Monday, October 07, 2013
Hand Shake, Arm Shake, Milk Shake
Veefheart's roadie (although there wasn't a name like that yet for what he did) ... he was graspy, too.
He eventually returned all my clothes I had left behind at his place, but he did not return Humphrey, a near life size sitting lion that Polly Bergen had given to my sister when I was a kid. He kept that, the rat that he was. So I didn't feel sorry for him when his Topanga Canyon house burned down a few years later.
He kept Humphrey even though I asked about his whereabouts on several occasions and had given Vleefheart's roadie many kindly presents, artsy crafty items I had made by hand.
One was a pencil holder I had fashioned most carefully by hand ... I covered a tube that had once held a chicken boullion cubes with a piece of brown newsprint paper. Once I removed the green foil, I could glue the cover over it. I clipped and measured carefully and affixed the new wrap into place, The new cover I had painted with a brush after dividing its circumference into halves -- the top half orange, and the bottom half black (so the pencil holder would seem more stable when set on a tabletop) ... I used actual watercolor paint and a fine camel hair brush to paint the paper.
Then I adhered a glossy ad from one of the magazines my sister brought home from the dental office. The ad was an oblong box, and exclaimed: "PREVENT TOOTH DECAY".
I made this around October, and kept it until Christmas when I gave him a Chaunaka present December 1964.
In between, I decided I liked this creation so much, steeped as it was in personal history, this artifact was like the prototype, and I soon made another once the boullion cubes ran out of the red foiled tube.
That piece I retained in my possession and used throughout much of my college career and beyond until long about oh 1997 when news came to me from a mutual acquaintance that Vleepheart's roadie had died. When I moved across the great water, I discarded my pencil holder.
And Vleetharf's roadie was a bit graspy. He and the guy who "helped script" "Captain Milkshake" I caught them once arguing .... was it about me, veiled in some way? Ummm ..... I don't know, they were arguing about my flannel lined levi jacket and kind of pulling it back and forth between each other in some kind of tug of war as I was about to leave ... one or the other would get the jacket and I would follow as it was cold in the winter to be riding on motorcycles. I'd likely get a ride home with one or the other of them, I hadn't made up my mind about either one of them at that time. That Milkshake guy was a real absurdist and a little snotty. He would leave notes for a friend who had taken a girl home, taped to the door saying, "I hope you had a perfectly grotesque evening".
Before I forget, Vleetheart's roadie worked for the Byrds first, remember? Now this can be funny. I heard a story that Frank called in 1965 and spoke with David Crosby about hiring this guy away from them, and Crosby purportedly said, "Uhhhh yeah that's okay, man, we don't need him."
Anybody else hear this story? That may be another reason why David Crosby is listed as an influence on the "Freak Out!" list of whatever another synonym for influence might be.
¶ 10/07/2013 08:16:00 PM
He eventually returned all my clothes I had left behind at his place, but he did not return Humphrey, a near life size sitting lion that Polly Bergen had given to my sister when I was a kid. He kept that, the rat that he was. So I didn't feel sorry for him when his Topanga Canyon house burned down a few years later.
He kept Humphrey even though I asked about his whereabouts on several occasions and had given Vleefheart's roadie many kindly presents, artsy crafty items I had made by hand.
One was a pencil holder I had fashioned most carefully by hand ... I covered a tube that had once held a chicken boullion cubes with a piece of brown newsprint paper. Once I removed the green foil, I could glue the cover over it. I clipped and measured carefully and affixed the new wrap into place, The new cover I had painted with a brush after dividing its circumference into halves -- the top half orange, and the bottom half black (so the pencil holder would seem more stable when set on a tabletop) ... I used actual watercolor paint and a fine camel hair brush to paint the paper.
Then I adhered a glossy ad from one of the magazines my sister brought home from the dental office. The ad was an oblong box, and exclaimed: "PREVENT TOOTH DECAY".
I made this around October, and kept it until Christmas when I gave him a Chaunaka present December 1964.
In between, I decided I liked this creation so much, steeped as it was in personal history, this artifact was like the prototype, and I soon made another once the boullion cubes ran out of the red foiled tube.
That piece I retained in my possession and used throughout much of my college career and beyond until long about oh 1997 when news came to me from a mutual acquaintance that Vleepheart's roadie had died. When I moved across the great water, I discarded my pencil holder.
And Vleetharf's roadie was a bit graspy. He and the guy who "helped script" "Captain Milkshake" I caught them once arguing .... was it about me, veiled in some way? Ummm ..... I don't know, they were arguing about my flannel lined levi jacket and kind of pulling it back and forth between each other in some kind of tug of war as I was about to leave ... one or the other would get the jacket and I would follow as it was cold in the winter to be riding on motorcycles. I'd likely get a ride home with one or the other of them, I hadn't made up my mind about either one of them at that time. That Milkshake guy was a real absurdist and a little snotty. He would leave notes for a friend who had taken a girl home, taped to the door saying, "I hope you had a perfectly grotesque evening".
Before I forget, Vleetheart's roadie worked for the Byrds first, remember? Now this can be funny. I heard a story that Frank called in 1965 and spoke with David Crosby about hiring this guy away from them, and Crosby purportedly said, "Uhhhh yeah that's okay, man, we don't need him."
Anybody else hear this story? That may be another reason why David Crosby is listed as an influence on the "Freak Out!" list of whatever another synonym for influence might be.
¶ 10/07/2013 08:16:00 PM
