Seven years ago an event happened that was so crazy there was no way it wouldn’t change my life.
June Eighteen through Twenty, Two-Thousand and Ten – Mammoth Erection Fest
We set out that day with little more than a poorly-formed idea of what we would find. The Rusty Reverend Flip Cassidy, our friend John Martin, and myself, rumbling through the desert in a truck full of old TV’s, painted with humorous, relevant, and somewhat strange phrases, and about 16 cubic feet of space for myself.
Our first stop, as with so many others, was Salvation Mountain, where we had the undeniable pleasure of getting a tour from Leonard Knight himself. we were then convinced to go check out the Karma Kitchen; a gathering place for Slab City locals (which, unfortunately, closed down some years ago) that quickly erased any preconceived notions I had about Slab City. After meeting some lovely folk and hearing some about the Slab City community, we made our way to our destination. Our home for the next few nights: East Jesus.
We pulled up at the end of Sidewinder Road and got our first glimpse of the sculpture garden. We immediately knew we were home. We found our camping space (incidentally, the future location of “West Satan”) and went in to meet the man himself. Immediately, upon meeting Charlie, I could tell this was not a man to cross but that if/when accepted, you were a friend for life (the end of which would come a little to quickly for my liking). He showed us around and we were amazed, humbled, yet equally comforted by the existence of all this art made out of the detritus of decades of human consumption. This was clearly the right place for us to be.
We unloaded the 15 TV’s that would become the infamous “The Television will not be Revolutionized” and set to work carving out our small niche in this amazing and, until then, unknown world. While setting up our camp and watching our friends arrive one-by-one we started to hear the sounds of music wafting in our direction. It took us a few minutes to realize we were hearing the dulcet tones of Charlie playing Leonard Cohen. We wandered over into the music room entranced by the musicianship of this iconoclast who was still an unknown quantity to us.
As the day wore on we became acclimated to the 103 degree temperatures and our various friends showed up for what was to be a weekend that, for weeks after, we would be unable to explain to those that weren’t there. The centerpiece of the weekend was the erection of “Definition of a Grievance” or “The Mammoth”. If memory serves it took 6 of us to affect this monstrous erection built by Joe Holliday.
Through the course of the weekend we would explore what Slab City had to offer and discover what would become some of our various traditional East Jesus activities. Junk diving, hot springs (not recommended during the day in the summer), and exploring the various art pieces of the Slabs were just some of how we spent our time at our new oasis away from the crushing reality of city life.
By the time Saturday night rolled around we felt more at home than most of us ever had before. But nothing could prepare us for a night at The Range. The open-air venue, created by Builder Bill, which usually showcases the talent of the Slabs, was taken over by a multitude of bands and artists from Los Angeles. This would be the night that Slab City was introduced to Flip Cassidy and the Junkyard Gospel and it was as glorious as it could have been. This was truly the proper venue for Flip’s brand of rusty Americana and it was the first of many times (and incarnations) the band would play the Range.
The rest of the night passed in a haze of alcohol, music, fire, all the usual trappings of an East Jesus hootenanny were present and accounted for. By the time we all finally went to bed (seriously, the Range was still going and I went to bed at 4:00am) there was no other place we wanted to be.
The usual Sunday morning hangover we were all used to had this new added element of “Do we have to leave?” But we knew we’d be back…and soon. Hot weather be damned. there was nothing going to keep us away after what we’d just experienced. Of course, the trip would not have been complete without Flip Cassidy’s debut performance in the East Jesus music room. As was my usual M.O., at the time, I recorded it all on video. I remember, even all these years later, watching those videos and getting the sensation that I was watching a piece of history. The look of the art all around, the sound of the music room (which, despite our best efforts, we still have yet to replicate) the aura, surrounding everything, that Charlie created all gave it a look that I can still imagine, in 40 years, watching as an important moment in history.
In the days and weeks that followed, the lot of us that had been there couldn’t find the words to explain what we had seen, what we had experienced. It was all so surreal. We would talk to each other about how amazing everything had been, we would sit for hours and discuss grand plans for a future as part of East Jesus. We were hooked. The First Church of the Chocolate Martini had risen and infected us all.
We returned a number of times through the next year until Charlie’s unexpected passing. At first it was difficult to return. The place we had known was missing it’s key feature. But we would find in the years to come that he was and is still here. The magic Charlie created continued after his death. He started something that couldn’t be destroyed nor his presence kept away. East Jesus will always be East Jesus.
In the last 10 years, this explanation-defying microcosm has grown from a trash heap in the middle of the California desert to a place where art can be art, where creativity is free to grow, where artists can be at peace with a world that is not at peace with them. And, for the past 7 years, it has been a huge part of my life. I found something I didn’t know was missing in my life. I found home. For good or bad, noisy or quiet, unseasonably wet winters or unbearably hot summers, empty or full to bursting with various collections of oddballs, East Jesus is my home and one of the first places I truly have felt I belong.
And all this started with a trip, to the middle of nowhere, to create a mammoth erection.
MAKE GOOD THING – DO BIG FUN – GET MORE LAID – RISE AND INFECT
