From Bob Sarles
In '97 I was at a party thrown for the opening of an exhibit focusing on the
psychedelic music era at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I
directed the documentary film "Feed Your Head" that was commissioned for the
exhibit (produced by Dave Cunningham). During the party someone
introduced me to Ken Kesey. When Kesey was told that I was the director of
the film for the exhibit, he slapped me hard on the back and said "You got
the story right, not many do." Coming from Kesey, that was one of the
greatest compliments I ever received.
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Running into the Hog Farm in Aspen Meadows New Mexico
August 1969
By Bill Keenom
We were hitch-hiking through there on our way back to Portland
from Taos, NM when this guy picked us up and said "Hey there's this
trippy party up the hill from here, wannago?" We of course were up
for any party, so we get there, and Ken Kesey is offering to throw
our I Ching while sitting crosslegged in the bed of a Datsun pickup,
drinking a bottle of Spanada and he had an American flag tooth when
he smiled (and even when he didn't).
I ended up losing my vision over some dust sprinkled marijuana while
on one of the buses going down the valley draw in the famous bus
races chronicled in "Flashback," y'know the one with the 8mm film
documenting the race. At the end of the weekend in Aspen Meadows a
couple of the Hog Farm kids who had befriended us invited us to go
with them to some big concert in New York. We were kinda burned out
and told them, naw, we'd better continue on to Portland and rest up
a bit. And of course the day we got back home, the headlines were
"Half a million kids overrun Bethel New York! National disaster
declared!" For once we weren't part of the problem. DAMN!!! Been
kickin' myself ever since.....
Also ran into Ken at McArthur Court (UofO) during a poets' "hoo-haw"
in 1990 or so. My friend Walt Curtis had been a part of Spit in the
Ocean with Ken, (a tabloid type arty paper) and Walt suggested we
attend this get-together. I spent just a few minutes with Ken
talking about politics and history, but the thing I'll never forget
was that he wore a brown tee shirt that so full of holes, it
would've been turned into a cleaning rag at my house long ago. He
told me he really liked that tee shirt, that it was very comfortable
and had been with him through lots of happenings. I took from his
reflection on his tee shirt that Ken was not only comfortable in his
clothing, but also very comfortable in his skin, ready to approach
the world on his own terms without bowing to any culture's dictates.
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Thanks to Hammond Guthrie for the following (via Punmaster Music Wire)
From the Kesey Memorial in Eugene:
Ken's brother Chuck noted that when he told the youngest member of the Kesey
clan that Ken was gone - the youngster replied: "So now whose gonna teach us
to hypnotize the chickens?"
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