It's taken fifteen years, but it looks like a constitutional amendment is about to pass the house which would then make it OK for congress to outlaw setting a colored piece of cloth on fire. There's still some time until the Senate takes it up, and then a majority of states ratify it, and finally the actual flag-burning law is drafted and signed, once it is constitutionally valid to do so. But today you still have the right to freedom of expression. Where's that Zippo?

The last time I turned on the FM radio, I wrote about it. Something about the length of time until a Greg Douglass tune crosses the airwaves. That was months ago. Turned it on again this evening for a sound check. Elapsed time until I hear the first Greg Douglass lick - exactly three seconds. Course I've got his current CD's and hear them all the time at the store. I've also got Mistress - way ahead of its time back in the early seventies. Didja' know that they just (finally) released a Country Weather record album? Boy Without a Home, live at 'the Church' or the Walnut Creek Civic Center or something like that in 70 or 71... I'm hanging out for the CD, but I might have to buy the vinyl because it exists today. The CD is still in the works. It's fifty bucks for the album. Doesn't matter. If you know Country Weather, you know you gotta' have it. I'd tell you that it brings back vivid memories, but that's not the entire truth. A more apt term would be 'flashbacks'.

Which reminds me (funny how that happens) of a little beer party I went to in Concord (Ca.) in 1973. There was a scruffy kid sitting on the floor by himself playing some mean rock-n-roll on an old Gibson Les Paul. He never spoke a word. Hardly anybody noticed. I did. Turns out he was the second guitarist for a little band called 'Santana'. The next time I saw him (about six months later) was at Winterland introducing his new band called 'Journey'.