Thursday, June 30, 2005
I wish I had more first hand memories of Chet Helms.
I met him more than once, but the first time was the surprise. This is from long ago, now. When a thumb outstretched on certain by-ways was seldom overlooked, back when people stood at freeway onramps at the foot of University Avenue in Berkeley optimistically holding up cardboard signs signaling their destinations. One said "London", and another noteworthy had hand-lettered the word "Nepal".
I was skimping on busfare. I was hitch hiking up University Avenue more than a few miles to class and a bearded guy in a common old-looking pick-up truck stopped to give me a ride. There was a big dog sprawled across the torn front seat who had to scoot, and the driver fortunately had a column shift or the dog would have had to move more if there had been four on the floor. The driver was Chet Helms.
It was at my destination, at the Sproul Plaza entrance, the colorful handbills for his concerts would be handed out to passersby. I know this, because I'd gladly accepted a few here and there. And one time earlier on, a fellow rather closely attached to the inner sanctum of the Family Dog had handed me half of his stack and asked me to help disburse them. That was but one of the locations.
Chet went a bit out of his way to take me to the campus that day, the way that hippies were sometimes known to do. That's likely because the driver was Chet Helms.
I don't have many first-hand memories of Chet Helms. Almost everything I've heard about Chet Helms has come from other people who knew him. Maybe that's true for you, too. Not quite fifteen years later, that same leafleteer I mentioned above was still in association with his friends and they brought Joe Strummer and the Clash over for their first appearance in California. I previously had thought it was the Clash's first appearance in America, but in reading through Chet's tribute, I realize I was mistaken and being grandiose in my memories. I was pleased to learn back then that Joe Strummer ate kippers, as members in my immediate family (my hubby and cats) also at that same point in time partook of that same tinned finny snack and with immense enjoyment. That made me feel we had something in common.
Not quite twenty years later, that same leafleteer, himself a concert promoter then, commented to me in a frustrated tone that Chet had been sitting on a treasure trove with those posters and handbills and he didn't know what he had, he hadn't made a dime from it. Because he wasn't a financially successful entrepreneur, the current coin of the social realm, that means Chet probably was kind of a hippie or some kind of counterculture guy then, wasn't he? I'm not breaking any confidences when saying the same leafleteer also criticized Chet for leaving his dog in the truck way too much and for too long.
Like a lot of other people my age who were in the vicinity, I kind of come from being around the swirl in those old days. Those old days started becoming the new old days when a friend of mine migrated North to join the Actor's Workshop, which transformed into the San Francisco Mime Troupe , which soon needed a benefit (to help defray legal expenses for an appeal or bail or something), and a guy named Bill Graham held a show ... and on and on and on. We were all just so many travelers finding our way on life's highway and would sometimes find we shared a path in common for a time and bump into each other for awhile down the road a bit.
Just as David Byrnes says there are more moths than butterflies, all I can say is I know there are plenty of little kippers who also joined the swim, which seemed always and inevitably to include the big fish and just as inevitably the sharks.
Bye, Chet. Thanks again for the lift!
(More for your reading pleasure on Chet Helms, Rebel with a Cause" (via Rox Populi)
(I was going to write a little thing here about how it is I never considered myself a critic, per se. How could I? I mean the closest I ever got to Pauline Kael was knowing the projectionist in her theater. And his only claim to fame was that he rented a basement room to Sandy Bull on the street where I lived.)
xxxxxxx
7/2/05 p.s.
Flash re Clash from Steve Rubio: "I was sure I'd seen their first U.S. appearance, and it was at the Berkeley Community Theatre. I looked, and that show was several months before Tribal Stomp. They played in Vancouver for the first stop on their first North America tour, so Berkeley wasn't the first on the continent, but it was the first one here in the States."
Thanks, Steve! ¶ 6/30/2005 10:51:00 AM
I met him more than once, but the first time was the surprise. This is from long ago, now. When a thumb outstretched on certain by-ways was seldom overlooked, back when people stood at freeway onramps at the foot of University Avenue in Berkeley optimistically holding up cardboard signs signaling their destinations. One said "London", and another noteworthy had hand-lettered the word "Nepal".
I was skimping on busfare. I was hitch hiking up University Avenue more than a few miles to class and a bearded guy in a common old-looking pick-up truck stopped to give me a ride. There was a big dog sprawled across the torn front seat who had to scoot, and the driver fortunately had a column shift or the dog would have had to move more if there had been four on the floor. The driver was Chet Helms.
It was at my destination, at the Sproul Plaza entrance, the colorful handbills for his concerts would be handed out to passersby. I know this, because I'd gladly accepted a few here and there. And one time earlier on, a fellow rather closely attached to the inner sanctum of the Family Dog had handed me half of his stack and asked me to help disburse them. That was but one of the locations.
Chet went a bit out of his way to take me to the campus that day, the way that hippies were sometimes known to do. That's likely because the driver was Chet Helms.
I don't have many first-hand memories of Chet Helms. Almost everything I've heard about Chet Helms has come from other people who knew him. Maybe that's true for you, too. Not quite fifteen years later, that same leafleteer I mentioned above was still in association with his friends and they brought Joe Strummer and the Clash over for their first appearance in California. I previously had thought it was the Clash's first appearance in America, but in reading through Chet's tribute, I realize I was mistaken and being grandiose in my memories. I was pleased to learn back then that Joe Strummer ate kippers, as members in my immediate family (my hubby and cats) also at that same point in time partook of that same tinned finny snack and with immense enjoyment. That made me feel we had something in common.
Not quite twenty years later, that same leafleteer, himself a concert promoter then, commented to me in a frustrated tone that Chet had been sitting on a treasure trove with those posters and handbills and he didn't know what he had, he hadn't made a dime from it. Because he wasn't a financially successful entrepreneur, the current coin of the social realm, that means Chet probably was kind of a hippie or some kind of counterculture guy then, wasn't he? I'm not breaking any confidences when saying the same leafleteer also criticized Chet for leaving his dog in the truck way too much and for too long.
Like a lot of other people my age who were in the vicinity, I kind of come from being around the swirl in those old days. Those old days started becoming the new old days when a friend of mine migrated North to join the Actor's Workshop, which transformed into the San Francisco Mime Troupe , which soon needed a benefit (to help defray legal expenses for an appeal or bail or something), and a guy named Bill Graham held a show ... and on and on and on. We were all just so many travelers finding our way on life's highway and would sometimes find we shared a path in common for a time and bump into each other for awhile down the road a bit.
Just as David Byrnes says there are more moths than butterflies, all I can say is I know there are plenty of little kippers who also joined the swim, which seemed always and inevitably to include the big fish and just as inevitably the sharks.
Bye, Chet. Thanks again for the lift!
(More for your reading pleasure on Chet Helms, Rebel with a Cause" (via Rox Populi)
(I was going to write a little thing here about how it is I never considered myself a critic, per se. How could I? I mean the closest I ever got to Pauline Kael was knowing the projectionist in her theater. And his only claim to fame was that he rented a basement room to Sandy Bull on the street where I lived.)
xxxxxxx
7/2/05 p.s.
Flash re Clash from Steve Rubio: "I was sure I'd seen their first U.S. appearance, and it was at the Berkeley Community Theatre. I looked, and that show was several months before Tribal Stomp. They played in Vancouver for the first stop on their first North America tour, so Berkeley wasn't the first on the continent, but it was the first one here in the States."
Thanks, Steve! ¶ 6/30/2005 10:51:00 AM
