Fear Itself - Fear Itself
[Dot DLP 25942, 1969]

Hard blues/psych band Fear Itself's 1969 release of the same name, is going to be re-issued by a company in Germany soon called World In Sound. (Site contains a song from the lp)

Crawling Kingsnake/Underground River/Bow'd Up/For Suki/In My Time of Dying/ Letter/ Lazarus/Mossy Dream/Silly Gene/Born Under a Bad Sign/

Fear Itself's lead singer and slide guitar bluesmaster, Ellen McIlwaine, who's played with everybody (she is probably the only guitar player in the world who has played with Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Taj Mahal and Jack Bruce) has been contacted by Wolfgang Reuther, who has mastered it from a vinyl (i am sure the original no longer exists) and will put it out on cd AND lp. Ellen found some old pictures and posters and is writing a bio of how they all got started together and he is making a booklet to go with it.

Dearest husband played guitar on this album (he's on the horse on the right) so we're looking to buy a copy. Cheap. But everytime I bid on the lp when I'm able to find it, I always get outbid. Fuckers. It would be very cool to see this old record come around again....and the search continues.

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Green Helll - "I am trying to kill my lawn. All 7000 square feet of it. Few things are as stupid as being enslaved to the idea of having your yard look like the top of a billiard table. Perhaps the same sadists that invented the contemporary suburb also invented the lawn. Like the suburbs, where it proliferates like a noxious weed, the lawn serves no purpose, looks sterile, wastes labour and pollutes."

"I am attempting to eliminate the monstrosity that I have inherited when I bought my house and replace it with wild flowers, herbs, and fruit-bearing shrubs. But I am not alone in this endeavor."

link

Eat Your Lawn - Of the 30 most commonly used lawn pesticides, 29 are toxic to birds, fish, amphibians and/or bees. Environmental groups have raised the biggest clamor over the herbicide 2,4-D, which a growing number of studies show to be a possible contributor to non-Hodgkins lymphoma and other cancers.

link

Edible Landscapes
"Last summer, my family and I removed our front lawn and replaced it with an edible landscape of fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs and other plants as part of a project by our local art center and Los Angeles artist/architect Fritz Haeg."

"We've been asked plenty of questions about this move, the two most common being,"

'What do your neighbors say?' and 'Has the city fined you?'

"Our answers: 'They like it' and 'No.'"

link

Can I get an amen?

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Joan Baez, Others Tree-Sitting

Tree-sitting protesters vowed Thursday to peacefully resist eviction from a 14-acre urban garden on which the landowner wants to build a warehouse.

The inner-city site is "a place of safety and respite from the harshness of the concrete jungle. . . We just have to save it," actress Darryl Hannah said from the branches of an old walnut tree where she perched for the day despite her vertigo.

Below her, supporters had created a tent city in the midst of the flowers, bananas, edible cacti, sunflowers and other produce that is farmed by about 350 mainly poor, Latino families. (Altar picture at the base of one of the trees - link)

Hannah is among celebrities supporting the farmers and their effort to preserve the garden, a green swath in an industrial area southeast of downtown. Folk singer Joan Baez sat in the tree Wednesday, and musician Ben Harper and his wife, actress Laura Dern, Julia Butterfly Hill gave speeches.

link

Why can't we have some decent live news coverage of this and other events like it?

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Babblin' Friday

Greetings, everyone! Got any big plans this weekend? I just returned to the Casa de Doublewide.

Driving back this morning through 3 states in the pouring rain (after attending the annual Assless Chaps Marshmallow Drop) was nerve wracking so I stopped and bought a scented candle in a glass jar that fit perfectly in my drink holder, after removing the fits and burnt spoons. (Mother always leaves a mess.)

But it honestly had a calming effect. The candle. And I'm definitely going to keep a candle in the car from now on to help me relax on the road. It's not like you can actually meditate while driving.

xoxo

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Forget the Haight and Woodstock

A new book makes a compelling case that Laurel Canyon, home to Joni, Zappa, Mama Cass and many more, was the true center of '60s rock.

The '60s were all about neighborhoods. Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village, Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, Watts, Tu Do Street, Harlem, Woodstock -- for Americans, at least, the decade was divided into a series of remarkable communities, some utopian and others nightmarish, each with a strong claim to being the epicenter of that turbulent epoch.

link

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