Let me tell you something you don’t know… and wouldn’t if I didn’t tell you.
It was the end of July, 1974, and Carolyn and I had just spent a week or so at
soon-to-be-an-Oscar-winner Don McBrearty’s home at 31 Lonsdale Road, Toronto, opposite
Upper Canada College.
The highlight of that part of our triumphant “tour" (celebrating Carolyn’s recent acceptance into Dalhousie Medical School) was going down to McLuhan’s Coach House on Saturday - July 20 - to visit Marshall McLuhan and help him celebrate his 63rd birthday.
On that occasion Marshall introduced us to Barrington Nevitt - inaugurating an important scholarly connection in the McLuhan Quadrant.
Our new friend, Cynthia Losier, was with us and she asked “Mac” about her friend, Derrick De Kerckhove.
McLuhan answered: “Derrick is in Africa selling advertising for the CIA.”
I hadn’t met Derrick, yet.
Anyway, we headed off for NYC a few days later to spend a couple of weeks in Zappa-biographer
David Walley’s East Village “cave”.
David was off on vacation somewhere.
So this turned out to be the week President Nixon got “Watergated” and left Washington.
The night before his resignation speech (August 8, 1974 - JW’s 9th birthday) we went to
Club 82, which was just around the corner from Walley’s home.
Welcome to 82 Club: The Naughty Story of a Legendary New York Drag Institution
The musical entertainment was being provided by
THE DICTATORS, a new band we had never heard of, but would go on to be known as the world’s
first PUNK BAND.
This was 5 months before CBGB’s opened.
I don’t recall the “music” because a food fight broke out between the band and some members of the audience.
The main food-splattered “victim” was
Legs McNeil, who was on his way to becoming the world’s first “punk”.
I noted his name and when I was at CBGB’s two summers later, Legs was now a “legend".
I had inspired the kinetic aspect of the Punk movement at CBGB’s a year before by my jamming with
Dean Latimer (former employee of Walter Bowart’s EAST VILLAGE OTHER) and his band, ORANGE JULIUS…
… and by my poetry presentiment on the stage after the band’s contribution to the evening’s “fun”.
Here is the story of THE DICTATORS:
My “xenochrony" surfaces in this article wherein I discover that Handsome Dick Manitoba lived on
City Island at the time - City Island was where Carolyn and I ended up 25 years later, where we began iONdom in 2005.
A hidden subplot of the TV show, THE SOPRANOS, was City Island with our landlady (Fordham St.) being the sister-in-law of
Joe Gallo - Bob Dylan
did a song about him:
And the “character" living next door to us was the landlady’s close friend, “
Big Pussy”.
Boy, he didn’t like me!!
He was probably “psychic”.
Anyway, it was an auspicious evening - Aug.7, 1974 - the ramifications of which are still being felt throughout the universe.
See tomorrow’s news.
After NYC, we drove across the USA for a big reunion - called “An August Affair” - of the Cosmic Awareness movement in Seattle.
Our driver that summer was Maritimer Ed Seeton who would accidentally get us to Maui in June, 2008 - after we hadn’t seen him for 20 years.
This event led to David Worcester, channeler for “Cosmic Awareness”, moving to Los Angeles in 10 months.
Which meant we would be spending a lot more time in L.A. for the next 30 years - including spending many hours with
Joe Dun Sloan, the maker of the “D-Cell”, anti-aging miracle:
JoeDunSloan YouTube
Bob Dobbs
