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Street jukeboxes, Moondogs, and flutists in the noonday sun

Yes, Grimes Poznikov has a Facebook group where this photo and others can be found: https://www.facebook.com/Automatic-Human-Jukebox-Grimes-Poznikov-165205406850071/

The San Francisco Chronicle took me back a decade or two with this item about a homage to the late Grimes Poznikov and his Automatic Human Jukebox. From the 1970s through the 1990s Poznikov played his horn inside an elaborately got up used refrigerator cart. He began his career with a repertoire of about two dozen tunes. You picked a song, plugged in your money, and got your music delivered through the, well, box.

In the 1990s his presentations became more free-associative, so to speak, as per this YouTube.

Poznikov died in 2005 from booze, mental illness, and living on the street. Now he has a decorated porta potti in his honor, made to look like his then popular box.

Moondog; from Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moondog

Moondog; from Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moondog

This brings me to one of my more dubious claims to fame. I knew Moondog. Yes, that Moondog, the composer, musical instrument inventor, poet, and philosopher. The very same Moondog who stood silently in his Odin outfit around midtown Manhattan for many years.

Back in the 1970s I worked relatively close to his various haunts. I would sometimes sit next to him and eat my lunch in his vicinity. “How’s it going Moondog?” I would ask. Pretty good, he would reply. In truth, I don’t remember the exact response, but it was close to that. We wouldn’t say much more because Moondog decidedly was not into talking. But I somehow convinced myself that we had a relationship.

Hybrid HighbrowMoondog’s real name was Louis Thomas Hardin. I am reminded of him because my wife and I visited the travelling Peter Hujar photography exhibit yesterday, which included a Moondog photo. It was only years later that I learned that Hardin successfully sued none other than Alan Freed for infringing on his name, as per Freed’s “Moondog Rock and Roll Matinee.”

Here is a portion of Hardin’s marvelously syncopated “Moondog Symphony.”

While we are on the subject of dogs, this Youtube is making the rounds. It reminds me that no matter how aroused a canine may become by an unusual sound, in this case that of a young lady practicing “Frère Jacques” on her flute, it will not allow the disturbance to interrupt its rest. The Nap Must Go On.

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