Oakland Police Department: Above the Law?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/24/oakland-police-department-above-the-law/

Remembering Jackson

 

My friend Jackson died over Labor Day weekend. He was a couple years younger than me. I met him in January 1978 right after my friend D. and I made it to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, CA. I was 22 then. Jackson came up to us in People's Park. He carried a rather beat-up guitar in one hand and a quart of Rainier Ale in a paper bag in the other. We started talking and drinking. Then he began playing some blues. The guitar was missing the high E string, so he compensated by playing some old blues songs in alternate keys. He told us about the 25 cent meal then being distributed every evening in a church basement on College Street a couple blocks from the park. After the meal, we headed to Earth People's Park—a crash pad owned and operated by the White Panthers. Jackson headed off to his next endeavor. The fellow “running” the crash pad that night was a guy D. and I had met in Englishtown, NJ the morning after a one day festival at the race track there that featured the Grateful Dead. We joined him and his fellow Bleecker Street Yippies in gathering all the food the vendors had left when the concert ended. Then we started a fire and cooked breakfast for the thousand or so festival goers who hadn't made it out of the grounds after the show. Anyhow, we said hey, he told us where we could sleep and then invited us to drink from the mason jar he had in his hand. It contained a rather potent psilocybin tea. I think D. and I slept for a couple hours before she and I headed back up to Telegraph at morning's light.

 

Anyhow, we became good friends with Jackson over the years. When some friends of ours from back East joined us and we rented an apartment, Jackson was a regular—guitar and beer in hand. When there was something going on in People's Park or on Telegraph, Jackson was there. As we grew tight, he began to hint at his past. He had hit the streets when he was in junior high. His dad was a jazz musician who sometimes had work and sometimes didn't. His dad also struggled with a narcotics addiction. The family lived in a working-class district of Richmond, CA.--a working-class town dominated by industry and pollution. Jackson didn't talk about his family much.

 

Always a step or two ahead of the police in Berkeley, Jackson lived off of panhandling, some petty crime and busking. His easy smile and natural openness combined with a natural and smooth blues guitar styling usually ensured a decent audience until the cops ran him off. For a while he and a bass player also named Jack played regularly on the corner of Telegraph and Durant a couple blocks south of UC Berkeley's Sather Gate. After the street quieted down, we would all meet up at whatever bar or restaurant was selling cheap pitchers of beer for a night of drinking and talking shit until the place closed.

 

I left the East Bay in 1985. Mine and D.'s romantic relationship had ended a few years earlier and I was a new father of a son. His mom and I headed north to Washington state. I went back every year or so for a while and usually ran into Jackson. He was still playing his guitar. Sometimes he was drinking and sometimes he wasn't. Sometimes he was with a woman and sometimes he wasn't. When I moved east to Vermont in 1992, I had lost many of my connections to the Bay Area. Some of my friends had died, some were in prison, some were living lives their parents had wanted them to, some were up in the woods growing weed. I had no idea where Jackson was or what he was up to.

 

About two years ago, I received a Facebook friend request. It was from Jackson. We chatted back and forth over the next few months before I lost contact again. His missives went between remembering the old days, deploring his on again, off again unhoused situation, and rants about wearing masks. There were a couple more periods where he would start messaging me again and we would continue our conversations. He told me he was fighting cancer and was finally being housed in a decent place with a little privacy. He also told me that the place was dirty and dangerous, especially for women and young people. About six weeks ago, I lost contact again. I didn't think much about it.

 

This morning I saw a post from a mutual friend (someone who also crashed at that apartment mentioned above) that Jackson had died. Every time Jackson would begin drinking, he would splash a bit of the first can or bottle on the ground when he first opened it. The first time we drank I asked him why. It was “for the brothers and sisters gone before” was his reply.

 

So, a splash of beer for my brother Jackson.

Save People’s Park: An Open Letter to the City Council of Berkeley, CA

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/04/save-peoples-park-an-open-letter-to-the-city-council-of-berkeley-ca/

Let a Thousand Parks Bloom

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/10/let-a-thousand-parks-bloom/

A Guitarist's Wisdom

Jorma Kaukonen's biography--a consideration....

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/07/a-guitarists-wisdom/

Art is a Hammer

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/26/art-is-a-hammer/

The Year of the Hippie Dream

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/15/the-year-of-the-hippie-dream/

Bicoastal Beauty, Bicoastal Disgust

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/24/bicoastal-beauty-bicoastal-disgust/

Hate Speech as Free Speech, How Does That Work Exactly?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/28/hate-speech-as-free-speech-how-does-that-work-exactly/

KBOO-FM Interview with Paul Roland

Subject:  Daydream Sunset...

https://kboo.fm/sites/default/files/episode_audio/kboo_episode.2.150909.0800.15845.mp3

Deadly Eye Contact: Freddie Gray and the Baltimore Police

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/27/deadly-eye-contact-freddie-gray-and-the-baltimore-police/

Tripping Through the American NIght Now Available on Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Tripping-Through-American-Night-Jacobs-ebook/dp/B00GRZN7SY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385127274&sr=1-1&keywords=tripping+through+the+american+night

New novel available for purchase

Just click here....   then click on the novel(s) you wish to buy.  Then order directly from Fomite.

Thanks

Drugs, Guns and Politics

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/drugs-guns-and-politics/

Punk, Politics and the 1980s

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/14/punk-politics-and-1980s/

The FBI vs. the People of Berkeley

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/26/the-fbi-vs-the-people-of-berkeley/

Cratched Does California--Ghosts of Christmas Past

Selection that appears in Tripping Through the American Night...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/12/26/cratched-does-california/

The Co-Conspirator's Tale Now Available

http://www.fomitepress.com/FOMITE/Co-Conspirator.html

1979.  When Peter Somers fell in love with a girl named moonshadow on the Berkeley pier, little did he know that she was a member of a group of wannabe revolutionaries.  After an undercover cop is killed and another friend is falsely charged with the murder, the cell disappears.

2007.  Somers ends up back in Berkeley after receiving a letter describing the arrest of his friend on murder charges.  He joins forces with a lawyer and others in an attempt to clear his friend's name.  The authorities have something else in mind. 

There's a place where love and mistrust are never at peace; where duplicity and deceit are the universal currency. The Co-Conspirator's Tale takes place within this nebulous firmament. Crimes committed by the police in the name of justice. Excess in the name of revolution. The combination leaves death in its wake and the survivors struggling to find justice in a San Francisco Bay Area noir by the author of the underground classic The Way the Wind Blew:A History of the Weather Underground and the novel Short Order Frame Up.

There are no hero cops or private eyes in The Co-Conspirator's Tale, just a couple of folks who don't trust the world as it is to provide justice. The battlefields are the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area and the psyches of the accused, their accomplices and their accusers.

The Blues Had a Baby and They Named Him Jimi Hendrix-Spirits of the Red House

My friends and I used to fantasize about a life after death in a rock and roll heaven. Although there would be many guitarists present in the heavenly jam, the guy at the front of them all--sharing leads, riffs and chord changes--would be Jimi Hendrix. His clarion strings would stretch notes beyond the elysian boundaries, challenging Orpheus himself. As if to prove me right, a new disc from the master himself was released from beyond the grave on March 9th. Titled Valley of Neptune, the disc contains twelve never-before-released songs or versions of songs. The title song, a version of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Crying Blue Rain" were recorded in early 1969 with the best-known lineup of Hendrix's band the Experience (Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass) and percussionist Rocki Dzidzornu (who played percussion on the Stones song "Sympathy For the Devil"). The majority of the other material was recorded later the same year.
For those who don't know much about Hendrix's brief and fiery career, the year 1969 was probably the most chaotic and cataclysmic of them all. His band The Experience was dissolving in front of him due to a number of reasons--personal and business. Indeed, by the time of the April recording sessions where some of the songs on Valley of Neptune were recorded, bass player Noel Redding was gone. In addition, according to some biographers Jimi's drug use was reaching dangerous heights while his management was pushing him harder and harder to tour more and more. This pressure in turn led him to use drugs more, creating a vortex not unfamiliar to the lives of many performers and artists. By the end of 1969, Jimi would be playing with a new band featuring bass player Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. It would be this band-known as the Band of Gypsys-- that played at the Fillmore East on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day of 1969-1970. The album recorded those nights was the only live album by Hendrix ever released while he was still alive. Later that year, a reformed Experience minus Redding toured the US and Europe. This tour included the shows at the Berkeley Community Theatre in Berkeley, CA. that were made famous in the concert film Jimi Plays Berkeley. The portion of this film that has the band playing Hendrix's "Machine Gun" while antiwar protesters fight with police outside is one of those cinematic moments where film captures the zeitgeist of a time. This time happened to be at the end of a month that began with the US invasion of Cambodia and included the murders of four students at Kent State University by National Guard troops, the police murders of two more students at Jackson State University and a national crisis.
Most folks who knew Hendrix's music back then can remember their emotions upon hearing about Hendrix's death on September 18, 1970. I recall being at home in Frankfurt am Main, Germany listening to the radio. The announcement was made during the regular hourly broadcast of the news headlines. Friends of mine who lived and breathed Hendrix were beyond distraught as they smoked pipe after pipe of hashish with fellow mourners--German and American--at an unofficial memorial service in Frankfurt's Grüneburg Park the next day.

As for the CD itself, let me discuss a few of the highlights. After opening with a version of "Stone Free" that opens with a contrapuntal syncopation that resolves itself with a classic Hendrix guitar adventure tailspinning to the song's end. The title song is a psychedelic blues that one can easily imagine dancing to. The lyrics talk about erasing the world's pain ahead of a new world to come. The guitar work carries the lyrics with an understated beauty that hints at that new world. The version of "Red House" is a masterpiece in and of itself. Slower than other recordings of the tune, Hendrix's guitar becomes that lyre invented by Hermes and played to perfection by Orpheus himself. This song has always been one of my favorite Hendrix tunes, from its rendering on Electric Ladyland to the multitude of versions present in the bootlegs and official releases that populate any Hendrix fan's collection. The guitar work here debates and enhances Billy Cox's bass playing without ever giving an inch on either side of the dais. The spirit of every bluesman from Robert Johnson to Charley Patton and Son House are present in the lead put forth here. My other favorite is the reworking of the Cream song "Sunshine Of Your Love." This tune was a fairly big hit in 1968 after its release in December 1967. Written by bass player Jack Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton, its introductory measures are among rock music's best known bars. Hendrix and the Experience played this song quite often in 1968 and 1969 in their concerts, so it's not much of a surprise to find it on this disc.
Now, a cynic might say that it's easy to recycle some old tapes and make a buck off of them. If they were referring to this collection, they would be completely off the mark. This disc enables the listener to hear Hendrix in a brand new way. The members of the Jimi Hendrix Memorial Project that have committed themselves to maintaining and enhancing Hendrix's legacy have certainly done the man right with this release. It is definitely worthy of that rock and roll paradise referred to above.