I heard this song in the mid-60s and, being in a slightly more-than-usually conscious state of mind (coming down, that is), felt like the Stones were bending time. Taking time and goosing it, delaying it, playing with it.
Keith’s book, Life, is surprisingly good. In it he talks about a record they made in a motel room with a tape deck, Charlie playing a kids’ drum kit, that they achieved something with analog that you can’t get with digital. (My recollection may not be entirely accurate.) But what’s interesting is that digital recording is on or off, black or white, with nothing in between, if you will.
The idea of introducing (allowing) imperfections in your music, your art, your life. Richer.
I came around a corner and this guy was sitting on the double line. He didn’t budge, just staring into the headlights. By the time I got my camera out, he ambled to the side of the road. Witty.
From Kevin Kelly, who wrote: “Bootstrap your way from the stone age to farmstead. Follow this amazing primitivist who builds his own tools, and shelters from stone, dirt, plants and fire.”
I wrote this last week for my surfing friends from the ’50s. It’s a tribute to an extraordinary guy who was, among other things, the foremost big wave surfer in Northern California in those golden years.
“Out, out brief candle!”
He had this quote on the nose of his balsa wood board in 1955, crudely written (in longhand), and funkily glassed. It’s a quote from Macbeth, Shakespeare commenting on the brevity and inevitability of death.
I used to wonder if it had something to do with Rod’s dad dying at a very early age. Maybe he thought he wasn’t going to last long, but luckily for many of us, he did.
I first knew Rod in San Francisco high school days in the early ’50s; he was a city swimming champion, in the 220 and 440 yards. I was one of the swimmers at Lowell and we knew the best city swimmers: Jim Fisher and Bill Floyd at Lowell, Jose Angel at Washington, John Stonum at St. Ignatius, Billy Wilson at Sacred Heart, Rod at Lincoln; all of these except Bill Floyd became surfers. Many of us trained at the YMCA on California Street, and then the Marine’s Memorial with coach Lyle Collett. Charlie Sava, who coached SF girl Ann Curtis to 2 gold medals in the 1948 Olympics, was the city’s genius coach.
I was going to Stanford and in 1954, got started surfing, and thereafter spent half of each week in Santa Cruz. By the time I moved up from Cowell’s to Steamer Lane, I met Rod. He was going to San Jose State, but spending all the time he could in SC. He lived in his car with his dog Steamer.
