Obray ramsey biography of william shakespeare

A history of the psychedelic ’60s

By Stephen E. Smith

The stoner who said “If you remember the ’60s, you weren’t really there” got it wrong. Most of us who lived through those times recall what went down, even if we did inhale. But if your memory is less than eidetic, Ryan H. Walsh’s Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 is an engrossing aide-mémoire, a jumbled catchall of social upheavals and artistic convergences that occurred in Boston half a century ago.

Walsh focuses on two narrative threads, one societal and the other musical, that evolved in parallel. The first is the founding of Mel Lyman’s Fort Hill Community, variously identified as a commune, cult or family; and the other is Van Morrison’s mystic stream-of-consciousness song cycle Astral Weeks recorded while the Irish blues rocker was hiding out in Beantown. Both events, although unrelated, had a transmutative effect on a flower-power generation searching for “peace and love” and alternative lifestyles.

Walsh begins with the not-so-secret culture-shifting decision by Bob Dylan to electrify his backup band and crank out a high-decibel version of “Like a Rolling Stone” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Members of the audience still debate whether Dylan was greeted with widespread booing, but Walsh maintains the crowd was exiting in a funk when harmonica player Mel Lyman took the stage and intoned a 20-minute dirge-like rendition of “Rock of Ages.” Lyman was a member of Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band, a Boston group that had achieved modest national success. By 1966, he’d emerged as the charismatic leader of a community that squatted in abandoned houses in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury.

Lyman had drifted from California to North Carolina (he learned to play banjo from Asheville’s Obray Ramsey) and settled in Boston, attracting a coterie of subservient followers. His Fort Hill Community was no run-of-the-mill hippie commune. Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette, the stars of M

Columbia^Spectator W FOVNPE9WTT PAUL STARR Editor - in - Chief LAWRENCE D. LEVIN Business Manager

Games

During the past few weeks, political action on this campus has. been reduced to little more than a tactical game. Hundreds of students, led by Students for a Democratic Society, have staged dramatic, militant protests often without clear political ends; the administration has responded to the moves in a narrow, repressive manner. And, while the game is played, several legitimate demands which nominally underlie the demonstrations remain unmet. Events on campus yesterday reflect this unfortunate political gamesmanship. At the start of yesterday's protests, students occupying Mathematics and Fayerweather Halls announced that they had taken the action to press for a series of demands. Unfortunately, however, the issues which presumably motivated the protest seem to be secondary to the protest itself. In past weeks, SDS has made little effort to educate or mobilize the campus behind their demands. The radicals have issued a long list of grievances, but in many cases,. the students have failed to offer any more than a rhetorical defense of their positions. Last spring, the radicals agreed to discuss their demands with the administration. This year, however, the list is "non-negotiable." Many of the demands which SDS has raised are just, but unfortunately the radicals have often allowed their tactics to obscure- . |heir political goals. ' At the same time, however, the administration has responded to the demonstrations in a reactionary, uncompromising manner. During yesterday's occupations, University officials made virtually no attempt to contact —let alone negotiate with-the protesting students. When the demonstrators seized the buildings, the administration was interested only in managing the crisis, not meeting the demands. To the men in Low, the demonstrations were only a game and the University need only outwit the protesting students to win a point. Unfortun

Ryan H. Walsh’s Landmark Study of the Counter Culture in Boston

By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 12, 2018

Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
By Ryan H. Walsh
Penguin Books, 2018
357 pages, illustrated, with notes, index and bibliography
U.S,, $27, Canada, $36
ISBN 978-0-7352-2134-5

While in San Francisco, last June, we toured an epic exhibition surveying the Summer of Love. It captured the vibrancy of emerging rock bands- Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company- the psychedelic posters that promoted their gigs at Bill Graham’s Fillmore Ballroom, and the colorful gear worn by zonked out fans.

As the one-hit wonder, Scott McKenzie, crooned “If you’re going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. All around the nation, there’s a new vibration.”

Wearing a white suit I heard him sing that song at the Electric Circus, a psyche

The jovial old-time musician who wrote about a makeout king’s backseat exploits in “The Ace,” can no longer drive. The man who sang about the last, long ride of the “Black Smoke Train,” can no longer sing. And the lonesome striver who claimed, “The gleam that’s in my eye is just tomorrow’s enterprise,” in “I’ve Got Plans,” is running out of tomorrows.

Tommy Thompson, 63, original member of the Hollow Rock String Band and founding member of The Red Clay Ramblers, is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Confined to a bed and fed through a tube, he has lost all sense of time. Robbed of the exquisite personal and musical memories still enjoyed by fans and friends, he waits–in lieu of a medical miracle–for the inevitable physical departure that will follow the loss of his mind.

Coming to terms with Thompson’s illness–which forced him to retire from the Ramblers in 1994–will be the subject of “A Tune for Tommy,” a workshop performance running April 19-29 at Durham’s Manbites Dog Theater. Half of the opening night’s proceeds will benefit the Eastern North Carolina Alzheimer’s Association. A full production is expected to run during the theater’s 2001-2002 15th anniversary season.

The play tells Thompson’s story both in his own words and from the perspective of his daughter, Jesse Eustice, who–along with a group of friends and caregivers–has been looking after her father since his illness began. The script, co-written by Eustice and Manbites Dog’s Jeffrey Storer and Edward Hunt, is based on a series of letters Eustice began posting to the Red Clay Ramblers Web site, www.redclayramblers.com, starting in May of 1999. Partly a service for concerned friends and fans, and partly a form of catharsis, these letters have chronicled the small victories, sad failures, and simple means of getting by that have occupied Eustice and her father as he slowly recedes into his illness.

I’m not sure how to explain how my father is doing. People want to hear good news, b