piece of my heart

now baby, take a take another little piece of my heart..

 

I was listening to KIST 1340 radio and they had a contest..so I called in and won a ticket to see Janis Joplin at the Earl Warren Showgrounds..I was about 16 and this was the late 1960s...I had to ask my father if I could go and he'd ask me if I was gonna smoke pot and he'd squint at me and shake his head then finally approve..haha..February 3, 1968 Earl Warren Showgrounds, Santa Barbara, CA Big Brother and The Holding Company, Electric Flag, Sweetwater.....and Janis was great! a front row seat looking up I saw multi-colored lights shining through her huge hair as she belted out songs, almost swallowing the microphone..it was Heaven!



Earl Warren Showgrounds

 

 my parents were conservative but not crazy and I'm not sure how they felt about Earl Warren because we never talked politics..but I loved politics..and music..when I picked up my guitar and cut back on my schooling, my father was not amused..we had a contentious relationship most of the time...like two goats butting heads

pretty soon I just went to Earl Warren with my friends fuck the parents...they always went to Vegas anyway...

I liked smoking cigarettes there in the Earl Warren auditorium..I felt like a man, a free man, or teen anyway...watching all those bands...Alice Cooper put on a good weird show..he'd walk around the little stage like a zombie...I saw Jefferson Airplane and the lovely Grace Slick...the Doors..the Grass Roots! in the 1970s I traveled the USA with the Grass Roots manager on the O'Jays tour... I'll tell ya about that some time but needless to say, those days were a blast!! I got tripped up plenty of times, but always landed on my feet, like a cat!

but when I heard the John Birchers fingered President Eisenhower and his Chief Justice Earl Warren as Commies, I was wanting to know why....as a kid I'd say the Pledge of Allegiance with my classmates and drink a glass of milk to a picture of Ike drinking milk...can't get any more American than that...and Earl Warren, all I really knew is they named a cool playground in Santa Barbara after him and I got to spend time there as a teenager..Ike was a great president and Ike and Earl were ok in my book...

Over the next few years Warren made it clear he supported the civil rights campaign and voted for the banning segregation in America's schools. He now became a target of right-wing groups and Robert Welch, the leader of the John Birch Society, described Warren as being a member of a Communist conspiracy. Other white supremacists such as George Wallace and James Eastland joined in these attacks. At one rally in Los Angeles there were calls for Warren to be lynched!! the Birchers were and are lunatics

Earl Warren showgrounds is an historic landmark and should never be touched..let the flower shows, the Fiesta rodeos, and even the dog shows continue ad infinitum..it's California

later I'd learn of the Warren Report..the Warren Commission's report to LBJ on the assassination of JFK and the killing of Oswald...the report concluded that one assassin killed Kennedy and no conspiracy was involved...but of course it's all an open question but there's little doubt the Birchers were involved ...and on that day in Dallas, Kennedy was not a popular guy with conservative Texans...so they killed him

be that as it may, the lunatic fringe has pretty much been corraled into a Petri dish for observation by real Americans like me....and I will observe them to make sure they don't spread and contaminate the rest of America....the land that I love