THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.They have cut into the living flesh, attacked the bone structure of the art underneath...killed the building in its form as in its symbolism"-Victor Hugo
I cannot help thinking about Doug Sahm today, 21 years after he passed. For those of you who are not aware of Doug, he was the leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet, whose song She’s About A Mover was a huge hit in the 60s. During the course of his lifetime, Doug was on five different major labels, released dozens of albums on many others, helped usher in the Americana sound, and was beloved by so many. He was a confidant to Bob Dylan, rediscovered Freddie Fender, introduced Flaco Jimenez to a whole new audience, and helped out Roky Erickson during a downtime in his life. And while he lived all over the world and was always moving, he always championed his home state of Texas.
I met Doug through my friend Bill Bentley. Doug flew into my office at the Ski Lodge (the Warner Bros. building) in Burbank with a hit: A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada. He just walked on in, sun glasses on and a 5 gallon hat, and started singing. From then til the end of his life we talked weekly. I signed the Texas Tornados, his band at the time, to Reprise and we commenced to produce the great album 4 Aces.
After the life of that record ran its course, Bill and I persuaded Doug to do a solo record…a return to his country form. He quickly threw together a band with double fiddles, a master steel player in Tommy Detamore, guitar slinger Bill Kirchin from Commander Cody and hit the studio, taking some of his older material and revisiting it with a fresh new sound. I went down to Dallas to see him play with the band, and to hang out and talk about his record. He was great that night, three hours of songs of his life. But after the show, he complained of just not feeling right and having cramps in his hands. Doug hated doctors, but was planning on seeing one when he tripped back to Los Angeles.
A few weeks later he died. He had a massive heart attack in Santa Fe.
The hole he left in my life is still very much there for me. Doug called me all the time, to talk about business: recording…record distribution. The music industry was his life and he was a student of it since his days with Huey Meaux. When he couldn’t find me, he would call my Mom whose number he found in the phone book, sweet talking her for a while and then asking where her son was. He took me to Spring Training, where he was beloved by the Cubs organization, introducing me to Ernie Banks and the entire AAA farm team while throwing a Giants hat on after on taking me to see my home team across town. All the while telling me how I needed a cowboy hat (he bought me one) and to drink vials of ginkgo every day for stamina. He would go on about his times with Jerry Garcia, and the rest of the Haight Ashbury scene. After all, he was a self-described long haired hippy refugee.
Miss you Sir Doug. You were a unique soul…like none other.
I made a mix for anyone who wants to dig in. C’mon…you too can be a Doug Head.
Why Did a Nazi Buy a Fake Vermeer? New Film Dramatizes History’s Greatest Forgery
National Book Awards 2020 Finalists and Winners
I am definitely losing touch because I know few authors on this list. Time for more reading. Shortlisted poet Natalie Diaz is wonderful, a sample of her work is below…
'She made music jump into 3D': Wendy Carlos, the reclusive synth genius
16-Year-Old Cosmic Mystery Solved, Revealing Stellar Missing Link
It Was the Animals
By Natalie Diaz
Today my brother brought over a piece of the ark
wrapped in a white plastic grocery bag.
He set the bag on my dining table, unknotted it,
peeled it away, revealing a foot-long fracture of wood.
He took a step back and gestured toward it
with his arms and open palms —
It’s the ark, he said.
You mean Noah’s ark? I asked.
What other ark is there? he answered.
Read the inscription, he told me,
it tells what’s going to happen at the end.
What end? I wanted to know.
He laughed, What do you mean, “what end”?
The end end.
Then he lifted it out. The plastic bag rattled.
His fingers were silkened by pipe blisters.
He held the jagged piece of wood so gently.
I had forgotten my brother could be gentle.
He set it on the table the way people on television
set things when they’re afraid those things might blow-up
or go-off — he set it right next to my empty coffee cup.
It was no ark —
it was the broken end of a picture frame
with a floral design carved into its surface.
He put his head in his hands —
I shouldn’t show you this —
God, why did I show her this?
It’s ancient — O, God,
this is so old.
Fine, I gave in, Where did you get it?
The girl, he said. O, the girl.
What girl? I asked.
You’ll wish you never knew, he told me.
I watched him drag his wrecked fingers
over the chipped flower-work of the wood —
You should read it. But, O, you can’t take it —
no matter how many books you’ve read.
He was wrong. I could take the ark.
I could even take his marvelously fucked fingers.
The way they almost glittered.
It was the animals — the animals I could not take —
they came up the walkway into my house,
cracked the doorframe with their hooves and hips,
marched past me, into my kitchen, into my brother,
tails snaking across my feet before disappearing
like retracting vacuum cords into the hollows
of my brother’s clavicles, tusks scraping the walls,
reaching out for him — wildebeests, pigs,
the oryxes with their black matching horns,
javelinas, jaguars, pumas, raptors. The ocelots
with their mathematical faces. So many kinds of goat.
So many kinds of creature.
I wanted to follow them, to get to the bottom of it,
but my brother stopped me —
This is serious, he said.
You have to understand.
It can save you.
So I sat down, with my brother wrecked open like that,
and two-by-two the fantastical beasts
parading him. I sat, as the water fell against my ankles,
built itself up around me, filled my coffee cup
before floating it away from the table.
My brother — teeming with shadows —
a hull of bones, lit only by tooth and tusk,
lifting his ark high in the air.
