By John M. Edwards. In Haight-Ashbury, once the center of the 1960s Hippy Flower Power Movement, I came upon a hawker selling unique chicken-claw pipes. I purchased one and held it up in the light as he passed me a tape of Ry Cooder, the famous slide guitarist who taught Keith Richards a special open tuning so it would be “easier to play on smack.” And why it’s such a bitch to figure out Rolling Stones songs in the first place. This is what San Francisco is like. Never to be… Read more

John M. Edwards remembers the bon temps of his college days in New Orleans, including live music, po boys, and cameos by Frank Zappa and Quentin Tarantino. * * * At the Napoleon House—an atmospheric inn where the “Yats” (New Orleans elite) once hatched a nefarious plot in the inner courtyard sanctum to return their Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte to the so-called Louisiana Purchase (brokered between the Little Colonel and Thomas Jefferson for only several mil)—I sat munching on a… Read more

Whether you live near or far from the home where you grew up, there comes a time when you go down into the old family basement to haul remnants of your past to the dumpster. That time came for me on my most recent visit to New Jersey when my brother and I and some hired arms hauled several decades worth of half-buried memories up from the basement of the house where we grew up. Emptying a basement is often associated with mourning or natural disaster, but in this case our reason for… Read more