​Anacoustic Mind is the creation of musician and drummer Mike Ogletree, a Scottish Singer/Songwriter and former member of the bands Simple Minds and Fiction Factory. Inspired by the life and work of two Roberts: Scotland’s 18th century Bard - Robert Burns and the Jamaican activist/musician Robert (Bob) Marley, Mike, among other things, arranges and performs classic Scottish sangs with a Jamaican beat in a style he calls Scottish Reggae. 

“I live in New York, which is the planet’s cultural melting pot, and it's a wonderful environment and opportunity to get into the joyous task of arranging and performing Scottish Reggae Music. I'm in a very vibrant part of the city where I have had no choice but to surrender body, mind and soul to the rhythms of the street-life that surround me. It is these experiences, these sounds, these sights, these smells and this energy which fuel the grooves and moves of Scottish Reggae, a sound which is literally coming alive in the streets of New York’s LES. When I busk on the corner of 1st Ave and 9th and see people sing and dance along to 18th Century Poetry it brings the joy of knowing that both of the Roberts' missions and legacies live on.”

Sung chiefly in the Scots Dialect of his home Shire (Ayr) on the west coast of Scotland with a distinct "Marley" groove makes Scottish Reggae a not-to-miss mash-up. Currently on symbolic retreat through the dark of winter in and around New York, busking and hitting the open-mic and pub/bar scene, something groovy is growing in Mike’s Anacoustic Mind, sangs an' soons he hopes will have folk the wurl' o'er Scottish reggae-rocking in no time. 

"Just as a plant which sprouts in the dead of winter is doomed, and one which sprouts in spring flourishes, so it is with us."
Lao Tzu

For me the hardest thing about writing is not source material, I have plenty of that, rather the question is how to get it all lined up and in order so that it makes sense rather than paragraph after paragraph of non-contiguous ramblings.

I look into the past and see a myriad of stories and events from child-hood teenage-ness, my 20’s and 30’s and so on that are all interesting enough to take up a few paragraphs. Yet right now as I write we are travelling through one of the most eventful and significant times in human history on this planet, happenings that are yelling out to be chronicled.

Take US Unemployment Insurance, well I do, having just been “let go” from my last job of nine years loyal service. Oh well. I think the universe was telling me to get away from the “9 to 5”. Nine years is the longest I’ve ever worked in a regular 40-hr-a-week job that has nothing in any way to do with the music industry. Time to start working for me and you again. But, in the US “Unemployment Insurance” is an interesting and different experience compared with how they did it in the UK or Scotland to be specific, which is where I “signed-on” back in the day.

My story about the origins of the name of UK pop reggae band UB40 comes to mind, and I usually find someone to tell it to when I’m in the mood, and being laid-off definitely puts me in the mood. (Apparently I was rude to an important client of the business I worked for, I’m not known for my rudeness, and since I wasn’t allowed to face my accuser that was that; gones-ville, probably for the best all things considered.) But the UB40 story is an interesting one, referring to the band UB 40 of course, whose music I have been a fan of since their beginning; I sold their first 45’s on vinyl when I worked for Bruce Findlay at Bruce’s Records in Glasgow and Kilmarnock in the 70’s, (“Bruce” also managed two of the bands I played in - Café Jacques and Simple Minds, tales for another time) but I digress. UB 40’s debut single comprised of two stellar tracks IMHO “King” and “Food For Thought”, they were unemployed when the band was forming, writing and recording their songs in a bed-sit in Birmingham UK. In the 70’s this was the working model for many young wannabe musicians in the UK at the time; leave school start looking for a job, meanwhile sign-on to the dole and form or join a band. So when this group of musicians decided to call their band “UB40” it was not only a clear statement of their actual circumstances at the time but also a name practically every young person in the UK their age could relate to because UB40 stood for Unemployment Benefit, Form 40, which everyone had to fill out and included the card you had to have and present when you went to claim your unemployment benefits each week. The UB40 no longer exists, although the term is still well understood to refer to unemployment claims in the UK. The cover of their first single was even a mock-up of the UB 40 form and the lyrics in their first single “Food For Thought” tell the story about being a “one in ten”, the unemployment ratio in the UK at the time.

I last had a UB40 card in 1983 just after I left Simple Minds. Old habits die hard; I wasn’t getting any royalties and it wasn’t a busy time for funky rock/pop drummers, but the bills still had to be paid. So signing on it was. Meanwhile I put the word around the country that I was in the market for a new drumming gig and got some local session work as well as auditions for up and coming bands but not enough so that I could “sign-off’ the dole. Eventually I met up with my next full-time band, a group of lads, songwriters from Perth, Scotland called Fiction Factory who had management, were about to sign a recording contract with CBS records and needed to put a band together in a hurry so they could perform for the record company thus clinching the deal. That whole evolution went together so fast that before I knew it we were rehearsing, performing, signed up to CBS, recording a new single and on tour as support act with Paul Young who was riding his recent wave of success with the hit single “Wherever I Lay My Hat.” The tour was known as “The Twelve Days Of Christmas” tour, and covered all major cities the length and breadth of the UK. Every gig was sold out and we were treated so well by the roadies and loved by Paul’s fans as the opening act that when our first single “Feels Like Heaven” came out shortly after the end of the tour it went straight up the pop charts, eventually reaching the number six spot. A great song worthy of all the praise and accolades it garnered, its success launched us into a whirlwind of TV and radio appearances and other live events. All of this happening notwithstanding the fact that I had no wages, was only being paid expenses, not having had time to draw up and sign a musician’s contract with the band, and therefore had continued to sign on. The kicker came the week I went to sign-off and the guy working the desk at the Social Security Office recognized me from having seen Fiction Factory on Top Of The Pops the night before. “The gem’s a bogey” I thought (Scottish parlance for “the game’s up, I’ve been caught”) but just as I was getting ready to hear him say “… and someone needs to see you about that - claiming benefits while you were working,” he congratulated me with a big happy smile, saying how chuffed he was to see somebody he knew on the telly on Top Of The Pops. And that was that, January 1984 Kilmarnock, Scotland, the last time I signed-on and signed-off for “unemployment”.

Until now that is, May 2015 Manhattan, New York over thirty one years later and this time it’s The Department Of Labor and practically everything gets done on line. There is no UB40 of course but there are forms to fill in, documents to be read, job searches to be done and work search records to be kept, mandatory meetings, helpful job-finder courses to attend, possible spot-checks and I am once again in the system. For a little while. I have actually never really been unemployed for more than a few months. But the regular jobs I had were only fillers lasting months, nine at most, as a security guard in one case, between gigs as a musician.

 

Well with one thing and another I have so far written one third of my intended target for today and it is now time to leave for the Open Mic Downstairs happening just six blocks south of me at St Marks Place. Sweating like a dog in the liquid sludge they laughingly call air at this time of year in the city I have a coupla things to tray if I pull an early number in the open mic pot-luck-pick. Otherwise most likely home early for more music-and-me work and an early night to early rise for one of those helpful little Job-finder courses at New Dept. Of Labor tomorrow morning 9:30 bright and sharp. Interesting and eventful.

Or I may come back and blog more about why I am planning a road trip to Charleston and the latest Anacoustic Mind video.

Awrabest Noo

And so there were, drums that is. A major thread in the woof and warp of my "interesting and eventful" life, drums influenced most of my thoughts, feelings and actions as I struggled up through early childhood and into adolescence, the only dark skinned boy, and the eldest in a family of five kids.

Other than my little wooly head ours was a regular, relatively poor and slightly dysfunctional, but average/regular white Scottish family. The dysfunction attributable mostly to the antics of a violent, alcoholic man, the step-father I wish I’d never had, and the birth-father I never knew, a US Airman based in Scotland until 1958 when he abandoned my sister, mother and I, leaving me so traumatized that I can’t remember a single thing about him. Still numb on the subject after 57 years. Growing up I was in a constant and absolute mystery about my racial roots, my skin color, my facial features and my hair, and anything that gave warm credence to these facts was always welcome. Music and drumming were two such devices, I was going to become a drummer! Then, after some wise high-school career guidance along the way it became a fireman, a soldier, an architect or a lawyer, a real job, not music; I remember being persuaded into the notion that I could be like one of my idols Cassius Clay, the boxer, probably in an attempt to have me work out some “anger and frustration” over my circumstances. After all, my uncles used to say, “Yer dad was into the boxing.” He apparently used to show them moves he learned sparring with other servicemen at the air-base gym in Prestwick 10 miles south of Kilmarnock. So I’d be a natural, in the same vein as “natural rhythm”, now I was supposed to be endowed with natural boxing abilities too.

 

Only thing is I didn’t like getting hit. On the fateful night of my first and last boxing lesson at eight years old, left by my step-father at a school gym “miles” away from home, full of strange boys and young men who looked at me, a newbie and a dark one at that, I’m sure they hadn’t seen many like me round there before. Anyway, without any kind of orientation that made any sense, or warm-ups, half way through the first lesson I was paired with an older kid with skills, who I’d seen boxing earlier and told to practice with him after which we’d get a chance to spar in the ring. Just practicing I didn’t like how this kid was landing blows to my head and body but when we got into the ring he let me have it and after a rain of punches for which I had zero skills to counter or defend, I was so disoriented and dazed I had to throw in the towel. Then, to add emotional insult to my injury, in the changing room after boxing class was over the other kids started calling me names and making fun of me. Yes, I hadn’t learned to take a punch but I could sure as hell still give one out which is what I proceeded to do to the loudest bragger in the crowd. I waited till I was fully dressed and ready to leave the gym and focusing all my frustration at having been painfully humiliated in the ring and in the dressing room I let him have it on the nose wham! And made such a fast getaway that I never saw hide nor hair of any of them then, in pursuit, or ever again. I would leave the boxing to Cassius from now on and I went home sulked at my step-father and mother, told them what happened and tuned into The Beatles on the radio. From then on I would never understand the need for physical violence in an “evolved” species. How could the same race, capable of creating such subliminal beauty through art also have the capacity to inflict painful humiliation and harm to each other? An enigma, if a better informed one, which persists with me to this day. It is the enigma that is resolved with music because music gives expression to all emotions with no need for physical harm.

 

These early experiences forced me to inspect my place in a culture I was struggling to understand. Like many I’m sure, I never really saw how I fit in with all this. Never isolated or alone, I was too curious for that, I often felt separate and different and with confirmation coming from all corners of the environment I developed an unhealthy tolerance for the racism on the one hand, while on the other I embraced whatever I could of my own “blackness”, what was strong and proud, rebellious and defiant. This explained how I could still love Cassius Clay and the sport of boxing, I used to wear Lonsdale boxer-shorts, boots and t-shirts on stage in homage to him when I played with Café Jacques in the 70’s, yet reject the violence and conflict the sport represents. It also explains why I chose the path of entertainment over sport when mapping out my own career interests. I perceived music imbued with the power to transcend conflict and bring together people of all different creeds and colors; and the activity of drumming was an outlet for anger and frustration which could become beautiful art. For better or for worse I was conflicted but I was learning.

 

At the time and perhaps even today, my Black universe consisted of three “ethnic” frames of reference I had been exposed to, within which I sought illumination and inspiration regarding my origins: African/American Athletes and Servicemen, African/American Entertainers and Africans from Africa. Fields rich with possibilities. I almost joined the army. In the 70’s I was strongly drawn to the Black South African cause, the resistance fighters and the struggle for Freedom and Justice for Africa in general and almost ran away to fight there. I love sports and was devastated when I was told at age 9 I would never make a sprinter because of my flat feet L. Not really tall enough, I wouldn’t make the Globetrotters and who’d ever seen a basketball net in 60’s Scotland anyway; first one I remember seeing was in the garden of a US Serviceman’s house my mother used to clean. And while these activities, military and sports, had the potential to bring people together there always lay the element of conflict at their core which repulsed me and led me onto the path of entertainment, music specifically. A non-violent conflict-free approach to communication which has the capacity to transcend cultural and spiritual barriers. Music brought me together to myself and it has been such a life confirming experience that I feel obliged to share it.

 

With art I feel no desire or design; when their absence is certain and calm their space, now more defined, provides an opportunity for creativity to emerge. In art, like many things I suspect, patience is its own reward. And as we float down from this land of esoterica, here in the real world miracles in energy, time and space can still perhaps happen and I offer the proof of the above in the following.

 

Since the Open Mike blog launched into the blog-o-sphere a few weeks ago, I once wrote specifically about being a singing, songwriting, drummer and raising the singer/songwriter corners of the trio after focusing on being a drummer for more than 30 years. Now, last night an old drummer friend from back home who always happens into my life under mystical circumstances, reached out and over a few beers talked among other things about how he wanted to focus more on his singer songwriter side. He swore he had not been reading my blog, but who knows. JM and I go way back to a chance encounter Kilmarnock town-hall where he was warming up to play with his band Rodeo at the time. We exchanged a couple of words and I never saw him again until about 5 years ago in New York. Still a great drummer after all these years he now works and makes a living as a photographer right here in the city. We stay in touch and play together occasionally and after last night’s tete-a-tete and with no push or pull we found ourselves in the middle groove; in response to “how’s the band (Anacoustic Mind) doing?”

 

I explained how I was in-stasis waiting patiently for the right people to present themselves, how I’d stopped trying to find them creating the space for them to find me. Then, after discussing my woes as a band leader, a story with which he is quite familiar, he proceeded to map out the case for himself as drummer/singer/songwriter for AM with focus on the drums. Enthusiastically we agreed about musical direction and tastes, what it means to be an equally-credited contributor in a band, how our integration of his songs is what the band is all about, we could share drumming duties, also agreeing how the random combination of individual talents and skills in a band context yields such a rich vein of creativity rather than hiring session musicians to play a gig and on and on into the wee hours. So, on the back of a few beers ‘n bowls and late night chats ‘n jams here’s to a fruitful and long partnership with JM in the Anacoustic Mind pool of thought as drummer/singer/songwriter. I mark this up as more synchronicity made possible through patience, honesty and artistic humility in the middle groove, and I’m also bubbling with nervous anticipation at having a live trio form back together again. Or not. We shall see.

As 1971 rolled in my heart rolled out onto the streets of Kilmarnock, fell over and broke with a dull thud under the rainy, grey Scottish skies. February, and the rest of the new year seemed like they would never come. I was going to be stuck at 15 years old forever, condemned to suffer the pangs of love's loss endlessly. I remember walking into the street one day staring at those gloomy heavens, calling out to God with tears streaming down my face, "Whatever it is you want me to do I'll do it, but please help me understand!" No reply, and so it goes. 

In the absence of God I turned to music and friendship in that order. Then music may have been more important to me than friendship. When I was a small child my mother used to leave me with the neighbor, Mrs H and her family of Loyal Orangemen (of which much more later) and they had a Dansette record player with a well stocked record collection. I used to beg to listen to records all the time. That was where I first listened and jammed to Sandy Nelson's "Let There Be Drums", and Dave Clark the singing drummer, it was where I developed a love for music, till I craved it more than anything. At one point later on the sons even had a drum-kit in the up-stairs bed-room which I played when I could. And sometimes on a Saturday we'd go to the appliance store in the town-center which had a record dept. and listening booths, and we'd listen and buy some of the latest hits of the 60's on vinyl. The music on those records, along with traditional Scottish folk music and songs of the great balladeers like Kenneth McKellar and Andy Stuart could bring me more pleasure than anything else. Being allowed to sit with the record player in Mrs H's living room for half an hour putting on 45's and banging along on the arm of the sofa with a pair of knitting needles to Sandy Nelson at age 5 was my Idea of heaven.  

And so it is even today. I still love listening and jamming to my music which now also includes sitting down in a New York rehearsal studio with a few friends for an intimate funky jazzy jam, or climbing onto a riser on a 200 ft festival stage to play the hits for thousands of adoring Fiction Factiry fans. The fire and purpose of music that was kindled in me all those years ago still burns through and around me, it is perhaps the greatest source of life I know.

In New York however it's the re-kindling of an abandoned project that has recently commanded my general enthusiasm and creative juices. Mike Ogletree - The Singer-Songwriter Project. More accurately - as a Singer-Songwriter-Drummer I had focused with a good degree of success mostly on the drummer's corner of the triangle, while the singer-songwriter became at most a songwriter singing back-ups. Like many drummers I wrote and sang my own songs since starting in music, but it was ultimately my race, as well as my talent that were to determine my role in the school bands I played with. "Natural rhythm" they called it. "You're colored so you must be able to play the drums." What, like being colored equates to having a good sense of rhythm I suppose. Whatever, "colored" still considered an acceptable term at the time I kind of took it as a compliment, abandoned all hope of being the Hendrix in the band, and traded-in my plectrum for a pair of drum-sticks. However, having already started at age 13 writing songs on an old beat up guitar in  my bedroom and recording them on my friend's dad's tape recorder I was determined to continue, and I did, and I do till this day. Songwriting was more than just the songs and the music or being allowed to sing and play guitar in the band, it was a complete therapy that could transcend all feelings and emotions, and rise above them to offer whole new vistas on life away from the entanglements that often gave rise to pain and suffering. Songwriting was an expression of  harmony and completeness.

I only recently realized while reading "The Art Of Writing" that it is the poetry of music that is the key to its universal and eternal appeal. The definition, if there is one, of poetry being "life itself" confirming that music is an integral part of life itself. In fact music is in the very woof and warp of everything that life is. At it's most mundane music could be said to be a religion, at it's most esoteric, music is spiritual anarchy. Which is how it goes with me right now. It is as if a flood gate of creativity has opened up in me which is so free and spontaneous, so new I don't know of no way to channel it. I have stopped making musical sketches and writing down lyrics because I already have so much I know I may never get to them all.

The confluence of events in New York has strengthened my feeling that this island is some kind of Ley-line like energy portal that pours all kinds of poetry and music into the environment. The city appears to be in a continuous state of free-flowing cultural flux, an integral part of the social energy it creates. And this is the attraction and the sticker, these outbursts of great creativity that produce the new, the different, the original, the authentic, experiences we as both audience and protagonist long for, will long for and have longed for since child-hood. 

Then sometimes I day-dream, and I can see and hear an old Dansette record player in a wee cottage on the Isle Of Arran.

So it's blog day 3, and really day 4 too since I missed yesterday, having spent a very productive and joyous afternoon volunteering to help at "A Repeat Performance" vintage store on 1st Ave while my friend SJ took a break and went round the corner to the Russian Baths on 10th St. The happiest moment of the afternoon was when a young man  came in and couldn't contain his excitement about having discovered the store, "This has been the best shopping experience of my life!" He exclaimed to the other customers interested in what he was buying and getting so excited about. A vintage Viewmaster slide viewer, a sheet of slides with 20 street shots of 70's New York, a stack of pictures, pamphlets , booklets and cards and a piece of the Berlin wall - total sale $120.00, and most importantly of all, a very happy customer. This and other similar interactions in the store on the street are the simple things in life that give me so much pleasure and optimism that our world will one day  be a better place.  I had intended to write later in the evening, first dinner then a couple of hours work in the studio after which write the daily blog, but my taste for cayenne-laced pasta eaten in the 80 degree heat and sweat  of New York's late spring humidity, accompanied by 3 bottles of Modello Especial, I was so thirsty, left my body with other designs. Head for AC and rest. And so it was. I had been up since 5:30 am and I crashed at 10 pm

So it's Day 4 and 3 combined, and an avowal to keep better discipline, I was very disappointed I didn't blog yesterday, in fact after knocking off from the studio today and getting ready to write I could feel the excitement growing in me. In a moment of inspiration I wrote down some helpful notes I thought might help keep my writing focused. I prepared the ritualistic cup of coffee and grabbed my copy of Lu Chi's "The Art Of Writing" for the ritualistic pre-writing read when the following couplet jumped out at me "Past and present commingle: Eternity in the single blink of an eye!" an extract from the second poem "Choosing Words" an astonishing read in itself. But these words "Past and present commingle" were the synchronistic confirmation of what I had been inspired to write down earlier in the studio, a note to self suggesting that in my writing I should endeavor to weave the events from my present and past into one recording about what is happening right now as I write. Dontcha love old C.G. Jung. And from Lu Chi - "Eternity in the single blink of an eye!" the unifying whole of the story, the ever present now which is here yet not here. You might have guessed I have been enjoying some Taoist energy over the past few years. The beauty in the Tao is that it creeps up on you as long as you are patient and just let it happen.

So with another 5:30 am start, I clock-up 6 hours in the studio and 2 hours filming for the video part of the project then have my second cup of coffee, over a poem from "The Art Of Writing" and looking at "eternity in the single blink of an eye" I began today's blog.

On the topic of commingling past and present the vintage store on 1st Avenue, A Repeat Performance, is a fascinating Alladin's Cave of numinous objects mostly from the 80's, 70's, 60's and older which attract and hold people's attention as they gaze curiously, intently, longingly at an old lamp-shade or type-writer from the 40's, two items the store is famous for. Tom Hanks is rumored to have had himself locked in the store one afternoon some years ago  while he bargained and bought several vintage type-writers for his famous collection and pleaded to be allowed to go down to the basement where the "good-shit" was, I'm told he didn't get to go. And just yesterday the actress Mckenzie Davis wandered in, I had just seen her in the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, a good actress, didn't buy anything, but I was cool. Then there's the LES buzz of the place with on the left a Chinese massage parlor, they seem to be all over NYC, and a little Latino speak-easy (shhh!) in the basement. Then, on the right the trendy "Deep End Club" store run by daughter of Attractions' drummer Pete Thomas, Tenessee, the "It Girl" I'm told. Now this is the kind of environment I can make myself comfortable in, immersed in an earlier, similar energy from times rich with life experience; people, objects, words and images, past and present commingling. Vintage radios, tape-recorders and record-players; vinyl records, cassettes, type-writers, jewelry and clothes, hats musical instruments, accessories and a myriad of things too many to mention; and I, pumping Northern Soul, Reggae and a plethora of old school R&B, Jazz and classical music from my iPod out onto 1st Avenue, a Modello in the bag, a smile on my face, it could be worse. 

The store, the smells, the objects, the layout all remind me of a small vintage store where I bought my first drum kit back in 1970. I was 14 years old living and schooling in Plumstead, a district in "Sauf East Landan" right next to Wollwich Arsenal (yer Arsenal). Barnfield Gardens, btw, was where I heard reggae music for the first time, rumbling and throbbing from the enormous PA systems the West Indians used to use to flood the neighborhood with the unmistakable Sound of Jamaica. Barnfield Gardens, also where I tried marijuana for the first time, developed a love for prog-rock, lost ma verginite', made hippy friends, got chased by a gang of skin-heads, joined a band AND bought my first drum-kit. 

I first saw the black drum-kit in the window of a vintage store near my house, a place I loved to go and hang out and dig through the old scond-hand books, comics and vinyl records they sold, they also occasionally had second-hand musical instruments, AND I had an adolescent crush on the lady who ran the store (blush), due I'm sure to the heady perfume she always wore and the generous milk-white cleavage that was always thrusting out of the black low-cut dresses she always wore. But I degress, ahem, the drum-kit. It was a hybrid of home-made and Olympic drums, stands and cymbals, and I first saw it in on my way home from school one day. It was one of my secret pleasures to always go home via the vintage store and hang-out to "see if they had any new stuff", not that I had the intention of buying. But then one day it was there in the window, all set up and ready to play, black, wood and chrome, stands, cymbals, pedals, kick-drum, snare-drum, hanging-tom and floor-tom - 50 paund. It seemed to sparkle and glow in stereo-vision, the kit of my dreams, of my imagination, my air-kit, the one I played in my dreams in the dark of my bedroom every night, listening to, emulating and learning from Carl, Ian, Mitch, Ginger et al, as I pounded air with a pair of mum's knitting needles. I used to set up this imaginary drum-kit in my mind each night before listening to and playing along with my favorites of the day. I saw it with my minds eye, each piece, mount it, set the angles, the heights, adjust my sitting position, everything just right before sitting down to jam with the great Michael Giles on "21st Century Schizoid Man", or bombasto classic-rock king Carl Plamer for "Karn Evil 9" and "Lucky Man", or Ian Paice laying down some seriously solid grooves one after the other on "In Rock", the foundations. And now here it was, it seemed, all solid and real, no longer an elusive schimera in my minds eye but present, ready to play in the window of the vintage store right round the corner from my house. A miracle, I had to have it, but 50 paund, where would I get it?

Fortunately, it was to prove a relatively easy if lengthy  acquisition. I did have some birthday savings, about 20 paund, and I knew I could plead, beg or borrow from my mother because I also had a paper round which brought in a few bob each week and I did odd jobs around the neighborhood like washing peoples' cars or windows to make extra. By another miracle, much to the chagrin of the store-keeper, the kit did not sell and it ended up out of the window stacked in a corner for a month as she wondered how she was going to get rid of it. Enjoying the opportunity to show her some of my genuine emotion I told her that I was saving-up to buy it and begged her to keep it for me. Whether she did or not it remained there till I had enough to pay half and then pay up the rest as i got it. After 6 weeks I'd bought my first drum-kit and my friends and I were jamming at a hippy/commune/squat/house on the other side Shooters Hill which also served as a rehearsal space and hash-den. I remember one night being invited into the inner sanctum of the house where the hash smoking went on. At the time I hardly touched any drugs, once or twice a year maybe, and these were actually young men, older than us who sold from the house. The inner sanctum where the consumption and purchasing of the goods took place was a dark, red and black candle lit room behind a white door where people cushions, lamps, incense and all kinds of paraphernalia seemed to litter the walls and floors, it was a mess and I was happy to get out after a few tokes, rarely going back if at all.

But we were jammin' in the next room, drums, bass and 2 guitars we would do covers of Hendrix, The Cream, Hawkwind even some Beefheart and Zappa and had a go at writing a few songs of our own. It was a good time for me, a welcome distraction and release from the stress I still felt living in London and pining for the rustic hills and fields of Scotland my homeland, where old friends and family were, 300 miles to the north but never far from my mind and always in my heart.

Then, in the summer of '71 everything changed; I went on holiday back home to Scotland, to the beautiful Isle Of Arran in the estuary of the River Clyde, with old school friends and friends of friends, among tourists and visitors from all over the UK and Europe who flock to the island each summer. In '71 the more included ML, a girl I met on a camp-site, captivated by stories of my life in Landan and in awe of the early beard I sported and the pipe I smoked both of which made me seem way older than my 15 years. The beautiful raven-haired, oval-faced, sweet smiling Maid Marion who loved Roxy Music and Smokey Robinson took my love and inspired me to return to Scotland when I was 16, in 1972, only to break my heart at Christmas one year later when her parents, lied to her and bribed her to stop seeing me because of the color of my skin. 

And so it goes. They were a faithful, white, middle-class, Christian Presbyterian family, it was not my first run-in with their kind and it would not be my last.

Actually it was "Scottish chocolate ass", "chocolate" being one of the kinder names I was given as a child growing up during the 50's and 60's in predominantly white Presbyterian west-coast Scotland; the "chocolate", a reference to and reminder of my non-white mixed-race origins,  Scottish and African-American. The only other African-American's I remember identifying with and having a feeling of kinship for were on TV, the actor Don Mitchell, Mark Sanger in the US show "Ironside", and boxing legend Cassius Clay Jr. / Muhammad Ali. Aside from this and a few encouraging words from my mother I was on my own trying to understand why there was all this drama over the differences in the color of a person's skin, namely mine.  I was having a hard enough time taking in the rivalry between Catholics and Protestants / Rangers and Celtic, having spent a good bit of my childhood in the care of a family of fanatic Loyal Orangemen.  

Now, today it is many many years later and I live in New York City, one of the largest cultural and racial melting pots in the world, visiting my car mechanic, a friend who also happens to have "chocolate" origins, his being Native American, African/American and English. Mr Wes "Moondog" of the Blackfoot out of North Dakota, mechanic and proud rider/owner of a black chrome plated Harley Davidson Sportster motorcycle; a man  with whom I confess I felt an immediate, unspoken kinship when we first met back in 2010 because of his "chocolaty" origins.. 

Today started at 5:30 am with a good read of the days news in bed then up for a shower, a cup of New York coffee and a cheese sandwich, in that order; then installing and setting up a 2nd widescreen Samsung monitor for my Pro Tools studio leading me straight into Music-Mix Mode for my latest project/song a Scottish-Reggae version of Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I saw Your Face". 

My procurement of the aforementioned "2nd widescreen Samsung monitor" bears special mention in today's blog, as it tells about my latest venture into scavenging for profit in the streets of New York. Yesterday it was a Samsung SyncMaster S22B310 widescreen monitor, value $115.00 approx., seen on the way out of my apartment, stashed in a paper bag on a desk next to the trash at the bottom of our stairs. Spotting a good find I immediately snagged it and ran back upstairs to stash my booty and head back out. Only to find what looked like the owners of the monitor loading a moving truck with the rest of their furniture and belongings lined up in the hallway. In a panic now, since I didn't want to steal or appear to steal their property I dashed back upstairs grabbed the monitor and cables raced downstairs and managed to get it back on the desk without anyone noticing. Phew! I was relieved, experiencing heart palpitations and breathlessness from all that exertion and panic, but relieved. "If it's there when I get back (highly unlikely I thought) in a couple of hours then it's mine." But, right there and then it looked for all the world as if it was about to be loaded along with the other items lined up in the hallway next to the trash.  But lo and behold when I came home later that night, thinking no more about the monitor, BINGO, it was still sitting right where I left it along with the desk and several other items of furniture that had been there before. Now abandoned without doubt I claimed the prize and calmly walked upstairs to see if it still worked, which it did. 

You see I live in a section of New York's Lower East Side which is like a part of NYU's campus, consequently there is always a high turnover of New York University students taking up residence for a few semesters then moving out after graduation, which just happened last month. During this time the streets are packed with furniture, discarded electronics, clothes and all kinds of interesting stuff for the picking. What happens is the graduates, flush with the success of their academic year are so eager to get the hell out of New York and back home to wherever that might be, China, the Mid West, Russia, that they will abandon high value items rather than go through the hassle of packing them up and taking them with them or even selling them before they go. Two years ago I got out of my car after parking it in a street here on the Lower East Side near my apartment and almost fell over a brand new $300.00 HP computer with a burnt-out power supply. $50.00 to replace the power supply, followed by a re-install of the Windows 8 OS (embedded on the HD) then a free upgrade to OS 8.1 and I had a brand new HP Computer with a 3.2 Ghz AMD Processor 1 TB of disc space, smoothly running the latest version of Windows. (The kicker to this story is that I was actively refusing in defiance to upgrade my Windows XP to Windows 8, vowing never again to give my money to Microsoft, and instead had wiped my old computer and was installing a Linux based Ubuntu operating system when fate in the shape of a care-less departing NYU student thrust this opportunity my way.) Windows 8.1 works great by the way. Other finds of mine include a set of Yamaha speakers, an Alesis Piano Keyboard, a microphone stand with a boom arm and pop shield.

But the street scavenging in New York is phenomenal. It reminds me of Copenhagen, Denmark in the late 70's when I first went there on tour with my band Cafe' Jacques. We'd heard the legends of how you could furnish your whole apartment from  things people put out for the trash, and of the commune Freetown Christiana that thrived as a kind squatter, existentialist, peace and cannabis-filled autonomous neighborhood - it was Copenhagen in the 70's! And sure enough we saw all kinds of furniture and stuff put out for the trash (as well as the cannabis). For the Copenhagens we were told that it was some kind of tradition to change their furniture at regular intervals and those who could afford to  did and the others were the better for it. 

In New York however the art of scavenging has several different levels, there are the hard-working industrious empty bottle and can collectors who can bee seen roaming the streets at all hours hauling and shoving train-lines of shopping carts in some cases, loaded high with mountains of plastic bottles and aluminum cans, or the professional scavenger who will find high value items such as vintage furniture and accessories or electronics which he then sells to the vintage stores or flea markets in the area, and people like myself who keep an eye out for specific high value items that can occasionally show up while out walking the dog or parking the car. 

But I digress - to the studio and straight in to Music-Mix Mode. I chose to record The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for 2 reasons, the first being that it is one of the most beautiful songs I know (my favorite version being the Peggy Seeger one) and the second that in the person of Ewan MacColl there is a strong Scottish connection, making it a prime candidate for my Scottish-reggae groove. So, with my newly installed and working monitor I now have a "2 wide-screen monitor equipped Pro-Tools" set up in my studio which is just grand :), and my 4 hour mix session was pure joy. 

Due to a tendency to record and mix all day I am trying to compartmentalize my day to include other activities such as living, eating, drinking etc. so today my cut off was 12 noon for a TV lunch then move onto blogging for a couple of hours before venturing out into the seventy plus degree New York humidity for a walk and a few errands. Well at 12:15  I left the studio and started my TV lunch: another cup of coffee and cheese sandwich sounds about right, while watching an episode of The Code on Netflix, an Australian Drama series which I highly recommend.  Having finished my lunch opened "The Art Of Writing" by Lu Chi and read the following poem by T'ao Ch'ien:

"Reading the classics again,
sometimes I still find heroes,
old sages I dare not emulate,
but who stood strong in adversity.
I too will not choose the easy way."

What a profound source of inspiration and motivation this book is. However I had to put my enthusiasm on hold and postpone my blogging after a phone call from Wes my chocolate mechanic telling me to bring my rattly little car down to his garage so he could un-rattle it for me. Damn it is hot and humid today, but I love driving and walking through the city. After leaving the car with Wes over at his garage on Delancey I am on foot heading for Mikey's on Ludlow and it's a bottle of ice cold water and a much needed Mikey Burger and fries (this I also recommend, highly - any weather). From Mikey's it's on to the 1st Ave. PO Box for House with Heart, my partner's orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal, to check for mail and donations to her charity, followed by a visit to the bank, Chase of course, and home to write day 2 of my blog before day 2 is over. 

In truth there is so much more to tell about what happened today and how it all ties into events that have happened and continue to happen almost cyclically throughout my life, events whose synchronicity and repetition render the present now a new impression of a now that has always existed.

Open Mike

It has been said by friends, associates and complete strangers that I have led an interesting and eventful life which would be worth writing about. It has also been said that how I express myself, the words, the concepts I use, THE ACCENT, has the power to attract and keep others interested in the stories I tell. 

I will attribute all this to three things:

1. I do lead an interesting and eventful life which amazes me whenever I reflect on it.

2. Having started with human language (Eng. Lit was my favorite subject at school and I speak fluent Italian plus a little French & Spanish) I have a deep insatiable interest and love for all of Life's communication processes. The words, the thoughts, the gestures, the senses, the people, the animals - Life. How, why, where and when Life communicates is a fascinating and illuminating study.

3. I am a fanatic about my Scottish accent; the result of a traumatic move at the age of 12 from my home town of Kilmarnock on the west coast of Scotland  to Swinging London in 1968. Only I wasn't swinging much. Cut off suddenly from the community of my hard-won school friends and close relatives, just weeks before I was due to matriculate to the Kilmarnock Academy, the highest Secondary School in the area (an honor I had worked my ass off against all odds to achieve) my little West Coast Scottish chocolate ass was whipped off along with my 4 brothers and sisters to great big sprawling, smelly, noisy London. A place where they spoke loik this and used words and sounds which, grated on my prepubescent and traumatized ears as if to confirm completely that I was either the wrong person or I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. The whole environment seemed alien and unwelcome to me. I needed something that would allow me to retain some sense of self, a benign source of rebellion to counteract this overwhelming angst I was being forced to experience, something no one could tell me to stop doing or scold me for; my SCOTTISH ACCENT. I decided there and then to always keep my Scottish accent. No way will I ever speak "loik a Landaner" - resolved I. At that point my Scottish accent was the only intimate connection I felt with everything I had learned about life and love till then, it kept me strong and still today it continues to color my words and cultural identity. 

And so it goes, since age twelve I have tried to cultivate and maintain my Scottish accent as an asset. Through three years of teenage hell in London till '71, then back to Scotland till '84, on to Italy for 9, California for 15, and now here in NYC for 9, my resolution persists;  heads will turn and curious ears prick up and eyes stare sometimes wonder when I speak because they all  "just love the sound of your beautiful brogue."


"You should write a book." Some say.
"Contribute to my magazine." Say others.


Three things; a life being lived, a passion unleashed, a benign, persistent life-changing act of rebellion. Do these an interesting read make?

Till now, and since 1975, in words I have published song lyrics; and a good number of them too. A body of work which I always perform with enthusiasm and excitement. I have also had published several press-releases for musical projects I have been working on. But a book? Maybe a blog or something every now and then. So I have been toying with the idea for some time now.

And with that a copy of Lu Chi's Wen Fu "The Art Of Writing" fell into my hands this morning; literally, I was cleaning and it fell of the book-shelf, signalling along with certain other life events coming into alignment  that it was time to start the process. 

This has been day 1.

Open Mike

What a rehearsal line up from last night - Omnichord, Violin, Fender Jazz Bass, Djembe, Cajon, Acoustic Guitar and the most awesome singers and songs; with trumpet and possibly contra bassoon still to come the May 4 Super Sunday Showcase at Sidewalk Cafe NYC promises to be an eclectic affair. Please don't miss, for yer own sake.