In 1975, before cell phones, personal computers, the internet, social media, Miami Vice, and most video games, a sort of kinky, weird, post-apocalyptic movie set in 2024 came out. It was called A Boy and His Dog, and starred a young Don Johnson. Working on an unrelated substance post, I just learned that movie was set in 2024. Well... we didn't have World War III, or World War IV. Civilization is still around, we didn't live through the end of the world. But the real world in 2024 was something they couldn't possibly have imagined back in 1975. Which was crazier? A Boy and His Dog or real life 2024? You decide, and let me know on Facebook.
The year 2024 in review by NBC News. I'd say the real 2024 was a hell of a lot crazier than a talking dog helping a guy get laid. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
I'm doing most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out sometime:
I'd like to thank the Sunday afternoon Grateful Dead/jam band show on KPFK radio (90,7 FM in L.A.) for turning me on to this song in the early 2000's. The single best band name and song title combo I've ever heard of. The Ominous Seapods with "Bong Hits and Porn." They seriously do ROCK, by the way.
This blog post it NSFA (Not Safe For Anybody)
You have been warned...
No long ramble. Here are some songs I've heard of that are weird, sometimes funny as well. At least to my warped sense of humor.
Censorship? Pretty much everyone who checks out this list would want to censor some of these songs, but everyone would pick different songs. That's the whole point of free speech. Ponder that for a bit.
I do most of my writing on Substack these days, check it out. But it's not near as funny as these songs.
Dave Van Ronk with "Dink's Song" in the early 1960's.
I just picked up a new book at the library, Talkin' Greenwich Village, by David Browne. It's an incredibly well researched look at the folk singing scene that emerged out of Greenwich Village, in New York City, from the late 1950's, through the 1960's. This scene was full of young singers and guitar players, enamored by the earlier folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, and the folk musician tradition in the U.S. that went back 100 years or more before then. From public singalongs at the fountain in Washington Square Park, these young musicians began to perform the songs they heard from Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, and a whole slew of the folk and blues players of the early 20th century.
By 1957, when the book dives into the scene, the Greenwich Village district in New York City had a history as home to several prominent writers, going back decades. At the time, the small clubs and coffee houses of the Village were where jazz greats like John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk performed in small clubs while in NYC. The coffee shops were the stompin' and reading grounds of the beat poets, Jack Kerouac being the best known to most of us now. The young folk singers began to play gigs at these clubs and coffee houses, which were often hassled by police and city officials, because of neighbors complaining about the noise.
A legendary scene evolved, as more young folk singers were drawn to the scene. They all played music, drank, argued, worked odd jobs, fell in love, broke up, marched in protests, and got followed by the J.Edgar Hoover FBI in some cases. Most of them were on the far Left side of the political spectrum, often socialists and in some cases, actual communists. I'm more interested in the music scene, but the politics of the time was a part of it all.
In the early 1960's, with Village newcomer Bob Dylan being one of the first, they began writing their own folk songs, in addition to singing the classics. Ever heard of Dave Van Ronk? Neither had I. But he was an early and constant part of the scene, and taught several others to play guitar when they showed up on the scene, as well as writing many songs. The book marches through the happenings, and Van Zonk is a major thread in much of it. Browne chronicles the comings, goings, interactions, and key events of the main musicians in this scene, year by year.
I picked up the book for a couple of reasons. As a goofy, young kid in Ohio, I was a fan of guitar playing singer/songwriters. The first album I asked my parents to buy me as a gift (Christmas or birthday, can't remember), was John Denver's Greatest Hits, Volume 2. Our family had moved to a farmhouse outside the tiny burg of Shiloh, Ohio. Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" became my theme song. OK, we didn't actually work the farm, we just rented the house, but I wandered that farm, the creek, and woods every day. I did have to help chase the cows back into the pasture two or three times, when they got out. That was the extent of my actual farm life.
At 8 or 9 years old, I was a fan of bluegrass that I heard on Hee Haw, like Grandpa Jones,Roy Clark, and Glen Campbell. While I didn't like most of the country music coming out of my mom's radio in the kitchen, I did really like the music of Johnny Cash. So acoustic guitars, folk music were my favorites in my grade school years.
The other reason for picking up Talking Greenwich Village is because as a BMX freestyler in the 1980's, I developed an interest in what I call "Creative Scenes." To me, a Creative Scene is any group of people who come together on a regular basis to do something creative. That can range from a couple of skateboarders at a skatepark, to people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating Apple Computers in the 1970's. Art, music, creative businesses, action sports, there are creative scenes in all these things. I witnessed the early scenes of the BMX freestyle world, when there were little pockets of riders in different locations, promoting our weird, new, little sport. Since I moved around, and became a part of several different BMX and skateboard scenes, I saw how they helped riders and skaters progress, and how these scenes ultimately influenced many other people, and helped the sports grow and evolve overall. Over several years, I realized there are all kinds of different Creative Scenes, and that most of the progress in society comes from various Creative Scenes that spring up and thrive for a while.
The Greenwich Village folk music scene of the 1960's was one of the most influential musical scenes in the history of the United States, and that influence continues to ripple outward, in today's young singer/songwriters, like Alice Phoebe Lou, Jenn Fiorentino, and many more, covering the songs they grew up on, and then writing and performing their own. Generations of singer/songwriters in the U.S., and around the world, were influenced and inspired by the 1960's Greenwich Village folk scene.
I'm only about halfway through the book, but it has already turned me on to a whole bunch of singers and musicians I had never heard of. First, here are several of the people who inspired the early Greenwich Village folk music scene, people who were in and around the Village, coming out of the 1950's. Then I've linked a whole bunch of the early musicians that were part of the Village folk music scene in that era. If you have an interest in folk music, Greenwich Village, U.S. music history, or guitar picking, Talkin' Greenwich Village is well worth the read.
Once upon a time, there was this guy named Gerard who lived in Hermosa Beach and ran a small surf video distribution company. Gerard was a kind of shady salesman guy, but he sold A TON of videos for all the independent video surf film producers, so they loved him. He also sold a lot for the bigger companies, like Vision Skateboards and Sims Snowboards. Because he sold so many videos for other people, he would call them up and say, "Hey, I'm making a compilation video, can I use a clip from your new video in it?" They'd always say, "Sure, go for it." He would say as many of his compilation videos as he did their videos, and he made twice as much money per video on the compilation videos. Shady... but it worked out for everyone involved, including me. Gerard hired me to edit and work for him for a while, and he sold 500 copies of my BMX video,The Ultimate Weekend, in the fall of 1990, in the U.S., and a bunch overseas as well.
As skateboarding and snowboarding took off in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Gerard's little distribution company also sold a ton of skateboard and snowboard videos, as well as surf flicks. After I left Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, in 1990, I met Gerard, and wound up editing three videos for him. We did two issues of Skateboarder's Quarterly Video Magazine, and that was nearly three years before411 (skateboard) video magazine came out. I also edited this first issue of Snowboarder's Quarterly.
Most of these video clips are from other people's videos, edited with the mini-interviews Gerard and I did at the Action Sports Retailer trade show in San Diego, in the fall of 1990, as I recall. The Snowboarder's in Exile premier was great. There were maybe 100 to 150 people in the room watching the premier, and nearly every top snowboarder in the world was there. I watched that video probably 100 times over the next few years. In Snowboarder's Quarterly #1, above, you can see our quick interviews with the future 1992 Penthouse Pet of the Year (and Damian Sanders' then girlfriend) Brandy Ledford at 18: 12, and Sims Snowboards team rider Chris Roach at 35:12, among others.
At the beginning, you see ski/snowboard fimmaker Bruce Benedict, and producer Laura Mickelson, my former co-worker at Unreel, talking about their snowboard video, 20 Tricks. Laura Mickelson is now a working artist here in SoCal (which I just found out), as well as a long time video/TV/documentary filmmaker. Damian Sanders, one of the main guys in Snowboarders in Exile, did a ton of snowboarding, some motocross freeriding. He went on to start the Pimp N Ho Ball and the bi-weekly Club Rubber, with business partner Jon Huntington, in Costa Mesa, California, which turned incredibly profitable. Both the night club and the ball got so popular that they moved to Las Vegas. Check out this interview for a deeper look at Damian.
Damian and Brandy lived in Huntington Beach in the early 1990's, and even next door to the P.O.W. BMX House, in Westminster, for a little while. One night in 1992 or so, I was riding my BMX bike down Beach Boulevard in H.B., and got pulled over by the cops, since I didn't have a light on my bike. For some fucking reason, they called for back-up. The second pair of cops walked up, as the first pair was checking my ID. One of them said, "Last night we pulled over some crazy kid right here, driving a hearse, and he had "666" shaved in the back of his head." I said, "You guys pulled over Damian? I saw him and Brandy around downtown H.B. sometimes, and I knew Damian was driving a hearse then. The cops said, "You know that guy?" I said, "Everyone in H.B. knows who he is, that's Damian Sanders, he's one of the best snowboarders in the world." The cop just shook his head. I never actually met Damian, but I'd see him around town over the years, through the 1990's and into the 2000's, when I was a taxi driver and picked up lots of fares from Club Rubber. I think I got another ticket for riding my bike without a light, but I can't remember for sure. I got a few of them back in those days, but usually got off with just a warning.
This morning, I went digging into YouTube looking for Skateboarder's Quarterly #2, which is pretty hard to find. I haven't found it yet, but I ran into this Snowboarder's Quarterly video instead ( Finally found it later, fuckin' algos these days!) I haven't seen this video since probably 1991. I was the cameraman for all the little, in between interview and trade show footage, and I edited this video together, using big blocks from Snowboarders in Exile,20 Tricks, New Kids on the Twock, and a couple other videos that came out at the beginning of the 1990-1991 snowboard season.