Randall Kane, 1923-2009. Brilliant iconoclast

Randall Kane and Karl Neice at the Ozymandias-like George Hicks Fancher Monument near Merced, California, on a 1987 drive to the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite (photo by Robert Page) 

Randall Kane, 1923-2009. Brilliant iconoclast, artist, businessman, longtime proprietor of "one of the world's great joints," lover of silence and nature, generous friend, always ready for a good chuckle.

One thing a lot of people don't know about Randall Kane, who helped to bring so much great music to the Catalyst: He preferred silence. And maybe a dollop of Chopin here or there.

Randall Kane was convinced Americans would never vote for a black man for president. Unfortunately, that's the last thing we talked on the phone about before he passed away. But he was pleased to be wrong about Obama, according to his brother Russell. Actually the last thing he said to me was to pass the phone to that "proud beauty," my wife Carole, who also enjoyed our times together.

In the 1980s, Randall and I went on long hikes in which he detailed his philosophy gathered from a long life fairly blessed by his own bravado and his willing benefactors and hangers-on, fans and customers, family and employees, and lovers and detractors. He would also quote the early Romantics, Keats and especially Coleridge and Shelley, reciting whole poems as we walked along (yes, including "The Ancient Mariner"), trespassing on Smith Ranch, past the old petroleum mines and portland cement diggings, the invading but fragrant eucalyptus, to the "secret" bus stop midway between Davenport and Santa Cruz.

I promised I would never reveal what I heard, but it made no difference. He had far too many stories to keep track of and never repeated on. Randall was an engaging person to be with if you weren't a fool, and he had a simple test to detect if you were or not. No, I'm not giving it away because I am currently employing it! The secret test for fools shall never die!

But irony, gilded language and a certain "disirregardlessness" should spell it out for you. No matter how much I tried to be up to date, his knowledge and opinions on art and artists, news and politics were always one step ahead, or I was one or two facts short.

Yes, he was a "oner" and even a wonder, but a grounded wonder. And he was generous and gregarious to a fault, and I don't know where we'd be without the dutch oven he bought us as a homewarming gift for our first house in the early 90s. Or the impromptu lunches, dinners, and beer-drinking sessions we shared over the years.

This was one of our favorites, which he drilled into me on our hikes:

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,

Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that it's sculptor well passion those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818 (191 years ago) Thank you Randall, you were a wonder all right.

-- Karl Neice July 27, 2009

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_12929031