Jon Hammond at the Organ and Microphone
*WATCH THE FILM HERE: Get Back In The Groove
Musikmessesession Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/GetBackInTheGrooveMusikmessesession by Jon Hammond
Published May 29, 2015 Usage Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Topics #HammondOrgan #Musikmesse2015 #Hofheim #Groove Jon Hammond Session #ASCAPExpo Composer #SoulMusic 
"Get Back in The Groove" musikmessesession in
Jazzkeller Hofheim - Peter Klohmann ts Giovanni Totó Gulino d Joe Berger g Jon Hammond o http://www.HammondCast.com ©JON HAMMOND International ASCAP Producer Jon Hammond Language English Youtube
https://youtu.be/D-dNDA0bUuI CNN iReport http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1245601 Vimeo https://vimeo.com/129340567 Jon Hammond Band Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jonhammondband/videos/vb.133709526657853/1065785310116932/?type=3&theater
Air France Airbus A380 - aka "Flying Forehead"! - Jon Hammond 
"Some unofficial nicknames of Airbus A380 are flying
forehead, mammoth jet, Whale Jet flying. Green Giant is also unofficial nickname of Airbus A380. Low fuel consumption of the engines and pollutant levels far below the levels required by the
strictest of standards are behind the justifying of this name." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380 The Airbus A380 is a double-deck,
wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner, and the airports at which it operates have upgraded facilities to accommodate it. It was
initially named Airbus A3XX and designed to challenge Boeing's monopoly in the large-aircraft market. The A380 made its first flight on 27 April 2005 and entered commercial service in October 2007
with Singapore Airlines. The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, with a width equivalent to a wide-body aircraft. This gives the A380-800's cabin 478 square metres
(5,145.1 sq ft) of usable floor space, 40% more than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-8,[4] and provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 people in
an all-economy class configuration. The A380-800 has a design range of 8,500 nautical miles (15,700 km) Taillights at Dusk - do we have enough cars yet? 
Jon Hammond — at San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Bring on The Freight! - Port of Oakland, 
Jon Hammond — at Port of
Oakland. No X Cess Baggage Blues Jon Hammond with NDR Horns Hamburg Auster Bar 
http://hammondcast.blog.ca/2015/05/30/no-x-cess-baggage-blues-jon-hammond-with-ndr-horns-hamburg-auster-bar-20485799/
Jon Hammond Late Rent Session Men w/ Bernard Purdie MIKELL'S *LINK: https://youtu.be/6FSQrnuKDLU Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/JonHammondEDDIEMONEY_JONHAMMONDonHammondCastKYOURadio Jon Hammond and Eddie Money
go back over 35 years in just over 6 minutes in this radio interview on Jon's daily radio program HammondCast on KYOU Radio 1550 AM, onboard Eddie's tour bus just before doing a show to a packed
house at BB King's Club in New York City for a hometown crowd of diehard Eddie Money fans friends and family in from Long Island, Queens, and Jon now lives in Times Square. A menagerie of images from
Jon Hammond's personal archives going back to the '70's and the night of the concert accompanies the audio as heard on HammondCast KYOU Radio 1550 AM and streaming worldwide ©JON HAMMOND
International http://www.HammondCast.com 
Baby Hold On, Two Tickets to Paradise, Take Me Home
Tonight, Shakin', Trinidad, I Wanna Go Back, Walk on Water, Think I'm in Love, Wanna Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star, We Should Be Sleeping, No Control, Where's The Party, I'll Get By, You Don't Know Me
Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/6842260411 Youtube https://youtu.be/FfOCHD1TkV8 Jon Hammond
Show Preview MNN Channel 1 on air 04/04 featuring original Jazz Blues and Soft News - first segment filmed in Hamburg Eimsbüttel live in Auster Bar Jon Hammond Band with NDR Horns musical director
Michael Leuschner trumpet, Lutz Büchner tenor saxophone, Fiete Felsch alto saxophone, Funky Heinz Lichius drums feature on this one, Joe Berger guitar, Jon Hammond organ + bass http://www.HammondCast.com/ Auster Jazz Series - then to Anaheim California special showcase Jon Hammond Band featuring Bernard Purdie on Jon's original funky jazz
composition "Head Phone" with Bernard Purdie fatback drum, Koei Tanaka Suzuki Harmonica star, Alex Budman tenor, Joe Berger guitar, Jon Hammond at the New B3 Mk2 Portable organ with high-power model
3300 Leslie speaker covering the bass as well - musical history here at The NAMM Show JON HAMMOND AT JAZZKELLER, FRANKFURT – COMPLETE ALBUM: https://marcostachikawafotografia.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/jon-hammond-at-jazzkeller-frankfurt-complete-album/comment-page-1/#comment-895
do jazz já se apresentaram ali e as fotos de muitos
deles decoram suas velhas paredes. Já na entrada percebe-se que o local não é para grandes agitos e nem tão pouco é o melhor local para se jogar conversa fora ou para se fazer happy-hour. Não. Ali se
respira jazz, e dos melhores. Na noite em que fomos estava lá o Jon Hammond. Enquanto descia a íngreme escadaria, percebi que deveria ter levado mais lentes, mais baterias, mais cartões de memória…
rsrsrsrs… Logo na entrada pedi a autorização do proprietário da casa para fazer algumas fotos, no que recebi um largo sorriso como resposta e o aguardado “…as many as you want, my friend!” E pronto,
fiz as fotos dos amigos que estavam por lá só por educação (rsrsrsrsrsrsrs!! …que nada, essas fotos foram devidamente publicadas nas redes sociais) e assim que pude, saí pra curtir e fotografar esse
lendário tecladista. Abaixo, algumas das fotos, espero que gostem! Os amigos que estavam comigo? Sei lá, nem vi a hora em que foram embora… rsrsrs… Um abraço, Marcos Tachikawa Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/ImprovedAudioUndergroundFrankfurtJonHammondBandIntimBarLissania1 Jon
Hammond Band circa 1992 Underground Frankfurt Scene Night Shows in Europa Intim Bar and Lissania in Frankfurt's Red Light District during musikmesse. 
Original Funk tunes "Pocket Funk" and "Nu Funk" aka "Hip Hop Chitlins"
Note: sadly funky drummer James Preston has passed, long-time drummer in various formations of Jon Hammond Band, Sons of Champlin, Cold Blood with Lydia Pense, RIP Jimmy - Al Allen Wittig tenor
saxophone, Barry Finnerty guitar, Jon Hammond organ, funky James Preston drums - special thanks to Joe Berger Hans Romanov Europa INTIM Bar ElbeStrasse 34, 60329 Frankfurt and Stefan Hantel aka
Shantel Lissania on the Kaiserstrasse Youtube http://youtu.be/3wjgB0moazk - as seen on cable access show The Jon Hammond Show now in 31st year - all music
©JON HAMMOND International ASCAP http://www.HammondCast.com/ — with James Preston and Jon Hammond at KiezPraline CNN iReport http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1188407 Dailymotion http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2a7z74_underground-frankfurt-jon-hammond-band-intim-bar-lissania_music
Jon Hammond Band Facebook https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=936450226383775 
Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/JonHammondAndFriendsJazzSpotSwing Youtube http://youtu.be/x6a8MHYESqc Jon Hammond and Friends drop in to Taipei night spot JAZZ SPOT SWING organ lounge, 
Jon at Mr. Nobuki Kuwahara's Hammond Sk2 organ with house musicians - Kenichi Toyoda piano
- special thanks to Nico, Shannon, Letitia - Superlux Taiwan, 
P. Mauriat Europe Pmauriat Albest Team! 
http://www.HammondCast.com/ - Jazz Spot Swing
Vimeo http://vimeo.com/110027287 CNN iReport http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1182889 Jon Hammond Band
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=924772564218208 
Koei Tanaka and Jon Hammond - special NAMM Lunch Set
NAMM Show Center Stage Jon Hammond Band photo by Lawrence Gay HammondCast - CNN iReport - http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1231127 MNN Channel 1
Jon Hammond Show Preview 04/11 Original Jazz Blues and Soft News 
My Mom's Rose plant is in bloom - Jon Hammond
Mr. Shuji Suzuki and Jon Hammond - MNN 
Jon Hammond's new ultra-bright flashlight from
Maglite now on the job "Mini Maglite Pro LED Flashlight NEW Ultra Bright 226 Lumens" - now on tour - Silver 
The Famous Tall Paul of West Oakland: 
The Famous Tall Orange Bicycle Man of West Oakland
Sighted today aka "Tall Paul" - Jon Hammond "THIS MAN IS TRANSFORMING OAKLAND ONE AWESOME CUSTOM BIKE AT A TIME" 
Photo: ©JON HAMMOND International http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/7062-this-man-is-transforming-oakland-one-awesome-custom-bike-at-a-time
by R. A. SCHUETZ Mar 20 at 6am I first met Tall Paul as he was walking out of the Oakland Home Depot toting a giraffe of a bike. It was orange with gold accents — pedals, spokes, and pinwheel-shaped
mags — and its body was made of interlocking triangles stacked so tall the handlebars stood at roughly my height. I was impressed and asked if I could take a closer look. “Of course,” he said, and
began showing it off. Tall Paul is tall — over six feet — with soft, dark curls he usually hides under a baseball cap. He’s cordial, but when he starts talking bikes, a kind of electric and childlike
wonder steals over him. You can’t help but feel enthusiastic too. When I asked how he mounts such an ungainly ride, he demonstrated by giving it a shove as he jogged a few steps beside it, then he
clambered up the triangles of the frame like they were a ladder. “Where did you get it?” I asked him. “I made it,” he said. Patting his bike, he explained: “Last fall, I was out with one of the
double-stackers when I saw a couple of kids cutting school. They were about 10 years old; I saw them cutting class all of the time. And when I saw the kids, I saw they were excited about the bike.
They were like, ‘Wow!’ And I thought, ‘Hey, that might be something I can do to get them back in class.’” Paul made the two boys an offer: if they went back to school and got three A’s on their next
report cards, he’d give each of them a bike. “And it worked,” he said, laughing. “They turned out to be really smart kids. They just got caught up messing around in the streets and cutting school and
stuff. They’d been doing it for a while.” Now Paul has a standing offer to reward any kid who makes three A’s on his or her report card. While Paul doesn’t have the resources to give everyone a bike,
if an A student brings him a frame to work with — even if it’s so rusted it no longer runs — he restores and customizes it. He invited me to come by and watch him work on his bikes sometime. He lives
near the Home Depot in a mobile home “parked illegally,” which, I later learned, means he stays put for street sweeping because he’s cultivated relationships with city employees, who sometimes chip
in a few dollars for the bikes he’s fixing up for students. That he’s able to stay in one location is part of what’s made him a neighborhood fixture — even beyond Oakland, parents from San Jose and
Hayward know to bring their kids’ report cards to him. On the day I visited, his place was instantly recognizable by the bikes stacked on the roof. When Paul saw me, he greeted me with a hug and
began hauling bikes out of his home and propping them on the sidewalk. One after another, there they were: double-stacks, choppers, and, finally, the little black-and-gold frame of a child’s bike
with its wheels in disrepair. This bike, painted in Paul’s signature colors, is to be the prototype that introduces his bike program to schools in the area, starting with Prescott Elementary in
Oakland. Paul's idea is to donate a tricked-out ride every report card season, which the school would prominently display. Every A on a student’s report card would be an entry into a raffle to win
the bike. If schools take to it, his goal is to work with as many as he can. Tall Paul started tinkering with bikes when he was just a child himself — as he remembers it, he was five years old. His
mother had saved up to buy him and his six brothers and five sisters bikes for Christmas. While everyone else was out riding theirs, Paul took his down to the basement and dismantled it. “I wanted to
see what made it work,” he said. The passion for taking bikes apart and putting them back together hasn’t left him. “I like everything about it,” he said. “It’s an art.” One of his passions is
sanding down the metal of a rusty bike and erasing the ravages of time until the frame gleams. “You see, when you sand it, you take your hand, and you feel the bike. You don’t want to feel a scratch;
you don’t want to feel a nick; you don’t want to feel nothing. Like a baby’s butt — smooth.” When he’s finished, he puts it all back together and makes sure it runs well, then carefully paints each
piece down to the spokes in the white-walled wheels, then buffs everything to a lustrous shine. For his own bikes, his finishing touch is a rhinestone “TP” (for “Tall Paul") affixed between the
handlebars. He also plans to add gears to his double-stacks. A few pigeons milled about on the sidewalk where Paul was working. He said the birds know him, just like the rest of the neighborhood
does. “They recognize me,” he said. “I could ride my bike right to the corner and stop, and birds will fly down from everywhere and come to it.” He took a break to coax them near. That day there were
maybe a dozen, but he explained that on Sunday there’s inevitably a flock around him. Crouching among the birds, he told me he also dreams of opening a shop so that he can scale his operation.
Although the bikes he hasn’t started restoring yet can rest atop his mobile home, he has to take all of his finished and in-progress bikes inside when he’s not working on them. Plus, he has several
bikes of his own. This means he usually accepts only two bikes at a time from children and tells others to come back in two days. With a shop, he’d have space to store bikes and tools, as well as a
location for business. “I’d love to get this program into every school in the world for all the kids,” he said, referring to his bike raffle. But he’s taking it one step at a time. For now, he’s on
the lookout for any bike that people have given up on and are selling for scrap metal, which he can buy for a few dollars. “I get whole bicycles that probably come off a bush or somewhere. They have
all these leaves in them and chains so rusted, you can’t even turn them. But I bring them back to life.” *Note: photos must be credited ©JON HAMMOND International / Jon Hammond - Jon's photos on
Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary attending Art Exhibit of Chinese Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei huge installation on "The Rock" while celebrating birthday and prepping for 29th trip to Frankfurt to
play musikmesse and both jazzkeller's, jazzkeller Frankfurt and Jazzkeller-Hofheim with organ combo Jon Hammond Band - it was an amazing experience, met with Mr. William Baker Former Inmate / Author
*see photos with Bill Baker "Old ex-con back at the Rock, telling prison stories" "He's been a car thief, a jailhouse rioter, an escape artist." Alcatraz 1259." That was his number on the Rock.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152676219332102&set=a.10152676219282102.1073741881.558692101&type=3&theater
Ai Weiwei at Large #AiWeiWeiAlcatraz Ai Wei Wei at Large Exhibit on Alcatraz Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island Alcatraz Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) offshore from San
Francisco, California, United States.[2] Often referred to as "The Rock", the small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison (1868), and a
federal prison from 1933 until 1963.[5] Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of aboriginal people from San Francisco who were part of a wave of
Native activism across the nation with public protests through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
http://jonhammondband.com/blog.html Returning 19th year Fr 17. April 2015 Musikmessesession mit Jon Hammond Jazzkeller Hofheim #Groove #HammondOrgan #ASCAPExpo #musikmesse2015 #NAMM #JAZZ #Blues Jon
Hammond, ASCAP Composer, Musicians Union, Local 802, Local 6, #Accordion #Hofheim
"Get Back in The Groove" musikmessesession in
Jazzkeller Hofheim - Peter Klohmann ts Giovanni Totó Gulino d Joe Berger g Jon Hammond o http://www.HammondCast.com ©JON HAMMOND International ASCAP Producer Jon Hammond Language English Youtube
https://youtu.be/D-dNDA0bUuI CNN iReport http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1245601 Vimeo https://vimeo.com/129340567 Jon Hammond Band Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jonhammondband/videos/vb.133709526657853/1065785310116932/?type=3&theater
Air France Airbus A380 - aka "Flying Forehead"! - Jon Hammond 
"Some unofficial nicknames of Airbus A380 are flying
forehead, mammoth jet, Whale Jet flying. Green Giant is also unofficial nickname of Airbus A380. Low fuel consumption of the engines and pollutant levels far below the levels required by the
strictest of standards are behind the justifying of this name." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380 The Airbus A380 is a double-deck,
wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner, and the airports at which it operates have upgraded facilities to accommodate it. It was
initially named Airbus A3XX and designed to challenge Boeing's monopoly in the large-aircraft market. The A380 made its first flight on 27 April 2005 and entered commercial service in October 2007
with Singapore Airlines. The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, with a width equivalent to a wide-body aircraft. This gives the A380-800's cabin 478 square metres
(5,145.1 sq ft) of usable floor space, 40% more than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-8,[4] and provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 people in
an all-economy class configuration. The A380-800 has a design range of 8,500 nautical miles (15,700 km) Taillights at Dusk - do we have enough cars yet? 
Jon Hammond — at San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Bring on The Freight! - Port of Oakland, 
Jon Hammond — at Port of
Oakland. No X Cess Baggage Blues Jon Hammond with NDR Horns Hamburg Auster Bar 
http://hammondcast.blog.ca/2015/05/30/no-x-cess-baggage-blues-jon-hammond-with-ndr-horns-hamburg-auster-bar-20485799/
Jon Hammond Late Rent Session Men w/ Bernard Purdie MIKELL'S *LINK: https://youtu.be/6FSQrnuKDLU Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/JonHammondEDDIEMONEY_JONHAMMONDonHammondCastKYOURadio Jon Hammond and Eddie Money
go back over 35 years in just over 6 minutes in this radio interview on Jon's daily radio program HammondCast on KYOU Radio 1550 AM, onboard Eddie's tour bus just before doing a show to a packed
house at BB King's Club in New York City for a hometown crowd of diehard Eddie Money fans friends and family in from Long Island, Queens, and Jon now lives in Times Square. A menagerie of images from
Jon Hammond's personal archives going back to the '70's and the night of the concert accompanies the audio as heard on HammondCast KYOU Radio 1550 AM and streaming worldwide ©JON HAMMOND
International http://www.HammondCast.com 
Baby Hold On, Two Tickets to Paradise, Take Me Home
Tonight, Shakin', Trinidad, I Wanna Go Back, Walk on Water, Think I'm in Love, Wanna Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star, We Should Be Sleeping, No Control, Where's The Party, I'll Get By, You Don't Know Me
Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/6842260411 Youtube https://youtu.be/FfOCHD1TkV8 Jon Hammond
Show Preview MNN Channel 1 on air 04/04 featuring original Jazz Blues and Soft News - first segment filmed in Hamburg Eimsbüttel live in Auster Bar Jon Hammond Band with NDR Horns musical director
Michael Leuschner trumpet, Lutz Büchner tenor saxophone, Fiete Felsch alto saxophone, Funky Heinz Lichius drums feature on this one, Joe Berger guitar, Jon Hammond organ + bass http://www.HammondCast.com/ Auster Jazz Series - then to Anaheim California special showcase Jon Hammond Band featuring Bernard Purdie on Jon's original funky jazz
composition "Head Phone" with Bernard Purdie fatback drum, Koei Tanaka Suzuki Harmonica star, Alex Budman tenor, Joe Berger guitar, Jon Hammond at the New B3 Mk2 Portable organ with high-power model
3300 Leslie speaker covering the bass as well - musical history here at The NAMM Show JON HAMMOND AT JAZZKELLER, FRANKFURT – COMPLETE ALBUM: https://marcostachikawafotografia.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/jon-hammond-at-jazzkeller-frankfurt-complete-album/comment-page-1/#comment-895
do jazz já se apresentaram ali e as fotos de muitos
deles decoram suas velhas paredes. Já na entrada percebe-se que o local não é para grandes agitos e nem tão pouco é o melhor local para se jogar conversa fora ou para se fazer happy-hour. Não. Ali se
respira jazz, e dos melhores. Na noite em que fomos estava lá o Jon Hammond. Enquanto descia a íngreme escadaria, percebi que deveria ter levado mais lentes, mais baterias, mais cartões de memória…
rsrsrsrs… Logo na entrada pedi a autorização do proprietário da casa para fazer algumas fotos, no que recebi um largo sorriso como resposta e o aguardado “…as many as you want, my friend!” E pronto,
fiz as fotos dos amigos que estavam por lá só por educação (rsrsrsrsrsrsrs!! …que nada, essas fotos foram devidamente publicadas nas redes sociais) e assim que pude, saí pra curtir e fotografar esse
lendário tecladista. Abaixo, algumas das fotos, espero que gostem! Os amigos que estavam comigo? Sei lá, nem vi a hora em que foram embora… rsrsrs… Um abraço, Marcos Tachikawa Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/ImprovedAudioUndergroundFrankfurtJonHammondBandIntimBarLissania1 Jon
Hammond Band circa 1992 Underground Frankfurt Scene Night Shows in Europa Intim Bar and Lissania in Frankfurt's Red Light District during musikmesse. 
Original Funk tunes "Pocket Funk" and "Nu Funk" aka "Hip Hop Chitlins"
Note: sadly funky drummer James Preston has passed, long-time drummer in various formations of Jon Hammond Band, Sons of Champlin, Cold Blood with Lydia Pense, RIP Jimmy - Al Allen Wittig tenor
saxophone, Barry Finnerty guitar, Jon Hammond organ, funky James Preston drums - special thanks to Joe Berger Hans Romanov Europa INTIM Bar ElbeStrasse 34, 60329 Frankfurt and Stefan Hantel aka
Shantel Lissania on the Kaiserstrasse Youtube http://youtu.be/3wjgB0moazk - as seen on cable access show The Jon Hammond Show now in 31st year - all music
©JON HAMMOND International ASCAP http://www.HammondCast.com/ — with James Preston and Jon Hammond at KiezPraline CNN iReport http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1188407 Dailymotion http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2a7z74_underground-frankfurt-jon-hammond-band-intim-bar-lissania_music
Jon Hammond Band Facebook https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=936450226383775 
Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/JonHammondAndFriendsJazzSpotSwing Youtube http://youtu.be/x6a8MHYESqc Jon Hammond and Friends drop in to Taipei night spot JAZZ SPOT SWING organ lounge, 
Jon at Mr. Nobuki Kuwahara's Hammond Sk2 organ with house musicians - Kenichi Toyoda piano
- special thanks to Nico, Shannon, Letitia - Superlux Taiwan, 
P. Mauriat Europe Pmauriat Albest Team! 
http://www.HammondCast.com/ - Jazz Spot Swing
Vimeo http://vimeo.com/110027287 CNN iReport http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1182889 Jon Hammond Band
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=924772564218208 
Koei Tanaka and Jon Hammond - special NAMM Lunch Set
NAMM Show Center Stage Jon Hammond Band photo by Lawrence Gay HammondCast - CNN iReport - http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1231127 MNN Channel 1
Jon Hammond Show Preview 04/11 Original Jazz Blues and Soft News 
My Mom's Rose plant is in bloom - Jon Hammond
Mr. Shuji Suzuki and Jon Hammond - MNN 
Jon Hammond's new ultra-bright flashlight from
Maglite now on the job "Mini Maglite Pro LED Flashlight NEW Ultra Bright 226 Lumens" - now on tour - Silver 
The Famous Tall Paul of West Oakland: 
The Famous Tall Orange Bicycle Man of West Oakland
Sighted today aka "Tall Paul" - Jon Hammond "THIS MAN IS TRANSFORMING OAKLAND ONE AWESOME CUSTOM BIKE AT A TIME" 
Photo: ©JON HAMMOND International http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/7062-this-man-is-transforming-oakland-one-awesome-custom-bike-at-a-time
by R. A. SCHUETZ Mar 20 at 6am I first met Tall Paul as he was walking out of the Oakland Home Depot toting a giraffe of a bike. It was orange with gold accents — pedals, spokes, and pinwheel-shaped
mags — and its body was made of interlocking triangles stacked so tall the handlebars stood at roughly my height. I was impressed and asked if I could take a closer look. “Of course,” he said, and
began showing it off. Tall Paul is tall — over six feet — with soft, dark curls he usually hides under a baseball cap. He’s cordial, but when he starts talking bikes, a kind of electric and childlike
wonder steals over him. You can’t help but feel enthusiastic too. When I asked how he mounts such an ungainly ride, he demonstrated by giving it a shove as he jogged a few steps beside it, then he
clambered up the triangles of the frame like they were a ladder. “Where did you get it?” I asked him. “I made it,” he said. Patting his bike, he explained: “Last fall, I was out with one of the
double-stackers when I saw a couple of kids cutting school. They were about 10 years old; I saw them cutting class all of the time. And when I saw the kids, I saw they were excited about the bike.
They were like, ‘Wow!’ And I thought, ‘Hey, that might be something I can do to get them back in class.’” Paul made the two boys an offer: if they went back to school and got three A’s on their next
report cards, he’d give each of them a bike. “And it worked,” he said, laughing. “They turned out to be really smart kids. They just got caught up messing around in the streets and cutting school and
stuff. They’d been doing it for a while.” Now Paul has a standing offer to reward any kid who makes three A’s on his or her report card. While Paul doesn’t have the resources to give everyone a bike,
if an A student brings him a frame to work with — even if it’s so rusted it no longer runs — he restores and customizes it. He invited me to come by and watch him work on his bikes sometime. He lives
near the Home Depot in a mobile home “parked illegally,” which, I later learned, means he stays put for street sweeping because he’s cultivated relationships with city employees, who sometimes chip
in a few dollars for the bikes he’s fixing up for students. That he’s able to stay in one location is part of what’s made him a neighborhood fixture — even beyond Oakland, parents from San Jose and
Hayward know to bring their kids’ report cards to him. On the day I visited, his place was instantly recognizable by the bikes stacked on the roof. When Paul saw me, he greeted me with a hug and
began hauling bikes out of his home and propping them on the sidewalk. One after another, there they were: double-stacks, choppers, and, finally, the little black-and-gold frame of a child’s bike
with its wheels in disrepair. This bike, painted in Paul’s signature colors, is to be the prototype that introduces his bike program to schools in the area, starting with Prescott Elementary in
Oakland. Paul's idea is to donate a tricked-out ride every report card season, which the school would prominently display. Every A on a student’s report card would be an entry into a raffle to win
the bike. If schools take to it, his goal is to work with as many as he can. Tall Paul started tinkering with bikes when he was just a child himself — as he remembers it, he was five years old. His
mother had saved up to buy him and his six brothers and five sisters bikes for Christmas. While everyone else was out riding theirs, Paul took his down to the basement and dismantled it. “I wanted to
see what made it work,” he said. The passion for taking bikes apart and putting them back together hasn’t left him. “I like everything about it,” he said. “It’s an art.” One of his passions is
sanding down the metal of a rusty bike and erasing the ravages of time until the frame gleams. “You see, when you sand it, you take your hand, and you feel the bike. You don’t want to feel a scratch;
you don’t want to feel a nick; you don’t want to feel nothing. Like a baby’s butt — smooth.” When he’s finished, he puts it all back together and makes sure it runs well, then carefully paints each
piece down to the spokes in the white-walled wheels, then buffs everything to a lustrous shine. For his own bikes, his finishing touch is a rhinestone “TP” (for “Tall Paul") affixed between the
handlebars. He also plans to add gears to his double-stacks. A few pigeons milled about on the sidewalk where Paul was working. He said the birds know him, just like the rest of the neighborhood
does. “They recognize me,” he said. “I could ride my bike right to the corner and stop, and birds will fly down from everywhere and come to it.” He took a break to coax them near. That day there were
maybe a dozen, but he explained that on Sunday there’s inevitably a flock around him. Crouching among the birds, he told me he also dreams of opening a shop so that he can scale his operation.
Although the bikes he hasn’t started restoring yet can rest atop his mobile home, he has to take all of his finished and in-progress bikes inside when he’s not working on them. Plus, he has several
bikes of his own. This means he usually accepts only two bikes at a time from children and tells others to come back in two days. With a shop, he’d have space to store bikes and tools, as well as a
location for business. “I’d love to get this program into every school in the world for all the kids,” he said, referring to his bike raffle. But he’s taking it one step at a time. For now, he’s on
the lookout for any bike that people have given up on and are selling for scrap metal, which he can buy for a few dollars. “I get whole bicycles that probably come off a bush or somewhere. They have
all these leaves in them and chains so rusted, you can’t even turn them. But I bring them back to life.” *Note: photos must be credited ©JON HAMMOND International / Jon Hammond - Jon's photos on
Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary attending Art Exhibit of Chinese Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei huge installation on "The Rock" while celebrating birthday and prepping for 29th trip to Frankfurt to
play musikmesse and both jazzkeller's, jazzkeller Frankfurt and Jazzkeller-Hofheim with organ combo Jon Hammond Band - it was an amazing experience, met with Mr. William Baker Former Inmate / Author
*see photos with Bill Baker "Old ex-con back at the Rock, telling prison stories" "He's been a car thief, a jailhouse rioter, an escape artist." Alcatraz 1259." That was his number on the Rock.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152676219332102&set=a.10152676219282102.1073741881.558692101&type=3&theater
Ai Weiwei at Large #AiWeiWeiAlcatraz Ai Wei Wei at Large Exhibit on Alcatraz Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Island Alcatraz Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) offshore from San
Francisco, California, United States.[2] Often referred to as "The Rock", the small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison (1868), and a
federal prison from 1933 until 1963.[5] Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of aboriginal people from San Francisco who were part of a wave of
Native activism across the nation with public protests through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
http://jonhammondband.com/blog.html Returning 19th year Fr 17. April 2015 Musikmessesession mit Jon Hammond Jazzkeller Hofheim #Groove #HammondOrgan #ASCAPExpo #musikmesse2015 #NAMM #JAZZ #Blues Jon
Hammond, ASCAP Composer, Musicians Union, Local 802, Local 6, #Accordion #Hofheim