Brenda Knight talks summer lovers, with brief N.L. intro

Brenda Knight of Red Wheel/Weiser Books and Conari Press has jumped on board the Noveltown blog train. In the short time I've know Knight I've heard some wicked tales. I just hope she shares some of those stories with you Noveltown blog readers.

Knight is an expert on the Beat Generation spiritual books, and a whole lot more.

Her first entry details some of her journey at the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. - n.l.

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Summer Lovers – San Francisco, Calif.
Brenda Knight
bknight@redwheelweiser.com

Last Sunday, 40,000 people commemorated the 40th anniversary of The Summer of Love; a day filled with poetry and song and maybe a little bit of madness. My friend Amanda and I decided to go together. It was going to be her seven-month-old daughter Aya’s first concert. We both wore Beatnik black, and as we dove into the sea of tie dye, we realized we would not have made good hippies. I started to question my choice of footwear a couple of miles in—my platform wedgies were not making the trek up and down 70 degree angled hills any easier. By the fourth mile, one of my feet was bleeding.

I didn’t mind; we were there to represent. We laughed the whole way there and felt excited to be a part of history.

Looking for signs and augers for the day, the first thing we saw upon our arrival was a hippie being carried off on a stretcher. “Hmmmm.’ we both intoned. The next thing we saw was also puzzling; the security was being run by Hell’s Angels. “I guess they forgot about Altamont,” Amanda observed.

Our plan was to take in the vibe of free love and record Beatnik goddess ruth weiss’s reading of a poem she had written for the occasion, “1967.”

Ruth had promised to get us on the VIP list for backstage, but I was a little worried since she had forgotten to confirm with a call on Saturday. When I went up to the will call booth, a mean lady said our names were nowhere on the list and started giving me the bum’s rush. She was all business and was definitely not dispensing any free love.

A slow-moving man in the back of the booth was grabbing up a bundle of yellow strings with which to tie laminates. He seemed to approve of my choice of outfits very much. I saw my chance and waited in his line. I leaned forward a bit to make it easier for him to look down my top and told my sad tale, ending with a rather wheedling, “We really need to be interviewing the poets, man. They’re about to go on stage.” I realized that I could have been speaking in the strange clicking language of the Subsaharan bush men and it wouldn’t have mattered. He looked sideways at Gestapo Woman and deftly slid two laminates to me in a folded piece of paper. As we entered the gate, I was trying to remember my Dante.

The backstage scene was an astonishing array of rock royalty. Wine and beer were flowing freely as well as incense and other strangely scented smoke. I said to Amanda, “There is going to be a lot of really strange hooking up this evening.” It was only a little after “high noon,” but you could just tell that things were going to get crazy. The concept of free love began taking on new meaning for us; we looked at each other and made a pact to get out of there before the going got too weird. I was hearing some deeply strange snatches of conversation as we swept along looking for Ruth, a 4-foot-11 needle in a hippie haystack. One man was giving very detailed instructions on the dispensation of acid on pencils while, next to him, a cameraman filmed actor Willem Dafoe pontificating his politics. There were a whole lot of happy people, though, and I did not see one person who wasn’t smiling. Amanda spied Ruth beside a massive speaker—we rushed over to hug her. She seemed a bit tipsy, but elated. She was due to go on stage in fifteen minutes, so we made a plan to hang out afterward and I went to get a good position for recording Ruth. My laminate also accorded me access inside the barriers with the news crews, and I settled down to enjoy the show. Ruth came on after Country Joe and the Fish’s performance of “Viet Nam.” I remember thinking it was a good thing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were not there; they had no friends among the Summer Lovers.

Ruth glided onto the stage decked out in a sequined butterfly shirt. It always amazes me that this big voice can come out of this tiny woman. She started off by ululating, “Beast Be a Saint.” I stood right in front of the stage and recorded. Oddly, Amanda, Superbaby and I were the only women inside the barrier. The crowd went wild for her original composition, and Ruth ended with a prophecy of peace. Hot Tuna took the stage, and for a moment I felt like I had traveled back in time.

And maybe I did. Somehow, the recording of Ruth was erased by the tear I had made in the fabric of time. All we could do was laugh and find some shade under the perfect summer sun.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Sunday, September 09, 2007. You can leave your response.