Category Archives: Peace Love Art and Activism

Rockarama at the Avalon

March 26, 2021 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

Rockarama at the Avalon

1969 Festival #1

5 Days of Music

Wednesday 26 March 1969

Sunday 30 March 1969

Knowing my interest in 1969 festivals in particular, friends send a link to a festival from that year. Most of the time, the festival is already on my list, but every once in a while, something new pops up.

I think I have all of what I personally define as a festival: outdoors and multi-day events that mainly showcase rock groups, keeping in mind how the definition of rock music had broadened by then.

I include Rockarama. Even though it does not meet my admittedly narrow definition, it’s close enough to deserve at least a mention.

Having said that, a mention of the event itself is all it can get since there’s little information I can find about it. Instead, I include something about the bands themselves and include a YouTube link if one is available, though not from Rockarama itself.

Given band’s styles and YouTube samples available, the five days must have been very nice.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Wednesday 26 March

Santana

Of course, Santana was simply another band on March 26, 1969. Obviously a great band and a mostly unknown band. They didn’t know that they were five months from fame.

It’s a Beautiful Day: from an AllMusic bio: San Francisco psychedelic folk-rock unit It’s a Beautiful Day was primarily the vehicle of virtuoso violinist David LaFlamme. After beginning his musical education at age five, LaFlamme later served as a soloist with the Utah Symphony, following an army stint by settling in the Bay Area in 1962. There he immersed himself in the local underground music scene, jamming alongside the likes of Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin; after his short-lived Electric Chamber Orchestra splintered, LaFlamme also co-founded an early incarnation of Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks before assembling It’s a Beautiful Day in mid-1967. The group — which originally included LaFlamme’s keyboardist wife Linda, vocalist Pattie Santos, guitarist Hal Wagenet, bassist Mitchell Holman, and drummer Val Fuentes — issued its self-titled debut LP on Columbia in 1969, scoring their biggest hit with the haunting FM radio staple “White Bird.”

Rockarama at the Avalon

Allmen Joy

From a Darius…site: If Blue Cheer made cream cheese outta the air, then these guys musta crystalised the heavens on a good night. Some kind of a mix of Blue Cheer & Big Brother guitars, Country Joe & The Fish style ethereal moves & organ, & occasional Dead-like feedback & vocal insanity, mixed with 60s garage sounds & a nod to the Chambers Brothers… 60s West Coast manna from the vault.

Rockarama at the Avalon

The Lamb

From an AllMusic review: Lamb were formed by the duo of Texan singer Mauritz and multi-instrumentalist (though primarily guitarist) Bob Swanson. The two (writing both separately and together) was responsible for the band’s material. They attracted attention in San Francisco when they opened for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young for a few nights at Winterland in November 1969. Impresario Bill Graham became their manager, and producer David Rubinson, who had worked with notable groups such as Santana and Moby Grape, acted in that capacity for their first record. Their debut album on the Fillmore label, A Sign of Change, was perhaps their most uncompromising and experimental, relying largely on jazz-folk acoustic arrangements and spotlighting Mauritz’s impressive voice on impressionistic, dream-like lyrics.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Anonymous Artists of America

From a red-legacy article:The story of the AAA is fantastic. Their endeavor to be a band was jump-started by several gifts: the first was a full set of instruments financed by one of the artists, Lars Kampman, which was followed by Owsley Stanley’s gift of 100,000 micrograms of (then legal) LSD. They were also given the second music synthesizer in the US by Don Buchla, its inventor, which took a year to build out at the highly influential Tape Music Center in San Francisco. The AAA were one of the first psychedelic bands at a time when rock and roll was redefined through massive advances in amplification technology and by music labels, like Capital Records who commissioned LSD fueled projects. The AAA frequently opened for the Grateful Dead and headlined at Ken Kesey’s notorious Acid Test Graduation. Their performances went on for hours and weren’t especially good, involving costumes and a topless bassist, handmade instruments and spontaneous improvisations that mixed with strobe lights and film projections, turning the show into a multi-sensory immersive experience.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Thursday 27 March

Cleveland Wrecking Company

From the Roartorio site: The Cleveland Wrecking Company were formed in San Francisco in 1965. Their members came from jazz, flamenco and R&B backgrounds, but together their psychedelic brew verged on Blue Cheer heaviness. As perennial local favorites, they gigged at every stage in the area. They left behind no recorded artifacts during this time; a deal with Vanguard went nowhere, when their manager absconded to Mexico with the album advance on an ill-fated mission to buy a kilo of pot. A later incarnation of the band – with a completely different lineup and musical style – released a 45 that has since become a favorite of cratedigging DJs, but This is not That. These two tracks [follow link above] hail from 1967-8 : one studio, one live (the sonics on the latter may remind of the VU’s “guitar amp” boot, but with a solo as overdriven and atonal as this, it’s a plus).

Rockarama at the Avalon

Ace of Cups

From their site: The Ace of Cups formed in San Francisco in 1967 and has been described as one of the first all-female rock bands. The members of the Ace of Cups were Mary Gannon (bass), Marla Hunt (organ, piano), Denise Kaufman (guitar, harmonica), Mary Ellen Simpson (lead guitar), and Diane Vitalich (drums). Making their mark in the burgeoning counterculture of the 1960’s, they shared stages with Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead.

Rockarama at the Avalon

The Conqueroo

From a psychedelicbaby article: The Conqueroo were Ed Guinn (bass and keyboards), Charlie Pritchard (lead guitar), Bob Brown (guitar and lead vocals) and what seemed like a never-ending succession of drummers, who included Gerry Storm and Alvin Sykes. Somehow whilst the Elevators and co. all got deals at the time, the Conqueroo only got to release one 45 on Sonobeat and a posthumous LP put out in the 80s, From the Vulcan Gas Company.. The band was known for its blues based psychedelia, particularly its fuzzed-out, free form jams and wonderful deconstructed cover versions such as ‘Knock on Wood’ and ‘Positively Fourth Street’.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Morning Glory

From an AllMusic review: The popularity of California rock bands with both female and male vocals was simply immense in the wake of the Mamas & the Papas and Jefferson Airplane. Morning Glory pay significant tribute to both bands on “Two Suns Worth,” their obscure and only LP, though you can certainly hear some Byrds in some of the guitar licks, as well as traces of Bay Area psychedelic groups like Moby Grape in some of the arrangements. It’s well-sung (with the sole woman in the group, Gini Graybeal, handling most of the lead vocals) and tightly played, with Abe “Voco” Kesh, most famous for his work with Blue Cheer, handling the production.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Friday 28 March

Melting Pot

I can find a song by this name by the UK band called Blue Mink from 1969, but cannot find a band by this name. Anyone?

Rockarama at the Avalon

Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band

The band was descended from the Instant Action Jug Band (November 1964 – November 1965), which included Joe McDonald in its original lineup. Cleanliness and Godliness formed in December 1966 and went through various personnel changes. In March 1969, the band consisted of Judy Linsky (flute), Richard Saunders (bass), Tom Ralston (drums), Gary Salzman (dobro, mandolin), Phil Marsh (guitar, vocals), Annie Johnston (guitar, vocals), and Brian Voorheis (harmonica, guitar, vocals). The Chicken On a Unicycle site has a very thorough tree showing the band’s various permutations.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Linn County

From Iowa Rock and Roll site: Linn County had its roots in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with Danceland and Armar Ballrooms providing a meeting place for musicians. Stephen Miller – organ, piano, vocals, Fred Walk – electric guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, Dino Long – bass, Jerome “Snake” McAndrew – drums, Larry Easter – soprano & tenor saxophone, & Jay Magliori – baritone saxophone. All Music said: An unusual late-’60s band that combined horn-embellished soul-rock with more interesting material utilizing jazz-colored arrangements and somewhat spacy songwriting. There were few parallels for this kind of thing at the time, other than perhaps the only slightly less obscure Insect Trust. A minor group, but at their best an intriguing one.

Rockarama at the Avalon

The 4th Way

From Springer link site: Formed in 1968, musical group The Fourth Way was among the first bands to merge rock, jazz, and non-Western musical approaches in a way that mirrored the mixed-race membership of the band—white New Zealander pianist Mike Nock, black American violinist Michael White, white American bassist Ron McClure, and black American drummer Eddie Marshall—a notable feature at the time. The band’s eponymous debut and their second release, a live recording titled The Sun and Moon Have Come Together, were recorded in the fall of 1969. Their final recording, Werwolf, was a live recording of their appearance in the 1970 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. However, with the exception of a small number of dates clustered around the band’s appearance in Montreux, The Fourth Way rarely performed outside of the San Francisco Bay Area, limiting their exposure.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Deadly Nightshade

There is a band called Deadly Nightshade, but it formed in 1970 from an all-female band called Ariel, so I’m pretty sure they didn’t play Rockarama. There was a Deadly Nightshade lightshow out of San Francisco at this time, so… Here’s a bit about that: In 1967 and 1968, Deadly Nightshade [originally] consisted of myself [the author never identifies himself] , Carolyn Bunch, Tom Stewart, John Bossi and Bob Kano. Our equipment was a couple of overhead projectors with 650 watt halogen lamps, six manual slide projectors, an old 8mm film projector, and various special effects devices for doing reflectives. We did shows at the UOP and towns around the San Joaquin Valley, but mostly at the club in Stockton. The bands we played with were mostly local, but occasionally we would get gigs with bands from LA (the Liquid Blues, Smoke) or the Bay Area (Steve Miller Band), who were touring through the California Valley. Starting in 1969 Deadly Nightshade focused on performing more in the Bay Area, including Napa, Santa Rosa, Davis, Hayward, San Jose and San Francisco. Because we were new in the scene we made an effort to do anything we could for exposure and engagement. We were lucky to work with the San Francisco Tape Music Center and Don Buchla. We helped them produce the Pillow Show, and staged it in the newly renovated Exhibition Hall at the Palace of Fine Arts. The lightshow was projected on the outside of an inflatable translucent plastic “pillow” with capacity for about 20 people listening and viewing from the inside at one time. The effect was disorienting, but very much of the times.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Saturday 29 March

Shades of Joy

From AllMusic: The mysterious Shades of Joy recorded the wholly instrumental album The Music of El Topo in San Francisco, the LP finding release on the Douglas label in 1970. …it’s an odd but listenable mix of early jazz-rock fusion, psychedelia, funk, and the kind of meditatively somber and pretty music you might expect to hear on the soundtrack to a period drama. And in fact most of the compositions are credited to film director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who was responsible for the early-’70s cult film El Topo. Fifteen musicians are credited with playing on the album, the most noted of them being occasional Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia sideman Howard Wales (on electric keyboards), though there are also numerous percussionists, brassmen, and flutists; in fact, there are three combination flutist/tenor saxophonists alone. Martin Fierro (who played flute, tenor sax, alto sax, and cowbells, as well as being credited as a “scratcher”) seems to have been the musician most involved with the project, also doing the orchestration and horn arrangements.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Clover

From Discogs site: Clover had a two part career, the first in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in the US and the second in the later 1970’s in the UK. The group was formed in San Francisco in 1967 when Johnny Ciambotti joined up with John McFee, Alex Call and Mitch Howie who were members of a group called the Tiny Hearing Aid Company. Clover’s first gig was July 4 1967. They performed around the Bay Area over the next two years eventually signing with Fantasy in 1969. They recorded two albums and one single for Fantasy in the early 1970’s. Eventually an expanded line-up of the group moved to the UK in 1975 or early 1976. There they released two further albums, and (uncredited) backed Elvis Costello on his debut album My Aim Is True (1977). The group broke up in 1978 after returning to the US. The group is most well known outside the US for their version of Route ’66 in the Levis Jeans commercial. Around 1976, Huey Lewis joined this band (credited as Huey Louis) and appeared on the two final Clover albums released 1977.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Country Weather

From AllMusic: Country Weather was one of the minor bands that were part of the San Francisco music scene of the mid- to late ’60s. The group was formed in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, CA, by high school students Dave Carter (bass and vocals) and Steve Derr (rhythm guitar and vocals) as a cover band called the Virtues in 1966. They were joined by Paul White (lead guitar) and Craig T. Nelson (drums) (not the actor of the same name), who were soon replaced by Greg Douglass and Bill Baron. In 1967, they auditioned for promoter Chet Helms, who suggested they change their name and stop playing covers. Soon after, they became Country Weather. Over the next few years, they played frequently at such San Francisco venues as the Avalon Ballroom, the Fillmore Auditorium, and Winterland, opening for many of the renowned acid rock bands of the day, as well as up and down the West Coast. But they were never signed to a national record contract. In 1969, they recorded their own one-sided, five-song disc, which earned airplay on local radio stations.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Fruminous Bandersnatch

From Psychedelicized site: from Lafayette, CA, Frumious Bandersnatch is often said to be one of the most underrated bands to emerge from the San Francisco scene in the late 60s. Their sole EP is regarded as one of the better offerings of the period that should have found much greater success. Originally known as All Night Flight, they changed their name in 1967 to Frumious Bandersnatch after a character in the Lewis Carroll poem ‘Jabberwocky’. Original members included Dave Denny (lead guitar, vocals), Jack King (drums, vocals), Brian Hough (bass) and George Tickner (guitar). Denny soon left the band for a brief period and was replaced by Kaja Doria (vocals) and Bret Wilmot (guitar). It was this lineup that first recorded the band’s material, including an early version of ‘Cheshire’. Nothing was officially issued at the time.

Sunday 30 March

Youngbloods

From AllMusic: The Youngbloods could not be considered a major ’60s band, but they were capable of offering some mighty pleasurable folk-rock in the late ’60s, and produced a few great tunes along the way. One of the better groups to emerge from the East Coast in the mid-’60s, they would temper their blues and jug band influences with gentle California psychedelia, particularly after they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. For most listeners, they’re identified almost exclusively with their Top Ten hit “Get Together,” but they managed several respectable albums as well, all under the leadership of singer/songwriter Jesse Colin Young.

A.B. Skhy

From AllMusic: A.B. Skhy was a blues-rock quartet from San Francisco consisting of guitarist Dennis Geyer, keyboard player Howard Wales, bass player Jim Marcotte, and drummer Terry Andersen. This lineup made the group’s debut album, A.B. Skhy, in 1969, with a seven-piece horn section. The album failed to chart, but the instrumental “Camel Back” hit number 100 on the Hot 100 for one week in December. Andersen and Wales then left and were replaced by guitarist James “Curley” Cooke and drummer Rick Jaeger for the group’s second album, Ramblin’ On (1970), which was produced by Kim Fowley. They broke up during the recording of their third album.

Initial Shock

From Psychedelicized site: Originally formed in 1966 as The Chosen Few, The Initial Shock was a psychedelic rock band from Missoula, Montana. Composed of members from Missoula bands Mojo’s Mark IV and The Vulcans, the band changed its name to The Initial Shock in 1967, moving to San Francisco that same year. The band only produced two records during their incredible time together as a band. “Mind Disaster” b/w “It’s Not Easy” and “You’ve Been a Long time Coming” backed with “I Once Asked”. Both were regional hits in the western USA and also in the Top 10 Southern Survey where the lead singer, Mojo Collins was, and still is from. Members of the band included Mojo Collins, (guitar, lead vocals), Brian Knaff, (drums, vocals),George F. Wallace, (lead guitar), Steve Garr, (bass) and George A. Crowe (road manager).

Alice Cooper

The now well-know band had just recently become “Alice Cooper” and would release their first album in June. From Wikipedia: Originating in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1964, “Alice Cooper” was originally a band with roots extending back to a band called The Earwigs 1964, consisting of Vincent Furnier [Alice Cooper] on vocals and harmonica, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, and Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar and background vocals. By 1966, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar joined the three and Neal Smith was added on drums in 1967. The five named the band ‘Alice Cooper’ and released their debut album in 1969 with limited chart success.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Pure Funk

A popular Indiana college funk band, founded in 1969 by keyboard player, Michael Read, vocalist, Asher “Adam Smasher” Benrubi, and guitarist, Rob Swaynie. The band later became the more successful Roadmaster. Fifty years later…

Poster Art: Gilbert Shelton

Gilbert Shelton‘s talents surfaced early with his silly superhero spoof ‘Wonder Warthog’ which was published in a campus magazine in 1959 (Ranger). In May 1968 he introduced ‘The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers’ in the newspaper Rag, starring Phineas, Freewheelin’ Franklin and Fat Freddy.

Rockarama at the Avalon

Next 1969 festival: Palm Springs Pop Festival.

Peace Love Art and Activism

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

Aside March 24, 2021 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021

Ferlinghetti from The Band’s Last Waltz concert, 25 November 1976

This site springs from my having attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, my being a volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, and doing an assignment on protest music.

What I immediately found out with the assignment was protest music had roots deep in the 20^th century and branches into the 21^stand that I’d need to put the music in context.

Context is a wide concept and many people, places, and events come under it.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

Lawrence

From the City Lights site: Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered an elitist conception of art and the artist’s role in the world. Although his poetry is often concerned with everyday life and civic themes, it is never simply personal or polemical, and it stands on his grounding in tradition and universal reach.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

Iron Curtain/Cold War

On March 5, 1946, less than a year after the Allied victory in Europe, ominous signs already pointed to future conflicts. Winston Churchill, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, condemned the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declared, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” [full text]

The new normal had a new name: the Cold War.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

Military-Industrial Complex

On January 17, 1961 even outgoing President Eisenhower, a conservative, a Republican, and a World War II hero spoke of that the new military buildup and both that path’s pitfalls and its consequences.

In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower warned Americans to be aware a developing and worrisome post-war relationship between the government and the private sector.

He understood the need for having a prepared military (a lesson learned from World War II), but he was troubled about “the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex.” Eisenhower worried that the entangled cooperation between the government, its military, and industry could weaken or destroy the very institutions and principles it was designed to protect.

Military-industrial complex: another new term in the World’s new normal.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

Beat Generation/Beatniks

In the wake of the War’s end, some young Americans were disenchanted, not with the victory over Fascism, but with the path down which that victory led us.

Their reaction was both a repudiation and an avowal. Repudiating the pursuit of materialism (the more you have he more successful you are, the better a person you are) and searching in other directions: Easter religions, use of psychedelics, sexual liberation, organic diets, and other non-conformist attitudes.

The Beats are most often associated with their writers: Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Jack Kerouac — who met in 1944 in and around the Columbia University campus in New York City.

Kerouac (who also credits Huncke) is credited with the use of the word “beat” to refer to the view. It fit nicely both with its common meaning as with beaten or tired, but with a poetic twist, it also calls forth the idea of beatific and upbeat.

Society mocked such views and easily demonized those who pursued them. In the 50s, adding -ik to anything connected it with Bolshevik, Sputnik, and all its negative Communist associations.

Because of its perceived subversiveness, New York City unsuccessfully tried to ban folk musicians from playing in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square in the early 1960s.

But, I’m getting off the topic of Ferlinghetti. Context.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

NY > France > NY

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born on March 24, 1919 in Yonkers, NY. Carlo Ferlinghetti from Brescia, Italy and Clemence Mendes-Monsanto a French-Portuguese Sephardic Jew. Lawrence was the fifth Ferlinghetti son. His father had died six months earlier. He was in his 50s and suffered a heart attack on the stoop of his house.

His mother suffered depression and his Aunt Emilie and her husband (his mother’s brother) took him in and they moved to France, near Strasbourg. He forgot English and learned French. He lived there until he was three.

They returned to New York in 1922. The uncle disappeared, Aunt Emilie couldn’t provide for Lawrence, so the state placed him in an orphanage for a year. He returned to live with Emilie in a year as she had found work as a governess for Presley and Anna Bisland, but in 1926 she disappeared. The family he was living with sent him to Riverdale School for Boys. He was 5½.

A couple of years later, the family had Lawrence live with a Zilla Larned Wilson, an unrelated widow. in Bronxville. He then attended public school and did well, particularly when he joined basketball and was part of its championship team.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

UNC > USN

But he also found friend who found stealing fun. From a Wall St Journal article: Anna Bisland stepped in and sent me to Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts. When I was there, it was a farm school. The students—mostly missionaries’ sons—worked in the barns and fields. Mount Hermon was a tough academic school. I was exposed to poetry for the first time, and T.S. Eliot was a big inspiration.

He attended Chapel Hill University in North Carolina as Lawrence Ferling where he majored in journalism and received his AB in 1941. He began his career in journalism by writing sports for The Daily Tar Heel, and he published his first short stories in Carolina Magazine, for which Thomas Wolfe had written.

After graduation and before Pearl Harbor, he joined the Navy. As a Lieutenant Commander he was part of the Normandy invasion and later arrived in Nagasaki shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped. Those experiences became the basis for a lifelong antiwar view.

After the war, he attended Columbia University and in 1947 received his MA in English literature. He then received his Doctorate de l’Université de Paris (Sorbonne) in 1950. He had met his future wife, Selden Kirby-Smith, on the ship sailing over, who was also going to attend the French university.

His dissertation, in French, was about images of cities in modern poetry.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

San Francisco/City Lights

Ferlinghetti went to San Francisco in 1951 where he taught French in an adult education program, painted, and wrote art criticism. He was joined there by his fiancée, Selden, known as Kirby, and the two were married. The marriage would last until 1976 and produced two children, Julie and Lorenzo.

In 1953, he and Peter Martin, the publisher of City Lights magazine–named after the 1930 silent film by screen comedian Charlie Chaplin–opened City Lights bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach. It was the country’s first all-paperback bookstore as a way to provide easier access to quality literature. It was also a gathering place for the neighborhood and other writers.

They hired Shigeyoshi “Shig” Murao as a clerk. Murao worked without pay at first, but eventually became manager of the store and was a key element in creating the unique feel of City Lights.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

Howl

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked”

In 1955, Ferlinghetti launched City Lights Publishers. His own career as a poet began with publication of Pictures of the Gone World in 1955.

On October 7, 1955, he was at the Six Gallery in San Francisco when Allen Ginsberg gave the first reading of “Howl.”

Jack Kerouac fictionalized and described the event in his 1958 novel, The Dharma Bums. Ginsburg became Alvah Goldbrook and Howl became Wail.

Anyway I followed the whole gang of howling poets to the reading at Gallery Six that night, which was, among other important things, the night of the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Everyone was there. It was a mad night. And I was the one who got things jumping by going around collecting dimes and quarters from the rather stiff audience standing around in the gallery and coming back with three huge gallon jugs of California Burgundy and getting them all piffed so that by eleven o’clock when Alvah Goldbrook was reading his poem ‘Wail’ drunk with arms outspread everybody was yelling ‘Go! Go! Go!’ (like a jam session) and old Rheinhold Cacoethes the father of the Frisco poetry scene was wiping his tears in gladness.

Ferlinghetti asked Ginsberg for the manuscript promising to publish it. Ferlinghetti had launched City Lights Publishers in 1956, he published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

From a Guardian article]: Before publication Ferlinghetti…[gave]…a manuscript to the American Civil Liberties Union asking them for support if he was prosecuted. The ACLU agreed. When a batch of books was seized by US Customs [on 25 March 1957] he was arrested for importing obscene literature. “They had been printed in England because it was much cheaper and much better quality. But when they grabbed them, we were ready.”

Those charges would be dropped, but on June 3, 1957, two undercover San Francisco police officers arrested Shig Mauro for selling a copy of Howl and Other Poems. He would say, “Imagine being arrested for selling poetry!”

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

People vs Ferlinghetti

On October 3, 1957 Ferlinghetti won the case when California State Superior Court Judge Clayton Horn decided that the poem was of “redeeming social importance”

Horn’s opinion was that the State had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that the book was obscene and that the defendants had wilfully an dlewdly committed the alleged crime.

The decision stands a a cornerstone of free speech and is as important as Judge John M. Woolsey in United States vs One Book Called “Ulysses” on December 6, 1933.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

63 Years

Ferlinghetti was 38 at the time of the Howl victory. He would live for another 63 years and though his fame may sprout from that trial, he continued to be a spokesman for free speech and described as the spiritual father of the Beat movement.

He never stopped writing. He never stopped publishing.

Thank you for your moral strength and steady example.

Lawrence M Ferlinghetti

Peace Love Art and Activism

Spring 2021 COVID 19

March 21, 2021 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

Spring 2021 COVID 19

Spring 2021 COVID 19

2,477,878 COVID Deaths Worldwide

March 21: 114,365,615 cases; 2,536,762 deaths worldwide

511,133 COVID Deaths USA

March 21: 29,202,824 cases; 524,669 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

March 21: 14.6% at least once; 7.1% both

Spring 2021 COVID 19

AstraZeneca

Announcement

March 22, 2021: in a late-stage study in the United States found that AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups.

AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding no increased risk of rare blood clots identified in Europe.

Although AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been authorized in more than 50 countries, it has not yet been given the green light in the U.S. — and has struggled to gain public trust amid a troubled rollout. The study comprised more than 30,000 volunteers, of whom two-thirds were given the vaccine while the rest got dummy shots. [AP article]

Take Back

March 23: the following day, American federal health officials said that test results from a U.S. trial of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine may have included “outdated information” and that could mean the company provided an incomplete view of efficacy data, .

A spokesman from the drug company said Tuesday it was “looking into it.” [AP article]

Update

March 24: AstraZeneca insisted that its COVID-19 vaccine was strongly effective even after counting additional illnesses in its disputed U.S. study.

The drugmaker said it had recalculated data from that study and concluded the vaccine is 76% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, instead of the 79% it had reported earlier in the week. [AP article]

Spring 2021 COVID 19

2,758,733 COVID Deaths Worldwide

March 24: 125,540,591 cases; 2,758,733 deaths worldwide

558,422 COVID Deaths USA

March 24: 30,704,292 cases; 558,422 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

March 24: 25.3 % at least once; 13.7 % fully

Vaccine Glut

March 26: vaccine manufacturers had been steadily increasing their output, and states had snapped up new doses as quickly as the government could deliver them. but officials expected the supply of vaccines to outstrip U.S. demand by mid-May, if not sooner, and were grappling with what to do with looming surpluses . [NYT article]

Infection Curve Plateau, But…

March 26: States raced to vaccinate as many people as possible as the United States’ coronavirus infection curve continued its plateau for a third week at more than 55,000 new cases per day, a level that health experts warned could rapidly escalate into a new wave.

That prospect added further urgency to vaccination efforts, even as some states appeared confident that their inoculation levels justified loosening restrictions.

At least 31 states had pledged to make vaccines universally available to their adult populations by mid-April, and many more have announced plans to expand eligibility on or before May 1, a goal set by President Biden. Alaska, Mississippi, Utah and West Virginia have already made all adults eligible to receive shots, and some local jurisdictions have also begun vaccinating all adults.

The expansion cames at a critical juncture in the pandemic, with 25 states reporting persistently high infections, according to a New York Times database. Over the previous week, there had been a daily average of 58,579 new cases, about the same as the average two weeks earlier. [NYT article]

Spring 2021 COVID 19

2,758,733 COVID Deaths Worldwide

March 28: 127,863,603 cases; 2,797,663 deaths worldwide

562,526 COVID Deaths USA

March 28: 30,962,803 cases; 562,526 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

March 28: 27.6 % at least once; 15.1 % fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

WHO Report

March 29: according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press, a joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 said that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,”

The findings offer little new insight into how the virus first emerged and leave many questions unanswered, though that was as expected. But the report does provide more detail on the reasoning behind the researchers’ conclusions. The team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis. [AP article]

Spring 2021 COVID 19

Pfizer effective with young

March 31: the companies reported that the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine is extremely effective in adolescents 12 to 15 years old, perhaps even more so than in adults. No infections were found among children who received the vaccine in a recent clinical trial; they produced strong antibody responses and experienced no serious side effects. [NYT article]

Vaccine production error

March 31: workers at a plant run by Emergent BioSolutions in Baltimore manufacturing two coronavirus vaccines accidentally conflated the ingredients several weeks ago, contaminating up to 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and forcing regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines.

Emergent BioSolutions is a manufacturing partner to both Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish company whose vaccine had yet to be authorized for use in the United States. Federal officials attributed the mistake to human error.

The mix-up has delayed future shipments of Johnson & Johnson doses in the United States while the Food and Drug Administration investigated what occurred. Johnson & Johnson moved to strengthen its control over Emergent BioSolutions’ work to avoid additional quality lapses. [NYT article]

2,827,559 COVID Deaths Worldwide

March 31: 129,464,126 cases; 2,827,559 deaths worldwide

565,256 COVID Deaths USA

March 31: 31,166,344 cases; 565,256 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

March 31: 29.4% at least once; 16.4 % fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

US Case Increase

April 5: United States coronavirus cases increased again after hitting a low point late in late March and some of the states driving the upward trend have also been hit hardest by variants, according to an analysis of data from Helix, a lab testing company.

The country’s vaccine rollout had sped up since the first doses were administered in December, recently reaching a rolling average of more than three million doses per day. And new U.S. cases trended steeply downward in the first quarter of the year, falling by almost 80 percent from mid-January through the end of March.

But during that period, states also rolled back virus control measures, and now mobility data shows a rise in people socializing and traveling. Amid all this, more-contagious variants have been gaining a foothold, and new cases are almost 20 percent higher than they were at the lowest point in March.

2,876,102 COVID Deaths Worldwide

April 5: 132,529,221 cases; 2,876,102 deaths worldwide

569,282 COVID Deaths USA

April 5: 31,496,976 cases; 569,282 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

April 5: 32% at least once; 18.5 % fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

April 12: the virus was again surging in parts of the United States, but it was a picture with dividing lines: ominous figures in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, but largely not in the South.

Experts were unsure what explained the split, which did not correspond to vaccination levels. Some pointed to warmer weather in the Sun Belt, while others suspect that decreased testing was muddying the virus’s true footprint. [NYT article]

2,958,324 COVID Deaths Worldwide

April 12: 137,249,434 cases; 2,958,324 deaths worldwide

569,282 COVID Deaths USA

April 12: 31,990,143 cases; 576,298 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

April 12: 35.9% at least once; 21.9 % fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

J & J paused

April 13: federal health agencies called for an immediate pause in use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine after six recipients in the United States developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within about two weeks of vaccination, officials briefed on the decision said.

All six recipients were women between the ages of 18 and 48. One woman died and a second woman in Nebraska was hospitalized in critical condition, the officials said. [NYT article]

Three Million Deaths

April 17: according to a New York Times database, the world’s Covid-19 death toll surpassed three million. More than 100,000 people had died of Covid-19 in France. The death rate was inching up in Michigan. Morgues in some Indian cities were overflowing with corpses.

And as the United States and other rich nations raced to vaccinate their populations, new hot spots had emerged in parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

The global pace of deaths was accelerating, too. After the coronavirus emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the pandemic claimed a million lives in nine months. It took another four months to kill its second million, and just three months to kill a million more. [NYT article]

3,023,317 COVID Deaths Worldwide

April 17: 141,286,944 cases; 3,023,317 deaths worldwide

580,756 COVID Deaths USA

April 17: 32,361,280 cases; 580,756 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

April 17: 38.5% at least once; 24.3 % fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

3,071,080 COVID Deaths Worldwide

April 21: 144,432,576 cases; 3,071,080 deaths worldwide

580,756 COVID Deaths USA

April 21: 32,602,051 cases; 583,330 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

April 21: 40.5% at least once; 33.8 % fully

India

April 22: the NY Times reported that India’s rapidly worsening coronavirus outbreak had expanded on a scale beyond any previously measured in more than a year of the pandemic: The health ministry reported 312,731 new infections, the most recorded in any country on a single day.

India’s total eclipsed the previous one-day high of 300,669 recorded coronavirus cases, set in the United States on January 8, according to a New York Times database, though differences in testing levels from country to country, and a widespread lack of tests early in the pandemic, make comparisons difficult.

Over the past two months, the outbreak in India had exploded, with reports of superspreader gatherings, oxygen shortages and ambulances lined up outside hospitals because there were no ventilators for new patients.

J & J Pause Lifted

April 23: the Food and Drug Administration announced that use of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine could resume with a warning added to its label about the risk for a rare blood-clotting disorder that has occurred among young women.

The F.D.A. decided against limiting the vaccine’s use by age or gender, although some European countries had imposed such restrictions on a vaccine made by AstraZeneca because of a similar clotting disorder. [NYT article]

A Billion Shots

April 25: the world’s seven-day average of new cases hit 774,404, according to a New York Times database. That was a jump of 15 percent from two weeks earlier, and higher than the peak average of 740,390 during the global surge of January 2021.

Despite the number of shots given around the world — more than one billion, according to a New York Times tracker — far from enough of the world’s estimated population of nearly eight billion had been vaccinated to slow the virus’s steady spread.

And vaccinations had been highly concentrated in wealthy nations: 82 percent of shots worldwide have been given in high- and upper-middle-income countries, according to data compiled by the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. Only 0.2 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries. [NYT article]

Spring 2021 COVID 19

3,122,449 COVID Deaths Worldwide

April 25: 147,780,802 cases; 3,122,449 deaths worldwide

580,756 COVID Deaths USA

April 25: 32,824,389 cases; 586,152 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

April 25: 41.8% at least once; 35.9 % adults fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

April 30: Worldwide, the number of new coronavirus cases had shot upward since the beginning of March, more than doubling in two months. For the past two weeks, new global cases had exceeded their previous high point in early January. The average daily rate of new cases had been above 800,000 for more than a week.

The increase in cases was largely being driven by the uncontrolled outbreak in India, where new cases had risen sharply for the past month and showed no signs of abating. A seven-day rolling average of new daily cases in the nation exceeded 357,000, a more than fivefold increase since April 1. [NYT article]

3,193,246 COVID Deaths Worldwide

April 25: 151,999,293 cases; 3,193,246 deaths worldwide

590,055 COVID Deaths USA

April 25: 33,103,974 cases; 590,055 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

April 25: 43.3% at least once; 38.4 % adults fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

No Global Herd Immunity

May 9: experts said that the COVID virus was changing too quickly, new more contagious variants were spreading too easily, and vaccinations were happening too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

That meant if the virus continued to run rampant through much of the world, it was well on its way to becoming endemic, an ever-present threat.

According to Dr. David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, virus variants were tearing through places where people gathered in large numbers with few or no pandemic protocols, like wearing masks and distancing. [NYT article]

3,306,564 COVID Deaths Worldwide

May 9: 158,959,801 cases; 3,306,564 deaths worldwide

595,812 COVID Deaths USA

May 9: 33,476,781 cases; 595,812 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

May 9: 45.6% at least once; 43.2 % adults fully

Spring 2021 COVID 19

12- to 15-Year-Olds

May 10: the Food and Drug Administration authorized use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds in the United States, a crucial step in the nation’s steady recovery from the pandemic and a boon to millions of American families eager for a return to normalcy. [NYT article

Spring 2021 COVID 19

Masks Off!

May 13: CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced that fully vaccinated adults could safely resume activities indoors or outdoors without masks or distancing, in gatherings large or small. The announcement marked a major milestone in the effort to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

“You can do things you stopped doing because of the pandemic,” Walensky said.

The new policy was based on recent real-world studies from Israel and the U.S. on people who’ve been vaccinated, she said. [NPR story]

India

May 12: authorities announced that India had recorded 4,529 Covid-19 deaths on May 11, the pandemic’s highest single daily death toll in any country so far as the virus spread into the country’s vast hinterlands.

The previous deadliest day for a single country was recorded in the United States in January, when 4,468 people died.

Many experts believed the true number of deaths and infections in India, a country of 1.4 billion people, was even higher, and evidence had emerged across the country of large numbers of people dying from Covid who had not been officially counted.

India reported 267,000 new cases on May 11, pushing the official case tally past 25 million, with more than 280,000 deaths. [NYT story]

Spring 2021 COVID 19

3,513,719 COVID Deaths Worldwide

May 25: 169,074,090 cases; 3,306,564 deaths worldwide

595,812 COVID Deaths USA

May 25: 33,971,207 cases; 606,179 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

May 25: 49.5% at least once; 50 % adults fully

Biden Orders Inquiry

May 26: President Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, indicating that his administration took seriously the possibility that the deadly virus was accidentally leaked from a lab, in addition to the prevailing theory that it was transmitted by an animal to humans outside a lab.

In a statement, Mr. Biden made it clear that the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies had not yet reached a consensus on how the virus, which prompted a pandemic and had killed almost 600,000 Americans, originated in China. He directed them to report back to him in 90 days.

“I have now asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion,” the president said. [NYT article]

EU/Digital Covid Certificate System

June 1: a digital Covid certificate system that would facilitate travel within the European Union became operational in seven countries previewing what could become a standard for post-pandemic global mobility.

The document, known as a digital green certificate, records whether people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, recovered from the virus or tested negative within 72 hours. Travelers could move freely if at least one of those three criteria was met.

Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Croatia and Poland made the certificates available to their citizens on June 1 and accepted them for visitors. The European Commission, the bloc’s administrative branch, said the system would be used in all 27 E.U. countries as of July 1. [NYT article]

Spring 2021 COVID 19

World Surge

Malaysia

June 1: authorities in Malaysia barred people from venturing more than about six miles from home. Covid-19 patients were spilling into the hallways of overcrowded hospitals in Argentina. In Nepal, 40 percent of coronavirus tests were positive, suggesting that the virus was racing through the population.

All three nations were experiencing their worst coronavirus outbreaks since the start of the pandemic, joining countries across Asia and South America where infections had surged to record levels — a stark counterpoint to the optimism felt in the United States as summer dawned.

Deep into the second year of the pandemic, the emergence of coronavirus variants and the global gaps in access to vaccines had plunged parts of the world back into the anxious stages of Covid-19. Argentina, Malaysia South Africa and others reimposed lockdowns. Thailand and Taiwan, which kept the virus in check for much of 2020, closed schools and nightspots in the face of new waves. [NYT article]

3,762,368 COVID Deaths Worldwide

June 8: 174,735,684 cases; 3,762,368 deaths worldwide

613,052 COVID Deaths USA

June 8: 34,242,866 cases; 613,052 deaths in the US

% Vaccinated in the USA

June 8: 51.6% at least once; 53 % adults fully

Africa Vaccinations Poor

June 9: in the global race to vaccinate people against COVID-19, Africa was far behind.

In South Africa, which had the continent’s most robust economy and its biggest coronavirus caseload, just 0.8% of the population was fully vaccinated, according to a worldwide tracker kept by Johns Hopkins University. And hundreds of thousands of the country’s health workers, many of whom come face-to-face with the virus every day, were still waiting for their shots. [AP story]

G7 Vaccine Committment

June 10: world leaders from the Group of Seven industrialized nations committed at least 1 billion coronavirus shots with struggling countries around the world — half the doses coming from the U.S. and 100 million from the U.K. [AP article]

Vaccine Requirement Upheld

June 12: U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes, in the Southern District of Texas, dismissed a lawsuit brought by employees of Houston Methodist Hospital who had challenged the hospital’s coronavirus vaccination requirement. The Hughes said that the hospital’s decision to mandate inoculations for its employees was consistent with public policy.

And he rejected a claim by Jennifer Bridges, a nurse and the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, that the vaccines available for use in the United States were experimental and dangerous.

“The hospital’s employees are not participants in a human trial,” Judge Hughes wrote. “Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the Covid-19 virus. It is a choice made to keep staff, patients and their families safer.” [NYT article]