The Sunshine Place tells the mind-blowing, true-story of Synanon - one of America’s most cutting edge social experiments, turned into one of its most dangerous and violent cults - as it’s never been told before: by the people who lived it. Dederich, aka “Chuck,” would be the one to destroy it all, along with the lives of many of his followers and millions of dollars in assets. The man who made the miracle happen, Charles E. What started in a house on the beach, soon spread to compounds across the country. Before long, it would make an even bolder claim: It could cure any of your problems. To check it out, click HERE.Once called “the miracle on the beach,” Synanon began in the 1960s as an experimental rehab facility in Santa Monica, California with a radical claim: It could cure heroin addiction. * * * * * * “November and Other Tales” by Brian Arsenaultīrian Arsenault’s November and Other Tales is a collection of short stories exploring the way cold comes by degrees in winter and in the human heart. To read more reviews and posts by Brian Arsenault click HERE. And even if it is, this record in its best parts is as good a rocker as there is.

The whole world isn’t programmed music on an iPad, you know. This remastered, reissued wonderfully vinyl album is worth finding your old turntable or hitting that good downtown music store (which is still there, at least online) and buying one. It’s a perplexing album that way throughout but don’t miss it. “Hard Monkeys” (draw your own conclusions) is so good, so true to the form, but somebody tell me what “Here They Come” is. Still, someone should have come in and said, hey, all the songs are going to be like “Hard Monkeys,” get it? And he did move off in other directions from what TYA had become. Getting back to “Over the Hill,” this is where Lee mournfully predicts “think I’ll leave the blues over the hill.” Still he also intones that “this stuff is killing me.”Īnd jumps right into “Baby Won’t You Let Me Rock ‘N Roll You,” pure hard driving rockabilly, which is only electric blues with a little white country on it.īoy that boy could play. I for one won’t patronize the song with Lee’s rippling, screaming guitar work wonderfully underlaid by Ric Lee’s ferocious drumming. Ten Years After did get their one giant hit record off this album, by the way - the hippie (I guess) anthem “I’d Love to Change the World.” Last I knew, the track was still getting FM “Classic Rock” play. Many thought that “progression” depressed Alvin but didn’t he have the industry muscle to stop it?

“Who is (or was) this guy?” I found myself saying.ĭepending upon your level of generosity, Alvin and the band were broadening their musical style, trying to finally get a hit record, or leaving the blues for pop. There’s a sort of Traffic sounding angst poetry song and there are little pointless electronic effects that seem quaint now but were probably meant to be psychedlic, and maybe even a touch of the Kinks on “Over the Hill” (more about this tune later). The problem is the album moves off into a variety of stuff. Listen to the lead track “One of These Days” and tell me it wouldn’t be fine done by the Billy Boy Arnold Band. He didn’t just borrow it like most British and American rockers of the time, he got right down into it. He was also admirable for writing in the electric blues form of American artists of the 50s: Muddy, Howlin Wolf, John Lee. Page, Clapton, Townshend, any of that magnificent array of British rock guitarists of the era. But Alvin Lee in 1971 on A Space In Time - however uneven the album is - was the equal or better of any of his contemporaries. I mean I know he’s still out there and he probably still can. Ten Years After A Space In Time (Remastered) (Capitol)īoy that boy could play.

A space in time ten years after