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 I was no different than a lot of guys in my generation. I wanted to be the next Bob Dylan or Joan Baez and travel around singing about what was “blowing in the wind.” Those days weren't much different than now: there was war, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, greed, etc. If you live long enough, you see how little things really change. I became socially aware in my early teens, thanks to two older brothers who talked to me about what was going on in the world and introduced me to great writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, James Baldwin and Allen Ginsberg. They taught me lots of things I didn’t learn in school. Unfortunately, I was too young to go to the South on the freedom rides. I snuck off to antiwar marches in the city, but missed the free speech movement at Berkeley and the so-called Summer of Love in San Francisco’s famed Haight-Ashbury. Still, I knew where to buy a copy of The Drummer (Philly’s underground newspaper) with the naked picture of those “Two Virgins,” John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Or to get the latest banned poetry by Ginsberg and others. I spent many hot summer nights with my close circle of friends hanging out on the stoop, as we called the front steps in South Philly, and learning to play guitar. They showed me the basic chords and gave me a simple explanation of music theory (“If ya know da notes in the key of C, ya can figure out any song in the world”). They taught me tunes by Dylan, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, and others. I started writing my own material, often hiding the gender of the object of my lust, especially when he was sitting across from me listening to my song. I didn’t do any major public performances of my music until the 80s, when I did a stint in a group called the Queer Boys. We quickly gathered a loyal following at our favorite haunt: the Gay Coffeehouse at the LGBT Center. We had no sacred cows. We mocked everything and everybody from then-President Ronald Reagan to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. We intermingled the classic songs of the 60s and 70s with our own original and irreverent, sometimes downright raunchy, repertoire. In the 90s, after moving to San Francisco, I was one half of Tallase and Mecca, a folk duo. Ted Tallase and I played here and there and even cut a demo tape (it was before CDs) in another singer/songwriter’s garage studio. One of my favorite songs from that period is "c'mon." In the new millennium, there was The Peaceniks, a group that sang protest songs at rallies and marches. Our motto: we have a song for every cause. It wasn’t an exaggeration. One of our songs became the theme for the living Wage campaign. Another “yuppie yuppie stole my pad,” is still a favorite at tenants rights and anti-gentrification rallies. Last
summer,
musician
and
producer
Khalil
Sullivan
invited
me
into
his
studio
to
record
some
tunes.
The
sessions
created
great results.
"Sticks and stones" and "box" are two of the songs he produced and
recorded. It's the realization of a dream to hear such
polished versions of my songs. These days,
I'm mostly playing solo, doing rallies and gigs wherever I can find
them. I
still want to be Joan Baez.
(To see all of my music videos, go to: youtube.com/user/avimecca) |
