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Unknown: One Well, I really want to talk to you about is the music and social setting out of which it came. Sure I won't ask for any biographical information, except as it comes out in the interview, and it's not your favorite color or

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anything like that. The interview is completely uncensored, so you can use any kind of language. Oh, that's a little good. I've heard a lot about, first of all, about communal bands, and I've talked to Big Brother, and I've talked

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to Quicksilver, and they give me the impression that yours is the last remaining even semi communal band. So it'd be interesting to find out the genesis of the communal bands, and then what happened to them and how viable they are after a

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group gets established. Well, in our case, it was a matter, well, we thought that in order for us to do our thing, that it would mean some sort of, you know, we'd have to, like, put everything else down and

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just do it. So that's what we did. Originally, our getting together was a combination of that we thought the thing for us to do would be to get to live together. What in order for our music to get closer together?

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It wasn't. Wasn't just an economic it was an economic as well, yeah, but it wasn't primarily No, no, no, no. It didn't. It didn't start. Is that that way? Originally, it just and we've been like, doing it on and off,

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living together on and off, when, when we've been able to find the right place to live for the last two years, and we remain very close, just because we came in contact with each other, and we practice almost every day, whether or not it

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really, you know, I mean, I'm not saying the way I the way I feel about it is that a band plays together, can play together without living together, you know, I don't think that that really affects the music that much. You know. I

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think right in our case, the fact of our music being somewhat together is that we've all learned how to play in the band. You know, we've learned how to play from each other. None of us, or at least none of the the front people in the band, me and

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Bob and pig pen and Phil were in any rock and roll bands as such before we got together. And so we've all learned to play from each other, which makes it so that our music is much closer together, because we've gotten to the point where we can more

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or less read each other's minds, because our musical backgrounds, for last year, two years, have been very closely related. Why'd you decide to give up the communal arrangement? We haven't given

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it out. We haven't given it out. I mean, you know, well, it's because the idea, it's really only that's Bob Weldon you can come and talk to, if you like, Jasmine. Jazz magazine. Changed its name in September issue, which isn't out

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here, August issue, which isn't out here yet. For some reason, the jazz pops one has Larry Coryell on the cover. We've seen it so and we were talking about communal bands, saying that I interviewed the Quicksilver messenger service. And I talked

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to Janis Joplin and Peter, and we got into the communal thing, right? Well, the communal thing is really, I mean, it's just like gregarious people like to have lots of people around. When you have a lot of people around who were stimulated,

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interested, it just presents more channels of communication, you know, I mean, I mean more, I more ideas flow. There's just, it's just like being in San Francisco. It's like, it's a cosmopolitan place, in a way, and a lot of ideas coming to it.

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And because of that, you know it's like it it's just a matter of being where the matrix of things are happening. You know what I mean, you just put yourself in a position where you're getting the most information, the most kinds of

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ideas. And that's like the ideal situation to be in, to be in a creative position, you know what I mean, the more things that are happening. So the closer you are with the other musicians, the more the

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band will benefit as a result. I imagine. I mean, it seems to work out that way, whether or not that's really the case is, you know, sociology business, it would seem

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to me that the more I have to do that through the tape transcriber, so make sure she knows who's talking. It would seem to me that the more you get into interaction, the better you get at it. And living, communal scene

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stimulation, interactive activities, don't you? What about your tribe? I've understood that you had, at one point, at least, you had a tribal following that you took

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with you. Well, we've still got it. I mean, it's all our old ladies, you know, and our equipment manager, fan club president and all that. These are all like, these are all the. People. We all live together. We've all lived together for the

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past couple of years, and they still all travel with you Sure? I mean, it depends on what the situation is. If it's economically feasible, that's what happens, because we're

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always at our best when there's when our whole scene is around. I mean, it just makes us feel better as people, you know? I mean, the whole thing about on the road. Is that such a drag? Is that there you are all by yourself and don't know anybody,

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right? Right, right? So, you know, you bring your own scene along with you, and that way you've shared a lot of experiences, too. When the tour is bad, when the tour is over, it's not so much a matter of us saying, well, here's what

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happened when we were on the tour, because we were all there, you know, nobody missed anything. Were you going to anything? Bob, were you going to add anything? How do you see the music that the band plays as being related

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to the lifestyle of the people who come to listen to it? That is, I don't think it's related. I mean, I think it's only related incidentally, because the music. Music is its own thing. You

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know? I don't, I don't know whether or not it depends on lifestyle or not. Do you see yours, this band somehow evolving out of the whole could be seen?

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No, no, because we were all in a different scene. What kind of role in different scenes? I should say, maybe you should run that down. Well, the scene that I was in was, that was coffee houses, folk musicians, right? Me and Peter Albin and yorma,

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Paul cantner, David Freiburg of Quicksilver, and all these different people. We were all we and Janis Joplin. We all used to do coffee house gigs. We all used to play in, you know, either solo or maybe with one or two other musicians and play on

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amplify instruments and that sort of thing. And it was like, there's, you know, a big grass mugging scene, an acid scene, and that was all going on before the famous hippie scene. But it's all the same kind of people. You know what I mean?

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The difference is that musicians are a little different from other people are anyway, you know, it's really the really the musician scene is, is different than the hip always has been, right? What happened in folk music to

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drive so many folk performers out of focus? The very fact that it's such a dead thing, you know what I mean, yeah, in the sense that that there is no, there are no real lovers of folk music. You know what I mean? There's a

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certain point you can get to musically where there's nobody hearing you but other musicians, and that's okay, but that isn't really where it's at in terms of communicating something musically. There's no mass audience, no, no. There's no

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mass audience. And finally, you know, the interest died, and we all got older musically like that was our roots, you know. And this is just as well that there was no mass audience, because none of us deserved it.

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Do you feel that you can express yourself more fully in the music you play now? Absolutely sure that's that's why I never much cared for folk music. That was very vital. No, I don't think so. It was only vital, like I say, for, for

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the roots thing, you know, for really getting into traditional music as a way of really understanding where music is at on the traditional level in this country. And that's largely what popular music is. I mean, has it like it before the Beatles

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popular music was a, like a corruption of some very strong traditional strains. And, you know, just, just bad performances, bad, you know. But, I mean, but, but the idea is the rhythmic ideas and stuff like that came from the blues,

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came from country and western music and things like that. It seems to me that a lot of folk musicians as well as their audience, look down their nose at popular music in the late 50s and early 60s. It was awful. Yeah, I never listened to

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the am radio. I must be quick to confess, and now I do. So there must have been some kind of change, both in me and in what goes what happens in the radio, what happens in popular music? You mentioned the Beatles. You think they were instrumental in

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bringing that kind of change around? Oh, absolutely sure. They put fun back into music. You know, who else or, well, the Beatles were. The Beatles are all of us, really.

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They're the same people. They listen to the rock and roll when they were kids. And the difference was that there wasn't the heavy folk thing in England that there was here. You know, it was like when I started playing, when I first started

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playing guitar, the things that I were playing was like, were playing was like, Chuck Berry stuff, right, right? And then after a while, what was happening in rock and roll no longer turned me on. It was an interesting I was getting older,

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I was getting smarter. I was reading more, you know, I know it's just, you know, I was growing up in the music wasn't. So my interest went to some something else folk at that, right, right, right. But later on, when folks

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began to wither and the Beatles had shown what you could do upon right? Then there was a start. You know, there was a start. There was also a start for for people who for beatniks, you know what? I

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mean, yeah, Janice Johannes said she was a Beatnik. Folks, absolutely right. We all were. You know. All Beatrice. There's no other source of income, you know, on the

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streets, and that's a good place to have been. You know, it's a good place to so you really antedate the hate, in that sense, when you go back before the hate, sure, sure, yeah. Because I remember a lot

00:10:14.040 - 00:10:26.180

of the things that the hippies think that they have discovered were actually occurring in Berkeley and San Francisco. Well, remember, the whole hippie movement is an invention of the newspapers. Yeah, it's not really what's happening. And you

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know, the things that are happening are the same people that have been plugging along various creative endeavors all these years. The only difference now is that the people who used to paint are now doing light shows in films, the people who

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used to play in coffee houses are now in rock bands, but it's the same strain. You know what? I mean, it's kind of all it's like an almost purely American artistic milieu, you know? I mean, it's

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just Brahms unique, brought up to date a little bit. Yeah, I'll say it's unique. What about jazz? You mentioned you mentioned rock and roll, you mentioned popular music and folk music, but you haven't said anything about jazz. I hear a

00:11:07.920 - 00:11:24.020

lot of improvising in a lot of improvised solos in the new rock and it seems to be a lot of it either drives from or is running parallel to what's going on in jail, right? Well, what jazz is like is another one of those things.

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It's like jazz is kind of like flamenco, in a way. It started as a real strong traditional branch, you know, from Negro traditional music coming from blues and red time all these early you know, like, like, it's essentially African with, like,

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this European instrumentality and stuff breathed into it. And as it's grown up, it's gotten to be so sophisticated to the extent of becoming an art music, and I consider most jazz to be art music, that its real home is not in its in the kind of thing

00:12:03.900 - 00:12:16.560

it's thrown into, you know? I mean, it's real home is not in jazz clubs. His real home is, is like a concert stage, or even places like the Fillmore and stuff like that. Yeah, that seems to me, you know, the concert stage I I've

00:12:16.860 - 00:12:26.540

been in east of the last few years, and I attended, I guess, really, if you want to hear what is current in jazz, you have to go to go to concerts. Absolutely. John Coltrane is only place in here, or Nicole, it's only place here. Robert

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Island, they won't work clubs, because clubs are shitty, you know, bad places. They're a down scene. And the jazz scene has been associated with a sort of down scene for a

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long time. One of the things, though, that it seemed we was inhibiting about the concert was the damn thing was so formalized, absolutely. Well, there it is. See, that's also the death of music. I mean,

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as soon as music is art, music, what happens to it is, it becomes a play thing for a few intellectuals, a few writers, right? And then, and then there's no there's no

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longer. It's lost its big thread to the collective unconscious. You know what? I mean, it used to have a hold on it, in a sense. I mean, it used to be a moving force, but, you know, it can get pretentious.

00:13:07.680 - 00:13:18.420

Yeah, right, and it isn't what the musicians themselves want. I asked John Coltrane about this point. I bring it up almost all the time, but what kind of an audience he liked? And he said, Well, he liked to responsive audience. Audience sure showed

00:13:18.420 - 00:13:26.300

it's appreciate Absolutely. He felt the audience became another member of the group. Absolutely, that's the way it should be. That's the way it should be. And as far as I'm concerned, the ultimately

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responsive audience is a dancing dance. And even in the straight Theater, which now you know, has no dancing still at all, there is a kind of at least people don't look down their nose at you. If you freak out in some

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way or other, you're being moved by music, you can still do it. The Jazz audience has tried for so long to overcome its feelings of inferiority that they put that down very strongly, absolutely, to be cool. Yeah, it's not cool, right? To move

00:13:49.240 - 00:14:00.580

around. So, you know, some cat gets up, starts dancing around as I saw. Put them out. Put them out. Well, here's the thing. Is that everybody's so tired of keeping their cool, I mean me, at any rate, that I would rather just

00:14:00.580 - 00:14:12.960

blow it. You know, I blow I like just to do another thing. Rather than concentrate on keeping my cool, I would rather have my mind blown. You know, I would rather blow it. Sure, that's, that's what's nice about the light shows, right?

00:14:12.960 - 00:14:25.880

Occasionally absolutely washes you out and let you respond in no different way than you would have before, in your own, your own playing of improvised solos, you find that listening to jazz has helped you, given you any ideas?

00:14:26.360 - 00:14:44.140

Oh, yeah, sure, absolutely, absolutely. I really, like, I listen to Charles Lloyd a lot. We've played with Charles Lloyd on a lot of occasions. And, like, that's a kind of music that's sort of a new music, and is sort of a new jazz in a way.

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And it's like it's closely related to the kind of stuff that we're doing, only we don't do it as well as Charles Lloyd does. Well, you do it differently. It's differently. It's a

00:14:52.540 - 00:15:03.060

question of as well as well. No, it's true. I mean, I would say the jazz musicians on the whole have a lot better chops than those of us who are like in rock and. All. And in in the kind of like San Francisco

00:15:03.060 - 00:15:11.640

music and so forth, almost every almost without exception, everybody is self taught. Nobody has the like the book chops. You know what I mean? Very few people in jazz do to Charles. Is unusual

00:15:11.640 - 00:15:21.800

in that respect. He has a degree, couple of degrees, from USC, but most of the great Hornet, Coleman, John Coulter and Albert, idler, they studied formally some, but they're self taught. They have me so talk, because the things that they're

00:15:21.860 - 00:15:31.700

doing aren't can't be learned any right? And you play two registers about what's supposed to be normal register, right? The saxophone, man, you have to teach absolutely nobody else is everybody. In fact, if you get taught, they'll tell you it's

00:15:31.700 - 00:15:49.600

wrong. Let's see, oh, yeah, about chops. I don't know, though, you know, I heard the cream. And it seems to me that, if nothing else, the musicians in that band have a tremendous amount of Stagnaro, absolutely, of endurance, absolutely, which,

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you know, bespeak something. I mean, it's not that easy to get up and play it. No, no, I would say the cream. Or like, they are the damn near the best group there is, you know, like their music

00:16:01.200 - 00:16:14.820

is really strong. I mean, really strong. And it's not just a matter of volume, either. It's a matter of, you know, their understanding of time, their understanding of what they're doing, you know, like they have a very good picture of their

00:16:14.820 - 00:16:27.800

music, you know what I mean, and it's uniquely theirs. And that's something, you know, that's, that's something incredible that's that doesn't happen that often. Yeah, yeah. A lot of bands lack enough of an identity to be that strong,

00:16:27.800 - 00:16:43.180

right, play for that much time and still play something uniquely theirs. Does the dead? I gather that when I read The Village Voice and elsewhere, the Dead has played free concerts when they went east. Are you still doing that? Yeah, why do

00:16:43.180 - 00:17:00.660

you make it a point of playing free concerts? Because it's another scene. It playing outdoors, like in a park or something like that, and having people be there, not having paid makes them not go through the kind of changes when

00:17:00.660 - 00:17:12.480

they pay their money, they want to be here and get their money's worth at which, like in the Fillmore and Avenue and places like that, it means maybe sitting down in front being sure to hear every note. I would rather have people not have that

00:17:12.480 - 00:17:22.760

kind of pressure, consumer pressure, so that they can just be there. We can just play, and maybe something else can happen. See, it's not out of any feeling of obligation, though, that you

00:17:22.760 - 00:17:34.820

play those No, no, it's with me. I just like to play right you get a chance to talk to a lot of the people you know and see him

00:17:34.820 - 00:17:47.440

and they get and also, there's always the thing of having people who might not normally ever see you or hear you, or might not know what you're up to. How did the whole thing about free concerts begin? At least I

00:17:47.440 - 00:17:58.000

asked you, because it seems to me, we were talking earlier about the jazz club and how detrimental it was for the music to be played in a place like that. And I've written some, I'm going to write more on the importance of taking jazz out of

00:17:58.000 - 00:18:08.760

the club and putting it in places like film or as a First Avenue and free concert. Secondly, so maybe if you wrapped a little on that subject, the jazz musicians might be able to pick up on it and figure out how they could

00:18:08.760 - 00:18:21.360

start getting there. Well, here's the way, here's the way. It started for us about a year and a half ago. We used to live in a big place out in the country. We got it was sort of a ranch, and we had a party up

00:18:21.360 - 00:18:37.460

there for all our friends in the city who were, you know, like at that time, was the most of the people in most of the bands, the guys who make the posters, and all the people we came up to our house, and we all got stoned. And we, you know, there was a

00:18:37.460 - 00:18:48.940

swimming pool there. Everybody took off their clothes and ran around. And we played outdoors. And everybody who felt like playing played outdoors. And it was so nice to be able to dance out in the sunlight, you know, just move around, out in the

00:18:48.940 - 00:19:02.380

cell line, just play, you know, without any kind of show restrictions. You know what I mean. You know. You know where you have to have a set this long. And all that I've heard they hate to play 40 minutes, right?

00:19:02.380 - 00:19:12.960

Right, right. Right, right, absolutely, absolutely. So like when you play outdoors, you don't have any of those rules. You don't have any kind of rules. In fact, there's nothing particularly expected of you, because nobody paid any money to

00:19:12.960 - 00:19:26.660

hear you. So you can do anything you want. For one thing, for another thing, there's the whole thing of when you're outside, you have a different feeling in yourself. You know, your body feels different. The sun on you feels different. It's better

00:19:26.660 - 00:19:40.780

than being in a dark place. You can see the faces of everybody you're playing to. You can get, you can get an instant reaction, and everybody is much less inhibited outdoors. Oh no, it's just a lot healthier, I think so. I think it's the, I think

00:19:40.780 - 00:19:56.620

it's the healthiest, you know and like it makes a difference in the music. What are two spots in musicians and the attitude of the crowd? What? How does it change your attitude?

00:19:57.520 - 00:20:12.000

It makes it makes me play. Want to play for a. A long time. And like, here I can so I do and like, you get into a thing of taking Lou, taking it easy, and settling into what you're doing and playing. You get into instead of playing a show, like,

00:20:12.000 - 00:20:28.640

for instance, we play, we play songs that last half hour, 40 minutes a piece and right, and the stuff has a longer time to develop. It has a longer time to go through its changes. And there's also a whole, this is

00:20:28.640 - 00:20:43.000

all this freedom, you know, of experimenting. You don't you're not worried about keeping a certain level, you know, maintaining a certain level of excitement, or whatever, you know, whatever. The thing is that, like when you're doing a

00:20:43.000 - 00:20:54.460

show, there's a whole lot of pressures on you, of sorts, you know, they're way in the back of your mind, but they're there unless these people play $3 to play, and I have to do my best for

00:20:54.460 - 00:21:04.140

them. Oh, sorry, there's just a whole lot less bullshit when you're playing out to us, what, a lot nicer. What are some of the other hang ups that go along with being a

00:21:04.140 - 00:21:15.780

successful rock group now that you know you're well, we're not that successful. We're not successful enough at this point for it to be a hassle in the sense, like we're not hassled by teenyboppers and we're not hassled by autograph

00:21:15.780 - 00:21:25.460

seekers. That much have you done? Has that been deliberately part of the group? I mean, have you kept yourself being a success? We've tried to, we've tried to make it so that nobody thinks of

00:21:25.460 - 00:21:37.340

us as stars. Yeah, you know, we've tried to make ourselves because it's readily accessible, and everything that seems to be true San Francisco bands in general, everybody, right? We're not who cares about. I mean, the whole thing about is, is it's,

00:21:37.340 - 00:21:50.380

it's being successful. If we're all eating, you know that's successful. You know anything, anything more than that is invention. You know you're always being, being a star. You know being a star, for

00:21:50.380 - 00:22:04.080

instance, you can't, you can't associate with anybody on on a personal level, because there's a star thing happening. It blows my mind severely, and hurts me when, for instance, I'm walking down the street, and maybe I have a feather in my hair and

00:22:04.140 - 00:22:17.880

some tea. Bopper runs up and grabs a bunch of hair and pulls a bunch of hair out along with the feather. And that happened to me just yesterday. Oh, wow. And like, you know, all because, all because I remember the Grateful Dead, and

00:22:19.680 - 00:22:37.340

who needs it. Yeah, precisely. Who does need it. But see, the audiences have been very groovy in San Francisco. Behind all that, I noticed that the and the audiences are like, you know, they know when you're cooking, you know, it's really

00:22:37.340 - 00:22:50.320

groovy. It's really groovy to play for a responsive audience, and our music is like, at a level that it's still possible for everybody to hear it all, you know, and to dig it all. I saw that in the straight the other night when Janice was

00:22:50.320 - 00:23:03.060

singing she, you know, get because you read a lot about, you know, the San Francisco rock band and their followings. I've been the east for two years. I've been cut off, and everything that's happened here. And I was a little skeptical.

00:23:03.060 - 00:23:13.620

But when I was at the straight and I saw Jenna singing, I mean, it was very close rapport between her and the audience. And daily, those people you know worked with her and she worked fed back what they were feeding her.

00:23:13.620 - 00:23:22.220

So that's the whole San Francisco trip, condensed. Is that why so many is the existence of that audience that has propelled so many bands,

00:23:22.760 - 00:23:32.300

sure, to do good, yeah, because there's an audience waiting for you to get good. I can't, you know, the amount of music I've heard here is, first of all, just in four or five, well, I guess about a week now

00:23:32.300 - 00:23:42.640

is incredible. The amount of good music I've heard is even more incredible, I know. And it's happening like, when it means it when musicians, now, musicians are coming to San Francisco, so,

00:23:42.640 - 00:23:54.040

like, there's, there's getting to be a very heavy store for musicians in Yeah, like Charles muscle wine and Mike Bloomfield, right? All those guys here, like the New York dancing in the 40s, right?

00:23:54.040 - 00:24:03.720

Let me make it in jazz Henze. And the atmosphere here is, like, super accepting, and everybody digs for you to succeed here and digs for you to get good. Yeah, the

00:24:03.720 - 00:24:13.920

competitive thing doesn't seem to have become a big hang up. It's no hang up at all, in fact, because none of that, I mean, none of the bands here are competing with each other, because we're all trying to do the same thing. We're all trying

00:24:13.920 - 00:24:26.840

to make music, and we all know where we're all at and which is that we're all students. You know? You know, we're all learning. We all learn from each other. We learn from everybody that comes to town, and it's groovy for us. It's groovy for

00:24:26.840 - 00:24:38.420

everybody around who have you learned from recently, the cream? What about Jimi Henze? I've heard a lot of talk about him. Nothing like the cream. I mean, he's also got a three

00:24:38.420 - 00:24:52.300

piece band, similar sound, you know, because of the instrumentation, but, but the cream is, as a is much heavier. They're much better musicians than Jimmy Henze. Yeah, I heard the album. I didn't have a chance to listen

00:24:52.300 - 00:25:01.560

to it very carefully. Heard in Music City in LA, which is a bad place to hear. It wasn't that impressive. And then here, I've heard a lot of people talking about, well, you should have seen. About the film, I can say

00:25:01.560 - 00:25:12.660

because, like, they played with a lot of very heavy bands. They played with Gary Burton's band, they played with the electric flag. They played with Paul Butterfield's band and with much Charles Russell WISE band, and they made them all sound pretty

00:25:12.660 - 00:25:19.620

old fashioned. Oh, you mean the Queen, well, I did see the cream. I mean, I heard Jimi Henze, right, right, right, right. I talked to Eric too, as a matter of fact, yeah, well,

00:25:20.280 - 00:25:29.720

he I don't know what he mentions about it. He mentioned, that's why, that's what you've mentioned. Jimi Henze is one of the reasons. I thought I'd ask you, right? Well, you know, he probably thinks one way about

00:25:29.720 - 00:25:43.180

Jimi Henze. I mean, Jimi Henze is, is, like, very strong, and he's got a fantastically good, you know, stage, come on, yeah, and, and he's a strong musician too. I mean, he plays real good. And his ideas are good. He writes good. He writes pretty

00:25:43.180 - 00:25:53.920

good songs and stuff like that. But I really don't think that he's that they're the whole level of that band is anything like cream. Oh, he's one guy. He's one good, but like the cream or three guys

00:25:53.920 - 00:26:05.040

that are all equally heavy, yeah, yeah, definitely. It's an individual thing. With the cream rises Jimmy. It's always Jimi Henze and Blank, blank and blank, blank could be changed from day to day.

00:26:05.040 - 00:26:16.620

Absolutely right, right? I don't think so. Now, kind of junior gray Paul Avenue and the Raiders right to the cream of Gulch have got a bigger thing together than Jimmy Henze, which may be what makes them heavier. I think so.

00:26:16.620 - 00:26:28.160

See, like the whole San Francisco orientation is for a group to work well together. It's not so much star oriented, you know, Janice, I think, is really San Francisco's only star. Who

00:26:28.340 - 00:26:42.220

Janice, Joe, yeah. And even there, I noticed that Janice herself seems to be working to make it, you know, a bad thing, although I noticed on the radio, they say, well, Janis Joplin, and you can't really

00:26:42.220 - 00:26:55.540

help it, because anybody with that forceful personality is going to Sure, Cruz gonna snap out a little Kees just can't be helped. Linley. And Linley guy, Eric mentioned, and I'll throw on you as Frank Zappa, do you have much

00:26:55.540 - 00:27:06.240

chance also his music? And if so, did you form any impression of it? I know you were New York the same time he was, yeah, he was playing right upstairs from us. Oh yeah, I

00:27:06.240 - 00:27:23.060

think I really admire his Avenue. He's got a good head. He's, he's a smart guy in a recording studio. And he's got, he's got his thing going. I myself am not, you know, I don't like topical shit. You know, I really don't like it. I think I

00:27:23.060 - 00:27:34.880

would like to hear Zappa do a thing that was pure music, because I think he could do a good thing, but, like, I think what he's doing is less than he's capable of, and I don't like that that much. You know,

00:27:34.880 - 00:27:42.400

that's funny hearing you say he was an ex folks, and you say you don't like topical music, because a lot of someone's ever played topical music, you know, like when I wasn't when I was in,

00:27:42.400 - 00:27:54.820

when I was in, the phone music my bag was instrumental things, you know, I went through all the instrumental, the traditional instruments, and that's what I was into. And I always preferred the music, and I preferred the the ballad. So I never did go

00:27:54.820 - 00:28:09.540

for topical stuff, you know, that was never where it was at for me. And I still don't like it, you know, I still I, you know, I bad rapping. America is something that everybody does, and there's no need to do it, you know. I would rather see

00:28:09.540 - 00:28:21.320

everybody working toward a higher level, you know, to ignore all the shit and to go on to the next step, whatever those topicals we can get as dancing, singing, dancing in the street, street, yeah?

00:28:21.320 - 00:28:33.980

And it's really a flash to sing, dancing in the streets when you're playing in the street, that it's really happening, yeah? And that's beautiful. You know, that's the kind of stuff I like.

00:28:35.000 - 00:28:44.620

I gather your favorite place to play that is in San Francisco, as far as cities go, yeah? But I like to see new places too. It's because it's amazing, man. There are, like, little San Francisco scenes popping up

00:28:44.620 - 00:28:56.920

everywhere. We played in Detroit and had a great time. Detroit is a fairly swing city for a Midwestern Dennis, yeah, I guess people around the artist workshop, same, all those people, yeah, they're very fine people really like

00:28:56.920 - 00:29:06.000

it. Did you play any free concerts there? Yeah? Yeah. We played the grand the ballroom, and then we played Ann Arbor out in the park down there, and had just a beautiful time.

00:29:06.000 - 00:29:21.140

Yeah, some very nice kids there. Have you played LA? We've never really played LA. We've played like in the cheetah down there, you know, all the shit places, and we can never get it on, because always brought us down so much. I mean,

00:29:21.140 - 00:29:35.900

the people that the promoters down there are horrible, right? The whole la snap, the whole hype, you know, bread, you know, dollars and cents and that's all. We've never gotten it on in LA. We've played there, but we've never done it.

00:29:35.960 - 00:29:46.960

That's too bad. I noticed you're gonna be on that big orgy of the Hollywood Bowl, which is gonna be kind of, you know, jazz of the field used to be that, like that, 15 acts, 20 minutes each. Yeah, we want to do that just for the flash plane in the

00:29:46.960 - 00:29:59.500

Hollywood Oh, yeah. But I know nothing's gonna happen. How long you gonna be down there? Maybe we'll try and do something while we're down there. We're also going down pretty soon to go into the studio again. And you know, you know, we'll try and

00:29:59.500 - 00:30:06.180

set up so. Was it? Have you thought about cutting your record live? I know I thought that was the Avalon that was set up. Now we're doing, we're thinking of doing parts of the

00:30:06.180 - 00:30:21.860

next album, album Live. We're also going to try doing stuff, of combining live in studio, and this time we're gonna go in and fuck around. Last time we went in in four straight days and just played our shit, yeah, and that was it, and it didn't, you

00:30:21.860 - 00:30:37.820

know, I didn't like it, you know, none of us liked it, and it was, you know, this time, we'll spend some time at it. We've got some nice, heavy material and good ideas. I think we'll run out of questions you want to wrap about

00:30:37.820 - 00:30:47.500

anything. No, I don't have anything to say. I mean, really, I don't have anything to say. If you come to San Francisco, be sure and wear a bone in your nose.

00:30:47.500 - 00:30:57.880

Yeah, a bone in your nose, right? And now that the summer things over, maybe it's groovier here. Yeah, things look like they've cooled off, like I got a parking space today,

00:30:57.940 - 00:31:10.140

right? That's because all the kids are back in school, yeah, the first are back home, right? So maybe it's gonna get all right again, yeah, San Francisco for the San Franciscans, Americans, Google,

00:31:10.440 - 00:31:10.980

right? You.