Peter Kaukonen
Beyond Help!
© 2004 Benson L. Kaukonen
CD permanently out of stock. Sorry!
Musico-sociopolitical commentary, editorials, broadsides, satire, venom, despair, and more; think Alan Ginsberg, backed by Jimi Hendrix and Ice-T. Brilliantly played, lyrically profound, and more timely than you can imagine.
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Peter Kaukonen was born in 1945. His father was a diplomat, and Peter grew up in Pakistan and the Philippine Islands. His family was musical, their tastes eclectic, but listening to their records was nothing like listening to the sounds that came off the streets of Karachi.
Until, of course, he heard "Rock Around The Clock."
He finished high school in Connecticut, where he started playing guitar, teaching himself to fingerpick and flatpick folk music and blues. In 1963 he moved to California to attend Stanford University. He majored in biochemistry, human sexual behavior, and musicology, none of which appeared on the curriculum. He played the folk circuit with folks who went on to become Janice Joplin, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane.
An autodidact, he plays electric and acoustic guitars, both six and twelve-string; acoustic and electric four, five, and six-string bass; mandolin and bouzouki, and keyboards. His musical odyssey is marked by detours and excursions. His first recordings were for A&M in 1967. He went on to play, tour, and record with Johnny Winter, Jefferson Starship, Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and his own infamous Black Kangaroo. He continues composing and recording his deeply personal and eclectic music in his own recording facilities.
In another universe he utilized his advanced degrees-along with the interpersonal skills and psychological insights gained through decades of collaboration with the functionally deranged but musically prominent-to do program development in County Mental Health, a true oxymoron. Working in a San Francisco Bay Area county, he was told that "clients who can respond to therapy are too well to be your clients."
Before that he worked in rural California, where he immersed himself in the values that made America great: mindless violence, heavy firepower and heavy drinking, narcissism, racism, xenophobia, and perpetual paranoia. Some of his compositions reflect the vitality, the exuberance, the ruggedness, and the spiritual and moral corruption of this land of manly men and manly women, where hygiene is limited to grooming one's horse and family values are focused on wife beating, incest, and child abuse. Such observations are immortalized in his current release, "Beyond Help!," a compelling overview of our barren sociopolitical landscape.
He currently lives with his wife in Mill Valley, California, where he bicycles preposterous distances on and off the road and takes great pleasure in growing roses.
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Poetic bile set to a funky dance beat.
author: S.CargoPeter Kaukonen, brother of Jefferson Airplane guitarist, Jorma Kaukonen is a true original. His observations of todays political climate are razor sharp and his words bite. His mythical Black Kangaroo album released in the early 70's introduced us to his "white boy" rap in a song called Billy's Tune. Always ahead of his time, Peter once again uses his "white boy" rap to tell you the truth as to how things truly are here in the land of the free. Listen to Peter spew his poetic bile set to a funky dance beat. I give it a 5, 'cause you can dance to it. Too bad the current hip-hop superstars aren't brave enough to rap about what Dr. Pete is rapping about!