacate the premises, my guess is the deadly triumvirate became known by the clientele and the last long hair at the jukebox had been spotted.

In the current technological climate this can be achieved nowadays from the safety of your seat through an app on your phone. At least this is what my son tells me as he plays Patsy Cline in the local biker bar. Guerrilla Jukebox at it’s best and safest.

Which has nothing to do with the original premise which I may get back to next time, for now I want you to imagine a bar full of bikers rocking out to Patsy.

They are who they think they are…

Well my Harper parcel finally arrived and it is a collection of joy sitting there on the coffee table demanding to be played. The decisions waiting to be made are almost overwhelming.

The only thing to be done was play the single most powerful album I ever heard during my formative musical years. An album that justified my angry young man stance and my wise stoner outfits for years and to this day still informs many of my decisions social and political. An album that is full of beauty and ugliness, celebrating all that is good and awful about our degenerate race as we rush headlong into fucked upville at a rate that is bewildering. An album that still makes me sit up and listen and nowadays chuckle at the sincerity of it all, a sincerity that is still as raw and honest as ever.

It helped tonight that I played it right after the travesty that was the vice presidential debate when I heard many an “evergreen excuse.” Somedays I still wish that I could be feeling all the Saturday again in order to get thorough the farce that American politics has now become.

So here I am sitting and listening to the brilliance that is Flat Baroque and Berserk after the travesty of the playground fight I just witnessed on national T.V.

So for my American pals:

“How does it feel to be completely unreal?

How does it feel to be a voter?”

and

“How does it feel to be out on your own?

How does it feel to be thinkin’?”

The question of “How does it feel with your god strapped to your wrist?” has made it so I have not worn a watch since 1980 when I first heard this album, it is also what saved me from the fitbit wave a few months ago.

The whole album is full of lines that seem to have defined so many times in my life. Memories flood back throughout the whole album, throwing vegetables at Thatcher, yelling at the guards outside the  U.S .Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Sitting on the floor attention thoroughly focussed on Harper as he fumbled his way through a set of songs in a way that verged on insanity or transcendence. The Irish Center, the Adelphi, Krackers, The Floral Hall, The Philharmonic Hall, when they wouldn’t turn the lights off, gigs in Southport. Liverpool, Manchester, Warrington. St. Helens, Bradford, Hull, Brighton, New Brighton, Putney, so many festivals, in fields, halls and mud puddles too many shows and too many memories and always the core of songs from this album present.

I’ve sat crying as relationships end to this album. Tested out new relationships, can you really live with someone who can’t stand your favorite record? Sought solace in poetry and laughed at the lunacy.

Just remember.

“Free Speech

One each.”