Yeah, it was fun to play and get crazy, to walk the edge, the thin line between life and death, to challenge the forces, the universal powers. You had to test yourself. You did it to be cool, man. You had to be cool! Manbaby reached into his coat pocket as though he was fondling the muzzle of a fi ne pistol but instead it was something much more powerful. When he showed me the small leather case and cast his eyes up to mine. I knew I was dead as if I had been shot through the heart. The earth is bleeding…Rivulets trickle like ruptured vessels down the arms of the desolate self-crucifi ed in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Harlem. The earth is bleeding, bleeding songs, bleeding anguished written lines, bleeding poets lusting death, bleeding days of hard hustle and cold cavernous rooms warmed by the spoon and the constant re-visit of the wound. The track lengthens the mind yields to the life and rivulets fl ow, inching down the fi nger tip in baleful consciousness. Destruction of honor, and tomorrow’s distant purple mountains are barren streets reverently crossed to sit at this table before the desperate solace, the inevitable homage, the gleaming tip of seduction, the sharp pressing and bleeding on. And now it fl ows, the trickle of conscious participation as rivers fl ow to the cold pristine mix of the sea. And as the earth bleeds openly for brother and son, so goes the madness, so goes the war, so goes the man undone, and so goes the Rushing. The inspiring story of the tough sub culture of drugs and jazz music in the 60’s and the “Crooked Road to the Big Time.” Through the depths of heroin addiction and jazz music one made it back and survived. THE RUSHING DON ALBERTS