February 6, 2015

  • parties

    I went to the Rainbow Peoples Party in the 1960s.  Well, it was more a political party, or maybe I should say anti-political party.

    This Detroit area group of riffraff began as the White Panther Party.  (The Black Panthers were a thing back then.)  Soon the White Panthers needed to change their name, because they were being mistaken for segregationists, thus the Rainbow Peoples Party was born.

    Under the direction of John Sinclair, they formed a thrash band named the Motor City Five (MC5).  Sinclair wrote a book of poetry called Guitar Army.  John Lennon once wrote a song about him.  Why am I telling you this?  Dunno, it seemed interesting.

    I met John Sinclair once, and the memory is still vivid.  He and MC5 were renting a house on the Michigan campus next to my sister's apartment.  One day he sauntered over to my sister's to gab.  He announced that he was high on mescaline, and the mescaline was really great.

    He talked about rock and roll, I talked about a blues band I was in.  I put on my Junior Wells album and played him a couple of cuts.

    "Yeah, wow, but you gotta hear MC5, really high energy music."

    I talked about finishing college.

    "What for man, and then what?"

    "So I'll get a job in . . ."

    "Man, you don't have to work, you know. No. Nobody needs to work."

    Strange philosophy, eh?  I think he meant you don't need to punch a clock.  But we know he was writing, and managing MC5, and also dealing weed.  A whole lot of weed, enough in fact, to get the attention of the state police.  He was jailed several months after this conversation, and that is when John Lennon wrote his batty tribute.

    Ah, the sixties.