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Relay: Little Giants

Relay: Little Giants

The writer with Ziggy Marley after he performed in the office at Billboard in 2003.
The writer with Ziggy Marley after he performed in the office at Billboard in 2003.
I must plead guilty to serial name-dropping
By
Christopher Walsh

“You’ve met everyone!” Durell Godfrey exclaimed last Thursday, just after the editorial meeting and moments before the bombshell tossed by TMZ, the celebrity-gossip website, landed in the office: Prince was dead. 

Durell was referring to the actor Peter Dinklage, whom I have not actually met, and three of the four Beatles. 

I must plead guilty to serial name-dropping, though. John and Paul and Ringo, Elton John, Mary J. Blige. It’s all in my first book, “Into the Twilight,” a collection of these “Relay”s that is available at Amazon, BookBaby, and elsewhere in cyberspace (call me for a print copy).

But it’s true, I have been fortunate to meet a lot of people I admire, and some other noteworthy people, too. Keith Richards, B.B. King, Donovan, Ziggy Marley, D.J. Fontana, Graham Nash, Ron Wood, Warren Haynes, Norah Jones, Percy Heath, Suzanne Vega, Ace Frehley, Don Was, Billy Joel, John Mayer, Bootsy Collins, Ray Manzarek, and Glenn Tilbrook come to mind. Telephone conversations with Chuck Berry, Brian Wilson, Bill Wyman, Quincy Jones, Mickey Hart, Billy Bob Thornton, Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons, Robert Cray, Steve Earle, Lou Reed, Jorma Kaukonen, Jimmy Vaughan, Zakk Wylde. 

I haven’t had a television for four years now, and I don’t miss it at all. Today’s “smart” TVs surpass my understanding, and anyway, all things audio and video have converged in my iMac. Programming like the cable news channels, “The Daily Show,” and, sometimes, baseball games are there, along with multiple lifetimes’ worth of musical video content on YouTube. What’s more, the tyranny of cable TV is fading as devices like Apple TV allow a la carte selection from a growing body of content. 

Cooler still, HBO NOW allows anyone with an Internet connection to access its programming on a computer or mobile device. I signed up specifically to watch “Vinyl,” a series focusing on the music business, in all its sleazy glory, circa 1973. 

As colleagues who were in the business at the time attest, those were the days. My years at Billboard and another trade magazine in New York City weren’t quite so wild as that depicted in “Vinyl,” but there are some parallels. I’ll neither confirm nor deny participation in backstage high jinks at a few Black Crowes concerts. Ditto for an impromptu encounter with Levon Helm and Hubert Sumlin at the Beacon Theatre. It’s all in my rock ’n’ roll memoir, available wherever unpublished books are sold. (Note to agents and publishers: Call me.) 

During that semi-freewheeling time, I used to haul the laundry down from my sixth-floor walkup in Williamsburg to a Laundromat on Bedford Avenue. It was a mind-numbing chore, but one incident, a dozen or so years ago, stands out. Somewhere between pulling the clothes out of washing machines, throwing them into dryers, and inserting another thousand quarters, a silly contretemps played out before me when a young woman began accusing another patron of removing her still-damp clothes from the dryers and stuffing them into one of the rolling baskets you find at such places. 

The accused, a dwarf, denied all charges, but the woman would have none of it. Of his guilt she was certain, and she yammered on about just how inconsiderate he was and terribly inconvenienced she was. Her life, in fact, was irrevocably ruined, if the incessant yap-yap was any indication. 

I felt terrible for the poor man. His life was already hard enough, I was sure. To now suffer the indignity of being yelled at, in public, by this entitled, impudent youngster? It was wrong, but I said nothing. 

A year or two later, I saw a preview for a film. I don’t remember its title or subject, but to my amazement, there he was, the dwarf from the Laundromat. He probably wasn’t dragging his laundry down Bedford Avenue anymore. His accuser? Toiling in obscurity to this day, I’d wager. 

Yes, I have HBO NOW, now, but have not seen even one of the 51 episodes of “Game of Thrones,” starring Mr. Dinklage. I’m afraid to start for fear I won’t be able to stop, and thus will not accomplish anything ever again.

I never did meet Prince, nor see him perform. But he did sit directly in front me at a Sheryl Crow concert at the Beacon in, I think, 1999. (Yes, I have met Sheryl Crow a couple of times, once in the defunct Hit Factory studios, where she recorded a duet with Tony Bennett [yes, I have met Tony Bennett] but was too shy to say more than hello.) 

Like Mr. Dinklage — well, not really like him — Prince was slight in stature, but the hoop earrings he wore were enormous and offset his otherwise understated attire. As Ms. Crow concluded the last song of her set, but before the encore, Prince and his companion(s) — one or two women, if memory serves — discreetly left the building. 

Maybe I should have said hello. 

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

Point of View: The Best Thing

Point of View: The Best Thing

I was a callow and feckless youth
By
Jack Graves

A recent visitor to this office remarked on my books. “There’s everything you should read,” he said as I preened.

Actually, it’s everything I should have read long ago, in my bright college years, but forwent in favor of playing sports each season — soccer, squash, ice hockey, lacrosse — and serving up greasy hamburgers at my snack bar, known as “Gravy’s,” in the basement of Saybrook College.

In one of my ads, posted outside the college’s paneled dining room, I drew myself as Jesus feeding the 5,000, and urged the masses to “Go Gravy’s.”

I was a callow and feckless youth, and, as I saw yesterday in thumbing through an old photo album upstairs, which we are to have painted this week, an unsmiling infant with an odd, uncomprehending look. In all the photos of babies I see these days — my grandchildren among them — all are smiling, smiling broadly. My mother said I ran at 9 months, and that fact, the fact that I was often on the go, may have had something to do with it. Once, she said, she found me at the bottom of the hill atop which our house sat, sitting in the middle of Bennington’s Main Street. Presumably there wasn’t much traffic, it being wartime.

These photos, taken with a Brownie, I suppose, are fading now, and in some cases vanishing. There we are at McGuffy’s nursery school, the pugnacious Georgie Turner eyeing me sideways as I’m looking placidly straight ahead. My father assured me I’d put an end to his bullying about which I complained if once, just once, I’d hit him in the nose with all the force I could muster. 

“Papa! Papa! I did what you said: I hit Georgie Turner as hard as I could in the nose and he’s not bothering me anymore!” I wonder, Georgie, if you’re still alive, and, if so, how life has treated you. . . .

There we are in front of 25 Claremont Avenue in New York City bundled up in the blizzard of ’47. I’m holding Peter Puppy across my chest. He’s snow-covered and sighing, but putting up with it. There’s Puddy, Willie Dobbie, Ingrid. . . . I’ve begun to smile. . . . 

My cousin Margot is sitting regally in a chair, age 3 or so. Her mother, my aunt Mary, used to call her “Madam Queen,” and you can see why. She never had a problem smiling, and she, a breeder of black Labs on the Eastern Shore, and a motorcyclist and sailor as well, is still smiling. And laughing. And very loudly too. 

Which is the best, the absolutely best thing you can do.

Point of View: What a Weird Trip

Point of View: What a Weird Trip

"My finger might slip and we’d find ourselves booked on a flight to Afghanistan.”
By
Jack Graves

Talking to my sister-in-law Linda the other day the subject turned to trip-planning.

“I leave that to John,” she said.

“It’s just the opposite with us,” I said. “I leave it [and many other things] to Mary. As you know, I can’t hear very well, and I’m not very good with computers. My finger might slip and we’d find ourselves booked on a flight to Afghanistan.”

That had her in stitches, which is good because she’s recovering from a painful ankle injury, and so I continued. “Last night, I was looking over the itinerary for Georgie and Mary’s flight to Raleigh-Durham this weekend, and I found that they were going to stop first in. . . .”

“In Baltimore?”

“No, not Baltimore, in Orlando! Go figure. It was the first Mary’d heard of it. She was not pleased. ‘They told us we wouldn’t be changing planes,’ she said, retrieving the printouts from me. ‘I knew something was strange when it said the flight would take five hours and five minutes. Raleigh-Durham’s not that far away as the crow flies.’ ”

“Then I looked at the rental car details. And I saw that they were to pick up the car at Islip at 1 p.m. Friday and return it there at 7:30 p.m. Sunday! That didn’t sound right at all, and I told her so. She was incredulous, and, once she’d seen that it actually said what I said it said, nonplussed. ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! After flying down to Orlando and back, there would have been no car for us in Raleigh-Durham! They would have put us on a bus. What is wrong with these people!’ ”

“ ‘You can’t trust anybody,’ I said. ‘Nobody.’ ”

“After she’d gotten the car rental details straightened out, she thanked me profusely (which of course raised my self-esteem) and, reasoning that obviously she was now among those legions not to be trusted, said she would entrust me with the planning of our next trip. Brimming with diffidence, I said I would rise to the occasion . . . once the puppy we’re to get soon were raised.”

I ought to be able to find a travel agent by then. I trust the species is not utterly extinct. I think I heard someone say one had been spotted the other day at the Morton Wildlife Refuge. And there’s a rumor that there’s a mating pair at Mashomack.

Connections: Closing America’s Doors

Connections: Closing America’s Doors

Jews were virtually barred once, too, and it wasn’t all that long ago
By
Helen S. Rattray

Nothing upsets me more about the nastiness coming from Donald J. Trump and Ted Cruz, the presumptive front-runners for the Republican nomination for president, than their idea that Muslims should be barred from entering the country. Jews were virtually barred once, too, and it wasn’t all that long ago.

Senator Cruz thinks only Christian Syrians should be allowed in, and he has the nonsensical idea that the more than four million Syrian refugees “should be resettled in the Middle East, in majority Muslim countries.” I am frightened by even a hint of a religious test for who should be admitted to this country not only because it is immoral, but because I am old enough to remember World War II. 

During his long tenure as president Franklin Roosevelt was held in high regard by my parents and just about everyone they knew. What they didn’t know was his failure to open America’s doors to European Jews seeking to escape the Holocaust. The Great Depression and fears that Jewish refugees might alternately become financial burdens on the state or take away jobs have been described as reasons why the American public did not favor admitting Jews. You can decide for yourself if religion had anything to do with it. 

The civilized world may not have been aware of Hitler’s “final solution” when German Jews were stripped of citizenship in 1935 or when on Nov. 9, 1938, Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, occurred, in which Jews were viciously attacked through­out Germany. But surely it was a warning of what was to come. 

President Roosevelt and the State Department were not moved. More than 300,000 mostly Jewish Germans applied for visas in 1939. Only a little over 20,000 were approved under the federal quota. 

The president remained silent when the St. Louis, a ship loaded with refugees seeking asylum in this country, was turned away, with concentration camps the eventual destination for many of those aboard. Nor did mounting evidence about the death camps sway American policy even after we entered the war. 

It wasn’t until 1944, and because of the intervention of a Jewish secretary of the treasury, Henry Morganthau Jr., that Roosevelt finally urged Congress “to take all measures . . . to rescue victims of enemy oppression in imminent danger of death.” 

My maternal grandfather, who had emigrated from eastern Europe long before I was born, warned me that I shouldn’t trust anyone who wasn’t Jewish. As a child during the war years, I was sure he was mistaken, but I came to understand why he thought as he did after the war, when a couple with tattooed numbers on their arms who survived a concentration camp came to live nearby. 

The process by which refugees are considered for resettling in the United States today is more humane, I suppose, although it takes between 18 months and two years. The United Nations Refugee Agency first refers people for United States visa consideration. By November of 2015, it had referred 22,427 Syrians, although only 2,290 were admitted to this country since 2011. With more than 4 million Syrians among other refugees seeking new lives, even President Obama’s suggestion that we take in 10,000 is paltry. 

I wonder what those in future generations will think of that.

Relay: I Love A Parade

Relay: I Love A Parade

This weekend brings out the green in all of us

When I read this winter that a town UpIsland had voted to prohibit solicitors from going door to door, I thought, send them out here. I’d have invited them in, served them coffee, asked about the family, and sent them home with a bundt cake. Of course, I would later cancel the very big order I placed, because, really, how many vacuums or cleaning fluids does a woman need? 

Yes, it was that dull out here this winter. More businesses were closed, and it seemed that fewer people were out and about over all. But this weekend brings out the green in all of us, and I’ll soon be eating my words.

I’m always a bit baffled when locals tell me they stay home instead of going to the Montauk Friends of Erin parade. When I spoke last week to Capt. Paul Forsberg, who is this year’s grand marshal, he told me he thought it was amazing that this little hamlet without one traffic light could hold such an elaborate parade, and I agreed with him. The parade attracts thousands of people, most of whom wear silly hats, makeup, or other green bits of clothing, all great for people-watching.

And, of course, there are always salespeople out and about, whether they be Girl Scouts selling cookies or others promoting store sales. I think I empathize with salespeople because my father was one. I’m sure it wasn’t his life plan to be a salesperson, but he didn’t have much choice after the incident with the police department.

After he left the Army, he became a mounted police officer in New York City, meaning he rode a horse rather than sit in a squad car. One night while on duty he tied his horse to a post and went into a shop for a doughnut and coffee. The horse got loose and somehow managed to get into a movie theater, where he scared the poor moviegoers to death. My father was fired and became a salesperson.

He sold Wyler drink products, which were similar to Kool-Aid, to supermarkets and smaller grocery stores. But Kool-Aid had already drenched the markets and had the bigger name, so when my father came home with his drunk face on, we knew sales weren’t too good. There was never a shortage of lemonade or cherry juice in our house.

There were times when I was a little girl when he took me to work with him, probably when I was faking illness to stay home from school. My mother always worked and someone had to watch me, so they piled blankets, pillows, and coloring books in the car for our ride up to Westchester County, which was his territory. 

I used to feel so sorry for him when I saw the managers shake their heads, no, no Wyler here. But then my father got smart and realized when I was with him the store managers were much friendlier and even placed bigger orders than usual. I must have had bedhead and been dressed in rags for them to have that type of reaction. My bedhead is pretty scary, so maybe they just wanted to get rid of us.

Anyway, we’ll all be drinking the Kool-Aid this weekend, no matter what shape or color it comes in. Green beer will be flowing, the bands will be drumming, silly floats will draw a laugh, and Montauk will wake up for the season. I, for one, can’t wait!

 

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The East Hampton Star.

Point of View: The Closest Thing

Point of View: The Closest Thing

I was glad Mexico had not built a wall to keep us tourists out
By
Jack Graves

“Estoy feliz que Mexico no ha construido un muro contra noso­tros!” I said to the taxi driver as we arrived at the Las Brisas hotel outside Zihuatenejo.

He laughed, as had been my intention in saying I was glad Mexico had not built a wall to keep us tourists out. On that note, we began a week’s stay at the closest thing we’ve come to paradise on this earth, there being nothing to do there but read and swim and speak bad Spanish to the unfailingly pleasant staff, a wonderfully captive audience. 

And yet, even though I felt more at ease than ever with the language, to the extent that I was able to frequently get orange juice mixed in with my margaritas, and to make some headway in proposing that the name of Isaias Ochoa Hernandez, a former Las Brisas lifeguard who began protecting baby sea turtles there years ago, be added to the hotel’s history of the project, a history proudly affixed to a stone wall near the beach, it’s Mary who always received the compliments — heeding apparently the advice of my father that all one needed to say in French was thank you and goodbye, “merci” and “au revoir.”

In her case it’s “gracias” and “lo siento,” to which she adds, apologetically, “Mi espanol es muy mal,” invariably prompting her interlocutor to declaim, “No, no, senora, you speak very well! You speak very well!”

“I’m better than her in tennis, she’s better than me in swimming, and we’re tied in Ping-Pong,” I said to a waiter who had noted we were sporty. I forgot to add that she killed me in backgammon — thankful that I wasn’t that fluent.

For exercise, though, you needn’t do anything more than climb up and down Las Brisas’s steep stone stairs that lead through jungly growth to the pools, the tennis courts, the beach, and, if you’re of a mind, to the lobby, about as high up on the cliff into which the hotel is built as a sacrificial Aztec or Mayan altar. 

“It was like Syphilis,” I said, panting, to Mary following one of my steep ascents. “Sisyphus, rather. . . . You know, Robert Graves [no relation] says he was known as the worst knave on earth for promoting only Corinthian commerce and navigation.”

That reminded me of a certain knave on the earth now, though I held my tongue, not wanting our bliss to go amiss.

Connections: The Bubble Quiz

Connections: The Bubble Quiz

We might be able to say that this cloud of national humiliation has had a silver lining
By
Helen S. Rattray

Maybe it’s a good thing that interest in the presidential election has been revved up by one candidate who denigrates so many people — targeting them by place of origin, religion, and sex — while another foments revolution (albeit a peaceful one). Everyone I know keeps talking about the primaries.

I cannot believe disrespect and name-calling are good for democracy, but if more of the electorate turns out in November as a result, we might be able to say that this cloud of national humiliation has had a silver lining.

A report on voter turnout in national elections between 2000 and 2012, from an organization called the Bipartisan Policy Center, showed it “dipped from 62.3 percent of eligible citizens voting in 2008 to an estimated 57.5 in 2012. That figure was also below the 60.4 level of the 2004 election but higher than the 54.2 percent turnout in the 2000 election.” So it seems that somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of voters were the decision-makers in those years. 

Of course, a simple majority hasn’t always assured national election. In 2000, Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president, lost in the Electoral College after Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush in a 5-to-4 Su­preme Court decision. That then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor voted with the majority was considered the deciding factor. Mr. Gore had won the popular vote, although by only a very small percentage; Ralph Nader had won almost 3 percent of the vote and was probably the spoiler rather than Justice O’Connor. In addition to talking about the primaries, friends and relatives who admit to being surprised by the size of Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s support have found it amusing to take something called the Bubble Quiz. According to their score on 25 questions, they were able to find out if they lived “cloistered together . . . with little to no exposure to American culture at large.” 

The quiz was devised by Charles Murray, a well-known political scientist and author who describes himself as a libertarian. He was recently interviewed about it by Paul Solman on the PBS NewsHour.

The Bubble Quiz questions range from “Have you ever walked on a factory floor?” and “Have you ever had a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?” to whether you have seen certain popular movies or eaten in certain chain restaurants. If you are interested in finding out where you score, it’s easy to find on the NewsHour website.

I myself took the quiz earlier today, but didn’t find it particularly enlightening. I guess I’m already aware that I live in a bubble of privilege. Also, I am not entirely sure that Mr. Murray is an oracle on what constitutes “American culture at large.” Still, if those who took the quiz were a fair sample of the voting public, and if their answers were carefully analyzed, perhaps it might serve as a barometer of the next election.

What we all know for sure is that the electorate is deeply divided, and that the societal culture gap is real. Trump and Sanders are only making that division so obvious we cannot ignore it any longer.

The Mast-Head: 1,000 Tons, No Takers

The Mast-Head: 1,000 Tons, No Takers

A long, tall mound of steaming dark-brown, almost black soil
By
David E. Rattray

East Hampton has 1,000 tons of compost it can’t get rid of.   A couple of weeks back, officials sent out a notice announcing the town had a large amount unscreened compost to unload. The stuff had accumulated at the recycling center, the end product of all the lawn clippings, leaves, and brush that flow into the place, which are run through a giant grinder and left to mulch. Visitors to the so-called dump can see it for themselves — a long, tall mound of steaming dark-brown, almost black soil. 

Homeowners and landscapers know all about the town’s compost. Though it is thought not to be all that good for growing edible crops, it is terrific for sweetening up portions of a tired lawn or ornamental plantings. For a modest fee, workers at the recycling center will put a load in the back of a pickup truck for commercial landscapers or gardeners; permit-holders with a few bins to fill can do so at no charge, as I understand it.

However, when the supply reaches the hundreds or thousands of tons, the town has a problem. No one responded to its request for bids to buy the stuff, and earlier this month the Purchasing Department had the matter tabled during a town board meeting.

Compost is not the town’s only recycling headache. Because market prices for the products it collects have gone up and down over the years, it sometimes costs more for the town to deal with the material than it can receive from buyers.

That said, it is better in dollar terms for the town to hold down the volume of solid waste of any sort that it collects and has to haul away. Yard waste and tree trimmings ground into compost represent that much less that has to be sent to a distant landfill or incinerator.

Even if difficult to get rid of when the supply piles up, the composting program is a net benefit for taxpayers. And while we might not be able to take care of that 1,000 tons all on our own, a bucket-load here and there that any of us can take and use at home helps out.

The Mast-Head: Another Montauk

The Mast-Head: Another Montauk

A gringo creation
By
David E. Rattray

Despite the howler monkeys in the trees and 84-degree ocean, Playa Guiones, Costa Rica, seems a whole lot like a tropical version of Montauk. This thought struck Lisa and me early during our vacation at this up-and-coming Pacific Coast resort town.

The similarities are both superficial and serious. There are surfers and a yoga crowd in Playa Guiones who have made a commitment to spending months upon months chasing their dreams. There are short-term visitors like us, grabbing hotel rooms for a week or two. And, to longer-lasting effect, the area has resident expats and an active investor and developer scene. Indeed, it seems that every other conversation I have heard in our week here has been about real estate or the opening of some new business.

The only locals a visitor generally encounters work in the visitor trade, the beach town itself appearing to be almost entirely a gringo creation. Which is not to say that Playa Guiones is bad — nor Montauk — but that the idealized version of the place presented through its creature comfort-centric commerce can be misleading.

There is an English-language newspaper here and its recent coverage has included stories about the region’s water supplies. As new businesses open and vacation houses, most with swimming pools, are built, demand has increased rapidly. Between an extra-dry dry season and extra consumption, Playa Guiones and the neighboring villages have had to endure nightly water interruptions to allow the system to refill. At a recent community meeting a mostly expat audience debated whether and how to add a new public well to improve the supply.

Bolinas, a Northern California surf town I visited not long ago, responded to a similar challenge decades ago by permanently capping the number of water meters. Long Island, where all the drinking water comes out of the ground, probably should have done something similar, but policymakers have tended to act as if the supply were infinite. A new state study, announced by the governor last month, might clarify the situation — if we’re lucky.

It’s hard to say whether Playa Guiones is overrun with visitors the way Montauk can be on certain summer weekends. Yet all the real estate signs, Airbnb rentals, surfing lessons, overpriced food, and various other for-profit schemes seem the same, and they are on a worrisome trajectory. Too much really can be too much, and I hope that whatever passes for a power structure here at least takes it slow.

I have my doubts, though. The Times Travel section did one of its breathless takes on Playa Guiones on Sunday, which can only mean one thing: More is ahead, and it’s not necessarily going to be good.

Relay: Revolution Relived

Relay: Revolution Relived

A pronounced preference for the real thing
By
Christopher Walsh

Oh man, that was fun. Though it went by in a flash, as I’ve been telling people since Sunday, it was well worth it. Well worth the 57-mile after-work drive to and from the rehearsal studio in Bohemia. Well worth the hours holed up in the tiny and cluttered studio/writing room at home, learning new songs. And well worth all of Saturday’s downtime as the hours ticked away and the butterflies took flight. 

It had been exactly one year since anything resembling a formal performance — a short-lived band that gave exactly one performance before falling apart, as these ventures usually do — and in the ensuing months I’d wavered between a mild enthusiasm to soldier on and, more often, fervent cynicism and negativity. When time allowed, I’d hole up in that tiny room in what seems a futile effort to attain even passable dexterity on the piano. The guitars weren’t played at all, silently gathering dust as they hung from the walls. 

Is anyone even listening? Does anyone care? In my observation, live music is received as background noise. Don’t the kids prefer a D.J. these days?

Maybe, but the audience that packed Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday, at least, showed a pronounced preference for the real thing. The crowd definitely skewed older, shall we say, and when queried at the top of the show, many testified to personal experience with the Fillmore East, a downtown Manhattan rock ’n’ roll venue that closed when I was 4 and to which this event paid tribute. 

A few months ago, Randolph Hudson III, a guitarist and wonderful guy, asked if I owned a 12-string guitar. As it happened, I had bought one, on a whim, just a few months earlier when an offer I thought insultingly low was unexpectedly accepted. Randy kindly referred me to Joe Lauro, of the HooDoo Loungers and the Historic Films archive, who has helped to conceive and organize many similar musical events at Bay Street in the last few years. 

Joe and I had a short conversation, and I was invited to play with a group that would perform music of Jefferson Airplane, a group I’d always liked yet wasn’t especially familiar with beyond a spellbinding scene in “Gimme Shelter,” the Maysles brothers’ document of a 1969 festival at which a young man was stabbed and kicked to death by members of the Hells Angels as the Rolling Stones played on. 

Paul Kantner, who died in January, played the 12-string, an integral component of the psychedelic band’s sound. The “Airplane” would play between groups performing music of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, two other icons of rock ’n’ roll’s long-ago golden age. 

In Bohemia — what a suitable name for these hippie revivalists’ rehearsal site — it was immediately apparent that Joe had assembled a fantastic crew, perhaps none more than the vocalists, George Feaster and Carolyn Droscoski, who would be our Marty Balin and Grace Slick. George, I later learned, is also an accomplished actor; as a frontman he is one of the best I’ve ever seen. When Carolyn belts out “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” it is, as Joe said, as though Ms. Slick is standing before you. 

Time and logistics allowed for just two group rehearsals before the big day, and by Saturday we just about knew what we were doing. When it was time, we proceeded to the stage in darkness, the last minutes of the original “King Kong” playing on the screen overhead, as Jefferson Airplane had done at a Fillmore East concert. 

“Well, Denham,” the police lieutenant said, “the airplanes got him.”

“Oh no,” Denham replied, the orchestral score swelling to its climax. “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” 

And then we were off, “3/5 Mile in 10 Seconds” and “The Other Side of This Life” and “White Rabbit” and more, ending with our own climactic “Volunteers” (“Got a revolution, got to revolution!”). It went by in a flash. 

I hope those veterans of the Fillmore East were able to relive a moment in their lives, and I wish I could relive the moment I hope they relived, if that makes any sense. Can we all do that again? 

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.