DEVENDRA BANHART

Biography of Devendra Banhart written by himself:

Born on May 30 1981, oh what
a time I had coming in. I was born in Texas. Stupid fucking boots. But
I like those boots, I wanna get a pair. Then , after a few years, i moved
to Caracas Venezuela, and I lived there, with my family, (we moved there
because my father was arrested and sent to jail) In Caracas, everything‚s
fucked, but I love my grandmother, whom fed whisky to me from her pinky,
paid me to touch my earlobes, and let me pull her elbow flab. As I first
became a teen-ager, my mother remarried and we moved to California, into
a canyon, Encinal Canyon. I began to play music. Then I moved to San Francisco
to go to an art school, There I lived with Jerry Elvis and Bob The Crippled
Comic. My first show was their wedding , I played my own adaptation of
How Great Though Art and Love me Tender. My next show was at Wazeima, an
ethiopean restaurant. I wonder why I want to tell you how about all the
shows ive played, I will not, the first two are the most significant, I
played many bad places, some good, some people I have played with are:
Black Hearts Procession,Microphones,Smog,Little Wings,Karl Blau,Vetiver,Flux
Information Sciences, The Lowdown,Young People, Old Time Relijun, Jerry
Lee Lewis 60th picnic party, and M.Gira, amongst many other faceless talents
, gay pirates.

I cant do this (too well)

I Devendra Banhart then moved
from san Francisco, to Los angeles, then to paris, then to San Francisco,
then to Los Angeles, then to New york, though, while In Los Angeles he
formed the Black Babies, so he can be Devendra Banhart or The Black Babies,
in New York, he is poor as shit , no, don‚t put that in , today , shit
man , its all coming apart , ive got no phone, news of getting kicked out
the squat , im trying to not let it get to me,blah blah blah)

Flutter away little flute.

In New york, he lives in an old Salsa Club, it is a squat, a shot hole with a dead charm , as in
many people I know for a fact died there, today I found journals of the
boy who died there, he wanted to be an actor, I found his headshots too.
There is a room called the Helter Skelter room and its scary as shit. I
live there, there are no windows, there is no air, but its free.

For Devendra, he feels, that
Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Karen Dalton, Vashti
Bunyan, and Fred Neil are the most important musicians there ever was,
thank god for them.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

October 19, 2002

Challenging the Growth
Gurus

By MICHAEL MASSING

As the chief economist of
the World Bank in the late 1990’s, Joseph E. Stiglitz got a firsthand look
at how policy was made at its sister institution, the International Monetary
Fund, and he was dismayed. Decisions, he said, were made on the basis of
ideology rather than sound economic reasoning.

    The fund
was made up of “third-rank students from first-rate universities,” as he
once put it. Frank discussion was discouraged, and developing countries
were expected to accept fund prescriptions without question. And those
prescriptions too often failed, leaving many nations sunk in poverty.

    The experience
convinced Mr. Stiglitz of the need to reassess the ingredients of growth.
As he wrote this year in “Globalization and Its Discontents,” “If the developed
countries were serious about paying more attention to the voices of the
developing countries, they could help fund a think tank ˜ independent from
the international economic organizations ˜ that would help them formulate
strategies and positions.”

    Now Mr.
Stiglitz himself has set up such an institute. The Initiative for Policy
Dialogue is at Columbia University’s School for International and Public
Affairs, where Mr. Stiglitz is a professor. It is bringing together economists,
political scientists and policy analysts from around the world to re-examine
the prevailing wisdom about development and to come up with alternative
strategies. “There’s not a Brookings or an American Enterprise Institute
for the developing world,” said Mr. Stiglitz, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Science.

    It’s
an ambitious and controversial undertaking. Mr. Stiglitz is the I.M.F.’s
most visible critic, and the fund has made little secret of its disdain
for him. In a biting open letter posted on its Web site (www.imf.org),
Kenneth Rogoff, the fund’s director of research, calls Mr. Stiglitz’s ideas
about development “at best highly controversial, at worst snake oil.” His
“alternative medicines, involving ever more government intervention, are
highly dubious in many real world settings.”

    Undeterred,
Mr. Stiglitz is taking aim at the so-called Washington consensus, a package
of free-market, free-trade policies that, critics charge, the I.M.F. and
World Bank have imposed on third world nations. “We disagree with the World
Bank-I.M.F. idea that there’s one approach that’s right for all countries,”
Mr. Stiglitz said. Rather, he said, there is a range of policies that must
be selected based on conditions in each country.

    Mr. Stiglitz’s
effort to rewrite the textbook on development is being conducted through
14 panels that are re-evaluating such critical issues as bankruptcy, poverty,
privatization and trade. For each a dozen or so specialists from the Northern
and Southern Hemispheres are meeting to compare the experiences of different
countries and ponder what policies have worked where. The objective of
each group is to produce a series of papers that will provide a fresh look
at the components of growth.

    But Mr.
Stiglitz hopes his institute will be more than a paper exercise. He has
accused the I.M.F. of acting like a “colonial ruler” and stifling discussion
in developing countries, so in addition to the study groups, he is organizing
forums in some countries. The goal is to expand the policy debate beyond
the usual elite of government officials and business executives to include
civic leaders, activists, academics and journalists. So far, forums have
been held in Ethiopia, Moldova, Nigeria, the Philippines, Serbia and Vietnam.
At the Nigeria session a key theme was the need to raise living standards
in the countryside, where most Nigerians live. Soon after, Mr. Stiglitz
recalled, Nigeria’s agricultural minister obtained more money for agriculture.

    Mr. Stiglitz
spends about a third of his time advising foreign governments, providing
alternatives to the ideas of the I.M.F. He has been to Argentina four times
in the last four years and recently visited Bulgaria at the invitation
of that country’s president.

    “What’s
amazing,” Mr. Stiglitz said, “is how little information is available that
is disinterested and balanced. In many cases the discussion has been very
general. For instance, it’s said that countries need good corporate governance.
But what does that mean?”

    Finding
the answers to such questions is the goal of his institute’s study panels.
The panel on privatization, for example, is looking at the experiences
governments have had in selling state-owned enterprises. Gerard Roland,
a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and
co-chairman of the panel, said that the fund had pushed governments to
give away the assets of such companies “as quickly as possible.” If those
assets don’t immediately end up in the right hands, the reasoning goes,
marketplace incentives will ensure that they eventually do, with less skilled
owners selling to more able ones. But in Russia and other countries that
tried this, Mr. Roland said, the new owners quickly became oligarchs who
blocked future reforms. The outcome was rampant corruption and a sharp
decline in output.

    Poland
initially planned to have a similar program, Mr. Roland continued, but
it was blocked by the Polish parliament. So privatization there proceeded
more gradually. As a result Polish enterprises ended up with more seasoned
owners, and its economy grew more briskly. By comparing such experiences,
Mr. Roland’s group is trying to determine which approaches work best in
which circumstances.

    “When
the I.M.F. says that these are the particular policies you should follow,”
Mr. Roland said, “those policies often aren’t thought through and don’t
have a scientific basis. Policies have to be adjusted to each country’s
environment.”

    Similarly,
the panel on trade is examining the effect of efforts to lower trade barriers.
“The I.M.F. and World Bank are pushing across-the-board trade liberalization,”
said Dani Rodrik, a professor of economics at Harvard University and co-chairman
of the committee. In reality, he added, “Trade reform is something that
has to be tailored to each country’s circumstances, taking into account
its geographic advantage, its institutional needs, its relations with its
main trading partners.” He added: “What are the best policies to encourage
foreign investment? Is this good for all countries, or are some countries
throwing away resources through tax subsidies? And how can trade policy
be targeted to reduce poverty? We’re not trying to present a particular
take but to summarize and describe what we know about these issues.”

    Such
an approach troubles Jagdish Bhagwati, a colleague of Mr. Stiglitz’s at
Columbia and a strong advocate of free trade. “Joe assumes that there’s
a monolithic view at the fund and the bank, but that’s not the case,” he
said. The whole idea that there’s a Washington consensus that promotes
a one-size-fits-all policy is absurd, he said, adding, “In practice shoe
sizes are bound to vary and do. The real choice is between wearing shoes
and going barefoot. Socialism didn’t work. In countries like India, Egypt,
Brazil and China, the market was absent. The debate is moving away from
knee-jerk interventionism and excessive controls.”

    Mr. Stiglitz’s
institute, Mr. Bhagwati went on, is not including people “who really have
alternative points of view.” Its trade group, he said, “has none of the
big trade people,” including himself. “The Initiative for Policy Dialogue
is in danger of turning into the Initiative for Policy Monologue.”

    Mr. Rodrik
disputed this. Of the five economists from developed nations invited to
join his panel, he said, two ˜ Gene Grossman of Princeton and Rob Feenstra
of the University of California at Davis ˜ are former students of Mr. Bhagwati.
(Mr. Feenstra declined to join because of time constraints; Mr. Grossman
has yet to decide.) The three other economists “are also utterly mainstream,”
Mr. Rodrik said. Mr. Bhagwati himself may be asked to join the group. “We
have no intention of keeping certain views off the table,” Mr. Rodrik added.
“That would defeat the purpose.”

    The institute’s
architects deny any inclination to turn the clock back to an era of state
farms and five-year plans. Thomas Heller, a professor of international
law at Stanford University and co-chairman of the committee studying the
rule of law, said that while it has become clear that the wholesale withdrawal
of government from the economy is ill-considered, no one would deny the
value of the market. The institute, he said, “is attempting to make a series
of adjustments without getting countries to go back to the state-heavy
systems of the past. We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath
water.”

    Is the
institute likely to have any impact? That depends on how confrontational
it becomes, said Robert Solow, an emeritus professor of economics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A recipient of the Nobel in economic
science who has long argued that governments must be prepared to intervene
in the market, Mr. Solow said the idea that a Washington consensus forces
cookie-cutter-type policies on every country is overdrawn. “If you look
at the way the World Bank and I.M.F. operate,” he said, “you will see that
they have regional and country specialists who know their way around. When
they deal with a country, they study it very knowledgeably, and their prescriptions
do pay attention to local conditions.”

    On the
other hand, he said, I.M.F. programs “do tend to have an awful lot in common,
whether they’re aimed at Turkey or Thailand.” So the institute’s effort
to look at how different policies work in different environments could
prove useful, Mr. Solow said. If, however, it “starts with the notion that
it’s going to turn everything upside down, that it’s going to be the dark
destroyer of the I.M.F. and the World Bank, then it won’t succeed.`

    Rather,
he said, the institute should try “to bring around the international financial
institutions, to present a reasonable case and induce them to move a little
bit.”

FROM THE L.A. TIMES:

 

Swallowed by Urban Sprawl

Relocating to Inland Empire puts people in the midst of what they fled, researchers find.

By Scott Gold and Massie Ritsch, Times Staff Writers

RIVERSIDE — The Inland Empire, overwhelmed by unchecked growth and plagued by helter-skelter development, is by far the nation’s worst example of urban sprawl, a team of researchers said Thursday.

For 20 years, the price of homes closer to the coast has skyrocketed, forcing hundreds of thousands of
families to search inland for affordable housing. Many landed ˜ in Riverside or
San Bernardino, Corona or Ontario ˜ with the hope that
they had left behind the ills of urban life.

Instead, the study says, they have found themselves in a far-flung dystopia, a region whose schools and roads cannot keep up with the number of new residents, a sea of strip malls and chain restaurants, all surrounded by just as much traffic, pollution and congestion as they confronted in the city.

The three-year study was conducted by researchers from Rutgers and Cornell universities and released by a Washington coalition of organizations interested in growth, known as Smart Growth America.

    The report faulted the Inland Empire for everything from its lack of economic
and social cores ˜ two-thirds of the massive region lives at least 10 miles from
a central business district ˜ to a haphazard, poorly connected road system that
makes walking and bicycling perilous.

    Even the region’s high number of traffic fatalities ˜ 49 of every 100,000 people
die each year in car crashes ˜ is due to endless hours spent negotiating
highways and packed, high-speed arterials, the study concluded.

    Barbara
McCann, a spokeswoman for Smart Growth America, said the Inland Empire

fits the dreaded metropolitan
tag: “There is no ‘there’ there.”

    Home
building and economic development organizations, which have defeated

several recent attempts
to limit growth in the Inland Empire, disputed the

study’s results.

    “I would
call it a blatant joke,” said Borre Winckel, executive director of the

Building Industry Assn.’s
Riverside County chapter. “I am not impressed by it.”

    On Thursday
afternoon in Chino Hills, on the western rim of San Bernardino

County, scores of people
were having lunch at tables assembled in front of what

passes for a central gathering
place ˜ a giant strip mall called Crossroads

Marketplace. It features
a Costco, a Sport Chalet, a mattress store and an

enormous Lowe’s Home Improvement
Warehouse emblazoned with a slogan: “More of

Everything.”

    At one
of the tables, Clysta Keller, 57, sat reading a book. Keller said she and

her family moved from Orange
County to nearby Mira Loma 20 years ago after her

husband retired from the
military, largely because they could afford a nice home

there on a third of an acre.
Back then, it was a quaint country home. Now it is

in the midst of perpetual
construction and giant warehouse operations.

    The Inland
Empire, weary of being a dormitory for the rest of Southern

California, has tried to
create more local jobs, and Keller has one of them, in

Lowe’s administration office.
It still takes her at least 35 minutes to drive 17

miles to work.

    Like
many others, she said she found it difficult to reconcile how there can
be

so much stuff in the Inland
Empire, yet so little to do. Even a highly

anticipated soccer academy
that was built near her home failed because of a lack

of attendance, she said.

    “I
feel most sorry for the children growing up here,” she said, recalling
the

difficulty she had finding
things for her children to do when they were younger.

    “The
politicians like the idea of more people moving here. But they aren’t

taking care of the schools,
or the traffic ˜ or even thinking of things for the

children to do.”

Using a ‘Sprawlometer’

The Oxnard-Ventura region
ranks ninth in urban sprawl, according to the study.

    The Los
Angeles-Long Beach, San Diego and Sacramento metropolitan regions all

registered slightly better
than 100, or average, on the “sprawlometer.”

    Such
growth is difficult to measure, the researchers pointed out. It is akin,

they said, to former U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous view on

pornography ˜ it’s hard
to define, but we know it when we see it. Previous

studies have typically used
limited and subjective data to analyze it, often

relying almost entirely
on density as their primary yardstick.

    In the
new study, researchers spent three years developing a four-category

measure of sprawl.

    In 83
metropolitan regions representing half of the nation’s population, the

researchers used 22 demographic
databases to calibrate density of development;

the blend of homes, jobs
and services; the accessibility of streets; and the

strength of downtown areas
and other “activity centers.”

    To the
cynic, it might seem that each category was devised atop a bluff in

Temecula, where the population
doubled between 1990 and 2000, or along

California 71, home to rows
and rows of Spanish-tile-roofed homes built with

stunning efficiency.

    The Riverside-San
Bernardino region scored poorly in every category except

density of development,
in which the region was below average ˜ a vestige of

older developments that
featured larger lots.

    The
result: Riverside-San Bernardino scored 14.2 on the sprawlometer. A score
of

100 is average, researchers
said, and the lower the score, the worse the

attendant problems are.

    The
Inland Empire was the only metropolitan area that scored lower than 45.
It

far outpaced the second-
and third-place finishers, both in North Carolina.

    “It’s
a pretty bad commentary,” said Philip Lohman, executive director of the

Los Angeles-based Endangered
Habitats League, an environmental organization that

helped with the study. Lohman
spent his teenage years in Redlands, in San

Bernardino County, then
earned three degrees at UC Riverside before moving to

Lakewood. “We can’t undo
the damage that’s been done. All we can do is protect

what remains,” he said.

Looking for Solutions

Riverside County Supervisor
Tom Mullen said such an effort is well underway. For

three years, Mullen and
other Inland Empire leaders have pieced together what

they say is the nation’s
most ambitious metropolitan development plan. It

includes, Mullen said, a
$13-billion plan for four new highways, including a new

connector to Orange County,
and a proposal to set aside 550,000 acres of open

space and animal habitat
in western Riverside County.

    “The
important thing is that we recognized that there was a serious problem
and

that we needed to find an
innovative way to deal with it,” Mullen said. “We know

it is out there. And we
are trying to fix it.”

    Colleen
Smethers, a retired nurse practitioner in Mira Loma, doesn’t buy it. She

said the Inland Empire is
being built backward ˜ houses first, then stores, then

infrastructure such as roads
and schools.

    “They
call it the blueprint for the future,” Smethers said. “They think we
are

so stupid that we believe
it. That’s the part that’s so hard to swallow. We live

here in this little country
place, supposedly out of the city. And we have big

rig traffic on my street….
We are choking out here.”

    In Oxnard,
a primary section of the metropolitan area that ranked ninth in the

study, several residents
defended their lifestyle Thursday ˜ and the “small

town” atmosphere they say
exists in their community.

    Standing
in front of the home that he and his wife bought last year in Oxnard’s

Aldea del Mar tract, Jeff
Starr, a critical-care nurse, cited the positive side

of growth: People have some
elbow room, some distance between themselves and

other people, droning freeways
and belching buses.

    “You
work in a high-stress job and you come home and you don’t want to be

bothered by noise and commotion
outside,” Starr said.

    Starr’s
mother lives in Riverside County, and “every time we drive somewhere, we

see stuff that wasn’t there
the time before,” he said.

    But,
he asked, “What are you going to do? People gotta live somewhere.”

ClearChannelSucks.org is a free speech website dedicated to educating the public about entertainment
giant Clear Channel. Clear Channel owns over 1,200 radio stations and 37 television stations, with investments in 240 radio stations globally, and Clear Channel Entertainment (aka SFX, one of their more well-known subsidiaries) owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top
250 radio markets, controlling 60% of all rock programming. They outright own the tours of musicians like Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Madonna and N’Sync. They own the network which airs Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Casey Kasem, and the Fox Sports Radio Network. With 103,000,000 listeners in
the U.S. and 1,000,000,000 globally (1/6 of the world population), this powerful company has grown unchecked, using their monopoly to control the entire music industry. If you find this alarming, ClearChannelSucks.org is the place for you.

Oklo: Ancient African Nuclear Reactors

Credit & Copyright:
Robert D. Loss, WAISRC

Explanation: The remnants of nuclear reactors nearly two billion years old were found in the 1970s in Africa. These reactors are thought to have occurred naturally. No natural reactors exist today, as the relative density of fissile uranium has now decayed below that needed for a sustainable reaction. Pictured above is Fossil Reactor 15, located in Oklo, Gabon. Uranium oxide remains are visible as the yellowish rock. Oklo by-products are being used today to probe the stability of the fundamental constants over cosmological time-scales and to develop more effective means for disposing of human-manufactured nuclear waste.

THANKS: O. K.!

FROM WESTERN DAILY PRESS-UK:

ADVERTISING ON THE HOOF

11:00 – 09 October 2002

Cows have been turned into walking advertisements in a bid to boost the rural economy.

    Company logos and slogans are being painted on to cows’ bodies before the animals
are released on pastures in Switzerland as part of a brand name marketing
campaign.

    Frank Baumann, who is head of the Cow Placard Company, said he hoped the idea
would help boost the rural economy. The company is offering advertisers
the chance to have a logo or slogan painted on to a cow’s side using car
paints.

    The move has been criticised by animal rights groups who said Baumann was simply
looking for publicity and was not supporting agriculture.

    The cost of a cow placard depends on the size and duration of the advertisement
but tends to be about £250.

COURTESY MARK L.!

From the LATimes:

Tantra’s Rogan Josh

Active Work Time: 40 minutes
* Total Preparation Time: 2 hours

Sanjay Dwivedi suggests serving the rogan josh topped with raw onion and accompanied by rice. Any leftovers can be combined the next day for an instant
biryani.

9 cloves garlic
1 (2 1/2-inch) piece ginger root

1/2 cup oil
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
5 green cardamom pods
3 black cardamom pods
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 pounds onions (about 3 onions), sliced

2 lamb shanks, each cut in 4 pieces
2 pounds lamb leg meat, cut in 2-inch pieces
1 cup water
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon pure red chile powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 tablespoons fresh tomato puree
1 teaspoon garam masala

Juice of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons sugar
Salt

Combine the garlic and ginger with about 2 tablespoons of water in a small food processor and process to a paste. Set aside.

To a hot pan, add the oil and heat over high heat. Add the cumin seeds first and let splutter, then the green cardamoms, black cardamoms, bay leaf, cinnamon stick, cloves and fennel seeds.

    Add the sliced onions and cook, stirring as needed, until golden brown, about 35 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-high, add the lamb shank pieces and cook 10 minutes. Add the diced lamb, then lower the heat and gently simmer 45 minutes, stirring often. Add the water and the ginger-garlic paste and cook for 10 minutes. Add the turmeric, chile powder, cumin and coriander. Cook 10 minutes, then stir in the tomato puree and garam masala. Continue cooking until the shank meat is very tender, 20 minutes longer. Stir in the lemon juice and sugar, then season to taste with salt. Divide among 8 serving plates, making sure each serving has a lamb shank piece.

6 servings. Each serving:
482 calories; 161 mg sodium; 122 mg cholesterol; 29

grams fat; 5 grams saturated
fat; 15 grams carbohydrates; 40 grams protein; 3.01

grams fiber.

*

Chicken Mangalorean

Active Work Time: 35 minutes
* Total Preparation Time: 1 1/2 hours

This is from Surya restaurant.

2 cloves garlic

1 (1 1/2-inch) piece ginger
root

2 1/2 teaspoons oil, divided

2 onions, cut in fine dice

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 (4-inch) cinnamon stick,
broken in half

6 cardamom pods

10 whole cloves

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 pounds boneless skinless
chicken thighs, cut in 2-inch pieces

1/2 (13.5-ounce) can coconut
milk

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon black mustard
seeds

4 to 5 small dried red chiles

15 to 20 fresh curry leaves

Combine the garlic and ginger
with about 1 tablespoon of water in a small food

processor and process to
a paste. Set aside.

    Heat
1 teaspoon of oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onions,

tomatoes, garlic and ginger
paste, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves, cumin

seeds, coriander, turmeric
and salt. Cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

    Add the
chicken and stir to mix with the spices. Cook 15 minutes uncovered,

stirring occasionally, then
cover and cook 5 minutes. Add the coconut milk and

water. Cover and cook 10
minutes.

    Meanwhile,
heat the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil in a skillet over high heat

until very hot.Add the mustard
seeds (be careful, they’ll pop out of the

skillet), chiles and curry
leaves. The oil should be hot enough so the curry

leaves crackle and turn
black right away; the chiles should also turn black.

Cook no more than 3 minutes.
Pour this mixture into the chicken. Simmer 5

minutes longer.

6 servings. Each serving:
320 calories; 692 mg sodium; 99 mg cholesterol; 20

grams fat; 9 grams saturated
fat; 7 grams carbohydrates; 29 grams protein; 1.72

grams fiber.

*

Shrimp Vindaloo

Active Work Time: 20 minutes
* Total Preparation Time: 45 minutes

From Addi Decosta, former
owner of Chicken Madras in Hawthorne, now of Addi’s

Tandoor in Redondo Beach.

15 whole cloves, divided

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 (3-inch) cinnamon sticks,
divided

6 cloves garlic, divided

10 small dried red chiles,
or more to taste

3/4 teaspoon turmeric

24 whole black peppercorns,
divided

3/4 cup white vinegar

2 cups water

1 (1-inch) piece ginger
root

1 tablespoon oil

2 large red onions, minced

1 boiling potato, peeled
and cut into 2-inch chunks

2 pounds large shrimp, peeled
and deveined

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons sugar

Place 9 cloves, the cumin
seeds, 1 cinnamon stick, 3 garlic cloves, the chiles,

turmeric, 18 peppercorns
and the vinegar in a blender. Blend on high speed until

as smooth as possible, about
4 to 5 minutes. Add the water and blend just to

combine. Set aside.

    Place
the remaining garlic and the ginger in a small food processor along with

about 1 tablespoon of water.
Process until a paste is formed. Set aside.

    Heat
the oil in a large saucepan over high heat. Add the onions, remaining

cloves, remaining cinnamon
stick and remaining peppercorns. Cook, stirring

often, until the onions
have browned, about 15 minutes. Add the mixture from the

blender, the ginger-garlic
paste and the potato and continue to cook over high

heat until the mixture thickens
a bit and the potato is almost cooked through,

10 to 15 minutes. Add more
water if the curry thickens too much. Add the shrimp,

salt and sugar and cook
another 5 minutes, stirring, until the shrimp are cooked

through.

4 servings. Each serving:
256 calories; 1,510 mg sodium; 276 mg cholesterol; 6

grams fat; 1 gram saturated
fat; 21 grams carbohydrates; 32 grams protein; 3.54

grams fiber.

Variation: Substitute 1 1/2
pounds boneless pork, cut into small cubes, for the

shrimp. Prepare the sauce
as for Shrimp Vindaloo, add the pork and cook over low

heat 1 hour. Cool and refrigerate
overnight. Reheat and serve. 4 servings.

*

Malai Kofta

Active Work Time: 20 minutes
* Total Preparation Time: 1 hour

From A-1 Produce and Veggie
Lovers Deli in Northridge.

KOFTA

1 carrot

1/8 cauliflower

6 ounces paneer cheese

2 tablespoons besan (chickpea
flour)

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

Salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Oil, for deep-frying

Very finely shred the carrot,
cauliflower and cheese. Combine with the besan,

cumin seeds, coriander,
salt to taste and baking powder in a bowl. Mix well,

mashing together by hand.
Divide into 8 portions and form each into a ball.

    Add 1
1/2 inches of oil to a saucepan and heat to 350 degrees. Add the balls
and

deep-fry until browned,
45 seconds. Set aside on paper towels to drain.

SAUCE

1 large onion, cut in pieces

2 tablespoons finely chopped
garlic

1 1/2 tablespoons finely
chopped ginger root

Water

1/4 cup oil

3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon finely chopped
serrano chile

2 1/2 large tomatoes

1 teaspoon salt

Scant teaspoon pure red
chile powder

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon garam masala

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

15 golden raisins

10 cashews

1 teaspoon dried methi (fenugreek)
leaves

Combine onion, garlic and
ginger in a blender; blend until pureed, adding about

2 tablespoons water to make
blending possible.

    Heat
a skillet over high heat. Add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the cumin

seeds and fry a few seconds.
Add the blended onion mixture and the serrano chile

and fry well, stirring,
until the mixture thickens and dries out but is not

browned, about 10 minutes.

    Puree
the tomatoes in the blender and add to the skillet. Rinse out the blender

with 1/3 cup water and add
to the skillet. Cook 10 minutes.

    Add the
salt, chile powder, coriander, garam masala and turmeric. Let this cook

at a boil until it deepens
in color and the oil rises to the surface, about 10

minutes. Add the cream and
1/3 cup water. Add the raisins and cashews. Rub the

methi leaves between the
palms of your hands to crush, then add to the skillet.

Taste for seasoning. Cook
another 5 minutes. Add the Kofta; simmer 5 minutes.

Thin with water or more
cream, if needed.

4 servings. Each serving:
487 calories; 896 mg sodium; 37 mg cholesterol; 38

grams fat; 9 grams saturated
fat; 30 grams carbohydrates; 11 grams protein; 4.18

grams fiber.

Cover feature of Newsweek’s Oct 7 issue:

Young and Depressed

Ten years ago this disease was for adults only. But as teen depression comes out of the closet, it‚s getting easier to spot˜and sufferers can hope for a brighter future

By Pat Wingert and Barbara Kantrowitz

NEWSWEEK

Oct. 7 issue ˜  Brianne
Camilleri had it all: two involved parents, a caring

older brother and a comfortable
home near Boston. But that didn‚t stop the

overwhelming sense of hopelessness
that enveloped her in ninth grade. „It was

like a cloud that followed
me everywhere,‰ she says. „I couldn‚t get away from

it.‰

         
BRIANNE STARTED DRINKING and experimenting with drugs. One Sunday she

was caught shoplifting at
a local store and her mother, Linda, drove her home in

what Brianne describes as
a „piercing silence.‰ With the clouds in her head so

dark she believed she would
never see light again, Brianne went straight for the

bathroom and swallowed every
Tylenol and Advil she could find˜a total of 74

pills. She was only 14,
and she wanted to die.

      
A few hours later Linda Camilleri found her daughter vomiting all over

the floor. Brianne was rushed
to the hospital, where she convinced a

psychiatrist (and even herself)
that it had been a one-time impulse. The

psychiatrist urged her parents
to keep the episode a secret to avoid any stigma.

Brianne‚s father, Alan,
shudders when he remembers that advice. „Mental illness

is a closet problem in this
country, and it‚s got to come out,‰ he says. With a

schizophrenic brother and
a cousin who committed suicide, Alan thinks he should

have known better. Instead,
Brianne‚s cloud just got darker. After another

aborted suicide attempt
a few months later, she finally ended up at McLean

Hospital in Belmont, Mass.,
one of the best mental-health facilities in the

country. Now, after three
years of therapy and antidepressant medication,

Brianne, 19, thinks she‚s
on track. A sophomore at James Madison University in

Virginia, she‚s on the dean‚s
list, has a boyfriend and hopes to spend a

semester in Australia˜a
plan that makes her mother nervous, but also proud.

AN ŒEPIDEMIC‚?

      
Brianne is one of the lucky ones. Most of the nearly 3 million

adolescents struggling with
depression never get the help they need because of

prejudice about mental illness,
inadequate mental-health resources and

widespread ignorance about
how emotional problems can wreck young lives. The

National Institutes of Mental
Health (NIMH) estimates that 8 percent of

adolescents and 2 percent
of children (some as young as 4) have symptoms of

depression. Scientists also
say that early onset of depression in children and

teenagers has become increasingly
common; some even use the word „epidemic.‰ No

one knows whether there
are actually more depressed kids today or just greater

awareness of the problem,
but some researchers think that the stress of a high

divorce rate, rising
academic expectations and social pressure may be pushing

more kids over the edge.

    This
is a huge change from a decade ago, when many doctors considered

depression strictly an
adult disease. Teenage irritability and rebelliousness

was „just a phase‰ kids
would outgrow. But scientists now believe that if this

behavior is chronic, it
may signal serious problems. New brain research is also

beginning to explain why
teenagers may be particularly vulnerable to mood

disorders. Psychiatrists
who treat adolescents say parents should seek help if

they notice a troubling
change in eating, sleeping, grades or social life that

lasts more than a few weeks.
And public awareness of the need for help does seem

to be increasing. One case
in point: HBO‚s hit series „The Sopranos.‰ In a

recent episode, college
student Meadow Soprano saw a therapist who recommended

antidepressants to help
her work through her feelings after the murder of her

former boyfriend.

       
Without treatment, depressed adolescents are at high risk for school

failure, social isolation,
promiscuity, „self-medication‰ with drugs or alcohol,

and suicide˜now the third
leading cause of death among 10- to 24-year-olds. „The

earlier the onset, the more
people tend to fall away developmentally from their

peers,‰ says Dr. David Brent,
professor of child psychiatry at the University of

Pittsburgh. „If you become
depressed at 25, chances are you‚ve already completed

your education and you have
more resources and coping skills. If it happens at

11, there‚s still a lot
you need to learn, and you may never learn it.‰ Early

untreated depression also
increases a youngster‚s chance of developing more

severe depression as an
adult as well as bipolar disease and personality

disorders.

NEW APPROACHES

      
For kids who do get help, like Brianne, the prognosis is increasingly

hopeful. Both antidepressant
medication and cognitive-behavior therapy (talk

therapy that helps patients
identify and deal with sources of stress) have

enabled many teenagers to
focus on school and resume their lives. And more

effective treatment may
be available in the next few years. The NIMH recently

launched a major 12-city
initiative called the Treatment for Adolescents With

Depression Study to help
determine which regimens˜Prozac, talk therapy or some

combination˜work best on
12- to 18-year-olds. Brent is conducting another NIMH

study looking at newer medications,
including Effexor and Paxil, that may help

kids whose depression is
resistant to Prozac. He is trying to identify genetic

markers that indicate which
patients are likely to respond to particular drugs.

       
Doctors hope that the new research will ultimately result in specific

guidelines for adolescents,
since there‚s not much evidence about the effects of

the long-term use of these
medications on developing brains. Most

antidepressants are not
approved by the FDA for children under 18, although

doctors routinely prescribe
these medications to their young patients. (This

practice, called „off-label‰
use, is not uncommon for many illnesses.) Many of

the drugs being tested˜like
Prozac and Paxil˜are known as SSRIs, or selective

serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
They regulate how the brain uses the

neurotransmitter serotonin,
which has been connected to mood disorders.

       
Outside the lab, the hardest task may be pinpointing kids at risk.

Depressed teens usually
suffer for years before they are identified, and fewer

than one in five who needs
treatment gets it. „Parents often think their kid is

just being a kid, that all
teens are moody, oppositional and irritable all the

time,‰ says Madelyne Gould,
a professor of child psychiatry at Columbia

University. In fact, she
says, the typical teenager should be more like „Happy

Days‰ than „Rebel Without
a Cause.‰ Even adults who make a career of working

with kids˜teachers, coaches
and pediatricians˜can misread symptoms. On college

campuses, experts say, cases
of depression are too often misdiagnosed as

mononucleosis or chronic-fatigue
syndrome. That‚s why many kids still suffer

unnoticed, even though more
schools are using screening tools that identify kids

who should be referred for
a professional evaluation. Often it‚s only the overt

troublemakers˜disruptive
or violent kids˜who get any attention. „In most cases,

if a child is doing adequately
in school, is getting decent grades, but seems a

little depressed, there‚s
a great likelihood that the child won‚t come to the

attention of the teacher,
counselor administrator or school psychologist,‰ says

Phil Lazarus, who runs the
school-psychology training program at Florida

International University
and is chairman of the National Association of School

Psychologists‚ emergency-response
team.

FINDING HELP

      
And finding the right help can be as difficult as identifying the kids

who need help. There are
currently only about 7,000 child and adolescent

psychiatrists around the
country, far fewer than most mental-health experts say

is required. The shortage
is most acute in low-income areas and there are severe

consequences in communities
with more than enough traumatic circumstances to

trigger a major depression.
At the age of 13, Jonathan Haynes of San Antonio was

clearly on a dangerous path.
His parents, both crack addicts, were homeless˜a

major risk factor for depression.
Haynes did what he says was necessary to

survive: sold crack himself,
and broke into houses and cars. But his life began

to improve in the most unlikely
place: jail. In 1999, his parents, by then

drug-free, encouraged him
to get help. Still high from the marijuana he had

smoked that day, Haynes
turned himself in to police. At Southton, the county‚s

maximum-security facility
for juveniles, he was diagnosed and prescribed

antidepressants. Now 18,
Haynes works as a cook and lives with his family on San

Antonio‚s East Side. „I
got my priorities straight,‰ he says. „I gotta stay

strong. I got strong parents.
That helps. Ever since I got out of Southton, I‚ve

been off the streets.‰

       
In his case, it seems clear that traumatic family events contributed to

his illness. But more often
the trigger for adolescent depression is not so

obvious. Scientists are
studying a combination of factors, both internal and

external. The hormonal surges
of puberty have long been shown to affect moods,

but now new research says
that changes in brain structure may also play a role.

During adolescence, the
brain‚s gray matter is gradually „pruned,‰ and unused

brain-cell connections are
cleared out, creating superhighways that allow us as

adults to focus and learn
things more deeply, says Dr. Harold Koplewicz, author

of „More Than Moody: Recognizing
and Treating Adolescent Depression.‰ The link

between this brain activity
and depression isn‚t clear, but Koplewicz says the

pruning happens between
the ages of 14 and 17, when rates of psychiatric

disorders increase significantly.

      
Scientists also believe that there‚s a genetic predisposition to

depression. „The closer
your connection to a depressed family member˜a depressed

father rather than a depressed
uncle, for example˜the greater an individual‚s

likelihood of suffering
depression,‰ says John Mann, chief of the department of

neuroscience at Columbia
University. Negative experiences, such as growing up in

an abusive home or witnessing
violence, increases the probability of a

depressive episode in kids
who are at risk. Doctors around the country reported

an influx of young patients
after last year‚s terrorist attacks, although it‚s

too soon to tell whether
this will translate into significantly higher numbers

of youngsters diagnosed
with major depression. Lisa Meier, a clinical

psychologist in Rockville,
Md., a Washington, D.C., suburb, says the attacks

made many kids‚ worst fears
seem all too real. „Prior to September 11, if a

child said they were afraid
a bomb would drop on their house, that was very

clinically significant,
because it was an atypical fear,‰ Meier says. „It‚s not

atypical anymore.‰

 Gabrielle Cryan, now
19, got her first Prozac prescription when she was a high

school senior

TRIAL-AND-ERROR THERAPY

      
Many depressed adolescents have a long history of trouble, which often

includes misdiagnosis and
a lot of trial-and-error therapy that can aggravate

the social and emotional
problems caused by the depression. Morgan Willenbring,

17, of St. Paul, Minn.,
has suffered from depression since he was 8, but school

officials first thought
he had attention-deficit disorder. „I think that‚s

because they see that a
lot,‰ says his mother, Kate Meyers. „They tend to lump

together what they see as
acting-out behavior.‰ It took more than two years to

figure out a good treatment
regimen. Desipramine, one of the older

antidepressants, didn‚t
work. Then Willenbring spent six years on Wellbutrin,

which was effective but
problematical because he needed to take it three times a

day. „It‚s very easy to
forget, which was not helping,‰ he says. When he missed

too many doses, he had trouble
concentrating and got into fights at home. But a

month ago he switched to
a once-a-day drug called Celexa and says he‚s doing

better. He even managed
to get through breaking up with his longtime girlfriend

without missing a day of
school.

       

The results of the NIMH study may help make life easier for youngsters

like Willenbring. The lead
researcher, Dr. John March, a professor of child

psychiatry at Duke University,
says there is already evidence from other studies

supporting short-term behavioral
therapy and drugs like Prozac and Paxil. But

that regimen works only
in about 60 percent of cases, and almost half of those

patients relapse within
a year of stopping treatment. „We‚re hoping [the study]

will tell us which treatment
is best for each set of symptoms,‰ March says, „and

whether the severity of
symptoms biases you toward one treatment or another.‰

       

Until the results of that study and others are in, parents and teenagers

have to weigh the risk of
medication against the very real dangers of ignoring

the illness. A recent report
from the Centers for Disease Control found that 19

percent of high-school students
had suicidal thoughts and more than 2 million of

them actually began planning
to take their own lives. One of them was Gabrielle

Cryan. In 1999, during her
junior year at a New York City high school, „I

obsessed about death,‰ she
says. „I talked about it with everyone.‰ With her

parents‚ help, she found
a therapist just before the start of her senior year

who „put a name to what
I‚d been feeling,‰ says Cryan. „My therapist made me

realize it, face it and
get over it.‰ She also received a prescription for

Prozac. Although she had
some hesitations about Prozac, „it really did help me,‰

she says. So did the talk
therapy. „The first part of the healing process˜and I

know this sounds corny˜was
becoming more self-aware,‰ she says. The therapy

helped her see that „everything
was not a black-and-white situation.‰ Before

therapy, little things would
throw her into a funk. „I couldn‚t find my shoe and

the whole week was ruined,‰
she says now with a laugh. „They taught me to get

some perspective.‰ And while
her depression now is „nonexistent,‰ she knows that

she may have to face it
again in the future. „We‚re all a work in progress,‰

Cryan says. „But I‚ve picked
up a lot of tools. When I feel symptoms coming on,

I can reach out and help
myself now.‰ Stories like hers are the successes that

lead others out of the darkness.

——————————————————————————–

With Brian Braiker in Boston,
Karen Springen in Chicago and Ellise Pierce in

Dallas

Florida man rescued after being lost at sea

Friday, October 4, 2002
Posted: 12:44 PM EDT (1644 GMT)

 CHARLESTON, South Carolina (AP) — A Florida man who was lost at sea for more than two months was rescued 40 miles off the coast, officials said.

    The Coast Guard reached Terry Watson, 43, around 7 p.m. Thursday. Emaciated and weak, Watson was suffering from dehydration, delusion and shock, officials said.

    “I died a month ago,” Watson told The Post and Courier after he was assisted off a Coast Guard rescue boat.

    Watson and his 23-foot sailboat called the Psedorca were found 42 miles southeast of Little River
Inlet, which is located near the North Carolina-South Carolina border, the Coast Guard said.

    Authorities say Watson was last spotted in Miami on July 19. The captain of another boat said he was traveling with Watson around the Florida Keys and reported the boat missing July 23.

    A search of more than 8,000 square miles turned up nothing.

    Officials aren’t sure how Watson survived. He apparently used his broken mast to rig a shelter, but Coast Guard crewmen said they had not been able to talk with Watson long enough to determine how long he has been without food and water.

    A charter fishing boat captain found Watson and his ship at 1:25 p.m. Thursday and radioed the Coast Guard for help, authorities said.

    A helicopter dropped a rescue swimmer near the boat, but Watson refused to leave his vessel.

    “The helicopter apparently scared him, and he was not in good physical condition. He could barely
move,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Scott Carr.

    The Coast Guard then sent a rescue boat from Georgetown. When it arrived, Watson
again refused to leave his boat, Carr said.

    Though the crew was prepared to use force to remove him to safety, they eventually persuaded Watson to come aboard Thursday evening, Carr said.

    He arrived at the Winyah Bay Coast Guard Station wearing a black and red life vest, a thermal underwear shirt, tattered green pants and brown hiking boots.

    At times he appeared disoriented, giving a rambling answers to questions. Other times, he appeared more coherent, the newspaper reported.

    “The Coast Guard is very nice,” Watson said. “I just need some food. I’ll be all right. I wouldn’t mind having some chocolate pudding.”

    Watson was taken to Georgetown Memorial Hospital for observation.

from http://www.observer.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,804928,00.html

You shone like the sun

Syd Barrett was the prodigiously talented founder of Pink Floyd, but after just two years at the centre of the 60s psychedelic scene, he suffered a massive breakdown and has lived as a recluse ever since.

In this extract from his candid new book, Tim Willis tracks him down and pieces together the
story of rock’s lost icon

Sunday October 6, 2002

The Observer

Remember when you were young,
You shone like the sun. Shine on you

crazy diamond. Now there’s
a look in your eyes, Like black holes in

the sky. Shine on you crazy
diamond.

–Pink Floyd’s tribute to
Syd Barrett on Wish You Were Here, 1975

The received wisdom is that
you don’t disturb him.The last interview

he gave was in 1971, and
from then until now, there are only about 20

recorded encounters of any
kind. His family says it upsets him to

discuss the days when he
was the spirit of psychedelia, beautiful Syd

Barrett, the leader of Pink
Floyd. He doesn’t recognise himself as

the shambling visionary
who, during an extended nervous breakdown

exacerbated by his drug
intake, made two solos LPs, Madcap and

Barrett , which are as eternally
eloquent as Van Gogh’s cornfields.

He doesn’t answer to his
60s nickname now. He’s called Roger Barrett,

as he was born in 1946.

    On a
blistering hot day, pacing the cracked tarmac pavement in this

suburban Cambridge street,
I wonder if I can act honourably by him.

When the DJ Nicky Horne
doorstepped him in the 80s, Barrett said,

‘Syd can’t talk to you now.’
Perhaps, in his own way, he was telling

the truth. But I could talk
to him as Roger; ask him if he was still

painting, as reported. I
could pass on regards from friends he knew

before he became Syd.

    Two housewives
in the street say he ignores their ‘Good mornings’

when he goes out to buy
his Daily Mail and changing brands of fags.

Apart from his sister, they
don’t think he has any visitors – not

even workmen. But they don’t
see why I shouldn’t take my chances.

It’s been a few years since
backpackers camped by his gate. ‘He

didn’t open the door for
them, and he probably won’t for you.’

    So I
walk up the concrete path of his grey pebble-dashed semi, try

the bell and discover that
it’s disconnected. At the front of the

house, all the curtains
are open. The side passage is closed to

prying eyes by a high gate.
I knock on the front door and, after a

minute or two, look through
the downstairs bay window. Where you

might expect a television
and a three-piece suite, Barrett has

constructed a bare, white-walled
workshop. Pushed against the window

is a tattered pink sofa.
On the hardboard tops, toolboxes are neatly

stacked, flexes coiled,
pens put away in a white mug.

    Then,
a sound in the hall. Has he come in from the back garden?

Perhaps it needs mowing,
like the front lawn – although, judging by

the mound of weeds by the
path, he’s been tidying the beds today.

    I knock
again, and hear three heavy steps. The door flies open and

he’s standing there. He’s
stark naked except for a small, tight pair

of bright-blue Y-fronts;
bouncing, like the books say he always did,

on the balls of his feet.

    He bars
the doorway with one hand on the jamb, the other on the

catch. His resemblance to
Aleister Crowley in his Cefalu period is

uncanny; his stare about
as welcoming…

In 1988, the News of the
World quoted the writer Jonathan Meades who,

20 years before had visited
a South Kensington flat that Barrett

shared with a bright, druggie
clique from his home town of Cambridge.

‘This rather weird, exotic
and mildly famous creature was living in

this flat with these people
who to some extent were pimping off him,

both professionally and
privately,’ said Meades. ‘There was this

terrible noise. It sounded
like the heating pipes shaking. I said,

“What’s that?” and [they]
sort of giggled and said, “That’s Syd

having a bad trip. We put
him in the linen cupboard.”‘

    It’s
a common motif in the Barrett legend: the genius mistreated,

forced to endure unspeakable
mental anguish for the fun of his

fairweather friends. But
it’s not necessarily true. There are some

terrible tales from that
flat in Egerton Court. But on this occasion,

as flatmate Aubrey ‘Po’
Powell remembers it, ‘Pete Townshend used to

come there, and Mick and
Marianne. It was an incredibly cool scene.

Jonty Meades was a hanger-on,
a straight cat just out of school. I’m

sure we told him that version
of events – but only to wind him up.’

    Similarly,
Barrett’s lover and flatmate at the time, Lindsay Corner,

denies the stories that
he locked her in her room for three days,

feeding her biscuits under
the door, then smashed a guitar over her

head. This time, however,
three other residents swear he did: ‘I

remember pulling Syd off
her,’ says Po. And that’s the trouble with

the whole Barrett business.
There are witness accounts by people who

weren’t there, those who
were there disagree – half of them, being as

totally off their faces
as Barrett was, must have a question mark

over their evidence. If
you can remember the 60s, as they say…

    By October
1966, Barrett was already well on the way to stardom. Pink

Floyd supported the Soft
Machine’s experimental jazz-rock at the IT

magazine launch party, a
2,000-strong happening in the disused

Roundhouse theatre, featuring
acid aplenty, Marianne Faithfull

dressed as a nun in a pussy-pelmet,
and Paul McCartney disguised as

an Arab. There was a giant
jelly and a Pop Art-painted Cadillac, a

mini-cinema and a performance
piece by Yoko Ono.

    ‘All
apparently very psychedelic,’ sniffed The Sunday Times of the

Floyd, thus encouraging
hundreds of difficult teenagers to check out

their new residency at the
All Saints Hall in Ladbroke Grove.

    Now once-
or twice-weekly, the shows took time to take off. Barrett’s

friend Juliet Wright remembers
an occasion when there were so few

punters that Barrett movingly
recited Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’

soliloquy onstage. But soon
ravers were crossing London for the

lights and the weirdness,
titillated by music-press adverts using

Timothy Leary’s phrase of
‘Turn on, Tune in, Drop out’. With

Barrett’s nursery-rhyme
freak-outs lasting 40 minutes each, the Floyd

become known as Britain’s
first ‘psychedelic’ band.

    Apart
from playing a packed live schedule, the Floyd were in pursuit

of a recording contract,
rehearsing and making rough demos. Floyd gig

promoter Joe Boyd, who had
production experience, took them into a

studio in late January.
Barrett had written ‘Arnold Layne’ by then,

and perfected the relentless
riff of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’. EMI –

the same label as the Beatles
– signed them up on the basis of these

demos, nominating ‘Arnold’
as the first single. Barrett was

delighted. ‘We want to be
pop stars,’ he said, gladly grinning for

cheesy publicity shots of
the band high-kicking on the street.

However, by the beginning
of April, he was already railing in the

music papers against record-company
executives who were pressing him

for more commercial material.

    He was
even less cheery by the end of the month. Six weeks before,

‘Arnold Layne’ had been
released. This jolly tale of Barrett’s

childhood pal and later
Pink Floyd member Roger Waters’s mum’s

washing-line raider was
helped up the charts by a ban from Radio

London, due to its lyrics
about transvestism. But Barrett had grown

to hate playing note-perfect,
three-minute renditions on stage. On 22

April it reached number
20, its highest position. On 29 April,

Barrett was still playing
it, at Joe Boyd’s UFO club at dawn and on a

TV show in Holland that
evening. The band then drove back to London

to headline at 3am in Britain’s
biggest happening ever, the ’14 Hour

Technicolor Dream’ at the
cavernous Alexandra Palace.

    It was
a druggy affair. Floyd’s co-manager Peter Jenner was certainly

tripping that night, and
Barrett is said to have been. John Lennon,

Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix
were among those who played to a

10,000-strong audience.
There were 40 bands, dancers in strobe shows,

a helter-skelter and a noticeboard
made of lightbulbs which displayed

messages like ‘Vietnam Is
A Sad Trip’. The Floyd came on as the sun’s

pink fingers touched the
huge eastern window. Barry Miles, the 60s

chronicler, reported: ‘Syd’s
eyes blazed as his notes soared up into

the strengthening light,
as the dawn was reflected in his famous

mirror-disc Telecaster [or
rather, Esquire].’ The truth was less

rosy. Barrett was tired,
so terribly tired.

    There’s
a horrible ring of truth to Barrett’s old college friend Sue

Kingsford’s contention that,
in 1967, Barrett would regularly visit

her in Beaufort Street,
to score from a heavy acid dealer in the

basement called ‘Captain
Bob’. It certainly sounds more likely than

the rumours that Barrett’s
camp-followers were lacing his tea with

LSD. Kingsford’s boyfriend
Jock says: ‘Spiking was a heinous crime.

You just wouldn’t do it.
There was a ritual to acid-taking those days

– a peaceful scene, good
sounds.’

    Cambridge
pal and future Floyd member David Gilmour reckons: ‘Syd

didn’t need encouraging.
If drugs were going, he’d take them by the

shovelful.’ Gilmour tends
to agree with something fellow Camridgian

and Floyd’s bassist Waters
once said that ‘Syd was being fed acid.’

But Sue Kingsford giggles:
‘We were all feeding it to each other…

It was a crazy time.’ Despite
her attachment to Jock, she had a

one-night stand with Barrett.
‘We were tripping,’ she explains.

    Ah, but
what does she mean by tripping? Another of Barrett’s

Cambridge friends, Andrew
Rawlinson, comments: ‘Acid in those days

was five times stronger
than today’s stuff. On a proper trip, you

might take 250 micrograms.
But a faction believed in taking 50mcg

every day. [There was even
a popular hippy-handbook on the subject.]

On that, you could function
– you might even appear normal – but you

couldn’t initiate much.’

    Perhaps
that was Barrett’s way. But if he had actually taken a proper

dose of acid at the Technicolor
Dream then it was a fairly rare

event. He simply didn’t
have the time for anything stronger than dope

– which he did smoke in
copious quantities. And maybe for a few

Mandrax, the hypnotic tranquillisers
which, if one can ride the first

wave of tiredness, induced
an opiate-like buzz when swallowed with

alcohol. In legend, ‘Mandies
make you randy.’ They may have appealed

to Barrett because they
were fashionable in the late 60s – or because

they stopped his mind from
spinning.

    The band
weren’t worried by his behaviour, yet Syd was Syd. And if,

by the end of May, people
who hadn’t seen Barrett for a while thought

he had changed, his month
had started well. On 12 May 1967 the band

played the ‘Games for May’
concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Barrett wrote an early version
of ‘See Emily Play’ for the event,

which was essentially a
normal concert bookended by some pretentious

bits. The Floyd introduced
a rudimentary quad sound-system, played

taped noises from nature
and had a liquid red light show. Mason was

amplified sawing a log.
Waters threw potatoes at a gong. The roadies

pumped out thousands of
soap bubbles and one of them, dressed as an

admiral, threw daffodils
into the stalls. The mess earnt the Floyd a

ban from the hall and a
favourable review from The Financial Times.

    On 2
June, the Floyd played Joe Boyd’s UFO after a two-month absence.

Though the other band members
were friendly, Boyd said Barrett ‘just

looked at me. I looked right
in his eye and there was no twinkle, no

glint… you know, nobody
home.’ Visiting London from France, David

Gilmour dropped in on the
recording of ‘Emily’: ‘Syd didn’t seem to

recognise me and he just
stared back,’ he says. ‘He was a different

person from the one I’d
last seen in October.’ Was he on drugs,

though? ‘I’d done plenty
of acid and dope – often with Syd – and that

was different from how he
had become.’

    Touring
the provinces in July, like the rest of the band, Barrett

resented the beery mob baying
for ‘Arnold’ and ‘Emily’. The Floyd

even wrote a white-noise
number called ‘Reaction in G’ to express

their feelings. But Barrett’s
inner reaction was harder to fathom.

With his echo-machines on
full tilt, he might detune his Fender until

its strings were flapping,
and hit one note all night. He might stand

with his arms by his side,
the guitar hanging from his neck, staring

straight ahead, while the
others performed as a three-piece.

    Perhaps
Barrett was making a statement. Perhaps he was pushing his

experimental notions of
‘music-of-the-moment’ to new boundaries.

Whatever else, he was now
seriously mentally ill. And almost

certainly he suspected it
himself.

    After
a couple of further concert debacles, Jenner and his partner

Andrew King were forced
to act. Though their debut LP Piper at the

Gates of Dawn was released
on 4 August, Blackhill cancelled the next

three weeks’ gigs and arranged
a holiday for Barrett and Corner on

the Balearic island of Formentera.
Hutt and Rick Wright would be

chaperones, accompanied
by their partners and Hutt’s baby son. Waters

and his wife would be in
Ibiza. When Melody Maker learnt of this,

their front-page splash
read: ‘Pink Floyd Flake Out’.

2 November 1967, US mini-tour.
Pink Floyd were not prepared for the

American way. They had expected
the San Francisco scene to be similar

to Britain’s. Instead, they
found themselves in humungous venues like

the Winterland, supporting
such blues bands as Big Brother and the

Holding Company (led by
Janis Joplin). The three nights they played

with Joplin, they borrowed
her lighting because their own seemed too

weedy. The crowd weren’t
into feedback or English whimsy –

acid-inspired or not. Barrett
was off the map, and when he did play,

it was to a different tune.

    At the
beginning of the week his hair had been badly permed at Vidal

Sassoon, and he was distraught.
The greased-up ‘punk’ style with

which he’d been experimenting
would be better. Waters remembers that

in the dressing-room at
the Cheetah Club in Santa Monica, Barrett

suddenly called for a tin
of Brylcreem and tipped the whole lot on

his head. As the gunk melted,
it slipped down his face until Barrett

resembled ‘a gutted candle’.
Producing a bottle of Mandrax, he

crushed them into the mess
before taking the stage. David Gilmour

says he ‘still can’t believe
that Syd would waste good Mandies’. But

a lighting man called John
Marsh, who was also there, confirms the

story. Girls in the front
row, seeing his lips and nostrils bubbling

with Brylcreem, screamed.
He looked like he was decomposing onstage.

Faced with this farce, some
of the band and crew abandoned themselves

to drink, drugs, groupies
and the sights. When they arrived in Los

Angeles, Barrett had forgotten
his guitar, which caused much cost and

fuss. ‘It’s great to be
in Las Vegas,’ he said to a record company

man in Hollywood. He fell
into a swimming-pool and left his wet

clothes behind.

    The Floyd
survived the tour by the skin of their teeth. On TV’s Pat

Boone Show, where they did
‘Apples and Oranges’, Barrett was happy to

mime in rehearsals – but
live he ignored the call to ‘Action’ four or

five times, leaving Waters
to fill in. Asked what he liked in the

after-show chat, Barrett
replied… after a dreadful pause…

‘America!’, which made the
audience whoop. On American Bandstand and

the Perry Como Show, he
did not move his lips, to speak or mime.

    Finishing
their commitments on the West Coast, the band began

thinking of how to replace
or augment him. The next day, they were in

Holland, handing Barrett
notes in the hope that he would talk to

them. The day after, they
were bus-bound on a British package tour

with Hendrix, the Move,
Amen Corner, the Nice and others, playing two

17-minute sets a night for
three weeks, with three days off in

middle.Though he had worked
harder, the schedule was too much for

Barrett. Onstage, he was
unable to function. Sometimes he failed to

show up and the Nice’s Dave
O’List stood in for him. Once, Jenner had

to stop him escaping by
train.

    Barrett
did play occasional blinders through out the autumn of 1967,

but these instances were
as unpredictable as spring showers, and the

band’s hopes that he might
‘return’ dimmed. The Floyd stumbled

through to Christmas, while
the three other band members hatched a

plan: they would ask David
Gilmour to join the group to cover lead

guitar and vocals while
their sick colleague could do what he wanted,

so long as he stood onstage.

    Barrett
couldn’t care less, and Gilmour, broke, bandless and driving

a van for a living – was
known to be not only a terrific guitarist

but also a wonderful mimic
of musical parts. Drummer Nick Mason had

already sounded him out
when they ran into each other at a gig in

Soho. On 3 January 1968,
Gilmour accepted a try-out. The band had a

week booked in a north London
rehearsal hall before going back on the

road.

    Four
gigs followed in the next fortnight, with Barrett contributing

little. He looks happy enough
in a cine-clip from the time, joining

in with the lads for a tap-dance
in a dressing-room. ‘But in

reality,’ says Gilmour,
‘he was rather pathetic.’ On the day of the

fifth gig the others were
driving south from a business meeting in

central London. As they
drove, one of them – no one remembers who –

asked, ‘Shall we pick up
Syd?’ ‘Fuck it,’ said the others. ‘Let’s not

bother.’ Barrett, who probably
didn’t notice that night, would never

work again with the band
that he had crafted in his image. And they

never quite put him out
of their minds.

    Not that
their minds were made up. Though the Floyd would go on to

huge fame and fortune, at
the time they believed they probably had a

few months left of milking
psychedelia before ignominious

disbandment. Barrett, as
Waters says, was the ‘goose that had laid

the golden egg’. Now their
frontman had become such a liability on

tour, they would rather
appear without their main attraction than

risk his involvement.

    However,
Barrett still had the band’s schedule. Waters remembers him

turning up with his guitar
at ‘an Imperial College gig, I think, and

he had to be very firmly
told that he wasn’t coming on stage with

us’. At the Middle Earth,
wearing all his Chelsea threads, he

positioned himself in front
of the low stage and stared at Gilmour

throughout his performance.
Now he had to watch his old college

friend playing his licks.
Undoubtedly, he felt hurt by this treatment.

    Though
the money from Piper came rolling in, Barrett’s work went

completely to pot. Jenner
took him into the Abbey Road studios

several times between May
and July 1968, bringing various musicians

and musical friends to help
out, but achieved next to nothing.

    Barrett
was all over the place – forgetting to bring his guitar to

sessions, breaking equipment
to EMI’s displeasure. Sometimes he

couldn’t even hold his plectrum.
He was in a state, and had little

new material. Jenner had
the experience neither as a person not as a

producer to coax anything
out of him. By August, he and King were

having less and less to
do with Barrett – which could equally be said

of the other lodgers in
Egerton Court.

    According
to flatmate Po, ‘Syd could still be very funny and lucid,

but he could also be uncommunicative.
Staring. Heavy, you know?’

    In the
spring of 1968, Roger Walters had talked to the hip

psychiatrist RD Laing. He
had even dri ven Barrett to an appointment:

‘Syd wouldn’t get out. What
can you do?’ In the intervening months,

however, Barrett became
less hostile to the idea of treatment. So

Gale placed a call to Laing
and Po booked a cab. But with the

taxi-meter ticking outside,
Barrett refused to leave the flat.

    By the
autumn of 68, he was homeless. Periodically he returned to

Cambridge, where his mother
Win fretted, urged him to see a doctor,

and blindly hoped for the
best. In London, he crashed on friends’

floors – and began the midnight
ramblings which would continue for

two years.

    By the
mid 70s, the Syd Barrett Appreciation Society had folded, due

to ‘lack of Syd’. But he
wasn’t quite invisible. In 1977,

ex-girlfriend Gala Pinion
was in a supermarket on the Fulham Road.

‘Where are you going, then?’
he said. ‘I’m going to buy you a drink.’

They went for a drink, and
he invited her back to his flat. Once

there, ‘He dropped his trousers
and pulled out his cheque book,’ says

Pinion. ‘How much do you
want?’ he asked. ‘Come on, get your knickers

down.’

    Gala
made her excuses and left, never to see him again. However, even

as an invisible presence,
he loomed large. The previous year, punk

rock had appeared and the
King’s Road had become heartland. Without

success, the Sex Pistols,
their manager Malcolm McLaren and their art

director Jamie Reid tried
to contact Barrett, to ask him to produce

their first album. The Damned
hoped he would produce their second,

realised it was impossible
and settled for the Floyd’s Nick Mason

(‘Who didn’t have a clue’,
according to the band’s bassist Captain

Sensible).

    Barrett
continued to do as little and spend as much as ever.

Bankrupt, he left London
for Win’s new Cambridge home in 1981.

    
From then until now, only a handful of encounters with Barrett have

been reported first-hand,
but some facts have come to light. An

operation on his ulcer meant
that Barrett lost much of his excess

weight. Win thought he should
keep himself occupied, so Roger

Waters’s mother Mary found
him a gardening job with some wealthy

friends. At first he prospered
but, during a thunderstorm, he threw

down his tools and left.

    By this
time, he was just calling himself ‘Roger’. In 1982, his

finances restored, he booked
into the Chelsea Cloisters for a few

weeks, but found he disliked
London. He heard the voice of freedom

and he followed – walking
back to Cambridge, where he was found on

Win’s doorstep – and leaving
his dirty laundry behind.

    The circumstances
of his final return to Cambridge were rightly

interpreted by his family
as a ‘cry for help’ and he agreed to spend

a spell in Fulbourne psychiatric
hospital. (It has often been said,

on the grounds that he has
an ‘odd’ mind, rather than a sick one.) He

continued for a while as
an outpatient at Fulbourne, with no trouble.

    Barrett
has never been sectioned. He has never had to take drugs for

his mental health, except
after one or two uncontrollable fits of

anger, when he was admitted
to Fulbourne and administered Largactyl.

However, he has received
other treatments. In the early 80s, he spent

two years in a charitable
institution, Greenwoods, in Essex. At this

halfway house for lost souls,
he joined in group and other forms of

therapy, and was very content.
But after an imagined slight, he

walked out – again all the
way to Win’s house. The increasingly frail

Win moved in with her daughter
Roe and her husband Paul Breen,

according to Mary Waters,
‘because she was so scared of his

outbursts’.

    Some
people think Barrett suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. It

certainly seems he can’t
be bothered to think about anything that

doesn’t directly affect
him. He kept rabbits and cats for a while but

forgot to feed them, so
they had to be sent to more caring homes.

Thereafter, the only intimate
contacts he maintained were with Win

and Roe. Otherwise, he seems
to have lost the habit – and become wary

– of human interaction,
limiting himself to encounters with shop

assistants and his sympathetic
GP, whose surgery has become a second

home. He was – and is still
– in and out of hospital for his ulcers.

    Paul
Breen revealed that his brother-in-law was ‘painting again’, and

meeting his mother in town
for shopping trips. It was a ‘very, very

ordinary lifestyle,’ said
Breen, but not reclusive: ‘I think the word

“recluse” is probably emotive.
It would be truer to say that he

enjoys his own company now,
rather than that of others.’

    As more
years went by, other news leaked out. Barrett was collecting

coins. He was learning to
cook, and could stuff a mean pepper. On the

death of Win in 1991, he
destroyed all his old diaries and art books

– and also chopped down
the front garden’s fence and tree, and burnt

them (though more in a spirit
of renewal than grief). He had been a

great support to Roe in
her mourning, but hadn’t attended the funeral

because he ‘wouldn’t know
what to do’. He still wrote down his

thoughts all the time. He
still painted – big works, six foot by four

– but destroyed any that
he didn’t consider perfect, and stacked the

rest against the wall. And
sometimes he was unable to finish them,

because obsessive fans had
climbed over his back fence, and stolen

the brushes from the table
outside, where he worked.

    A few
titbits, to finish. In 1998, Barrett was diagnosed as a B-type

diabetic – a genetic condition
– and was prescribed a regime of

medication and diet to which
he is sporadically faithful. His

eyesight will inevitably
become ‘tunnelled’ as a result – sooner,

rather than later, unless
he regularly takes his tablets. However, he

is far from ‘blind’, as
reported on the more excitable websites.

    For Christmas
2001, Barrett gave his sister a painting. For his

birthday in January 2002,
she brought him a new stereo, because he

likes to listen to the Stones,
Booker-T and the classical composers.

However, he evinced no interest
in the recent Echoes: The Best of

Pink Floyd (on which nearly
a fifth of the tracks are written by him,

despite the fact that he
only recorded with the band for less than a

30th of its lifespan). To
coincide with the album’s release, the BBC

screened an Omnibus documentary
about him, which he watched round at

Roe’s house. He is reported
to have liked hearing ‘Emily’ and,

particularly, seeing his
old landlord Mike Leonard – who he called

his ‘teacher’. Otherwise,
he thought the film ‘a bit noisy’.

 

    ‘Mister
Barrett?’

    ‘Yes.’

    His voice
is deeper than on any recordings, more cockneyfied than on

the TV interviews he gave
in 67. Behind him, the hall is clean but

bare, the floorboards mostly
covered in linoleum. I mention someone

dear to him, from his childhood.
She’d be coming to Cambridge in a

couple of weeks, and wondered
if Barrett might like a visit?

    ‘No.’

    He stands
and stares, less embarrassed than me by the vision of him

in his underpants.

    ‘So is
everything all right?’

    ‘Yeah.’

    ‘You’re
still painting?’

    ‘No,
I’m
not doing anything,’ he says (which is true – he’s talking

to me). ‘I’m just looking
after this place for the moment.’

    ‘For
the moment? Are you thinking of moving on?’

    ‘Well,
I’m not going to stay here for ever.’ He pauses a split

second, delivers an unexpected
‘Bye-bye’, and slams the door.

    I’m left
like others before me, trying to work out just what he

meant. ‘I’m not going to
stay here for ever.’ Does he just mean, ‘One

day, I might move house.’
Or is it a nod to the fate that awaits us

all? A coded message that
he may re-emerge into the world – perhaps

show new work or perform?
And is opening the door in your underpants

an unwitting demonstration
of self-confidence, or an eccentricity, or

worse? I retrace my steps,
cross the main road to my car where I

write a note that I hope
is tactful: ‘Dear Mr Barrett, I’m sorry to

have disturbed your sunbathing.
I didn’t have time to mention that

I’m writing a book on you…’
I plead my case, give my telephone

number, and return down
the cracked pavement.

    As I
reach the gate, I see him weeding in the front corner of the

garden, on his knees.

    ‘Hi,’
I say. ‘I’ve written you a note.’

    ‘Huh,’
he says, not looking up, throwing roots behind him.

    ‘May
I leave it?’ He straightens and stares into my eyes, but doesn’t

answer. He’s wearing khaki
shorts now, and gardening gloves, which

aren’t really suited to
receiving the note – and I would be tempting

fate to rest it on the side
of the wheelbarrow which he has bought

with him.

    ‘Shall
I put it through the letterbox?’

    ‘It’s
nothing to do with me,’ he says. So I do.

    ‘Nice
day,’ I say, on leaving. ‘Goodbye.’

    He doesn’t
reply, and I never hear from him.