All posts by Woodstock Whisperer

Attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, became an educator for 35 years after graduation from college, and am retired now and often volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts which is on the site of that 1969 festival.
Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Norman Rogers Quill

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Norman Rogers Quill

April 21, 1943 – July 9, 2011

The band Quill was the opening band of day 2 for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The opening band. Nowadays, when people go to a concert, are in the parking lot tailgating, and someone says, “The first band will be on soon. Should we get going?”

“Nah. Never heard of them. Have another beer.”

Opening bands are often the scapegoats. Some of the crowd is actually in so might as well get things going with what is sometimes a good local band, or a band good enough to tour with the big names but not big enough to stand alone.

Norman Rogers Quill

Quill the Opening Band

That was Quill, but at Woodstock the big difference is that even though there may still have been thousands of people still streaming onto Max Yasgur‘s field, there were hundreds of thousands already there.

Woodstock Ventures had hired the Boston-based band to play at the festival, of course, but to also be in the area a week or so early as good will ambassadors to local institutions. “See us? We have long hair and big sideburns and play this rock and roll, but we smile and are good people.”

Brothers Dan and Jon Cole had begun Quill in 1967. Norm was a guitarist, Roger North a drummer, and Phil Thayer a keyboardist.  Rogers had grown up in Brattleboro, VT. He had been in the Morning Start Blues Band.

At noon that sunny Saturday in Bethel, Quill did four songs in a 30 minute set:

  1. They Live the Life
  2. That’s How I Eat
  3. Driftin’
  4. Waiting for You

Norman Rogers Quill

No Woodstock Bump

Cotillion Records did sign them and the band did release an album. Cotillion was the same company that released the famed Woodstock album, but Quill was not on it.

Jon Cole would soon leave the band. Norm Rogers also left, but came back to record a second album. When Cotillion did not release it, the band broke up. Norm returned to Brattleboro.

Norman Rogers Quill

2011

He died in 2011 and the Brattleboro Reformer’s obituary read as follows:

Norman Page Rogers, 68, passed away unexpectedly at home, July 9, 2011. Norman was a loving husband, father, friend, artist, illustrator, musician and student of life. Son of Hubert and Helen Rogers, born April 21, 1943, Ottawa Canada, grew up in Brattleboro. Graduate of High Mowing School, N.H., 1961, studied at St. Lawrence University, Marlboro College and The Arts Students League, New York City. Traveled worldwide with colleague and friend Hugh Swift to Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nepal and into the Himalayas. Inspired by Never Cry Wolfe, Norman traveled to Newfoundland to find author Farley Mowat. Served in the Merchant Marines and spent time long line fishing off The Grand Banks of Newfoundland and Georges Bank. Norman celebrated the bicentennial by riding his bicycle from Vermont to Washington, D.C. He had an extensive musical career, his band, Quill, was the first band to play at Woodstock, Saturday, Aug. 16, 1969. As a string bass player and vocalist Norman’s career included playing with: Arwen Mountain Band, The Filthy Rich, Jeff Potter and The Rhythm Agents, and The Bill Strecker Band. Past 20 years was a musician with Andy Avery of Normandy. A singer in The Blanche Moyse Chorale. Most recently enjoyed playing with the Windham Orchestra.

Article on entire band from Boston dot com

Norman Rogers Quill

Peace Love Art and Activism

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

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Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

From Peron’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/dennis.peron)
April 8, 1945 – January 27, 2018

Father of Medical Marijuana

A 2014 headline in a San Francisco Gate article summed it all up:

Why you can thank a gay, hippie Vietnam veteran for legal medical and recreational marijuana today

Dennis Peron was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island, NY and served in the Air Force in Vietnam.

Of his time in Vietnam he said, ““[During the Tet Offensive,] it was a perfect storm. They [the Vietcong] brought the war home to Saigon. They [the Air Force] got even with me. They put me on the morgue for 30 days and I’m 20 years-old. I’ve never seen a dead person. That month I saw 25,000 dead people. I came out of my closet and found out who I was.”

After the war, he moved to San Francisco’s Castro District. During World War II, if the armed services discovered that a soldier was gay, it discharged him. Often this would happen just before the soldiers shipped out and San Francisco was a primary port during the war.

Some of these soldiers settled in San Francisco and later the Castro District became a primarily gay neighborhood.

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

Smoke-ins

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

Peron joined the Youth International Party ( Yippies!) , the radical side of hippies which promoted various anti-authoritarian ideas, such as promoting the use and legalization of cannabis.

Toward that end, Peron helped organize smoke-ins.

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

Medical Marijuana

He also sold cannabis from storefronts in the Castro and advocated for medical cannabis as the scourge of AIDS grew in the 1980. His partner, Jonathan West died of AIDS in 1990.

In 1991, Peron founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club at the height of the U.S. drug war in 1991.  He gave out cannabis to AIDS patients along with Brownie Mary.

Also in 1991, Peron organized for the passage of San Francisco’s Proposition P, a resolution calling on the state government to permit medical cannabis, which received 79% of the vote.

That same year, he co-founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first public cannabis dispensary. The club, which served 9,000 clients, was closed by a San Francisco Superior Court judge in 1998.

In 1993, Peron and Brownie Mary jointly released a cookbook with recipes for cannabis edibles.

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

Proposition 215

In 1996, Peron coauthored California Proposition 215, which sought to allow the use of medical cannabis.

Dan Lungren, the Attorney General of California, ordered a police raid of Peron’s club a month before the election, arresting Peron.

Proposition 215 was passed soon thereafter, which allowed the club to reopen. Later in 1996, the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party of Minnesota fielded Peron as their nominee, their first, in the U.S. presidential election.

In 1998, Peron ran in the Republican primary for California governor against Lungren, who won the primary and lost the election to Gray Davis.

Peron voiced support for decriminalization of all marijuana use, believing that it is medicinal. He opposed medical marijuana use for children.

Dennis Peron wrote in his 2012 book, “Memoirs of Dennis Peron,” that he was just a “gay kid from Long Island who joined the Air Force to get away from home.”

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

Anti-recreational

Peron opposed California Proposition 19 in 2010, which would have legalized recreational cannabis, because he did not believe that recreational use exists, as all people who use marijuana are using it medicinally. He opposed California Proposition 64 in 2016 (approved adult use marijuana) because for the same reason. Voters approved the proposition 57.13% to 42.87%.

In 2013 he published his memoirs: Memoirs of Dennis Peron.

Peron spent some of his last years on a 20-acre farm he owned and operated in Lake County [CA] growing and giving away medical marijuana.

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron

Accolades

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors recognized Peron, who was suffering with late-stage lung cancer, with a certificate of honor in 2017. Supervisor Jeff Sheehy called Peron “the father of medical cannabis”.

On January 27, 2018, aged 72, Peron died of lung cancer at the Veteran’s Administration Health Center in San Francisco.

“The city and the country has lost a cannabis leader who lived life on the edge,” Terrance Alan, a member of the city’s Cannabis Commission, told the Chronicle, “He lived his whole life on the edge, and that’s what allowed us to lead in cannabis.”

Cannabis Activist Dennis Peron
Birthdays, Cinema, Peace Love Art and Activism

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

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Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

Happy birthday, March 31, 1947
 “Music is simply the sugar syrup that the medicine of the Divine name is hidden in.”

New York City at the Church Of St. Paul & St. Andrew in October 2013

Sometimes a happenstance event becomes that stone thrown in a still pond and the ripples vibrate out to the lakes’ shores and into history.

In April 1965, the Beatles were filming the movie, Help!. The script called for a scene in an Indian restaurant with Indian musicians playing.

George Harrison saw a sitar for the first time.

Norwegian Wood

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

On October 12, 1965, the Beatles began working on their Rubber Soul album  and during the day’s second session they started to record “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).” Harrison played sitar on the song.

On my tours at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts I emphasize the importance of the Rubber Soul album and how it changed the scope of pop music. I joke about how when I first listened to the album, intently staring at and reading its covers, I found a typo: someone had misspelled guitar! They spelled it s-i-t-a-r.

And just as Harrison had accidentally discovered Indian music (and thus Indian culture), so too happened the teenage Western listener.

And as the Beatles became interested in other things Indian, so did many Baby Boomers.

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

Jeff Kagel

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

Jeff Kagel was a student at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

He had first learned yoga asanas [postures] on the floor of a tenement apartment on the Lower East Side in 1966 from a guy who had just come over from India.

Jeff also loved rock music and was in a band. He wanted to be a star.

The Soft White Underbelly would go on to rock fame as Blue Öyster Cult and sell more than 24 million records worldwide.

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

Krishna Das

As much as Jeff Kagel wanted to be a rock star, he felt spiritually lost.  In the winter of 1968, he made a decision: move to New Hampshire visit the spiritual teacher Ram Dass  (who, in his former incarnation was Harvard professor Richard Alpert as in LSD researcher with Timothy Leary).

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

Later, Kagel traveled across the country with Ram Dass as his student, captivated by the stories of  Dass’s recent trip to India where he had met the legendary guru Neem Karoli Baba, known to most as Maharaj-ji.

Jeff Kagel went to India.

From an interview in Ascent magazine:

In India, Krishna Das [Kagel] also encountered kirtan, or the chanting of God’s name. “I heard it and I couldn’t believe it. I thought, this is fantastic. I was always musical and I always loved to sing. I didn’t really do it at first as a spiritual practice, in a heavy way like that. I sang because I loved to do it.”

He spoke of his guru with great love and respect: “Someone like him is like the sun. To be in his presence and to be connected to him is to be doing the best thing you can do for your own blossoming. He didn’t give meditation techniques, he didn’t give mantras. He ripened you from the inside.”

For awhile, Kagel became “Driver” because he was in charge of driving the one car that’s how many referred to him, but…

Neem Karoli Baba gave Krishna Das his spiritual name. Das means servant, and Krishna is one of the names of God.

NYT interview: Krishna Das lived blissfully at Neem Karoli Baba’s temple until 1973, when he returned to America at the guru’s behest. His teacher called him back about a year later, but Krishna Das, who was making money and enjoying a new romance, hesitated. Within months, Neem Karoli Baba died.

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

Lost/Renewal

After Baba’s death, Das became lost.  Eleven years of substance abuse and depression followed.

He returned to India and came to the realization that although Neem Karoli Baba had left his body, his presence remained.

Chanting had never left Krishna Das.

Back in the United States, in 1994, Krishna Das started leading chant at Jivamukti Yoga Center, NYC.

From his site: Over the years, he continued chanting, developing his signature style, fusing traditional kirtan of the east with western harmonic and rhythmic sensibilities. 

Does he still love rock? Does he ever tire of kirtan?

I do, all the time! You should hear us at sound check. We do Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Rolling Stones. We do everything. We’re totally nuts in sound check. [YJ interview]

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das

One Track Heart

In 2012, director Jeremy Frindel released One Track Heart, The Story of Krishna Das. It is how I first heard of and heard KD.  And again I found myself asking, “How is it I never heard of him before.”

Jeff Kagel Krishna Das