Stories That Should Be Told (5) Gary Higgins Gary Higgins - Red Hash - 04 - Telegraph Towers (1973)
They should all go to jail!
I mean, given the results, maybe a lot of singer-songwriters looking for inspiration could benefit from a little vacation at the state's expense...
Take our Gary "the red," he had been playing around for about ten years. He had shared the stage with Gary U. S. Bond, played in a band with a future Silver Apples, but had never managed to be anything more than a nobody.
So we find him in '73, in a commune, covered in a bushy red beard and hair, a somewhat out-of-time freak trying to make a living selling some hashish with his friend Chico Cardillo.
The problem is that good old Nixon, right around that time, had decided to clean the country up from dealers, hippies, and various high-flyers.
Our Gary, a guy whom Nixon's agents would have jailed regardless, gets caught red-handed (with hashish, that is) and ends up with a three-year sentence.
But, before the sentence takes effect, Gary decides to record an album.
Like a last wish of the condemned.
A handful of friends (including a beautiful cellist named Maureen Wells) back him up, and his buddy Chico produces it. They even invent a record label to release it.
They print a couple thousand copies and head off to jail, all smiles.
And just like that, Gary disappears.
But the album, damn, it’s beautiful! Those who know better than I will write that it’s a miracle, balancing between Skip Spence’s "OAR" and a Crosby who can’t remember his own name; I’ll just say, for lack of better knowledge, it’s like Tom Rapp and his more acoustic Pearl's Before Swine.
A miraculous balance of folk singer-songwriter vibes, dreamy psychedelia, soft oddities, and a subtle sadness of the "end of an era."
Gary disappears, but the album starts circulating under the radar; it lands in many right hands—David Tibet, Joanna Newsome, "parsley" Banhart, the drummer from Oneida (I can’t remember his name right now!), and people like that... In Italy, it's printed in pirate copies that sell for quite a bit.
But, more importantly, it lands in the hands of Ben Chasny, who becomes obsessed with it: he records a cover of "Thicker Than A Smokey" from the aforementioned album, then talks to the folks at Drag City and convinces them to reissue "Red Hash" and sign Gary "the red." Okay, but where's Gary?
He’s vanished.
So Ben prints on the cover of one of his Six Organs of Admittance albums (I can't remember which) the phrase: "Anyone with information about Gary Higgins is asked to contact Drag City."
Moral: Gary reappears, the album is now in the Drag City catalog, and Ben has even taken him on tour.
Drag City also had him record another album, "Second."
"Second" is nice, undeniably nice.
But...
Something's missing... How to say: that magic...
Should we send him back to jail?