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American Poet in Amsterdam:
The Legendary John Sinclair
(Amsterdam, October 2004)—He’s been called “The Last of the Beatnik Warrior Poets,” “The Hardest Working Poet in Show Business,” an American cultural icon and a founding father of the international counter-culture. John Lennon wrote a song called “John Sinclair” and helped spring him from prison after the poet had served 29 months of a 10-year sentence for possession of two marijuana cigarettes.
Now the legendary poet/provocateur has fled the rising reactionary tide in the USA to resettle in Amsterdam and introduce his high-energy poetry performances to European audiences. Sinclair sets his verse to music from the blues and jazz tradition and fronts a hard-hitting band of Blues Scholars led by Rotterdam guitarist Mark Ritsema.
For 40 years John Sinclair has been a prolific cultural worker at the core of America’s subterranean arts community. He’s a dynamic performer and bandleader, a leading music journalist and editor, an award-winning radio broadcaster and prolific writer of album liner notes, a record producer and iconoclastic educator, a tireless crusader against the War on Drugs and an outspoken critic of corporate culture and the consumer society.
Sinclair founded and directed the Detroit Artists Workshop, managed the notorious MC5, formed the White Panther Party, produced the historic Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals, organized the Detroit Jazz Center, taught Blues History at Wayne State University, worked for the Detroit Council of the Arts, produced Piano Night at Tipitina’s for the Professor Longhair Foundation and the “live” broadcast of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival for WWOZ-FM, where he was voted New Orleans’ Best Radio Personality for five years running (1999-2003).
Sinclair spent three years in prison for marijuana offenses, overthrew Michigan’s draconian marijuana laws, helped enact Ann Arbor’s epochal $5 fine for possession of weed, and served as High Priest of the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. He’s a regular contributor to High Times and writes for music journals from Living Blues and Creem to An Honest Tune and Signal To Noise. His monthly column “On The Road” appears in the Little Rock Free Press and on-line at The Blacklisted Journalist.
The poet’s new internet radio program, The John Sinclair Radio Show, broadcast “live” from the cannabis coffeeshops of Amsterdam, can be heard at
www.johnsinclairradio.com
And Steve Gebhardt’s full-length feature film biography, 20 TO LIFE: The Life & Times of John Sinclair, will finally introduce this legendary underground cultural warrior to mainstream audiences when the movie hits theatres, TV screens and DVD racks next year.
John Sinclair is known for many things to many people, but for the past decade he’s concentrated on his work in poetry and music, touring incessantly throughout the United States and western Europe, performing his incendiary odes with a kaleidoscopic cast of musical all-stars billed as John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars.
Sinclair has collaborated with a brilliant array of contemporary musicians, from saxophone giants Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Sonny Fortune, Daniel Carter and Earl Turbinton to hornmen David Amram, Michael Ray, Charles Moore, James Andrews and Kermit Ruffins, guitarists Wayne Kramer, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Willie King, Jim McCarty and Jeff “Baby” Grand, and West African griots Bala Tounkare and Guelel Kuumba.
Sinclair has released 10 CDs—six with the Blues Scholars—and a highly acclaimed book of blues verse called Fattening Frogs For
Snakes. This winter will see the release of two new books of poetry, Song of Praise: Homage to John Coltrane and i mean you: a book for penny, as well as new CDs It’s All Good and No Money Down: John Sinclair’s Greatest Hits, Volume One. In 2005 Feral House Press will issue a new edition of Guitar Army: Street Writings/Prison Writings, Sinclair’s counter-culture classic originally published in 1972.
When he’s not out on the road performing with the Blues Scholars, playing duets with Mark Ritsema or lecturing on the cultural revolution, the Poetry of the Blues or the War on Drugs, John Sinclair can usually be found at the 420 Café in Amsterdam or by e-mail at johnsinclair001@hotmail.com. For bookings in the European Union, please contact Mark Ritsema at +31 10 465 6701 in Rotterdam or write
JustAsk@johnsinclairradio.com.
Big Chief Productions—October 2004
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20 TO LIFE
The Life & Times of John Sinclair
A Film by Steve Gebhardt
Produced by Steve Gebhardt & John Sinclair
A Musicus Production with Big Chief Productions
Executive Producer: Robert A. Johnson
With appearances by John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg, MC-5, Up, Ed Sanders, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Ed Moss, Andre Williams, Bo Dollis and Cyril Neville. Original 16mm footage from the 1960s and ’70s by Leni Sinclair. Graphic design by Gary Grimshaw. Music supervision by John Sinclair. Edited by Tom Hayes. Directed by Steve Gebhardt.
Soundtrack performances by John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, John Coltrane, Miles Davis Sextet, Detroit Artists Workshop Music Ensemble, Ed Moss & the Society Jazz Orchestra, MC5, Cecil Taylor, The Kingsmen, The Youngbloods, Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra, Detroit featuring Rusty Day, The Up, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band, Sly & the Family Stone, John Sinclair & Bill Lynn, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Thelonious Monk Quartet, Charles Neville & Diversity, the Wild Magnolias & Re-Birth Brass Band, Ed Moss & His Hot 5.
Steve Gebhardt’s films include Ladies & Gentlemen The Rolling Stones, Bill Monroe: Father of Bluegrass Music, Carla Bley: Escalator Over the Hill and the yet-to-be-released 10 FOR 2: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally (1972) and If I Could Be With You: John Sinclair with Ed Moss & the Society Jazz Orchestra (1996).
20 TO LIFE:
The Life & Times of John Sinclair
A Film by Steve Gebhardt
John Sinclair is a real American character. Poet, performing artist and bandleader, music journalist, radio broadcaster, record producer, educator and archivist, Sinclair first emerged out of his small-town Michigan background to forge a legendary course through the 1960s as a cultural activist, founder of the Detroit Artists Workshop, manager of the MC-5, and Chairman of the White Panther Party.
An early victim of the War on Drugs who faced 20 years to life in prison for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman, Sinclair mounted an historic challenge to the constitutionality of Michigan’s marijuana laws and served 29 months of a 9-1/2-to-10-year sentence before his legal victory on appeal changed the law for good.
The long campaign waged by Sinclair and his supporters in the courts, the legislature, the media and the streets culminated in a massive John Sinclair Freedom Rally headlined by John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg and Bobby Seale that resulted in Sinclair’s release from prison on December 13, 1971—just three days after the event.
For the next 10 years Sinclair persevered as a community organizer and cultural activist, producing the legendary Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals, writing for the underground press, founding the Detroit Jazz Center, developing and directing a wide range of projects for community arts organizations.
In 1982 John Sinclair took up his original vocation as a poet, set his verse to music, formed his first band of Blues Scholars and began to pursue a performing arts career that has produced three books, 10 CDs and hundreds of concert appearances throughout the United States and Western Europe with a kaleidoscopic cast of accompanists including Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Wayne Kramer, Daniel Carter, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Willie King, the late Jimmie Lee Robinson and scores more.
Sinclair left Detroit in 1991 for New Orleans and cut a broad mark there as a popular performing artist, music journalist, award-winning broadcast producer and radio personality on WWOZ-FM. In 1998 Sinclair was invited by High Times magazine to serve as High Priest at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, beginning a burgeoning love affair with the Netherlands that climaxed with Sinclair’s decision to move to Amsterdam in 2003.
Begun in 1991 and completed in 2004, 20 TO LIFE is the real-life story of this legendary poet-provocateur and American cultural warrior whose exploits have reverberated throughout the international underground for 40 years. The story is told by Sinclair, his family, friends and associates through the years and highlighted by a series of electrifying poetry performances by Sinclair’s contemporary blues and jazz ensembles.
The disparate elements of Sinclair’s unique story have been brilliantly assembled and painstakingly delineated by director Steve Gebhardt and editor Tom Hayes in this multi-layered 87-minute feature film from Musicus Media. The soundtrack was supervised by Sinclair himself and features music by the MC-5, John Lennon, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Allen Ginsberg, Sly & the Family Stone, Thelonious Monk, Charles Neville, the Wild Magnolias and the Re-Birth Brass Band.
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Lennon's
Acoustic reminds us what real protest is about
With the political climate as polarized as it's been since the
60s, this week's release of John Lennon's Acoustic couldn't have come at
a more opportune time. When it comes to protest music, there are none
better than two legends - Bob Dylan and Lennon.
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THE WHOLE STORY
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