Dr. John in Babylon

Dr. John in Babylon

THE GEOMETRY OF ROCK

The true musical geniuses of our age are generally frustrating figures. By their very nature they refuse to figure in with the mass of musical muck that is constantly perpetrated by AM and FM top-forty heads. To attempt to explain any of them, it’s necessary to go beyond the rock mainstream but still remain aware of it, in order that there be some sort of reference point for the reader or the author. Otherwise, it’s lost in the ozone again, as Commander Cody (in some ways exactly the kind of rocker we’re discussing) might put it.

On the other hand, to explain any of the rock iconoclasts solely in terms of the mainstream, working one’s way around any opportunity to enter the ozone (and therefore lose journalistic or other safety) is inevitably the greatest source of error and outright sham. That’s what happens when the likes of Iggy Stooge or Captain Beefheart or even the early MC5 are labelled “weird” or “bizarre” or “freaks”. As long as their genius is relegated to the circus or sideshow, those who do the relegating are not serving anyone’s interests except possibly their own — and then out of the most craven sort of fear. To understand the work of a rock genius only as a mutation of the mainstream is to misunderstand it with such thoroughness that one’s motives in doing so must inexorably be brought to the fore.

Thus, we come to the geometry of rock. (Let me quickly add that I think it works for more than rock, that it

works for the geniuses of any form; try applying the principle, the analogy, cited here to someone like Sun-Ra for example.) Definitely, the whole thing is an artificial, but somehow effective, way of explaining why you’ve got to look beyond the mere music to discuss someone like Dr. John, who will eventually become our subject.

Simply enough, if one views mainstream rock and roll (thoroughly wrapped up and divided among the Who, Stones and a few others, notably Led Zeppelin) as a plane, in which certain tenets operate, one begins to see how two-dimensional the common structure of music is. And no matter how well one fills that two dimensional space (a la the Stones) people who can work with the two-dimensional structure taken for granted and then move to a third, cosmic dimension are finally much more interesting and indeed creative. Not to say successful; one of the tenets of the mainstream, unfortunately, is that effective rock and roll is commercial rock and roll. A premise not at all bad, since it implies great relatability. On the other hand, the effect of the premise, which reduces everything to pablum, is obviously denigrating to everyone concerned with the whole ruse. Finally, the commercial artist who can operate in three-dimensions will be the most successful; that hasn’t really happened yet though the MC5 came very close to establishing themselves as the vanguard of that kind of thing. Before they decided that being involved with the mainstream, the au courant, was more important . . . again, that in itself would seem to imply some cowardice.

Generally, the dimensional picture of a group like say, the Velvet Underground or the Stooges, which touches the mainstream at a certain point or points and encompasses enough of the mainstream to make the music relatable, is driven far above the boundaries of the plane of the mainstream. But to focus only upon the line of intersection with the mainstream is to miss the most cosmic purpose of the music, is to miss its importance as a liberating force, lifting one out of the mundane and into the cosmos.

Occasionally, a three-dimensional figure may emerge whose effect is so bizarre that wherever he touches the mainstream it is wrenched out of shape, irrevocably and forever. Such was the case with John Coltrane and the mainstream of jazz. The Who made some assays into rock in that manner, with their feedback gimmicks, then decided that the safest course was to retreat into the safety of the already-proven-successful.

Of course, the higher one gets into the third dimension, the higher energy the jams become and the more bizarre they look to those accustomed to handling low-energy styles. And the higher-energy they become, the more they force the audience to not be an audience, to be a participant and that frees both audience and musician in a very real manner from a number of authoritarian restrictions.

When music enters that plane, the plane of liberation, it’s become four-dimensional. Not many people ever reach that stage (the Grateful Dead, occasionally, the Stooges when they’re really in the bowels of a receptive audience) but a number of

persons are beginning to become involved with striving for that direction.

Not the least of those figures is Doctor John, the Night Tripper.

II

MAC REBBENACK DISCOVERS VOODOO; AMERIKA DISCOVERS DOCTOR JOHN

If Mac Rebbenack had never discovered voodoo, you’d probably still have heard a number of records he’d played on, though not necessarily his music. But with the addition of voodoo and the discovery of his alter-ego (through several previous incarnations) in Doctor John, the Gris-Gris Man, the Night-Tripper, Rebbenack moved beyond a merely super-competent musician’s stature and became his own man in the open arena of the pop scene.

In a way, the discovery of voodoo by Doctor John is far less amazing than the discovery of Doctor John by Amerika. Brought up in the Bayou, the Louisiana home of the Cajun (of which tribe Doctor John is a definite member), Rebbenack had always known of voodoo. Where he comes from, he says, you may not have been a practitioner of the dark arts but you didn’t “disbelieve”.

In 1960, the then twenty-year old Rebbenack was almost literally dragged to the New Orleans’ “Temple of the Innocent Blood” to see the famed Sister Caterine, the most notorious of the twentieth century practitioners of voodoo . . . good voodoo, one should hasten to add, “white” voodoo.

Rebbenack describes that first meetin’-“Right away, I was scared. I thought, voodoo . . . black magic, but when I got to the temple of the Innocent Blood dey’s all dese people groovin’ aroun’ happy, no race differences, no hates. Dey wuz all one. An’ I could feel the power, jeez, I feel it all aroun’ me. I say, ’Dis is fo’ me’.”

It is unfortunate both for Doctor John and for history that white voodoo has been ignored for so long in favor of the more macabre aspects of its polar twin. I’ve seen him do things that I’d swear come right out of whatever books of voodoo lore exist but I’ve never seen the effect of any of it be anything but good. In fact. I’ve never seen it not have an almost immediate effect, which is some kind of testimony, I suspect.

Late one night around our dining room table, he told us the story of how the priest who’d recently baptised his baby daughter had, in the middle of the ceremony, told his young niece to “Shut up!” He was clearly horrified, not in any naive sense of our lack of pomp and circumstance but because he felt it tragic that a priest would have so small a comprehension of the powers that reside in the ancient ceremonies of Catholicism. “An’ he s’pose to be baptisin’ my baby!” as he put it.

With the advantage of voodoo, Rebbenack split for L.A. sometime afterward, taking Dr. John with him and becoming a respected and noted studio musician. When the idea for a Doctor John album hit, he took it around to everyone he could think of and they all turned him down. Eventually, he drifted into the office of Charlie Greene, the discoverer of a number of Atlantic’s groups, including Sonny and Cher and the Buffalo Springfield. Charlie and Mac knew each other from the Sonny and Cher sessions, where Rebbenack had done a number of the guitar things and Greene agreed to give the Doctor John idea a go.

The original plan was for a single record but the first record (Gris-Gris) hit it off so well that two others have followed. Greene has become Rebbenack’s “touchstone with the world,” who “produces my records and guides my career. Most of all he’s a frien’ who don’ have no mis-poipose in helpin’. I lean on him for focus so’s I can keep my head straight with my practices. He is the only man who knows both Mac Rebbenack and Dr. John as complete individuals — each with his own satchel.

“Every man’s got to have a frien’ like that.”

Greene is a bit reminiscent of Joey Bishop, physicalty, but comes on somewhere between Phil Spector, Lenny Bruce and an ordinary, high-intensity, semi-sincere manager of any other group. In reality, he’s Rebbenack’s perfect foil, is also Doctor John’s perfect foil (apparently as Harold Battiste, who is given credit for producing the first two records) and, once you’re past the veneer of Los Angeles overdrive, a good dope smokin’ buddy. Not at all the crass individual he seems at first, Charlie Greene is much more respected in the record business apparently, than his non-notoriety would suggest.

Finally, though, what we will be left with are visions apprehended of Doctor John chantin’ away up there with his snake skins, spade/chick chorus, wired bass player (who plays a tiny keyboard that ain’t no guitar but sounds similarly) and, at least on records, some vintage theatrical African drums. Feather in his cap, Doctor John carries a big stick, symbolizing some mixture of Moses’ rod (uncircumcised) and a king’s scepter, and sing/chant-ing in a voice more guttural, perfect than anyone on the Caucasian side of Captain Beefheart.

Where the music comes from is pretty easy. On a primal level out of the coon’s-ass Cajun swamps, bayous they call them. A strange mixture of French with Indian/spade blood turning into hardy people (you should read Evangeline by Longfellow, to understand the beginnings; really recommended only for those who can stay awake during “Lawrence Welk” inanities) who struggle just to survive and are considered an inherently inferior caste by most all of the others, even the Blacks.

Secondly, it comes from the New Orleans rhythm and blues mainstream, as if anyone was aware of it anymore. The only people it’s produced that had any kind of luck outside the French Quarter (or wherever the hell they play something besides trad jazz in New Orleans) are Fats Domino and Ernie K-Doe; meanwhile, a number of others, while they didn’t exactly starve, had little success outside of home (though the people who heard them generally ripped them off for what part of their genius they could), including such as the Sha-weeze (mentioned primarily because a couple of their tunes are available on a Liberty re-release of some old Imperial masters, called Sweet and Greasy, Rhythm and Blues Volume Two and also because Rebbenack flipped out when he saw the record) and the amazing Professor Longhair, who recorded for Atlantic and Ron and a whole oddysey of other people without ever getting a hit or whatever’s necessary to break out of home.

Professor had much more influence than anyone imagines, on number of people, primarily Fats Domino’s piano playing. A couple of his oid sides are available on an EP Mercury issued a couple of months back, apparently available only to disc jockeys (that’s where I got my copy). MEP-98 features two Professor Longhair tunes, “Bald Head” and “Her Mind Is Gone”, both interesting to those of you who find that sort of history interesting. Both are well-done, high-energy tunes that would probably be hits even now if they were given any sort of help; maybe Mercury will release more, maybe they won’t. It don’t make any difference anyway since Professor Longhair probably doesn’t even know they were re-released, according to Rebbenack. (The same set included a couple of Lorraine Ellison numbers, neither of which will stand up to “Stay With Me Baby” and a couple of precursors to the label’s ancient Youngbloods release. As well as a pair of Joe Cocker tunes, pre-Chris Stainton/Denny Cordell that are too embarassing to discuss here.)

For better or worse, those elements and voodoo seem to have made up the essentials of the Doctor John albums, which by now number three. On the other hand, they also, as we discussed earlier, don’t even begin to skim the surface of where the music’s really headed. It’s like discussing Joyce in terms of sentence construction; he made some grammatical breakthroughs, I think, but there’s a little more there.

Ill

THE BABYLON GRIS-GRIS REMEDIES

There is an apparent thematic discontinuity between “all three of Doctor John’s records, as if he were unsure, until the last one, if he would be allowed to do another. Certainly, in the case of the first (Gris-Gris, Atco SD33-234) the anxiety seems to be justified. At any rate, on that record

Rebbenack seems concerned that he should lay out Dr. John’s trip as clearly as possible. Thus, the record opens with these words: “They call me

Doctor John, I’m known as the Night-Tripper

Got my satchel of gris-gris in my hand

See me trippin’ up, back down the bayou

Ah’m the last of the best, they call me the gris-gris man

Got many clients, come from miles aroun’

Runnin’ down my presecriptions

I got medicine’s to cure all y’all's ills

1 got remedies of every description” which seem to explain everything in pretty rudimentary terms. On the liner notes, he seems equally concerned wif explaining himself, justifying what he’s doing as it were:

“I HAVE ALSO DUG UP THE OLD DANSE KALINDA TO REMIND YOU WE HAVE NOT CHOPPED OUT THE OLD CHANTS AND THE NEW CROAKER COURTBULLION TO SERVE BATTISTE STYLE OF PHYCO-DELPHIA.”

The rest is pretty much devoted to a further, more detailed explanation of where things came from. But Gris-Gris as a whole is the most voodoo (or, as may be the case, Doctor John’s version of the art) oriented of the three; almost every song seems to have the kind of implications one wouldn’t care to discuss in a darkened alley.

Both “Danse Kalinda Ba-Doom” and “Danse Fambeaux” on the first side would appear to be, then, old chants (charts are different than chants, at least in Dr. John’s terminology; charts would seem to refer to specific remedies. Gris-gris is probably a chart, and really so are the chants — or maybe more accurately, chants are chart-formulae. If you see what I mean.) “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya-Ya”, besides being the rationale for the record(s) would seem also to be explication of what Dr. John (considered separately from Mac Rebbenack) is.

The Gris-gris man seems to be the voodoo doctor (witch-doctor? Doctor John) and the rest seems to be explaining what, exactly, he can do for us. (He should’ve begun the thing, “Please allow me to introduce myself.”) After the first, he explains that “If you’ve got love

trouble . . . I’ve got just the thing for ya”, as well as a number of other remedies. Point of describing the first one harks back to the Alice Cooper comment that Dr. John is “on a heavy sex-trip”.

For sure, there’s a decided unity between the exotic and the erotic, far more than mere Freudian phonetics can explain; Dr. John is - the most obviously masculine rock star (white) in existences making all those Jimmy Page/Eric Claptons look like the sissies they might as well be.

Thus, “Mama Roux”, the third song on the record and the beginning of Dr. John’s charming series of semi-hooker songs, which culminated as a major theme in his latest record. “She was the queen of the little red white and blue”, says it all; sounds like a quick cheerleader grope in the backseat. Still, Mama Roux may be just another Mardi Gras song (remember “Easy Ri.der”?), not just another Mardi Gras ’cause it’s Doctor John; but, he says, or implies that the song is dedicated to:

“MIMI, WHO IN SILENCE SAYS THE LYRICS TO MAMA ROUX IN CHIPACKA, THE CHOPATOULIS CHOCTAWS WITHOUT TEEPEES ON MAGNOLIA STREET AND WISE TO THE ZULU PARADE AND THE GOLDEN BLADE THE SUN-UP TO SUN-DOWN SECOND LINERS WHO DIG FAT TUESDAY MORE THAN ANYBODY AND THAT’S PLENTY.”

Other than that, it reminds one in places of the old Small Faces’ tune, “Wham Bam, Thank You Ma’am”, mostly on the level of double-entendre.

“Crocker Courtbullion” is, again, a chant, much more r and b influenced than the other two but basically a chant, nonetheless. “Jump Sturdy” and “Walk On Guilded Splinters” are both basically standard rhythm and blues tunes with the addition of the mystic drums and such of the bayou, be they voodoo or not.

“Walk On Guilded Splinters” is undoubtedly one of the finest songs Dr. John has ever done; the conga drive, combined with the common Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost guitar/bass combination that is a trademark of this album, lends it an almost cobra-like enchantment. The lyrics are Doctor John at his eerie finest, hinting at ancient rites again but with no ill after-effects.

Guilded splinters (pun aside) lead one to thinking of bones, splinters of bone maybe, like the bones of a saint. Like he says, “Some people thing they jive me/But I know they must be crazy”. This is, however, the most successful composition Doctor John has ever done, in many ways. It is the perfect vehicle for his voice, a voice so gravelly that Rod Stewart looks clear-throated by comparison. And it is the perfect melding of rock and voodoo.

The basic ingredients of his sound defined (super-spade chick chorus, haunting, “talking” drums and conga, his own incredibly strong, yet simple, guitar licks, his ethereal voice, occasional horns), Doctor John was ready to move to the second album.

Babylon (ATCO SD 33-270) is largely concerned with apocalypse. Even the cover, which depicts Dr. John standing berobed in the midst of multi-colored thunderbolts has an apocalyptic feel to it, especially with “Dr. John-Babylon” written largely over his head like a rainbow ’cross the sky.

Babylon burst out of Amerika’s pop scene like a literal Led Zeppelin; smoking its way home in a time when it was really needed, the apocalypse dealt with in totality.

In a prophetic sort of way, this is one of the most revolutionary albums in history. More so than Volunteers (probably the most political rock album ever released aside from Kick Out The Jams) if less so than Liberation Music by Charlie Haden, it deals with Amerika as Babylon from beginning to end.

“Babylon, never, never, ever again will anyone want to call you they home. This is how you gonna sink now. I don’t care whatever you think now. I’m gonna bring my wrath down on you now, so you’ll feel the weight of truth now.” Throughout the record, Dr. John speaks to Ameri a allegorically, obliquely, much in the same manner that the Old Testament prophets spoke, albeit in a contemporary medium.

Still, Doctor John is more night-tripper than politician, on the surface at least and thus it was with some suspicion that I received the handbill that read “Doctor John — To the people — For the people — With the people — Atco Records”; sounded like another super-shuck, frankly.

So it was with even more surprise that I received him throwing out half his night’s salary to the audience one night in June; and the Detroit kids, despite supposedly being used to revolutionary acts from their hometown stages, scarfed up the money quickly and then disappeared into the midnight, as it were, without so much as a thank you. Maybe that’s the price you pay for being associated with all the other rip-off stars but then again it doesn’t speak very well for teeny consciousness in Motown, at all.

From the back of the club you couldn’t tell what it was he was throwing out, proof enough that somethin’ strange was goin’ on up there. Only later did I discover, through the auspices of photo-friend Siegel, that he was throwin’ out money. Far out, we thought. And Charlie Greene said later that they would’ve thrown out the rest if they could’ve got the big bills changed. (Hundreds; encouraging people’s greed ain’t exactly a revolutionary act no matter how you look at it, though.)

But when doing a benefit for the White Panthers was mentioned, he said he’d do it “only if the Black Panthers and the Green Panthers got some of the money too.” Meaning that he didn’t want to encourage no “race hates”, apparently. There is a certain naivete present in the man, a naivete caused, perhaps, by the fact that he is so far in front of the rest of us. As a crazed witch-doctor, it would be pretty superfluous to ask him to back-track. And who else do you know who took LSD and said that it set him back three years? “You know why they call it acid?” he asked pugnaciously. “Because that’s what it does to your mind. It rots it.”

Naive? “Glowin’ in the light of my life, knowin’ the law for happiness.’ But not quite, there’s some wisdom and some admonition in that song too. “The plan is for every man to be like a tree planted by the stream, yes it is, with good understanding and a lot of patience, you can make it, yes you can, beyond your wildest dreams ... All the eyes of the world are on you and they all want to see just what you gonna do — don’t commit suicide, gotta keep on Glowin’ ...” And later, “There’s a hand writing up on yonder wall, nobody seems to understand what it means at all. How can we live in a kingdom and never see the throne? Have all the riches and treasures and still feel like we’re all alone? You got to keep the law of the great commandments. In the jungles of the streets we are all defenseless.”

And he understands Amerika perfectly, summing it up better I think than anyone else has ever expressed. It’s the youth culture’s version of the wasteland, in just two short lines:

“This is not the land of milk and honey, this is the place where people sell their souls out for money (and you know they do!)”

“Babylon” though is the song of the record. What colossal and magnificent force, what total grasp of the situation:

“Everyone you executed with your machine guns, Babylon! You bringin’ about your own destruction, Babylon. I’m puttin’ you down, down, down, down where you can never rise up again.”

Through-out, the music on Babylon is far less spooky, more direct, much closer to r and b. Often, it’s closest to Albert Ayler’s New Grass and the somewhat over-serene sentiments are, as well, to be closely aligned with the quest of people like Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp for spiritual harmony while not neglecting, either, the equally important fight against racism. One cannot operate without the other; again, if we return to the beginning of this piece, we can see how the man’s music is liberating in that sense.

“Black Widow Spider” and “Barefoot Lady” are both akin to “Mama Roux”, though the former has more in common with the Cajun bayous than pure rhythm and blues. Even “Lady” is far more astral than almost any other common “soul” song. But the attenuation of some of r ‘n’ b’s roots for a more weighty posture in no way lessens their effect on thaf level.

It is on the second side that Doctor John really finds himself, however. On “Twilight Zone” the piano playing has an empathy and calm that is found only in the works of such spiritually well-developed persons as Lonnie Smith, of the Pharoah Sanders group, and more particularly, Alice Coltrane. “Twilight Zone”, a dip into the cosmos (“Martians kidnap the First Family, they gonna demand New York City for ransom money. We gonna outsmart ’em, leave a note for ’em to read — the best they can get is Milwaukee in the Twilight Zone”) which has much in common with the work of the Coltrane’s, yet on another musical plane altogether.

Despite the TV culture implications, this music is far beyond anything he’d yet done. The singers and rock oriented rhythm section are now complemented by an excellent saxophone and the astral energies of the piano. And, despite his usual “feel-good” Tim Leary-ish trip, for once here he leaves us with no hope for Amerikan decadence. Speaking of Martin Luther King, as well as the Kennedys, he concludes: “But where are they at?!? Somewhere in the Twilight Zone, in the outer limits of a land unknown, in the twilight zone.” Unmistakably anguished as his voice is, the real climax of the song is a truly outer limits instrumental section which follows.

‘‘Twilight Zone”, fusing spiritual/political considerations on a bizarre tangent, sets the stage perfectly for the waspishly humorous “Patriotic Flag Waver”, a merger of “My Country ’Tis of Thee” with gutsy rock and roll. The extremely sardonic effect of the juxtaposition is immediately obvious. The marching rhythms that set in later are just another element to make the whole song really work.

Further, it provides us some of the most relatable, basically free form lyrics ever. The imagery in lines like “Divided we stand, multiplied we’ll fall, overpopulation is my call” or old as the hills but I feel a little younger” and finally “I’m righteously righteous, stone justly just, faithful in the need of everyone’s trust” coupled with his completely unique voice, croaking itself to death, is stronger as political statement than anything the young Dylan attempted or accomplished.

Finally he comes up with the surreal beauty of the line “I’m a gourmet chef of charcoal barbecue, transplanted heart sewed to the sole of my shoe” which should really have been written by Captain Beefheart.

Following is the compleat anti-pop star trip, the guitar heavy, raga-rich “Lonesome Guitar Strangler”. The strength of Rebbenack’s guitar convinces one that all the feats of which he claims himself capable are really possible. “I shoot them full of fuzztone, my reverb kills them slow/Pm gonna use my G-string on a fellow named Gabor Szabo”: in the space of two albums, Rebbenack has proved himself the exquisite equal of any other pussy-footin’ axeman on the planet and he sets out in this song to prove it. Where before he has been basically understated in his playing, here he opens up and shoots everything from the hip. Everything.

The guitar playing emerged as a prime element in the new album as well. Remedies (ATCO SD 33-316) is by far the most rhythm and blues oriented of the records, for the entire first side, culminating in the voodoo-rock chant on the second side, “Angola Anthem.”

“Loop Garoo” has that familiar Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost introductory eeriness that makes you aware it’s him but the rest of the first side is harder, somehow, more basic. “What Goes Around Comes Around” is reminiscent of Delaney and Bonnie’s gospel-derived r and b, as are (to a lesser degree) “Wash Mama Wash” and “Chippy Chippy”.

Both “Wash” and “Chippy” seem to hark back to the tales of hard-bitten New Orleans women of the night in “Mama Roux”, “Barefoot Lady” and “Black Widow Spider” in preceding records. “Wash Mama Wash” however also draws some strength from the fact that that’s what it’s really about, that it is a work-song. “Rub a dub, dub, Momma bust them suds/Scrub Mama Scrub” returns the chorus and you can even feel sweaty, hot, tired if you want to.

“Chippy Chippy” is a discussion of everybody’s prostitution, reminiscent of Dylan’s “Everybody Must Get Stoned” in that respect. “Chippy on one, chippy on one, two three Chippy everybody, stone Chippy.” Muttered half-epithets, not voodoo oriented in the least, fill it out, in a kind of advanced Bourbon Street manner.

“Mardi Gras Day” is like a celebration song, for Mardi Gras Day or whenever. It sounds like street noises for openers, then a chant that may or may not be traditional. The ancient drumming, missing since the beginnings of Babylon resumes, as if in anticipation of “Angola Anthem”. The chanting is largely incoherent here, too, as it will be on the second side, except for the oft-repeated “All on a Mardi Gras Day”.

“Angola Anthem” begins with the same s o u 1 - s h a k i n g , form out-of-the-void, rhythmic impulses that first shook the planet eons ago; startlingly reminiscent of the chaos at the beginning of Pharoah Sanders’ Karma then dissolving into a conga/bass/guitar riff for Doctor’s often incoherent chanting. “Life is cheap in Angola”, he cries, and goes into a seventeen minute composition that can only be roughly apprehended; basically, it appears to be the statement of the Africans’ history from the days of the Gold Coast to the present.

The guitar line is the focus for much of the record. Struggling to break loose from the strictures of the drumming, never quite succeeding but progressing perceptibly each time. Dr. John’s voice sounds like representative terror and torture in several places; the closest a basically “white” man has come to capturing what the black experience must be like. (Being a “Cajun” implies, I think, that one is of varied blood.. Some Indian, undoubtedly, but also a strong affinity with the black man. In the Louisiana culture, the Cajun is barely a step above the Black man, with no consideration given to cultural differences.)

More and more, as the song moves into later movements, the guitar symbolizes the struggle for freedom. The only comparable item in rock has been Richie Havens’ version of “Run Shaker Life”, which epitomizes the same struggle.

Despite the seeming randomness of effects, the song has a sort of free-form structure again making it comparable to works in the New Black Music of Coltrane and Coleman and their followers. As I noted earlier, it seems to be a liberation music in the finest sense, both earthy and cosmic at one and the same time.

Voodoo must play a great part in this music for it represents the spiritual merger of African magic with European magic (Christianity). And Doctor John represents the finest goal of Cosmic Music, the melding together in a distinct manner of the earth-plane of common rock music and the spiritual plane of some other forms (the notable jazz influence on Remedies, for example, and the voodoo influence throughout).

High energy speaks to us in simple terms, directly and forcefully. Its energies are not always as apparently derivative as they are here, certainly, but they are generally this effective. Low energy forms just won’t do anymore, we’ve got too much business to take care of.

Cajun minstrel though he may be, Doctor John represents the finest flowering of the music of the Youth Culture. (Not alone, certainly, but with other high-energy formats — those of the Stooges and Beefheart, of the Velvet Underground and even such acceptable musicians as the Who.) All of them, whatever their basis, point us in one direction: Liberation.

Or, like they used to say in Ann Arbor —

“KICK OUT THE JAMS”.

I can’t bring myself to leave you with less than that. And I don’t know any more.

Dave Marsh