 URING the time I
lived in Berkeley, I've had the good fortune to see many talented people perform at
The Freight and Salvage Coffee House, an institution, now in folk and
traditional music circles...further than this, even, to play open-mike night
numerous times, and make the acquaintance of the MC of open-mike nights for a
number years in the eighties,
"MUGS MUGGLES"...
Mugs played western
swing in SUCH a slack way!
 IT WAS back in the late
eighties, I forget the year now...I had drawn a low number in the open-mike
lottery for who got to select a playing slot, and chose #11...As usual,
people'd go to the rest rooms to tune up while the player before you was on stage.
MUGS walked up to me as I stood in the hall facing the side of the stage, and
asked if I'd been kind enuff to let Mystery Guest be 10 & 1/2 that
night - noticing the grin and the bright twinkle in his eye - I said sure.
When MUGS went to the microphone before M.G., he was quite gracious in how he thanked
me for letting him put M.G. on before me...then he spoke to the back
of the room, "Mystery Guest, how do you want to be introduced?"
WAS still standing in the
hallway off to the right of the stage, and couldn't see the fellow responding - I
heard a voice say, "Joad."
So, Mugs Muggles, the MC, gave Joad the same introduction he gave us all, getting
the audience, half performers and half ot, to give a round of applause as a "chip off the old
Woody" at about 42 walked to the stage!
Joad looked quite like so many pictures of Woody Guthrie standing at a
microphone, it was uncanny, the resemblance...Joad being Arlo Guthrie's brother.
'D SEEN Joad play only once before...back on June 6, 1982, during the
San Francisco rally in support of the Congressional (Nuclear Weapons Production)
Freeze Initiative Campaign. He'd been one of several singers who augmented the
speakers list that day...I vividly recall what happened, too. One verse into a
song his microphone crapped out...Instead of stopping, he simply stood there "with
all his might" (The BAND - Stage Fright) and kept singing and playing...so, only
those near the stage got to hear that song. Then he played a song we all heard...It
was called "Fashionable Cynicism" and was about how Joad thought many of
the people who had been progressive in their youth were turning quite cynical as
the Reagan Eighties so savagely tore into the sensibilities of what went
before...the song was eerily prescient...I stayed in the Bay Area until the summer
of 1984, and sure enough...
Later, I would see Joad do his own show at the The Freight and Salvage. And,
because Country Joe McDonald produced a session for Joad, I was able to purchase
Joad's "Spys on Wall Street" tape through Joe's Country Store on his website
(which is listed on the links page of this site), and have heard all those songs
Joad wrote since then. Thanks, Joad(y)! Thanks,
Joe!! |
