A World of Shadows by Tosh Berman

 

"A World of Shadows" by Tosh Berman. Meditating on the Dave Clark 5's Denis Payton, the beautiful Abigail Folger, and of course, Jah Wobble. Read it here: 

Read "A World Of Shadows" by Tosh Berman

10050 Cielo Drive by Tosh Berman

 

"10050 Cielo Drive" by Tosh Berman. Read it here: 

https://tosh.substack.com/p/10050-cielo-drive?justPublished=true

August 11, 2014

August 11, 2014

The only thing I like about The Dave Clark Five is Denis Payton, their tenor and baritone sax player.  It’s easy to find Dave Clark recordings on I-Tunes, but of course it is preferable to find the recordings on the original vinyl.  There is one outstanding track of the Five called “Time, ” which features Payton as a solo player.  I don’t know much about this tune, but it almost sounds like a Stan Getz song - and it has to be one of those pieces that were made in great haste as a b-side to some smasher-o a-side.  Nevertheless it’s not easy to locate the sounds of the Five, due to the control that Dave Clark has over his material or to be more precise, the music of the Dave Clark Five.  One wonders why someone would want to hoard the music to such a great degree, but perhaps it is something that is very precious to him.  Or maybe he feels he can drain more money out of the dying music business.  I always suspect that he pretty much stole his sound from the great Joe Meek recordings from the early 60s.  The sad thing is the case that the work becomes a shadow of an era, instead of what it naturally is - a piece of music.

The control of one’s image by someone else is a very natural thing to be done.  Whatever it is your work, or worst yet, a family member, it’s an uphill battle because you want to do the right thing, but sometimes you are only getting in the way of what is interesting about that person.   Peter Folger, who was part of the Folger (coffee) family spent a great deal of his time protecting his daughter, Abigail from the damning articles or books about the Tate-LaBianca murders, which resulted in very little information about her and her life.  Which is a shame, because it sounds like she was a very wonderful person.  I rather know her as a living person, than as a dead victim, who by all accounts was at the wrong place at the wrong time - or maybe at the right place that was intruded upon people who were clearly wrong being there.  Nevertheless I found it interesting that she had an interest in the arts -especially poetry and the theater.  She was a debutante from San Francisco, who wore a bright yellow Christian Dior gown that she had purchased in Paris some years before the debutante ball.  The interesting thing about her was her devotion to the issue of civil rights as well as the art world.  She took a job at the University of California Art Museum in Berkeley as a publicity director.

In 1967, Abigail moved to New York and found a job as a clerk at the Gotham Book Mart on 47th Street.  When I worked at Book Soup, I met the most amazing people, that I still remain in contact with, and some went off and became huge stars, writers, or … dead.  Nevertheless each one had a profound effect on my life, and I just try to imagine what it would have been like to work with Abigail at the Gotham.  Would we discuss Frank O’Hara, or maybe she liked French poetry.  I imagine her more of being a fan of the New York School of poetry (whatever that is).   The thing is there is very little information about her.  We don’t know what her taste in music, books were and yet we do know that she was devoted to the art form of literature and music.   All we know are the facts, such that she met the author Jerzy Kosinski at the bookstore and he introduced her to Wojciech Frykowski, a fellow Pole, and a bit of an adventurer.  The perfect boyfriend for this New Yorker, who can only communicate fully to each other in French.  Frykowski wanted to move to Southern California, hopefully to work with his good friend Roman Polanski, or at least hoping that would happen.   Abigail decided to move with him to Los Angeles, where she wanted to be a social worker.  Of course, things didn’t work out well.

I want to know more of Abigail as well as Denis Payton, but alas, due to a certain amount of controlling one’s history and the passing of time, it now becomes a world of shadows. As I have stated before, I ‘m OK in that world.  I got the Dave Clark Five’s very rare album that came out only in Canada (of all places) called “Instrumental Album.” It has the Payton sound of sax sounding like metal against metal.  It’s raw. I find it beautiful.  There are certain instrumentalists who totally dominates a sound, and the only other person who can do that is Jah Wobble, with his bass on PIL’s “Metal Box.” In memory of Abigail Folger and Denis Payton, whose  birthday, I’m celebrating today.

August 9, 2014

August 9, 2014

Lately I have been isolating myself from the world that is out “there.”   At first, I would go to the woods every weekend, and then it would be four days out of the seven, but now as much as possible I try to stay in my cabin, that is not that far away from what would call civilization.  When I go back to my backyard, I can see the city lights, which are beautiful, but one can only notice such beauty away from the city itself.  Over the years I have built a small farm to grow vegetables, and I try to eat from this land as much as possible.  I’m not a meat eater and I truly believe one should eat that is green and came from the mother earth.   A good friend of mine, Wojciech Frykowski, who is an actor from Poland, told me “the highest form of self-restraint is when one can subsist not on other animals, but of plants and crops cultivated from the earth.”  He is totally correct, and by total instinct on my part, I always trust an European on such matters.

Since I don’t have a telephone at the cabin, I can only be reached by mail, sent to my post office box in West Hollywood.  Wojciech wrote to me that there is going to be a small gathering at a home he’s staying in at 10050 Cielo Drive, which is not that far away from my cabin.  I’ve been there many years ago, and it’s an interesting home built by the architect Robert Byrd for the French actress Michèle Morgan.  The house was constructed in 1944, and Morgan gave the residence up, when she moved back to France in 1946.  The legendary actress Lilian Gish moved in with her mother, while she was working on the film “Dual in the Sun.”  Aftewards Rudi Altobelli, a music and film industry person purchased the property and rented it out to Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon (their honeymoon nest in 1965), Henry Fonda, George Chakiris, Mark Lindsay (of Paul Revere & The Raiders), and Terry Melcher (son of Doris Day) and Candice Bergen.   When that couple split up in early 1969, the house was rented to Roman and Sharon.

I never met Roman, but Wojciech told me that Jay, my hairdresser (when I can afford him) will be there, and I always enjoyed his good cheer and company - so for sure I would try to make it over.  Also Wojciech wanted me to meet his new girlfriend Abigail, who I heard about from my other “Polish” friend Jerzy Kosinski.  He met her when she worked at the Gotham Book Mart on 47th street in New York City.   He was the one that actually introduces Abigail to Wojciech, so what a small world.  So I was just a little curious to meet her as well, since she is close to both of my friends.

Another weird coincidence is that I was looking for someone to build me a stereo system for my cabin and a friend of mine Bill who is the caretaker at the Cielo Drive told me about a kid named Steven, who is a electronic geek, and could built me a system for a little money.  I hired him, and he is a fascinating kid.  It appears that he was in trouble time-to-time with the law, due that he stole electronic parts to build radios and equipment of that sort.   I used to see him at his nighttime job, which is the Jonas Miller Stereo on Wilshire Boulevard.  Some people live lives that they themselves don’t find interesting, but Steven is so into electronics and stereo equipment, I just find him to be the Baudelaire of stereos.  He understood the unique work that makes up a sound and therefore a stereo set-up is a very subjective listening device for a customer.  I know nothing else about him, because the only subject matter he’s interested in is electronics, especially when it involves sound.  He’s perfect!

The truth is when it was now time to go to the party tonight at the house, I chose to stay in my cabin.   As I get older the solitude becomes more important to me.  I just refuse to be in “need” of the companionship of others.  For me, self-reliance can be both spiritual as well as economic.   I also don’t drink anything stronger than green tea, so it’s hard for me to go out with friends, because they do drugs, drink and that is not my scene anymore.  I just like to go in my backyard in the middle of the night, and lay on the grass and look up at the stars.  That’s plenty of company for me, and I really like the stars.