Wildlife: Sad news -- the rangers shot a black bear for nosing around West Glacier.
It was actually nosing around a couple of kids who were hiding under a car in fear.
Still sad -- but necessary in this case.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: The rain keeps falling, and the Weather Service predicts another band of moisture from the Pacific.

Charity Alert: The Literacy Site -- each click means a free book for somebody this week, so I'll leave this link alone.

Media Watch: A new documentary Double Dare on PBS's Independent Lens last night -- an excellent look at two women who earn their living performing stunts. Jeannie Epper did all the jumps, falls, and fighting for Lynda Carter on TV's Wonder Woman twenty-five years ago, and still works in Hollywood today. Young Zoë Bell worked as primary stunt-double for Lucy Lawless on Xena: Warrior Princess in New Zealand, then travelled to L.A. and China when that gig finished. She won an international award for Kill Bill, where she stood in for Uma Thurman, and deserved it! The film mentioned that she injured herself during Kill Bill -- enough to stay out of action for a year or more.
PBS' website about Double Dare
I woke up 'way too early, and watched first-rate movie villain Basil Rathbone playing a snobbish good-guy detective named Philo Vance in The Bishop Murder Case from 1930. I like seeing movies made in the days before drab formulas homogenized everything.
Illustrated Bishop Murder Case Synopsis
(A low-brow policeman makes a spoken reference to Sherlock Holmes in this flick -- many years before Rathbone placed his own indellible stamp on Doyle's character.)

Wildlife: More ducklings on Middle Foy's Lake! There's a family with about seven tiny Mallards.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Thank you Lord! The rain started again, right after Memorial Day.

Charity Alert: The Literacy Site -- each click means a free book for somebody this week.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art starts FOUR new shows this week -- Winold Reiss: Artist for the Great Northern; Splendid Was the Trail: Photographs of the National Forests by KD Swan 1911-1947; Recent Acquisitions; Crown of the Continent: Glacier National Park Permanent Exhibition featuring photographers TJ Hileman and Herman Schnitzmeyer; Exhibits at the Hockaday
I'm taking a fast road trip this weekend to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Bozeman, Montana to gather up five more Reiss paintings in time for the grand opening on June 9.
I'm off to run a combination web-seminar and conference call at Flathead Valley Community College. This remote stuff is taking a lot of time lately!

Media Watch: CSPAN had a re-run of a conference about Media Ownership, Media Bias that was rarely on topic, but it was interesting to see journalists discuss the various ways they get it wrong. William Keller (of the NY Times) had a lame excuse about their credulity towards Bush administration claims of Iraqi WMD. He said "Everyone else was fooled too." (Your paper simply cringed before the power of the White House and didn't do its job, Keller.)
I'm reading Stephen King's On Writing -- a mixture of autobiography and opinion by somebody with a track record.

Wildlife: Ducklings on Middle Foy's Lake! We saw at least two families while canoeing in the early afternoon.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Perfect Memorial Day weekend weather -- burnt the hell out of my pale (now red) skin -- gotta use sunblock.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site -- click to help someone help someone else.

(New Category) Garage Sale Booty: Treasure Island a trade edition from 1938, with all of N.C. Wyeth's illustrations; An autographed book by Ex-president Jimmy Carter; A Supercat puzzle by B. Kliban: A sculpted bird feeder -- suitable for Niger seed.

Media Watch: TV was pretty depressing -- too many war movies, which often dishonor the dead with insensitive fantasies -- making a profit from distorting the real stories of heroes we try to celebrate on Memorial Day.
Speaking of dishonor -- General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was telling some serious lies on the Sunday morning interview circuit. Many TV talking heads are paid to propagandize, and spin whoppers, but not him. He's either delusional, or dishonest, about our country's illegaly-mistreated captives, and the failing terror-war.

Here's something I'm happy about! My friend and KRCL-campadre, Barb Guy -- Ace DJ from Salt Lake City (who played a lot of Reggae on both commercial and community radio stations) published the following piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, which I picked up from www.commondreams.org:

They Also Serve Who Stand for Peace by Barb Guy
On Memorial Day, we honor people who have gone to perilous places with a strong commitment in their hearts. They risk danger and their own death because they feel passionate about a cause.
My dad, born in 1920, was the right age to fight in World War II, but he didn't go because he had a bum heart, a result of childhood rheumatic fever. My father-in-law, born in 1919, didn't go either. He was excused because his heart was too good - he was a conscientious objector. He spent the war doing "alternative service" in the states, jumping out of airplanes to fight forest fires in the West.
I would never argue that those who fight and to die for our country aren't heroes. I think very often they are. I know I'm not capable of making that level of sacrifice, and I also know I have personally benefited from the work of those who are. I am one of the legion in our country who take time on Memorial Day to consider the sacrifices that have been made by people who have fought and died to keep us safe and free.
But on Memorial Day I also honor those who work to end war - or to avert it. Our diverse country is big enough for many kinds of heroes, including people who work for peace.
My father-in-law, Hubert, quietly told his draft board that he didn't want to kill anyone and he stood bravely to face the tough consequences. When he tells me about it now, the memories are softened by the 63 years since his decision. The passion he must have felt has given way to a quiet humor. A man who reveres music, the dramatic arts and literature, he tells me that he just wasn't cut out to kill. He adds, "I'm also not good at marching in rows."
I know it was the killing that kept him home from the war, not the marching.
Guys just as sweet, just as peace-loving and artsy as Hubert made the other decision, the decision to go and fight for their country. Looking back from 2005, Hubert says that the men who went to war and those who didn't got along fine. In his college crowd there was no shame in becoming a conscientious objector.
I ask Hubert about his brothers who served in the military, the people in his town, and in the broader society - what did they say about his opting out of the war. He says only that some people were angry and some were OK, adding that introspective people, "people who worked things out in their minds were more accepting."
I honor the people who have fought righteous battles to keep me free and I also honor my father-in-law who risked his life to keep from taking another. That act of courage, of sanity, added value to my world. Those who cling to their own peaceful hearts amid pressure to do violence are heroes.
I honor Marla Ruzicka, a Californian. Bright-eyed. Blonde. Beautiful. Selfless. The day after Saddam's statue came down, Marla, then 25 years old, went door-to-door in Iraq, checking on the people, trying to determine how many innocent Iraqis the United States had mistakenly killed.
Armed only with a college degree, a charming personality and a piercing intellect, Marla hosted parties in the middle of wars. In Baghdad and Bagram, in Mosul and Kabul, she invited military advisers, aid workers, journalists and locals to come together and socialize. Using her refreshingly unorthodox means, this young woman managed to get language into a Senate appropriations bill that has ultimately provided $7.5 million in U.S. assistance to the civilians we have accidentally injured, and displaced in Afghanistan and survivors of those killed - and $10 million more for those in Iraq.
When interviewed by Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, she said, "It is a luxury for people to say war is bad . . . You can't say something is bad unless you come in with ways to fix it."
Like Hubert, who worked like a dog jumping from airplanes into forest fires to make his patriotic contribution, Marla didn't take the easy way out, she didn't stay home.
Marla died last month, giving her life in this damned Iraq war. She and Faiz Ali Salim, her Iraqi friend and colleague, were killed by a suicide bomber attacking nearby U.S. troops. Phillip Robertson of Salon.com reported, "When the bomber detonated his explosives, Marla and Faiz were among those killed, and with that terrible act, the bomber cut short the life of a tireless champion of the victims of the war."
Ironies pile up as high as the dead during wartime.
Like our brave American military veterans, Marla, and Hubert 60 years before her, went to perilous places with a strong commitment in their hearts. They risked danger and death because they felt passionate about a cause.
That cause is peace.
© 2005 Salt Lake Tribune

Wildlife: The baby geese have outgrown the neighboring ducks -- their feathers still look yellow in the evening light.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: A squall now and then, but fairly sunny yesterday. A robin's egg blue sky today with no clouds in sight. (You can turn the rain back on after Memorial Day.)

Charity Alert: The Rainforest Site -- click for some more oxygen in the world.

Media Watch: I saw Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson And The Story Of SMiLE on the satellite two nights ago. It was centered on his performance of SMiLE at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2004, but the filmmakers had to re-tell some of his biography with the Beach Boys, and the load he carried in making them successful, in order to properly describe what the music known as SMiLE actually was, and what it meant.
Before we go on, I want everyone to know that I bought the CD of SMiLE just as it came out. My favorite part is the song Surf's Up, and the music which leads in and out of it. Hear it HERE!
When I was a young teenager, I was frankly a pathetic musical snob. I liked classical music, jazz, folk music, and blues, but I hated the smug radio music called "rock and roll." Much of it was cynical teen-pop foistered on "us" by Tin Pan Alley, it's true, but there was ferment in the business, and some very fine music was being created which changed the industry forever -- especially after the success of the Beatles. It took me awhile (too long) to catch on, but Phil Spector, Berry Gordy, and (to me) the ultra-commercial Brian Wilson were part of a musical revolution 'from the inside' that brightened up the whole world for over a decade.
The Beach Boys were literally the kings of Salt Lake City popular music. Their stupid manager, Murray Wilson, had signed then to a long-term contract at the Lagoon resort twenty miles north of the main city, and they played there at least twice a year, for almost nothing, from the early to mid 60's.
Thousands of local teenagers got drunk and deflowered in the wake of those shows, but I was too young and naive to know or appreciate those aspects then. The Capitol album Beach Boys Live captures the vibe of the time -- screaming crowds in a cacophony that drowns out the efforts of the players to make music. (The girls especially loved the apparently untalented but handsome Dennis Wilson.)
My ears first picked up on the quality of the Beach Boys' Don't Worry Baby, without knowing it's connection to Phil (and Veronica) Spector. Soon after, I had to grudgingly admit liking the album Beach Boys Today. (The Spector-like You're So Good To Me caught my attention, although I'd remain unaware of the wide scope of Spector's achievements and influence for a few more years.)
In June of 1965, I briefly ran into Carl and Dennis Wilson at a local music store. They seemed preoccupied and none too friendly, so we didn't say anything more than "Hi." The buzz on the street from the Lagoon show was that Brian Wilson wasn't there -- nobody knew, or cared about, the studio guy (Glen Campbell) who was in his place. Later, the crowd accepted Bruce Johnston, a good singer/musician with a retiring, almost non-existent onstage personality, but they still wondered why Brian Wilson backed away.
All was forgiven in my home town when Summer Days & Summer Nights came out -- containing a song named Salt Lake City. The record was loaded with good songs that even I appreciated -- the 45 RPM version of Help Me Rhonda, sung by Al Jardine, California Girls, Girl From New York City, and Carl Wilson singing Girl Don't Tell Me.
Brian Wilson was competing fiercely with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, in their prime, plus lesser and equally popular Rock groups. The movie makes that clear -- but it downplays the fact that these pressures caused his FIRST nervous breakdown -- forcing him off the road in late 1964.
In retrospect, I can see that the Beach Boys were trying to find their feet by the summer of '65. Every household in SLC with teenagers had the silly Beach Boys Party album, but they owed their fans something better than that. The Byrds-like Little Girl I Once Knew didn't quite fit the bill either.(Although the ultra-loose Barbara Ann from Party remains a fun single even now, doesn't it?)
Good Vibrations and the album Pet Sounds came out in the winter, and shut me up, along with other Wilson nay-sayers, forever. They were among the best records of 1966 -- all the superlatives written about them are true. The film spends a lot of time describing how Brian Wilson was trying to follow up these masterpieces -- it's a wonderful look at a remarkable artist at work.
The movie even shows footage from Leonard Bernstein's mid 60's TV special about pop music. That broadcast was one of the highlights of my teenage life -- when the foremost musician in America spoke approvingly about the music I now loved the most, it validated me internally, and externally. Brian Wilson's plaintive solo singing of Surf's Up at his piano was truly the highlight of that fabulous show.
Everybody knows what happened next -- when the Summer of Love occured in 1967, the Beach Boys were A.W.O.L. Carl Wilson ducked out of the Monterry Pop Festival, avoiding enforcers from the draft board, which was smart, but the whole group ducked out with him, which wasn't. They actually had no choice -- the Beach Boys were in disarray -- Carl Wilson was the sole bridge between lead singer Mike Love and creative source Brian Wilson. Carl also supplied the voice of their current hit singles, and they couldn't perform without him.
From the website above: Filled with compositions that are complex and sophisticated while glorious and beautiful, "SMiLE" was originally intended to be the follow-up to The Beach Boys’ iconic breakthrough "Pet Sounds." It was to appear in stores in January 1967. In fact, more than 400,000 SMiLE record jackets were printed and ads were taken out in various magazines to prepare for the concept album.
The only new song played over the radio by the Beach Boys in 1967 was Heroes and Villains, and it wasn't well-received, to say the least. It sounded like half-hearted polka music to most young ears, including mine. A strange single called Gettin' Hungry by Carl Wilson and Mike Love came out, along with a scatter-shot album called Smiley Smile -- it sure looked like the Beach Boys were having a crisis with Brian Wilson, which was exactly the case. We all knew that SMiLE had been shelved -- what showed up in it's place was only purchased by people who needed an unscratched version of Good Vibrations.
Brian Wilson had suffered another nervous breakdown, and sad to say, he'd have several more. Drugs and medical quackery blighted most of his next thirty years, but he would survive, and re-establish himself as a performer eventually.
When Wild Honey came out in 1968, I personally liked the new sound of the Beach Boys, especially Carl Wilson's soulful, slightly unsteady voice, and the complex group vocals. I could put up with Mike Love if he was wasn't always the focus of the band. Friends was pretty mellow, and I enjoyed Do It Again on 20/20, except that the rest of the album was pretty unfocused. (Neglected Dennis Wilson had some interesting tunes, and there was at least one refugee-song from SMiLE, that I didn't know about at the time.)
When the Beach Boys moved to Warner Brothers they put out two superb albums: Sunflower and (do my ears deceive me?) Surf's Up, which contained a very pleasant version of the legendary song, five years after we all first heard it on television. Feel Flows by Carl Wilson is my choice for best cut, even though Brian's classic Until I Die is included too -- it is a very good LP!
My favorite incarnation of the Beach Boys encompassed the albums Carl and the Passions, Holland, and Beach Boys In Concert. The band was fronted by a mixed-race South African named Blondie Chaplin (who's been touring with the Rolling Stones lately). His ethnic East Indian countryman Ricky Fatarr played the drums while Dennis mostly stood and sang. Carl's bro-in-law Billy Hinchie played a variety of instuments in the back. Their music wasn't just white bread pop.
Brian Wilson's Marcella, and Sail On Sailor, Carl Wilson's Trader, Chaplin's Leaving This Town, and Dennis Wilson's Steamboat still please me mightily.
It was only a strange coincidence that I moved to Holland a few years after the Beach Boys tried and failed to base themselves there -- provoking yet another setback for Brian Wilson.
After they moved back to America, their recorded output was pretty ragged -- Fifteen Big Ones, with the original five man group, was pretty unadventurous. Love You was embarrassingly BAD. The Beach Boys were doing alright as a touring act -- except that Brian or Dennis could act VERY inappropriately at ANY time. Carl put out his own album in the late 70's, but it was unexpectedly lame. What surprised me was how good Dennis Wilson's unhearalded album turned out to be -- he was justly infamous in the gossip columns as a womanizing drunk. Well, he put out a better-than-average record in the late 70's, and I'll remember him for that, even though the rest of the world may remember his degraded end in 1982.
The Beach Boys lingered on in the 80s, and even played a part in getting Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary James Watt out of the government. (Don't mess with Nancy Reagan's friends!) Carl Wilson probably saved his only remaining brother's life twice -- once by getting him back into treatment with Dr. Landy, and second, using the legal system to force that same damned psycho-parasite away. When Carl died after fighting cancer (privately) in the late 90's, Brian Wilson had a new wife, a new life, and a career of his own, outside of whatever remained of the fractious Beach Boys.
His daughters by his first wife Mary -- Carnie and Wendy Wilson, sing very well, and have had some big successes with Chianna Phillips, daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas. Carnie has demonstrated a talent for writing too. I last saw the Wilson sisters singing with Al Jardine (reportedly the only mellow ex-Beach Boy) on a PBS special -- they all sounded great!
The movie finally shows how big a risk Brian Wilson too by revisiting SMiLE. He had lost so much confidence thirty-seven years earlier, and had suffered so many reversals of fortune during those intervening times, that no one could ever blame him for leaving that project in the past. The scenes of him facing up to the responsibility of re-creating and performing it, and even re-enlisting Van Dyke Parks, whose career had also been seriously set back by it, are portraits of dreadful courage.
Congratulations to his band for singing and playing what has to be the toughest vocal music on the planet -- requiring almost telepathic communion with Wilson's hyper-sensitive soul. May everyone continue to do great work!

Wildlife: The various blackbirds, finches, and cowbirds -- babies and adults -- were sure active when the hailstorm was over yesterday! (see below) They besieged the feeders by the dozens as the sun came out for a minute, and kept eating during the long rainstorm which followed.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: About 5 PM yesterday, it started raining, then HAILING -- stones the size of marbles -- luckily they were soft rather than hard, otherwise the car parked outside of the garage might have been damaged.

Charity Alert: Animal Rescue Site -- click on the other five too.

In The Community: German-American artist Winold Reiss is the focus of what may be the most important exhibit the Hockaday Museum of Art has presented since Call of the Mountains -- The Artists of Glacier National Park in 2002.
Read a little about Winold Reiss HERE
I'm off to help hang the show after my work is over here. I'll be driving down to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to pick up some additional paintings soon -- FREE VACATION!

Media Watch: It was a fairly important weekend in political history. The grim theatrical battle over judicial filibusters was forced into a guarded truce when seven senators from each party (total: fourteen) forged a "compromise" of a sort, rather than watch their power drain away in the aftermath of a forced rules change.
For good or bad, this story dominated the news: Here is one reasonably good place to read about the "nuclear option" power grab. (Daily Kos)
CSPAN was right where the action was -- good for them. They also ran the weekly National Press Club speech, featuring PBS' beleaguered CEO Pat Mitchell, once the Senate's ugly drama was done.
"We are going to be criticized from the left for being too right, from the right for being too left," Mitchell said in her speech, "and that probably means we're getting it mostly right,
Let me say this: PBS will BECOME history, rather than report on it, unless they fight back against the would-be censors foistered on them by right-wing extremists. Ms. Mitchell was correct in declaring that this non-commercial educational network has no substitutes among any of the 500+ satellite/cable stations. (...or any combination either, says I.)
Reading again -- I finished Jimi Hendrix : The Man, the Magic, the Truth by Sharon Lawrence. It is an interesting read -- she was a friend of Hendrix, with her own point of view about what happened, plus she has the tapes, notes, and transcripts to back up whatever she says.
She didn't have a positive relationship with Buddy Miles, saying very little good about him, but she seems to like Billy Cox, and Mitch Mitchell. Noel Redding is remembered well, as is Chas Chandler.
(Chandler helped Jimi when Hendrix really needed it, but he also started something bigger than he could handle. She acknowledges his later success with Slade, last of the Liverpudlian 'supergroups,' who were an important bridge between 'Glam' and 'Punk.')
I wasn't happy to read yet another version of Hendrix's death -- asserting probable suicide, rather than dumb carelessness with pills -- but she was THERE, in London, at the exact time it happened, and I wasn't. One thing we agree on though, is that members, or a single member, of his entourage could have given him a chance to live if they'd called for medical help immediately.
Lawrence paints a scary portrait of how he had NO control of anything in his life during his final months, and how his sleazy manager was running up a huge mortgage on Hendrix's future. (He later died in a plane crash around '73.)
She spends the last third of her book detailing the fortunes the vultures have made picking the bones of his legacy. His father, his half-sister, Paul Allen, and other lawyers and litigators look pretty bad under the light of her gaze.

Wildlife: There are about four families of Canada Geese hatched out on Firehouse Pond. They'll be visiting us soon, after the goslings lose their yellow feathers. They'll just follow the stream uphill!



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: A little light rain, some sunshine, and a cold wind all day.

Charity Alert: Animal Rescue Site

In The Community: We auctioned well over 80% of our miniature pieces for the Hockaday Museum's 4th annual benefit. Now I have to set up two more BIG shows, and tear down and relocate some others. Hockaday Museum of Art
I'm going to go crazy with teleconferencing and "Webinars" (web seminars) this week. I'm looking forward to cleaning chalk dust off the classroom equipment for a change.

Media Watch: I saw Searching For Debra Winger, which is actually a film made by Rosanna Arquette about 'Hollywood' actresses. Ageing seems to be an issue. (They ARE pressured to look like they're twenty years old, for about twenty years or so.) The film contains interviews with many famous women about their art, and the choices they made in their lives.

The Things You Find At Garage Sales: This morning I stumbled on a 1985 Island Records collection of Funk music from Washington D.C. entitled "Go Go Crankin' (Paint The White House Black) -- It features performances by Trouble Funk, E.U, Slim, Redd and the Boys, Mass Extension, and one tune by one of my favorite bands -- Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. The driving force behind these reissued records seems to be producer Maxx Kidd.
The phrase "Paint The White House Black" is also the title of one of my favorite songs by another of my favorite bands -- George Clinton and his whole crew of Funkadelic Parliamentarians. George even trades players with Chuck Brown sometimes.

Not too many weeks ago, I picked up an odd, oversized book called "The Year In Music 1978," Published in the Autumn of that year by Columbia House, a division of CBS Inc. (prepared and produced by Gladstone Books Inc.)
It's much more interesting to me now than it would have been 27 years ago -- there were a lot of photos of John Travolta, Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett and others whose music meant nothing in my life, and I doubt I would have read it.
There's a prophetic quote where UA president Artie Mogull laments: The Guy in the record company who has the authority won't listen to the tape; and the guy who listens to the tape doesn't have any authority. That's a syndrome that's going to kill the record companies. The deal has become more important than music. Can you imagine? The biggest irrelevancy in a record company today is music.
What's interesting is who's mentioned at all, and the context in which they appear:
"Sizzling" Tina Turner is mentioned once -- performing in New Orleans. She was starting her slow climb back to stardom, a year or so removed from getting a welcome hand-up out of the bar circuit by Olivia Newton-John and her manager. (Lotsa pictures of Olivia in this book -- she was at one of the peaks of her career!) The Rolling Stones' triumphant return to the top of the charts was photographically documented, while Lou Reed was noted as receiving a gold album for the 6 year old "Rock & Roll Animal," while "Street Hassle," his latest, was banned from the airwaves. Eric Clapton, although soaked with booze and heroin, did some of the nicest singles of his career with "Lay Down Sally," and Reed's own "Rock and Roll Heart."
I enjoyed seeing "Heavy" guitar rock doing so well in the huge arenas back then, but I didn't care as much for the overly-polished "product" that was pushed on the airwaves. There's a few pictures of Ted Nugent in this book, with and without his beard. Kiss gets many more -- even though they had just disbanded for what was to be twenty years. Many rock bands of the time who WEREN'T in this book had long careers -- like AC/DC, Judas Priest, Rush, Van Halen, and the Scorpions.
My favorite styles of music from these times were Reggae and Funk, the latter of which was incorporated into a lot of genres like Pop, Disco, R&B, and Jazz. As a matter of fact, Reggae is a first cousin of Funk too! Bob Marley and the Isley Brothers get their share of press and pictures .
Speaking of FUNK: Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy's Rubber Band, The Brides of Funkenstein, Parlet, and the Horny Horns were in their heyday when this book came out. Hard times and breakups were starting too, but here's a list of everything that this white-bread publication has to say about them:

Page 58: Black concerts this year were dynamite...

King of Funk George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, his hard-working princes of that realm, zapped their audiences with ray guns, bombarded them with a flashily inventive stage show' and blasted them with non-stop R & B energy of the funk variety.

(Note: This article also mentions difficulties with black performers attracting white or middle-class black audiences.)

Page 61: Above: Funkster George Clinton in two of his guises: nomadic outer-space ace and slick-as-silk con man. (Full-page picture) Courtesy Casablanca Records

Page 64: Bootsy Collins and George Clinton received rather dubious awards on July 21 (1978) at a dinner sponsored by The Rod McGrew Scholarship Fund, Inc. Communicators With A Conscience gave them a slap on the wrist with the "Responsibility Award," challenging the musicians to do something more ambitious with their popular music.
Arcie Ivy, managing director of of Clinton's production company (called Thang Inc.) disputes the award's contention that Clinton's message is superficial. He claims that in Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome Clinton is conveying a deep message against complacency and lack of spirit. He also pledged to donate fifty cents for every ticket sold for August and September concerts in dallas, Chicago, St. Louis, and L.A. to the United Negro College Fund.

In addition to sizzling live action, the soul scene blossomed with extravagent albums including ...
...Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome by Parliament
...Player of the Year by Bootsy's Rubber Band

Page 66: Top soul songs for the year included:
... "Flash Light" by Parliament
... "Bootzilla" by Bootsy's Rubber Band
Right: (Full-page picture on Page 67) For Bootsy Collins and his band of renown 1978 was a year of superior, flashy concerts in support of his gold-winning R & B chart-topper Player of the Year. Courtesy Warner Brothers Records

Concerts and Events

Page 176: February ...on the eleventh ... Parliament-Funkadelic, Kool and the Gang, and Grand Jury played for 11,600 fans at Baltimore's Civic Center.

Page 177: April ... On April 8, Parliament, the Bar-Kays, and Cold Fire set Kansas City, Missouri, jumping with a dazzling show at the Kemper Arena.

Page 178: ...On the thirteenth, (of May) in the Forum at Inglewood, California, Parliament, the Bar-Kays, and Faze-o stupefied 17,400 fans with a knock-out show...
...On May 20, Bootsy's Rubber band brought its inspired musical lunacy to the Summit in Houston. Preceded by Stargard and Raydio, the band had the sellout croud of more than 16,000 dancing in the aisles.

Page 180: ...On June 8, George Clinton and his group Parliament-Funkadelic, gave funk lessons to New York City at Madison Square Garden.

Tours

Page 186: Bootsy Collins: Began October 5, 1977 in Cheney, Pennsylvania; ended November 25, 1977, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Began March 17 in Greensboro, North Carolina; ended June 8 in Oakland, California.

Updates

Page 190: R & B chart toppers in the fall of 1978 included such songs as ... "One Nation Under A Groove: by Funkadelic, ...

Top Sellers (From October 1977 through September 1978)

Page 194: Platinum Record Awards Albums (Indicates sales of more than 1 million copies)
...Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome by Parliament

Page 195: Gold Record Awards Albums (Indicates sales of more than 500,000 copies)
...Bootsy? Player of the Year

Page 196: Singles (Indicates sales of more than 1 million copies)
"Flash Light" Parliament

Page 215: BOOTSY COLLINS
"If you fake the funk, your nose gotta grow," proclaims the Pinocchio Theory of Funk Professor Bootsy Collins, who in the disguise of a not-too-mild-mannered bass player has single-handedly transformed the face of funk with his 1978 monster single, "Bootzilla," from the top soul LP (number one after only four weeks on the chart) Player of the Year.
Born and raised in Cincinnatti, the formerly shy, blue-jeaned bass player served an eight-year apprenticeship with master funkifiers James Brown and George Clinton. He took the flash of those inspired loonies, filtered it through his own cheerful, reckless madness, and emerged with a new sizzle -- funk-honed, refined, and raised to a spacey art form.
In 1976, Bootsy and some equally raunchy henchmen put out an album called Stretchin' Out In Bootsy's Rubber band, which quickly went into a golden orbit. His second album, Aah...The Name Is Bootsy, baby, also achieved gold status and won him the devoted fervor of the world's Geepies. As Bootsy explains them, "Geepies" are "younger kids who are turned on without drugs. They're so deep, they're past D all the way to G. That's what makes them geep."
1978 Discography: Player of the Year

Page 217: Bootsy Collins (Full-page picture) Courtesy Warner Brothers Records


Page 260: (Picture in lower right corner) Parliament's George Clinton Courtesy Casablanca Records

Page 261; PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC
Onstage, after a breathtaking arrival by flying saucer, dripping with ermine and feathers, swaggering on mighty giolden platform boots, George Clinton as Doctor Funkenstein leads his outrageous gang of zanies in a superflash, superfunk extravaganza. As the Doctor has said about his second platinum album, Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, "The message of Parliament on this album is YOU WILL DANCE." As the irresistable rhythms of advanced funk sail out over his audiences, the maggot brains (fans of p-funk) rise up and boogie.
Where does he come from, this insane perpetrator of funk-talk, funk-music, and -- if all goes as planned -- eventual supergroovalistic prosifunkstication (that is, funk taken to it's highest level) of the whole world? Clinton's madness began back in the fifties in a barbershop near Newark, New Jersey, where he and some teen-age jivers harmonized between haircuts. Out of these laid-back beginnings, the Parliaments were born. First signed by ABC, they then moved on to tamala/Motown and finally to the Revilot label, where they scored their first towering hit single in 1967 -- "(I Just Wanna) Testify."
Revilot was to pass out of existance in 1968, and with them went the Parliaments' name.Clinton renamed his band the Funkadelics and developed them into a show band with a more aggressive beat, an overt black philpsophy, and an irresistably demented stage show that never stopped jumping. When the Parliament name again became available, Clinton signed his group of musicians to Casablanca as the Parliaments and to Warner Brothers as Funkadelic. This duality may cause some confusion, but there's no need to fear missing out on one or the other band -- when Clinton leads, his pranksters are together.
In 1978, Clinton trucked his mammoth show to sold-out houses all around the country, raising his largely black fans to heights of delirium.