Janis Joplin “Me and Bobby McGee”

To call Janis Joplin a legend is not an exaggeration. So many musicians and singers have named her as their role model. Sadly, her moment in the sun was only fleeting but she left a legacy that still echos today.
Janis was born in Port

Arthur Texas in 1943. She first big break was in 1967 when she fronted Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Monterey Pop Festival and then as a solo artist in 1969 at the now legendary Woodstock Festival.
Her hits included this week’s track and “Piece of my Heart”, “Mercedes Benz” and Summertime”. She had a raw earthy blues voice and I picked “Me and Bobby McGee” written by Kris Kristofferson as a wonderful example of her work. Sadly, she died in October 1970 of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.
The song tells the story of two young people hitch hiking across America and contains this amazing line, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose”. It struck me the first time I heard it and I have thought about it a lot over the years.
I was never that freewheeling spirit, travelling where the mood took me. I left school at 16 and started work straight away. Since then, I have been tied to things like my family, my kids, work and the truth is, I like that. To be truly free as an individual can mean being without all the things that have been important to me.
There is a more positive and beneficial side to freedom and that is our collective freedoms. In our country we do have many political freedoms such as the right to vote, the right to the protection of the law and to live in peace without the fear of violence and discrimination. Sadly, today I feel that these rights are under threat and we need to stand together to protect them.

Freedom’s just another word

A ship needs a harbour
A boat needs a dock
Trousers need a belt
Shoes need a sock

Sentences need words
You need tyres on a truck
A bathtub needs a plug
Lollies need a suck

A kiss needs lips
Nudists need the sun
Ducks need a puddle
Joggers need to run

Freedom needs limits
Floating voters need to float
Socialism needs planning
Democracy needs a vote

Children need a parent
Northern summers need heating
Problems need a solution
The Tories need defeating

Teresa May needs a backbone
Boris Johnson needs a gag
Jeremy needs our backing
He’s the only hope we have

© Jeff Price April 2018

There is an adult version of this poem Freedom’s just another word (adult version) if you would like to read it click the link

The Mamas and the Papas “California Dreamin’ “

Wonderful harmonies from this great Californian band. I have never been to America and I suspect I never will but the music of the Mamas and the Papas always take me to the west coast during a hot endless American summer.

That is how we always remember the seasons of our childhoods as either cold with

endless snow or summers of warm days and barmy nights. This winter in the UK all the talk has been about the weather and you know how we Brits like to talk about the weather.

The young people complain about the snow and we older people come back with “Well, the winter of 1964 was much colder than that and we had snow for months”

This week’s poem is a celebration of our collective desire to out bid each other with our weather anecdotes.

January Blue

My childhood winters were a wonderland
Each November brought the soft white snow
That stayed until the first daffodils of spring
We would build igloos on the green
Jump from the yard wall into newly fallen snow

Every June brought the summer
Warm balmy nights and sun drenched days in Nuns Moor Park
Sundays swimming in the sultry waters of the North Sea
Building sand castle on the shore line
Rolling down the dunes my underpants full of sand

Of course, it isn’t true it just seems like it now
The reality was snow blackened with soot after a few days
A sea cold enough to cause my testicles to retreat
We rarely went to the coast as it was too expensive
The park was a playground for bullies and perverts

But these are the stories I told my children
Now they long for the glory days of their childhood

© Jeff Price March 2018

Panama Red: New Riders of the Purple Sage

This song was a favourite of dope smokers in my younger days. The New Riders of the Purple Sage original line up featured the legendary Jerry Garcia and toured regularly in the early seventies. The video is a later one, when the band were a lot older. If you want

to watch a version from when they were young click here . Warning. The quality of the video is quite poor.
Some clever lines like “Searching all the joints in town for Panama Red” and “Nobody feels like working because Panama Red is back in Town”. Watch and enjoy as you read the poem. Full lyrics here.

I don’t think I ever tasted the delights of Panama Red but there were many other varieties with equally exotic names such as Nepalese Temple Balls, Durban Poison, Acapulco Gold and Mary Jane. In those days being a dope smoker made you feel like a rebel and it was also part of the counter-culture I identified with. It was also a reward at the end of a working day when everything was sorted and you could relax with a spliff.
Eventually, I tired of the weed and was also keen to stop smoking the tobacco that also went in to a joint. It is a decision I do not regret except having been through the process of quitting two things became obvious, one it was not the dope I found hard to be without but the tobacco. Secondly, it was the ritual and reward aspects I missed much more than the effect.

Goodbye Mary Jane

Meeting you for the first time
Made my head swim
My heart beat faster
My pulse pound in my veins
At first things were awkward
My teenage fumbling embarrassing
Soon I became an expert at turning you on
My fingers working up an expert rhythm
We would meet at hippy parties
Chilling out with stoned friends
Passed around as casually
As a packet of biscuits
In the end, it was just the two of us
It crept up on us like old age
I was eager to meet you after work
Winding down after the graft of the day
We were settled in our routines
But we weren’t good for each other
After a night in your company
I could feel you in my body
My lungs heavy as a thunder cloud
My mind plagued by paranoid ramblings
When it finally happened
And we parted
I expected that I would miss you
Yearn for you in the still long night
However, it turned out to be a relief
The paranoia passed, I felt better
Walked taller, breathed easier
My only regret is that I didn’t do it earlier
I would have saved myself a fortune

©Jeff Price November 2017

Muddy Waters “Mannish Boy”

What an amazing track, I must have been about fourteen when I first heard it. There is something organic about the rhythm of this track, the way it seems to reach deep inside and still today when I hear the Da De Da guitar refrain I am taken back in time to the

1960’s.
I don’t know where I first heard it. It could have been in the record shops of Newcastle or on Radio Luxembourg but it was probably on a pirate radio station. There were a few of them around and the most famous was Radio Caroline but for us Northerners it was Radio 270. This was a station based on a ship off the North East coast at Bridlington and I could pick up the broadcast on my transistor radio.
It closed down in 1967 when the Labour Government, under Harold Wilson,

banned pirate stations. In August 1967, Radio 270 went off air and the ship came in to Bridlington harbour and myself and a bunch of mates went to welcome it back. We lined the harbour wall as it sailed in and in the evening we had a party on the beach. It was a spontaneous thing, no one in particular organised it, just a lot of young people having the same idea at the same time.
My Facebook pages have been filled recently with people demanding change. The #MeToo campaign has brought down the power brokers of Hollywood. #neveragain after the Florida school shooting became a spontaneous movement of young people demanding changes in the American gun laws. In the UK tens of thousands have been joining the Labour Party to demand changes here. #AboutTimeTo

Tsunami

On the ocean floor, deep beneath the waves
One tectonic plate pushes against another
At first it creaks and splutters unsure of itself
New to the world that sits on top of it
For the casual observer all there is to see
Is a small shift in the surface of the sea
But it is discovering it’s moment
It is gathering strength
It’s power does not dissipate but grows
First as an injustice
Then a hashtag
Then a movement
© Jeff Price February 2018