HELIX – The Return of the REDUX
From Paul Dorpat and Bill White
The five issues of Helix freshly posted below are a continuation of what was posted  previously – where we let off many months ago. With this return we embrace again our intention to post them all, although most likely with less rigor. It may be a month or more before we post another one. In this we also depend upon Ron Edge who has done the scanning, and so well. Bill and I hope that you will also respond and reflect on what you read – any or all parts of it. Record your comments on anything you read in these Helixes, and send the MP3 to Bill at BWhi61@hotmail.com by the end of April, at which time Bill will edit audio histories from the MP3’s he receives and post them here with the Helix issues. If you prefer to post a written commentary or response, please join our Helix Redux Facebook site, home of lively conversations on all things Helix and related. https://www.facebook.com/groups/217636941681376/

POSTSCRIPT:  MP3’s received after the end of April may be included in the next issue to be posted.

Below is a photograph of the concert advertised at the bottom of the back cover of Vol. 4 No.8

After an about three month wrestle with our blog’s server we have persuaded it with a little more cash and plenty of pitiful coaxing to do us right, and so have returned for more weekly (we hope) postings of HELIX.  This week it is the issue penultimate to the first SKY RIVER ROCK FIRE FESTIVAL.  It is for the most part about the line-up of artists expected over that Labor Day Weekend outside of Sultan on Betty Nelson’s strawberry farm.  (The berries were not in season.) Again, Bill White and I have returned with some joined reflections on what we find within the tabloid, and this time Bill has also attached a MEDLEY of SONGS performed by SKY RIVER ARTISTS at that time – or nearly then.  He found them , of course, on YouTube. Ron Edge is engineering it all – or nearly.   The long-distance recording on Skype that features Bill and I did not record off of Skye Itself.  Rather, Bill (in Peru) had to fall back on the work of his small recorder set between himself and his computer in his apartment about 100 yards from the Pacific surf.  It is a prudent precaution he consistently takes.   So this week, while Bill’s voice is not filtered through the computer’s speaker, mine is, and resembles, Ron notes, a “mouse in the corner.”

B.White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/04-06.mp3|titles=HelixVol 4 No 6]

For a MEDLEY of SONGS performed by SKY RIVER ARTISTS, click below image:

The cover for this issue uses a photograph of Betty Nelson’s pets – I think – at her “strawberry farm” outside of Sultan, where the first Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair was held on Labor Day weekend, this year 1968.  Whoever laid out the cover continued this tabloid’s tradition of being wrong about the proper volume and issue numbers for the Helix then to hit the streets – and it was on the streets were circulation occurred.  There were never very many outlets – just a handful of brave merchants.  It was the vendors who kept the paper going – the vendors and record ads and the staff’s collective acceptance of poverty.  It was hardly worrisome – with a little help from one’s friends.  Again, Bill White and I gab about another issue and Ron Edge puts it and the colorful Helix Logo together,  Thanks to us all.

B.White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/04-05.mp3|titles=HelixVol 4 No 5]

Somewhat true to our new and relaxed schedule of reviewing an issue of Helix every second week – as it also continued to be printed here in the mid-summer of 1968 – we return to talking on top of each other employing (for free) the creative sputter of Skype’s marvelous recording tool.

B.White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/04-04.mp3|titles=HelixVol 4 No 4]

Ron Edge has suggested that we name this edition – the audio commentary part of it – “Stall the Crowd.”   Some ghost has got in the Skype Recording Machine Bill is using and flipped and twisted Bill and my conversation about Helix Vol. 4 No. 3 into what Bill names a “disaster.”  But it is also a fanciful flop.   Why would this latest instance of our routine conversations via Skype between Seattle and Lima sound like it has now been joined by whales?  These third parties are not without their appeal.  You may prefer them.  Long ago when I first called Bill on Skype I heard the whales, although Bill did not.  Well then, I thought, are these the whales that have not made it south of the Panama – our very own gratuitous but graceful sirens, our ghosts of Namus past and all the other Orcas in Puget Sound formally captured by brave but mad whaleboys.  But Vol. 4 No.3’s  recording oddities are more elaborate than its orca-acapella. Bill continues, “Our voices are out of sync, and getting worse as the recording goes on, until finally we are often talking at the same time on different subjects.” We might do that anyway – but not like this.   Then it comes to Bill – the rescue by psychedelic insight.  He concludes, “I may have saved it by heavy cutting and accenting the tone of an acid trip . . . some of the passages are quite lucid, others incomprehensible, but there is method here.  It is something like two stoners talking.”  Still Ron advices “Stall the crowd.”  But how?  For balance we need something that has clear and familiar continuity and, it turns out, we have it from Bill as well with his guitar relaxing on his and Kel’s Peruvian pallet and singing Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” under Kel’s direction.  Here’s the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkZjEZMcLoI

B.White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/04-03.mp3|titles=HelixVol 4 No 3]

We return to our postings of – if you have forgotten – the Seattle-based tabloid HELIX, which was originally published on newsprint between the budding seasons of 1967 and 70.   With this issue Number 2 from Volume 4 we reach the mid-summer excitements of 1968.  We were – surprisingly to this reader – still a bi-weekly then.  (Surely, we will become a weekly soon.)  Our haphazard insertions – as of late we have not made weekly those weekly offerings as originally hoped  – are the result of working from two continents, although both are in the Western Hemisphere.  During this audio commentary you will sometimes hear a not displeasing percussive sound behind the conversation.  It comes from street work outside Bill and Kel’s apartment in Lima, Peru.  The conversation between Bill and myself was dropped toward the very end  for a short while providing a sonar like intermission. By now Bill has Vol. 4 No. 3 already in hand which was done on Ron’s new* oversize scanner, and so the work of recording/scanning the pages has been made easier for him and the results are somewhat clearer for all of us.  (*It may be not new but used.  Ron has a profound knack for finding his technology in thrift stores. While this is good for the environment it is not so swell for the gross national product, and that. we know, is an old conflict.)

B.White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/04-02.mp3|titles=HelixVol 4 No 2]

While Bill White is studying hard for the mid-term – already – in his Spanish language class there in his new hometown of Lima, Peru – he did manage to take this break to discuss with me the July 3, 1968 offering of our 24 page tabloid.  Every week I am surprised by what we find including, so far, the fact that we had not yet turned into a weekly.  I thought it was long before this.   The attentive repeater will have noticed that we have not been keeping up with our weekly pledge, but then no one asked for promises and we have had extraordinary distractions like moving to Peru.  By his every description Bill is loving it.

[We will here attach a Spanish translation of the above as supplied by Google.  As Kel has instructed Bill these Google translations are often mistaken.  This, then, gives Bill another lesson with the chance to correct Google – with Kel’s help.]

Mientras Bill White está estudiando duro para el mediano plazo – ya – en su clase de español hay en su nueva ciudad de Lima, Perú – se las arregló para tomar este descanso para discutir conmigo el 03 de julio 1968 ofrenda de nuestra página 24 tabloide. Cada semana me sorprende lo que encontramos incluso, hasta el momento, el hecho de que no se había convertido aún en una semana. Me pareció que era mucho antes de esto. El repetidor atento se habrá dado cuenta de que no hemos estado al tanto de nuestro compromiso semanal, pero nadie le preguntó por las promesas y hemos tenido distracciones extraordinarias como mudarse a Perú. Por cada uno de sus Bill descripción le encanta.

[Estamos aquí adjuntar una traducción al español de lo anterior según lo provisto por Google. Como Kel ha dado instrucciones a Bill estas traducciones de Google a menudo se confunden. Esto, entonces, Bill da otra lección con la oportunidad de corregir Google -. Con la ayuda de Kel]

B.White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/04-01.mp3|titles=HelixVol 4 No 1]

With Bill White happily camped in his new Lima flat w. Kel, we now have a second Skype recorded reading of Helix, this one for June 14, 1968.  Herein plans are made for the first Sky River Rock Festival – although not named so as yet – Robert Kennedy is shot dead, Lorenzo Milam reveals his esoteric review of KRAB Radio since giving up its management, and Walt Crowley reviews his favorite movie, 2001.  And much more.

B.White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/03-10.mp3|titles=HelixVol 3 No 10]

With Bill White now comfortably set in his New World neighborhood in Lima, Peru and the helpful SKYPE, we can put up the next issue of HELIX, the one probably from June 7, 1968.  (The issue was not dated, but surely we are correct or no more than one days off.)  Now we will week-in-week-out put these tabloids up – in their proper order – and have a good time both reading them and reflecting on them together.  Please notice how the new and drier climate – plus the medicines applied by his doctor Kel – have cleared the stuff in William’s head and he is sounding fine.  (SKYPE is, however, kinder to Peru than to Puget Sound.  While Bill’s voice resounds, the Skype filters also amplify from our Seattle end that ssscar of recording, the hissing S.   We hope to dampen it with our next offering – in a week or so. If not we will live with it.  Repeated thanks to Ron Edge for processing all this and adding his art – the coloring of Jacque’s logos – as well.)

B. White and P. Dorpat

[audio:http://edge-archive.com/audio/03-09.mp3|titles=Helix Vol 3 No 9]

This week Bill White and I pause in our commentary on this most recent issue to call Thom Gunn for an elaboration on the “party” – he calls it – that followed his victory in the late spring of 1968 as the newest U.W. Student Body Prexy.  He called it “World War Three.” The school administration was not amused.  As you may recall,  and as Thom described on the phone from Whidbey Island, it was followed by World War Four.

Bill White is off to Peru on Thursday and there is no telling when he will return – if ever.  We will try, however, to find a Skype-aided way to continue these readings and comments together.  We will also put aside this piling-up of tabloids for a two week break, during which Bill will begin his new and second role on this blog as a travel writer and South American correspondent.  So next week no Helix but rather our first “on the road” with Bill  White – and on the train to Florida.  The following week Bill will be on a cruise ship that will take him from Florida to Lima, Peru.  His report will then will be on the sea.

B. White, T. Gunn and P. Dorpat