Shady's Port-O-Pulpit
gonzo evangelizing the eschaton
Don’t Let The Milk Float Ride Your Mind
Mar 30th
“Don’t let the sun blast your shadow
Don’t let the milk float ride your mind”
– Ziggy Stardust, “Rock & Roll Suicide”
I’ve been increasingly uncertain about the role of this blog and yesterday I wrote a long tirade about how microblogging via Facebook status updates and Twitter have seemingly supplanted a lot of the blogging activity that I used to participate in and how that seems a lot more like microwavable meals on wheels than actual interaction, but by the end of the long winded tirade, I’d bored myself with how tedious it sounded and I didn’t post it.
Then this morning I clicked over to Technorati.com, the site that tracks all of the thousands of blogs online, and saw that it lifted my ranking from 1 to 103 and listed the following tags as descriptive of what this blog is all about: “blotter art, blotter, merry pranksters, ken kesey, lsd, acid, psychedelic art, art, jerry garcia, grateful dead, deadheads, burning man,”
Granted, I probably put those tags in there. In fact, I’m nearly certain I did when I submitted the blog for inclusion on their site, but what I’m noticing this morning is nowhere in there did I include “curmudgeonly rants about how facebook and twitter and microblogging are superficial and deteriorating discourse in the modern world,” so I decided this morning that I need to get over my grumpy old man tendency and get back to the meat of the matter, which is cheerleading this weird little art world that I’ve found myself in and that I’m spending my time trying to promote as an alternative to venturing out into the cold scary world of employment to earn my rent and groceries.
Kesey once used the term The Intrepid Trips Society for Artistic Revolutionary Training (ITSART) as the umbrella under which he threw parties. I’d like to see the ITSART faction of the Grateful Dead scene have a second life. In that vein, I should say it does look like our afterparty is going to happen. At least that still seems to be the hope… Furthurmore is still the working name… Two days, May 31st & June 1st, a continuation of the Memorial weekend event at Mountain Aire…
I’ll post more here and to ATFurthur.com when some contracts get signed and announcements are ready to be made.
And in the meantime, I’m creating some new blotter art designs, tweaking some old ones into new variations, working on scanning images to the Shakedown Gallery website, and still plodding along with Google Page Ranking.
George W. Bush: Asshat or Fucktard?
Mar 25th
He may not be President of the United States anymore (thankfully!) but that doesn’t mean George W. Bush still isn’t a total clown. Watch as he attempts to act like a statesman on a recent humanitarian visit to Haiti:
Asshat or Fucktard? Definitely both!!!
The Furthur Festival
Mar 18th
After completing what seems all around to have been a rather successful tour of their new band Furthur, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir took the occasion of Phil Lesh’s 70th birthday party to announce that the band will be hosting “The Furthur Festival”, a three day festival in the Seirras.
I’m definitely looking forward to it, but also a bit bummed that it seems to me a clear indicator that I won’t be going South for the Do Lab’s more Burner-centric Lightning In A Bottle event. I guess I can’t be everywhere doing everything at once, though I do my best 
Furthur The Band gets its name from Furthur The Bus, as the Grateful Dead lyrics to the song “That’s It For The Other One” clearly indicate:
“The Bus came by
and I got on
That’s when it all began.
There was Cowboy Neal
at the Wheel
of a bus to Never Never Land.”
In high school I did a term paper on Ken Kesey for an English class. That expanded to a Master’s Thesis, a sold interview with Ken Kesey, a writing class with Ken Kesey, an opportunity to be Ken’s Faculty Assistant, and eventually a slot selling Kesey’s stuff on the Furthur Festival tours back in ’98 and ’00.
By 2000, the Furthur Booth evolved into the Merlin’s Wheel Gallery, which I’ve since mutated into the Shakedown Gallery, a traveling festival gallery selling blotter art, signed ephemera and weird psychedelic artifacts.
In 2005, Zane offered me the opportunity to organize the Acid Test 40th Anniversary Party. The result was A.T. 40, a sprawling psychedelic smorgasboard of talent from the Deadhead, Burning Man and twisted cabaret tribes of all flavors on Halloween Night in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The follow-up event was A.T. Furthur: Daze Between, hosted between the two Dead dates at the Shoreline Ampitheater back in May of 2009. A.T. Furthur could be viewed as both taking the Acid Test model Furthur and as the Always Traveling Furthur Circus…
Well, the bus rolled out for the Portland Furthur show and I was able to spend a little time with Zane Kesey. It remains to be seen if the bus is going to make it to Angels Camp for the Furthur Festival, but if it does, expect the Shakedown Gallery and the Key-Z Productions booth to merge. And, who knows, maybe Zane and I will get another A.T. afterparty together. If you’re booking travel and reading these words, planning on staying West an extra day or two just in case. Afterparties can be fun!
Almost Famous!
Feb 1st
My Burning Man article, Fiyo On The Playa, which was published in Magical Blend Magazine back in ’98 or ’99, was quoted in a book titled “God in the details: American religion in popular culture” and I just found out via self-Googlating! Check it out!
SEO Etc
Jan 31st
Well, my project of the hour is trying to boost Google Page Ranking by wrapping my head around Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The goal is to understand SEO well enough to be able to move The Shakedown Gallery up the blotter art food chain enough that it will start to generate revenue and make me some money while I’m not out on the highway hitting every parking lot across the country trying to turn the Jamband Scene into my meal ticket.
Part of that pertains to my growing disinterest in most of the music (yes, I do, in fact, really like Furthur even though I think they sound more like a cover band than any other post-Jerry GD project to come along) but, even with that endorsement, I find that I’m increasingly disinterested in the crowd politics at the shows.
So my goal is to have enough of an understanding of linking that online traffic and promotion of art online can start to really subsidize my road income.
We’ll see how that goes.
In the meantime, it’s a hoot to try to learn something new, and the SEO, Google Analytics, WordPress thing is definitely something new for me to wrap my brain around.
Right now I’m just doing my best with an out-of-the-box Free WordPress Template (in this case Mystique)… mostly to save money. If I should happen to wind up getting rich, I’ll work on finding someone I can pay to build me a custom template.
Footnote: Here’s my Technorati Blog Claim Code: 6YMSMDSZRBHR
Greetings From Rooftopia
Jan 11th
On the eve of my 41st birthday, I find myself in an artists’ compound in Los Angeles affectionately known as Rooftopia. The artists involved are people I met in the fall at the Symbiosis Gathering who had a neighboring booth and became fast friends.
In October, en route to Phish’s Festival 8, I came through town and called up Jimmy Bleyer. He gave me a place to stay and took me on a tour of two gallery spaces, the Hive Gallery and the future site of his Temple of Visions Gallery. We talked and he introduced me to Nathan Cartwright, curator of the Hive Gallery.
Nathan offered me space to hang a small blotter art display at the January 9th opening which coincided with Jimmy’s Grand Opening of the Temple of Visions Gallery.
For my part, my contribution was less than ideal. I squandered valuable planning time in November and barely pulled a display together before I was on a boat in international waters working the Jam Cruise festival. But, hey, thank goodness that the universe looks out for Fools, Drunks and Children, because unseen forces rallied to my aid and a modest but tasty blotter display was hung at the Hive.
The opening itself was nothing less than astounding. There was a line fifteen deep at the doors of both galleries for hours as people paid $15 to attend the two shows. I’d never seen anything like this.
For my part, I was actually in an emotional funk, but these past few weeks — well, from Furthur’s New Year’s Eve run to the present — for me have just been about appreciating how lucky I am to have cultivated such solid friendships in my life.
On New Year’s Eve at Furthur, The Beatles song “All You Need Is Love” blasted from the loudspeakers just as the countdown was happening. Balloons fell from the sky, I was texting this to someone I adore who couldn’t be there and the band started to play The Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion, which is a Grateful Dead devotional song of sorts, and I felt in that (completely sober) moment just how loved and how lucky I am.
Two days later I was on a boat in the ocean, then in Jamaica, then The Caymans and hearing some of the best musicians on earth doing improvisational jams ’til the sun came up, and then flying west for my first ever art display at a “real gallery.” And Love, Love, Love… Without It in The Dream, It’ll Never Come True… Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.
Sooo… 40 has treated me quite alright. Back to Sam Fran’s Disco tomorrow, and back to trying to get a clear sense of what February might have in store.
Regardless, on this eve of my 41st birthday, I feel like one of the luckiest people alive. Now I gotta get out the popcorn popper and drum up some coin ‘cos I ain’t got a trust fund and all this fine livin’ doesn’t come without a price.
“Ohhh, What A Beautiful Buzz, What A Beautiful Buzz…!!!”
(Gimme A Little Drink… And I Fall Down Drunk…)
Another Year On The Golden Road
Jan 1st
At the start of every year I seem to find myself quoting the lyrics to a song by a band called The Bottle Rockets that I only ever heard on the radio once… (“Brand new year / Same old trouble / Stroke of midnight / Don’t change a thing”)… Cynical, yeah, but hearing that song growl through the radio just after the stroke of midnight back in Missouri made me howl with laughter and left an indelible mark on my brain.
Thankfully, I had a more momentous New Year event this year, another New Year’s Eve in The Bay with the alumni of the Good Ol’ Grateful Dead. The band’s current incarnation, Furthur, while not really breaking ground (ie Going Furthur in the Acid Test or Merry Prankster sense of the term) is playing some of the best music they’ve played in years, primarily as a result of adding a Jerry Garcia sound-alike, John Kadlecik, who cut his teeth as a Jerry impersonator in the band “Dark Star Orchestra.”
Back in Rosendale we used to make tie-dyes for DSO when they were just getting started. They are a fun band and sound a lot like the early ’70s Grateful Dead. The fact that Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of the ACTUAL Grateful Dead have recruited him to be the lead guitarist of the new band is a testament to just how talented a player he is.
OK, so, yeah, after fourteen years of avoiding having a Jerry clone, it is strange to hear members of The Dead sounding like a cover band of themselves, but, in the great defense of this band Furthur, in a great many ways they sound BETTER than The Dead themselves did during the stadium rock era, primarily because the band is tighter, the playlists are more exciting (no bathroom songs) and they are breaking out old classics that Jerry didn’t play at the end of his career. That said, I’d “trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday” to hear even Jerry’s off nights, because, yeah, he had that much charisma.
(In that vein, my friends put together a song, “Santa Jerry”, about how, for Christmas, they’d love to hear just one single Jerry tune live, one last time. Audrey, the singer, has a very beautiful voice… check it out on youtube.)
Back in my corner of the world, I’ve got LOTS on my plate… Tonight I have to pull a late-nighter and pack up a bunch of blotter art to send to The Hive Gallery, which is hanging a room of blotter art for a show I’m calling “Microdots: Pixels and Perforations.”
Then in the morning, I’ve gotta shuffle a bunch of things together and then race off to SFO and head to Fort Lauderdale for yet another Jam Cruise… which, after I return, will entail me flying to LA for the Hive show… Phew!!!
And, well, I’ve also started to link up Shakedown Gallery to Facebook and Twitter… with more madness to come…
“It keeps getting stranger and stranger, so let’s get on with the show…”
Thoughts While Flying Over The Rockies
Nov 17th
I’m jet-setting across the country again (big pimpin’ with a $130 cross-country direct flight) listening to my iPod & using Virgin Air free in-flight wi-fi to check Gmail, Facebook, etc. T-Rex cranking Electric Warrior… It’s a Brave New World.
Planet Queen
Perchance to dream
She used my head
Like an exploder
The Planet Queen
The worlds the same
I am to blame
She used my head
Like a revolver
The world’s the same
Well it’s all right
Love is what you want
Flying saucer take me away
Give me your daughter
Dragon head
Machine of lead
Cadillac King
Dancer in the midnight
Dragon head
Planet Queen
Perchance to dream
She used my head
Like a revolver
The world’s the same
I move into a big beautiful Victorian next to the Panhandle and then just jump right back to roadrunning. So it goes. For the moment all seems well in my world.
My only real hurdle for the winter seems to be turbo-charging the Blotter Empire. Gotta get the sites up to snuff to supplement $$$ from shows & slinging few prints in Golden Gate Park.
No complaints! Life is good! I’m stoked that I made the leap to Sam Fran’s Disco. Which begs the question “Why am I flying east?”
The heart has it’s reasons, it’s seasons and songs of it’s own. Back to roadrunning, but this time with a spacious room in SF to return to when I decide I’ve had enough of Ghetto Fabulous Wookie Wonderland.
Godfather of The Blotterati Makes Headlines Again!
Oct 24th
There’s yet another article on Mark McCloud, my buddy, hero, and curator extraordinaire of the Institute of Illicit Images aka The Blotter Museum. The latest media was handed to me in Golden Gate Park this afternoon — a local free newspaper, The Haight Ashbury Beat, ran an article called A morning with the Godfather of blotter art.
Between the recent Juxtapoz article and this local blurb, Mark McCloud’s been getting quite a bit of press lately!
Blotter Art’s a long way from “going mainstream”, but at least Mark doesn’t have to worry about The Feds kicking in his doors one more time… we hope!
Just in case he needs another robust legal fund, go buy a Giclee of one of his “forensic blotters” from BlotterBarn.com…
Pad, Sweet Pad
Oct 18th
Well, just got back to San Francisco, after a week back east at the New York Harvest Festival, and lucked into what seems to be a great living situation near the Panhandle with a couple of older guys that I know via their friendship with the curator of the Institute of Illicit Images.
One of the guys that I’ll be living with had a moment of his “fifteen minutes of fame” when he put flowers in the barrels of guns during a Viet Nam War protest back in the sixties.
The house is a sprawling beautiful Victorian, the sort that made the Haight-Ashbury the hot spot that it was during the mid-to-late Sixties.
I visited The Haight on my first trip to San Francisco in 1987, the 20th anniversary of the Summer of Love. While in town, I bought Charles Perry’s Haight-Ashbury: A History. That book (once again out of print!) sits alongside Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as being, to me, one of two books that best captures the What and Why of San Francisco’s late ’60s art explosion.
Paul Krassner summed up the Haight as a “spiritual revolution that was treated as a temporary fad.” And I think he was pretty spot on in that assessment.
Despite its storied history, I had never thought of wanting to live in or near The Haight. The neighborhood goes through roller-coasters of popularity, but it is also a sad landmark in many respects. Any given block of the upper Haight is heavily populated by drifters begging for change. Many are rude.
So much of the Burning Man “No Spectators” ethos owes more than a passing debt of gratitude to the interactive street theater that groups like the Diggers and the San Francisco MIme Troupe enacted in the Haight. So much of that early “Trip Without A Ticket” art has infiltrated the Burner scene, but you’d be hard-pressed to know this walking down Haight street.
The Upper Haight is both gentrified and ghettoized, at the same time. The street is populated with nice inviting store fronts selling love beads, tie-dyes, incense, bongs and peasant dresses, same as it has for years, and out front there are dozens of dreadlocked young people with dogs asking for change or to “spare-a-juana”…
The Charles Perry Haight-Ashbury book details the promise of the neighborhood as an art movement. The dull pendulum swing from Psychedelic Mall to Beggar Colony only underscores, in my mind, just how tragic the loss of the neighborhood’s artistic spirit really is.
Then again, that same spirit is alive and well elsewhere in San Francisco, a fact that I’m reminded of every time I venture past Gerlach, Nevada out into the Black Rock Desert for the annual designer drug desert orgy.