Rare Vintage Concert & Radio Music on your Computer

Go to Concert Vault for an amazing number of vintage live concert audio and radio, etc. Just listened to Bonnie Bramlett at Bottom Line in NYC 1978.

List includes rock, country, jazz etc. Many are Fillmore concerts.

Listening now to a full set of The Byrds, late show at Fillmore West 1970, with Clarence White on guitar. Clarence was the great country blues influence that changed the Byrds forever. I saw The Byrds in St Louis in late sixties when the local country rock group Spur opened for them. I got to go backstage at rehearsal the afternoon of the concert. I didn’t get to meet them although they were right there but Clarence looked me in the face and nodded. “This Wheels On Fire”. I was very impressionable and star struck at that age.

Clarence was killed years ago. “You don’t miss your water ‘til the well’s gone dry”.

Next up Merle Haggard, Bob Marley, John Anderson, BB King.

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Add this to your favorites. Good stuff! Enjoy!

Gary

Bonnie Bramlett - Movie Star!

I just talked to Bonnie Bramlett regarding her part in the new Kevin Costner movie, The Guardian, which was just released. Bonnie plays a blues club owner named Maggie and got rave revues.

“There are lots of peripheral roles, and all the actors are quite engaging. Bonnie Bramlett is phenomenal as the crusty owner of a blues bar where the guys hang out; the role gives us several chances to hear her glorious singing. (Baby boomers may remember Bramlett as the co-leader of Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, an R&B band that included Eric Clapton.)”. ~ Marty Clear, St Petersburg Times

It’s a small speaking role but reportedly Bonnie does a great job pulling off a southern accent – and she gets to sing!

Bonnie asked that all her fans and friends go see the movie and let her know what you think. Email me and I’ll pass your comments along. I’m to report back next Monday.

Bonnie plans to concentrate on acting for the near future and also will be touring some to support her new CD, Roots, Blues and Jazz. I have a copy and it’s great.

Previously Bonnie appeared as a bartender in the 1991 movie “The Doors” the story of Jim Morrison and also was a regular on the Roseanne show playing the part of “Bonnie”, Roseanne’s best friend and fellow waitress at the diner. So, she played a bartender and then a waitress and now is a club owner. Look’s like she’s making progress in the acting world. I predict a co-star role in the future.

A few days ago her daughter Bekka Bramlett, pictured here with her mama,Bonnie, appeared on MSNBC’s Imus In The Morning with Sam Moore of Sam and Dave fame and blew everyone away with her vocal trades with Sam. Imus was obviously impressed. Bekka looks so much like her mom did at that age it’s scary. When those two perform together it’s a real treat to see and hear them trading vocal riffs on handclapping, gutsy blues numbers. Bekka should be a major recording star. Can’t imagine why she isn’t.

Bonnie’s mother Ruth Nizinski, originally of Granite City but for the last six or more years a resident of Nashville, passed away in February of this year, she was 85. Ruth worked in the insurance industry there in St.Louis until she retired. Ruth lived with Bonnie here in Nashville and Bonnie says she misses her terribly.

Bonnie sends her regards to all her old friends back in Illinois that used to catch her act when she sang at the Whirlaway, Radisons, and with Billy Peak and Ike Turner at Gaslight Square and other local clubs.

Gary

For more info about the movie and Bonnie, her career and music go to her website www.bonniebramlett.com

A Case for Immortality

In the New Testament, Saint John describes the Logos as God, the Creative Word, which has a holy existence and power over all existence. Even giving spiritual power to the utterance of the word God itself. Therefore, most people regard the Greek word Logos to mean exclusively “Word”, but they are mistaken.

“- as any philosophically educated Greek of the time knew, "Logos" doesn't just mean "word" in a literal or even in a lively metaphorical sense. It's more along the lines of "the rational principle of the universe." It's the underlying pattern of the cosmic fabric, the warp and weft by which all things hang together. It's why things make sense--the reason cause follows effect--the law of non-contradiction -- the creative mind that accounts for why there is something rather than nothing. Because the Logos is, everything else is too. Above change, beyond time, outside of space: prepositions break down in the face of the Logos. It's the first and final cause of the whole created world.”

The 6th-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to use the term Logos in a metaphysical sense. He asserted that the world is governed by a fire-like Logos, a divine force that produces the order and pattern discernible in the flux of nature.

Lao Tzu and those who followed him understood this as well but referred to this “cosmic fabric, the warp and weft by which all things hang together”, and this, “divine force that produces the order and pattern discernible in the flux of nature”, as the Tao. Others use the word ”God” to describe this never ending, ubiquitous, all-permeating power, energy, or whatever you wish to call it, as the source of all existence, the creator, the father or the mother if you prefer.

Conversely, it becomes fairly easy when considering God, the Tao, the life-giving force, the vastness and mystery of the universe and the interconnectedness of all things to consider the soul immortal, especially when you consider that no thing actually dies or disappears, they only take on new forms; are dispersed and absorbed into one another.

Because of our mind and its processing of sensory information provided by our only sensing apparatus (the five physical senses) we are locked into this sphere of a limited conceptual thought allowing that once a living thing enters the stage of what we refer to as death, the loss of spirit and the decay of physical properties, life ends. But all evidence is to the contrary.

While we accept that life begins from the interaction of living microscopic cells, we have difficulty accepting that in death it reverts back to living microscopic cells. When the form of a rock, tree, animal or any “living” form “dies”, the molecules that make up that form do not die or disappear, they just disassemble and move on to interact with and become reassembled as a part of a new form or substance. The body, the plant, the organic cellular structure, breaks down into miniscule parts that are still alive but no longer a part of the larger organism. They enter the earth the air, the water and are picked up and reassembled as part of many other living organisms. They become metabolic energy and are gathered up and incorporated into new life – they continue to live. So it’s a given that the physical elements that make up our bodies do not die.

So, what about the other part of life forms, the one that seems to live in us as the observer, the spiritual being that occupies this life form we call a body? It’s easy to conceive that whatever constitutes “the soul” of all living organisms is part of the “Tao”, or “God”, etc. and that this “soul” or the “spirit”, just like the physical components, does not die and moves on to inhabit and become the living expression of another life form.

In the Phaedo, Socrates’ great discourse on the immortality of the soul, Socrates asserts (while slowly dying of poison), "I cannot imagine anything more self-evident than the fact that absolute beauty and goodness and all the rest ... exist in the fullest possible sense." In the same dialogue, Socrates wonders, "Is there any certainty in human sight and hearing, or is it true, as the poets are always dinning into our ears, that we neither hear nor see anything accurately?" Philosophers have argued ever since whether sensory input aids or arrests the quest for knowledge.
Socrates has no doubts about what puts the distance between him and the pure knowledge of pure being for which he longs. It's his body. His soul is always being led astray in its search for truth, because his body attracts distractions. Socrates lists them: "diseases which attack and hinder us in our quest for reality.... The body fills us with loves and desires and tears and all sorts of fancies and a great deal of nonsense.... Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires."
Socrates fully believed in an afterlife of the spirit and like Jesus and so many other great spiritual masters he authored no written work and lived a life of simplicity. He held “- that to need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach divinity.”

At the root of the charges that led to his death sentence was the fact that Socrates was corrupting the youth but the truth was he publicly criticized many of those in power showing their judgments and decisions to be flawed, lacking intelligence and good reason. Regarding the issue Socrates suggested that he had made many abiding enemies by personally approaching people who had reputations for wisdom only to reveal through questionings that their wisdom was specious. Others had been alienated by young persons who had witnessed Socrates' methods of questioning similarly revealing yet other people's pretensions to wisdom to be baseless. Socrates made the case that his questions had tended to vindicate the utterance of the Oracle at Delphi that “no one was wiser than Socrates” by showing that he, Socrates, did indeed have a particular claim to wisdom in that he at least fully recognized his own ignorance.

Socrates was also accused of being an atheist and neglecting the Gods. Those charges and the death sentence that was delivered underscores that right-wing religious fundamentalists have always had a penchant for violence and murder.

Perhaps as a mockery, the last words Socrates spoke were to remind his friend Crito they owed a chicken sacrifice to Aesculapius the Greek God of Medicine for the Hemlock he had drank to end his life. “Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius; please pay it and don't let it pass.”

Gary

Religion and Politics Don’t Mix

I believe people of good virtue should enter politics. The fact we don’t have enough virtuous people in politics has become painfully obvious in these times. But I don’t think elected representatives should bring their strict religious beliefs to the party. They should be checked at the door to the capitol building and the door to the White House.

I agree with Shree Rajneesh when he said as long as religion is allowed to become the mainspring of politics we will continue to be a world in turmoil because politics means sectarianism. And religion should have absolutely nothing to do with sectarianism. Religion is an individual commitment to spirituality he says and should not become sectarian. Politics are totally sectarian, and there is no relationship to spirituality. “Politics survives on sectarianism, sectarianism survives on hatred, and hatred survives on blood – and the mischief goes on “, Rajneesh says.

During the era in which I grew up, politics, divisive as they are, were left outside the church sanctuary. Once inside all who entered were brothers and sisters in the spirit of the church, a sanctuary to practice individual spiritual commitment.

The word sanctuary means a place of asylum, of immunity, a refuge from the world of political sectarianism. Throughout history churches and temples gave refuge to fugitives who were immune from arrest by civil authorities while they were in the church or temple sanctuary.

Those who bring political sectarianism into the church are destroying the church as a sanctuary for those who seek spirituality and a refuge from the troubles of the secular world.

Gary

Now and Zen

The reason I chose Now and Zen to title these remarks is that in Zen philosophy there is no “then” – there is only “now”. If you are waiting for things to get better or waiting to reach some milepost before you act, or for a miracle to happen that will make your life bearable, you’re going to miss out on life.

Life is now! Right at this very moment, and that is the only point in your existence that you can experience. Right this second. Now!

The illusion of the future is always melting into or “becoming” the moment of existence - a fleet sensation - the “now” of your life. What once was the immediate future envisioned in your mind a moment ago has just become this very nanosecond you are now experiencing. This “present moment” then quickly becomes the unalterable past. It may be a disappointment, a missed opportunity, but only if you let it.

The “wish I had done it” doesn’t matter anymore if you didn’t do it. The promise “I’ll do it next time - or next week” is not something you can guarantee or predict. Do what you feel is the right thing to do “now”, drop the past and drop the future.

The future is unknown and along with what you might reasonably anticipate, it also brings the unexpected. The only control you have is over this very moment - where the rubber meets the road to use a popular analogy – and how you process it. This moment is the point of action, the only point of reference to life you have. Even if you use your memory or the thoughts and ideas of recorded history to mold it – this moment is your experience of the life you live - moment to moment. This is your moment of being. It’s your writing on the page of life, your footprint in the sand. It’s your creation, the energy of your existence interacting with the energy of the universe. And it’s your experience, the shaping of your soul. This is your only chance to experience the sensory sensations you are blessed with. Right now at this moment.

Life has the illusion of flowing like a river but does it really? Is it just a series of moments like the individual still frames of a movie film that creates the illusion of continuity, linearity and time? Or like the alternating currents of AC electrical power does it ebb and flow as a sine wave? Is the wave peak the life experience and the trough the non-living opposite, the push pull which together gives life to all living things and to all existence?

Or does it even matter that we understand except for the fact that the here and now is the only life worth living?

If you live in the past you are avoiding the present, obsessing over what could or should have been (we’re all guilty), and if you live in an imaginary future you are putting life off and avoiding the present. Experiencing each of life’s moments to the maximum is an acquired ability that few ever succeed in achieving – the so called “enlightened beings” among us. There are degrees of ability of course, but anyone can become enlightened in a general sense.

How do you live in the moment? By just “being” completely in the moment and not somewhere else is one explanation but the ability of “just being” has many facets and challenges. Drop the self they say. Get rid of the ego. Quit filtering nature through an intellectual sieve (like what I’m doing at this moment).

Here’s an exercise or two to allow you to experience what it means to be fully in the moment.

Find a quiet place where you won’t be distracted or interrupted, a place to meditate so to speak. Now, take either hand and concentrate on it. Look at your hand carefully as you slowly move your fingers as if to grip something in the claw made by your fingers. Look carefully at how the hand operates, the beauty of it, and the intricacy. Focus on only your hand.

Think of how much like a bird of prey’s claw your hand is, how much like other animals your hand functions. Exclude all thought other than your hand and the miracle that causes it to move the way it does almost instinctively without your command. Think about how you, using your mind, can make your fingers work individually, and the wrist to turn just so and how robotic and machine-like it seems. Think about the chemicals and neuron transmitters that cause the various ligaments and muscles to interact and perform whatever it is you would like the hand to do. As you focus, become your hand, but detach yourself from it at the same time.

If you concentrate long enough you will begin to marvel at this creation that is so critical to your existence. The hand almost looks as if it has life and powers of its own. Then drop all intellectual analysis. Allow your mind to view it as a separate living entity but realize your oneness with it. If you allow yourself to be completely absorbed with your hand and its miraculous abilities you will experience to some degree what it means to meditate, to be an observer and to live completely in the moment - being totally aware.

You can do this with any activity at any time.

Living in the moment means having full sensory awareness at the deepest level of what you are experiencing.

If you are washing your face, devote your attention to it. Become an observer by becoming fully aware of washing your face, the feel of the water temperature, the feel of the soap’s lather and its fragrance, the movement of your hands. Act with intent – not robotically. Make graceful movements, smooth, not rough and vigorous. Take responsibility but let go at the same time. Totally absorb the experience. See and feel the difference.

When you walk, be mindful of (observe) how you walk and walk with intention but also walk with mindfulness of balance and grace. When you move your arms and hands to accomplish a task be mindful of and observe their movement, move with balance and grace like a dancer, whether you’re peeling potatoes, turning a wrench or lifting a box. Whether you’re writing a letter or driving a car. Be mindful of the experience, be totally alert and into the moment. It takes practice but if you pay attention you can do it – and then it will eventually become second nature.

Concentrate on smooth, graceful actions, as those who practice Tai Chi, not herky-jerky, overly quick, coarse and reckless movements subject to mistake and accident. But you should be able to do this without losing yourself to what is going on around you. You can walk, or drive, or operate machinery with increased awareness, with grace and with mindfulness and attention yet with detachment, and you can still remain aware of all the dangers and hazards of life. You can be the observer and still be in control.

Many of those who excel in sports have incorporated being here and now into their game. Watch Scott Rolen, third baseman for the St Louis Cardinals. Rolen is ever mindful and graceful. Even when acting quickly with snap judgment he’s graceful in his motions. In baseball parlance they say he has “smooth” hands. Watch him and you’ll see he stays completely in the game, ever attentive and “in the moment”. Being “in the zone” is another description. Unfortunately for the Cardinals their pitching staff has not learned how to stay “in the moment”. It’s also true of most of the other players when at the plate batting.

For most of us “being in the moment” has to become intentional before it can become natural. You have to be mindful to become unmindful and natural. In Zen they refer to the enlightened person as an observer, someone who observes there own behavior and actions, detached from but mindful of every action and emotional response.

Sometimes living in the here and now happens without intent – as it should and as it happened when you were an infant. All babies and little children live in the here and now. They experience life in the moment without the encumbrance and baggage of knowledge, training and conditioning that eventually kills our ability to experience life fully and at its best. Few adults have retained the ability to observe and stay focused like a small child in its first years of life.

When you view a beautiful sunset or majestic view and you become captured by the moment, that’s being totally in the moment. As you become slack-jawed, entranced and are absorbed by the experience, that’s experiencing life as it was intended by God. By keeping your attention on being in the moment - completely, here and now - you will become more awakened to the richness of life and will enter the territory of what it means to be “one” with existence.

Who can have more? Who can be richer than that?