Amsterdam > Milano
Trip Start
Feb 23, 2007
1
34
Trip End
Jun 15, 2007
Milano, Italy
Friday, June 15, 2007
(Amsterdam, Friday, June 15, 2007)-Big Drama on our day of departure for two weeks in Italy when Dr. Dorothy realizes that she's left her purse with her money and passport back at the pad just as we're about to enter Centraal Station to take the train to the airport, meet Mark Ritsema and catch our flight to Milano.
A serious tragic-comedy of errors follows: The keys to the apartment are also in the purse, so I have to ring up John Richardson and ask him to bring the keys I gave him last night for the cats from the 6th Ward to use over to Lijnbaansgracht and let the Dr. into the apartment so she can get her passport. By this time it's too late for her to get back in time to make our flight, so I have to go on ahead with Mark and get on the plane.
But first I ascertain from the clerk at the booking counter that Dorothy will be able to change her flight to the next one available for only €52 if she makes the change within 30 minutes, and then she can meet us in Milano later the same day-certainly in time for the gig tonight at the COX 18 Free Festival, where the three of us are scheduled to play.
Mark and I fly to Milano and our man Marco Lorenzin from COX 18 is there to pick us up and take us into the city where the festival is being staged on the extensive grounds of a former Catholic mental institution now known as the Museo Arte Paolo Pini, an experimental arts complex that has turned the psychiatric campus into a collection of theatrical, workshop and classroom spaces, the Jodok BarRistorante, a children's sport & play center called I bambini e le bambine, an organic garden called Il Guardino degli Aromi, a catering operation, and the OstellOlinda, a spacious and comfortable hotel and living facility for the participants and their guests-like ourselves.
The drama continues by means of a series of frantic phone calls to and from Dr D at Schipol Airport, where she has been bullied into buying a whole new ticket to Milano and back, although we will be going from Milano to Roma and returning from there in two weeks time. There is a 5:00 pm flight that's postponed and not gonna leave on time, then it's set back again when the plane coming from Milano does not arrive in Amsterdam, and now there's no chance at all that she'll be able to make the gig tonight.
Increasingly frantic on my own end, waiting to go on stage in Milano, I suggest that she switch her ticket to Rome, remain in Amsterdam until Sunday morning and then fly to Rome to join me there for our scheduled two-week residency at the Forte Prenestino. But our conversation is terminated before we can work out the details and I find to my great dismay that my Vodafone telephone minutes have been completely depleted, so now I'm cut off from the outside world until I can find a pre-pay card in Rome on Monday.
The Dr is now completely at sea. She feels like she can't go back to the apartment because there are six cats from New Orleans staying there now, the airline won't give her ticket money back and, as I learn several days later, she ends up purchasing a whole nother ticket-back to the United States! In Detroit we used to call this singing the Negro National Anthem: "Fuck it then! I'm outta here!"
I'm a bit perplexed with no idea of what's going to happen now, but it's time for Mark & me to close out the opening night show of the Beat Goes On Festival in Milano, and that's just what we do. And, as the great Italian-American vaudevillian Jimmy Durante used to say, "Good night, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are...."
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On my first trip to Milano in November 2005 I had the great pleasure of making an episode of my radio show with the characters from the COX 18 community who'd brought me there. Now I'm going to present it again right here:
John Sinclair Radio Show #59
COX 18, Milano, Italy
Sunday, November 6, 2005 @ 7:00 - 8:00 pm [20-0543]
http://www.johnsinclairradio.com/audio/jsrshow59.mp3
I was invited to spend the weekend in Milano, Italy, as a featured participant in a massive 3-week art event called BEAT HIPPY AUTONOMI PUNK held at a 30-year-old art squat in Milano called COX 18. Steve Gebhardt, director of the film TWENTY TO LIFE: The Life & Times of John Sinclair, came over from the States and we screened the film and talked to the audience on Friday night. I hung around COX 18 all day Saturday and Sunday with the characters in charge: Guiseppe, Stefano, Paolo et al. On Sunday evening they scrambled their little equipment together and we all sat around a big table at COX 18 and did a radio show. Gary Barton-this one from San Francisco-joined us, and we had recorded music by Yusef Lateef, Martha & The Vandellas, The Treniers, John Sinclair & Mark Ritsema, Muddy Waters, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Reed, and the Blues Scholars from a "live" broadcast on WDET last July.
Playlist #59
[01] Opening Music: Yusef Lateef: Blues In Space with Intro & Opening Tokes
[02] Martha & The Vandellas: Dancing in the Street
[03] The Treniers: Rock This Joint
[04] Comments & Conversation with Pippo, Intro to COX 18 & BEAT HIPPY AUTONOMI PUNK Exhibition
[05] John Sinclair & Mark Ritsema: brilliant corners
[06] Comments with Pippo, Giancarlo Matteo & Paolo re: COX 18
[07] Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home
[08] Ornette Coleman: Blues Connotation
[09] Jimmy Reed: Take Out Some Insurance
[10] Comments with Gary Barton of San Francisco re: Exhibition at COX 18
[11] Closing Comments & Closing Music:
[12] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Fat Boy @ WDET
A Joint Production
Produced & Hosted by John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam
Co-Produced, Co-Hosted & Translated by Guiseppe Pipitone for COX 18
Engineered by Stefano
Mastered & posted by Henk Botwinik
Executive Producer: John Sinclair
Special thanks to Caterina, Monica, Guiseppe "Pippo" Pipitone, Marco, Stefano, Matteo Guarnaccia, Giancarlo, Paolo & Bay Area Gary Barton
©(P) 2005 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Podcast by www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com @ November 7, 2005
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This just in:
Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur was released June 12th by Warner Bros Records as part of Amnesty International's effort to mobilize activism around the human-rights atrocities occurring in Darfur, Sudan.
More than 50 international recording artists and over 30 record labels have united behind the project, which features iconic songs by John Lennon recorded by an array of best-selling artists-including U2, Green Day, R.E.M., Jackson Browne, Avril Lavigne, Big & Rich, Christina Aguilera, Snow Patrol, Corinne Bailey Rae, Flaming Lips, Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, Los Lonely Boys, Jakob Dylan, Ben Harper and Regina Spektor-and will be available for purchase both on CD and as digital downloads.
Accompanying the two-CD set, 11 tracks performed by Duran Duran, Deftones, Gavin Rossdale, Yellowcard, Widespread Panic, O.A.R., Ben Jelen, Me'Shell Ndegčocello, Rocky Duwani, Emmanuel Jal and The Fab Faux, are now available as exclusive digital downloads on iTunes.
The rights and all music publishing royalties for John Lennon's songs were donated by Yoko Ono to Amnesty International, which chose to harness the power of Lennon's music to inspire a new generation of activists to stand up for human rights.
"It's wonderful that, through this campaign, music that is so familiar to many people of my era will now be embraced by a whole new generation," Ono says. "John's music set out to inspire change, and in standing up for human rights, we really can make the world a better place."
Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A., adds, "We know music's power to unite and inspire people. With hundreds of thousands dead, millions driven from their burned out villages and rape being used as a tactic in the Darfur conflict, the world needs a mass mobilization demanding action and justice.
"The Instant Karma campaign combines John Lennon's passionate desire for us to imagine a more peaceful world with Amnesty International's expertise in effecting justice.
"Instant Karma allows ordinary people to lend their hand in saving lives-a notion we think would make John proud."
Proceeds from CD and digital sales will support Amnesty International and its campaign to focus attention and mobilize activism around the urgent catastrophe in Darfur and other human-rights crises.
American Express Cardmembers who purchase the album with their Card via InstantKarma.org/Imagine will receive six exclusive tracks either on CD or as digital downloads. These bonus songs include Josh Groban's previously unreleased take on "Imagine," as well as "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" by Maroon 5, "Woman" by Paddy Casey, "Beautiful Boy" by Freshly Ground, "Imagine" by Afro Reggae and "John Sinclair" by Trevor Menear.
-Forte Prenestino
Roma
June 27 > 30, 2007
