a. You put an ignorant uneducated fool in charge who behaves like a wild adolescent.
b. He surrounds himself with incompetent sycophantic morons like Hegseth
c. He believes that he can bully, threaten and attack anyone to get his way
d. He shares an obnoxious, belligerent, fascist ideology with his appointments and lives in a bubble
e. He is a psychopathic narcissist who things he is more important, more powerful than anyone and can do anything he wants
f. When he and his cronies think that laws (international or national) are made for everyone else but not them
g. That everything is black and white and just by stating things they happen
h. Who believes that planning and investigating likely outcomes is for pussies
i. Who thinks he can bomb, kill and force anyone and everyone to do what he wants, when he wants
j. Who doesn’t care about consequences or human misery
k. Who drops allies and friends and sides with fellow war criminals, tyrants and despots (like Putin and Netanyahu)
l. Who is so needy that he has hissy fits with anyone who doesn’t go along with what he wants.
m. Who always lies and seems to believe his own lies
n. Who can’t read, is stupid with short attention span, disbelieves experts, won’t take advice and acts of gut instinct (always wrong)
o. Who believes going gung-ho produces results
p. Who sees everything as a means for personal gain and really doesn’t care about the nation’s debts, affect on ordinary people or number of deaths
This is the definition of Fascism – superiority built on prejudice and not reality. Scapegoating and treating other people as inferior, worthless and subhuman so that you can treat them abominably, cruelly and coldly – incarcerate, expel and bomb, even torture – because they are worthless. Simplistic black and white solutions to complex issues. Use of force and suppression. Linear thinking. Lack of compassion and empathy. Brutality.
A polite confrontation between two rivals with opposing views:
Chapter 21 – Changes
‘Come in,’ Chameakegra said, indicating a seat next to a low mense on which were two tumblers of synth.
Grrndakegra had not been invited into these private quarters on the Neff. She looked round at the room with some curiosity. It was strange, so very strange. The walls had these oblong structures on them with strange shapes and colours. The mense seemed to be made of some natural substance. There was a peculiar noise wailing away.
When Chameakegra had messaged her and invited her for a casual evening of relaxation she had not known what to make of it. What had Chameakegra meant? What ploy was this?
The two of them might have had joint command but they had been operating autonomously with the minimum coordination or contact – particularly following Chameakegra’s outburst. Grrndakegra had been supervising the extraction process, the decommissioning of all military equipment and overseeing the setting up of lunar facilities. Chameakegra had been working on the Hydran government with its various departments. The two of them had been involved with the new energy grid but once the decisions had been made that was running itself. The need for them to work together was minimal. Then this. Out of the blue she’d received this invitation. What was going on?
At first Grrndakegra was going to decline but her curiosity got the better of her. What was Chameakegra up to? It felt as if it might be best to go along and find out. As Beheggakegri had suggested; there might be something to be learnt that she could use against her, something to be found out about her peccadillos. What was there to lose?
Chameakegra looked relaxed, dressed casually with a pleasant blue hue to her scutes. Grrndakegra found herself hoping that her own scutes were suitably friendly. She daren’t look but doubted they were. This visit was making her feel uncomfortable.
‘I call this my Hydran room,’ Chameakegra remarked, seating herself opposite Grrndakegra.
Grrndakegra peered round at the weird room. There was a soft covering underfoot. The walls were coloured and muted lights created a relaxed atmosphere, not that Grrndakegra was at all relaxed; she remained fully on guard.
‘Try the synth,’ Chameakegra suggested.
Grrndakegra took a sip and very nearly spat it out. The stuff certainly wasn’t synth. It tasted like liquid fire.
Chameakegra chuckled at the Giforian’s reaction. ‘Sorry. I should have warned you. Just the barest sip.’
Grrndakegra grimaced and put the tumbler down. Was her host trying to poison her? Was that the plan? She glared at her hostess.
‘It’s Hydran,’ Chameakegra explained. ‘An intoxicating beverage they call whiskey. It certainly has a kick. Probably a bit of an acquired taste. It’s the ethyl alcohol that gives it that kick. I’ve grown to like it. When you get more used to it you can make out all manner of flavours and nuances. Great to relax to.’
Grrndakegra eyed the beaker suspiciously. She did not know if she’d ever want to get used to that burning fluid.
‘I thought it might be an idea to have an evening of Hydran culture,’ Chameakegra explained, sipping her whiskey.
‘So that’s what that noise is,’ Grrndakegra remarked, beginning to twig what this was about.
Chameakegra nodded. ‘You see, I find this culture more fascinating than any other I’ve ever visited. While it is obvious that these Hydrans have some extremely unpleasant attributes I feel it is good to understand that there is another side to them; they are extremely creative.’
‘Well, judging from the taste of that whiskey and this wailing sound I can’t say that this Hydran culture is something I’d be particularly interested in exploring.’
Chameakegra laughed. ‘As with all new things, it takes time to understand something as different and complex as this. I have an advantage. I have been here a long while carrying out the assessment and completely immersed myself in their culture.’
Grrndakegra was impressed with how relaxed and cheerful Chameakegra seemed. She must know that she was in cahoots with Beheggakegri actively working against her, yet here she was being friendly. Nothing made sense. She did not seem to have taken umbrage at his lack of appreciation or derogatory remarks. The past confrontations and harsh words seemed to have been put to one side. This was a complete charm offensive. What was she hoping to achieve? She allowed herself a little smirk. Whatever it was it was doomed to fail.
‘I hoped you might give it a try and come to appreciate a little of what makes them tick.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Grrndakegra replied. ‘They seem like a bunch of primitives to me; primitives with nasty habits.’ But a little part of her was intrigued. So this was Chameakegra’s ploy. She had invited her round to try to win her over to the Hydran’s side. Well that wasn’t going to happen, was it?
Chameakegra did not seem to be in the least put off. ‘What you are standing on is an Indian rug. It was handwoven by Hydrans from animal fur.
Grrndakegra looked at the rough material with its strange designs. Her eyes went a little funny. The scrolly shapes seemed to draw her in to its rich coloration.
‘The sound you are listening to is called classical music. Hydrans regard it as a sophisticated pinnacle of their culture.
Grrndakegra found herself listening to the sounds. She could distinguish a number of different types of noises blending together. There was a rhythm to it, a distinct flow. ‘Sounds like a noise.’
‘Come, look at these,’ Chameakegra rose from her seat and led Grrndakegra over to the oblong shapes on the wall. ‘These are works of art. The Hydrans use pigments to create representations of other Hydrans, animals, landscapes or scenes.’
Chameakegra’s obvious enthusiasm was wasted on her. She peered at the squiggles of colour. ‘I can’t make out any images what-so-ever.’
Chameakegra chuckled again. ‘That’s because this one is an abstract by a Hydran artist called Miro. He drew out imagery from his subconscious and was famous for his bold use of colour and strange esoteric imagery.’
‘Certainly vivid colours,’ Grrndakegra admitted. ‘Can’t make any sense of it though.’
‘Here,’ Chameakegra pointed, ‘That’s a very stylised bird. Joan Miro was well known for his use of child-like imagery.’
‘I can certainly agree with that. A child could certainly have produced that.’
Chameakegra led her along her collection of art and photography then shared a couple of poems. She summoned up the tridee to show some dance and changed the music to a raw simple sound as they wandered through her large collection. ‘They call this rock ‘n’ roll,’ she explained, and this,’ the music changed to a droning sound ‘Indian classical’. They roamed around the room with Chameakegra picking up artefacts from alcoves, encouraging Grrndakegra to handle them, feel their texture, and appreciate their shape and colour, while providing some commentary on their history and importance.
Despite her misgivings Grrndakegra found some of this fascinating. These Hydrans certainly had a range of artistic creations. She could see that, even though most of it was crude and vulgar, others rather repulsive or strange. Chameakegra explained how each of the hundreds of cultures had created their own styles of music, dress, artefacts, dance and art all resulting in an amazing richness. ‘As imaginative as their multiple ways of killing and maiming,’ Grrndakegra retorted.
They returned to their seats and talked. Chameakegra sipped her whiskey and, after a little while, Grrndakegra picked up her tumbler, sniffed the contents and took a tiny sip.
I have been a huge fan of Country Joe and the Fish ever since I was introduced to their first album way back in 1967!
A great band live too!
Electric Music For The Mind and Body was an essential seminal album. They vied with Captain Beefheart as my favourite West Coast band – revolutionary, political and extraordinary. Loved them.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with them all (apart from Barry) at a gig in Leeds. We talked about old times. Joe was on form.
I got to see Bruce and Barry do solo gigs in Hull and had a long talk with both.
Joe was a favourite, loved his voice and solo work – his spirit was in the right place.
Everything you ever wanted to know about Rock Music –
The Acid Rock Scene of 1966-1967
By 1966 the Hippie sub-culture of Haight-Ashbury had become more than a minor cult. It had begun to attract in huge numbers of followers and grown into a thriving community with idealistic aspirations and a peaceful message that was both simple and revolutionary and about to engulf the whole globe with its message of ‘Peace and Love’. Its bands were Country Joe & the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, It’s a Beautiful Day, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Quicksilver Messenger Service, Blue Cheer and the Grateful Dead. A similar scene, with a slightly harder vibe, had grown up in Los Angeles involving Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa’s Mother’s of Invention, the Byrds, the Doors, Steppenwolf, and Love. While these scenes were largely autonomous there was a degree of interchange.
This came to be known as Acid Rock.
It was on the brink of exploding both on to the national charts and to rule the Underground Rock Scene.
The first thing you noticed about this style of music was the completely different sound created by the guitars. They soared, shrill with piercing energy. The second difference was in the lyrical content which was full of drug references, peace philosophy, politics and anti-war statements.
At the same time the British Underground was getting under way and the two scenes became intertwined, feeding off each other and vying to get further out. As the bands travelled, toured and intermingled they learnt from each other and despite their very different cultural and musical backgrounds began to get more and more closely aligned. They dug each other and were turned on by each other.
San Francisco
In San Francisco the top bands started getting recording contracts with the major record companies. The record companies had realised that there was a new scene to exploit and wanted in on the action. Unlike with earlier problems with groups like the Charlatans they began, mainly because nobody understood what to do with them, to be given a far greater freedom of expression in the studio. This enabled them to experiment and developed their sound even more. One of the first was Jefferson Airplane who featured Grace Slick on vocals. They played a Folksy Acid Rock on albums like Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing at Baxters, Crown of Creation, Bless its Little Pointed Head and Volunteers. Their double sided single ‘White Rabbit/Somebody to Love’ became massive. ‘White Rabbit’, with its Lewis Carrol allusions, was a classic LSD trip inspired song. The band reflected the current counter-culture philosophy and aligned itself fully with the culture it had emanated from. They performed at all major Haight-Ashbury events performing many free concerts in the Golden Gate Park. With their long hair, flowing multicoloured robes and ground-breaking light shows they set the scene.
Another big favourite was Country Joe and the Fish. They evolved out of the Instant Action Jug Band and were more overtly political right from the start with their ‘I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag’, ‘Tricky Dickie’, ‘Superbird’, ‘The bomb song’, ‘Who am I’ and ‘Untitled protest’. Their act was also infused with druggie songs such as ‘Grace’ (about Grace Slick), ‘Janis’ (Janis Joplin), ‘Bass Strings’, ‘Magoo’, ‘The Marijuana chant’ and ‘The Acid Commercial’. They released three groundbreaking albums – ‘Electric Music for the body and mind’, ‘I feel like I’m fixin’ to die’ and ‘Together’ before running out of steam.
Big Brother & the Holding Company were one of the earliest bands on the scene but were pushed into the background as Janis Joplin, the lead singer, was given more prominence. They made early recordings without her and later ones after she’d gone that showed that they were a lot more than a mere backing band. Yet it was the album ‘Cheap Thrills’ with its cartoon cover featuring Janis singing numbers like Big Mama Thornton’s ‘Ball and Chain’ and the incredible ‘Piece of my heart’ that was their apotheosis. Janis went on to have a tragically short solo career recording ‘Dem ol’ Kosmic Blues Again Mama’ and hits with numbers like ‘Me and Bobby McGhee’.
The Grateful Dead were legends before their time. They actually blended R&B and Country in their early incarnations and started as Mother McCrees Uptown Jug Champions before morphing into the R&B Warlocks and meeting up with Kesey for the Acid Tests. They epitomised the San Francisco philosophy, living in a house on the Haight in what was a commune, consuming shit-loads of drugs and devising a stage act with the state of the art light show, long improvised numbers complete with Jerry Garcia’s oscillating feedback. They gathered a fanatical following but somehow failed to capture the complete magic of their stage act on record; their best being ‘The Grateful Dead’, ‘Live Dead’ and ‘Anthem of the Sun’.
Blue Cheer was a heavy unit named after a brand of LSD produced by Owsley. They were part of the heavy, psyched out power trio style that spawned Heavy Metal. Their extremely heavy version of Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ was the highlight of their first album Vincebus Eruptum.
The Quicksilver Messenger Service produced long psychedelic improvised versions of R&B numbers like Bo Diddley’s ‘Mona’ and the wonderful ‘Who do you love’. Their apotheosis was the album ‘Happy Trails’. After that they suffered a number of drug busts and the band fell apart.
Moby Grape was created by Skip Spence who was the Jefferson Airplane’s original drummer and was launched on a major hype. They had a huge party complete with the handing out of gimmicks and decals to signal the release of their album and simultaneous release of all ten tracks as 5 singles. All five flopped and they suffered a loss of street cred from which they never recovered.
Los Angeles
The LA music scene was centred on the Sunset Strip with a number of small clubs like London Fog, Ciros and the Whiskey a Go Go. The alternative community would travel in from centres like Venice in order to sample the wares of these Acid Rock Bands.
One of the earliest bands on the scene were Captain Beefheart and His Magic and. The Captain – Don Van Vliet – had been to school with Frank Zappa. They’d formed a leather-jacketed R&B/Doo-Wop band in the late 1950s which had terrorised everyone and got nowhere.
He changed his name to Captain Beefheart (from a musical play he put together with Frank Zappa) put together the Magic Band and had a minor hit with Bo Diddley’s ‘Diddy Wah Diddy’ in 1965. Their early style was very Blues based but was also extremely original and his stage act at that time can be heard on the Mirrorman album which was released in 1969. Beefheart’s voice was said to be the most powerful in Rock with its huge range. The first album featured Ry Cooder on guitar and was called Safe as Milk. They followed up with Strictly Personal with its much debated psychedelic phasing and released the incredible Trout Mask Replica produced by Frank Zappa – probably the most innovative album of all time. Beefheart claimed that the music came out of the dessert and that none of the musicians could play and that he’d taught them from scratch so that they could play this new type of music. He claimed that experienced musicians could not be trained to play this way. All of the band were given new names – Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Drumbo, Winged Eel Fingerling, Mascara Snake and Antennae Jimmy Semens. Trout Mask Replica was the result of the band being isolated in a big house and practicing endlessly for hour after hour. Don was not weird. He only called in a tree surgeon because he was concerned that the music might be having a detrimental effect on the trees around the house who might get frightened of the loud music. He also claimed to have written all the songs on the double album in one day. When sarcastically asked why it had taken him so long he replied that he wrote them on the piano and he’d never played a piano before. The band was one of the most brilliant, weird and exciting live acts. The standard of brilliance lasted right through to 1980, despite Don’s reputation as being impossible to work with and a changing set of musicians. Don then went off to have a second career as an artist.
The Mothers of Invention were another early band and the brain-child of Frank Zappa. One of his early incarnations was a band he formed in 1964 called Soul Giants. He was always messing about with sound in his home-made studio but following a run-in with the Vice Squad over the manufacture of a sex tape that earned him three years of probation and furnished him with the Suzy Creamcheese idea. The Mothers, as they were originally called before the record company added the ‘Of Invention’ in order to avoid any suggestion of offensiveness, were an outrageous group of individuals who used theatre, satire, and strong political overtones flouting all conventions in the process. Uniquely their roots were not so much in R&B but a strange mixture of 1950s Doo-Wop, avante-garde experimental classical and sleazy Jazz. Their first two albums were ‘Freak-Out’ and ‘Absolutely Free’ and featured a variety of tracks such as ‘Who are the Bain Police?’ and the satirical ‘Brown Shoes don’t make it’. Their outstanding masterpiece was ‘We’re only in it for the money’ which was a gatefold take-off of Srgt Peppers featuring the band in drag. It sent up the whole hippie phenomenon with ‘Hey Punk’ and had numerous other highly original tracks along with a unique cut up presentation.
The Byrds started out based at Ciros on the Strip and broke nationally with their FolkRock electrical presentations of Dylan numbers in 1965. By 1966 they were entrenched in the counter-culture with a series of psychedelic albums like Fifth Dimension, Younger than Yesterday and Notorious Byrd Brothers and druggie singles like ‘8 miles high’. They were an important precursor to the whole West Coast sound as well as stimulating Dylan to turn electric. They then went on to unfortunately add Gram Parson’s to their line-up to pave the way for Country Rock putting an end to their psychedelic brilliance. The Notorious Byrd Brothers was their apotheosis.
Love formed in LA in 1965 out of a Garage Punk Band called Grass Roots and were the first of the new Acid Rock Bands to get themselves signed up to a major company – the highly rated Elektra. They were a strange mixture of aggressive Punk sound and light almost folksy melodies. They released four brilliant albums – Love, Da Capo, Forever Changes and Four Sail and achieved moderate commercial success. The song writing of Bryan Maclean and Arthur Lee created a range of incredible songs that ranged from punchy hard hitting to mellow and beautiful. Their album ‘Forever Changes’ is consistently voted one of the best of all time. They were torn apart by heroin addiction and Arthur went on to serve a long jail sentence for fire-arm offences.
The Doors were formed after a chance meeting between Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek on Venice beach in 1965. Jim was studying film at UCLA and Ray already had a band called Rick and the ravens. Ray was greatly impressed with Jim’s poetry and philosophy and they put the band together. The name – the Doors – was taken from Aldous Huxley’s ‘Doors of Perception’ which in turn was borrowed from William Blake’s poem ‘The Marriage of Heaven & Hell’. Jim had this idea that you could break through this mirage of reality into a greater reality. He certainly tried his hardest to test the limits of his mind with acid, hash and alcohol.
Their music was a fusion of Jazz, Rock and Blues featuring Robbie Kreiger’s unique slide guitar sound while Manzarek not only did the swirly organ bits but also provided the intricate bass lines. Robbie Densmore was an extremely inventive drummer who provided a range of interesting rhythms, including Latin American. The result of marrying Jim’s poetry to this was an extremely varied style. They could produce driving Rock and heavy Blues as well as long extended psychedelic stuff all very listenable and commercially successful while containing an edge that kept them at the forefront of the counter-culture. They were extreme and dangerous if a little unpredictable.
They quickly gained a residency at the London Fog on the Sunset Strip and quickly moved on to take over the Whiskey A Go Go. They built up a strong following who were enthralled with their performances while driving the management bananas in fear of getting themselves closed down because of Jim’s use of expletives and extreme content and behaviour. Jim was often very stoned or drunk and tried to push things further ad further creating his Greek Adonis stage act to elongated freaked out Blues numbers and Jim’s poetic interpretations of his own epic stuff such as ‘The End’, ‘Break on through to the other side’ and ‘When the Music’s over’.
The lyrics Jim produced were extremely erotic and Jim’s stage act was often spellbinding. The band had a strong political sense that came through strongly on numbers like ‘Unknown Soldier’ and ‘Five to one’.
They became signed to the prestigious Elektra label and released a number of excellent albums and singles – ‘The Doors’, ‘Strange Days’, ‘Waiting for the sun’, ‘The Soft Parade’ and ‘Morrison Hotel’. Jim got himself charged with lewd behaviour and incitement to riot after seemingly exposing himself on stage. His subsequent death in Paris was shrouded in mystery. He is supposed to have died in the bath from alcohol or drugs or heart failure or even electrocution from an electric fire that was accidentally knocked into the water. We’ll never know because a doctor quickly filled out the death certificate without carrying out a post mortem and he was buried the next day before anyone actually saw the body. It sparked tales of Jim, having become disillusioned with the life of a Rock Star, engineering the whole thing and taking himself off to Africa in complete anonymity.
The Doors were probably the most successful of all the Acid Rock Bands.
Buffalo Springfield was also formed in Los Angeles in 1965 when Folk musicians Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Ritchie Furay met up and decided to form a band. Legend has it that Stills and Furay were stuck in a traffic jam on an LA Freeway and saw Neil’s hearse up ahead and jumped out of their ca to run over to him and get him to join. Neil had come down from Canada to Los Angeles to find them but had been unable to make contact and had decided to head back to Canada. They took their name from the manufacturer of a steamroller that was working in the road outside where they were staying. Buffalo Springfield were launched on to the LA Scene. They were immediately successful and got signed up to release 3 albums before friction between Stills and Young broke them up. Their most successful songs were ‘For what it’s worth’, ‘Broken arrow’, Expecting to fly’, ‘Bluebird’, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll woman’ and ‘Mr Soul’.
The death of Buffalo Springfield signalled the birth of Crosby, Stills and Nash. This happened when Stills got together with David Crosby from the Byrds and Graham Nash from the Hollies at John Sebastian’s house. They started jamming around and found that their harmonies really gelled. Graham had come across to the West Coast after getting fed up with the Hollies commercial trivia and leapt at the opportunity to get his teeth into something more substantial. This new ‘supergroup’ made its debut at the infamous Woodstock festival.
CSN had two sides; the first was acoustic and the second was electric. For the electric style they opted to bring Neil Young into the fold to form Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. They reflected the times with their ‘Wooden ships’ and version of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’. With Neil Young they came up with strong songs like ‘Ohio’ and ‘Chicago’.
Artist
Stand out tracks
Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band
Abba Zabba
Grow Fins
Yellow brick road
Safe as milk
Electricity
Drop out boogie
Zig Zag wanderer
Ah feel like ahcid
Safe as milk
Trust us
On tomorrow
Gimme that harp boy
Moonlight on Vermont
Dachau Blues
Ella Guru
The blimp
Steal softly through snow
She’s too much for my mirror
Veteran’s day poppy
Hobo chang ba
Smithsonian Institute Blues
Jefferson Airplane
Somebody to love
White rabbit
Let’s get together
Plastic fantastic lover
She has funny cars
The ballad of you and me and Pooneil
Crown of creation
Lather
Triad
We can be together
Volunteers
Good shepherd
The son of Jesus
Blue Cheer
Summertime Blues
The hunter
Mothers of Invention
Help I’m a rock
What’s the ugliest part of your body
Who are the brain police
Brown shoes don’t make it
Call any vegetable
Concentration moon
Who are the brain police
You’re probably wondering why I’m here
Plastic people
Call any vegetable
The idiot bastard son
Let’s make the water turn black
Take your clothes off when you dance
Harry you’re a beast
The way I see it Barry
My guitar wants to kill your mama
Willie the pimp
Lonesome cowboy Burt
I’m the slime
Dinah-Moe Humm
Debra Kedabra
Muffin man
Sam with the showing flat top
Poofter’s Froth Wyoming plans ahead
Titties and beer
Cosmic debris
Don’t eat the yellow snow
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Mona
Who do you love
Happy trails
Buffalo Springfield
For What its worth
Mr Soul
Expecting to fly
Broken arrow
Rock ‘n’ Roll woman
Bluebird
Flying on the ground is wrong
Burned
Nowadays Clancy can’t even sing
Hung upside down
Rock ‘n’ Roll Woman
Expecting to fly
I am a child
Bluebird
Doors
Love me two times
Moonlight drive
The crystal ship
The end
Gloria
Back door man
Break on through (to the other side)
Soul kitchen
Strange days
You’re lost little girl
People are strange
Unhappy girl
When the music’s over
My eyes have seen you
Hello I love you
Love street
The unknown soldier
Not to touch the earth
Five to one
My wild love
Wild child
Wishful sinful
Shaman Blues
The soft parade
Maggie McGill
Peace Frog
Waiting for the sun
The changeling
Love her madly
Crawling kingsnake
Grateful Dead
Goodmorning little school girl
Sitting on top of the world
Born cross-eyed
St Stephen
Cosmic Charlie
Dark star
The eleven
Uncle John’s band
Casey Jones
Sugar Magnolia
Truckin’
Box of rain
Playing in the band
Big Brother & the Holding Company
Piece of my heart
Ball and chain
Down on me
Summertime
I need a man to love
Country Joe & the Fish
Janis
Grace
I Feel like I’m fixing to die rag
Who am I?
Magoo
Untitled protest
Not so sweet Martha Lorraine
Porpoise mouth
Superbird
Bass strings
Pat’s song
Colors for Susan
Susan
Rock & Soul music
Bright Suburban Mr & Mrs Clean Machine
Byrds
8 miles high
I wasn’t born to follow
Dolphin smile
So you want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll star
Chymes of freedom
All I really want to do
Mr Tambourine man
Turn Turn Turn
Lay down your weary tune
He was a friend of mine
5D (fifth dimension)
John Riley
Everybody’s been burned
My back pages
The girl with no name
Have you seen her face
Artificial energy
Triad
Tribal gathering
Goin’ back
Change is now
Dolphin’s smile
Space odyssey
Draft morning
Nothing was delivered
This wheel’s on fire
Deportee
Ballad of easy rider
It’s all over now baby blue
Lover of the bayou
Positively Fourth Street
Love
Alone again or
My little red book
Mushroom clouds
My flash on you
A message to pretty
Signed D.C.
7 and 7 is
Stephanie knows who
Orange skies
She comes in colours
Alone again or
A house is not a motel
Andmoreagain
Live and let live
The daily planet
Bummer in the summer
You set the scene
Singing cowboy
Crosby, Stills Nash & Young
Wooden ships
Ohio
Teach your children well
Suite: Judy blue eyes
Chicago
Woodstock
Guinevere
Helplessly hoping
Long time gone
Carry on
Almost cut my hair
Helpless
Our house
Just a song before you go
The lee shore
4 + 20
Wasted on the way
Find the cost of freedom
Janis Joplin Kosmic Blues Band/Full Tilt Boogie Band
Kozmic blues
Try (just a little bit harder)
To love somebody
Mercedes Benz
Me and Bobby Mcghee
Cry baby
Everything you ever wanted to know about Rock Music!
If you would like to purchase this book in either digital or paperback it is available on Amazon.
I was listening to Hegseth, complete with white supremacist tattoo, gloating about the death raining down on Iran. I was reading about the US Generals giving their ‘Jesus Loves you and wants you to kill’ speeches to the troops.
It was all sick.
The USA is in the hands of a bunch of Nazi Evangelists.
Iran is in the hands of a bunch of Nazi Muslims.
They are all praying for death.
It is pathetic. I see all these Muslims in lines prostrating themselves in the rubble as they did out their dead children. God is great.
I see these evangelists applying their hands and asking God to intervene on their behalf.
How many was this god saved?
Religion is surely the worst invention we ever came up with. How many has it killed?
You can be sure of one thing – Trump is making BILLIONS out of it. We haven’t forgotten Epstein though!!
With rising annoyance Grrndakegra flicked her communicator on. The image of Beheggakegri consolidated as she prepared herself for another infuriating session.
‘I thought we need to get our heads together to work out some tactics,’ Beheggakegri said in a far more conciliatory tone.
‘I’m open to ideas.’ Grrndakegra noted the more satisfactory blue scutes and lowered crest. Seemingly Beheggakegri was in a better mood.
‘We got some good evidence together out of that last protest action even if it didn’t quite produce the desired effect.’
‘So what do you want me to do? I’m promoting the dissent and enabling protest. I arranged the violence. I can’t do much more.’ Grrndakegra was still angry at the way she had been treated.
‘Well, more of that wouldn’t go amiss,’ Beheggakegri mused, ‘but I was thinking that we need to find a way of undermining Chameakegra.’
Grrndakegra stared at the image above his tridee. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Couldn’t we find a way to demonstrate that she is closely in cahoots with the Hydrans? That she is getting some personal gain?’
‘What profit can she possibly be making from an arrangement with the Hydrans?’
‘I don’t know,’ Beheggakegri seemed to be floating ideas, ‘maybe it would indicate some psychological character flaw that we can exploit. Perhaps she has a predisposition to enjoying violence or has developed some Hydran-like lust for possessions? Anything that would explain her obsession with these vermin?’
Grrndakegra considered Beheggakegri’s suggestions. Was there any mileage in anything like that? She thought not. But then…
I am seventy-six and, outside of the military, I have never even seen a gun in England.
I am sure that people in the USA think that owning a gun keeps them safer. In actual fact they are 12 times more likely to be shot than in England.
Gun crime in England is very low. Gun crime in the USA is very high.
My own experience backs this up. The only times I’ve seen guns is in the States. In my first week of teaching in Los Angeles in 1979 a gun was pulled on me in my classroom.
I was taking role call and a girl said ‘Heeey!’
I looked up to find a girl standing in the aisle, legs apart, both hands holding a pistol aimed right at my head, like some Hollywood cop.
‘Heey!’ she repeated.
It’s amazing how quickly your mind works when you have a gun pointed at your head. I figured I’d only been in the school a matter of days; I hadn’t been there long enough to really piss anyone off sufficiently to shoot me. She was obviously wanting the new ‘English’ teacher to panic and dive under my desk.
I told her to ‘Sit down and put that away’ and went back to concentrating on my role call. At the end I looked up. She’d sat down and there was no sign of the gun.
I set the class working and strolled down to the back where she was sitting.
‘That was incredibly stupid.’
‘It wasn’t loaded,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know that. I could have had a gun in the drawer and blown you away.’
She laughed. ‘You didn’t though, did you?’
‘I could have pressed the button and summoned security and you’d be a police cell now.’
She shrugged.
It kind of made my year. It went round the school. I was cool.
But the reality of guns was all around me. The gang kids talked of their machine guns, hunting people down and shooting them. One morning we had the office windows shoot out with a drive by. Two of my students were shot on the way into school. All the people we were introduced to proudly showed me their gun collections. Myriad road signs were full of bullet holes. I witnessed an armed police raid on a van in the supermarket carpark.
In 1971 I’d come over to the States on a student work visa and worked in a Deli House in Boston on Massachusetts Ave.. The young native American dishwasher (Little Wolf) who I worked with had shot a guy in the stomach for grabbing his girlfriend. The Chef, Boris, a Russian American had shot three people, killing two of them, for being rude and abusive to him. A guy was shot and killed outside the Deli one night.
America is not a safe place! Guns sure do not make things safer. Arming criminals and psychopaths is nuts. Placing guns in the hands of angry people is dangerous. Having access to guns when someone is depressed is ridiculous. Arming religious fanatics is stupid!
Glad I live in a safer society. America is far too dangerous!
The DOJ were ordered by congress to release ALL the Epstein files. Instead they released a number with heavy redaction and deliberately withheld files mentioning Trump.
What are they hiding?
Is Trump a paedophile?
Is Pam Bondi carrying out the biggest cover-up in American history?
If you’ve got nothing to hide then release them all and do away with the pages and pages of redactions.
This stinks!
Talk about corruption and swamps!
Trump has made $4 Billion so far and he probably should be in jail!
