We hope you got enough sleep last night, ’cause tonight’s CRYPTICAL show includes a whopping 32 Grateful Dead classics performed live for your listening and dancing pleasure. Tonight’s lineup includes Barry Erde, Stephen Ramirez, Mitch Stein, Mark Corsolini and very special guests Dave Hebert (JGB) and Sunshine F Becker (Furthur).
We’ll have a Shakedown Street Bazaar including some very talented local vendors, and will be offering some really great auction and raffle items to benefit the Rex Foundation.
The Grateful Dead’s own Howard Danchik will be mixing the show, so bring your friends along as we bop on back to Portland in 1974 for an epic show that’s sure to have you dancing into the wee hours!
David Mort’s latest book “Voodoo Child” is available now from the Kindle Book Store. You may be interested in it as it covers the evolution of the blues and rock.
One of rock music’s more iconic images is that of Jimi Hendrix onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival in ’67, kneeling over the remains of his burning guitar after his performance of “Wild Thing.” He was beckoning the flames to rise as if summoning up demons and dragons from hell, which is what several fans described as witnessing after ingesting “Monterey Purple,” a strain of LSD concocted especially for the event.
Thirty years earlier, a bluesman by the name of Robert Johnson supposedly made a pact with the Devil at the crossroads in return for becoming an Ace” on the guitar. So perhaps Jimi had made a similar pact as both their souls were claimed at the age of 27. And before Robert there was another “Ace” named Charlie Patton who, like Jimi, could play the guitar behind his back, above his head and with his teeth. And before Jimi there was T Bone Walker who performed in a similar fashion. And as these three musicians were African Americans with Cherokee ancestors, perhaps they’d inherited an added spiritual dimension.
By the time Robert Johnson made his supposed pact however, the myth was already as old as the hills. The fact is that most blues musicians were itinerants who’d chosen a life on the road over a mundane, family or domestic existence, leading loved ones to conclude they were dancing to the devil’s tune.
For the purposes of my story, which traces the evolution of blues, r n b, soul and rock n roll from the Mississippi flood of ’27 to the deaths of Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, all such talented musicians, those deemed “Aces” “Kings” or “Queens,” had made similar pacts with the devil. Artists such as Buddy Holly, Bessie Smith, Eddie Cochran, Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, who when their respective souls passed over, often after meeting a violent death at an early age, could be claimed to play for the “ARKestra Paradiso.”
This “ARKestra,” so called because it boasts two players per instrument, performs in a room whose walls are made of a membrane fashioned from tightly stretched goat skin or vellum. Therefore, it can pick up on sound waves travelling through air and water. This room is situated in an old slave ship named “the Paradiso” which floats on a giant underground lake, so can detect vibrations through its wood, taut ropes or sheets, and surroundings. This lake is in a giant cavern known as the Orpheus chamber, situated deep inside a mountain, home to stalactites, stalagmites and crystalline, flower like structures named anthodites, which also pick up on vibrations passing through rock. Consequently, these musicians are performing in a closed environment that resonates like a gigantic bell, thereby creating a wall of sound.
The “ARKestra” is composed of pairs of those musicians deemed “Aces,” “Kings” or “Queens,” plucked from the flood of misery that segregation created to help change the New World for the better. They mentor and sympathetically resonate with musicians still alive, and working through their performances and recordings, seek to create a new vibe called the “big beat,” woven from different strands of music.
The old slave ship, “Paradiso,” is also home to the largest record repository in the world. Known as the “ARKhive,” it comprises two copies of all the recordings ever made in the New World, arranged year by year in the aisles of the original slave hold.
Monsanto denies that Glyphosate is linked with cancer. Other industry experts in this interview disagree and claim that there are many links with cancer as well as severe environmental damage.
Long term use lowered yield due to ever more glyphosate resistant weeds
“Widespread use of glyphosate has led to the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds covering an estimated 120 million hectares globally in 2010. So far, 23 species of weeds have been recorded, forcing Monsanto to acknowledge the problem and protect their profits by declaring that their warranty does not cover yield losses. Glyphosate-resistant weeds are threatening the utility of glyphosate and glyphosate-tolerant crops. Resistant weeds are likely responsible for increased herbicide use. Argentinian use went from 2 to 20 liters per hectare between 1996 and 2010.” PermaCultureNews explains. That is a 10 fold increase of a toxic matter.
The National Pesticide Information Center reports that glyphosate is linked to cancer and to skeletal mal formation in the fetus.
When high doses were administered to laboratory animals, some studies suggest that glyphosate has carcinogenic potential. Some studies also have associated glyphosate use with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Glyphosate exposure has been linked to developmental and reproductive effects at high doses that were administered to rats repeatedly during pregnancy. These doses made the mother rats sick. The rat fetuses gained weight more slowly, and some fetuses had skeletal defects. These effects were not observed at lower doses. Doses have been increased by 10 fold due to the fact that weed it proposes to eradicate actually grows immune.
Nature announces glyphosate probably carcinogenic to humans.
Nature reported on March 23, 2015 that the World Health Organization release a report stating: “The cancer-research arm of the World Health Organization last week announced that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, is probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The Oncology Lancet reported in March, 2015, 17 experts from 11 countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC; Lyon, France) to assess the carcinogenicity of the organophosphate pesticides tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate (table). These assessments will be published as volume 112 of the IARC Monographs.
Wenonah Hauter’s investigative article in Ecowatch, a foremost provider of scientifically-based, environmental news explains why the scientific studies are often so feeble about reporting their findings. She wrote: “Under the Influence: The National Research Council and GMOs charts the millions of dollars in donations the NRC receives from biotech companies like Monsanto, documents the one-sided panels of scientists the NRC enlists to carry out its GMO studies and describes the revolving door of NRC staff directors who shuffle in and out of agriculture and biotech industry groups. The new issue brief also shows how NRC routinely arrives at watered-down scientific conclusions on agricultural issues based on industry science.” Full article
The American Cancer Society gives glyphosate a 2A rating which means it it probably causes cancer in humans. More
So what is the big deal with Glyphosate? It lowers yield in the food supply, it increases weeds’ immunities and it most likely causes cancer, skeletal disturbances in fetuses, and it attacks the enzyme household in brain, liver and hearts of fetuses if the mother is exposed to high levels.
European governmental officials volunteered for a test checking the level of exposure in their urine. The level turned out to be several hundreds of percentage higher than the legal limit. Andrew Kniss wrote an excellent article for weedcontrolfreaks that shows in-depth research in on place. Article Glyphosate turns out to be a bid deal.
The message of the song is widely discussed. In 1944 Jamala’s great-grandmother and all members of the Tartars were deported from their home land, based on Stalin’s orders. During the transportation five of her great grandmother’s children died.
Only after the Soviet Union dissolved was the Tartar family able to return to Krim. Jamala claimed repeatedly that the song is entirely a personal story about her family. She was born in 1983 in Kyrgyzstan and returned with her family to her homeland Krim, before studying music in Kiev.
Her song caused quite an uproar as Eurovision’s guidelines expressly forbid political content in songs. Since 2014 the student Jamala has not been able to return to Krim to visit her family. Thus the song is a most personal story. Personal stories are allow and encouraged.
She won the 61st Eurovision Song Contest 2016 despite calls for disallowing the song since it angered Russians. PRI reported that Emine Ziyatdinova, a Crimean Tatar journalist and multimedia artist explained: “I was just in Crimea. People have it on their ringtones. It’s a way to protest what is going on.” More
Little wonder that Russian government officials are not pleased. Tass, a Russian News Agency, explained: “The Mejlis emerged back in 1991, when the descendants of Crimean Tatars, deported from Crimea after being charged with collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, began to return to the land of their ancestors. When Crimea reunited with Russia in 2014, the Mejlis failed to have itself registered properly at the Russian Justice Ministry. Its leaders reside outside the peninsula and refuse to recognize Crimea’s reunification with Russia.”
Russia is protecting its access route to the Black Sea and its investment in the harbor. The Independent, a UK news media company explained in 2014: “Crimea is strategically important as a base for the Russian navy. The Black Sea Fleet has been based on the peninsula since it was founded by Prince Potemkin in 1783. The fleet’s strategic position helped Russia defeat Georgia in the South Ossetia war in 2008, and remains crucial to Russian security interests in the region.” More
The Tartar singer wants to see her family, the Russians need to keep their country secure, the Ukrainians… well, the Ukrainians are still struggling with the basic concept of democracy.
Newsweek reported on April 16, 2016 “In the span of one week beginning April 6, Dutch voters rejected ratification of a long-awaited EU-Ukraine trade deal, putting Ukraine’s aspirations of European integration in jeopardy; the Panama Papers exposed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s offshore assets, sparking a media firestorm in Ukraine; and Ukraine’s prime minister resigned after months of political turmoil, sparking a political clash in the search for his replacement.
Meanwhile, the ongoing war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region is steadily worsening, and a ceasefire that never fully took hold is teetering on the edge of collapse.
“No, of course the revolution didn’t achieve its goals,” Onyshchenko says. “People are definitely frustrated, but they are too tired to make another revolution.” More
Eurovision has come a long way from the days when Abba won the contest with their song Waterloo. I just love Abba and their song Mamma Mia was such fun. The world is getting more difficult, or perhaps we are just becoming more aware of it. With that in mind Mamma Mia let’s all remember that we should all be there for each other:
