Joan Baez singing in support of Hurricane Katrina's victims. Flanked by Reverend Billy (Church of Stop Shopping) and Bishop Joey (First Church of the Last Laugh). By the temple in Black Rock City, Sept. 4, 2005.

The Burn This Time

Megan Lynch performing in Bijou at Martuni's, 2005-08-21.

Tom Morgan, 1962-2005
One of the incomprehensible losses this year was when Tom Morgan and Rebecca Gains were suffocated by monoxide from a defective heating system in their Clear Lake home on March 21st.

I was one of the first to meet Tom at the 1996 Burning Man when he and Candace Locklear arrived in the Motel 666. For old school burners, that is often considered the last cool year. It was the end of an era, and with the death of Michael Furey just before the opening of the event, marked the closing of a frontier.

Certainly coolness is relative, and there have been great times on the playa since then. One person I know I will miss at Burning Man this year is Tom Morgan.

Back under the febrile mortal rays of '96, after they piled out of their car we enjoyed cocktails, smokes, and laughter. Before too long I took this picture of Tom in the hay-bale packed crypt beneath the Man. I think this is where we escaped to after being sickened by an Aesthetic Meat Foundation performance involving too much blood, incisions, beer and fire.

Analog Tom, dj supertastee, Sexpot Tom...Blessed be!

On April 10th, at a memorial, Here Are The Fact You Requested performed a couple of Tom's songs....

Three Day Stubble's 25th anniversary party at the Bottom of Hill on Thursday the 18th was great! Donald the Nut, visiting from Kyoto, Japan, gathered the band together with many friends and guests and put on a rockin' show excerpted here.

Rube Waddell
Here is the second clip - "Dios Mio, Sexo, Drogo, y Rock y Roll" an earlier song than "Bestiality," also performed on May 21st, 2005, during the closing night party at the San Francisco's late lamented Odeon Bar. Rube Waddell is my favorite hobo jug-band of the apocalypse.