Weird Scenes Inside Cambridge, Harmonica History, Shadow Figures, & Folk Genealogies

[Hübschräuber]

Thanks for the memories and the recommendations. 

I was not familiar with Mel Lyman and checked out his Wiki entry. It seems that he became a cult leader. Jim Kweskin stayed by his side.

In reply to the article, a commenter on X cryptically states that Lyman "had a TRP lookalike acting as his liaison to the Kennedys". He claims that the man we took for Pynchon on the photographs from Newport was someone called Owen de Long.

https://x.com/robtned/status/1995235038393504164

FWIW






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Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> schrieb am Montag, 1. Dezember 2025 um 02:32:

> That's some article!
> 
> In 1971, working as barman in the student bar at Exeter Uni I spotted
> an ad for albums for sale by the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. I'd had the Big
> Brother/Jim Kweskin Mouse/Kelley poster on my wall for a couple of
> years, so my curiosity was sparked.
> https://collections.artsmia.org/art/132153/the-woman-with-green-hair-alton-kelley
> 
> So I bought them, first three jug band albums and Jim's solo albums
> Relax Your Mind and Jump for Joy. Relax Your Mind remains one of my all
> time favourites and Mel Lyman's harp playing is a lot of the reason. And
> that purchase was the start of a musical exploration that still goes on
> 50 + years later, taking me back into the 20s and 30s with Skip James,
> Charlie Poole and Pink Anderson, and in the then present via the Geoff
> and Maria albums taking me to to the likes of Wendy Waldman, the
> McGarrigles, Allan Toussaint and Bobby Charles. Years later hunting the
> web for more Bobby Charles I found the wrong Bobby Charles but his
> guitarist was Danny Gatton, rated by many of us up there with Django
> Reinhart and Lenny Breau as top of the greats. If you don't know him
> there's plenty of live gigs on Youtube.
> 
> The poster's still on my wall, and Relax Your Mind still gets played a
> few times a year.
> 
> 
> On 30/11/2025 20:10, Hübschräuber via Pynchon-l wrote:
> 
> > Plus Pynchon and Fariña. Name of the Substack: Latitudes and Departures.
> > 
> > https://lenaajit.substack.com/p/the-mirror-at-the-end-of-the-road
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l