Where the Sun Shines a Different Color Every Day

Richard Brautigan is one of my favorite
favorite
favorite writers of all time, love, emptiness, and beyond.

A good friend of mine loaned me a loved and well-worn copy of Revenge of the Lawn that had belonged to his father, our-aged, when we were nineteen or twenty, and I've been in love with the infinite magic of his style ever since. Mystery wraps itself warmly around the words in these pages, and paints beautiful and surreal images onto the open space of all the free evenings I've spent reading and rereading his short novels, stories and poetry.

Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1935, lived and wrote out his life in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, traveled through the ebbing Beat Generation and emerging Counterculture Movement of the late 1960s and early '70s, and weaved it all into his work. He died in Bolinas, California in 1984 and is survived by daughter Ianthe.


















































Gee, You're So Beautiful That It's Starting to Rain
Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A

Computer Magic
A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
A

Finding out about Fish
A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
A+!



Boo, Forever
Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.



***

[black & white images various LIFE magazines, poems from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster,brautigan.net]

Sweet & Slade, glam rock part two

When I'm feeling blue, I often find that the over-the-top exploits of glam rock lifts my spirits. I'm serious as can be! It's the boisterous wild-child spirit of rock & roll, the cartoonish Let's-play-Dress-Up and be brash; the silly, outrageous, rambunctious, anything-goes embodiment of fun. Who can argue that big hair, glitter everywhere, spacey silver and sky-high platform boots with shiny jumpsuits are the ultimate rockstar boogie fantasy? Makeup, costumes, guitars wailing, kitsch and camp. It's not deep; it's just a good time.

From T. Rex to the Sweet and Slade (featured here), Suzi Quatro, Alice Cooper, early David Bowie and Roxy Music, The Glitter Band, Wizzard, the New York Dolls, the list goes on...

Anyway, here are two of the biggest names of the period: fabulous British exports straight from the top-of-the-charts glittering 1970s, the Sweet and Slade! Of course, the crowd goes wild...

Suzi Q, First Lady of Glam

Born in Detroit, Suzi Quatro first began playing music with her sisters in an all-girl garage group called the Pleasure Seekers (which would later become Cradle) while in her early teens. British producer Mickie Most became interested in working with Suzi as a solo act when he happened to see Cradle perform while in town to work on a Motown album for Jeff Beck. Although she wrote some of her own songs (along with her husband and guitarist Len Tuckey), most of her recordings were penned by the songwriting duo of Mike Chapman & Nicky Chinn, who also wrote for fellow glam rockers the Sweet. Suzi had a string of glitter/bubblegum/raunch-fused hits in the U.K. during the mid-late '70s, but failed to really make waves with her music in the U.S.: her American star lit up with her stint as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days, the guitar-playing, sass-talking rocker girlfriend to The Fonz.