Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, I love you...

...and here is one of many reasons why.

Sly Stone and Richard Pryor on The Mike Douglas Show: Really, Really Real

I love this clip.

It's Sly Stone and Richard Pryor -- easily at the apex of their respective careers at this point --  overwhelming Mike Douglas on his show with pure star wattage and verve and yes, blackness. The premise is that Richard will accompany Sly on drums. (Huh?)  Ultimately, they completely upend the interview with stops and starts of what seems to be their own private conversation that started elsewhere and spilled onto this situation.  Surprisingly, it's not drug induced. What's apparent is that they have a great deal of love and respect for each other.  Even when they're figuring out what's going on with whatever they're going to do ("Richard, are you going to play drums?")  in front of an audience of millions with chunks of blank space idling between them, you can glimpse their genius.  And their friendship.

Who does this? When things go awry on a talk show nowadays, it's (somewhat) scripted.  This wasn't planned or improvised. They were just goofing off.

It's more than wonderful, to watch Sly change clothes onstage behind a folding screen with the help of a female assistant -- onstage! -- and hear not only the audience gasp audibly as he presents himself transformed, but Mike Douglas' reaction as he glances behind the screen. Like a superhero in full regalia, Sly is a shiny gleaming silver glitterbomb, ready for action.  Then and now (remember his blonde mohawk at the 2006 Grammys?) Sly understands performance, the importance of fantasy and the power of a strong visual.

Were performers more brilliant then -- or were they simply more commonplace because they were on television every day?

Someone should release all of the episodes for The Mike Douglas Show. Or maybe I should be grateful that I live in New York City and join The Museum of Radio and Television so I can watch them whenever I want. 

...and now, a rock 'n roll book review...

Long Time Gone by David Crosby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

you can learn a lot from biographies/autobiographies. this was no exception.

when it comes to rock and roll excess, who can separate truth from fiction from legend? when i saw the book i thought, cool—i can hear all about it from him. and that’s kind of the way the book goes, except that it augments what he says with what everyone else says: roadies, ex-lovers, business partners, damaged hippie freaks, ex-managers, fellow musicians and everything inbetween. all of that stitched up together gives a fuller picture than him, telling it like he remembers it. more often than not, everyone else reinforces whatever he says, and there’s the co-author with a timeline and photos and other documentation in case anyone goes off track. nice detail all around, especially when things go straight to hell and then get even worse.

there's him in the early days, riding around on a motorcycle wearing a leather cape. his love of/insistence upon three ways and little harems to take care of him. that whole hippie commune mentality, that share everything, with that everybody-in-and-out-of-everybody’s-house at all hours /everybody having sex with each other lifestyle. and him being a dick at any and every given opportunity because he thought he was soooooo great.

i don’t know. i think david crosby has a beautiful voice and he’s written some beautiful songs but after reading this and barney hoskyn’s “waiting for the sun” i think neil young is sooooooo great.

everyone else in rock and roll that does this level of drugs and debauchery for as long as he did dies in a pool of their own vomit. not “the cros”—probably because he got sent to prison for several years, and that’s what ultimately forced him to get clean. i knew some junkies in my day but at one point, just about everyone decided they didn’t want to die and they stopped doing it. somewhere in the 80s (the 80s!) he was looking at his rotting teeth and his swollen ankles and the sores and severe burn marks all over his face and body and he’d cry and feel sorry for himself and then he'd do some more freebase. (yikes-a-doodle-doo.)

sure, he went through hell with gasoline drawers on, but by his own admission, he was the one that bought the ticket for that ride -- triggered in part by his choice to deal with the sudden loss of his then girlfriend christine hinton with heroin instead of therapy.

and this was the guy that melissa etheridge chose to borrow a cup of sperm from to have not one but two kids with her then partner julie cypher? they couldn’t find jeff beck or eric clapton or something?

i don’t smoke and i don’t even do drugs and this book made me want to stop drinking coffee and eating meat and freaking detox whatever funk i had out of my system, just get it off of me. i just wanted to steam and sauna and take three showers and thank Jesus i never tried heroin. or cocaine. or freebase. or crack. or whatever everybody’s gotta be smoking or snorting these days. whatever.

and wow. he and his then girlfriend jan (who was even more strung out than he was) got clean and sober enough to get married and have a kid. i read that and i had to put the book down and when i did, i thought, the human body is a miraculous thing. or as the old black folks down south would say, He’s a wonder-working God.

bizarrely enough, i knew all their songs so well that when any particular ditty were mentioned in the book, i could hear it in my head. and i’ve never owned any of their records. even now, i don’t sit around listening to any of their songs. they were on permanent rotation that hardcore on the radio when i was a kid.

PS: um, yeah. this is kind of a must-read. especially if you’re a musician and you want to half-way know your rock and roll history.

View all my reviews

Black Man Fridays - The Murder Of Fred Hampton, Parts 1 - 4

i always liked this brother.

he was honest, sincere, and very smart - a gifted communicator, a college student, a young father and husband, and an officer in the black panther party. how cool that he could see the positive impact of his hard work in the community and how it was making a difference in the lives of so many people. but it was the twang in his voice that got me. he seemed so down to earth and folksy and accessible. even now, when i see film clips of him casually talking politics, he feels like someone i used to know.

fred was killed - actually what i should say is, murdered - in his apartment by the chicago police in conjunction with the fbi. it seems that j. edgar hoover - everyone's favorite crossdressing homosexual! - was willing to do anything to twart a black power movement, even if that meant assassinating all of its officers.

i think the black power movement was extremely dangerous to the status quo because it was so inclusive. all power to all people wasn't just a chant they threw up in the air at rallies. they meant it. such a radical shift would have destroyed everything that edgar held dear. everyone would have stopped obsessing about things like race and gender issues and they would have focused on what's really going on.

here's the documentary "the murder of fred hampton" in four parts. i know it's a little long, but trust me - it's well worth watching. and really, shouldn't we always make every effort to know our history?

i am the black gold of the sun

i can't even tell you how much happiness flooded my soul when i heard this song. all of a sudden, it was summertime and i was 7 years old again -- surrounded by aunts and uncles and a hoarde of cousins in charleston heights, south carolina.  i remember everything: ripping and running and romping around in the countryside, eating lots of seafood and reading whatever i wanted all the time -- which was mostly encyclopedias and biographies, and of course kid-lit like the little house on the prairie series.  i loved half-pint!

i suppose i could ask "how green was my valley" as i remember my little kidhood but the real question to explore is: how black was my world?  i had my great-grandparents, my grandparents and my parents. get christi love! was on the tv. pam grier was at the drive in. and so was cicely tyson. and abbie lincoln. and blacula. don cornelious was on soul train. all of my aunts and uncles had naturals.  everybody wore dashikis. the first time i ever saw my uncle jackie's then girlfriend/now wife aunt mattie, she had on a beautiful gele, and i thought she was glowingly lovely. lots of their friends were visiting africa and spending time there. and this song flooded the airwaves -- or at least, my uncle tyrone's 8 track stereo system.

no one had to tell me that black was beautiful.  

i watch black music videos nowadays, i look at black pop stars and i wonder -- was it all a fad? was it fashion?  or a dream that we collectively felt would never end?  

i think there was a moment back in the day when we began to truly love ourselves and each other.  it's not that the "n" word didn't exist -- it's just that everybody was so caught up in calling each other "brother" and "sister" that no one ever bothered to use it.  (we were COGIC, too -- i'm pretty sure that had a lot to do with it.) we began to explore our history, we embraced our past and found our way back to africa as best we could. 

and then the 80s happened.

the thing is, all of what i remember is still alive in all of us, right below the surface. i know this is true because when i walk down the street and i call someone sister or brother, they give it right back to me with so much feeling that sometimes, it aches. years ago, i fell back into the habit of saying it all the time -- especially to the africans. instant unity: the glow that is exchanged never goes away. it's just sitting there, waiting to come alive whenever any of us says it to each other again.

we really are the black gold of the sun.

Charles Bronsom is...MANDOM!

i loved charles bronson when i was a little kid. he was a man's man -- the ultimate tough guy. now that those million dollar japanese commercials that american celebrities have been doing for years have come to light, gems like this one are starting to surface. he must have done this in the 70s.

as i watched it, all i could think was, that's totally the life i thought i'd have when i grew up: there i'd be, all dressed up and having a cocktail of some sort while some nat king cole look-a-like tickles the ivories. and then some midget doorman would give me that hearty "goodnight" along with my car keys, and i'd zip through gotham, feeling powerful and arrogant and in control. wheeee!

i wonder what that stuff smells like. do they still sell it? or has it gone the way of right guard and hai karate, two other very important emblems of my manly childhood...