RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Philosophy Scholar Bill Meacham on 'How to Be an Excellent Human'

Bill Meacham, right, with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer in the studios of KOOP Radio in Austin, Texas, Friday, May 31, 2013. Photo by Tracey Schulz / Rag Radio.

Rag Radio podcast: 
Philosophy scholar Bill Meacham,
author of 'How to Be an Excellent Human'

"By working for the good -- that is, the healthy functioning -- of the world around us, we nourish that which nourishes us, and we thrive." -- Bill Meacham

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / June 6, 2013

Also find the podcast of our May 24, 2013, Rag Radio interview with counterculture legend John Sinclair, below.

Philosophy scholar and activist Bill Meacham, the author of How to Be an Excellent Human: Mysticism, Evolutionary Psychology and the Good Life, was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, May 31, 2013.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Bill Meacham here:


On the show we discuss issues raised in Bill’s book, How to Be an Excellent Human and in his essay, “Imagine There’s No Morality,” posted at The Rag Blog. We talk about how to use the discipline of philosophy to address questions like what it means to be a human and how we can live good and fulfilling lives; how we can make ethical and moral decisions; and the ethical implications and motivations involved in working for social change.

Bill also contrasts what he poses as the "Goodness" paradigm vs. the "Rightness" paradigm, and addresses metaphysical issues like "panpsychist" mysticism and the mystical concept of "Oneness" -- and how quantum physics may be seen to inform that concept.

Bill Meacham is an independent scholar in philosophy. Also an activist and former staffer at Austin's '60s-‘70s underground paper, The Rag, Bill studied philosophy at Williams College, Columbia University, and the University of Texas at Austin where he received his Ph.D. Meacham also spent many years working as a computer programmer, systems analyst, and project manager. He blogs at Philosophy for Real Life and The Rag Blog, and his writings can also be found at What's What.

John Sinclair.

Rag Radio podcast:
Sixties counterculture legend John Sinclair

Also listen to our Rag Radio interview with Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair. A legendary counterculture figure from the '60s and '70s, Sinclair founded the White Panther Party in Detroit in 1968, managed the historic “avant-rock” proto-punk band, the MC5, worked with the underground newspaper, the Fifth Estate, and founded the Detroit Artists Workshop.

Find our May 24, 2013 interview with John Sinclair here:


After John Sinclair was sentenced to 9-1/2-10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman, John Lennon celebrated him with the song “John Sinclair.”

A 29-month campaign to gain his freedom climaxed in a mammoth eight-hour “John Sinclair Freedom Rally” in Ann Arbor, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Bobby Seale, and others performed and spoke in front of 15,000 people. Three days after the concert, the Michigan Supreme Court released Sinclair, and later overturned his conviction.

Sinclair moved to New Orleans in 1991, where he was named the city’s most popular disc jockey by OffBeat Magazine five years in a row, and moved to Amsterdam in 2003. Since the mid-'90s, John Sinclair has performed spoken-word poetry with his band, The Blues Scholars. One of the pioneers of podcasting, his weekly internet program, the John Sinclair Radio Show, is the flagship of Radio Free Amsterdam.


Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, June 7, 2013: Mother Jones correspondent Tom Philpott on agricultural sustainability and the "Politics of Food."

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : 'Radio Unnameable' Legend Bob Fass and Filmmaker Paul Lovelace

Late-night radio revolutionary Bob Fass, left, and filmmaker Paul Lovelace.

Rag Radio podcast: 
Free-form radio legend Bob Fass and
'Radio Unnameable' filmmaker Paul Lovelace

“I wanna be a neuron -- I don’t wanna be the brain. We’re all the brain.” -- Bob Fass to his radio audience in the 1960s.

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / May 9, 2013

Bob Fass is an American broadcast legend who was a pioneer of free-form radio and who has been on the air at New York's WBAI for almost 50 years. Fass's show, Radio Unnameable, provided an early forum for counterculture figures like Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, and Abbie Hoffman, and helped spawn the Yippies.

Paul Lovelace is the producer and co-director of Radio Unnameable, a remarkable documentary about Fass and his singular legacy.

Bob Fass and Paul Lovelace were our guests on Rag Radio, Friday, May 3, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Bob Fass and Paul Lovelace here:


Bob Fass's Radio Unnameable -- he appropriated the moniker from Samuel Beckett -- is credited with revolutionizing late-night radio. The show was first broadcast in 1963 on listener-sponsored Pacifica radio station WBAI-FM in New York City.

Pacifica, founded in 1946, pioneered listener-sponsored radio in this country and WBAI became a Pacifica station in 1960. But they signed off at midnight and, Fass told us, "I knew that there was a world of people who would listen to the radio late at night -- for companionship, for education" -- so he coaxed management into letting him do an all-night shift.

From the beginning the show featured regular appearances by counterculture figures such as Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Kinky Friedman, and Wavy Gravy, and broadcast the first performances of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles."

Fass’s on-air calls-to-action brought thousands into the streets for countercultural happenings including a Human Fly-In at JFK Airport, a Sweep-In to clean up New York streets, and a Yip-In at Grand Central Station that turned into a police riot. Fass was called a "midwife" to the birth of the '60s counterculture and his show helped to incubate the theatrical New Left activist group, the Yippies.

Fass told the Rag Radio audience that there was "a whole cultural revolution in New York City," and "I had the good fortune to be able to put it on the air." "There was no other place doing what I was doing," he told us. "If something was gonna happen, [Radio Unnameable] was where it was gonna happen."

"We were kind of demystifying radio," he said, "making it somehow less austere and didactic."

Fass also experimented with form; he might play a record backwards or play two records at once or play the same song multiple times. And he would put as many as 10 callers on the air simultaneously. Jay Sand wrote that Fass "had the same supplies as any other broadcaster -- two turntables, a microphone, a stack of records, perhaps a guest in the studio, a friend on the phone... [but] the radio program he created... transcended those common wares."

Fass developed a very special relationship with his listeners, even giving his loyal audience a name: "Cabal." He would open the show with the greeting: "Good morning, Cabal." “I wanna be a neuron," he once told his audience. "I don’t wanna be the brain. We’re all the brain.”

Fass, who was born June 29, 1933, can still be heard every Thursday night from midnight-3 a.m. on WBAI 99.5-FM in New York.

Good morning, Cabal.

Paul Lovelace is a documentary filmmaker who produced and co-directed (with Jessica Wolfson) Radio Unnameable, a feature-length documentary about Fass and his amazing story.

The film, which was screened in December 2012 by the Austin Film Society -- where it was introduced to the audience by songster and former Fass regular Jerry Jeff Walker -- is currently showing around the country and the DVD will be released in September. It will also be available on Netflix, YouTube, and other outlets, Lovelace said. Radio Unnameable has screened to widespread kudos and Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 100 percent positive rating among critics.

As Rag Blog editor and Rag Radio host, I was honored to participate in a panel with the filmmakers after the Austin screening. I spent time in New York in the '60s and worked with Houston's Pacifica station, KPFT, in the '70s -- and I can offer personal witness to Bob Fass's incredible contribution to progressive radio in this country.

The film features new interviews with Paul Krassner, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, Wavy Gravy, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ed Sanders, David Amram, and others, as well as the insightful and edifying reflections of Fass himself. And, as John Anderson of Variety points out, Fass's "legacy, and his archives, are as epic as the medium gets," adding that the film includes "extraordinary archival material and some sparkling footage of New York."

Lovelace told the Rag Radio audience that more than 60 people worked on cataloging and organizing the archival material which was in a range of media formats including "5,000 or more reel-to-reel audio tapes, just from 1962-1977." "We immersed ourselves in the material," he said. "It was a treasure trove."

Michael Simmons wrote at The Rag Blog that “Fass and ‘Cabal’ changed history and deserve the credit, and Lovelace and Wolfson have provided the first in-depth cinematic look. It resonates like an epic tale with the hero emerging as a long-shot survivor."

In his review at The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that Lovelace and his co-director Jessica Wolfson "pay tribute both to an influential voice in broadcasting and to the times whose ideals and follies he helped articulate," identifying Bob Fass as "a gentle, soulful voice" who "kept [New Yorkers] from loneliness."

Paul Lovelace has previously won film festival acclaim for his short films, Robert Christgau: Rock N’ Roll Animal, about the esteemed Village Voice music journalist, and for the 35mm narrative short, The Sonnets. His first documentary feature was The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose, a portrait of the psychedelic folk duo. Paul also wrote, produced, and edited the PBS documentary, American Roots Music: Chicago.

Michael Simmons sums it all up beautifully:

Radio Unnameable is a roadmap for rebels, those who believe -- as the saying goes -- that another world is possible. Fass and Lovelace and Wolfson show that political and cultural transformation are often generated in the wee small hours of the morning -- that perfect time when the moon shines, the squares sleep, and dreamers share dreams while wide awake.

Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, May 10, 2013: Journalism professor and activist Robert Jensen, author of Arguing for Our Lives: A User's Guide to Constructive Dialog.
Friday, May 17, 2013: Political economist Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?
Friday, May 24, 2013 (RESCHEDULED): Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, legendary founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

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Mark Naison : Wall Street and the Making of a Global Counterculture

Photo by Robert Johnson / Business Insider.
The Wall Street occupations and the
making of a global counterculture

The emergence of a global youth counterculture should be seen as a powerful complement to a global movement for freedom, democracy, and economic justice.

By Mark Naison / The Rag Blog / October 6, 2011

NEW YORK -- On Monday, October 3, I spent about an hour in Liberty Plaza, sitting, walking around, and talking to people before the event I had come for -- a “Grade-In” organized by teacher activists -- finally began, and was stunned by how different the occupation was from any demonstration I had attended recently.

First of all, in contrast to the last two protests I had participated in -- a Wisconsin Solidarity rally at City Hall, and the Save Our Schools March on Washington -- I saw few people my own age and no one I recognized -- at least until the “Grade-In” started

When I arrived at 11 a.m., most of the people in Liberty Plaza were the ones who had slept there overnight, and the vast majority were in their 20’s and 30’s -- a half to a third my age. They were drumming, sweeping the sidewalk, talking to curious visitors -- who were still few in number -- eating or chilling with one another, and their relaxed demeanor blew me away given the tumultuous events of the day before when more than 700 protesters had been arrested by the NYPD after marching onto the Brooklyn Bridge.

They were also, to my surprise, thoroughly international. Many of the people I met at the information desk, or who spontaneously started conversations with me, had accents which indicated they had been born in, or had recently come from, countries outside the United States.

I felt like I was in Berlin or Barcelona, where you could always count on meeting young people from all over the world at any music performance or cultural event, only this was a political action in the heart of New York’s financial district. I felt like I was in the midst of a global youth community, one I had certainly seen emerging during my travels and teaching -- after all, I had helped organize a “Bronx Berlin Youth Exchange” -- but that I had not expected to see at this particular protest.

But it was there, no doubt. And definitely made the discipline, determination, and camaraderie of the protesters that much more impressive. But, as much as the age cohort and global character of the occupation seemed strange, it also seemed oddly familiar, though it took a while for that familiarity to sink in.

The longer I stayed at Liberty Plaza, the more it felt like the countercultural communities I had spent time in during the late 60’s, from Maine to Madison to Portland, Oregon, where discontent with war and a corrupt social system had bred a communal spirit marked by incredible generosity and openness to strangers.

During the years when I traveled the country regularly as a political organizer and revolutionary -- 1968 to 1971 -- I never had to stay in a hotel or pay for a meal in the more than 20 cities I visited. Every one of these cities had a countercultural community and I was always able to “crash” with people I knew or with people whose names I had been given by friends.

And I did the same for people in NYC. My apartment on West 99th Street was a crash pad for people from around the country who had come to New York for demonstrations, or for revolutionaries from other countries who had somehow gotten my name. I still remember making huge pots of chili for anyone who showed up -- with Goya chili beans, canned tomatoes, chopped meat, bay leaves, and chili powder. And it was not unusual for 20 or 30 to show up.

I had feared those days would never return -- erased by decades of consumerism, materialism, and cheap electronic devices -- but when I visited Liberty Plaza, I realized that the global economic crisis had recreated something which I often thought of as an artifact of my own nostalgia. Because right here in New York were hundreds of representatives of a whole generation of educated young people from around the world, numbering tens if not hundreds of millions of young people, who might never land in the secure professional jobs they had been promised or experience the cornucopia of material goods that came with them.

Described as a “lost generation” by economists, a critical mass of these young people, in cities throughout Europe and Latin America -- and now right here in the United States -- had decided to build community in the midst of scarcity, challenge consumerism and the profit motive, and call out the powerful financial interests whose speculation and greed had helped put them in the economic predicament they were in.

Serious questions remain about the long-term significance of this global movement. Would these middle class (or ex-middle class) protesters connect with the even larger group of people in their own countries -- workers, immigrants, minorities -- who had been living in poverty well before the current crash?

Would their community survive even a modest revival of the world economy, sending them back into a lifestyle of acquisitive individualism which the global consumer market depends on to yield profits? Could they connect with people in poor or working class neighborhoods who were already practicing communalism and mutual aid to create a truly multiracial, multi-class movement?

The jury is still out on all of those issues. But there are some promising signs. The chants of “We are all Troy Davis” during several of the movement’s marches. The increasing participation of labor unions in the protest. The involvement of more and more activists from the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods in support of the Occupation.

And those who lived through the 60’s should remember this. Oppositional cultures of all kinds -- ranging from hippie communities to the Black arts movement -- represented the soil in which political protest flourished during those heady years.

And the same is true in this era. The emergence of a global youth counterculture should be be seen as a powerful complement to, if not an actual component of, a global movement for freedom, democracy, and economic justice.

[Mark Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University and is principal investigator of the Bronx African American History Project. Naison, who was active with CORE and SDS in the 1960s, is the author of Communists in Harlem During the Great Depression and White Boy: A Memoir, and is co-editor of The Tenant Movement in New York City, and has written over 100 articles on African American politics, social movements, and American culture and sports. This article was also posted at With a Brooklyn Accent and Progressive America Rising.]

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Sue Katz : May Day in Vermont

Poet Verandah Porche (left) and author Sue Katz. Photos from Sue Katz, Barry Hock, and Consenting Adult.
May Day in Vermont

By Sue Katz / The Rag Blog / May 10, 2011

I think you'll get some enjoyment from reading this by Sue Katz, one of my friends from the "old days," a contributor to the anthology Out of the Closets, and a woman with a lovely checkered past and present (and future!).

I was present at this gathering, too, on April 30, a day short of May Day.

What Sue doesn't mention is that this is the Packers Corners commune, founded in 1968, one of the pioneering "back to the land" places in our region (about 30 miles from my house in Massachusetts). Many people present resided at the former LNS-MA (Liberation News Service) commune in Montague, Massachusetts, birthplace of the modern no-nukes movement.

The founders were mostly friends from Boston University, only a few years out of college. This is the place made somewhat famous by one of its former residents, Ray Mungo, who wrote about it in a book he titled Total Loss Farm. (His name for the farm, not the farm's actual name.)

So many wonderful people, and a joyful atmosphere. Sad moments, too, remembering people who have died, including the most recent death (from brain cancer) of Tony Mathews, hippie carpenter extraordinaire of Gill, MA, [LNS founder] Marshall Bloom (I called out his name), Fritz Hewitt, Marty Jezer, and others.

-- Allen Young / The Rag Blog / May 10, 2011

May Day gathering at Packers Corners. Allen Young is third from the right.
PACKERS CORNERS, Vermont -- Although I do not have the time for this, what with trying to get all my work done before my trip abroad, I am unable to deprive myself of my annual trip to Vermont for May Day. The event is held at The Farm, founded by my college posse in 1968, and overseen to this day by my poet darling Verandah Porche. (She's in the red blouse and long skirt in the photos.)

I arrive on Friday afternoon in time to help unravel the silk streamers still wound tight around our May Pole since last year. We sit outside under the welcome sun hoping for a good day tomorrow, when people will come from all over the surrounding countryside and others, like us, from Boston.

Our main task completed, I take a temporary departure from Verandah to go just down the road to the 1840 home of my book binder friend Susan and my antiques expert friend Gilbert. They are putting me up and feeding and watering me.


“Feeding” is too pale a term for what goes on. We’re talking about delicious cheeses and dips to get the juices going and then a dinner of onion-stuffed roasted moist chicken, rich mashed potatoes, for which Gilbert is famous, asparagus that has been kept on ice until it is time to be cooked to an uncanny perfection, eggplant wraps smothered in tomato (from the garden) sauce, all followed by an exquisite apple pie (with ice cream), the top of which is swollen with crispy deliciousness.

Susan stands up to start to clear the table and freezes. “Everyone,” she says to us in a low voice, “stand up and be still.” We obey, looking out the windows overlooking the rear deck. They keep a bird feeder there, feeding to the tune of 10 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds per week, attracting an ornithologist’s wet dream’s array of birds.

But tonight that is not all the feeder is attracting. On its hind legs, a 300-pound black bear is sucking its dinner from one of the feeders. It sits on the deck on its fat butt, a luxurious fall of shimmery long fur cascading around its back, satiating a big case of the munchies. I am frozen. What do I know? I’m from Pittsburgh, for gawd’s sake. “Camera!” I yell, “someone get a camera.”

Gilbert meanwhile runs outside to have words with the bear, who does not seem to welcome confrontation. The bear returns to four well-padded feet and reluctantly, having been shoo’d loudly a few more times, ambles around the back to the side of the house and then up the lawn to cross the road. No one gets a photo in time.

Susan is unhappy that this beautiful creature has been chased away, while inside the house we follow our precious sighting of the bear by switching from window to window, circling the walls for the best view as the animal gracefully distances itself from us.

We sit outside on the deck around a fire pit on steel legs into which Gilbert feeds board after board to warm us up. Susan cannot get over the bulky beauty of the glorious animal and she and Gil reminisce about the time another black bear came right into their living room. Or was it this same one when it was younger? If so, she is so glad it has survived hunting season.

We turn in around 10 p.m. and sleep in the intense darkness that one only gets in deeply rural settings -- and maybe dungeon cells. In the middle of the night there is a screaming crash of glass. I am startled awake and think that it must be a kerosene lamp and perhaps kerosene is all over the floor.

Within seconds the light comes on. It is Susan. I have figured out that some tossing and turning has shifted one of the four pillows sideways, knocking over what used to be a kerosene lamp and what is now an electric lamp, as I know so well, having turned it off when it was sleep-time. In bare feet, Susan tiptoes through the hunks of frosted glass, lifting what is left of the shade to a sideboard. She says that she and Gil were afraid that it was the bear, making its way back in.

We leave the glass with the intention of cleaning it up in the morning light.


Saturday

I wake early and sweep up the glass with a hand brush and dust pan. Gilbert is already preparing a scrumptious breakfast of eggs, sausage, sautéed potatoes and challah. Susan is dressing for her morning climb up the mountain with Verandah and I am checking my email.

Just before one we make our way to The Farm bearing contributions to the pot luck that precedes the annual May Day ceremony. Happily I meet up with my dear niece, nephew, and grandniece Sadie (otherwise known as Verandah’s daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter, respectively). Out of my little bag of treats, the beach ball is the biggest hit -- once poor Matt depletes himself of oxygen blowing it up, and I actually get to play with Sadie, a rare treat for me.

The morning had started foggy but the sun clearly wants to participate in this day of joy and is now burning down on flesh made vulnerable by an endless winter. It is a glorious day -- sunny but not scorching. As I explain to one new guest, a young guy, this particular May Day celebration combines three themes: the international day of worker solidarity; the pagan festival of Spring; and the celebration of the end of a harsh Vermont winter that can cause isolation as folks hunker down around their stoves.

I see old friends (like from the '60s) and newish ones and once the many dozens of guests have cleaned their plates it is time to mount the mountain overlooking our once-and-future commune. One friend hoists the May Pole and many others grab one of the colorful streamers and up we go, followed by music makers and stragglers.

At the top, the May Pole is inserted into its usual hole and propped up until stable, so that the rest of us can wind around and around, weaving in and out, both clockwise and counter, to the tunes of Peter Gould’s hand accordion.


Once done, we stand and sit in a circle while the singing commences. The scope of talents and the range of union, worker, and sentimental tunes is startling, and the support of the amateurs by the professionals -- like Patty Carpenter and Melissa Shetler -- and Verandah Porche -- is emblematic of the kind of supportive, collaborative community these folks have constructed.

As always, Verandah asks us to invite in those who have died -- and people around the circle call out names of mutual friends and then individual loved ones. One guy calls out, “My parents!” -- and dozens of echoes of “and mine!” reverberate from around the circle. We are orphaned, but we have each other and the generations behind us.

[Sue Katz is an author, blogger, journalist, unionist, and rebel whose rants and reviews are posted on her blog, Consenting Adult.]

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BOOKS / Gary Chason : Glenn Jones' Novel is Paranoiac Psychedelic Memoir

A dark psychedelic flashback:
'Why Are We in Texas?'

By Gary Chason / The Rag Blog / November 15, 2010

[Why Are We in Texas? A novella by Glenn Jones (Lulu.com, 2010); Softcover; 93 pp.; $14. Also available as an electronic download for $3.99.]

Glenn Jones’ epic yarn, Why Are We in Texas?, is not so much a nostalgic stroll down memory lane as it is an LSD flashback. Drawing on over 60 years of Austin counterculture, it starts on that fateful day in 1966, when Charles Whitman rained hot lead down upon the campus, and ends a (disturbingly) few years in the future at that same, uber-symbolic building: the University of Texas Tower.

In a flash-forward prologue, Texas actually secedes from the United States, setting off a war that pits well-armed Tea Party types, bikers, the National Guard, Aggies, cowboys, gay revelers, liberals, soldiers from Fort Hood, and assorted others in a wild free-for-all of blood and guts. The “big-haired Governor,” the secessionist leader, avoids harm by cross-dressing and escaping on a motorcycle. Jones’ vision of the future is beyond dystopian; it reads like a bad acid trip. (You probably had at least one of those. I know I did.)

Between the beginning and end, the story revolves around Lon, a familiar enough denizen of the Austin underground, who, at the outset, is an underachieving UT student who spends more time discussing esoterica -- and paranoid fantasies -- in the Chuck Wagon at the Texas Union than he does on his classwork. The naturalism of the social scene, and indeed most of the novel, is in jarring contrast to the opening and closing sequences, which sometimes don’t seem to be part of the same story.

I was reminded of Billy Lee Brammer’s The Gay Place and Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in equal measures. It is clear that Jones, a former contributor to The Rag, The Rag Blog’s print media predecessor, didn’t get any of his story ideas from books at the library; he obviously lived it from the inside, ate it up and swallowed it whole.

We are immersed in hippie culture, with all the drugs, booze, free sex, and radical politics that we could ever want. It feels authentic because it is authentic, as anyone who lived in Austin during those decades can attest. The iconic locations are all there: The Plantation, Les Amis, Vulcan Gas Company, Armadillo World Headquarters. And Lon’s residence is a spot-on depiction of the Ghetto, that legendary bastion of counterculture at its most awesome.

The main characters are recognizable, resembling people we all knew, or maybe still know. If you look closely enough, you may see yourself in there somewhere. We encounter rock stars Janis Joplin and Roky Erickson, filmmaker Eagle Pennell, writers Bud Shrake and Billy Lee Brammer, in a mix that somehow summarizes the whole shebang, that attempts (with considerable success) to put the entire Austin experience down on paper. If you can remember the Sixties and Seventies, it has been suggested that you didn’t really live them. This book will help you fill in the gaps in your memory.

It is so Austin-centric, however, that I wonder if readers who live elsewhere will get it. There’s a lot to be said, I suppose, for being time/place specific. It’s a staple of good storytelling. And for those potential readers who have never lived in Austin, I offer my sincere condolences. This book will serve as a primer.

Our hero and his many friends grow up, get married and divorced, screw around on each other, drink too much, smoke too much, party too much, get real jobs, and do all the things that make life happy and miserable simultaneously. Time passes; shit happens. Lon wants to write but never seems to get it together, and he is sometimes hard to like, especially when he’s slamming his wife through the sheetrock in a drunken rage.

In the epilogue, which matches the prologue in tone and paranoia, Lon’s dark side seems to win out. Regarding a stolen nuclear bomb brought up the Colorado River by boat from the Gulf of Mexico and buried on a farm, suspension of disbelief is a big stretch, but let’s give Jones the benefit of the doubt. After all, this is a paranoid fantasy, like many spun out over endless cups of coffee at the Chuck Wagon.

Which makes me wonder: Is that really what it’s been about?

In all, Why Are We In Texas? is a fast, fun read, especially for those of us fortunate enough to have been a part of the culture Jones so accurately depicts. I’m just hoping for a happier ending in real life.

[Gary Chason is an Austin-based independent filmmaker, actor, screenwriter, playwright, and stage director. His article, "Sexual Freedom League: The Naked Truth" was the cover story in the second issue of The Rag, August 17, 1966.]

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Ivan Koop Kuper : KFMK-FM Was Houston's 'Mother Radio'

Bumper Sticker design for FM radio station KFMK. Graphic © Joel R. Cheves 1965 - 2008. Image from OmegaGraphix.
Progressive Radio Roots:
KFMK-FM was part of a radio revolution

By Ivan Koop Kuper / The Rag Blog / September 22, 2010

Long before the Internet provided user access to virtually every genre of music ever recorded, before the advent of multi-channel satellite radio, and before corporate mergers and buyouts created today’s mass media monopolies, Houston’s first commercial 24-hour FM rock station provided free-form music with an anything-goes format.

The forerunner of all rock-formatted radio stations to follow in the Texas marketplace, independently owned KFMK-FM promoted itself as “Mother Radio,” and targeted Houston’s burgeoning baby boomer counterculture in the late-1960s.

“We were starving for music and information back then,” said Bill Bentley, director of A & R for Vanguard Records in Los Angeles and former Houstonian. “When the station went on the air, it was a real godsend. I bought an FM radio for that very reason. Houston was no longer a desert wasteland because up until that time we only listened to AM radio on our transistors.”

Broadcasting at 97.8 on the FM dial, Mother Radio was one of many radio stations that sprang up across America during the summer of 1967, just as the colorful new underground papers were popping up all over the country. These stations were all inspired by San Francisco’s underground flagship alternative, KMPX-FM, whose format was the creation of California radio visionary, Tom “Big Daddy” Donahue.

According to Bentley, KFMK was not only a media innovation, it was a lifestyle and cultural phenomenon that influenced a generation of Houston listeners. “The radio station was our beacon,” Bentley said. “It was a soundtrack for the new counterculture, a place we could listen in. Back-to-back, every song was great. It was like we died and went to heaven. The format fit the music, and it was cultural evolution. The DJs had the power to pick the songs, and treated the music with total respect. They believed in the music as much as the audience did.”

Up to this time, mainstream “terrestrial” radio historically broadcast on the AM frequency and only in less-than-glorious monophonic sound. Early FM stations broadcast in stereo but were limited to classical music, easy listening or “elevator music,” and foreign language broadcasts.

Listeners tuned in to Top-40 AM radio to hear contemporary pop music. Then as now, the disc jockeys were loud and chatty, the music was repetitive, and the medium catered to listeners with short attention spans.

Graphic from ad for KFMK-FM in Larry Sepulvado's underground music publication, Mother Magazine, Issue #3, 1968, Houston, Texas.

Mother Radio changed all the rules, according to former KFMK production director, Stephen Nagel. “We called ourselves ‘free-form radio’ and ‘progressive radio’ because the term ‘album-oriented radio’ hadn’t been invented yet. The whole thing was completely DJ-programmed. I don’t ever remember attending a programming meeting where I was told what I had to play. That was the whole idea; it was ‘free-form’ and there was no format I had to follow,” said Nagel.

KFMK and stations like it created a new kind of relationship between radio and listener. The announcer’s delivery was relaxed, the spinning of album tracks was innovative, and the multi-genre music was programmed in a manner that the songs segued and flowed into each other, attracting listeners who tuned in for hours.

“This is how we approached it,” explained Nagle. “We were going to play the tracks from the albums that AM radio didn’t play that we thought were just as cool as the tracks that AM radio was playing to death. We also weren’t going to yell at our audience but talk to them like they were our friends that knew something about the music we were playing and we weren’t going to play the same songs over and over again or limit ourselves to the ‘hit’ singles.”

A typical KFMK broadcast hour consisted of uninterrupted rock, blues, folk, and jazz music of the era, as well as Indian sitar ragas. At the top of the hour, the station played several commercials, followed by the daily horoscope, and a rip-and-read newscast that always ended with the DJ telling his listeners: “And the war drags on,” a line borrowed from a popular folk song that referred to America’s on-going involvement in Indochina.

All good things must come to an end and Mother Radio was no exception. Handicapped by a failure to attract a substantial market share of the Houston audience, an ineffective low-power transmitter and the bottom-line economics of inadequate advertising revenue, Mother Radio ceased broadcasting by mid-1969 and closed its doors. (According to the historical website, 1960's Texas Music, pressure from the Houston Police was also a factor in the station's closing.)

“KFMK was ahead of its time but under-capitalized for the Houston marketplace,” said Nagle who now makes his living practicing law in Austin. “The station owners misjudged what a cultural impact and profit-making potential commercial FM stations like KFMK would have in the future.”

By 1970, a new era of rock radio activity swept over Houston’s media landscape. Privately-held and substantially funded KLOL-FM competed with ABC Radio owned, KAUM-FM, for positioning and a slice of the new demographic pie with their versions of free-form formats. KILT-FM ("Radio Montrose") as well as KRBE-FM also experimented briefly with progressive rock programming before transitioning into safer and more pop-oriented amalgamations.

(KAUM-FM, unique among the progressive radio stations, also had a large and innovative news department, rivaling even the AM news stations.)

1970 was also the year that Houston’s new listener sponsored, community radio station, KPFT-FM, signed on the air. The Pacifica radio affiliate came the closest to duplicating Mother Radio’s original concept, but only late at night, after prime time when its news and public affairs programming ended.

[Ivan Koop Kuper is a graduate student at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, and maintains a healthy diet of music, media and popular culture. He can be reached at kuperi@stthom.edu. Find more articles by Ivan Koop Kuper on The Rag Blog]

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Jeffrey Nightbyrd : Rehearsals for the Apocalypse

Underground journalist and Sixties activist Jeffrey Nightbyrd will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin, Tuesday, September 14, 2-3 p.m. (CST). To stream Rag Radio live, go here. To listen to this show after the broadcast, or to listen to earlier shows on Rag Radio, go here.

'Don't be a slave to the rules':
Our time in the sun

By Jeffrey Nightbyrd / The Rag Blog / September 13, 2010

See 'The mysterious murder of Michael Eakin,' by Jeffrey Nightbyrd, Below.

[The Austin Sun was a counterculture paper published in Austin from 1974-78. It was born of the underground press, and served as a precursor to the many "alternative" publications that would follow. The Sun's influence went far beyond its short life span. It served as an incubator for major talent and helped stimulate the development of Austin's music scene, helping artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Ely, Marcia Ball, and Butch Hancock reach a wider audience.

The Sun was founded by Jeffrey Nightbyrd and Michael Eakin. Nightbyrd -- formerly Jeff Shero -- was a major figure in the Sixties New Left, in Austin and nationally. He served as national vice president of SDS and was active with the Yippies. Jeff was involved with Austin's original underground newspaper, The Rag, and also edited RAT in New York. Jeff now directs Acclaim Talent, one of the largest talent agencies in the Louisiana/Texas region.

(Co-founder Michael Eakin, a former editor of the Daily Texan, was shot to death in 1974. The crime was never solved and is believed by many to have been related to a story he was researching on the South Texas Nuclear Plant. See the sidebar article below.)

A retrospective exhibit of art from The Sun ("Rehearsals for the Apocalypse: The Austin Sun Years 1974-1978)" is currently showing at the South Austin Popular Culture Center. The following was adapted from notes Jeff wrote for the exhibit.]

Looking through the old Suns, the issues we championed haven’t changed today: war, a smart energy policy, no nukes, long range environmental thinking, ethnic and religious tolerance, sensible drug policies, planning instead of runaway growth, and sexual freedom.

In Austin tolerance has become widespread but our economy dangles on a precipice, we are fighting overseas wars, and our natural world is imperiled. Hence the title of this museum exhibit: "Rehearsals for the Apocalypse. The Austin Sun Years."

The hard facts are that former Daily Texan editor Michael Eakin and I thought it was essential to create an Austin newspaper that presented alternatives to the local information sources. So we went about raising money.

People like Bud Shrake who had just sold a movie script to Hollywood pitched in.

“Bud," we told him. “We don’t know if we will ever be able to pay this much back.”

“I know that," he said. “One day pass it on.”

Over a brief few years many great writers and artists got their start. My first partner, Michael Eakin, was murdered under suspicious circumstances. And like an improbable reality show, we sunspots kept surprising each other with bursts of originality.

Finally hard economic reality set in forcing me to take in a “liberal” real estate investor. Soon he bought up more stock than anyone and ousted me as a “terrible manager.” His condemnation -- “You don’t even have a time clock!” -- still rings in my ears.

Afterward, most of the Sun staff followed their muse and found more success.

For most of us the Sun years were a time of plenty... or should we say our time in the Sun.

Following are some thoughts and memories:


Good drugs and bad drugs

The Sun crew laughed at the over-culture’s hypocrisy about drugs. After all, we live in America -- the society that invented the “Drug Store.” Some drugs like alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine (the most addictive of all) had legal sanction. But others, like pot, could send a smoker to prison. (Pot prisoners are almost half the population of many jails and we never saw pot smokers getting into fist fights in bars.)


Psychedelics

In the Sun era, creative Texans reached for transcendence through peyote and mescaline just as the indigenous Indians had for thousands of years before. Into the mid-Sixties peyote could still be bought at cactus nurseries. Then the hysteria fed by the establishment media set in, demonizing psychedelics as madness-inducing. We tried to bring enlightenment to the frenzy.


William Burroughs

Burroughs, the apocalyptic futurist and author of Naked Lunch, inventor of cut-up writing, and beatnik legend, inspired the Doom issue of the Sun, which in turn inspired the theme of this exhibition, “Rehearsals for the Apocalypse. The Austin Sun Years.”

Burroughs contributed his articles to the underground press for free.


Michael Ventura

Michael Ventura, a Sicilian street kid from Brooklyn, stopped by the Sun on his way out of town and got his first paid writing assignment. A curious combination of street-toughened, world-class dirty dancer and Talmudic-like scholar, he became a creative mainstay of the Sun. His apartment walls were astonishing, covered with voluminous hand-lettered note cards, quotes from the world’s greatest and most obscure thinkers, thousands of posted notes that worked as brain stimulants for his essays.

Jeffrey Nightbyrd, in the day.

Rocky Horror midnight madness

The national Rocky Horror Picture Show Saturday night phenomenon took off in Austin. The producers called the Sun and asked if we would sponsor a test event to see if Rocky Horror had legs, as they say in the movie biz. Tim Curry flew in, and a raucous crowd at the Paramount Theater cheered their way through the look-a-like contest. By the end of the night the sell-out crowd had sung their way through the entire movie and a phenomenon was born.


The music scene and Stevie Ray Vaughan

The clubs kept giving birth to stunning and original bands and musicians that would make jaded veterans pause in awe. I remember Michael Ventura touting a new guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and watching him for the first time in an obscure club on Red River called the One Knight. Eight people were in the audience. But Stevie didn’t care.

Driven like a Hendrix or a Picasso he ripped through songs so fast and beautiful that you knew you had entered a moment of magic shared only by a few. Soon the venues grew much bigger. But somewhere in Austin right now another young genius is playing.


Sexual freedom

The Sun wanted to keep the government out of all our bedrooms. But in this era gays could still be prosecuted as sodomists, and women were not secure in the Roe v Wade ruling that protected the privacy of their bodies. We felt the rainbow of sexuality that is the human experience was none of any government’s business. Relationships of any kind are hard to sustain. So, root for everybody. The Sun rooted for all consenting adults and championed the right of the abnormal to find their happiness


On writing

Writers fresh from the academic reformatory that is the university would bring us lifeless prose. What would now be slam poets would arrive, ignorant of the rules of English grammar, and put down words that were captivating.

I told writers: “Don’t be a slave to the rules -- make the language your slave. Do anything that works.” I would suggest reading advertising copy. Or translations of the Chinese master Li Po and Tu Fu. In extreme cases I would hand writers a copy of the poems of e. e. cummings. There are no rules of good writing save putting down words in any fashion that communicates with passion.


Piedras Negras jailbreak

Taking a page from the Wild West, gun-toting hired guns stuck up the guards at the Piedras Negras jail and freed a gringo rancher’s son. In the mayhem, a bevy of hippie pot prisoners made their escape running down to the Rio Grande and swimming the river. First thing, they called the Sun to tell their story. We were just going to press, so at 2 a.m. the art department redesigned the cover and we beat the dailies by two days.

Michael Eakin. Photo scanned from Daily Texan.
The mysterious murder of Michael Eakin

By Jeffery Nightbyrd / The Rag Blog / September 13, 2010

Austin Sun co-founder and former Daily Texan editor Michael Eakin was a dogged opponent of the South Texas Nuclear Plant. On April 14, 1979 he was shot to death while sitting in a parked car in Houston. The crime was never fully investigated. There are few hard facts in the case.

The South Texas Nuclear plant was built after politicians overcame huge opposition within out city. There is no proof that Michael’s murder had anything to do with his journalistic investigations. But former Sun investigative reporter Todd Samusson recently sent me some very disturbing information which follows:

I had extensive experience of harassment for doing anti-nuke organizing in Austin. I was physically assaulted several times. Always by two large thuggish-looking guys but never the same two. I had my house ransacked and nothing stolen but an address book. I received threatening calls. I had my porch light smashed out three times. I even came out of a meeting once and found a bullet hole in the rear window of my truck (that same piece of crap I used to schlep Austin Suns from the printer in Taylor back to the Sun offices). My car window had a bullet shot through it.

Michael Eakin obviously had it much worse. In the weeks preceding his death he told me he was working on a freelance article about cost overruns at the South Texas Nuclear Project. He said he had been interviewing construction workers at the site about intentional slowing down of work to drag out the project. Also about major flaws in the concrete pours of the containment buildings. (These stories were later confirmed in articles in the Austin American Statesman -- I think written by Bruce Hite.)

Michael was shot point blank and killed in his car in Houston with a small caliber pistol (weapon of choice for mob contracts, according to police). Also shot was his passenger Dilah Davis. She was hit in the face but survived. She was very active in Austin Citizens for Economic Energy the electoral group working against the nuke.

That project was done on a cost-plus basis. There was absolutely no incentive for Brown & Root to come in at the contract price. In fact they had every incentive to seek cost overruns. The south Texas nuke was originally bid at $700 million-plus. When I left Austin in 1988 the cost was heading toward $4 billion. The nuclear industry isn't about how to best generate electricity; it's about construction gigs. And, on a bigger scale, it's about bonded indebtedness on electric utility bonds used to pay for that construction. That $4 billion turns out to be way, way more than that over the life of the debt.

So the money trail is way bigger than Brown & Root. It goes to huge bond houses. Anybody along that trail had motive to stop Michael from prying.

Brown & Root was eventually fired for its cost overruns and replaced by Bechtel. But they went on to do well, becoming KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) and making zillions from the current war in Iraq.

Michael Eakin should not be forgotten. As a journalist he pursued his passion to expose corporate corruption to the end.

Now showing!
Rehearsals for the Apocalypse

The South Austin Popular Culture Center is presenting a landmark exhibit featuring the underground/alternative newspaper the Austin Sun. The exhibit will run from Sept. 11 through Oct. 23.

"Rehearsals For The Apocalypse" encompasses the entire run of the Austin Sun, which was from October 1974 through June of 1978. The Sun was founded by Jeff Nightbyrd and Michael Eakin. They were joined later by printer and bon vivant J. David Moriaty as managing editor, The Sun transcended the usual mode of underground newspapers with professional layouts, cutting edge news articles and, wonder of wonders, paid staff positions.

The exhibit features a selection of newspaper covers along with accompanying articles, photographs, and comments by Jeff Nightbyrd, Dave Moriaty, and some of the key staffers. The show also includes a striking selection of vintage photographs.

"Rehearsals For The Apocalypse: The Austin Sun Years 1974- 1978" will run from September 11th through October 23rd. The South Austin Popular Culture Center is located at 1516-B South Lamar Boulevard in Austin. Hours are Thursday through Sunday from 1- 6 p.m. or by appointment and chance.

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Houston Alternative Media : Telling It Like It Was

Underground in H-Town. Art by Shelby Hohl / Museum of Printing History.
Underground [history] in H-Town:
Veteran journalists compare notes
On counterculture and alt media

By Raj Mankad / May 24, 2010

[Raj Mankad is the editor of Cite magazine, the "architecture and design review of Houston" that has been published quarterly by the Rice Design Alliance since 1982. OffCite, where this article first appeared, is Cite's online incarnation.]

“The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is watching you.”

An arrow bearing that note was shot into the Space City! office. The incident was one among many threats and acts of violence against progressive and radical institutions in Houston. The KPFT station transmitter was bombed off the air twice. Bullets were shot at and yellow paint thrown on the walls of Margaret Webb Dreyer’s gallery, which she ran out of her home from 1961 to 1975. The gallery had served as a counterculture hub according to Thorne Dreyer, her son and an editor of Space City!.

Thorne Dreyer shared these stories at an event on alternative media also featuring veteran writers Tom Curtis, Gabrielle Cosgriff, and Michael Berryhill. The Museum of Printing History hosted the panel discussion in conjunction with “Underground in H-Town,” an exhibition that highlights the importance of minority and alternative publications in local history.

Space City! was published from 1969 to 1972, a part of an international explosion of underground papers set off by the introduction of low-cost offset printing.

Houston in the 60s and 70s is never represented as a hotbed of dissent on par with San Francisco or New York. “The main thing about Houston was that it was all spread out,” Dreyer said in a similar talk at the Houston Zine Fest. “There was no Houston there, [only] community in bits and pieces everywhere. Houston is much more of a city now than it was then. What Space City! did was to help to identify all these pockets of progressive politics and kindred spirits, and pull them together into a cohesive spirit...a network of countercultural stuff.”

Gabrielle Cosgriff picked up the discussion where Dreyer left off. She partnered with Janice Blue to publish Breakthrough from 1976 to 1981. They named it after La Brecha, a book written by Mercedes Valdivieso, a Chilean feminist who taught literature at the University of Houston and Rice University. Cosgriff talked about Breakthrough’s support of Kathy Whitmire in her election to Houston city controller and mayor. The recent election of a lesbian mayor and a city council with an equal gender balance, she argued, can be traced back to efforts three decades earlier.

In its last year of publication, Breakthrough became a general-interest publication --“women’s issues are everybody’s issues” said Cosgriff -- and named David Crossley as a co-editor. Crossley has gone on to lead Houston Tomorrow. Cosgriff serves on the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle.

The audience in the small auditorium included activist Gloria Rubac, writer David Theis, and many other notable people. Alternative media scholar and Rice Media Center staffer Tish Stringer recorded the discussion on video. There were some young people absorbing the history including Culturemap writer Steven Thomson and Emily Hall of PH Design.

Organized in partnership with the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, “Underground in H-Town” presents original documents and images from community papers and the alternative press from the second half of the twentieth century, with a special focus on the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Papers presented in the exhibition include historic issues of Forward Times, Voice of Hope, Space City!, The Jewish Herald Voice, El Papel Chicano, El Sol De Houston, Houston Breakthrough, among others. It is worth a visit.

For more information, visit The Rag Blog post on the exhibit by Shane Patrick Boyle. The Rag Blog is edited by Thorne Dreyer.

From left: Michael Berryhill, Gabrielle Cosgriff, Tom Curtis, Thorne Dreyer. Photo by F. Carter Smith / The Rag Blog.

Special issue of Cite
Will focus on counterculture

In 1970, Charles Tapley’s architecture firm won a national award for convincing their client, Camille Waters, not to build anything on her site in the Texas Hill Country. The architects’ renderings portray a life camping out of a volkswagon. The upcoming issue of Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston recovers this and other 1960s and 70s sites of counterculture.

This issue of Cite, like many in its 28-year archive at citemag.org , mixes high design with down and dirty civic engagement.

Scheduled for a June release, the special issue covers experimental geodesic domes, the Moody Park riot, underground papers, the Love Street Light Circus, the 1977 march on an Anita Bryant performance that gave birth to Houston's vibrant GLBT organizations, and other topics. The photography draws from the Space City! archives. Gary Panter, East Texas-born illustrator and set designer of the Pee Wee’s Playhouse, is contributing the cover art.

-- Raj Mankad / The Rag Blog

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Ramsey Wiggins : Me and Gilbert Shelton: A Memoir

Legendary underground cartoonist and comix artist Gilbert Shelton.

Me and Gilbert Shelton: A Memoir

By Ramsey Wiggins / The Rag Blog / March 8, 2010

Legendary underground artist Gilbert Shelton will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Tuesday, March 9, 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. For those outside the listening area, go here to stream the show.

Shelton is the creator of such iconic comic strips as the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, and Wonder Wart Hog. His comix have sold over 40 million copies in 15 languages. Born in Houston, Shelton developed his art in Austin and then San Francisco. He now lives in France, where he is collaborating with French artist Pic on a strip called Not Quite Dead.

I. The Texas Ranger and Wonder Warthog

"Bright college days, oh carefree days that fly
To thee we sing, with our glasses raised on high." -- Tom Lehrer

In 1960 at the University of Texas (at Austin: that was the only one back then), if you helped to sell the Ranger, the student humor magazine, you got to attend the keg party that was held the weekend after the issue hit the streets. If you were only 20 years old and looked like you were 14, access to many kegs of beer on a Saturday night was a more than reasonable payment for hawking the magazine on campus for a couple of hours.

One of the other perks was that you got to hang out with the people who created the magazine. That’s when I met Gilbert Shelton and the others who brought forth the prize-winning best college humor magazine in the country.

The Rangeroos, as they called themselves, were an extraordinary bunch. Creative, smart, hard-drinking, and somehow older and more worldly-wise than the rest of us, they were the best of the best. We who were less than pretty, less than rich, or, despite being both, still disaffected, were drawn to the like minds of this social and party axis.

Lieuen Adkins and Gilbert Shelton when they both worked for the famed humor magazine, the Texas Ranger. The photo was taken at Lieuen's house on East 23rd in Austin, where the LBJ Library now stands. Photo by Bob Simmons / Austin Photos '62-69 / Texasghetto.org.

This was where I met people who knew stuff: music to listen to, authors to read, how to write, what was funny, and how to drink a lot without throwing up. I also met Janis Joplin, Bill Helmer (later a senior editor at Playboy), Dave Hickey, Billy Brammer, Tony Bell, Lieuen Adkins, Joe Brown, Hugh Lowe, Pat Brown, and all the others who couldn’t settle for life in the herd.

These were heady times. The glacial epoch of the early cold war era was transitioning into Camelot; crewcuts, panty-girdles, Eisenhower, and communist witch hunts were yielding to Ivy League, leotards, the Kennedys, and the Playboy philosophy. We joined the Civil Rights movement. We danced the Limbo, drove MGs and Volkswagens, and listened to The Kingston Trio, Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, and Bob Dylan’s acoustic incarnation. We read poetry and angry young men. It was rumored that women could have orgasms, and that love might be free. Revolution wasn’t in the air yet, but the possibility of joy extended to the horizon.

One of the newer joys back then was to pull the king’s beard. Marching and demonstrating for civil rights had been righteous, but dreadfully serious. Mockery and satire, when served up with a deft hand, were much more cool. A put-down, especially when the target remained clueless about the damage done, was the coolest of all.

The Ranger served this up and more. In 1960 the entire staff was fired three times in the course of a semester for hiding various put-downs and obscenities in successive issues of the magazine. After that, the infighting became more and more elegant, as a blustering and clueless Texas Student Publications office was outflanked again and again by subtlety, irreverence, and skill.


Enter Wonder Warthog.

He had already appeared in 1962 in the Bacchanal, an off-campus commercial attempt by Bill Killeen -- and several of the staffers fired in 1960 -- to escape the strictures of a college publication. The threat of the draft drove Gilbert back to graduate school 1962-63 where he became the editor of the Ranger and further polished the Hog of Steel.

WW sent up superheroes, arch-villains, beatniks, LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, and most concepts of morality extant at the time. Gilbert, who has nearly always had a collaborator or two, worked off and on with fellow Rangeroos Tony Bell, Lieuen Adkins, and Joe Brown to produce the first drafts of what would become world-class social satire.

Wonder Warthog later took Gilbert and friends to a wider audience, but back then the Fearless, Fighting, Foulmouthed alter ego to mild-mannered Philbert Desanex, ace reporter for the Muthalode Morning Mungpie was all ours. Frat boys might have money, cars, and high-maintenance girlfriends, but we had Wonder Warthog. Comic books had a whole new meaning.

Things change, and everybody moves on. One day I looked up and I was married, a father, a graduate student, and wore a suit to work at the Graduate Dean’s office. The summer of love came and went. John Kennedy had been assassinated, then Robert, then Martin Luther King, Jr.

Janis died of an overdose, then Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones. Woodstock had turned into Altamont. The Civil Rights movement had turned into a shooting war. Vietnam was turning teenagers into post-traumatic heroin addicts by the thousands. We all marched after Kent State; My Lai revealed us as torturers, rapists, and murderers. The ship of hope was dashed on the rocks of the military-industrial complex. I drank too much and every night before I fell asleep had the terrifying thought that my life would be the same until I died.

Meanwhile, I heard stories. Gilbert had joined Pat Brown, then a student at the Cleveland Art Institute in Cleveland, where he had tried to work for American Greeting Cards, but it hadn’t taken. Back in Austin, he did psychedelic posters for the Vulcan Gas Company, then he joined the general exodus to the west coast, hoping to do rock posters.

His new strip, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, had begun to appear in The Rag, an off-campus production with low production values and a serious antipathy for the Vietnam War. The strips in The Rag would be reprinted in rags all over the world

In 1971, my college friend Dave Moriaty showed up and told me how he, Gilbert, Jack Jackson (whose art carried the moniker "Jaxon") and Fred Todd had bought a printing press and were publishing comic books as Rip Off Press. I wanted to die from envy. He was thinking of starting a magazine, and suggested that I might want to join them.

Dave Moriaty at the Rip Off Press, 17th and Missouri in San Francisco, in 1970. Photo by Bob Simmons / Austin Photos '62-69 / Austinghetto.org.

II. Rip Off Press

"The term 'drunken printer' is redundant." -- Men’s room wall in Rip Off Press

I wanted in the game. The degree was finished, the marriage was over, my boss was about to retire, and I had more old friends in San Francisco than I did in Austin. The party wasn’t over yet. I had already stopped cutting my hair, so in May of 1972 I quit the job, took out my retirement money, and headed for the coast.

Rip Off Press had relocated from the increasingly dangerous and expensive Haight-Asbury area into the warehouse district at the bottom of the north side of Potrero Hill. There was a trucker’s bar across the street (The Bottom of the Hill Bar, now famous as a music venue), and my friend Moriaty had a flat up the hill on Arkansas Street. You could see Berkeley and Oakland from his back porch and Mount Sutro from the front window. The flat downstairs could be had for $100 a month. Jack Jackson and his old lady lived across the street. Deal.

Rip Off Press was hot. Gilbert wasn’t just an artist, he was now a franchise. He lived with a very, very smart woman, Laura Fountain, and they had a big house on a cul-de-sac that had a block party every Bastille day.

Faded glory: Your correspondent Ramsey Wiggins, upstairs at the Rip off press office in 1972. Photo by Bob Follet.

The Freak Brothers were worldwide. A German lawyer with a Polish name, Manfred Mroczkowski, had come up with the idea that all the bootleg European editions of the Freak Brothers could be licensed and made to pay royalties. The first official publication had just come out in German. Rip Off and their main competitor, Last Gasp Eco-funnies had come to détente; each sold the other’s material in their mail-order operations. Serious business.

Rip Off was begun to print rock posters, but the ancient press wasn’t good enough for close-register poster work. It was, however, good enough for underground comic book covers, and was soon augmented by a better, smaller press. Gilbert’s office/studio/playhouse was upstairs, the press, shipping office, and a cavernous, mostly empty warehouse were downstairs. In the summer, the roof was festooned with sunbathing naked hippies. The truckers loved us. At 10:30 and again at 3:00, Fred Todd would ring a bell and we would troop into the walk-in safe for a smoke break. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

I wasn’t good enough to be on the creative team, but Art can always use another handmaiden. I went to work as a dogsbody in the job printing shop we ran as a sideline and was given the nonpaying title of Managing Editor for the short-lived Rip Off Review of Western Culture.

It was the end stage of the best of times. In 1972 the summer of love had come and gone, but there were still affordable places to live, the counterculture was alive and well, and San Francisco was -- well, San Francisco. Robert Crumb was there, along with S. Clay Wilson, Dave Sheridan, Ted Richards and all the other underground comic artists.

Rock stars came and went. Chet Helms, grand poobah of the near-defunct Family Dog, appeared from time to time to try and get us to print posters on the cuff. Eddie Wilson, who had started Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, stopped off at our house to have a shower.

Gilbert Shelton designed this poster for Austin's famed rock hall, the Vulcan Gas Company.
The great circus that was Berkeley was across the bay, and Marin County was across the Golden Gate Bridge. Occasionally a young woman would find it interesting that I worked at Rip Off Press. I got tongue-kissed by a Hell’s Angel at the Garden of Earthly Delights, and had enough class to give him some tongue back. We parted with mutual respect. I was, after all, from Texas.

Once at a party I stepped between Robert Crumb and a large, angry woman who took offense at his Big Ass Comics, keeping her at bay while he escaped down the stairs. I ate with artists, and I drank with giants.

Every morning I would drink a pot of strong coffee and walk down Arkansas Street to the bottom of Potrero Hill, arriving at the press at the civilized hour of nine o’clock. Company president Fred Todd would be in the office, pacing up and down, throwing the point of his buck knife into the floor and swearing as he waited for the mail and the daily receipts to see if we would be able to buy paper and ink or, on Fridays, meet the payroll.

The shipping clerks would already have popped their white crosses and begun packing up orders. Moriaty got us to work burning plates for the printers. By 10 the head printer, a part-time rock organist and full time drug addict, would arrive and begin his morning routine of two cups of coffee, two joints and two Desoxyns before cranking up his press. (Our motto was “Quality is not our bag”)

Gilbert would arrive around eleven and, depending on the company that showed up, work, play ping-pong, or otherwise amuse himself. Jack Jackson worked at home but would pop in, usually late in the afternoon. Various print shop customers, artists, artist wannabes, and plain delusionals would come and go through the day.

At noon we would troop across the street for a sandwich and a beer, then back to the press for the afternoon, then back across the street for beer, eighty cent highballs, and a game of pool. Then back up the hill for dinner or out into the night, depending on the amusements available for the evening.

Life was good. I worked in the print shop with a future mayor of Marble Falls and a future Austin real estate developer. One day the drug addict printer got his right arm stuck in the press. He was in a cast for a long time.

Eventually a woman joined me from Austin, and we were together for quite a while. We later had a son who became famous. The Rip Off print shop invested in a worn-out magazine web press that we could never get to work right. I almost fell into the folder.

Things, change, and everybody moves on. After I had been there for about a year, the job printing shop, never a profit center, was declared a failure, closed and the equipment was sold off except for one press used to print comic book covers. The Rip Off Review of Western Culture wasn’t cultured enough and ceased publication. I was out of a job and out of Rip Off Press.

I stayed on in San Francisco for awhile, but after three days transcribing numbers at a nut and bolt manufacturing company for a temp agency, I had had enough. I was a revolutionary, god damn it. I spent two weeks in my basement rebuilding the engine in my 1966 Volkswagen, then packed the woman from Austin and what else would fit and headed back to Austin in September of 1973: The last to come to San Francisco, and the first to go back. I was sad for a time.

Rip Off Press founders Fred Todd, Gilbert Shelton, Jack Jackson, Jackson's companion Beatrice Bonini, and Dave Moriaty.
Time passed. Rip Off Press prospered without me, and I without it. The chance meeting with Eddie Wilson in my San Francisco living room turned into a three-year rock and roll marathon as the Advertising and Public Relations Director at Armadillo World Headquarters. After I burned out at the Armadillo, I made a Faustian bargain and sold ads for the Austin Sun, and, after that I really floundered for awhile. Doug Brown took pity on me and I started one of several stays at Oat Willie’s, Austin’s oldest headshop. The Sixties were officially over, even in Austin. It was confusing for awhile.

Meanwhile, more and more comic books came out of Rip Off Press. Dave Sheridan continued to collaborate on the Freak Brothers, and Fat Freddy’s Cat became its own publication. Paul Mavrides also began collaborating on the Freak Brothers in 1978.

Foreign-language editions came out officially in every European language except Russian. I’ll bet there is at least one unofficial version there, too. So far, no one in China has offered to make a deal, nor have the African languages stepped up, but long after the counterculture had lost its currency in the U.S. it remained alive and well in Europe, and The Freak Brothers did well. The Freak Brothers appeared in High Times magazine, and Universal Studios bought the license to produce a live-action Freak Brothers movie. Gilbert did an album cover for Doug Sahm, and then one for the Grateful Dead. Money rolled in.

Then, the logical next step for the Freak Brothers: A coffee table edition.

Freak Brother Freewheelin Franklin with his customary sage advice.
III. Oat Willie’s Campaign Headquarters

Ok, so I’m a clerk at Oat Willie’s, in 1978, leading the simple life, when the word comes out that Rip Off Press has done the first Freak Brothers collection, a coffee-table sized perfect bound book, for a respectable price and at a respectable investment in production costs, which Gilbert is going to go on tour to promote. One of the places he wants to do this is Austin, and since Oat Willie’s sells more Freak Brothers comics than any place in Texas, he wants to do an autograph party here.

Did I mention spending three years flogging rock and roll at the Armadillo? Anyway, Doug asked me to help a little with the publicity, so I started calling around and, a few days before the event went around to visit a few disc jockeys at a few radio stations. It turns out that the Freak Brothers are about as famous as Jerry Garcia. Everybody talks it up on the radio, and Gilbert gets to do an on-air on the top-rated FM station in Austin.

Came the day, and the place was a mob scene. Gilbert signed autographs until his hand hurt. TV stations showed up, then more people showed up. At one point a cop showed up in a patrol car, and everybody was nervous until it turned out he just wanted a signed copy of the new book like everybody else. He went to the head of the line.

I’m pretty sure that was the biggest-grossing day in Oat Willie’s history. It was the first really good day for me in a long time, anyway. I remember it fondly.

And Then…

Things change, and people move on. Gilbert and Laura escaped to Europe in 1979, first for an extended visit, and then permanently to Paris in 1982. Robert Crumb and his wife Aline Kominsky live in France, too. Two American national treasures, expatriated to France. Hmm.

Gilbert Shelton: Cool one with a cool one.
Dave Sheridan, Gilbert’s first collaborator, died of cancer in 1982. The Freak Brothers continued with collaborator Paul Mavrides. Universal Studios bought two more licenses to produce a Freak Brothers movie, and another company, bolixbrothers in Bristol, England, has been trying to produce an animated feature since 2003. The latest, but hopefully not the last, Freak Brothers collection is the full catastrophe, the Freak Brothers Compendium, which is the complete collection, all under one cover.

Gilbert’s latest undertaking is Not Quite Dead, the adventures of the world’s least-famous rock band. It’s also a collaboration, this time with the French underground cartoonist Pic. Three issues of this comic are out so far, and two have been translated into English.

Me, I stumbled around like a bull in a china shop until I had a spiritual awakening in 1989, and have been remarkably clear-headed since then. I live sedately in Austin with my wife, who understands me.

We’ve both done well, Gilbert and me.

I’ll get to see him one more time at Oat Willie’s on Friday, March 12th, where he’ll be autographing his works one more time. I’m doing a little publicity for this one, too, but maybe the lines won’t be as long. Or maybe they will.

He’ll host an art retrospective on Saturday the 13th at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture if you miss the autograph party. If you see a tall old guy with a glass of club soda, it’ll be me.

Until we meet again: Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were first published in Austin's underground newspaper, The Rag.

• Cartoonist and underground artist Gilbert Shelton's work is being featured in an exhibit at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, 1516-B South Lamar Blvd. in Austin. Shelton's work will be on display from March 13th-May 8, 2010. An opening reception, featuring the artist, will be held on March 13, starting at 7:09 p.m. Original art and prits will be available for sale.
• Gilbert Shelton -- whose published work includes The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, Wonder Wart Hog and Not Quite Dead (with French cartoonist Pic) -- will autograph copies of his work at Oat Willie's Campaign Headquarters, 617 West 29th St. in Austin, beginning at noon on Friday, March 12, 2010.
• Shelton -- whose Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are to be featured in a movie now under development, will appear in "A Conversation with Gilbert Shelton" at South by Southwest (SXSW), at the Austin Convention Center, Monday, March 15, 2010, at 3:30 p.m.

Gilbert Shelton: Things are looking up.

Gilbert Shelton and the Simpsons' Matt Groening.

Gilbert did this jacket art for the Grateful Dead.

Wonder Wart Hog at home.

Fat Freddy's Cat speaks in many tongues.





Shelton's latest effort, done in collaboration with French artist Pic.

Still from long-in-development Freak Brothers movie, Grass Roots.

Texas Ranger party in 1963 at 18th and Brazos in Austin. That's Fontaine Maverick dancing on the furniture. Ramsey Wiggins is the tall guy in glasses and the gray sports jacket (already) turned to the left. Photo by Bob Simmons © 2000.

Some of the Rip Off Press crew at the corner of Franklin and Golden Gate Ave. in San Francisco in 1969. Photo by Bob Simmons.


Rip Off Press staffers dine in San Francisco, 1972. L-R: Bob Follet, editor of the Rip Off Review; Beatrice Bonini, Jack Jackson, Dave Moriaty, Aline Kominsky, Ramsey Wiggins, and Philipp Carlisle. Grab from a polaroid photo taken by the waiter.

Oat Willie's crew, 1977. Ramsey's the tall dudely one in the shades. Photo by Ken Hoge.

Ramsey Wiggins, his own self. Photo by Eric Rosenblum from the Austin Sun Reunion, October 31, 2009.
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