Tuesday, February 28, 2023
SRI SATHYA SAI BABA - MADHURAM SAI MADHURAM
Here's a cassette with bhajans from Indian spritual figure Sri Sathya Sai Baba. It's without the cover so I have no song titles for this one....
Brings back some memories, this tape... Way back, around 1993 I had a girlfriend and she introduced me to a lot of stuff that I had never been into. She introduced me to Reiki and I was, in the course of events, initiated into the first and into the second level. Lots of really very crazy personal stories when it comes to Reiki but this might not be the place to share those :) Let me just say that heavy drug use, mainly xtc in large quantities and every now and then magic mushrooms and Reiki is a very powerful but not always good combination.... I was initiated in the so called OSHO kind of Reiki, from Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as just Osho. She also took me to those Osho parties and although I didn't mind them it wasn't really my thing. My thing, back then, was dancing and hip hop and I liked the dancing at those parties. What wasn't for me was the "laughing sessions" where everybody just sit around and laugh, about basically nothing, laughing till they lay crying on the ground, tears streaming out of their eyes, holding their bellies, all from laughing. What also wasn't for me was when they would play tapes from Osho with his speeches, everybody laughing hard at his little jokes even though you knew that they heard those tapes loads of times already.... Back in the late 70's, 80's and early 90's Osho was huge in Holland, I remember one concert, from Zazou Bikaye in Paradiso in Amsterdam where the place was full with them, all in orange and red clothing, all with that huge wooden necklace with a picture of their guru and all of them dancing like crazy. I liked that a lot more than some of the punk concerts I would go to in the late 70's, early 80's where folks were more busy with heavy fighting. Pools of blood just isn't really my thing....
Osho's disciples dancing....
Osho hanging out with some of his disciples...
I would also go to the monthly Fool Moon parties in Rotterdam, mainly for the dancing. I had just come out of years and years of training jiu jitsu and weights and I had some pretty bad injuries, a broken breast bone and a really messed up shoulder among other things, all from training incidents, doctor said I couldn't train anymore for a long, long time so I picked up dancing, I had energy like crazy back then. I was working in the Rhythm, a wild, crazy cafe in Rotterdam and I was working in greenhouses around the city of Apeldoorn growing weed, sometimes away for months, living in the forest in a small camper or in the greenhouse itself come harvesting time, wild, wild stories there, but anyway, in Rotterdam it was the cafe and going to rave parties and hip hop concerts to dance, 3, 4 times a week at the least...
Cafe The Rhythm in Rotterdam. Worked there for some 5 years, great place where all the freaks would hang out. It closed down around 10 years ago or so...
I worked the greenhouses for 3 years or so and then I shifted to other jobs in Rotterdam, organizing distribution, organizing cutting crews and I started working as a dj in a great, great place called the B14/Twijfelaer, a jazz cafe/restaurant that had been there since just after the Second World War, also, like all the great places in Rotterdam, closed down now. I used to go there all the time during the late 70's punk years and during the 80's, many, many great concerts. I was usually working the Thursday nights when Miko was doing the funk/blues sessions with various musicians. Miko was a tall, handsome black guy from the Bay Area in Oakland and he used to play the guitar in the Eddie Murphy Band and with Prince, you can see him in that Purple Rain movie. Great guy, great showman.... But yeah, Reiki, Osho, those Fool Moon Parties. That week I spend with that girlfiend in the city of Antwerpen in Belgium, in a castle doing courses in Chinese astrology, African dancing, massage and macro-biotic food, a week long bio-energetica therapy sessions with her every morning, one of the most insane things I've ever gone through really...
Cafe/restaurant B14/Twijfelaer, the only picture I could find....
Anyway.... the 80's and 90's were fantastic, loads of great jobs, money was easy to make back then, fantastic concerts, incredible adventures, trips to Thailand where I would wander around for months on end, working in Germany and Denmark at pop festivals selling clothes and stuff from South America.... Here's your Sri Sathya Sai Baba cassette:
GET IT HERE
I have another tape from him somewhere, let's see if I can dig that one up....
Enjoy!
Hi Henk
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, You've had a colorful life & bit more exciting than mine:)by the sound of it. I'm not much into gurus but i do have a lovely Hare Krishna Vegetarian cookbook which a bald man in a saffron robe & a red dot on his forehead thrust into my hands one day as i was walking thru the city. Actually, the recipes are pretty good & 40 years later i'm still using them.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the music on this tape
David
Not much into guru's myself :) But some of them do seem to know how to throw a good party :) You meet the weirdest people in those scenes.... People giving trees reiki and shit. Most of the guys that I saw that were into it were mostly into it for trying to get into girls pants, I got out of that scene quick fast... But then again... the old, old Rotterdam punk scene.... some pretty messed up people in that scene too way back... I ran away from home when I was 15 and lived in squat houses in Rotterdam with lots of fellow punks and I had enough after some 8 months or so, almost everybody in the squat was shooting up smack by that time and that wasn't for me... We, our scene had a bad, bad reputation for heavy violence too, I hated that part of it, always the same nonsense, always people getting stabbed, getting bottled etc. I got so fed up with it that I started living with my parents again, 4 wonderful years where I was just working, buying lp's, books and comics and loads and loads of weed, living in a small town just outside Rotterdam... Started living in Rotterdam again when I just turned 20, I didn't even really wanted to nut it was just time. Became a house dealer, weed, hash, mushrooms, great times too.... Left the punk scene around the beginning of '82 but always kept going to concerts and cafe's etc. .... These days.... only one cafe where I go to in Bandung, usually monday night and friday nights, a place where other expats go to too, and I go to jaipong and other events every now and then... Too much fun with my wife and kids to go out much :) Hare Krishna Vegetarian cookbooks sound like fun too :)
ReplyDeleteI can relate a bit to your journey, I was involved in the music scene here during the 70's & 80's, mainly blues/rock/country. Met plenty of interesting (weird) people, lots of drugs & drink & a few deaths. I was married with kids & a day job so i kept away from most of the heavy stuff. I enjoyed the music & loved playing guitar but playing in pubs night after night watching drunks crying in their beer; brawling & usually talking a lot of shit wasn't a lot of fun for me.
ReplyDeleteKind of why I stopped dj-ing here in Bandung, couldn't stand the totally drunk folks spilling their beers over the equipment screaming Bob Marley!!! Bob Marley!!! And that would happen over and over.... Also, if they don't know the music they're hearing they won't like it. Not like way back in Holland where people come running to you, asking what you are playing :)
ReplyDeleteHe was a vicious crook, and sexually a pervert one...I hope you're aware of it. And, look at his face and fancy dress! How could you believe in such a clown! The real gurus don't come to the crowd. It's up to an individual to search and find a real one! Not only after few days (by flight travel) or weeks, but months, even years...there's no supermarket where you can find gurus. authentic ones can't be found as ready-made products. The whole thing is ridiculous (and dangerous).
ReplyDelete:) Oh I'm aware :) I saw plenty of these kind of charlatans, not just when I was still living in Holland but enough of them in my 28 years here in Indonesia, it's all just a (actually very simple) trick, kind of related to what the illusionists do, preying on the weak-minded, and it's not just all these so called guru's from India, you'll find it in Christianity, Islam, in all religions, and not just religions, "self-help", now there's another one.... Or how about all these pod-casters on say youtube, with their click-bait fancy headlines raking in the big bucks just repeating what they hear on other podcasts or read on certain forums.... There's a couple that I like but better I keep all that to myself :) Lemme give one name, one guy that I follow and really like, Chris Hedges.... And how about Sadguru :) Can't stand the guy, ask how the villagers who are living close by and around his multi million dollar compound feel and think about him, that so called ashram where all these so-called elites go for their "enlightenment", and while you're at it, ask them about that path used by elephants close by that compound.... One thing positive I can say about Osho though, he was one slick, sly guy, but he did have a pretty good sense of humor :)
ReplyDelete