A clumsy latecomer to the magic in the clearing in the mountains

I was in Washington, D.C. for the Friday night premiere of a play witten by a friend, sleeping on the friend's floor, and he had family coming to town for Saturday night; best I scatter.

The Irish rover in Baltimore suggested I meet him in Virginia. How would I get to Virginia? I wanted to know. "I'll get you sorted out," he said.

I thought something as simple as a ride from the city; but no.

The Irish rover, Pat Egan, was playing a festival that afternoon in Staunton. That night he was playing sessions and partying in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Between Staunton and the mountains was a college town, Charlottesville, Virginia, with a train stop. He put me on a one-way train.

"Get off the train, wander into town. Grab a beer. Watch the girls," was the Irish rover's advice. I did those things, and waited.

He appeared on cue, in a minivan driven by his exwife - still his flautist, on certain gigs - and her new boyfriend. No hard feelings there, Jeez.

I didn't know what to expect of the party in the mountains, was not given any clues about it - specifically was denied all detail by the Irish rover. But he had gone through some trouble, and indeed personal expense, to get me there; and that was encouraging.

For we had wandered together, in a simpler time. We had packed up with an African bush man drummer, a Merchant Marine songster, and a redheaded blues guitar orphan, and driven to a hippie commune in the Missouri Ozarks, where clothing was optional; where so many things were optional.

I am sorry that sounds like a tall tale, for it is strictly factual. Pat Egan and I were together with the Stone Age African drum, the melodies of the seaports of the wide open world, the American blues guitar, the rolling Irish music, and whatever is mine. It was not to be forgotten, that coming together; that confluence. We have not forgotten it. We are always looking for it, for something like it.

Far down a winding mountain road, we climbed out of the vehicle and into a clearing. A house that had been growing under a craftsman's hands bloomed to one side of the clearing; a barn for music he had built stood on the other. Between them, Bass beer was cold on tap, with a tequila bottle atop the cooler. And behind them both, a swimming pool, left in a natural state, with diverted creek water for pool water, and frogs in the pool singing lustily in the night.

The frog is my totem animal; pardon again, for what might be taken as pretention, but is only simply true. I was ecstatic to take in the deep peals of the frogs, singing for their sex. It was a church to me.

A dog wandered up, a bull dog. Simon was his name. I have known many dogs, many wonderful dogs, in many fantastic places. Simon immediately appeared to me as the perfect dog. As I shared this perception with people at the party, I encountered only quiet agreement with an obvious fact to which I was a clumsy latecomer.

Music was here, and there, and over yonder, and further down the trail, closer to the lake, where more frogs sang, and sang more loudly. I was a clumsy latecomer to all this magic in this clearing in the mountains.

Further down the trail were the youth, one young man strumming chords and singing a twenty-first century mountain lad's equivalent of gangsta rap power ballads, all "Fuck you," and "you," and "you," as his buddy nodded along, in the dark with the frogs.

Over yonder a tall rangy journalist, working on a heroic immigrant newspaper story about a Mexican man who swam the Rio Grande thirty years ago to come into this country and ended up in these mountains, stroked story songs on a guitar, carefully heeded by a bearded man from New Zealand.

There, in the music barn, fiddlers and guitarists clustered around the piano, where a bearded man - so many, many bearded men in these Virginia mountains - comp'd along on chords and runs as they all sang familiar songs, filigree'd by a dobro, played by another bearded man.

Here, inside the partly reconstucted house, where I wandered, were young people, gathered in a circle in the shadows, out of view of the party and unto themselves. We play in the dark and the inaccessible places, they seemed to say, in the way they were settled in. We like to play this way. We don't like for you to creep up on us while we play this play, while we play "The Cumberland Gap" and fight over whether it is a two-part song, or a three-part song.

A girl guitar player said, "Peter, you're the fiddler; you're supposed to be the jerk." So then Peter the fiddler roared, "THREE PARTS, DAMN IT!" and they all broke into a three-part "Cumberland Gap," damn it.

I had rambled through these mountains, a little to the west, years before, and sat with the family of Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who did so much to capture these songs, and save them for us, waiting in the future. I wanted so much to romanticize these competent, talented, physically striking, and somewhat dangerous looking young people, crowded together in the dark, playing for no one.

Each time I stepped closer for a closer look, for a fuller sound, someone would look up from their instrument, squinting nervously through eyeglasses, as if I were an intruder, not a listener. I was an intruder; I was a listener.

And then they did the thing musicians have always done in the bands of my dreams, they switched instruments around; and in every new grouping, the music was a little more intense, as the person stuck playing a less familiar instrument compensated for absent technique with guts and emotion, and the spirit of the music was laid raw.

It was laid most raw when the girl banjo player ended up standing up and thumping the double bass like she was born to do it, like she would die doing it. At the end of that song, she spoke of thirst; and to keep the music from stopping, to keep her from stopping with the death throttle on the double bass, I offered to fetch her water.

She handed me a plastic cup, with a trace of wine in the bottom: "Just pour the water on the wine."

I went and fetched the water and poured the water on the wine and handed it to her, to help wth her thirst; then I wandered out the half-built house, out onto the patio outside. The patio looked down to the swimming pool frog pond. The frogs sang for their sex.

I thought of Nymah Kumah, the African bush man drummer who had taught the Irish rover and I so much. "Man stole music from the birds, anyway," Nymah told me once.

Man stole music from the frogs, anyway, I told the darkness.

The Irish rover strolled up. Then the flautist, Laura Byrne, who had been his wife. She said, "They cry out until they find their mates, then they quiet down. Then they start having sex. That's how it goes." She wandered back off into the night.

I marveled at the stray frog who continues to sing, after the others have found their mates. There always seems to be the one, in every round of mating. There goes one again. "He's fucking floating," the Irish rover said, pointing out the lonesome, musical frog on the float. "Look at your man over there: 'This is my chance!'"

I wondered if that was the origin of song: not the one who sings for sex, but the one who is nourished on the song, not the sex; the one who sings a song beyond sex.

The mysterious young mountain musicians had come out of the dark house now, out onto the patio, to smoke and talk. A pair gathered around the Irish rover. They knew each other, as old acquantainces, inklings of friends. They were not, to the Irish rover, the creatures of mystery, and a little danger, that they were to me; that I wanted them to be.

The girl banjo player who had played the double bass to death paired off with the more silent, cragged, handsome of the fiddlers. He looked much like the youngest son of the Merchant Marine songster I had known and played music with, when he was young and inarticulate, with swooping bangs and forbidding looks.

Someone called the cragged fiddler by name: "Chance." Of course. Of course, this cragged young mountain fiddler would have to be "Chance". He would have to be, in fact, "Chance McCoy," a name imported wholesale from American folklore.

Chance lost some of his clothes, and jumped into the swimming pool frog pond. "It's really warm," he said to his girl, whose name was and would have to be "Liz Mead" ("mead": an ancient form of honeyed wine). "Just jump right in."

Liz Mead lost some of her clothes and jumped right in. It was not really warm. It was really cold. Chance McCoy had set her up. She cursed him, then kissed him.

Then these two mysterious to me mountain people were out of the water and next to me by the swimming pool frog pond, wet and cold. Chance jumped up and wandered off into the night; Liz stayed put to shake dry her hair. I told Liz how much I had fancied her bass playing; how much she had brought the band alive with the double bass.

"But you can't really hitchhike with it," she said.

Peter, the fiddler obliged to be a jerk, approached and asked if Chance had any more tobacco. Liz searched for Chance's tobacco, found a stick of it, it slipped out of her hand and into the frog pond.

"It went away," Liz said.

I said, "You dropped it in the pond."

Liz said, "It jumped in the pond. It wasn't my tobacco."

And then Chance McCoy was back, with more beer. With more beer there would be more music, soon, there could be no doubt about that. I would intrude again; I would listen again.

I would think of the frogs and the birds, who gave us their music. I would think of the African bush man drummer; now dead. I would think of the Merchant Marine songster, Pops Farrar, now dead. I would think of Bascom Lamar Lunsford, long dead, and his mountain music, still alive, still alive and changing in these competent, unpredictable, dangerous hands.

In the morning, I would leave these mountains with a heart full of hope.

But for a moment that night, before the music came back, there was only beer, and frogs, and tobacco, and friends, and intruders. There were young mountain lovers, less wet, less cold, sitting together by the dark pond, and the frog songs.

"Can we just come back here tomorrow?" Liz Mead asked of Chance McCoy.

Chance McCoy shook his wet head and said, "Let's do that. Fuck whatever we have to do tomorrow!"

*

Photograph of Liz Mead, on another day, in another mountain clearing, from her MySpace page.

At a Taffety Punk Theatre opening night cast party: "Burn Your Bookes"

It turned out to be a naieve question. I asked the actor if she had found the language difficult.

She said, basically, the only difficult language is the language that is not written well; and the language in Richard Byrne's play Burn Your Bookes was written very, very well. It is a pleasure to speak language like that, she said.

She had just spoken a mouthful of that language. This actor, the bright-eyed Kimberly Gilbert, has the last major role to take the stage in the play. Not an hour before we were speaking, the curtain had come down on opening night of Taffety Punk Theatre's premiere production of the play.

Kimberly plays the stepdaughter of a famous alchemist. Yes, at one time, there were famous alchemists. Her character's stepfather was Edward Kelley, who got bottled up in a Bohemian court longer than his English family would have wished. This was during the European Renaissance, when alchemists were sort of weapons of mass destruction, or of potential mass wealth creation, base metals into the ever-elusive gold - secrets of state to be hoarded. Or eliminated.

Kimberly was a bright-eyed actor, with no one waiting for her on opening night. I was a guest of the playwright, the man of the hour, who didn't need me under his heels. I needed her, or someone for the company of the night, and I thought she needed me; but was a fool. She migrated to the cast party, and was a life of that party. And it was a lively party.

It was a pleasure to see Daniel Flint, who had commanded so much of the stage in the lead role of Edward Kelley, returned to himself, a contemporary man, an actor with an attitude and a winning way. He had on a grey porkpie hat, and sideburns had claimed swaths of his craggy face.

His date, his partner, was the woman who had sat beside me during the premiere performance, which I had found riveting. I was swollen with pride for Richard Byrne, the playwright, whom I have known for half my life, almost exactly. If a writer might dream, he might dream of fashioning a play from difficult materials, hocus pocus and wife-swapping from the 16th century alchemists in what is now Prague; and then catalyzing a rowdy crew of creative souls in a magnificent city like Washington, D.C. to manifest this fitful dream on the stage.

I was just as riveted by the neighbor of my neighbor in the audience. With Daniel's lady friend was her friend, Chelsey. Chelsey is tall as God and far more beautiful. We small-talked about Twitter, the only kind of talk that is possible about Twitter. I have since found her there, and now listen to her playlists; good stuff.

But, at the cast party, Chelsey was in the embrace of a tall bloke who had a minor role in the play, a nice man named Eric, who looked like a taller make of the motor force behind the Taffety Punks, Marcus Kyd. Marcus has the easy smile and charisma that even a straight man would have to describe as attractive, as cute. It was not difficult to see how he could get immensely creative people to go along with him in producing difficult plays for no money, for almost no money.

And his company's production of this difficult play was equal in every way to the occasion of the world premiere. The Taffety Punks' roots in the culture of D.C. punk was on display, with punk band posters more or less stapled onto the backs of minor alchemists, and the boots of Renaissance tricksters held fast by duct tape, as if they were frayed guitar cords.

*

That would be Richard Byrne, playwright; and Daniel Flint, star, at the cast party.

A hybrid play mined from a hybrid art

I was in Washington, D.C. Friday night for the opening of Taffety Punk Theatre's premiere production of Burn Your Bookes by my old friend Richard Byrne.

It is a challenging play, set in Bohemia during the flux of the European Renaissance. The title is, at a glance, misleading, because this is not a play about censorship. It is a play about alchemy - the art (con art, many would say) of transmuting less valuable metals into gold.

Alchemy was a hybrid pursuit, and Richard crafted a hybrid play out of it. He subtitles his play, in three acts, as a "tryptych," to signal its hybrid character. It tells three different stories, about the same cast of characters, with three different techniques, rather than plotting one storyline through three mutually modulated acts.

When I took my seat in the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop on Friday night, I had read acts one and two and seen a video of act two workshopped at the Kennedy Center in 2008. Though Richard had entrusted me with a PDF of the entire play, I purposefully held off on reading the third act, wanting to be surprised at the premiere; and indeed I was surprised, very pleasantly so.

Act one is, in essence, a domestic drama about relationships in and between the families of two English alchemists, Edward Kelley and John Dee, who both have turned up in the court of Emperor Rudolph II in Bohemia. There was a sort of free agency in alchemists at this time, with monarchs and emperors poaching from each other the alchemists that had the buzz of having a hot hand - the mystical ability of enriching the treasury without finding and mining for gold.

One problem with mystics, among many others, is that you can't contain their mysticism to the sphere of infuence that interests you. Kelley also has seen faeries in his glass (in essence, his crystal ball) that speak of wife swapping; and if there is one thing more volatile than two alchemists cooped up in a foreign court, it is two wife-swapping alchemists so cooped up. Richard mines some vivid, if at times confusing, dramatics out of this rich material.

Act two is another animal altogether. If act one resembles a superheated Jacobean domestic drama in form, the technique of act two is taken straight out of Samuel Beckett, with all his forlorn, infighting, often paralyzed duets. The act is almost entirely a dialogue between two stationary alchemists, imprisoned in adjacent cages for fraud and failure.

The fraud has grown accustomed to his fate. He knows he has cheated and was caught and is determined to make the most out of whatever life is left to him. His neighbor has failed, rather than faked, and like most failures in most media, he is certain that success almost had been his and certainly would be, if he could only be let out of his cage and back into the fire of active pursuit.

Their duality is an idiosyncratic variant of a classic opposition - and the playwright makes the most of it, alternating howlers with lines of sparking beauty and metaphysical truth.

I have digested act three less fully, since Friday was my first exposure to it and I have not found the time to return to the text since I got back home to St. Louis. After the entirely male domain of act two, it opens into the female world of Elizabeth Jane Weston, aka Westonia, a pioneering woman poet and the stepdaughter of the alchemist Kelley.

Really, act three is about the struggles of composition and the agonies of enduring someone else's editorial judgments, all finely tempered by gender politics which came as a major surprise to me. The alchemical themes and storylines of acts one and two are revisited and wrapped up, while the imagination is taken in an entirely new direction.

This new departure near the end that does not feel gratuitous nor irrelevant is a defining hallmark of successful longform writing. Just try to do it - I have tried - it is amazingly difficult to achieve.

I find I have said nothing about the production, directed by Marcus Kyd, but this is getting long, as it is; so I will return, later, to discuss the fun the Taffety Punks had with this difficult but rich play.

*

Image of Dee and Kelley raising a ghost is out there all over the web without attribution; hence none here.

Alderman explains why he videotaped his constituent on street in underwear

Yesterday I posted the police report about Alderman Jeffrey Boyd (St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay's favorite black alderman) videotaping a constituent who was standing in the street in the middle of the night wearing nothing but his underwear.

This is the statement Boyd sent in response. Andre Williams, the other person described by police as a "bystander" videotaping this humiliating incident, also is an elected official. He is the 22nd Ward committeeman.

*

Alderman Jeffrey Boyd's story:
On the night of April 16, 2010, I was parked in front of 5891 Martin Luther King Dr at approximately11:35 pm with my friend Andre Williams. This location is 5 doors from my office and next door to Mr. Williams’s restaurant. A few minutes later we observed an individual in underwear and socks in the middle of the intersection, when seconds later a police car arrived.

We observed the officers attempting to communicate with the half clothed gentlemen when I decided to videotape the interactions of the police officers and the gentleman. I was curious as to how they would handle this situation.

While standing on the sidewalk, an officer requested that I turn off my video phone. I complied; however rethought his request and decided that maybe I should be videotaping the incident. I attempted to videotape again when the officer demanded that I put the phone back into my pocket. Again I complied; however I asked the officer if I was doing anything illegal. He stated that I was interfering because he was standing next to me and not involved in the incident.

This was puzzling. I continued to ask the question in what way was I interfering when another officer tackled me from behind and handcuffed me. I told him that I was the Alderman. The officer escorted me to the back seat of the police car where I sat for approximately 30 minutes. He was heard verbally saying “this is your F’ing alderman. This is what is representing you”.

I was never told why I was being handcuffed or read any Miranda Rights. I feel that any citizen has the right to video tape any incident that involves the police. The police have no authority to violate the rights of citizens.

*

I am trying to make sense of this incident for tomorrow's St. Louis American. I do know one thing. If (God forbid) I ever lose my senses, and I am found nearly naked in the street by an elected official, I hope he does more to help me than to videotape my shame out of "curiosity".

And if the police trying to help me tell this elected official to get out of the way, I would hope he would get out of the way and not attempt to flex his aldermanic muscles.

The alderman, the cops, and the dude on the street in his underwear

This St. Louis Metropolitan Police Report on Mayor Francis G. Slay's favorite black alderman (Jeffrey Boyd) reads like a piece of speculative urban fiction.

*

Incident: Interfering with a Police Officer

Location: 5800 block of Dr. Martin Luther King Drive
Date/Time: 4/16/10@11:33pm

Police received a call for a “suspicious person” in the area of Dr. Martin Luther King Drive and Hamilton, described as a Black male who had taken off his clothes in the street. Officers arrived and observed the male standing in the middle of the street in only his underwear. The man, later determined to be 32 years old, was agitated and appeared to be in an altered state. He was pacing back and forth. The man would not answer any of the officers’ questions but officers were eventually able to convince the man to get out of the street and walk to the sidewalk.

While waiting for assistance from EMS to transport the man to a hospital, the officers on the scene saw two male bystanders in front of 5891 Dr. Martin Luther King who had their cell phones out and appeared to be videotaping the incident. The two men began to ask the 32 year old questions and comment on his behavior. The 32 year old had calmed down a bit from his earlier agitated state but officers feared he could again become irrational if the two bystanders continued to talk to him and videotape him while he wore only his underwear.

The officers asked the two men with the cell phones to step back. One of the men immediately complied. The second male, identified as [22nd Ward Alderman] Jeffrey Boyd, refused, stating he had the right to record video. Officers agreed he had the right but asked that he stop not only because the male was in his underwear, but also because of the man’s mental condition and the likelihood that it could agitate him, therefore posing a danger. Again they asked Mr. Boyd to step back and again Mr. Boyd refused. Concerned that they would be unable to diffuse the situation with Mr. Boyd while also keeping the 32 year old male from hurting himself or someone else, officers requested backup.

When an additional officer arrived, he noticed that the 32 year old appeared to be mentally unstable. An unidentified female approached, stating she did not know the male but that she had retrieved his clothing. The male began to put on his clothes while one of the officers talked to him in an attempt to keep him calm. As the officer talked to the man, the officer heard Mr. Boyd raising his voice as he spoke to other officers, telling them he was not going to move back. Mr. Boyd was asked a final time to move back but he again refused. Mr. Boyd was then told that he was being placed under arrest for “Interfering with a Police Officer” and was asked to put his hands behind his back. Initially he refused, telling the officers that they knew who he was. An officer then forcibly placed Mr. Boyd’s hands behind his back and handcuffed him. Mr. Boyd was issued a summons at the scene for “Interfering with a Police Officer” and released.

When EMS arrived, the 32 year old male had to be physically placed on the stretcher. For his own safety due to his irrational behavior and the potential to harm himself and/or others, he was handcuffed to the stretcher. He was not charged with any offense but was taken to a hospital for evaluation.

Bootblogging #19: Krakersy (is Crackers in Polish)

In my basement, which sometimes I curate as a museum, is a small Polish table flag. It was given to me on Red Mountain in Washingston state by a Polish ambassador to the U.S. We were drowning in Washington wine at the time. The wine made us happy, and happier.

The Polish ambassador, middle-aged and white-headed, but also tall and rugged, had with him a much younger wife. We were put together because she knew music people and I had been carrying on outside on the winery patio about Polish music.

As the Polish amabasador's wife settled in beside me, having made a dinner choice, in the winery's grand dining room, she asked me to tell her about the Polish music that I knew. I started talking about my Polish pen pal Krzysztof and his fantastic bands over the years, and next thing I know the amabasador's wife falls off her chair onto the winery floor.

Turns out Krzysztof's current band Buraky (Polish for "beets") was something of a well kept secret among people who knew the truly creative folk music of Poland. Their sense of tradition is more wild, and associated with more wild and mountainous places, than what mostly passes for Polish folk music - even in Poland, but especially here, where one finds mostly paint-by-numbers polka bands.

"I can't believe I come to a place like this and meet an American and he is talking to me about Buraky," the Polish ambassador's wife kept saying, over and over, though the wine, the hubbub of the official dinner, and the language problems kept us from getting much further than that shocking recognition over Buraky.

Jackson Browne once sang, "These days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do." "For you," Gregg Allman added, when he sang that song.

Today I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do for Polish music, and poetry. News of a plane full of Polish politicians going down behind enemy lines in Russia will do that to you. Especially if you once swung on Red Mountain with a rugged Polish ambassador and his young, smart, hip, drunk wife.

Here is one thing I forgot to do. I forgot to honcho an archival reissue of Krzysztof's college band, Krakersy (it means "crackers" in Polish). Krakersy formed around the Technical University in Wroclaw in 1979. I have in my possession most of their recordings, which are really wonderful.

I have long imagined producing a release called Krakersy: Polish pop, blues, rock, goof and cabaret from behind the Iron Curtain. I need  to go back to that project. After all, we never know how long we have. Do we?

Here is a taste ...

mp3s

"Stoje na warcie" (I am standing on guard)
Krakersy

Krzysztof Opalski notes: this song describes "dreams of the soldier, who is standing on the guard but thinking about a girl, not the military duties".

"Grochowka" (Bean soup)
Krakersy

Krzysztof Opalski notes: "Bean soup with sausage is typical military soup. The idea of this song was to write the hymn for bean soup."

"43"
Krakersy

Krzysztof Opalski notes: "The number 44 is from Adam Mickiewicz. He lived in XIX century and is so imporant here, like Lord Byron in England. 44 is a magic number, but 43 is missing something."

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More in this series

Bootblogging #1: Three by The Lettuce Heads

Bootblogging #2: Three elegies for local musicians
Bootblogging #3: Michael Shannon Friedman
Bootblogging #4: Three more by The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #5: Chuck Reinhart's guitar circle hits
Bootblogging #6: The silly side of The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #7: Songs for "Divorcing God"
Bootblogging #8: More songs for "Divorcing God
Bootblogging #9: Adam Long presents The Imps!
Bootblogging #10: More Michael Shannon Friedman
Bootblogging #11: The Adversary Workers
Bootblogging #12: The May Day Orchestra
Bootblogging #13: Solo Career live in Santa Monica
Bootblogging #14: Four from The Funhouse (Seattle punk)
Bootblogging #15: Four more from The Funhouse (Seattle punk rock)
Bootblogging #16: I will be your volunteer! (for Bob Slate)
Bootblogging #17: Yet more The Lettuce Heads

Bootblogging #18: Four by Russell Hoke

*

Photo is of Krakersy, back in the day.

DNA testing delays Clemons hearing

Attorneys for condemned man claim newly presented evidence justifies new trial

By Chris King

Of The St. Louis American

May 10, 2010 will no longer be a day of reckoning in the Reginald Clemons case, as DNA testing of newly presented evidence has forced a delay in the case plan laid out by the special master appointed by the Missouri Supreme Court.

Today Judge Michael Manners, the special master in the Clemons case, reported to Clemons’ counsel, the Missouri Attorney General and the Missouri Supreme Court that a new hearing date would be scheduled after a teleconference with attorneys on April 13.

Manners had been informed on March 25 that Clemons’ attorneys and the State had reached an agreement to submit the new evidence to DNA testing.

Joshua A. Levine, one of Clemons’ attorneys, wrote to Manners that “we are confident that further testing will only serve to confirm what is already established: no physical evidence connects [Clemons] to the crimes.”

In 1993 Clemons was convicted as an accomplice in the murders of Julie Kerry and Robin Kerry. Two days after his interrogation by St. Louis police, after being sent to the hospital for treatment of injuries, Clemons filed a complaint that he had been denied the rights to silence and counsel during his interrogation. He also claimed that his confession was coerced and scripted after an hour and half of beatings.

In this allegedly coerced and scripted confession, he said he raped Robin Kerry but not Julie Kerry. He never confessed to murder, and he has never been tried nor convicted of rape. However, the charge of rape was used as a “sentence enhancer” by prosecutor Nels C. Moss in his successful push for the death penalty.

The newly presented evidence includes a rape kit taken from the corpse identified as Julie Kerry. Robin Kerry’s body never was found.

Also in the newly presented evidence: a condom, clothing that purportedly belonged to Clemons’ codefendant Marlin Gray, and what Manners describes as “a light-colored hair recovered” from Gray’s clothing.

Gray was executed by the State of Missouri in 2005.

Clemons’ execution was scheduled for June 17, 2009 before a federal court issued a stay of execution while it ruled on a separate procedural matter. In the meantime, the Missouri Supreme Court surprisingly opened a new evidence phase by appointing a special master with subpoena powers.

In his original jury trial, Clemons’ attorneys requested any evidence taken from the Kerry corpse in a pre-trial motion. His current attorneys insist the sudden unearthing of this old evidence proves Clemons deserves a new trial.

As Levine wrote to Manners on March 25, “Due process demands that [Clemons] be granted a new trial to fairly evaluate all exculpatory evidence suppressed by the State, which includes not only the rape kit and lab report, but also the draft police report altered by the prosecutor in this case and other evidence uncovered during the discovery process.”

This passage offers a glimpse into even more newly uncovered evidence in this new, unprecedented evidence phase of a man who had been sentenced to die.

On standing apart in St. Louis

So I put in the CD, and that was it, my car CD became a black hole. OOoommmph.

It would spit the CD back out, after a little juju from me, but put the disc back in and, lights out, the CD deck is suddenly silent blank dashboard.

So, I am down to radio now, when I am in the car. In St. Louis, I knew, that was totally cool. We have KDHX here - my favorite radio station in the universe. I'd have thought that KDHX would be my sole, varied and sustainable musical diet.

Here is the super big surprise. It's actually not the only station I listen to in my CD-void car. KDHX is probably not even getting a pure majority of my ear time. It's getting a plurality of my plays, and it's still my favorite radio station in the universe (competing with BBC Radio 3 and KUSC in Los Angeles), but there is way more out there on the dial in St. Louis.

I'd always dismissed Classic 99 as schmaltzy and Romantic. I was an idiot. It is an edgy, essential, often profoundly strange, and thrilling venue for classical music. Some days I start out on Classic 99 and visit several hundred worlds on the way to work without ever moving the dial.

But, it has commercials - which pay the bills, I know - but it's hard to take your medicine. Jazz is a lateral move from classical, and KDHX has very little jazz, so often I light over on to WSIE - a station I had associated with soft jazz and derivative bop, again proving my idiocy. WSIE is often adventurous and almost never dull, full of surprises and quirky jazz.

With those three stations, KDHX and Classic 99 and WSIE, I could live only on the FM dial in St. Louis, but for the large glut of blues music on FM 88.1, so often scheduled during drive time. I am mostly for the scratchy and trance country blues, and I don't get much of that on KDHX blues shows, so I switch it on over to AM.

And that is where lurks 1430 AM, which is absolutely off the hook, insanely great and varied, an encyclopedic oldies - in many, many months of listening, now, I have only heard one song twice, a song by the Beach Boys, and only one band I don't need to ever hear again: the Beach Boys.

Thom and Stefene Fletcher Russell sing songs of praise to 770 AM, so I have added that station to my arsenal; and holy gamole, the Mexican pop music just hops and pops and sparkles.

Weird thing for me, just as I am making these discoveries, learning how varied is our local dial in St. Louis, the mighty KDHX is dramatically streamlining its self-presentation. Not the music, mind you, just the package.

"Independent music plays here," we are told, or the producers are made to tell us. That assertion of independence is the most forced, repetitious and robotic thing I am told anywhere on the edges of my St. Louis dial.

As an assertion, it is true, and not true, which makes it not worth asserting. Is Bob Dylan independent? Only in a spiritual sense of independence that is beside the point. Is Springsteen independent? Stevie Wonder? KDHX plays so much beautiful music that is coopted by the industry and mass-produced, and that is fine by me; I wish more beautiful music could be successfully coopted by the industry and mass-produced.

Also, I wonder, is "independent" synonymous with good? Not to me. I love symphonic music and opera, and they are always elaborately institutionalized. These musical forms are simply too expensive to produce without a strong institutional basis. Dependent music plays on Classic 99 - and, in St. Louis afternoon drive time, that dependent music is kicking the ass of any independent music on the dial.

KDHX's new didactic formatting is also telling me that the station "stands apart". Yaaaaawwwn. That is true in only one sense. On a St. Louis dial full of stations that really do stand apart, KDHX is the only one puffing up and telling me it is doing so.

*

Photograph by Thom Fletcher

A six pack of me published in The Nation magazine

During the years the internet was being popularized and adopted by newspapers, I was a traveling musician who paid my meager bills through freelance journalism. As such, I had a front-row seat as editors began to experiment with uploading print copy and developing standards for acquiring and asserting rights to digital publication.

I am a bit ashamed of one incident.

I had traveled to western North Carolina, found the descendents of the balladeer and song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and instigated a Smithsonian/Folkways release of his work on CD. I reported this adventure in a long feature story that I managed to sell to several weekly newspapers in Bascom's home state.

Years later, looking for information on Bascom, I found my story uploaded and archived on one of those newspaper's websites. The webpage that displayed my story was lined with advertising. No one had ever asked me if they could republish my story digitally or paid me to do so. I found the editor's phone number (I recognized his name; I had worked with him on the initial print version) and left him a nasty message.

He called back, justly offended. In the end, I let him keep the story up on their site, didn't demand any additional payment, and felt ashamed at my nastiness.

This memory came back to me yesterday. Searching for a link about Wole Soyinka, I found a page on The Nation magazine website where they are peddling digital copies of archival stories. And there was a long lead review of a Soyinka book I had written for The Nation in 1996, available for purchase.

The Nation is a venerable left-wing magazine published out of New York. They do important advocacy journalism, and I was immensely proud to review books for them and get paid for my work. They won't be receiving any nasty calls or letters from me, and I hope my old efforts on their behalf are bringing them some scratch now to continue their mission.

In fact, I searched the site for my author name so I could set up a little satellite store for them here. Seems like I did more work than this for them back then, but this is what they have archived for my byline:

The death of a clown. A review of a collection of poetry by Roque Dalton.

Less than exotic in Zaire. A review of a novel by Sony Labou Tansi.

Gay in Istanbul. A review of Blind Cat Black by Ece Ayhan.

Marx in Mozambique. A review of a work of post-coloniali African history.

Coffin for an Oligarchy. A review of Open Sore of a Continent by Wole
Soyinka.

Scream, memory. A review of two testimonial books about the Latin American disappeared.

Any of these stories would set you back $2.95, though there are discounts for volume.

Given that they have archived exactly six (6) of my stories, I do regret there isn't a discounted fee for specifically that many articles; for I would very much like to offer you a six pack of ... me! In The Nation magazine.

When Adlai got the Tea Party treatment in Dallas

In The St. Louis American's obligatory report this week on the passage of health insurance reform, I got a good quote out of U.S. Rep. Lacy Clay. I had asked him if he had spoken with his colleague U.S. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver after Cleaver (a pastor) was spat on by a presumably racist protestor on Capitol Hill.

"He was lucky he picked a man of the cloth," Clay said of the protestor. "If he had picked me, I would not have turned the other cheek."

In a week where incivility and threats of violence ruled American politics, I am glad we were spared the image of Congressman Clay wading into a Tea Party crowd and opening a can of whoop ass.

My wife follows this action on her free time, but since I give at the office, when she turns on her CNN at night I retreat into a neutral corner to read a book. This week I have been reading Dallas Justice: The Real Story of Jacky Ruby and His Trial* by Ruby's lead trial attorney, Melvin M. Belli.

Because Belli thought he and his client were crucified in the Dallas media, which he viewed as a mouthpice for the mid-century Dallas oligarchy, Belli sets a stage for how out of control that oligarchy was at the time - and their coziness with what he describes as "right-wing fanatics".

This all sounds drearily familiar. There even was a spat-upon Democrat, though this incident was absent of race.

Less than a month before President Kennedy arrived in Dallas for his unscheduled appointment with history, his Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson** was in town to address a Dallas UN Association meeting.

Stevenson was protested by a group calling itself "The National Indignation Committee," sort of a nice, all-purpose protest moniker. After the speech, exiting the building, Stevenson crossed police lines to reason with a woman who had yelled a vicious phrase at him.

At that point another protestor clubbed the diplomat over the head with a picket sign, Belli notes, "and two young men spat on him."

In another echo of the farce of today, "Bruce Alger, the right-wing Republican Congressman from Dallas, disputed the need for a City Council apology to the Ambassador."

Less than a month later, the U.S. president was shot dead in the same city.

FOOTNOTES

* I am reading about Jack Ruby because our arts organization, Poetry Scores, is setting to music (and staging other multimedia events) around the long poem Jack Ruby's America by David Clewell. Long after we picked Clewell and started to work on this project, he was named Missouri Poet Laureate.

** Adlai Stevenson is a great uncle of one of my best and oldest friends, the producer Lij, who cofounded Poetry Scores and coproduced the first poetry score with me.

I got a new thing for a new (old) baseball team

I'm making a new commitment tonight. I'm committing to the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville Cougars baseball team.

I drifted into a pregame interview on WSIE 88.7 FM this evening. WSIE is a jazz station hosted by the university, my third pick on the local radio dial, after Classic 99 and KDHX.

I expected jazz, but when I heard two people talking baseball, I had to soak in some of their dialogue, after this long hard winter, just to hear the old beloved lingo.

The radio guy was talking to the head coach of the baseball team. The coach sounded frank, not quite biting, about how his team is shaping up in the early spring. The radio guy asked good questions. I liked their rapport.

After the coach left us, hoping his starting pitching would give his team a chance to win, the radio guy started talking up the starting lineups. Immediately, I fell under the spell of baseball player names, which I consider a species of magical language.

I can read any box score from any team in any league from any era. I really can. Just the magic of the random names, and the satisfaction of matching fielding position to spot in the batting order. You know the variations, all those sleek leadoff shortstops, the squat backstops who bat eighth (just in front of the second baseman), the hulking corner outfielders and beef-fisted first basemen who clean up.

In the game tonight, SIUE at the Evansville (Indiana) Purple Aces -> I know, I know, I know; the Purple Aces! the fricking Purple Aces! -> there were two grand baseball player names in the starting lineups: a third baseman named Cody Thick, and a right-handed starting pitcher named Keegan Dennis.

Cody Thick, 3B !

Keegan Dennis, P !

Actually, now that I search to see who plays on which team, and if it was all really real, I see that third baseman is actually Cody Fick, not Thick, which - and I hadn't dreamt it was possible! - I like even better.

Cody Fick, 3B !
Keegan Dennis, P !

Both of these magical baseball player names happen to belong to the Purple Aces, the Indiana nine, but I don't mind. I'm following the Cougars, the hometown guys. After all, the next opposing team down the road will bring all new glorious additions to the alchemical literary tradition of the box score.

The SIUE Cougars are, by the way, very much my hometown team. I grew up one long grueling bike ride from the campus where these guys play ball. A big rangy lefthanded power-hitting first baseman cousin of mine used to play for them. Thanks to that connection, much SIUE baseball Cougar branded sportswear - typically threadbare from having been worn down by a power-hitting cousin of a first baseman - have adorned me.

So, play ball! I'm down with y'all. I'll be finding you on the radio, and here on my laptop (where the local boys just dropped one, 3-2, in extra innings; tough luck; but the starting pitching certainly did hang in there long enough to give the team a chance to win).

I really like the radio guy, Joe Pott, a working professional rather than a passionate campus amateur; though he does have passion. Pott reminds me a bit of my personal favorite baseball announcer (sorry, Cardinals fans): Gary Cohen, the voice of The New York Mets. I look forward to getting to know Joe Pott's game flow and combing through his broadcasts for nuggets of play-by-play lyricism.

Play by play only, at this point. He has no color commentator calling the games with him. Kind of restraining myself, at this point, from considering myself in tranining for a walk-on pro bono role as Joe Pott's color commentator.

And what is a thing for a baseball team without some trips to the park?

I am sure if I stick with this thing, I will go looking for some married/guy/with/child hall passes for weekend games (or perhaps packing the whole family for a budget good time - homegame tickets are in the $5-7 dollar range, as opposed to the $57 range).

But let's start with the easy part. I have negotiated Wednesday nights to myself after I make newspaper deadline. And the boys do have a few Wednesday night games under the lights on the schedule, all against "Saint Louis", which must be SLU.

Wednesday nights with the baseball Cougars

7 p.m. April 14, hosting Saint Louis on SIUE campus

7 p.m. April 28 at Saint Louis

7 p.m. May 12 against Saint Louis in Sauget

That there gig at SLU competes with a night of classical music at The Sheldon I had spec'd - there is so damn much to do in St. Louis! - what to do?

*

Dirty baseball picture from somebody's Flickr.