Clover Blue, by Eldonna Edwards. John Scognamiglio Books, 2019

Blue is not quite 11 when one of his mothers in the communal family gives birth. Made to watch the process, it makes him ask which one of the women he came out of. The Olders get uncomfortable; the leader of the commune, Goji, tells Blue that he’ll find out when he turns 12. On Blue’s 12^th birthday, the commune is disrupted by the arrival of two people. After, Goji tells Blue that he didn’t mean exactly on Blue’s birthday; he’ll tell him when it’s time. Blue finds this odd, because Goji normally treats Blue as an equal and tells the truth about things.



Set in the 1970s in northern California, Blue tells the story of his upbringing and coming into awareness of his past. Blue loves the members of the small commune. He finds out he was adopted when he was 3 but he remembers nothing of his prior life. He doesn’t even know what his birthname was. He only knows his life in the Saffron Freedom Community, which contains a guru, a surfer, a midwife and healer, a Grateful Dead groupie, a Vietnam deserter, and his best friend, a same age girl, Harmony. They live on a few leased acres, growing their food and living simply. All but Goji live in a large treehouse in an oak tree. They believe in peace, love, kindness, and reverence for all living things and the natural world. They all partake in the work needed to keep things running. There is no electricity or running water; they carry water from the springs. They stay off the radar because the State of California does not recognize the way the commune is set up; they’d have pesky questions like who one’s mother is, and why are they living under a tarp with no toilets other than an outhouse. It seems like heaven. Then things get upset when they get a new member and Goji falls for her.



The story is well paced. I loved the characters. The author really got the widening awareness that Blue has as he grows up. The setting is so well depicted I could feel and see the dry grasses and the rains. She shows that all was not sweetness and light; the commune runs into racism, violence, disdain for the hippie’s lifestyle, and the tragedies that can occur when herbal healing just isn’t enough. She also shows how well adjusted a child can be coming from a non-average up bringing; Blue and Harmony are educated well beyond their age level compared to those in regular school.



Basically the story is a coming of age and a search for identity- a search that’s a little harder for Blue than for most kids. He learns that the Olders are not as perfect as he thought, especially Goji. But they have taught him self-reliance, and that’s what he really needs, in the end.



I loved this book. I sat up until 1 a.m. for two nights reading it because I couldn’t put it down. Then, when I went to start this review, I flipped through it to refresh my memory because I read it two months ago. I ended up sitting up until 1 a.m. for two nights again, rereading, because it immediately sucked me in. And I haven’t reread anything for decades! The writing is such that I lived inside Blue, feeling his feelings. A wonderful piece of nostalgia for those of us who grew up in that era, even if not in the way Blue did. I’d give it 6 stars if I could.

Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded. David Hepworth. Henry Holt & Co., 2016

David Hepworth’s theses is that 1971 was the most important year in the history of rock/pop music. It was the year of innovations in how albums were made. It was a year of great albums made that still endure today, like ‘Tapestry’, ‘Led Zeppelin IV’, ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’, ‘Sticky Fingers’, ‘Blue’, ‘Pearl’, ‘Madman Across the Water’, ‘Harvest’, and, of course, ‘American Pie’. It was, actually, the year that albums became more important than 45 rpm singles. It was the year the Beatles were no more. The technology of making music and recording it changed. Arena rock started, as opposed to playing in clubs and halls.

Each chapter is one month in the year 1971. He doesn’t just tell us what was released by who; he goes deeper into the rock scene, covering things like Mick Jagger’s wedding, various rock stars battles with drugs and alcohol, and what producers and managers were doing. Some of the people he covers really never went anywhere. Being British, it’s seen through a British lens, but there is plenty about the American scene.

Was 1971 the most important year in rock history? I don’t know. I was surprised to find that ‘Blue’ and ‘Tapestry’ came out in ’71; they were such a seminal part of my teens (I could sing every word of both those albums) that I would have sworn they came out earlier. Likewise, I would have sworn Elton John, Rod Stewart, and Van Morrison became really big before that point. But he’s got the dates correct; that music was just so important to me that it colors my memories of the era.

It’s an interesting book- I read it in two evenings- but oddly unstirring. Hepworth is a reporter, not an ad man, and he gives us just the facts, ma’am. But the facts showed me what was below the surface of the music I came of age to. 

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High on Rebellion: Inside the Underground at Max’s Kansas City, by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin. Open Road, 1998, re-released 2016

Max’s Kansas City sounds like a name for a steak house, and up front, that’s what it was. On the first floor in the front area, they served surf and turf and had a well-stocked bar. But it was a lot more than that; it was ground zero for the changing arts and music scene of the 1960s and 70s and saw the birth of glam and punk. Owner Mickey Ruskin liked artists, and the club became their hangout. If he thought their work had promise, he’d let them run up unpaid tabs or take artworks in lieu of payment. Soon Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, and the Factory regulars were ruling the arts scene from Max’s back room; the drag queens were welcome there when they weren’t in many other places. Lots of musicians started coming in, and it soon became a place where anything could- and did- happen. Sex and drugs in the bathrooms, peeing in the phone booths because the bathrooms were taken, blow jobs under the tables, fights, and waitresses in crotch high skirts were all common. Beat writers were there. Amazing new music started showing up as well as visual art; Bowie, Springsteen, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Aerosmith, Tim Buckley, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith (both she and Janis Joplin would be turned away at the door the first time they showed up, Ruskin saying they were too dirty), Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, and the New York Dolls were all there regularly- Debbie Harry was a waitress there before achieving success with Blondie. Ruskin had a talent for working the door; he could sense who would fit in and who wouldn’t, and would turn lots of people away. It was high art and low life, and it was deeply mourned when it closed down because of the debts Ruskin had and his increasing drug use. Everyone spoke highly of Ruskin, even though he was an anti-Semite, a bigot, and a misogynist.

The story is told in snippets from all sorts of people who’d been there. Everyone from Lou Reed to Ed Koch to Halston to ex-waitresses to Abbie Hoffman to Holly Woodlawn have short bits of recollections in the book. It’s all loosely held together by memoirs of Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin, a former waitress who ended up marrying Ruskin and having children by him. There are lots of photos. I found it mostly an interesting, if uneven, read although I did get bored a couple of times. Given my interest in pop culture I’m not sure how I got to be this old without knowing about Max’s.

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The Predictions, by Bianca Zander. William Morrow, 2015

 

 It’s 1978, and teens Poppy and Lukas have grown up at Gaialands, a commune in New Zealand. This is not a smoke-pot-and-groove commune; this vegan community grows its own food, lives without electricity, lives in leaky, mouse-ridden shelters, shares everything, and works hard all day, every day. Even the kids have been brought up communally, having their own group shelter rather than living with adults- they didn’t even know who their parents were until recently, when circumstances forced the adult’s hand.

Lukas can’t wait to come of age and escape to the larger world. He wants to form a punk rock band. Poppy just wants to be with Lukas, who she loves. But when a new person enters the commune, she begins to doubt that love.

Shakti arrives, fancy Gypsy caravan and all. She’s a New Age chick, ankle bells, Indian clothing, Tarot cards, consciousness raising, and beautiful- and too good to do any actual work on the commune. Manipulating others into doing things for her is as natural as breathing.

As a coming of age ritual for the kids, she creates predictions for them. Poppy’s states that she’ll find love in a land far away. This is almost heartbreaking, given her feelings for Lukas, but when he leaves the commune, she goes with him. It’s the only way she’ll find her true love. Things don’t go as planned, and life out in the world turns out to be harder than they thought. They eventually end up in London, where hair metal and drugs are the current hot things. 

It’s a rather harsh coming of age story, but I think pretty realistic for the time and subculture. Poppy and Lukas both take their time growing up. I liked Poppy, but found her frustrating and kept finding myself wondering what the heck she was thinking when she did things. Lukas has no real depth to him, sadly. There is a side plot of a mystery that seems like it should have upset people more than it did. The story reads like the author hurried herself and she didn’t have time to develop characters and refine the plot properly. A good editor would have helped her immensely. I can only say I liked the book; I definitely can’t say I loved it.  

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