In the early Sixties, I worked in New York City for a repertory theater called "The Lving Theatre". It was an off-Broadway stage doing a variety of types of productions ranging from a drama based on a group of junkies waiting for their connection complete with an onstage jazz group that included Freddie Redd and Jackie McLean.

Anyway, we fished the show around ten thirty or so. It was after eleven when we would leave the theater and no one would feel like going hoime. As a result, we blended into the Greenwich Village night. Sometimes it was for conversation at the Figaro or the Cedar Bar where the abstract expressionists hung out, other times for music at the Cafe Wha, The White Horse Tavern or Goerdes Folk City. On the walls of the Figaro were two sayings. I think they were scrawled nearby the phone in the center of the cafe. One of them inspired a playwrite. You can guess which one. The first said, "It is better to fail your Wasserman than never to have loved at all." The second one asked, "Who's afraid of Virginia Wolfe?"

The people hanging around there those Greenwich Village nights was amazing. I found myself in conversations with Alan Ginsburg, Paul Goodman, John Cage, Jackson Maclow, Merce Cunningham - people who shaped their eras in the arts. It was an extraordinary place, Greenwich Village, and it only came alive in the evening.

The exception I guess was Sunday afternoons in Washington square. The figure who stands out in my memory is Roger Sprung but I think there were other musicians there whom I just wasn't knowledgeable enough to recognize although I think Phil Ochs and Patrick Skye might have been there.

The real music took place in lofts on weekends. Somehow the word would go out as to where the hoot was and a couple of hundred people would show up. One giveaway of the location was that there would be fifteen or twenty motor scooters and motorcycles outside. These gatherings never really began until 10:00 or so if I remember correctly and they never really ended, they just slowed down and people wandered out faster than they wandered in until there was no one left to play.

The quality of the musicianship, the familiarity with the music, the accessibility to good music was something that I have never found since.

There was a wonderful resource, a music store whose name I forget, but was run by a heavy unkempt man named Izzy Young. Izzy Young managed to be what I considered the center of what was going on in traditional music in New York or at least in the Village. He had books, records, instruments and there was always someone there to talk with (kind of like an imitation mudcat ;-)>

I met Mike Seeger there on the day he was getting married. I think he has done that several times since then but I was impressed by my brush with such a splendid musician. Ralph Rinzler would be in there.

Ah, hell, I am just rattling on, nos story just a bunch of loosly connected memories. Anyway, it's therapy for me!

Sourdough