Synopsis
A collection of the writing, reviews and interviews of John Sinclair, spanning forty years and personally selected by the author. The music, people and topics include: Detroit in the 1960s, and the author as manager of the MC5; John Lennon; Sun Ra; Jack Kerouac; Dr John; Iggy Pop; North Mississippi Hill Country Blues and the secret history of the Blues; Bandleader Walter "Wolfman" Washington; Irma Thomas, the Soul Queen of New Orleans; The Art Ensemble of Chicago; The White Buffalo Prophesy; The Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans; Bob Rudnick, the Righteous One; Johnnie Bassett, Cadillac Bluesman from the Motor City.
JOHN SINCLAIR is a legendary figure on the landscape of the 1960s. A cultural activist, manager of the MC5, and chairman of the White Panther Party, he was an early victim of the War on Drugs who faced twenty years to life in prison for giving two joints to an undercover narcotics officer. Sinclair served 29 months before his legal victory on appeal changed the law for good. The long campaign received international attention when John Lennon wrote a song for him and performed at a benefit concert on his behalf in 1971, along with Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg and Bobby Seale. As a music journalist, John Sinclair is widely recognized as one of America's leading authorities on blues and modern jazz. He designed and taught courses in Blues History and History of Rock & Roll for the Music Department at Wayne State University.
About the Author
John Sinclair (born October 2, 1941) is an American poet, writer, and political activist from Flint, Michigan. Sinclair's defining style is jazz poetry, and he has released most of his works in audio formats. Most of his pieces include musical accompaniment, usually by a varying group of collaborators dubbed Blues Scholars.
As an emerging young poet in the mid-1960s, Sinclair took on the role of manager for the Detroit rock band MC5. The band's politically charged music and its Yippie core audience dovetailed with Sinclair's own radical development. In 1968, while still working with the band, he conspicuously served as a founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group and counterpart of the Black Panthers.
Arrested for possession of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison. The sentence was criticized by many as unduly harsh, and it galvanized a noisy protest movement led by prominent figures of the 1960s counterculture. Sinclair was eventually freed in December 1971, but he remained in litigation – his case against the government for illegal domestic surveillance was successfully pleaded to the US Supreme Court in United States v. U.S. District Court (1972).
Sinclair eventually left the US and took up residency in Amsterdam. He continues to write and record and, since 2005, has hosted a regular radio program, The John Sinclair Radio Show, as well as produced a line-up of other shows on his own radio station, Radio Free Amsterdam.
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