THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson

I was just sitting down to write a post about the passing of both Don Everly and Larry Harlow, which already seemed so heavy, when I got a text that Powell St. John and Jack Hirschman also slipped away. Four giants in their respective fields….four game changers.

Of all of them, Jack’s death hits the hardest for me. Since being introduced to him by his daughter Celia many years ago, Jack has been a dear friend. He immediately connected with me through a distant relative, Yitzak Katznelson, who wrote a poem about the murdered Jewish people of the Holocaust (“The Song of the Massacred Jewish People”), as he himself was on his way to his death at Auschwitz. Jack had translated Yitzak’s poem and was happy to connect with the Katznelson clan (or as he spelled it, Katzenelson).

Jack was the people’s poet, a bridge from the Beats to now, whose poetry was confrontational, biting…real and honest. It also was beautiful, and the poem he read to Barb and me at our wedding was breathtaking…framed on the wall just a few feet away from me. The poet laureate of San Francisco, a champion of poets all around the globe, who amplified the righteous known and gave voice to the integral up-and-comers, Jack tirelessly traveled the globe with poems as his weapons and a mind that never ceased to create. And with all of that, he was a kind, soft welcoming human who was great to raise a glass with (especially at Specs) and talk about anything under the sun.

Jack died unexpectedly after a short illness. He had recently given a reading at Foreign Cinema in San Francisco and was hours away from concluding an on-line poetry series when he passed. He lived and breathed his craft up until he death.

It is hard to think of a world that Jack will not be around to help translate.

**

On Friday Larry Harlow died of heart failure. The lone Jewish member of the Fania-driven New York Latin scene…El Judío Maravilloso…Harlow defined the Latin sound in the 70s with his piano playing, production, songwriting, and orchestration. It wasn’t easy for him, not speaking Spanish fluently…not fitting in to the scene he would eventually dominate, having to seek help in finding the right words to express himself in translation when composing songs. It took til the mid-70s for Harlow to feel like he fit into the world he had made for himself. And this is even after he penned the first salsa opera: Hommy (based on The Who’s Tommy), which he performed to sold-out audiences at Carnegie Hall (which also helped reignite Celia Cruz’s career).

I was fortunate enough to work with Larry during several live performances The Idelsohn Society produced in the earlier part of this century. He was like the cousin you look forward to seeing at Thanksgiving, kind…funny…generous. But when he started playing the piano, with those accented punches of the keys as he bled salsa onto the stage with the start of one of his beloved numbers, he was a larger than life legend…one of the creators of modern Latin music with roots deep in the musical traditions he studied all of his life. He was a king of the Fania all-stars.

My dear friend Josh Kun interviewed him about his life in 2012, which can be viewed here. It is incredible to hear how he figured out his style and his place in the musical world, wanting to play jazz…bee pop…in the beginning, and finding his was to fame on his own terms.

**

It is impossible to think of the 13th Floor Elevators without thinking of Powell St. John. He penned some of their best songs including Slide Machine, Monkey Island, The Kingdom Of Heaven, You Don’t Know (How Young You Are)…Right Track Now (more of a Roky Erickson solo number). Powell embodied the hippie culture he helped create through music and painting. He moved to San Francisco from Texas to start the band Mother Earth. Upon leaving the band after two albums, he continued performing, and writing…having songs played by Janis Joplin, Boz Skaggs, The Miracle Workers, Doug Sahm, more…..

With his wife Toby, they were always welcoming to any musician or fan who was in the area, with an open door policy that was well-known, telling the stories of the 60s and beyond. Powell was a gentle, kind, artistic soul.

**

And then there is Don Everly, whose music with his brother Phil changed the face of music. The Everly Brothers’ signature harmonies, legendary songs, hybridization of folk and rock and country….it is hard to think of many other acts that had such an impact on so much music and so many musicians. After they finished the Lenny Waronker-produced record Roots, which is sited as the first country rock record (of which Lenny once told me: “we had to make it sound special…there were no obvious hits”)…after they finished and split up…Don went on to make a solo record that while not successful, was an artistic triumph and one of my favorites featuring Chris Hillman, Ry Cooder…produced by Lou Adler.

There is a lot of great writing and remembrances out there about Don and The Everly Brothers. Some choice few:

Graham Nash remembers meeting his idols.

Rolling Stone’s essential Everly Brother songs to listen to (I do not agree 100% with THIS being this list…though all of it is good). And for the record, I LIKE the 70s reunion record, Stories We Could Tell.

Chris Morris’ Don Everly Obit

As the sun tries to rise through a smokey land, the world feels so different with these incredible voices suddenly silent.

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THE COMPUTER ARCANE

By: Jack Hirschman

1.

To have this at one’s fingertips,
the whole world before one
and it not be zero—,

that’s the humbling meaning
of this revolution one’s a part of
and one’s been party to

for a long time now, at first
denying it as a threatening
turning of the table

on which one wrote one’s
poems or typed them on a
typewriter, even in duplicate,

using carbon paper. But this
revolutionary instrument,
which lies at the heart

of the poem one writes,
or the poem one’s typed
with copies, or this

which makes not only that
possible but can put your
poem in the hands of the

eyes of hundreds if not
thousands of imaginations
at the touch of a button,

as if you were not only the
creator of this good news
of the world of tomorrow,

but the distribution of it as
you are that good news, as
you’re the world itself and

it’s true, what that detestably
majestic philosopher foresaw
when he wrote that, future-wise,

contemporary technology’s
real key is it has the ability to
reveal to us what it means

to be, that a poem’s the core
expression of what it means for
human being to actually exist.

2.

So after years and years of the
feel-yours and the failures of
the ideology of unions

(both in capitals and small
letters) I put my ideologic love
of the Soviet dream between

two slices of practical bread
and I eat the contradictions
down to the very bones of

genocided millions these past
73 years, including the making
of concentration camps for

homeless people in every city
rearing their asshole mouths,
farting into the peoples faces.

3.

Now one of the reasons why
technology can do,—-do what?
Is doing what? What’s it doing?

It’s ending nation, it’s already
laughed at borders, walls.
They’re the morphine of dead

politicians trying to make Nation
great, like Trump and Netanyahu,
But all nations’ peoples no longe

rare national. People themselves
are in advance of that old, narrow
zerophobia. National’s a deathtrap.

National Socialism should have
made that clear by now. Computer
says: No nation. Different tongues

in a planet that needs a world
government. Yes, it’s true: the
whole story of the Soviet Union

can be seen in a film on your
computer. History now’s so fast

it looks like how Salernita

no
sounds, which is jazz to my
senses. like birds talking one

to another, who’ve been doing
it since the beginning of time.
Who don’t know nation. Are birds.

4.

Because we’ve all arrived at the
whole world, even if not all of us
know it. Refugees all: that’s what

being married to technology means.
Never mind the mind to which you’re
a forgotten. Here you’re unforgettable.

The contradiction I ate was a pun,
and the cooler I was in the midst of
a hot sun, the butter I became for

the bread that was hanging on the
line of poetry. No, comrade, the
computer’s not neutral, an indifferent

instrument conveniently helping its
user. It’s been 26 years it did away
with the Communist Labor Party,

in effect forcing us to recognize
the Leninist style of work couldn’t be
sustained where digitalization was

calling the shots. That’s a whole
alphabet of years since that fiery
ideology died with the death of

the Soviet Union, but now we’re
Basu-bound, not just for Russia,
nor will it be for any nation, but

for the whole world itself, when
the New Class of human beings
becomes tomorrow’s revolution

by organizing a demand for an
end to poverty in all lands, a
demand that sees monetary

exploitation to the door, that
effects the liberation of all
universities from corporate

greed so that every child can
go to school tolerant what real
freedom is, and the tearing

down of Wall Street so that the
human neck can move freely
on the human torso, and may

the concentration camps for
the homeless end in every city,
with the flaccidity of every

rifle and pistol in the NRA’s
arsenal aimed at the head
of every student of love,

and the opening of the heart
so that the national anthem
takes the knee, and white

women and black men and
black women and white men
walk hand-in-hand down your street.