Wavy Gravy, the Clown Prince of Hippiedom, turns 80

The great walrus of a man in the tie-dyed lounge wear and the red clown nose rises from his onstage easy chair at a Sunday afternoon concert. An audience of 2,500, in their own tribute clown noses, silently waits as he steps ever so painfully to the microphone to rasp, “Never judge a cover by its book.”

What does that mean? It doesn’t have to mean anything, because that rasp belongs to Wavy Gravy, the Yogi Berra of the Woodstock era, and this is his 80th birthday party.

“I don’t walk so good right now, but I can still talk good,” Gravy says in an earlier interview at his home in Berkeley. Suffering ongoing back agony that six spinal surgeries could not cure, he keeps mainly to an office chair with wheels that he rolls around his bedroom. “Collapsed weasel,” he calls his condition. But if you ask him if he is considering retirement, he quips, “My tires are good.”

Then he pulls himself out of that chair, down the rickety stairs and into a car for an hour-and-10-minute ride to an outdoor venue in Rohnert Park. His annual birthday concert is more important than the pain he is in. It is the main fundraiser for the Seva Foundation, a Berkeley nonprofit, and on this day it will raise $100,000 to prevent blindness and restore sight in 20 countries worldwide.

More here: http://www.sfchronicle.com/music/article/Wavy-Gravy-the-Clown-Prince-of-Hippiedom-turns-8056531.php?t=c6f9d90973&cmpid=twitter-premium

So, good old Wavy Gravy made it to 80! I remember being at his birthday party when he turned 60 which he called "the beginning of geezerdom" at that time.

Lots of great pictures at the above link!