From: ebail@ctp.com (Erik Bailey)
Subject: Pot & Music [LONG]
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 18:10:51 GMT
Organization: Cambridge Technology Partners
Keywords: marijuana pot music

Thought y'all might find this interesting. I found it surprisingly fair and
well-written.

--Erik

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[Reprinted without permission from _The Boston Globe_]
[Friday Sep. 11, 1992; The Music Section, page 45]

ROCK BANDS ARE PUSHING A POT AGENDA -- by Paul Robiceau

The Black Crowes raised some eyebrows during their recent concerts at the
Orpheum when they unveiled a backdrop with a huge marijuana leaf flanked by
the words "Free Us" and "No Narcs" -- and sold their own rolling paper in
the lobby.

But the Black Crowes, who performed for 50,000 people at the Atlanta Pot
Festival in April, are only the most visible band flying that renegade
banner. A growing number of musicians are coming out of the closet in
support of marijuana.

"It's not a gimmick, it's what we are and what we talk about," Cypress Hill
rapper B-Real said at this summer's New Music Seminar in New York, during a
panel, "Pot in Pop."

Pro-pot periodical High Times recently ran cover stories on both Cypress
Hill and the Black Crowes, detailing smoked-out interview sessions with
those groups. In 1991, the magazine ran a feature in which Willie Nelson
took a stand in favor of legalizing the hemp plant from which marijuana is
derived.

In Musician magazine, such artists as Sinead O'Connor and jazz bandleader
Frank Foster recently spoke about using pot to enhance their creative
process -- although both acknowledged that the drug impairs actual
performance.

"If you smoke a joint, you're much clearer," O'Connor said. "You realize
what your thoughts are, but you've got to write it down realy quickly
before it all goes through your head."

The hot rock mecca of Seattle also has its share of marijuana advocates.
Nirvana bassist Chris Novoselic and Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron have
publicly come out in favor of it.

This summer's Lollapalooza tour featured the sale of books on growing your
own pot, and paraphernalia such as pipes and bongs suitable for smoking it.
Pro-marijuana organizations were also invited to set up tables at
Lollapalooza, the recent neo-hippe HORDE tour featuring Phish, Blues
Traveler, the Spin Doctors, and Widespread Panic, and the
Guns'N'Roses/Metallica/Faith No More juggernaut that hits Foxboro stadium
tonight.

"There's this whole counterculture movement among young people right now,"
says High Times senior editor Steve Bloom. "It's not as big a a movement as
the '60s, but its a movement nonetheless."

"The times are right to be kind of radical right now, to take stands that
you might not have taken a few years ago."

"Something has been happening for the past five years that I've really
felt, like this sort of rumbling," concurs Audrey Clark of Boston's
psychedelic grunge-rockers the 360's. "It has that sort of feeling of the
'60s, in that there is that idealism and willingness to talk about things."

"I think people are less and less confident with the system, and with their
government," offers Mike Bordin, drummer for Faith No More. "It's like the
rats are coming out when the lights are on instead of waiting for the
lights to go off."

Before the Black Crowes' Orpheum shows, singer Cris Robinson noted, "It's
not about the moral issue, it's about the issue of being honest and telling
the truth, and saying what do I do that's so bad? I'm not a bad person, and
most people, the 50 to 60 million people in this country who smoke, are not
bad either."

"It's so sad," sighs Bordin, who categorizes himself as a moderate pot
smoker who shuns alcohol and other drugs. "It's just pathetic to be on the
edge about something like that."

"Nobody wants to risk his job to say they smoke marijuana," says Cypress
Hill's B-Real, whose group uses a pot leaf emblem and refers to smoking in
some of their lyrics. "We're in the public eye and we work for ourselves.
We're on Columbia Records, but they say 'Do what you have to do, and we
support you.'"

"[Pot advocacy] has played a major role in our overall reception," B-Real
says, "becuase a lot of people can relate to it 'cause -- they won't say it
-- but they get high."

"I've always been very open about it," says 360's songwriter Clark, who has
alluded to pot usage in a number of songs, including 1990's "Free," in
which she sings, "I'll get free, to do what I please, gonna get stoned,
feel everything."

"There was a time where it was really unfashionable," she says, referring
to the cocaine-dominated '80s, "when you said you smoked dope, and you were
like a hippie or a throwback to the '60s."

"It always went along with music for me," she says. "I'll smoke a joint,and
immediately reach for my guitar. It's a very natural thing. You just start
jamming out, and a lot of interesting, creative things happen that way."

"Blues Traveler bassist Bobby Sheehan agrees. "It makes you more open to
ideas. But I never like to say that if I do this or do that, I play or
write better. I write or play differently."

Apart from pot's recreational or inspirational uses, or the issue of
choice, other musicians such as Willie Nelson and Nirvana's Novoselic are
focusing on the subject of hemp.

Nelson reminds that hemp was legal in this country until 1937, proving its
worth for the farmer as a crop which was used to make many products,
including paper, rope, cloth, and oil, as well as for medicinal products."

"The whole plant has gotten a bad rap over the years," says Nelson, who is
quick to run to the back of his tour bus before a recent concert to fetch a
copy of Jack Herer's book "The Emperor Wears No Clothes," about the
politics of pot. "We've all been brainwashed on what a dangerous, horrible
thing it is, when the truth of the matter is it was just a conspiracy by
the petrochemical people to make room for plastics."

"They say people like me really have no business talking about it," he
says, "because they say 'All you want it for is you like to smoke it,' and
I have no answer for that because maybe I do enjoy smoking it... I use it
to relax, and that's all."

"Even if they couldn't make rope out of it," Bordin says, "it doesn't seem
like a big threat. [Pot] just doesn't seem like it's worthy of all the
scare tactics.

Do musicians worry about going public about pot, knowing that law
enforcement officials could target them on the road?

"I never carry it," Blues Traveler's Sheehan says. "That's the worst part
about it, feeling like a criminal and realizing, just because you have a
little pop, you might not make the next gig, which is out ofthe question."

"I never carry anything," concurs Bordin. "It's not worth it. That's not
why I'm here. I'm here to make music."

B-Real, however, says that Cypress Hill even lights up on stage at times,
but hasn't run into trouble. "Police overlook marijuana because they're
after the big fish," he says.

"I guess we put ourselves up on the line and it gets a little scary, but I
don't want to turn into some sort of fugitive," Crowes head Robinson told
the Globe. "I'm not really behind the lobbying on [the pot issue]. I just
said, he, this band does this, and a lot of bands do, as do a lot of
politicians and judges and police officers and firemen, and a lot of moms
and dads, and a lot of kids. And if we all just stood up and said it,
whether its right or wrong, it's _there_."

"It's definitely can't hurt," says Clark of the 360's. "By talking about it
and communicating, that's how you're going to make the change."

B-Real of Cypress Hill contends, "All in all, we're hoping for
decriminalization, which is at least a first step. First decriminalization,
and then comes legalization. To legalize [pot] is a big step that people
are afraid to take."

Clark draws an analogy to recycling. "If everyone is doing his part, then
it's that 'people have the power' sort of thing, where they can make the
changes happen."

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SIDEBAR: "I had a smoke and I went into a dream..."

References to pot (either obvious or veiled) have cropped up in song lyrics
over the years, from Brewer & Shipley's fluke hit "One Toke Over the Line"
through Cypress Hill's "Stoned Is the Way of the Walk." But apart from rap
and reggae, the most well-known examples still hail from the '60s and '70s:

* "A Day in the Life," the Beatles. The line "I had a smoke and I went into
a dream" raised ruffles over its airplay.

* "Sweet Leaf," Black Sabbath. "You introduced me, to my mind," Ozzy
Osbourne whined in this early '70s slab of grunge, which probably
influenced today's Seattle scene on two fronts.

* "Panama Red," New Riders of the Purple Sage. These outlaw buddies of the
Greatful Dead scored a hit with Peter Rowan's mythical adventure of a
character names after a strain of pot. Punchline: "He'll steal your woman,
then he'll rob your head."

* "Roll Another Number," Neil Young. This ode to paking a marijuana
cigarette for the road, from 1975's "Tonight's the Night," has received new
life on Young's live disc "Weld."

* "Don't Bogart That Joint," Little Feat. Tounge-in-cheek delivery of the
message "You've been holding onto it, and I sure would like a hit," drawled
in slow, rough harmony.

* "Late in the Evening," Paul Simon. He still gets screams at his concerts
when he sings the line "I went outside and smoked myself a j."

* "Legalize It," Peter Tosh. Probably reggae's most overt song in favor of
marijuana, or ganja, as Rastafarians refer to it.

* "Cheeba Cheeba," Tone Loc. This loopy tale of "blazing a joint"is on the
same 1989 album as the rapper's hit "Wild Thing." Cheeba is another word
for marijuana in rap circles.

-- 
Erik Bailey   | Cambridge Technology Partners      | Usual disclaimer
              | 304 Vassar St., Cambridge MA 02193 | applies: this post is
ebail@ctp.com | (617) 374-8418                     | mine, not my employer's
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