Marmaduke

Spoke to McDuke earlier this evening - we finally connected after several days of trial and error. He is doing very well and in fact, had just come in from seeing "Basic Instinct II." He wasn't quite sure what he thought of the film, which I did not see so I have no opinion. We also spoke of Al Gore's film about Global Warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." I haven't seen that yet, either, and John had never heard of it. I was invited to a party for the film's San Francisco opening a couple of weeks ago but I was in Los Angeles and had to pass. The invite said something like "Meet San Francisco's eco-glitterati" and I had to wonder if Larry Dawson (John's dad) was there. The elder Mr. Dawson used to make independent ecology related films back in the day. John comes from a long line of people just to the right of the left!!!

Anyway, back to McDuke, he will be in San Francisco in September or October but was not sure where he will stay. Michelle's home for ailing New Riders is open and has a vacancy....

I did tell John how well the new lineup sounded and he was glad to hear about it. Apparently, nobody has offered up any tapes or CDs of the shows to him. I have two - The Mystic on 4/8 and Eugene on 4/10. I am going to copy them for him and send them along with the latest Pez dispenser for his collection. In return, John is supposed to send ME the lyrics to Now We Call It Love and The Cowboy and the Rancher's Daughter which I will pass on to Ronny Penque and Johnny Markowski (because they ASKED).

Speaking of Johnny, how about that boy!!! Over 18% in the Jam Band polls and well ahead of Richie Hayward and Little Feat. Yeah, NEW RIDERS.

Speaking of Little Feat, God, was it really 33 years ago that we were all in that Holiday Inn in Philadelphia? Lyn and I were there with the Earl Scruggs Revue and Bonnie Raitt and Little Feat were staying there, too. They kept asking us to go to Boston with them and we said no. After we ran out and bought Dixie Chicken, we were extremely remorseful that we had not gone along. What a band. Later, when they came to San Francisco, we called them up and reminded Richie that we had met him in Philadelphia when he broke his toe in the subway and he invited us to come to Winterland with the band. We met over at (yet again, The Holiday Inn) the hotel and went to the show together. They were incredible.