What Do We Talk About?

 

How much time do you have? Is that a pregnant pause?

If there is a group the conversation is a riotous mess of syllables and adjectives with little meaning or coherence. When it is only the two, every word counts.

Some of the best writings are these conversations between two people. Unfortunately you can’t remember what you said the next day. You don’t even remember her eye color.

The funny thing after years have passed, those words will be recalled though tainted by time. They may sound more important now than at the time they left your mouth. They may have had interpretations assisted by others. They may finally be understood.

Getting later in life there is no time to waste on banter. Get to the core of the matter or don’t waste the air.

Or without saying a word, the silence speaks volumes.

Sequel

Take two.

I don’t like sequels. If the first version wasn’t complete…

Remakes

Some stories pop back up after years with new actors playing the original characters, but it is the same old story. The techniques might be better. The sound has improved, but it is the same old story. It is a re-do.

Sit-coms

The sit-com was a weekly (or even nightly) story with the core characters following a story of a family or an office. Many were comedic and none were very deep in meaning. Westerns were sit-coms. The cowboys had a lead and a sidekick and some school-marm or dance hall girl being the romantic interest. The heroes were always clean-shaven and neat and the streets were clear of horse poop. There were lots of variations to the cowboys (who were all white) but there was always the good guy who could draw fast.

Soap Operas

The daily version of drama was the soap opera. An ultra-rich family having dramas that filled a few minutes between commercials to sell detergents or refrigerators. The core characters would stay the same until suddenly a new actor would pop up with the same name as the day before?

Sequels

I remember monster movies sequels being the first. There was ‘Frankenstein’, ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’, ‘Frankenstein meets the Wolfman’, ‘Frankenstein gets a job at Miss Kitty’s Saloon’. Each was a different variation of a theme and even had different actors playing Frankenstein, but there was never ‘Frankenstein II’ followed by ‘Frankenstein III’

Maybe ‘Star Wars’ started the trend of continuing the popular story with the same characters in ‘Star Wars II’? Then ‘Star Wars III’, then ‘Star Wars IV’, then…

If there is a popular story that brings the audience back again and again, why not?

Where is ‘War & Peace II’? ‘Gone With The Wind II’? ‘Beethoven’s 9^th II’?

Maybe it is better to have ONLY ONE then come up with a new idea?

There are cover bands and tribute bands but there is only one Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger.

Series

Some stories meant to be continued… ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, ‘Sex in the City’ run their course but you want to see them all. ‘The Hardy Boys’ or ‘Nancy Drew’ continuous mystery solvers can go on forever.

So where are the new ideas?

Will the children only be regurgitated old ideas over and over again? Are we through with creativity? Have we run out of gas?

There are so many more options to present ideas, opinions, and philosophies with free comments of truth or dare?

The next time I am pointed to the next exciting sequel and requested to read, watch or participate; I’ll pass.

THEN THE BAND BROKE UP

Chapters

1.    Peter, Paul, and Penelope

2.    The Sonics

3.    The Thames

4.    The Chapperells

5.    United Sound / Turnpike North

6.    Thursday Night

7.    Morning Glory

8.    The Vagabonds

9.    L.S.D.

10.The Marriage Album

11.Pvt. Salt’s Homely Farts Rubber Band

12.Shenanigans

13.Cliff &/or Joe

14.Multiple Inserts

15.R.O.K.O.D.02

  

• • •

Records

Peter, Paul, and Penelope (Summer 1959-63)

The Sonics (Summer of 1964)

The Thames (Spring of 1965)

The Chapperells (Summer/Fall of 1965-1966)

Thursday Night (Summer / Fall-1966-1967)

The Vagabonds (Fall of 1967)

United Sound / Turnpike North (Winter of 1967)

L.S.D. (1968)

Pvt. Salt’s Homely Farts Rubber Band (1968)

Morning Glory (1969)

Wanted! (1970)

Backyard Boogie (1972)

The Marriage Album (1973)

Frog Hollow Day Camp (1976)

Greatest Hit! (1977)

2 Cards Pleeze! (1978)

The Musical (1979)

Joe’s (1980)

Hit The Highway (1980)

Crazy Daze (1981)

Multiple Inserts (1982)

Shenanigans (1985)

Clyde S. Meekly 13th St. Memorial Band

& Entertainment Group - Bar None (1987)

Remember Music (1988)

R.O.K.O.D.02 (2000)

        

• • •

Forward

This is a recollection of 60’s garage bands. It is just my experience but it relates to all the boys who wanted to impress girls and saw ‘the Beatles’ on Ed Sullivan and heard the girls screaming and chasing the band and wanting to be there.

This would require mimicking ‘the Beatles’ in fashion, hairstyles, mannerism and learning to play an instrument.

This is my personal journey of the garage band experiences and some of the people who were part of this adventure. There are few photos so I’ve used instruments to timeline the years.

Most of the people written about here are long lost and cannot collaborate my recollection, so these writing are just my point-of-view.

         

• • •

 

Chapter 1 – Peter, Paul & Penelope

I was about thirteen when it happened.

Television was always on. It was a little eight-inch screen playing a fuzzy black and white image and sound came through a little three-inch speaker. Variety shows would have the stage bands behind their music stands and directed by a conductor. They were basically 1930’s big bands sized down for the television studio. They played clips of popular music from the war years as fillers between jugglers and comedians. The recording equipment was antiquated at the time and the sound was more of a remembrance of a tune than actual melodies. It was the beginning of elevator music.

I enjoyed ‘Spike Jones and his City Slickers’ for their antics. It was similar to the renditions of classical music on television cartoons.

When a singer would come forward, the rest of the orchestra was hidden behind a curtain. Even the few commercials for cigarettes or appliances were close ups with some sound effects in the background. If there were jingles, the announcer would sing it.

There was music on the radio, but we only had one in the kitchen and my mom tuned it. My mother enjoyed Tennessee Ernie Ford’s ‘Sixteen Tons’ and Jimmy Dean’s ‘Big John’ for the low bass. The only music I heard was big band dance numbers and country western hillbilly music except for the daily dose of Paul Harvey. Neither caught my attention through the static reception.

That year for Christmas my dad bought our family a phonograph. A portable, though it was the size of a television and weighed about 40 lbs., it had tubes, a large 10” speaker and a heavy needle that dropped onto the vinyl. Three speeds (45, 33 & 1/3, 78) and a center spindle to hold a stack of records were it’s only features. It was placed in my brother’s bedroom so I didn’t get access to it unless he was away at school or Scouts.

My parents didn’t have a huge record collection. Some were blue party records with names like Red Foxx and Brother Dave Gardner with risqué lyrics to jungle jive. There were some classical vinyl and a few kid records with ‘Mickey Mouse and the Beanstalk’ and ‘The Little Train That Could’. There were also some 78’s but they were too warped to listen to.

My brother was purchasing 45’s that didn’t sound like anything on the radio or television. They were rhythm and blues music, mostly heard in jukeboxes. The Coasters’ ‘Searching’ and ‘Young Blood’, Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘Whole Lot a Shaking Going On’, Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ and ‘Blue Monday’ and Elvis’ ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Don’t Be Cruel’. The Everly Brothers’ ‘Cathy’s Clown’ and ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ had good harmonies but didn’t have the same twang as those cowboy tunes on the Old Dominion Barn Dance.

Then there was the ‘Kingston Trio’. Three clean cut guys in striped shirts and neat haircuts playing guitars and a banjo, singing everything from sea shanties to pop versions of Appalachian music. My brother bought every Kingston Trio album so I listened continuously and learned.

This was the time when the Big Band era was fading and rock and roll hadn’t arrived yet. The ‘hootenanny’ was the craze of the college set. There were open mic nights for folk singers to get together and share songs at coffee houses to high school auditoriums.

At school my friends were learning orchestra instruments to play for the school bands. Every weekend no one could come out to play because they had to practice the clarinet or violin. I wanted to play drums. My parents got me a toy drum kit with some bongos and a conga drum. The drums all had paper heads. The kit was destroyed after the first attempt of playing. Didn’t have to pay for lessons. In class we were given little black plastic recorders and taught the basic sheet music reading. ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ and ‘Frère Jacques’ were our first two numbers. The ‘Little Brown Book’ given to us for practice was full of hymns, Appalachian folk tunes and all-American favorites, including ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’, ‘Dixie’ and ‘Old Black Joe’.

Also at school our classes would be gathered up and loaded on buses to travel to the local performance theater where we, with other school kids, would be assigned seats to watch the city symphony perform classical music. We heard the soundtracks of our cartoon shows. Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 5’, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, Rossini’s ‘William Tell Overture’, Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ and Greig’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ were favorites. 

My parents had purchased tickets to nightly symphony shows, so it was familiar to me. Like going to church, it was dress up, sit still and listen. A group of people in tuxedoes sitting in chairs on stage, reading sheet music while some guy turns his back to the audience and waves a stick to keep everyone together is very interesting to watch. I enjoyed the percussionist who got to bang on things to accent the crescendos.

There were also the live road shows of ‘Carousel’, ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘Camelot’. I didn’t see any operas so these taught me the projection of a singer without a microphone.

I was overcome when the movie ‘West Side Story’ came out. Before, all the movies I’d seen were religious or western or war themes. Here were guys the age of my brother not only singing but also dancing to a full orchestra. Street gangs in New York dancing and singing. What else could attract a kid’s attention?

Every Friday evening I would also arrive at the same theater to watch Kiwanis Club travelogue films with accompanying music from around the world. I was being exposed to various forms of music without knowing it.

In church we’d sit in the same spot of a balcony overlooking the pipe organ. We could see the choir go to sleep during the sermon. ‘Praise God, From Whom All Blessings Flow’, ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’, ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ and Christmas favorites like ‘God Rest You Merry Gentlemen’ and other old English carols were the most popular hymns.

Participated in the church choir but my voice was lost in the crowd. Participated in school plays so being on a stage and performing for an audience never scared me. Even standing up in front of the class was not threatening. I was showing off.

My grandmother had an upright piano in a storage room next to her kitchen. When on vacation, the aunts would gather round and sing 40’s hits and church music. I had no reference to a keyboard except to bang on it and see what happened. My mother showed me what an octave was so the keyboard repeated itself. I would sit alone for hours figuring out black keys and white keys until told to stop because I was driving everyone crazy.

Again for Christmas my father got a small electric organ on spindly legs. It didn’t have all 88 keys or a big sound but it was a keyboard. I may have broken it or it wasn’t suitable for my mother so the next Christmas there was a two-keyboard organ with bass foot pedals, chord buttons and a volume pedal. It had different tones but didn’t sound like the church organ. Still it served its purpose.

Behind the sofa was a triangular black case with an Autoharp. It is an instrument with piano strings under buttons when pushed and strummed to play chords.  It was played flat on the lap, but uncomfortable. I did learn the G-C-D progression on the Autoharp but it wasn’t a guitar. I’d bang on the strings with my toy drumsticks like a zither.

 

Now the big reveal.

My father was a musician and composer. He learned music in school playing violin and trumpet. He went onto Duke University as Director of Instrumental Music. He conducted the Duke Symphony Orchestra and led the Blue Devils marching band. He wrote the university’s fight song, ‘Blue and White’. He then went on to form a dance band under the name of “Lee Dixon” and went out on the road. My mom was the singer.

He and she took a 10-piece band in a bus up and down the east coast and then out west playing at dance halls, speakeasies and clubs. There were recording sessions but no big breaks. The war arrived and the musicians were drafted and his band dreams were over.

 

Every summer break from school, after Vacation Bible School and day camp, the family would cram into the family car and head south to the family town of Wilmington, North Carolina. It was an all day trip down a two-lane highway. Radio signals didn’t carry far so we would sing in the car to entertain ourselves. ‘Tell Me Why’, ‘Danny Boy’, ‘The Sidewalks of New York’, ‘Dinah’ and ‘The Bear Went Over The Mountain’.

As many large families do when they go on vacation, the adults will find their spot on the beach with umbrellas and chairs allowing the kids to just romp through the waves. My cousins were used to surf and sun but I was an out-of-towner and would always get sunburn.

Since the townies’ kids knew all the ins-and-outs of the beach, us outsiders just followed along. We learned the places to go to earn some money sweeping and arranging chairs. We learned who the people were who would give us a free beer to stack beach umbrellas and chairs. We learned how to stack boxes, scrape barnacles from hulls, cover fish with ice, fill inflatable rafts and wax surfboards. We learned all the chores to do for neighbors and tourists to earn a few bucks we’d pool every evening.

The elders knew we couldn’t get into but so much trouble at the beach so they let our pack roam unattended. Now and then we’d check in to borrow the motorboat to go skiing then outrun the harbor patrol before returning to the dock.

Between our duties, we’d grab a board and hit the waves. We spent most of our time just floating, looking for a good wave but these were not the best surfing waters. I did learn how to ‘hang ten’ and ‘shoot the pier’ with unfortunate results.

As the sun went down, we’d all meet and see what our ‘pot ‘o gold’ held. If we had enough we’d buy a case of beer from a local bait shop that didn’t ask for identification of age. Whatever scraps and leftovers we could find from the local bars would be gathered.

The beach had a south end and a north end. The south end had all the houses, docks, bars, piers and bathhouses, while the north end was undisturbed. The north end of the beach, which would later be developed into a gated community, was nothing but sand dunes, sea grass and empty beach.

Our gang of Whitey, Sissy, Liz, Cookie, Lil Mac, Duncan, Jimmy, Tommy, Cathy and myself would wander far enough that we couldn’t see the lights or hear the noise from the south end, We’d dig a pit with our hands, pull up some dry sea grass, find whatever driftwood was available and start a fire. We’d pour in the shellfish onto the fire and listen to them sizzle while we’d pop open some beers. Mostly laughter and fun with the occasional couple wandering off to pull some more fuel; we were kids having harmless fun. If we got hot, we’d run into the constant background sound of the ocean. (Note: this was before Jaws).

There were no transistor radios so any music we wanted we had to make ourselves.

Lil’ Mac, who was older than the rest of us, had bought a nice ‘Martin’ D-28 guitar. He and his sister Liz had been listening and learning the folk music and sang as a duo at church activities. The rest of us would listen along and try to memorize what they were singing so we could duplicate it the next night. Cathy had a ‘Gibson’ LG-2 and would join in. Tommy brought his fiddle and the next year bought a ‘Martin’ 00-18 guitar. Jimmy had an open back ‘Vega’ banjo (like the one played by the ‘Kingston Trio’). It was a hodgepodge of voices but we were making our own choir. Whitey even found some bongos.

Most of the songs we’d heard before but we didn’t know the words. Lil’ Mac and Liz had practiced and led us through the lyrics and chorus like pros. It was too dark to follow the finger positions and there were different levels of instrumental competence, but under the moonlight we made a glorious sound.

When I returned to town, I was inspired by our beach ‘hootenanny’ and wanted to get a guitar.

I went to the closest music store, ‘Cary Gee’ which sold pianos but had a few classical guitars in the back. Their prices were far out of my league. I rode the bus downtown to ‘music row’ and stopped in all the shops but the ‘guitar’ had not caught on in my town. The ones that were available were for professional musicians and too expensive.

Somewhere I found a banjo ukulele. It must have been within my price range so I bought it. It had four nylon strings and I had no idea how to play it.

I bought a ‘Hal Leonard’ beginners chord book and sat down to practice. Being left handed, I put the neck on my right side so I could strum with my left hand. Unfortunately it made everything in the book backwards or upside down. I also didn’t know how to tune the thing and was missing two strings. When I thought I’d figured out a song, I’d put on a record and try to play along but it didn’t sound like Dave Guard’s banjo. My father didn’t know anything about the guitar and I didn’t know anything about music structure so it was just frustration. This was not going to be my instrument.

For Christmas, Santa brought me a baritone ukulele. It looked like a guitar but smaller. It had nylon strings but a bigger sound than my banjo. I could strum away in my bedroom and not disturb anyone else in the house.

On one of my ventures downtown, I noticed at the ‘Bachcarats’ jewelry shop they had some guitars hanging on the walls. There was a ‘Stella’ tenor guitar with a sunburst body and it was cheap (inexpensive). It was a plywood guitar, probably made by Harmony or Kay, and 4-steel strings made a tinny thin sound. Still it was a real guitar. I brought it home and started all over again. I decided to play the guitar the way the illustrations showed the position. Now the finger positions matched the dots on the page. I was still missing two bass strings but it started to sound more like a real guitar.

When I took it to the beach, I got lost in the shuffle but I had become a musical member.

I had joined a band.

I got a pitch pipe and learned how to tune the strings. I also noticed that Nick Reynolds of the ‘Kingston Trio’, also play a tenor guitar. That boosted my ego and determination.

The more I watch ‘hootenanny’ there were other singer/players like ‘The Journeymen’, ‘The Limeliters’, ‘the Chad Mitchell Trio’, ‘The New Christy Minstrels’, ‘The Brothers Four’, ‘Ian & Sylvia’, ‘The Big 3’, ‘Hoyt Axton’, ‘Judy Collins’, ‘Johnny Cash’, ‘The Carter Family’,  ‘Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys’, ‘The Tarriers’, ‘Bud & Travis’, and ‘the Smothers Brothers’.

My dad realized I wanted to learn the guitar so he took me up the street to a house I’d never been to. The guy there seemed to know dad and they started talking while I just stood and looked around. The interior seemed like every other house in the neighborhood. They walked back into the living room and handed me a guitar.

It was a red arch top full size acoustic guitar with 6-strings. I don’t know if dad paid for it or a gift from an old musician friend but I walked home with a ‘real’ guitar.

I took out my pitch pipe and tried to tune the old rusty strings. The action was high but I didn’t know how to adjust it. The headstock didn’t have a name on it but from the fret blocks it may have been a Gibson or an Epiphone. Due to the dead strings, it wasn’t very loud but I could carry a guitar with me that didn’t have to be plugged in. The tenor guitar and baritone ukulele were gone by this time…probably broken or left at the beach.

I rigged up a strap and bought a silver clip-on capo and a hand full of picks. I could practice rock and roll songs and folk songs on this guitar. The f-hole archtop was not the ‘cool’ style of the flattop blonde spruce top guitars with a circular sound hole used by my idols, but it was a ‘real’ guitar.

For the rest of the year, I’d carry this guitar everywhere I went to have it handy for a sing-a-long. I started writing music on this guitar. I played at Coffee Shops with this guitar. It was beat up when I got it and I didn’t give it any loving care, but did carry it around in an old black cardboard case.

I kept buying songbooks and learning new tunes and some old ones I’d played with Lil’ Mac and Liz. I bought 45-records direct from England from a deal in a teen magazine and started listening to new music that didn’t get radio play or were available at the local record store.

When my cousin Lil’ Mac and Liz and I would get together to play for parties or family gatherings we’d call ourselves ‘Peter, Paul and Penelope’ after a new trio that were becoming popular but looked like beatniks.

Then Lil’ Mac went off to college and the band broke up.

 

Our set list was:

Peter, Paul, and Penelope (circa 1964)

Autumn to May  (Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey)

Big Rock Candy Mountain  (Kerr, Siegmeister)

The River is Wide  (Nick Reynolds)

Tattooed Lady  (Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane)

Unfortunate Miss Bailey  (George Colman the elder)

Zombie Jamboree  (Conrad Eugene Mauge Jr.)

Wimoweh  (Zulu traditional)

Goober Peas  (P. Nutt, A. Pindar)

I Know An Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly  (Rose Bonne, Alan Mills)

Shady Grove / Hard Traveling  (Appalachian trad. / Woody Guthrie)

Malcolm – guitar (Martin), singer

Elizabeth - singer

Clifford – tenor guitar (Stella), archtop guitar (?)

Cathy – guitar (Gibson), singer

Tommy – guitar (Martin), bass fiddle

Jimmy – guitar, Banjo (Gibson)

 

 

         

• • •

 

Chapter 2 – The Sonics

 Between junior high school (middle school) and high school music took a turn.

The sounds on the radio were getting more dance oriented with lots of talk from local DJs filling the airways presenting their personalities. The cowboy/bluegrass music was fading away. The big band sound was fading away. The folk wave still was in its beatnik stage and hadn’t made an impression on the public yet, so everyone just wanted to dance.

Rhythm and blues provided the beat but there was still wariness of colored performers. Jim Crow was alive and well in this town so the music and what it represented was not understood on both sides of the street, but it was fun to dance to. The dances were trying to find a way from the ballroom cotillions and the square dances.

Middle class white teens were looking for a spokesman to hang their hat on, and they found ‘Dick Clark’. A young energetic guy with a toothy smile and very presentable to television audiences just fit the bill.

‘Dick Clark’ could present a foursome of black singers in sharkskin suits and patent shiny shoes with unison dance moves that keep the kids on the dance floor and not offend the parents.

The Kingston Trio and the Four Lads and the Tokens and hundreds of others were filling in the glee club sound of cover tunes so they were non-threatening during the troubled time of the early 60s.

New singers were appearing with greasy hair and crazy antics. Some would jump up on pianos. Some would swivel their hips. Some would just walk back and forth, but they didn’t have the moves of the black singers.

It was time to find some new music.

This was the summer break, after two weeks in North Carolina being a counselor at an overnight camp for boys that I’d attended for the pass three years, learning surfing with my cousin and apprehension about going to a new school.

A guy I had met at school convinced me to come to his house. We weren’t close friends but everyone else was practicing piano or ballet or trying out for the high school football team, so I followed.

Vic, the boy I met from school, knew I was attempting to play the guitar and said he was learning to be a guitar player too. A mutual bond was formed.

In the basement of his house, through all the dark crevasses and dangling wires and spider webs, he had a spot in the corner with a single light bulb showing the way.

There was a wooden stool, piles of papers, a tiny record player, and vinyl records stacked next to it. This was Vic’s ‘man cave’.

He had a guitar similar to what I’d seen in Sears’ basement. It was not an acoustic guitar like I’d seen all the folksingers use on television. It was a flat piece of wood with these knobs on it. It had some metal pieces under the strings. It had a cord coming out of it that was connected to a box that looked like a radio.

Vic picked up the guitar, turned a few knobs and strummed the strings.

VARRRROOOOOMMMMMMM!

Whatever just happened - got my attention.

This was loud and raw. This was space age sound. This is where I wanted to go. This was electric.

He showed me how the knobs worked and how the sound would come out of the little box instead of the guitar. I’d pick up my guitar and attempt to play along but couldn’t match the sound of electric power.

I had to get me one of these ‘electric’ guitars.

Now for those who don’t understand jonsing for something when you are in your teens, let me explain. At that age you are trying to become popular with strangers. The lifelong friends who were your neighbors are moving to different schools and losing contact. Family gatherings don’t happen, as often so you don’t get to see your cousins. It is time to explore the big world.

Reading magazines and looking at photos formed a basis of how American Teens should look like and act. They showed the way to comb your hair, what to wear, how to smell and even how to stand to look ‘cool’.

Then prejudice reared its ugly head.

If you didn’t wear the acceptable brand of clothing, you were rejected by ‘cliché’. Kids formed associations by who wore the latest styles or knew the latest dance moves or had the best haircut. Kids were stereotyped by who was ‘In’ and who was not.

This was my first ‘jonsing’ for a guitar.

I’d watched bands and singers playing guitar on television. I’d seen the guitars in the photos that the idols held. I didn’t know the brands or the sizes or even why they played that particular guitar, but I figured if I got one of those guitars I could play just like them. If I had that guitar I’d be popular.

Now at this time, electric guitars were rare, at least in the music shops I went to.

Vic and I spent hours in his basement playing chords over and over again, and then listening to his record collection. He had vinyl of ‘The Ventures’ and others who I’d seen on television. They wore matching suits, slicked back hair, did a little shuffle back and forth and smiled but didn’t sing. The melodies were a simple run of notes that we copied and tried to get up to speed.

I had to get an ‘electric’ guitar.

When I could not find anything on the Music Row that I could afford, I crossed the street into another world. I went where no one I knew had gone before. I went where the pawnshops were.

I’d always been told these were seedy places of last resort and should be avoided, but later found that traveling musicians would hock their axe to get a few bucks then come back later to bail it out.

The row of pawnshops had barred window displays full of guitars, cameras, guns and even fur coats. They were dark places that felt dirty to enter.

Behind the glass cases of watches, jewelry, coins, cameras, diamond rings and guns were rows of guitars hung on the wall.

The guitars were beyond reach so the proprietor would have to take it off the wall to present to you with anticipation of a young kid mishandling a valuable instrument. Under watchful eyes I’d strum ancient strings with no sound, then act like I knew what that sound meant, before checking the price tag. I’d hand it back and wander to the next shop looking for a bargain. If only I knew enough to appreciate the vintage classics I’d held, but I didn’t. I couldn’t afford them anyway, even at consignment prices.

I finally found an oriental model and a small amplifier with a five-inch speaker to meet my ‘electric’ needs and budget. I was on my way to becoming a rock and roll star.

This guitar had two single coil pickups and on the headstock the name “Linda”. A chance meeting that would haunt me for years. The amplifier had volume and tone control knobs and a single jack input. This was a basic starter ‘electric’ guitar.

I could walk the few blocks to Vic’s basement carrying the guitar and amp. We strung up some more extension cords and plugs that may have not been acceptable by the local fire codes and proceeded to make noise. Loud noise.

The first song we learned was the Ventures’ ‘Walk Don’t Run’. It is an easy descending run I could follow on one string. Vic learned the few notes of the melody and we played it over and over and over and over and over again.

Our noise didn’t match what was on the record. We needed a drummer.

Vic knew a couple of guys who brought over their gear and we all crammed into the damp corner among the moldy cardboard boxes his parents stored here. Another guitar and another amp and another wiring experiment keep us fumbling over each other.

Vic’s Silverton guitar had a single coil lipstick pickup plugged into a carrying case amp with a tiny speaker.  Dick had this slick Mosrite guitar like ‘the Ventures’ played and it had a whammy bar. It was plugged into a small amp just like mine so there wasn’t much competition for sound.

Paul’s 3-piece Rogers drum kit with one cymbal and we somehow squeezed him into a space where he could fling his arms without hitting any dangling wires and unplugging the rest of us.

We practiced and possibly copied in some form ‘Pipeline’, ‘Penetration’, ‘Telstar’ and even ‘Rebel Rouser’. Since we had a drummer now we could learn ‘Wipe Out’.

We had formed a band.

A band of brothers playing in a damp basement of reverberating noise but no one knew whom we were.

We needed an identity. Like any gang needs a brand.

A name like ‘Four Guys in a damp basement making bad noise’ didn’t sound like a good name. ‘Vic, Dick, Paul and Cliff’ wasn’t very exciting.

The brands on television touted new and different and exciting and big and bold. This was also the space age when cars had big fins and toothpaste was named after planets.

We needed a Jetson name, so we chose ‘The Sonics’. Much later I found that just about every garage band of the time were called ‘The Sonics’.

We’d leave all our guitars and stuff in Vic’s basement and meet again after a series of phone calls of when his parents would be out. Sometimes we’d all showed up. Sometimes it would just be Vic and I so we could bang on the drums and play each other’s guitars. Most of the time we just tried to stay connected to electricity.

I think this was the time smoking cigarettes started.

One of Vic’s recordings was Dick Dale. From what I could read from the back of the cover, his music was termed ‘surf music’.

This was not the same music as east coast surf music. Here the bands were basically reduced big bands with plenty of horns to get the kids to dance to ‘the shag’. There was no electronics.

Now you must remember playing in a damp basement with no baffling but wet cardboard boxes and rats, an ‘electric’ guitar can make some terrible squealing noises. This was long before Jimi Hendrix and all the effect pedals of today. This was natural electronic distortion.

Now and then we’d touch each other or a pipe and get a shock, but we survived. The current was rushing more than what was coming out of the plug.

For whatever reason, we gathered our stuff and went home. It was probably the end of summer and we had to get ready to go to school. Maybe his parents wanted to move some more boxes in or the neighbors had been complaining about the noise?

We never played together for anyone else. We never left the basement.

I lost track of Vic, Dick and Paul. If they all attended my high school, I never saw them in class.

‘The Sonics’ were a brief experiment of strangers coming together to make noise. We learned as we went, not for some acclaim or achievement, but just for the pure pleasure of making a sound in each other’s company.

‘The Sonics’ were a good beginning to understand electronic guitar playing with a bit of arrangement. Not sure we ever finished a song because each time we attempted to follow a tune, we played it different.

Now I had a banjo ukulele, a baritone ukulele, a tenor guitar, an archtop guitar and an electric guitar and amp. I was starting a collection of instruments I could barely play.

None of us were very accomplished guitar players so the sound was a roar of teenage angst noise. We probably spent more time talking and laughing, smoking and drinking pop. It was a cool place to hang out during the city heat.

This is what a band is all about?

 

Then the band broke up.

 

Our set list was:

The Sonics (circa 1964)

Walk Don’t Run  (Johnny Smith)

Penetration  (S. Leonard)

Pipeline  (Brian Carman, Bob Spickard)

Wipe Out  (Bob Berryhill, Pat Connolly, Jim Fuller, Ron Wilson)

Out-of-Limits  (Michael Z. Gordon)

Telstar  (Joe Meek)

In Crowd  (Billy Page)

Twilight Zone  

(Phil Wilde, Jean-Paul De Coster, Carlos Meire, June Rollocks)

Rebel Rouser  (Duane Eddy, Lee Hazlewood)

Vic – lead guitar, bass (Silvertone), Silvertone amp

Dick – guitar (Mosrite)

Paul – drums (Rogers)

Cliff – bass (Linda)

 

 

         

• • •

 

Chapter 3 – The Thames

Then there were ‘the Beatles’.

There was a buzz going around school about these guys in England making a stir. There wasn’t anything in the newspaper. There were no songs on the radio. There were no records in the stores. Now and then there would be a small picture in the teen magazines about the Mop Tops, but were outranked by Elvis, Fabian, Kookie and Ricky.

The radio stations in town only played big band leftover dance music, R&B dance music and hillbilly bluegrass square dance music, but on a shortwave radio could reach a station out of Boston called WBZ. It was playing this ‘English’ sound late at night.

Now and then, late night television would show some clips from the BBC of this ‘Beatlemania’ that was happening in England. Most were mini-documentaries giving a history of the Mods and Rockers, the Carnaby St. fashions and the beginning of the ‘Swinging Sixties’.

On February 9, 1964, like the rest of America, I watched ‘The Beatles’ on the Ed Sullivan show. So this is what all the fuss is about.

This was eight years after Elvis had appeared, but I was only 8 and didn’t get the bug. Maybe it was because I didn’t have that long slick back hair. I couldn’t comb a ducktail with my crew cut. My brother had bought ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and I even went to his first movie ‘Love Me Tender’ but I wasn’t in the mood for Elvis.

I was in the mood for ‘The Beatles’.

Here were four guys, about the age of the Kingston Trio, wearing suits and ties and playing electric guitars. They didn’t have any wild antics or dance moves but just stood still and sang in three-part harmony. The drummer on a high rise didn’t sing but just shook his head. They all smiled. They all seemed to be having fun and at the end of the song, they bowed in unison.

The difference was Ed Sullivan understood the reaction these four English guys had on the teen fans and made sure the cameras caught the reaction of the screaming girls. This was the ‘mania’ everyone had been talking about.

Now I was fifteen and full of testosterone and wanted to have the same reaction from girls that the ‘Mop Tops’ had.

First, I had to comb my hair over my forehead. That also meant I had to start skipping haircuts.

Second, my father bought me The Beatles second American album ‘Meet The Beatles’ which had the songs that started to appear on the radio. ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ was what they played on television and was climbing up the Billboard charts. I didn’t know how to play it.

All the teen magazines covered every page with The Beatles. ‘Who is your favorite Beatle’? Where do they live? When is their birthday? These four guys were photographed doing everything and they posed like movie stars.

The ‘long hair’ was the talk of the town. Every television show mocked with wigs and silly jokes but the times were a’ changing. Everything English became the fascination of every American teen to imitate. The skirts got shorter and the colors got brighter.

Still in this conservative town that was five years behind any cultural change, this phenomenon of the English Invasion took its time to cross the pond. The department stores didn’t have any styles that would match what the kids wanted, so the second hand stores were rummaged through trying to create a look. Boy’s jackets were thin ties and thin lapels. Neither Saxon Shoes nor Thom McAn shoes stocked ‘Beatle Boots’.

Again across the Broad divide of the city merchants were the ‘other’ clothing stores. These fashions were not tailored for the conservative Caucasian audience but had Italian styles sold by Jewish merchants. The clothing was cheaply made but colorful and outrageous for this town. They also had black boots made of Spanish leather.

A ‘Beatle Boot’ was a pointed toe Chelsea leather ankle high boot with a zipper on the side and a 2” Cuban heel. They were not made for standing a long time or walking in, but they looked cool. Wearing ‘Beatle Boots’ made any outfit look English.

I bought a chord book of ‘The Beatle’ songs. Everything was in the key of C (for the piano) and the sound didn’t match the record. Whoever transcribed the songs had put all these F chords and Bb chords and I had a hard time trying to play them. I was still learning how to change chords and wasn’t up to speed yet. At least it had the words.

The radio stations started playing more Beatle songs at the listener’s request and the DJs would throw in some tidbit they had read in some trade publication to keep the interest. The television orchestras and radio jingles started mimicking the new sound but it became Muzak.

Other English bands started hitting the airwaves and the trend was catching on. More long shaggy groups of boys with guitars started to appear on Ed Sullivan and other talk shows and teen magazines. Names like ‘The Animals’, ‘The Dave Clark Five’ and ‘The Rolling Stones’ hit the American circuit with interviews and plenty of records for sale.

Then, The Beatles made a black and white movie called “Hard Day’s Night”. There was no plot other than following these cheeky English lads around make snippets of what we believed was their lives and we loved it. With their dry British wit and carefree attitudes to a soundtrack of new songs, we all wanted to be The Beatles.

It was about this time that a guy I’d known in elementary school found me and said he was ‘getting a band together’.

He was going to a different high school and met some guys who had guitars. He said he didn’t play music but would manage ‘the band’. Somehow this sounded feasible so I talked my mother into driving me to an address he’d given me.

On the appointed weekend, mom drove my electric ‘Linda’ guitar, little amp and me to a house with a car parked in the yard in what appeared a ‘blue collar’ neighborhood. Not knowing anyone there and not seeing Bruce (our future manager) I knocked on the door. The living room was dark but I could see two figures moving around.

“Come on in” (famous last words)

Mom abandoned me without inspecting who these people were and left me to a new adventure. I knew I was up by the new high school and was within walking distance to home but it would be a hike.

Wally and Paul introduced themselves and we all tried to fill in the gaps of what Bruce had in mind for ‘his’ band. They were busy arranging cords and moving tables around while I watched. Some older guy was in the next room that appeared to be a kitchen. He was sitting at a chrome table in a white sleeveless t-shirt drinking a beer and staring into the fog of cigarette smoke.

Wally was a burley guy with pocked marked face and sideburns. His long hair hung over his thick eyebrow and he seemed to be in charge. This was his house. Paul was a thin awkward guy with a bush of curly hair and a squeaky voice. He seemed to be Wally’s sidekick.

As I got my guitar out of the case, I noticed someone else down a dark hallway. It was Wally’s sister. I was never introduced but she looked just like him, but in drag. I looked around the dusty room at the few family pictures on the wall while sitting on a couch with chew marks and springs coming out.

There was this board with some strings on it but it wasn’t a guitar. I was informed that was a lap steel guitar that his father had played Hawaiian music on. I held it like a guitar but couldn’t figure out how it was played. I didn’t learn about slide guitar until years later.

Just as we got all plugged in and situated, Bruce shows up.

The last time I’d seen him; he lived way out in suburbia that was still being constructed. The roads hadn’t been paved and forest were still being cut down and plowed for another ticky-tacky house that looked like all the rest. I think his dad was a dentist and his mother was loud and obnoxious. They had plastic on all the furniture. They were not an attractive family. They were Jewish.

I had attended his bar mitzvah and never wore a yarmulke again. We’d gone fishing and swimming at a pond full of water moccasins and snapping turtles. He liked the civil war. We had done some local theater productions with his mom. That is about all I knew about him.

He was not a fancy dresser, had a big nose and bad breathes but he was keen on becoming the next Brian Epstein.

While we were trying to get in tune with three guitars, Bruce was outlining how he would get us to play parties and school dances and we’d have posters and flyers and business cards printed. We spent a lot of time tuning and restringing our guitars.

Wally and Paul had played together before so I just watched. Wally would sing and Paul would sing backup. I couldn’t follow their chord progression so it was decided I’d play bass. That was easy for I only had to use one string and move up and down the neck. Once we got in unison of playing three chords, we played them over and over and over again. Each time got a little bit louder.

Wally had a black Gibson Les Paul Jr. with a single P-90 pickup and Paul had a burgundy Epiphone Wilshire with two pickups and a whammy bar. These were like professional guitars and much more expensive than my little pawnshop bargain basement guitar. I’d not seen these guitars downtown and didn’t know the area well enough to know where they would have purchased them. They let me play them and it was night and day between the actions on my guitar. Luckily I was just playing one string.

I don’t remember what song we played until we were exhausted, but they had a larger repertoire than what I knew.  We needed some songs to learn before we rehearsed again. We jotted down some of the favorites we’d heard on the radio and left attending to gather again with chord charts and rhythms to match.

Without the Internet to search, we had to listen to a 3-minute song and try to figure out how to reproduce something similar. If I’d figured the song in the key of D and Paul figured the song in the key of C and Wally figured out the song in the key of E, then we’d have to learn how to transpose.

At our next gathering, we all brought reams of paper with pencil scratches and capital letters for chord positions. While Bruce was going on and on about other bands he’d seen on television, we just played about two lines of each song and then skipped to another and then another until we found one that felt right. Luckily all the songs were 3-chords and nothing difficult. If we couldn’t remember the words we’d make up something.

It was summer and hot so all that electricity heated up the room, even with the windows and front door open. We’d take a break, have a cigarette and talk about cars and girls. Wally’s dad would give us each a warm beer and we’d laugh. Then we would start all over again.

One of the things we were missing was a drummer.

Bruce said he would find one for the next rehearsal and he did.

Wilson was a little mousey guy but had a great new set of white Ludwig drums (like Ringo played). He was shy keeping the beat but it didn’t matter because we kept adjusting it as we played.

We were pretty crammed at Wally’s house but none of the neighbors seem to mind the noise. A few would come around the front yard and listen. No one was dancing or singing along because we were not that good.

I invited everyone to my house for the next ‘band’ rehearsal. Paul and Wally crammed into my living room but Wilson didn’t show up. Don’t know where we would have fit him anyway. My mother was listening to the noise in the kitchen. She asked, “Who is the leader?” We didn’t know. She just shook her head and went back to the kitchen to smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and listen to the AM radio. Later she told me a couple of the songs weren’t bad but we didn’t discuss it any further.

Our next rehearsal was at Wilson’s house. He had a fairly large ranch house with a rec room with plenty of space. His drum set was already set up in the corner and the rest of us stumbled around trying to unplug lamps and plug in amps. Each time we got together, we’d bring some new gizmo. We learned how to use a capo to transpose. We learned how to do barre chords. We constructed microphones from old lamp stands and plugging them into the same amps our guitars were plugged in created a new ear-shattering sound. We were trimming down the list of songs we practiced to a set list that started sounding pretty good.

Our first crisis was the drummer leaving. Don’t know what the reason was but Wilson left the band. We had to get another drummer.

Bruce found another drummer, Bill who showed up with a smaller Slingerland drum kit but seemed more energetic. Half of the rehearsal was going over the same songs we were fine tuning and introducing to a new drummer and half was listening to the latest records, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. We were building confidence in each other becoming a band.

Bruce got us a gig.

He’d signed us up to play for an evening playground party behind a local school. Now we really had to learn our chops.

A name. We needed a name to be introduced to the party. What do we call ‘the band’?

Since we didn’t have a leader and we all sang; we couldn’t call ourselves ‘somebody and the whoever’. We bounced some ideas around. We couldn’t find an insect name to match ‘The Beatles’. None of the animal names were a hit. All the car names had been used. We could have gone with ‘Confederates’ or ‘Rebels’ but wanted to keep that English Invasion feel. ‘Liverpool Lads’ or ‘The London Four’ didn’t cut the mustard.

We finally decided on the river that ran through London. We would become ‘The Thames’ (pronounced as Temz or Tims) but it was always mispronounced as ‘The Thams’.

Now we needed a look. Every band had a look. Grunge hadn’t arrived even for a garage band, so we had to appear classy. We didn’t have any costumes so we had to figure out what each of us had in our wardrobes to match one another. We all had light blue dress shirts and dark sport coats. We all had white pants and black shoes. Don’t know why we all had white pants but we did. Should we wear neckties and look formal or open collar?

I suggested we wear ascots. An ascot tucked into a dress shirt was all the rage in Europe giving us a James Bond look.

There is a blurry photo somewhere of the four of us dressed in our new band uniforms in Wally’s backyard. Spiffy and sharp.

On the night of the big event, we set up our amps and found enough extension cords to power them up. We plugged in our makeshift microphones and guitars and adjusted the sound to keep the squeal down.

1-2-3-4 and off we went. We didn’t have any stage presences or rapport with the kids. We just fumbled around discussing the next song with ourselves before breaking into it. I don’t think we ever introduced ourselves. A performance was nothing more than a rehearsal with good suits.

I do remember it was a warm night and we had bug-covered lights shining in our eyes. After a few songs of jumping around and screaming, the ascots came off and then the jackets.

The only song I sang was The Beatle’s rendition of ‘Boys’. I screamed at the top of my voice and plucked on my bass string. It was my first professional performance in front of strangers.

At the end no one applauded. They just went back to getting into little groups and talking. A teacher unplugged us (no encore) and plugged in a record player. Some of the kids were dancing on the blacktop.

We were so excited we’d zipped through the songs and didn’t think they were too fast to dance to until we heard the record player.

There was no big paycheck but we got exposure. We played at a couple of other lawn parties and once at the country club thanks to my mother’s connections. We never sounded any better.

Rehearsals got fewer and Bill stopped attending. Paul, Wally and I were going different places and school was about to start.

We would be back in a different configuration but for now.

 

Then the band broke up.

 

Our set list was:

The Thames (circa 1964)

She’s Not There (Rod Argent)

         Slow Down (Larry Williams)

         Twist & Shout (Bert Berns, Phil Medley)

         Wooly Bully (Domingo Samudio)

         Louie, Louie (Richard Berry)

         Hang On Sloopy (Bert Berns, Wes Farrell)

         Boys (Luther Dixon, Wes Farrell)

         Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying

(Gerry Marsden, Freddie Marsden, Les Chadwick, Les Maguire)

         Heart Full of Soul (Graham Gouldman)

         For Your Love (Graham Gouldman)

         Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat (John Carter, Ken Lewis)

         Henry the 8th (R.P. Weston)

         Farmer John (Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris, Dewey Terry)

         Little Black Egg (Chuck Conlon)

         Love Potion #9 (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller)

         Alley Oop (Dallas Frazier)

         Baby, Please Don’t Go (Joe Williams)

Wally – lead guitar (Gibson Melody Maker), Silvertone 12” amp

Paul – rhythm guitar (Epiphone), Epiphone amp

Cliff – bass (Linda), ? amp

Wilson – drums (Ludwig)

Bill – drums (Slingerland)

Bruce - manager

 

 

                  

• • •

 

Chapter 4 – The Chapperells

I want to play in a band again.

Paul was driving now. He’d pick me up and we would get with Wally and relive ‘the ole days’ of ‘The Thames’. We had all learned new songs and had gotten better technically. We picked up where we left off and enjoyed the company again. We’d all started listening to different music and shared with each other our expanding musical taste.

The local AM radio stations started playing this ‘rock & roll’ stuff between car commercials and DJs, but WLEE, WRVA and later WGOE would only spin one tune and then cut to another. There was no way to learn the song or the words.

Gary’s Records at Willow Lawn mall became the Mecca for buying vinyl records. A 33 1/3 record cost around $3 so several albums could be afforded and taken home to start a library of music collection. Downtown the music store Walter D. Moses had records in the basement for sale, but they were mostly classical or off labels. There also were record bins in Woolworths and Peoples but not much of a selection. This was before the big box stores like Tower Records.

Vinyl records were our songbooks. ‘The Beatles’, ‘The Rolling Stones’, ‘The Kinks’, ‘The Animals’, ‘The Beach Boys’, ‘Judy Collins’, ‘Peter, Paul & Mary’, became staples of our training and learning without sheet music. The collections expanded to ‘Jefferson Airplane’, ‘Jimi Hendrix’, ‘Cream’ and others. One English girl gave me the first ‘Them’ album featuring Van Morrison. Another girl gave me the first ‘Doors’ album. There were bands popping out of the woodwork and there was so much to listen to and decide your preference. I enjoyed folk music but also enjoy orchestral rock but heavy metal didn’t get me until ‘Queen’ but production of recordings were getting better and better. Some records were bought and cherished to this day while others after the first listening were given away.

Bought ‘soul’ records, ‘jazz’ records, ‘classical’ records and ‘progressive rock’ records. There were ‘folk’ records, ‘dance’ records, ‘show tune’ records and ‘movie soundtrack’ records. I listened to everyone from Bach and Beethoven to Wilson Pickett and James Brown to Joni Mitchell to Stanley Clark and learned.

A 33&1/3 vinyl usually had one hit and the rest was fillers. The lads on the covers held instruments but studio orchestras played the hits. Only a few were listed as appearing on the album.

Paul still had his Epiphone Wilshire but Wally had gotten rid of his Gibson Les Paul Jr. and bought a fiery red Gretsch Astro-Jet. Two pickups and a whammy bar and he had been practicing.

Wally knew a saxophone player at another school who brought over some records. Alan introduced us to ‘soul music’ with tunes from James Brown, Wilson Picket, Booker T and the MGs and Otis Redding. Wally had been listening to ‘Chicago blues’ from Howlin’ Wolf to Bo Diddley. Paul brought in some ‘country tunes’ from Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and even some Elvis. I introduced them to the Rolling Stones who were covering all the aforementioned music.

Alan lived in a tiny cinderblock house in a blue-collar neighborhood on blocks with no sidewalks or paved streets. His neighbors were black and Hispanic so he was exposed to a variety of music. He drove a beat up car and wasn’t a sharp dresser but had something about him that would become the driving force of the band. He wore his hair slicked back while the rest of us were combing our hair over our foreheads to look like those English bands.

We decided to get together at a small room off the basketball court at his high school. When Paul and I got there, Alan had already started setting up with another sax player and a drummer. Wally showed up and we started hammering away the tunes with the sound bouncing off the walls.

Alan was a natural leader and seemed to know more music theory than the rest of us. The new players, Tommy and Jimmy joined in and the noise started to sound good quickly.

 Bands are like teams. Teams can wear the uniforms, follow the rules of the game, all play their positions well, but never win. A band is like that too.

Some bands have great individual players, expensive equipment and even great hair, but together it just doesn’t sound good. Bands that come together and sound great, they are the winners. We were sounding like winners.

What made the difference? Having horns filled the sound over the guitars? Having another voice harmony? Having a drummer that not only could keep the beat but also could drive the band?

The sound started to get a groove and all the pieces came together rather quickly. We all seemed to like the sound and all got along well.

A new band was coming together.

Alan took over the job of manager and started getting request for the band to play at high school dances. Again, if six guys were to be a band, we needed a name. The ‘Novas’? The ‘Essentials’? We settled on The ‘Chapperells’.

Alan signed us up for a ‘Battle of the Bands’ contest at his high school. We were older and more accomplished that the other two bands so we won. By winning we got the privilege to play for a school dance. No uniforms this time, but neatly dressed casual teen formal acceptable for this town.

We had practiced enough songs to make a long set list and even when we made a mistake, we filled in as if it was planned. This is how a tight band plays.

Each of us was a different kid. We came from different backgrounds. We went to different schools. We lived in different neighborhoods. We had other friends. Some of us drove and some of us didn’t. Some of us had girlfriends and some of us didn’t.

We were here, together, for one reason… The music.

We enjoyed this music. We wanted to play this music.

We couldn’t play this music without being in a band… especially if you are a drummer.

I didn’t know if Tommy played in the school orchestra, but otherwise a drummer has to be in a band. I knew Paul played in his school’s marching band but he played clarinet and there were no clarinet parts in this music.

We also played by ear. There was no sheet music, though half the band could read. We just worked out our arrangements on the fly until we found a groove that worked.

Bands need to practice. The more you repeat a song, the more you refine your particular sound. When it clicks, there is magic.

There is collaboration to being in a band. Unlike an orchestra where you follow the dots on the page with a conductor keeping time, a band is full of give and take. If Wally learned a song a certain way, maybe the horns added some new breaks and extended the song? Maybe Paul and Wally interplayed guitars for a solo? Maybe Tommy would speed up or slow down the song making it a different rhythm and giving an old favorite new life?

By now, every high school had it’s own band and the competition was growing. After ‘The Beatles’ hit, every teenage boy wanted to have teenage girls chase them down the street, so everyone bought guitars. There were ‘The Escorts’, ‘The Barracudas’, ‘The Joker’s Wild’ and ‘The Morticians’. Each had their schools following fans, but our band was a conglomeration from three different high schools.

Fans were required to get attendance at a dance. If you posters plastered on every telephone phone in the neighborhood didn’t bring in boys and girls who would spend their babysitting and grass cutting money on sodas and candy while listening to your noise, you would not be invited back. Some familiar faces would show up wherever we played but there were no groupies.

Each band had similar line ups to ours. Four, five or six guys (they were always guys. No girl singers) wearing similar outfits with similar hairstyles. Some had expensive instruments and some did not. Some had vans to carry their gear and some (like us) just filled our cars.

We all played the same songs. No original songs, just covers of whatever were popular on the radio. The same song sounded different from each band due to their talent or ability.

Now and then I’d get the request to fill in for another band. No rehearsals just stand there and fake it.

Making records was unheard of and without a record there was no radio play, so every band wanted to get its big break on the local television version of ‘American Bandstand’.

For a half an hour, usually on a Saturday afternoon, a few teenagers and a radio DJ would get into a television studio with a hard cement floor and some posters on the wall advertised by the local car dealership to dance around. The DJ would have a countdown this week’s hit list and the kids would shuffle around to a record player. Two giant cameras the size of refrigerators with long snaking cables would try to move around the small space trying to capture the excitement for the television viewers. Local bands would sign up to get exposure on this rocking teen show.

‘The Chapperells’ got their chance. We brought all our gear to the backdoor then saw the space we were assigned. One amp, fewer cymbals and drums and no dance moves. We jammed up in a corner in front of a curtain dividing the dance floor from the television mixing board. There were no microphones or monitors and the volume had to be turned down. The DJ would introduce the band and ask each member for our names. Then we were given a 2-minute block of time to make our mark on the viewing audience with a fuzzy black and white image and terrible sound only to fade out to commercial.

We played a couple of birthday parties and a gig at a new dance hall called ‘The Sheik’ that used to be an Oriental rug store in a strip mall. A few other basements and third story flats were opening up as places where bands could play in smoked filled rooms to shuffling teens. We played together enough to become really tight.

There is something about performing live. No matter how well ‘the band’ knows the music, every performance is different. A microphone will get unplugged in the middle of a song, a guitar cable will become disconnected, a cymbal will fall over or the words will suddenly be forgotten. Arrangements will change at an instant and some short numbers will become long jams because the audience likes it.

It seemed we never had enough equipment or our equipment would break. Speakers would blow up, guitar cables would need to be resoldered, and strings would break from tuning over and over again. There were never enough guitar picks or straps. Where will you find another drumhead?

One weekend we all wandered into ‘Astor’s Music Shop’. This was a crowded dark store with old, used and abused instruments for sale (and more important) for rent. When I introduced myself to the owner he recognized my name from my dad’s old band and let us have the run of the place. There was more to choose from than we could imagine. I could leave a check on Friday and bring the instrument(s) back on Monday.

I got to play many instruments I could never have purchased. I rented a Fender jazz bass guitar. I rented a Fender p-bass guitar. I rented a Gibson thunderbird bass guitar. I rented an Ampeg fretless bass guitar. I also rented an Ampeg Portaflex amp and didn’t want to take it back. The difference from the pawnshop was I had to bring them back.

At the end of the summer break, Alan told us he’d gotten us a gig in North Carolina at a place called the ‘Club-A-Go-Go’. We figured out the logistics and who would drive whom.

I had a possible flaw. My parents were vacationing in North Carolina the week before our big show and I’d have to meet the rest of the band there. Being teenagers, we figured it would all work out and were excited to play at a ‘beach club’. Alan even had some posters made up to attach to the cars. We were “The Chapperells -  #3 White Soul Band from Richmond, VA.” Not sure that title would put us on the cover of American Teen Magazine but we were certainly not #1 or #2, so we thought we could get away with it.

Before I left town, Wally handed me a bass guitar he had borrowed for me to play at the beach. I plugged it into my little amp and started figuring out our song list on four strings. Each guitar has a different feel and I had to get used to this one. Before I’d been borrowing bass ampliphiers that had big speakers and lots of power. The sound was big and deep even through my little speaker. I’d play the same notes over and over again trying to remember how the song went without the others playing along.

Again, another surprise.

Next to my grandfather’s house was a little corner grocery or bodega. My father would take me there after he’d talked to his dad for a short period of time alone.

This was an open-air produce stand with a rack for a few boxes and can goods. The floor cracked with peanut shells. A few fish and meat were open on melting ice and a young black boy would swat the flies. Now and then an elderly woman would walk in and get a bottle of pop or have some beef wrapped in brown paper. She’d open her small purse and hand the owner a few coins and then walk out ignoring all the rest of us. The phone would ring and the proprietor would instruct the black boy to gather some items and take them to an address. This was the simple life in a small town where people ran tabs with the grocery.

Paul T., the owner of the store and an old friend of my dad, had a tiny sliver of an office to the side of the floor. A desk squeezed in the darkness with a wall covered in signed photos of famous entertainers and personalities. My father’s picture was on the wall.

The surprise was this large amplifier that was slid from behind the desk. This amp was the size of a television and heavy. It was full of tubes and had 4-speakers. The blond tweed cover showed it had been used and probably traveled a bit. This was the classic ’59 Fender bassman.

   Again, I don’t know how much money changed hands or it this was a leftover from a pawn gone wrong. I hauled it out to the car, placed it in the backseat (because it took up so much room) and couldn’t wait to plug it in. Suddenly the electric bass guitar sounded like a bass should sound. I fiddled with the knobs and plucked the strings and filled the room with a booming thunder.

I didn’t want to go to the beach. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to sleep. I just wanted to practice the band songs on this monster.

On the day of departure, excitement and anticipation ruled the trip. We had to take a detour from our usual route but with the folding maps and a few recommendations from gas station attendants, we saw the sign “Nags Head”.

There were two roads. On the oceanfront were small cottages and the second road had a gas station, a small grocery and a few bars. Nags Head was still a fishing town and hadn’t been discovered or commercialized.

My dad slowed down because we couldn’t find any addresses and there was little traffic. I saw Paul’s car and two others and we pulled behind them. I brought out the new-to-me amp and long bass guitar as the band gathered around. My parents drove off and I was in a different world.

I had no plans or clothing or money, just a guitar and an amp. Paul and Wally were impressed by the size of the bassman and noticed the four plugs. We could all plug into this amp. Alan walked out of the darkness inside a white cinderblock building with ‘Club-A-Go-Go’ painted on a pane glass picture window. He had been talking to the bartender/owner about where to set up and when to start. I didn’t see Tommy or Jimmy.

It seemed Tommy and Jimmy couldn’t make the trip so Wally called up Bill (the drummer from ‘The Thames’) to be a replacement drummer. The rest of us never asked Alan how much we were getting paid, but we were sure to walk away with cash in our pockets.

When we walked in there was a bar to the left that ran the distance of the building and a few small tables scattered on the floor. There were a couple of slow moving ceiling fans and some dim lighting even in the middle of the day. There were no windows on the side and just a door in the back to take out the trash. Next to the bathroom door was our spot.

Bill didn’t have a large kit but we let him set up first, then we’d find our place around him. We found some extension cords we ran across the floor which certainly not up to code. There was only room for one microphone so we would have to step over each other.

The bartender gave us the nod and we started to play. There was no dress code so we just had casual beachwear of shorts and sandals. Our audience was two couples. One guy looked like a sailor and they all appeared drunk. One couple got up and stumbled around on an empty spot on the floor then slumped back to their table for another round. They didn’t seem to like or dislike our sound. We were just being tolerated. Maybe there would be a bigger crowd as it got later?

Some guy came through the door flashing sunlight in the darkness. He walked over to the bartender and started pointing at us. He was carrying a clipboard. They talked for a while and then he left with the bartender shaking his head.

When we took a break, the bartender beckoned Alan over to the bar. Since we didn’t have any water or food, the rest of us walked outside to get a breather of fresh air. There were some kids about our age milling around. Perhaps they heard us and came by? Perhaps this was the townies’ dance spot? Perhaps they were just bored kids looking for something to do? Wally struck up a conversation with one of the girls while Paul, Bill and I stood back letting him break the ice.

On the way back in Alan said we couldn’t play anymore. He said the guy with the clipboard was the local Bureau of Alcohol inspector and the state had an age requirement for who could enter or much less work at an establishment that sold beer.

Wally, Paul and I had fake IDs for our local bars that didn’t give a close look, but Bill had a baby face and couldn’t pass for acceptable drinking age. We made the decision to let Bill sit out and I’d play the drums. Alan would fill in the bass with his sax and we went back to playing. We didn’t sound as good but we were adapting to the moment. We were also playing to an empty room.

At the end of the second set, Alan went back to the bar. There was another long conversation as we watched from the distance. He finally came back and said to unplug. The owner was afraid the inspector would come back and he could lose his business license. We packed up our stuff and loaded up the cars while the townie kids surrounded the cars. We had no choice. The show at the Club-A-Go-Go was over.

Alan did get us two six-packs to drink outside but didn’t know if he had been paid any money. Wally picked up where he’d left off with the same young lady and we made a few friends by sharing the beer. It was getting dark and we had no place to go. After the beer ran out we just stood around talking to the local kids. The girls were rather impressed with unknown boys and the boys were not very happy about the attention we were getting. The boys gathered their group and wandered off.

Now alone in front of the Club A-Go-Go while older folks wandered in to the sound of bottles and a blasting jukebox that should have been us. Being hot, hungry, thirsty and tired, we made the ‘wise’ decision to drive the cars onto the beach and sleep. It sounded good at the time but we were learning.

We rolled out into the sand, rolled down the windows and crammed in between the guitars and drums. Then we got visitors.

The wind was blowing from the landside and brought hungry mosquitoes to feast on the boys from out of town. We tried rolling up the windows but it was too hot. We decided to go back to the blacktop parking lot but large cars full of heavy instruments had sunk in the sand. We tried spinning forward then backward and only got deeper. While our little vampire friends drained us, we unloaded everything, including the spare tire and started pushing. We’d push until we couldn’t breath and only made a few feet. We might be stuck here until morning.

Then the local gang walked by pointing and laughing at our dilemma. The girlfriends directed the boys to go help us and reluctantly they found a spot around the car. With a few heave hoes, we somehow pulled both cars out of the sand. The guys didn’t hang around for our appreciation.

We wandered back in the sand picking up parts and pieces in the moonlight and repacked the cars. Exhaustion was overwhelming our scratching arms and legs.

Then Paul chimed up about his aunt who lived in Elizabeth City. We didn’t know if we had enough gas or which way to go but it was better than being eaten by insects so off we went. A two-car caravan roaming through the darkness trying to stay awake and not run off the road, ‘The Chapperells’ were on the move.

Paul said he had been there before but didn’t know the address. We just trusted in him to find the house in the dark. It was late when we pulled up to a white two-story house. All the windows were dark as were the neighbors. There was no motions or sounds. It was decided to wait until sunrise to knock on the door. Paul walked around back and in a chain link fenced yard there was a large sprawling tree. We sat down in the wet grass leaning up against the trunk and immediately fell asleep.

At daybreak I heard a noise that interrupted my dreams. I opened one eye and saw a few feet away a double-barrel shotgun pointed at me by some old guy in a bathrobe. I didn’t move.

“Paul? Is that you?” called a woman’s voice from the backdoor.

Paul got up and replied while the rest of us tried to disappear. He walked up to the backdoor and greeted his aunt. She called out to her home security system to lower his gun for Paul and his friends. We all grinned Chelsea cat grins and didn’t make any sudden moves.

She showed more southern hospitality. We were treated to stacks of flapjacks, milk and coffee. We were dirty, smelly and covered in bug bites but were happy to be full rather than pushing up daisies. After some heartfelt good-byes, we climbed back in our stuffed vehicles and headed back the way we came.

Wally, Alan and Bill headed back home and Paul and I went along the beach road to meet up with a high school buddy at ‘Seashore State Park’.

When we found the park there was a booth that stopped all cars trying to enter. This was not a free park so visitors had to have some information about whom they were visiting. Park rangers wrote down license plate numbers and were suspicious to these two kids in a car packed with guitars looking for a good time.

Rather than have an extended conversation, we decided to just go looking for my schoolmate. The rangers hopped in a jeep and started following us. I don’t remember if they had a siren.

Campsites under trees all look alike, especially on two hours sleep. We circled around and then back again until suddenly there was a large group of kids. One kid was head taller than everyone else so I knew that was Joel (who would later be our singer in another band).

I hopped out of the car, Paul continued back to the highway and the rangers went back to tracking families with campers and tents. Joel’s family had invited me to camp with them for a weekend but they probably didn’t expect such excitement. I got to take a cold shower, have a meal cooked over a grill, grow a beard and sleep in the back of a Rambler station wagon. All good.

I told the story of my adventure so far as we walked around on the beach. We thought we saw a spaceship and reported our sighting to the rangers. We also found a dead dolphin.

Joel and I had been walking home together after school. He was better writing words with his poetry and would sing to my tunes. We wrote a song at the beach but had no paper so wrote the words on my shirt. The shirt had seen better days so the sleeve was torn off, thus the song “From A Shirt Sleeve”.

‘The Chapperells’ were not the only band I listened to. In the same auditorium that I’d listened to the local symphony and would later walk across the stage to receive my diploma, I would watch the real pros do their acts on the east coast circuit. One weekend evening might be “Peter, Paul and Mary” (the folk movement was still strong) and the next weekend “The Dave Clark Five”. It was a good excuse for a date, but I watched every move, checked out every guitar and amplipher and studied how every song was presented. I probably paid more attention to the show than my date because that was the only date.

On this adventure at the beach, Joel, who had learned the stick shift had borrowed the Rambler to drive down the beach for some reason. As fate would have it, on the way back we passed a dome shaped building that was an arena for local dances or speeches or club gatherings. On the sign by the road announcing events said: ‘The Rolling Stones / July 4^th’. The Rolling Stones? Those Rolling Stones? That band from England I’d been buying all their vinyl Rolling Stones? We circled back around and checked the box office.

Found out later this was a last minute addition to the bands planned dates. Traveling bands don’t make any money unless they are recording or selling tickets playing a show, so Virginia Beach was added.

Don’t remember whether it was before or after we saw the sign, I had gone to a bank to cash a check I had since I didn’t have any cash. I didn’t have an account in that particular branch but it was the same bank as written on the check. The cashier wouldn’t cash it.

Thankfully Joel’s parents, being my second mom and dad, loaned me the money for a ticket and a program that was just weird pictures of the band promoting their new album ‘Aftermath’.

There wasn’t a packed crowd but I figured there would be hoards of screaming girls up front to the stage, so we sat in the back. I forgot in this state our teens sat properly and listened. There was not rushing the stage or yelling. We attended rock concerts like going to church.

We had a good view of the stage, sitting on the backs of folding chairs.

As with every teen presentation, a local radio station DJ came out to work the crowd. He promoted the future acts, promoted the radio station as a sponsor, promoted himself and then introduced the warm-up band.

The first act was a local band called ‘The Castaways’. They played two forgettable songs and they were over. A pause with a couple of adjustments on the stage then the second band, ‘McCoys’ with their hit ‘Hang On Sloopy’ and a stand up drummer. They played a few more songs and the crowd started to stir. A closed curtain, more DJ rant and shuffling backstage. Then ‘The Standells’, from Boston, came out with their current hit ‘Dirty Water’. The drummer sang and they were the tightest of all the bands so far.

Began wondering if ‘the Rolling Stones’ had gotten sidetrack or late or wouldn’t show up at all. Then behind the curtain there was these guitars playing the blues. It sounded familiar and I could have listened to it for hours, but the curtain pulled back and there were ‘the Rolling Stones’. Mick, Keith, Brian, Bill and Charlie started in with one of their radio hits and everyone applauded. Mick commented on how ‘nice’ this audience was, looking a bit surprised and maybe disappointed. This band had become newsworthy by the riots they caused in Europe so no screaming girls rushing the stage must have seemed different. They played some songs I already knew from vinyl and some I hadn’t heard of before on their new album but enjoyed every note. They ended with their smash hit ‘Satisfaction’, gave some passive waves and walked off behind the curtain. There were no screaming fans. There was no rush of photographers. The show was over.

As the crowd started to thin out, I suggest we take a different door by the stage. This is where the story gets strange. You can believe it or not.

Joel and I walked toward the door and I noticed a room to the right. The door was open and there were a bunch of people standing around talking in there. I poked my head in and saw some of the previous band members, some reporter types writing on paper pads and some other guys just standing around. There was Keith. There was Brian. There was Mick Jagger. I figured they had been rushed away like they do in the newsreels, but perhaps this calm crowd didn’t cause a need for a panicked escape.

I suddenly realized I was in the inner circle and had not been noticed yet. Fear took the better part of valor and I thought, “Pick up something and walk away and security will think we are part of the crew.” I handed Joe some cables and I grabbed a guitar case and we casually walked out the door.

Joel threw away the cables but I had one of the guitar cases of the Rolling Stones. It was light so I thought it was empty. When we got back to the car, I popped it open and found Bill Wyman’s Vox sunburst teardrop bass guitar. I had just stolen a Rolling Stone guitar.  Had to hock it later to get out of tax debt.

‘The Chapperells’ would travel up to Maryland or down to South Carolina for a gig or two in a weekend, then go back to school during the week. Some were seedy little bars like the one in Nags Head and others were cheesy hotel dances. After we stopped the show, we either slept in the parking lot or all stayed in one room of a questionable motel instead of getting paid. If one of the band members hooked up with a local, he’d put a coat hanger on the door and the rest of us would wander around in the parking lot.

One memorable trip was down to South Carolina. We were supposing to play at some bedbug ridden hotel party and the next day play for some dance hall for a church party, and then drive back home. A typical weekend if ‘The Chapperells’ could play.

I remember a two-lane highway with no traffic. We’d passed through North Carolina and seemed to be cruising for another hour before we reached our destination. We were completely lost but followed the pavement that led us south. There were four of us crammed in the lead car and two more following behind. We were singing the songs on whatever radio signal we could get and just laughing and smoking cigarettes. We weren’t causing no trouble.

Then, another surprise.

Our caravan was being pulled over by a flashing red light. We pulled over to the side of the road (being those fine outstanding all American lads who obey of the law) and waited. We looked through the back window at the car behind who looked back at us in wonderment. What had we done?

This reminded me of my brief stint of driving back home. My country club friends (not to be confused with my ‘high school’ friends, my ‘scout’ friends, my ‘church’ friends or my ‘band mates’) enjoyed gathering at a little pub called the ‘T-Room’ (or Tempo Room). This was a place we could drink 3.2 beers with fake IDs and meet girls. Most of these kids were above my social class level but I knew them from elementary school.

One of their games was to drag race from one end of the avenue back to the tavern.

I’d had just gotten my driver’s license. I hadn’t driven any of my friends because I rarely had access to the car. My choices were a yellow Ford Galaxies XL with black bucket seats and a ragtop or a green Ford 65 Mustang with a 6-cylinder engine.

Now and then I would be given the keys to go to the grocery for a pint of ice cream or some milk. The trip would usually take about 15-minutes, but I’d detour to the ‘T-Room’.

A group of us would meet inside and then go out to start deviating up the girls. A pair of guys would decide who would ‘race to win’.

Two cars would slowly roll down the street building our confidence and nerve. We’d point west down the out-going and on-coming lane, count off, and hit the pedal.

Traffic at this time of night in that neighborhood was light so we could just blast down the street without interruption. Occasionally a car was coming in the other direction and the person in the left lane had to decide whether to zoom ahead or fall behind. The path dropped down before the railroad tracks and then widen for maneuverability. This is where the race began. If we made it through the stoplight we climbed a hill to another light to pause or blast through and a straight run to the T-Room.

My friend’s cars varied from MGs to Jaguars and I had American made Fords. I still participated.

If I was driving the Galaxies, the other car would pull out fast and I’d follow building up speed until I got to the top of the hill. Then that big engine would roar and would slowly overcome whatever challenged it. The Mustang was a flyer. From the first stomp, it was going to win even without power steering. Those little foreign cars couldn’t keep up but there was a problem.

One of our cities finest knew we were racing and waited for us. Just past the railroad bridge, he’d sit and wait.

As soon as we roared by he’d light up and follow.

Being a good law abiding citizen, I’d always pull over and wait. Sometimes the other kids would keep racing off and the cop would follow. Sometimes both of us would pull over and get our lectures and tickets.

The next time the T-Room gang met, we’d laugh about our race and getting caught. I found out that they were getting passes because of their father’s connections and I had a stack of speeding tickets.

I also lost out on the girls to guys with foreign cars.

After a trip to court with my father my choice was to give up my driver’s license.

Back in South Carolina, I didn’t know this police officer. I had no reference to my family back two states away. I was an unknown kid with a bunch of other unknown kids zooming down the highway in some Podunk town and caught in a speed trap.

The three cars sat on the side of an empty highway in the middle of nowhere and waited. This was the time when the newspapers reported white kids driving to the south to protest desegregation and winding up dead on the side of the road. We had no political agenda and waited.

While we stared back at the flashing light, the policeman slowly climbed out of his car and put his hat on. He had a Billy club on his belt and a big gun strapped on. He was a hefty guy with a big star on his white shirt. He walked up peering into each car at his own pace noticing we were from out-of-state. When he reached our car he leaned down and examined the front and back seats. I think he had his hand on his gun.

Tommy was driving the car and had rolled up the window, even in the southern heat. Tommy was staring straight ahead as if he was still driving. The officer stared at him without saying a word. Tommy turned his head, rolled down the window and said “I’ll have two burgers and fries” then rolled the window back up. The rest of us froze.

The person wearing the badge and carrying the gun raised his Billy club and tapped on the window. We were about to come under unknown authority in a foreign land.

Tommy rolled down the window and grinned.

As I recall the conversation went something like this.

“Where are you kids from?” “Where you going to?”

For a drummer, Tommy was quick with his response. He gave some blather about going to some rat-infested motel and his explanation was not winning us any points. Alan, who had arranged this trip, was in the second car and couldn’t help us out.

The officer, seeing all the guitars cases and mess in the back seat asks, “You kids play music?”

This was when Tommy’s quick wit saved us.

“Yes sir” he replied. “We play all the popular tunes. We’re going down to play a church dance, you know?”

The policeman was listening.

“We play Hank Williams and Merle Haggard. We play Johnny Cash and George Jones and all that stuff”

“You play the Everly Brothers? I like them boys.”

“Oh yes sir, we know all their songs. ‘Bye Bye Love’, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, ‘All I have to do is dream’ and even ‘Cathy’s Clown’.

The officer backed up and pondered his next move. We all waited.

“OK, you boys follow me”

We’d passed the test and had a police escort to our destination and lived to tell the tale.

Another unforgettable gig was a pool birthday party for the daughter of a friend of my mother’s. ‘The Chapperells’ pulled up a long gravel driveway to a house the size of a museum.

Since I was the spokesman on this occasion, I introduced myself in proper manner to the lord of the manor.

There were kids splashing in a pool and seeming to be oblivious to our arrival. We unpacked our gear and set up on the concrete around the pool.

Now playing electrical equipment around a swimming pool can be forbidden at best.

We ran our usual extension cords to the house and plugged in our amps. The drums were set up on a towel but it would not hold back the water.

‘The Chapperells’ played a tight set to teenagers with something else on their minds but dancing. Water splashed everywhere and we continued to play. There was no dancing or even acknowledgement that we, ‘The Chapperells’, were there.

After we’d played all the songs we knew, the lord of the manor requested we keep playing. We obliged.

As the sun went down, we were playing the same songs for the third time and it didn’t matter. ‘The Chapperells’ were just the background soundtrack to this birthday party.

As kids started disappearing into the shadows, I had to relieve myself during a break before the next session. I walked into a house of dark wooden walls adorned with animal heads and massive paintings of ancient people and rugs that felt like sand. As I wandered to the water closet I did appreciate the knickknacks of these people. Perhaps I can borrow a few things before I leave?

The band surrounded me wanting to know if we were done and when do we get paid. I seemed to be I was the point man so I wandered toward the house to get our pay.

The father staggered out, obliviously tipsy and slapped a pile of cash in my hand. “Keep playing”

I went back to the band and we obliged.

Even without an audience we sounded good in this nature’s auditorium. Each time we played a song it sounded better and better. We also hadn’t been electrocuted.

Finally when every kid was invisible, we started packing up our gear and loading the cars. A few kids came out to see us depart but were not interested in becoming familiar with us. We were just hired help.

While waiting for the check to be delivered, the birthday girl called me over. She had gotten a white motorcycle for a birthday gift and wanted to ride it. She wrapped me behind her and headed down a gravel road to the river in the darkness. It was a thrill for her and a panic for me. I grabbed hold of whatever I could and she liked it. The wheels skid to a halt in the darkness. She turned around and gave me a big smooch.

There was a pause and then she fired up the engine and swirled around back up the gravel road spitting out rocks as we went.

We unmounted next to the pool and she went her way and I went my way. The whole incident may have been to make her boyfriend jealous?

When I got back to ‘the band’ I was the bait of ridicule.

After all our guitars and drums and amps were packed away, I walked up to the house for a final request for a payment.

Her father, my mother’s friend, was blitzed by this time wrote a huge check and handed a pile of cash and seemed very happy we had been there before he staggered back inside. We were never invited back.

‘The Chapperells’ had a gigantic check, but it was the weekend and after 5PM and there was no bank to cash it. Late at night and we had to decide how to pay each other for all our good music.

Someone suggested a local barbecue restaurant that would accept checks.

Six sweaty kids walked in and asked to see the owner. We pleaded our cause to cash-a-check in the middle of the night for some kids that were totally unknown. We needed a lawyer and an accountant.

The ‘name’ on the check convinced the proprietor that it could be covered, ‘The Chapperells’ appeared to be wholesome kids and we got our pay.

I learned a lot from this group of boys interested in performing music for others. I learned when musicians gel together the results are better than any one alone. I learned playing music was not easy, but it was fun. I learned the people in the room were not just there to listen, but to dance. I learned the interplay between dancers and musicians was critical for the whole thing to work. I learned when it did work, it was magic.

I had been to a few dances and understood how the dance floor worked when the music was right. Now I’d seen the dance floor from another perspective. Knowing when a band was not just posers mimicking poster idols but were a conglomeration of musical ideas and talents, the dancers danced and the band played on.

Notice how a guitarist holds the instrument. It is a dancing position.

This group of guys taught me new things and took me to places I’d never thought of. We were never close friends but when needed we had each other’s back.

Wally and Paul were driving somewhere for something (probably a place we could buy beer for his dad with fake IDs) and I tagged along. We were driving down a two-lane road I’d never been on. It was between the country club and the McMansions on the river. We pulled in on a gravel parking lot to some sort of gas station and convenience store. There were several large old cars parked but no one in sight. It was a hot summer day with the windows rolled down but opening the door a blast of cold air hit us from the noisy rattling air conditioners blowing frost in every direction.

It was dark inside. It was not only the low lighting but also dark.

Wally walked over to a counter and got three bottles of beer. As the big man behind the counter popped the caps without a word just stared at us as Wally laid down some bills. I don’t remember if they were Schlitz or Carlings but they were terrible. Still they were wet on a hot day so we downed them like soda pop.

There was some music playing through a curtain that was blowing in the arctic air. Wally walk in and Paul and I followed. There was some tables scattered about and some folks standing against the wall and a small counter in the back and some guy playing an electric guitar through a tiny amp in the corner and it was dark in there too. No one said a word but we knew the spotlight was on us.

Wally acted like he’d been there before so we just sat down milking our warm beer and listening to this basic music.

At the end of a couple of songs, no one clapped but just shuffled around.

Wally nodded and we got up and left. He picked up a case of beer on the way out and we climbed back in the hot seats on the way back.

It was a life altering experience to have a chance to visit the black world and listen to non-homogenized music in a juke joint.

Of all the bands I played in, these guys made every note count.

 

We never had a rehearsal again. Maybe it was girlfriends or maybe they left for other bands or just lost interest…

To this day when I hear that bell of the ride cymbal, I know it is Tommy starting us off. “ I know you wanna leave me, but I refuse to let you go.”

 

Then the band broke up.

 

Our set list was:

The Chapperells (circa 1965)

Louie, Louie (Richard Berry)

         Night Train (Oscar Washington, Jimmy Forrest)

         Fever (Eddie Cooley, John Davenport)

         In My Room (Brian Wilson, Gary Usher)

         Long Tall Texan

(Little Richard, Robert Blackwell, Enotris Johnson)

         Cleo’s Mood/ Hot Cha

(Junior Walker, Harvey Fuqua, Willie Woods/ Willie Woods)

         Shake A Tailfeather (Otha Hayes, Verlie Rice, Andre Williams)

         We Gotta Get Out Of This Place (Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann)

         Searching (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller)

         Mickey’s Monkey (Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, Eddie Holland)

         Hot Pastrami (Dessie Rozier)

         Green Onions

(Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg, Al Jackson Jr.)

         Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock)

         Ebb Tide (Robert Maxwell)

         Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag (James Brown)

         Philly Dog (Rufus Thomas)

         Shotgun (George Ezra, Joel Pott, Fred Gibson)

         High Heel Sneakers (Tommy Tucker)

         Money (Janie Bradford, Berry Gordy)

         20-75 (Willie Mitchell)

Wally – lead guitar (Gretch), Gibson amp

Paul – rhythm guitar (Epiphone), Epiphone amp

Cliff  – bass (Gibson firebird, Ampeg fretless, Fender jaguar 6-string), Fender bassman 4x10”amp

Alan - sax

Jimmy – sax, trumpet, trombone

Tommy – drums (Ludwig)

 

 

         

• • •

 

Chapter 5 – United Sound/ Turnpike North

I want to play in another band.

After school television was full of teen dance shows featuring the latest billboard hits and fuzzy images of bands lip-syncing songs with their antics miming the Beatles. ‘Paul Revere & the Raiders’, ‘The Byrds’, ‘The Kinks’ and many more would get their three minutes of air time and we all watched.

A friend from high school was getting a band together or he already had a band together. He told me about it and I asked if I could sit in with them to jam?

There may have been some trading of dead presidents for a small bag of parsley, but it was the mid sixties.

Gene lived close enough to walk to so I carried my new (to me) Hagstrom 12-string sunburst guitar. Hagstrom was a Swedish guitar manufacturer and I’d never seen any other. I had gotten interested in that ‘jangling’ sound of the Byrds and George Harrison’s guitar but also like the full sound of a 12-string in folk music. It was within my pocket change so I bought it off the wall from a jewelry store on one of my ventures downtown.

I reached Gene’s house and knocked on the door. There was a rumble in the ground muffled by the bushes.

Gene led me downstairs to the basement. I don’t remember ever meeting his parents so it seemed he ruled the house.

The basement was much different than Vic’s Monument Avenue mansion’s basement. There were no stacks of cardboard boxes or piles of newspapers and magazines. It was a large, mostly empty space but it was different.

First the walls were painted. The pipes were painted. The floor was painted. The paint was all day-glo in sparkling purples and pinks and yellows. There were abstract designs and swashes and splashes of color. It created an atmosphere I’d become familiar with.

In one corner there was a drum kit. Lots of cymbals hid the small drummer smiling on the stool behind it. He seemed a happy young kid wearing a horizontal strip shirt and a long stripped stocking cap hanging over his shoulder. He was always laughing. Joey was probably eternally stoned.

On a stool sat Sonny, smoking. He was wearing mirrored shades in the darkness and never smiled. His hair was longer than the rest and rested on his leather jacket shoulders. He had this huge Gibson firebird guitar and a fairly large Gibson amp. When his smoke was done, he’d drop it on the cement floor, smash it with the heel of his motorcycle boot, then light another one.

Standing on the other side of the drums was a smallest guy with a Gibson SG bass and a large Vox amp. Guthrie was a mix between Sonny and Joey. He seemed friendly and smiling but was quirky and quiet. His blonde hair was a combed bowl shape like Brian Jones but longer. He wore military jackets with buttons and badges.

This ‘band’ didn’t talk much.

A couple of girls sat in a corner with an open newspaper and a bag of what appeared to be green leaves. They just giggled and rolled numbers. The basement was pretty much filled with a smoky haze dim lit with glo lights.

Something happened to my Hagstrom 12-string, so I went back to ‘Cary Gee’ and bought a Goya 12-string acoustic. Somehow 12-string guitars are cheaper than six strings?

I took my new Goya blonde 12-string acoustic guitar out and started tuning. A 12-string takes a bit longer to tune and I couldn’t easily change keys with a double elastic strap capo. Even as loud as a 12-string can be, I’d be lost in the noise of the amplifiers and drums.

Since there wasn’t a set list of songs and we’d never played together and no one seemed to want to talk, we just nodded at each other and passed around pre-pared joints.

There was constant traffic of kids coming and going, sitting for a short stint and then leaving. Gene was the master of ceremonies conducting this circus.

Gene had left the basement only to return down the steps with a Negro.

Jim Crow was just fading away. Our high school had just become integrated but there were none of ‘them’ in my classes. ‘They’ stayed in a pretty tight pack together so kids were still adjusting by avoiding each other.

Growing up in Jim Crow, everyone in my school looked like me. Everyone in my church looked like me. Everyone at camp looked like me. The only interaction with the ‘other’ race that lived in town was the janitors, cleaning maids and servers at my father’s club. Even passing on the street there was never any acknowledgment of the other. 

Gene explained later he wanted two singers and one of them had to be a soul singer. Bernie was his choice.

Have no idea where the connection between Gene and Bernie came from but here we all were in a smoky basement setting up microphones and getting feedback bouncing off the brick walls and just staring at each other.

Bernie seemed a bit older than the rest of us and was dressed in a sharkskin suit. His shoes were shiny, as he’d slid across the floor.

If I felt out-of-place, Bernie must have known he was on the other side of the redline and alone. He only talked to Gene and was much more interest in the girls on the floor than the rest of us.

What makes a band, a band is how they come together and make a sound. Joey was a pounder, Guthrie echoed the bass drum, Sonny played few notes but they were right. 

Then Gene and Bernie sang and it was if they’d been in a choir together. The two voices melted together and complimented each other. Music seemed to bring them together and the rest of us followed along.

Let me tell you about Gene.

I don’t remember taking any classes with him, but maybe we’d been in art class? Maybe he’d painted the walls? I do remember we talked about music and thus here I was.

Gene was a doppelganger for John Sebastian of the ‘Lovin’ Spoonful’. His hair wasn’t that long but with his round granny glasses and welcoming smile, he played the part.

My town still hadn’t gotten into the cool clothing for kids, but across the divide where the pawnshops were, the Jewish merchants were displaying in the windows wild designs and bright colors.

For the first time, I was buying my own clothing. I never knew the sizes but liked the style so the pants were too short or the shirt too baggy. Nothing matched and was certainly not to wear to the country club, but walking down the street made a statement. There were ‘dress’ clothing, ‘school’ clothing and ‘band’ clothing. There were patch madras pants (from golfing) and strip pirate pants that were too short, flowered pants, tie-dye bellbottoms and red velvet pants with poke-dot or flowered shirts.

One of my favorite recollections was going downtown to the established department store and just walking around. We had no intention to purchase anything but we wanted to be noticed. Gene would lead with his fringe vest and flowered shirts and beads, followed by Sonny in his black leather and shades and Joey in his stripped garb. I’d found an army jacket with lots of pockets to carry my pipes and black Cavendish tobacco. The blue jeans were tight and the Beatle boots completed the swagger. What made this event in time so memorable was Guthrie.

At one door where the ladies in white gloves would enter there was a fountain splashing perfume or Eau De Toilette to be sampled. The smell of the room was overwhelming so it may have also kept out the flies. On this trip, Guthrie, who was wearing a red British Uniform Royal Guard Soldier Fancy Dress Grenadier Trooper Tunic Jacket, became a doorman. When shoppers approached the door, Guthrie opened it then closed it behind them. He never spoke. We should have had a camera.

Don’t know if Sonny or Joey or Guthrie or Bernie went to school, but only now and then did we all get together in Gene’s basement. It was mostly the same every time.

A few others would sit in the corners and watch as we learned different arrangements to the songs that were popular on the radio. Without any effect pedals or engineering know how, we’d come up with sounds that might simulate what the professionals had. We’d use a vacuum to make the sound of a jet taking off. We’d play louder and louder until the amps were also smoking. Sometimes Bernie would show up, sometimes Gene sang solo.

We didn’t have enough microphones to capture my new Goya acoustic 12-string so I found a pickup that would slip in the sound hole under the strings but had an unattractive cord hanging out. It was too far to drag my Fender bassman, I’d just plug into Sonny’s amp.

If we did play anywhere, Gene would introduce us as “United Sound”. When Bernie didn’t show up, we were “Turnpike North”. I remember because I would make these cardboard signs to fit Joey’s bass drum head.

At the same time, I’d started writing my own music. I was trying to turn my archtop guitar to sound like a sitar with open tuning, learning about slide music and Indian drones. I was also collaborating with Joe(l) because his poetry was better than my grammar, but there will be more on that later.  I also borrowed a reel-to-reel tape recorder and started experimenting with clips from 45s and recording at different speeds and backwards. The attempt is posted on the Internet.

Someone invited me to the ‘professional’ recording studio on Broad Street. “Alpha Audio” was making tapes for advertising agencies for radio spots or commercials, but also had time to squeeze in some local talent. Probably the most popular vinyl was the ‘Escorts’ recording of a dance in the basement of the Mosque. The ‘Bring Down The House’ album with the band on the rubble of the former dancehall Tantilla and a semi-hit ‘Shake A Tail Feather’ hit all the right buttons. All the songs were covers so were familiar to the listeners. Have no idea of the record sales but I still have mine.

I just stood in the background and watched the confusion. Start, stop, rewind, start…. the procedure was a frustrating dance. I was impressed at a guy name Joe who worked the faders and also filled in on guitar. A happy guy who seemed to enjoy whatever happened next. I met him later when a friend wanted to move an upright piano up three flights of stairs for his brother. While filling the walls with empty pony bottles Joe and I shared a guitar and rock & roll.

My only other experience with a professional-recording studio was ‘Crackers’ studio in an abandoned building. It was a very laid back atmosphere as the band was writing while recording. I chimed in a couple of ideas and even played a bass part but mostly watched.

The rest of recording went on at ‘nimrodstudios’ with play and record at the same time, but that was later.

I don’t think “United Sound/Turnpike North” ever played anywhere other than Gene’s basement and even with the creative direction of experimentation, time passed on.

 

Then the band broke up.

 

Our set list was:

United Sound / Turnpike North (circa 1965)

The Great Airplane Strike

(Paul Revere, Mark A. Lindsay, Terry Melcher)

         Wild Thing (Chip Taylor)

         Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)

         Back in the U.S.S.R. (Lennon-McCartney)

         New Orleans (Jimmy Driftwood)

         12-bar Blues (Trad.)

         He Was A Friend Of Mine (Trad.)

         High & Dry (Jagger-Richards)

         I Got The Blues (Jagger-Richards)

         I’m Waiting For My Man (Lou Reed)

         Jenny (John Mayall)

Gene - vocals

Bernie - vocals

Sonny – guitar (Gibson firebird) Gibson amp

Cliff – guitar (Goya 12-string) Fender bassman amp

Guthrie – bass (Gibson SG) Vox amp

Joey – drums (Slingerland)

 

         

• • •

 

Chapter 6 – Thursday Night

I needed to form another band.

I wanted to get back to performing in front of an audience and perhaps play some original songs.

I met a guy I’d known in passing from junior high. He was older than the rest of the class so I figured it was not his first rodeo. He and another guy used to hang together and never saw them intermingle with the rest of the class. Figured he was a JD.

Alex was a drummer and he needed a band. I wanted a band and needed a drummer.

Alex was a tall lanky guy with short hair. His family had a big house on Monument Avenue with a garage with plenty of space for the potential next Billboard #1 hit.

Now we had to form a band.

Wanted a performance band instead of a dance band, but we learned to adapt.

I’d lost track of Wally but remained friends with Paul and his ’56 Desoto. We had the rhythm guitar player and we had played together enough to know where we were going.

Alex suggested we post an audition for band members so we reserved a room at his church, set up a long table and listened to a bunch of kids play their instruments while we made notes. It looked very professional.

Don’t know where he got the idea because we didn’t have any management (that I knew of) but it seemed to work. I was surprised how bad so many were but I remember this one kid. He said he had come down from D.C. on his way to California. He had this long straight hair with a headband and dark granny glasses. He played his bass and sounded good but decided to move on instead of being ‘our’ bass player.

Steve, a guy I knew from high school, played guitar. We’d gotten together a few times to jam. He mostly played top 40 hits and country western while I was playing the blues covers of covers. He, like Paul, was always working on his car. He also was a curious guy who experimented with Popular Electronics. This was a skill that would come in handy to re-solder our guitar cables and speakers. He was also building a telescope.

I believe his guitar amp was built from parts from Radio Shack. His guitar was a red Harmony double cutaway ‘Rocket’ with two pickups and big white knobs. I think he ordered it from a Sears catalog.

Steve’s guitar was better than my ‘Linda’ electric, so I had to buy another electric guitar. All the name brands (Gibson, Fender, Gretsch) were still out of my price range, so back to the pawnshop to find an axe.

In one place was a blonde hollow body guitar with three pickups and a whammy bar. No matter what it sounded like, it had three pickups AND a whammy bar. On the headstock was the name ‘Framus’. It was a German manufacturer I’d never heard of. It had lots of knobs for all the pickups, switches to blend tones, a pinky volume knob and a mute bridge. I found out later its model was called ‘Golden Television’. Who knew?

It was lightweight being totally hollow body and looked kind of cool and no one else had anything like it. It wasn’t set up very well but with a thin neck became easy to play. This would be my ‘lead’ guitar.

I needed a singer for the band.

Joe and I met up in high school homeroom and would walk home together everyday. He had similar taste, clothing and was polite. We started collaborating in writing music and I’d strum the guitar and he would sing. More on that later.

His family lived across the railroad tracks. His house was similar to mine but his father and mother both worked. He had a sister who looked just like him. His family seemed to interconnect the way my cousins did, but not my family. This would become my second home.

Joe would go on adventurous vacations collecting rocks with his dad. His itch to wander the world exists to this day.

He was a tall 6’4” guy with a large nose and big feet. He ran track and took Latin. He was breeding to follow his father’s teaching occupation. He left town after school to go to a prestigious ivy-league university while the rest of us went to the local community college.

So Joe was going to be the singer, Steve the six-string bass player, Paul the rhythm guitarist and backup singer, Alex on drums and I would play ‘lead’ guitar and backup Joe’s singing.

We started practices in Alex’s garage learning covers of popular tunes creating our own arrangements for a different sound. We would practice for a bit then his mother would come out with some baklava and we’d take a break. She was probably getting noise complaints from the neighbors.

Every time we’d play a song, it sounded different and was becoming an original sound. Songs were sped up or slowed down. There were no boundaries of making dance numbers.

Even on a weekend, a rock band playing in a brick garage with the door open could make a lot of noise. If anyone ever yelled at us to “Turn It Down”, we never heard it, until the police rolled up.

The cities finest came by and it wasn’t to review our song selection. We had to find another place to practice. None of us had enough room in their houses to squeeze all this equipment in, but Alex had a basement.

You know those guys you see at all the festivals who roam the stage moving the boxes, running the cables, positioning the lights, placing the monitors, setting up the microphones, testing the sound and waiting in the sideline to run out on the stage to make adjustments? We didn’t have those guys.

The previous band, ‘The Chapperells’ had once played at a ballroom/bowling alley venue where all the equipment had to be carried up a thin rusty metal fire escape on the side of the building. After lugging all this heavy awkward equipment up and down two flight of steps, then play for two hours under hot lights with no breaks, then drag it all back to the cars was not worth what we got paid.

So us band members/musicians/singers/roadies crammed the basement with large boxes with speakers and running extension cords everywhere. The basement was jammed and damp and long and shallow. No room to learn dance moves. It was below ground so we could practice and not disturb the neighbors.

I brought an old friend in who would later be an apartment roommate. Bill and I had grown up since elementary school and I knew he played saxophone. He played in the school orchestra but I wasn’t sure how he would fit in with a rock band. We tried a few numbers but without sheet music he couldn’t interpret and improvise what he was hearing and what he knew about his horn. Thank you for stopping by.

We only practiced a few times and kept changing the song list when Alex said we had gotten a gig at his church. There was going to be a dance on the indoor basketball court (the church was that big) and there would be a Greek band for the adults and we would be the band for the ‘kids’.

Again we needed a name to be introduced by. When was this dance? Thursday night. That was it. We were called ‘Thursday Night’. 

It never crossed our minds that this was a ‘dance’.

About this time Alex had found a guy who wanted to manage us. Kenny worked at one of the finer music stores downtown. He made some great promises then got some hokey business cards printed up. We were now ‘specializing in music for swinging teens’ with a clarinet, saxophone and piano players (all instruments we didn’t play) in a 40’s big band graphic style.

So the night of Thursday came around and we all met in the church’s parking lot. Alex directed us to the door behind the stage where we could leave our guitar cases and coats. There were soft drinks available and everyone was very accommodating. We hauled my gigantic Fender bassman on the stage but it didn’t fit where I was going to be standing so we moved it to the other side of the stage. Steve could use it with my guitar and the Greek band could use it. Alex spent the rest of the time setting up his kit and all his cymbals. We didn’t have ‘Thursday Night’ printed on the bass drum.

First the Greek band played singing words we didn’t understand and playing instruments we’d never seen. The dance floor was full of happy people skipping around waving white handkerchiefs in air. The party had begun.

After some stumbling over each other and some feedback, Alex counted us off and we were playing “Little Latin Loupe Lu”. We were so pumped by adrenaline, we played it about twice as fast as it should be and it was over in a moment. Then we played “Glad All Over” at the same pace and the dancers didn’t have a chance to keep up. We played a couple of numbers that were more joke numbers than dance songs, then a slow number to give the audience a break.

If you’ve ever seen “The Last Waltz” notice Robbie Robertson directing the Band and guest while playing and singing. G. E. Smith from the old ‘Saturday Night Live’ band did the same directing of musicians live. Trying to keep a band together in a show that is nothing more than another rehearsal is difficult. There is no waving a baton to a seated bunch of musicians reading sheet music whose only personality was to stand up or sit down.

‘Thursday Night’ was all individuals with their own style. Paul would jump around on stage and scream as if being attacked by bees. Joe hid behind the microphone stand. Alex was waving his arms and hitting anything that made a sound. I was trying to give my best ‘Keith Richards’ impression while scanning the dancers looking for a cutie to make eye contact with.

For Christmas I’d replaced my Hagstrom 12-string for a Goya 12-string with a bigger sound, even with the replaceable pickup. I was turning up the treble trying to get that high end to try and duplicate a dulcimer for ‘Lady Jane’ while Steve was pumping up the bass on the same amp. Steve was standing in front of the amp on the far side of the stage so I couldn’t really hear what was happening. I could only see the pained faces of the kids on the dance floor.

At one point, I was trying to plug into our only effects pedal. Steve had built a circuit board with some knobs on it in a cigar box and I tried to use it to distort the sound for the next song. Some kid was trying to be nice and bring us some soda but tripped on the step and a cup when splashing into the cigar box. A puff of smoke and some sparks and sizzle, but the bass drum had already started the beat so just played on. The sound was distorted.

Along with the usual ‘Thursday Night’ members was a keyboard player. Don’t remember ever practicing with Rusty, but there he was on stage with us filling in gaps with a sweet portable organ sound. He didn’t know the key or the patterns we had arranged, but was innovative enough to find a place in the mix. We needed him during the second set.

After a few more fast tunes, we took a break so the Greek band could come back. We thought we were doing pretty good until we heard…

“The kids want a dance band”.

No problem.

We had a few minutes to come up with a brand new set list of songs we never rehearsed together. Paul and I had some numbers we’d played in ‘The Chapperells’ and we threw in some simple instrumentals. Could we go out in public and play karaoke? It was time for ‘Thursday Night’ to prove they are a band.

Without horns, Rusty filled in the swag as I tried to remember finger positions on the spot. Joe would sing whatever words he could remember, then mumble through the rest. Paul pounded his amp to get that spring reverb ‘shotgun’ sound and Steve followed along and put in some nice runs. We just had to find a pace the kids could dance to and repeat it.

I decided to sing ‘Midnight Hour’ because Joe didn’t know the words. I did my best James Brown/Mick Jagger interpretation and screamed and hollowed and the kids danced. I fell down on my knees and Alex stopped playing and stood up. He settled back down and I tried to stretch it out with whatever came into my head. Rusty filled in and made the song.

The last song was a slow dance called ‘Try Me’, a James Brown instrumental featuring the organ. No back up singing or guitar solos so we were fairly safe for a finisher. Unfortunately my high E-string was out of tune and I couldn’t hear it. I was playing all the right notes but when I hit an E, everyone else heard fingernails on a chalkboard.

Kenny had brought the reel-to-reel tape recorder and with a hand held mono-microphone recorded most songs. After packing up, we went back to Joe’s house to listen. We were excited to listen to ourselves and through the bad recording thought we sounded great to us until the last song. That out-of-tune E-string stood out and I was embarrassed at ruining the song. Yes, you can purchase the CD of “Stinky Feat” performed at the Sts. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral for only a few drachmas.

Most band managements take photos of the band members to use for promotional flyers, record covers and news articles, but Kenny never took any photos.

On one occasion, the five of us were together at Steve’s house. Across the street there was a house being build. Steve had injured himself in some way so we carried him across the street and got up on a pile of bricks. Joe’s girlfriend had a camera. She took two photos that are the only visual record of a band called ‘Thursday Night’.

Our next stop was a ‘Battle of the Bands’ at Tucker High School. Rusty decided he didn’t want to be a permanent member so it was back to the five of us. We played our set and seemed to be liked. Joe had brought his sister and some of her friends who screamed and cheered. It was ‘Thursday Night-mania’. We thought we had won when ‘The Joker’s Wild’ walked in late. They were Tucker’s band. They played two numbers, rather badly and won the prize.

Kenny was working hard trying to find us another gig. He told us we were to be playing at a school called ‘Beaumont’ and we got excited again. We learned a couple of songs we could interact with the audience who we assumed would be dancers.

Kenny told us to pack up our guitars and he’d bring the drums and amps in a truck. You know what happens when you assume?

We filled Paul’s car and followed Kenny’s box truck down roads we’d never ventured. Stores and houses disappear and we were on a gravel road in the woods. When we went through two chain link fences we started wondering what kind of school was this?

As Kenny backed the truck up to a loading dock, we got out of the car and looked around. The building was nondescript with small windows at roof level. There were no kids hanging around. We walked up some metal steps to a guy at the door who looked like a guard but could have been a janitor in a blue uniform.

The stage was at one end of a basketball court with fold out bleachers. Kenny opened up the truck and rolled out some tall Fender amps we’d never seen before. These were the brand-new solid-state models that still had sales tags on. While Alex arranged his array of cymbals, we found enough electricity to turn on three tall boxes with switches and no knobs.

Then our audience came in.

A line of kids wearing grey jumpsuits walked in single file up onto the bleachers and sat down. Both sides of the bleachers filled up and they all looked at us.

It seems ‘Beaumont’ was no school but a ‘juvenile correctional center’. There would not be dancing.

We played our first number and there was no applause. There was little response. We played another number and then another with little notice we were even there.

One song we had practice to get audience participation was the ‘Land of 1000 Dances’. We had learned it as a ‘call and response’ so Joe would sing a verse and point to a group hoping for a reply. There was no reply. The silence was deafening.

To save our hides, we sped up the rest of our play list, unplugged and packed up the truck and didn’t wait for an encore request. Going through the second gate felt like freedom we hadn’t appreciated before.

Kenny gave us another dream to follow. He had gotten us a gig playing a front band for the ‘Swinging Medallions’ at the State Fair. They had a radio hit called, “Double shot of my baby’s love”. They were basically a frat band wearing madras pants from South Carolina. Still this would be a good exposure spot and didn’t include handcuffs.

‘Thursday Night’ was never a regular rehearsal band. We’d jam and drink ouzo as much as play tunes over and over until we got it right.

This was a big-time gig so got together after school every night and practiced. We did so well we got tight and sounded good. We were ready.

Then the gig fell through.

Alex went into the navy. Paul wandered off. Steve started playing country pop hits with his girlfriend and Joe and I became ‘Cliff &/or Joe’.

 

Then the band broke up.

 

 

Our set list was:

Thursday Night (circa 1966)

Satisfaction / Last Time (Jagger-Richards)

         Glad All Over (Dave Clark, Mike Smith, Ron Ryan)

         Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)

         House of the Rising Sun (Trad.)

         Long Tall Texan (Henry Strzelecki)

         Gloria (Van Morrison)

         Little Latin Loupe Lu (Bill Medley)

         Lady Jane (Jagger-Richards)

         Try Me (James Brown)

         Fortune Teller (Naomi Neville)

Little Latin Loupe Lu (Bill Medley)

Gloria (Van Morrison)

Glad All Over (Dave Clark, Mike Smith, Ron Ryan)

Mellow Yellow (Donovan P. Leitch)

Ab-so-lut-er-ly (Luters Hot Dogs – Smithfield Packing Co.)

House of the Rising Sun (Trad.)

Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)

Satisfaction / Last Time (Jagger - Richards)

Night Train (Oscar Washington, Jimmy Forrest)

Midnight Hour (Wilson Pickett, Steve Cropper)

Shotgun (George Ezra, Joel Pott, Fred Gibson)

Lady Jane (Jagger - Richards)

Wild Thing (Chip Taylor)

Eggplant That Ate Chicago (Dr. West Medicine Show and Junk Band)

 

Joe – vocals, tambourine

Cliff – lead guitar (Gibson SG, Goya 12-string, Fender mustang), Fender bassman 4x10” amp

Paul – rhythm guitar (Epiphone), Epiphone amp

Steve – bass (Harmony Melody bass), Fender bandmaster amp

Alex – Drums (Slingerland)

Kenny – manager

 

         

• • •

 

Chapter 7 – Morning Glory

I need to play in a band.

Steve (the bass player from ‘Thursday Night’) wanted to jam. His girlfriend, Ann Lee played the keyboard and his brother Steve played the bass. Seemed like an easy fit.

He’d cart all my gear over to his house and we’d set up in his garage. This would be a new experience with a twist.

Steve had upgraded his Harmony guitar to a Gibson SG. He’d also upgraded his Radio Shack amp to a Fender Bandmaster with two towering 2-12 cabinets.

His brother Paul was playing left-handed on a Hofner ‘Paul McCartney’ violin bass. It sounded better plugged into my Fender bassman, but he was happy to use Steve’s amp. He was proficient and capable to keep the beat. There was no drummer.

Both the brothers had the similar styles and motions that weren’t dance groove moves but this was not going to be a ‘dance’ band.

Ann Lee, on the other hand, was as cute as the day was bright. She seemed to have some piano background and filled in easily with whatever the guitars came up with. She also sang like a dove. She played a Farfisa organ and a Guild 6-string guitar.

Unfortunately, she was Steve’s main squeeze and much of the time was spent listening to them bickering. Isn’t love grand?

It was fun playing with people you’d not played with before on songs you’d never played before. It was a learning experience for all of us.

The name ‘Morning Glory’ seemed to stick to us like flypaper so it was a reference word.

Nothing we played was very challenging and practices were fun. They were more like family picnics than a band.

Don’t think we ever played for anyone else but ourselves. We never wrote any songs together (with the exception of ‘Herman Kachoo – the four-eyed lion’) and were happy just reproducing covers of other writers. There was a different feel of country and maybe with a drummer, could have played a square dance.

Now and then, Steve and I would play at one of the local coffee houses. These were the places with two guitars could play a few songs and pass a basket and make gas money. Steve wanted the limelight so I just hung back and sang the chorus.

The 12-string was too loud for coffee houses, so I bought a sunburst Ovation Balladeer 6-string with this funky curved back made of space age plastic called lyrachord. The neck was thin and the projection was loud if you could keep it from sliding off your lap. Made from a scientist/musician this guitar was invincible and had the sexiest headstock of any other guitar.

Coffee houses are interesting places to play. A small room with tables all crammed into each other lit by candles. Coffee cups and cigarette smoked were the only accessories.

To perform to a coffee house crowd was to sit in the middle of strangers and play your song without a microphone because you were only inches away. If the patrons enjoyed your music, they’d stop talking and listen. Your three to five song set might be presented between a poet and a political activist or another group of two or three squeezing in a corner sitting on wooden stools playing songs learned from their grandparents.

‘Morning Glory’ didn’t practice much because Steve was working on his telescope or car or I was going somewhere else looking for the love of my life. Either way ‘the band’ just sort of dissolved.

Ann Lee had decided she loved some guy out in Colorado and was leaving town and offered me a good price on the Farfisa organ and I took it. I was collecting a pile of musical instruments and needed some storage, so I bought a house.

 

Then the band broke up.

 

 

Our set list was:

Morning Glory (circa 1968)

         Never Ending Song of Love For You (Carl Radle)

         The Train That Never Returned

(Jacqueline Steiner, Bess Lomax Hawes)

         Country Roads

(John Denver, Taffy Nivert, Bill Danoff, Hayao Miyazaki)

         Teach Your Children Well (Graham Nash)

         The Weight (Robbie Robertson)

         Hide Your Love Away (Lennon-McCartney)

         Gloria (Van Morrison)

         When I’m 64 (Lennon-McCartney)

         Susie Q

(Dale Hawkins, Robert Chaisson, Stan Lewis,

Eleanor Broadwater)

         Dear Prudence (Lennon-McCartney)

         The Eggplant That Ate Chicago (Norman Greenbaum)

         Me & Bobby McGee (Kris Kristofferson, Fred Foster)

         Younger Girl (John Sebastian)

         Happy Together (Alan Gordon, Garry Bonner)

         Cry Baby Cry (Lennon-McCartney)

         Mr. Bojangles (Jerry Jeff Walker)

Steve – guitar (Gibson SG electric, Guild 12-string acoustic), voice, Fender bandmaster amp

Paul – bass (Hofner left handed violin), Fender bandmaster amp

Cliff – guitar (Framus electric, Ovation 6-string acoustic, Goya 12-string acoustic, Vox electric bass, Goya classical), voice, Fender bassman amp

Ann Lee – organ (Farfisa), guitar (Guild 6-string acoustic), voice

 

 

• • •

 

Chapter 8 – The Vagabonds

I was hired to play in another band.

The second manager from ‘Thursday Night’ wanted to form another band, under his management and also with him playing bass. He invited me to participate.

Mike was another scammer, part salesman part husker. I’d not play cards with Mike.

He seemed to have found some guys and needed a fourth to make a band. He’d already name it ‘The Vagabonds’. He had red jackets for us all to wear and even had set up dates to play without any rehearsals.

We did get together in this empty third floor of an abandoned building on the main drag downtown. The old creaky elevator brought our gear up and we positioned everything toward the street windows for the light. Extension cords ran the length of the building to connect to whatever outlet we could find. Sometimes the light would flicker. If nothing else, the echo was magnificent.

Mike could always find us equipment. Whatever we needed showed up on the floor.

The first two or three sessions were the band feeling each other out. We were all strangers and didn’t know what we could play together.

Mike had a basic skill of the bass guitar but was mostly busy directing the rest of us. He played a Fender Jaguar bass VI that looked like it just came out of the box. It looked like a regular electric guitar but had a lower tone to use as a 6-string bass. It had all sorts of switches and knobs like my Framus. 

Danny also played a Fender Jaguar with two pickups and a whammy bar but his was a regular electric guitar. He and Mike seemed to have known each other for some time but never learned the connection. His solos tended more toward the 50’s rockabilly style than what was becoming popular on the radio. I didn’t talk to him much.

Jesse, on the other hand, was an outgoing guy full of jokes and wisecracks. His drum kit seemed like parts and pieces from other drummers. There were different colors, different sizes and a huge bass drum. The cymbals were battered and beaten and cracked. Between every song, Jesse took a solo.

I was still playing my Framus ‘Golden Television’ and my Goya 12-string plugged into the trusty Fender bassman. Most of the time I’d play rhythm and backup Mike’s singing with Danny.

We played the right notes and followed the parts, but never seemed to gel. Mike would get us a couple of bottles of wine or some longnecks or a box full of ponies. The building rattled when we played.

Since downtown was closed at 5PM and everyone went home, we thought we were the only ones within miles. We were wrong. We heard a bunch of yelling and looked down on the street. There was a mob of kids up and down the block. No traffic, just downtown kids having fun with no one around to stop them. We were just supplying them a soundtrack. We should have sold tickets.

Mike got us a couple of gigs at local bars stuffed in a corner, playing our set list a couple of times, then packing up and going our separate ways with a couple of bucks in our pockets.

Without any promotion or management, the idea of tours was never imagined. Things like lighting or sound systems had to be provided by the club or motel. All we did was show up, plug in, make noise and load out. No merchandise or autographed programs. Without a record on the radio, we were forgettable.

Then we hit the big time. Mike got us some regular gigs at two dancehalls across the river. ‘The Wigwam’ and ‘The Log Cabin’ were just as their names describe. One was basically a flat floor with tiny tables and wooden chairs and a small bar at one end, while the other used picnic tables for seating. They both were noisy free and loose places and most of the clientele seemed older blue-collar couples. The walls had Indian blankets and Confederate flags as decorations. All the guys seemed burley and it was easy to tell the moms from the daughters.

It was never a thrill to play with ‘The Vagabonds’ but it was a job and I would get some free beer and a couple of bucks. I played at a couple of places where no one seemed to care to where the kids had a connection with what we were playing.

These places were different.

If you have ever seen the ‘Blue Brothers’ movie, you would understand. If the crowd that night didn’t like what ‘The Vagabonds’ were playing, they did not hesitate to let us know.

The audience would get rowdy and start yelling and throwing things. Bottles would break, chairs went flying, tables were pushed aside then a dance turned into a brawl. We just kept playing.

If we found a song everyone liked, we’d just play it over and over again. The patrons were not there to listen to ‘The Vagabonds’; they were there to blow off steam and party.

At the end of the night, the proprietor calculated the destruction and deducted the cost from our paycheck.

I didn’t play with ‘The Vagabonds’ very long. It was an uncomfortable band and I wanted to survive a gig without attending the hospital.

Don’t know what happened to Mike or Danny, but Jessie called me later. He found my phone number in the book and asked if I wanted to take a road trip with him. It was summer and I was in college and living in an apartment, so why not. I gave him my address and grabbed my toothbrush and guitar.

Jessie drove up in an old beat up van with different color doors. His hair was longer and he seemed a bit happier than before, but when you are young you do foolish things.

He had some maps and sketches on paper and we never seemed to know where we were going but somehow we got there. I assumed it was just a day trip to catch up and maybe meet some new friends. I was wrong.

We were headed west and when we crossed the mountains I knew I wouldn’t be attending the morning class. Jessie drove until the gas ran out and we’d stop at the first place we get to and fill it up with whatever gas they had. I gave Jessie the few bucks I had and we’d climb back in and keep on going.

The fumes from the inside of the empty van could have knocked us out but we rolled down the windows and just drifted into a daze. Jessie also had some little bummers to help with our confusion. There was a lot of laughing.

Now and then, he’d pull off the road and just stop the engine and crash. These little naps were as necessary as our bathroom breaks. I’d wake up by the shutter of the van moving again and we were off.

Jessie was on a mission. I was on an adventure.

We stopped in the middle of no-where-ville and took out the maps. He looked at the sky and the landscape as if he’d been here before. He pointed another direction and we were off on a different road. I was along for the ride.

Every stop for gas included a tummy fill-up. Corn dogs, beef jerky, candy bars and lots of warm beer. I don’t know where all the money was coming from but Jessie seemed to have plenty of cash. We didn’t discuss it.

This adventure was starting to get as stale as the beer. I asked if he knew where he was going and got no answer. Some miles were quiet. Some miles were continuous laughter. The sun was getting hotter and the landscape dusty.

We crossed a river and Jessie stopped to check the folding maps again. He looked around for a landmark, then licked his finger and held it out the window. If we were lost, I was not so sure anyone would find us out in this wilderness.

We drove on. The roads became rougher. The pavement disappeared and the rutted dirt stirred up dust coming through the holes in the bottom of the van. We passed shacks and some animals and civilization seemed to have disappeared.

Jessie made a left turn down some curvy road then slid to a stop. He hopped out into a cloud of dust and vanished from my sight. I heard some voices but didn’t understand what they were saying. I could hear them but they were speaking a different language.

As the dust cleared, there were several men standing by a doorway of what appeared to be a Quonset hut in the middle of sagebrush and nowhere. I started to open the door then thought better about it when I noticed some of these men were carrying rifles. They didn’t look like they wanted me to attend the party without an invitation, so I just sat still.

I may have been ten minutes or two hours. I had enough warm beer to keep me hydrated in the baking sun. This felt like being on another planet and I didn’t have the car keys.

Jessie walked out the door with a pair of shades on his head that I wish I had. He walked around to the back of the van and opened the doors. A couple of guys slide a bunch of packages on the floorboards and then threw a blanket over them. The doors closed and were locked.

Jessie said something to one of the guys with a gun and walked back to the van. He climbed back in the drivers seat and started the engine. He looked at me, smiled then flipped down the shades and hit the gas. We left the way we came in a cloud of dust and our destination disappeared.

He never talked about what was the purpose of this trip or what as in the back of the van and I never asked. I was more worried at this point of getting home.

This was a drummer in a band I’d played with briefly and I felt uncomfortable about whatever purpose, I wanted to go home.

We basically returned the way we came with more frequent stops and even stopped at a roadside dinner for a breakfast with hot coffee and milk. Even got to sit on a real toilet.

When I saw the mountains I started to feel relief. I wasn’t home but I thought I was close.

Jessie’s driving had become much less reckless and he obeyed the speed limit. When we drove through little townships, he stopped and used hand signals.

We didn’t talk much coming back. I fiddled with the radio trying to find some station and if a song came on we both sang it then went silent. His stash of pre-rolled numbers seemed endless but I did not complain.

I forgot the day we left and don’t remember when I got back. He rolled up and found a spot in front of my apartment building. Before we could speak to each other, he held his hand and gave me an aluminum wrapped block. He ushered me out the door, gave a wave and drove off without a word. 

Back up the three stories steps that felt like climbing a mountain, I started peeling off the dust and dirt. I was back in civilization. Sitting in a tub watching the water turn black I wondered if what just happened had really happened?

With a fresh awareness and some clean duds, I stopped the cat from bopping around my aluminum foil gift. Placing it gingerly on my footlocker (which was also the coffee table of the time) I slowly unwrapped the secret contents inside.

It seemed my little drummer mate had made a drug deal and gave me a tip for being shotgun. I never dealt in the stuff and had no idea of the purchase price but I think I got a nice gift from a guy I never heard from again.

About this time I realized I had to decide to play music OR keep a day job. Staying up most the night playing in a band for next to no money but having fun then going to a day job just didn’t work. Bands are fun but day jobs pay the bills.

Bands can be strangers that remain strangers. Like extras in a play, we come together for a moment of time, say our parts and then disappear into history. We still carry the scar of memory.

 

 

Then the band broke up.

 

Our set list was:

The Vagabonds  (circa 1965)

Road Runner (Ellas McDaniel)

         Shotgun (George Ezra, Joel Pott, Fred Gibson)

         Hitch Hike

(Marvin Gaye, William ‘Mickey’ Stevenson, Clarence Paul)

         Walking The Dog (Rufus Thomas)

         Searching (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller)

         Mustang Sally (Mack Rice)

         Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison, Bill Dees)

         Shake A Tailfeather (Otha Hayes, Verlie Rice, Andre Williams)

         Hot Pastrami (Dessie Rozier)

         Hang On Sloopy (Bert Berns, Wes Farrell)

         Wooly Bully (Domingo Samudio)

         Long Tall Texan (Henry Strzelecki)

         Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)

Mike – bass (Fender jazzman, mustang)

Danny – guitar (Fender jaguar)

Cliff – guitar (Goya 12-string)

Jesse – drums (Rogers)

All new transistor solid state Fender amps

 

         

• • •

 

Chapter 9 – LSD

I needed to play in another band.

So I form a group of friends to play along with. We all knew the same songs and we were always together anyway so sing along.

These were guys from high school. Other than Joe(l), we’d not played in a band together. We all listened to the same records and sang along in the chorus but never sat down to play the songs as a band.

Art (the S) had a Gibson J-25 guitar for years and had played at coffee houses with another guy who became a park ranger. They sounded professional with their harmonies but I’d never played guitar with him. He had taught me the finger picking of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ on my Stella tenor guitar but I didn’t know the music he knew and vice versa. He wanted to be a folkie and I wanted rock and roll.

Joe (the D) had sung in the ‘Thursday Night’ band and we’d played and written music together for over a year or two.

We had no plans to perform before others, but one day we did. We were mostly together to listen to vinyl and smoke dope.

Art’s brother Jim had a Teac 3340S 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder and we proceeded to sit in his bedroom and record unrehearsed history. Some of these recording are wonderful because we were not trying but just enjoying. Yes, there are copies on the Internet.

About this time, I wanted a guitar that was softer than the Ovation, so I went back to my local ‘Cary Gee’ and looked for a ‘classical’ guitar (thus nylon strings). There was one that caught my eye because the frets went down to the sound hole. It was just what I was looking for but the price was $300. That was beyond my spare change, but I dreamt about it.

I was working with Art (of the S) at the Broad Street train station cafeteria (which was just a row of vending machines and roll around tables). My job was to stock the machines and then clean up after the trains came and went. I also emptied the till and put the coins in a paper bag. After the trash was taken out, I’d move to the game room next door and play pinball. I had plenty of change so I got very good.

The owner had an office on Main Street where he would take all the bagged coins and count them in a rotating money machine that sorted and gave out a sum. My first trip there was to climb a row of narrow steps to the second floor. Each step was covered in broken paper bags and loose coins. Slipping and sliding on nickels, dimes and quarters the realization of this loot wasn’t important to them.

I went back to ‘Cary Gee’ and got my classical guitar. I paid for it with bags of coins.

Jim also seemed to have an unending availability to guitars and joined in so it may have been LSD+1.

We all experience chemistry together and play mind games but never really experimented with sounds. Jim and I did do some tape looping on his Teac 4-track tape recorder. He’d later sell it to me and I made lots of tapes then dubbed them down to cassettes but it died.

The L.S.D. ‘band’ was mainly a period where the first piece of business was getting ‘stoned’. None of us drank at that time or we’d never have picked up the guitars.

Still the recordings are a good capture of a moment in time.

Joe got married to someone who had not been his girlfriend. Jim disappeared and reappeared, selling me guitars and then re-buying guitars. I was mainly muscle for his constant moves. Art left his girlfriend and disappeared only to knock up some girl at the beach and make macramé.

Any occasional meeting with these guys required getting wasted and listening to the latest stereo configuration money could buy. We stopped playing and singing. It became boring.

 

Then the band broke up.

 

 

Our set list was:

L.S.D. (circa 1967)

Sing This Song Altogether (Jagger-Richards)

         Sympathy For The Devil (Jagger-Richards)

         Sitting On The Fence (Jagger-Richards)

         Hide Your Love Away (Lennon-McCartney)

         Duke of Earl / Wake Up Little Susie / Jelly Roll Gumdrop

(Gene Chandler, Earl Edwards, Bernice Williams / Felice Bryant, Boudleaux Bryant / Frank Zappa)

         Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)

         New York Mining Disaster (Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb)

         Plastic Jesus (Ed Rush, George Cromarty)

         I Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die (Country Joe McDonald)

         Cod’ine (Buffy Sainte-Marie)

         Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)

         Sing this song Altogether (Jagger-Richards)

Cliff – guitar (Goya classical, Ovation acoustic), voice

Art – guitar (Gibson), recorder, voice

Joel – voice, tambourine

 

• • •

 

Chapter 10 – Marriage Album

Joe wanted us to play ‘live’ at his wedding.

‘L.S.D.+’ was a band again.

Again we gathered in Art’s bedroom that was now Jim’s bedroom and got stoned. His mother never seemed to mind but with four kids and being a single mom, she probably didn’t have time.

It was still the usual routine of smoke some doobies and giggle.

Jim was the adult in the room because he ran the tape machine. He had a 4-way surround sound headphone system set up but it was better we used a single microphone to capture the ambience.

I brought over a pile of songbooks and Joe went through finding treasures. Others were written down on notebook pads and we figured out the chords. Remember we could hardly get in tune without laughing.

Joe found a list that suited him so we started practicing. Maybe add a recorder here and add a different vocal there and then tried to remember it the second go round. 

A couple days later we would gather again and start from the top. Practice makes perfect.

Both Art and I had been married by this time. He had this weird Quaker marriage where everyone just sat still until someone stood up and pronounces good things about the pregnant bride and groom. I didn’t come prepared. I had a big time wedding in a Williamsburg chapel. I don’t know who figured out the details. I just showed up on time. I did figure a music set and a student of the Williamsburg music elite teacher J.S. Darling was to play the organ. The student couldn’t make it, so Mr. Darling filled in.

Williamsburg is a funny little town. It is like Disneyland in Colonial times. It was a town for tourist. Everything was fantasy. It was the perfect place to take drugs.

Art and I would bus down on weekend to ply the tabs of acid and the wonders of a playground without worries.

So we had our song list and have practiced as much as we could. What else was there to do?

Joe wanted us to look the part of Williamsburg. That meant we needed to wear colonial garb. Luckily the only designated piece of clothing was a shirt.

Now a colonial shirt cannot be found at your typical department store men’s wear. Even the fine tailors don’t carry a line of colonial shirts.

A colonial shirt is actually a Victorian shirt that doubles as a nightshirt. It is a collarless shirt that has three buttons and a long waist body. The sleeves were puffy, like a pirate shirt. They look great in Williamsburg. They look silly anywhere else. It would be like wearing a wedding dress down Main Street.

Luckily we were not requested to wear leggings and buckle shoes or we may have hesitated to be clowns for a wedding. 

My wife found a brown one for me to wear. Art and Jim had their shirts constructed. The groom wore white.

The day of the event came and it was hot. We gathered at the designated area on the greens and sat in the grass with the rest of the audience. I think we played before the formal ceremony but not all my brain cells were functioning.

I opened two guitar cases I brought and rolled up my sleeves. There were no microphones or sheet music so the L.S.D.+ had now turned into ‘Those Darn Boys’.

There is a recording of the practice but not the main event.

‘The Marriage Album’ CD can be purchased for a few shillings.

The groom sang and we joined in changing instruments between songs. I do remember some of the local Williamsburg re-enactors came by and listened. Now we blended in the 18^th century spirit.

I packed up my guitars and got them out of the sun while our singer rose tall to have a formal ceremony with his bride. Later I found out they had been legally married the day before, so this was all a show.

No one passed a tri-corner hat so the band never got paid.

Occasionally ‘Those Darn Boys’ would make music together but rarely. It if wasn’t a B.A.R.F. party then it was a ‘Geezer’ recording.  

 

Then the band broke up.

 

 

Our set list was:

Marriage Album (circa 1973)

Good Day Sunshine (Lennon-McCartney)

         Gypsy Rover (Leo Maguire)

         Dear Doctor (Jagger-Richards)

         Sun (Donovan)

         Colors (Donovan)

         Sing This Song Altogether (Jagger-Richards)

         Hide Your Love Away (Lennon-McCartney)

         Don’t Let Me Down (Lennon-McCartney)

         Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)

         Great Balls of Fire (Otis Blackwell, Jack Hammer)

Joel - vocals

Jim – guitar (Rickenbacker bass, Fender mustang, Gibson Les Paul)

Art – guitar (Gibson acoustic), recorder, vocals

Cliff – guitar (Ovation acoustic, Goya classical), recorder, vocals

 

 

         

• • •

 

Chapter 11 – Pvt. Salt’s Homely Farts Rubber Band

If I can’t find another band, I’ll make one up.

In 1967, the Beatles released ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. Like every Beatle record before, it hit the turntable and was played over and over and over again. We all read the cardboard jacket and learned the words.

I bought the chord book and tried to learn the songs but they never matched the pitch on the records. I’d play the chords I knew with others and we’d try to be the Lonely Hearts Club Band for a minute. Guess we didn’t have the snappy costumes?

Some songs seemed to be easy to follow while others were more difficult, not knowing the amount of time these Beatles and their crew was spending on a sound that would change recording. Conception recordings were the beginning to rock operas.

At about the same time, Frank Zappa did a parody with an album called ‘We’re Only In It For The Money’.

Now Frank Zappa’s music is a required taste and I had that taste. Joe had bought me his first album just from the cover. We played it on a portable record player at the seashore park and scared all the folks out of the bathroom.

I’d always like music that was a bit bazaar and this latest Beatlemania masterpiece was for the choosing.

Without other musicians or another writer, I sat down and started figuring out a different version of the love & peace lyrics.

I sat in the basement and recording on the Teac 4-track tape recorder, did my own take on each song. I still don’t have a final take on the idea but variations can be found on the Internet.

https://soundcloud.com/pvtsalts

 

The first song was ‘Pvt. Salt’s Homely Farts Rubber Band’. Pretty much an inverse version of the Beatles’ version. Pepper vs. Salt. Lonely vs. Homely. It sort of rolled off the lips of the original. The idea was instead of greeting everyone to join in, my version was to announce this music was going to be bad and should be avoided.

The second cut ‘Not Gonna Sing It Again’ proved the point. It promised the rest would be out of tune and the audience should leave now.

The third song was ‘Burning A Mole’. The Beatles version talked about filling a hole where the rain comes in home improvement, but mine was a bit more grotesque.

Number four carried it a bit further. Instead of butterflies and tangerines, it was about the deceased floating down the gutters. ‘Juicy In Your Eye With Grapefruit’

Instead of getting better, I thought things were ‘Getting Worse’.

 A song about empty nesters turned into the reality when your kids don’t leave home. ‘She’s Coming Back’ was common sense real world when your kids don’t graduate, don’t run off and get married and just keep coming back home.

‘For the benefit of Mr. Blight’ had nothing to do with the circus. It was a straightforward view of Carney life and how people with little skills survive only to pay others for the right to be derogated. This might earn a warning label.

 

Flip the record over for side two.

 

Instead of some mystical sitar encrusted mind melt, I tried to put a realistic view of apartment living. This was a time where others did not appreciate people with long hair and beads. ‘Better Off Without Them’

‘When I’m Almost Four’ had nothing to do with becoming a senior citizen but just surviving abusive childhood.

Instead of a sweet meter maid parking a ticket on your windshield, I chose the waste disposal people. Somewhat similar to ‘Juicy In Your Eye With Grapefruit’ in concept, ‘Ugly Greta, Garbage Collector’ brings the vision of every day necessity gone wrong. You can fuss with a traffic cop. You can’t fuss with a garbage collector. Nor do you want to.

‘Too Night’ is a bit of a take off on the disco scene and the party crowd. Instead of welcoming the corn flakes of the day, this group is getting ready to grind the night away.

While the ‘Sgt. Pepper’s: ‘A Day In A Life” is a classic, never to be duplicated add a bit of reality and you get ‘ What Happened Yesterday?’ Or ‘I’d Love To Turn You Off’. 

 

Then the band broke up.

 

 

Our set list was:

Pvt. Salt’s Homely Farts Rubber Band  (circa 1968)

            Pvt. Salt’s Homely Farts Rubber Band

            Not Gonna Sing It Again

            Burning A Mole

            Juicy In Your Eye With Grapefruit

            Getting Worse

            She’s Coming Back

            For The Celibate, Mister Blight

            Better Off Without Them

            I’m Almost Four

            Ugly Greta, Garbage Collector

            Too Night

            What Happened Yesterday?

All songs composed and arranged and performed by nimrodstudios

General Confusion - guitar

Colonel Corn - guitar

Corporal Punishment - bass

Privates Parts - drums

 

This was not the last self-recording….

 

There was a rock opera The Musical

The set list was:

         Never Gave A Damn

         Good Time Music

         The Leader

         Whiskey Drinking Song

         Burger Song

         John Boy John

         Jump

         Black Boy Blues

         To Tell You

         You’re A Fool

         Good Time Music (refrain)

         Follow you

All songs composed and arranged and performed by nimrodstudios

 

 

And there was…

Frog Hollow Day Camp Band

The set list was:

         Candy Man (Trad.)

         Follow Me down

(Reverend Gary David, Dave Van Ronk, Eric von Schmidt)

         Tell Her No (Rod Argent)

         Younger Girl (John Sebastian)

         Lady Jane (Jagger-Richards)

         Hide Your Love Away (Lennon-McCartney)

         Louie, Louie (Richard Berry)

         Zombie Jamboree (Conrad Eugene Mauge Jr.)

         Peter Gunn (Henry Mancini)

         Paint It Black (Jagger-Richards)

         Tobacco Road (John D. Loudermilk)

         Great Balls of Fire (Otis Blackwell, Jack Hammer)

 

 

then there was…

Crazy Daze

The set list was:

         Backyard Boogie

         Waiting To Be Beamed Up Blues

         Ugly Greta

         Bobby Sands

         Mono Lake

         Going to be a Chicken Farmer in Haiti

         How Far Will She Go?

         There’s A Spot

         What The World Thinks

         Wabash Cannonball

All songs composed and arranged and performed by nimrodstudios

 

 

and then…

WANTED

The set list was:

         Charlie MacGregor

         It’s Gonna get You

         Snow Me

         Why Don’t You Mind Your Own Business

         Hula Girl

         Mr. Marshall

         She (part 1 & 2)

         True Love

         Two Guys with Nothing Else To Do...

         3 Views of Age

All songs composed and arranged and performed by nimrodstudios

 

and if that wasn’t enough….

 

There were two albums of Jim’s that he never knew about

Backyard Boogie

The set list was:

         Backyard Boogie

         Blooper (instrumental)

         The Dragon Queen

         Cat Tail Stomp

         Destruction (instrumental)

         Comin’ Thru

         The Big Apple

         Do Her In

         Backyard Boogie (reprise)

All songs composed and arranged and performed by nimrodstudios

 

 

and

Hit The Highway

The set list was:

         Hit The Highway

         Spinning (instrumental)

         You’re My Wailing Wall

         U.F.O.

         Make Your Own Way

         Wake Up (instrumental)

         Be-Bop Boogie

         Think Back

         Rocks Off

         Soft Noise (instrumental)

All songs composed and arranged and performed by nimrodstudios

 

 

                  

• • •

 

Chapter 13 – Shenanigans

I needed another band…

 From the recordings.

 

It was the same set list. It was a new recording process. It was not acoustically perfect. Some were dubs from years before. Some were experimental sounds.

There is a box of cables with all sorts of configurations to record from ¼” to RCA jacks. Television to reel-to-reel tape recording then dubbed to cassette.

All were still based on ‘Those Darn Boys’ background. There were Old wedding songs, bedroom songs, and some coffee house memories. There were basement tapes and mansland’s songs.

All were mostly redoes and re-recordings of repetitions of years.

The difference was with other experiences with other musicians and learning new techniques and new instruments made the sound different.

In the dark in headphones with a drum track, play the familiar until it is new.

Now every new idea was recorded without collaboration. Lyrics are typed and printed and put into notebooks.

 

Then the band broke up.

 

 

Our set list was:

Shenanigans (circa 1985)

         Side One

         Side Two

Joe - vocals

Art – vocals, guitar (Gibson acoustic)

Cliff – vocals, guitar (Washburn 6 & 12-string, Fender Stratocaster, Rickenbacker bass, Vox bass, Yamaha keyboard)

 

• • •

 

Chapter 14 – Cliff &/or Joe

The ‘original’ band.

 

Now there were no singers or guitar players available.

Just ‘make up’ a band and record it.

So pull out the pen and paper and start writing with no collaboration. This is what happened.

                  

• • •

 

‘Crazy Daze’ was a mash-up of several ideas of the time. Some were from previous ideas and others were new written on an upright piano.

‘Crazy Daze’ – 1981

         Backyard Boogie

         Waiting To Be Beamed Up Blues (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Ugly Greta

         Bobby Sands

         Mono Lake

         Going to be a Chicken Farmer in Haiti

         How Far Will She Go?

         There’s A Spot

         What The World Thinks

         Wabash Cannonball (trad.)

All other songs composed, arranged, performed by nimrodstudios

 

                  

• • •

 

‘Joe’s’ was written as a celebration to songs we would be singing while stoned. By now Joe(l) had become a family man with kids and the performance days were over, except for his annual B.A.R.F. cookout.

‘Joe’s’ – 1978

         True Love (Shel Silverstein)

         Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)

         Hide Your Love Away (Lennon-McCartney)

         Rum By Gum (Trad.)

         Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)

         Quick Trip To Surry (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Teach Your Children Well (Graham Nash)

         Cod’ine (Buffy St. Marie)

         Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)

 

                  

• • •

 

This was another mash-up of old songs with a decade to refresh. New instruments, musical taste changes and techniques brought a different arrangement to older songs.

‘2 Cards Pleeze’ - 1978

         I Like Girls

         Party Time

         Harvard...

         Long Tall Curley

         State Trooper

         Dump Sweet Dump

         Ming

         The Group

         1975 Cheer

         Hotel Colorado

All songs composed, arranged, performed by nimrodstudios

 

                  

• • •

 

It seems ALL bands have a Greatest Hits album, so I decided to have a ‘Greatest HIT’ album. Since none of these songs had made the Billboard 100 and could not be found on the jukebox and don’t request your radio DJ to play them (we do not sponsor Top 40 radio) I recorded them on a dual-cassette Karaoke recorder. 

‘Greatest Hit’ - 1977

         How To Reach A Peachy Keen Beach (Cliff &/or Joe)

         She (part 1 & 2) (Cliff &/or Joe)

         What To Do? (Jagger & Richards)

         State Trooper

         The Tinker

         A Quick Trip To Surry (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Mister Marshall (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Mimic’s Promenade (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Last Trip? (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Ridin’ In The Rain (Cliff &/or Joe)

All other songs composed, arranged, performed by nimrodstudios

                  

• • •

 

Hadn’t thought about a solo album, but why not? Most of these songs I’d written and composed, except for those from Cliff &/or Joe (duly noted). This was a recreation of what it might have been in college.

‘Wanted!’ - 1968

         Charlie MacGregor (Cliff &/or Joe)

         It’s Gonna get You

         Snow Me

         Why Don’t You Mind Your Own Business (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Hula Girl

         Mr. Marshall (Cliff &/or Joe)

         She (part 1 & 2) (Cliff &/or Joe)

         True Love

         Two Guys with Nothing Else To Do... (Cliff &/or Joe)

         3 Views of Age (Cliff &/or Joe)

 

                  

• • •

 

Jim was such a good singer on ‘Private Salt’s…’ so I wrote two albums for his generation. This was basic rock and roll of the time period. He and a friend, Patrick had made a professional studio recording so I was inspired to write his own album.

‘Backyard Boogie/Hit The Highway’ – 1969/1980

         Backyard Boogie

         Blooper (instrumental)

         The Dragon Queen

         Cat Tail Stomp

         Destruction (instrumental)

         Comin’ Thru

         The Big Apple

         Do Her In

         Backyard Boogie (reprise)

• • •

         Hit The Highway

         Spinning (instrumental)

         You’re My Wailing Wall

         U.F.O.

         Make Your Own Way

         Wake Up (instrumental)

         Be-Bop Boogie

         Think Back

         Rocks Off

         Soft Noise (instrumental)

All songs composed, arranged, performed by nimrodstudios

 

• • •

 

Breaking it back to simple guitar, I recorded these old memories. There were a few dubs but most were one-take recordings (flaws and all).

‘Frog Hollow Day Camp’ - 1976

         Candy Man (Trad.)

         Follow Me down

(Reverend Gary David, Dave Van Ronk, Eric von Schmidt)

         Tell Her No (Rod Argent)

         Younger Girl (John Sebastian)

         Lady Jane (Jagger-Richards)

         Hide Your Love Away (Lennon-McCartney)

         Louie, Louie (Richard Berry)

         Zombie Jamboree (Conrad Eugene Mauge Jr.)

         Peter Gunn (Henry Mancini)

         Paint It Black (Jagger-Richards)

         Tobacco Road (John D. Loudermilk)

         Great Balls of Fire (Otis Blackwell, Jack Hammer)

 

• • •

 

Rock musicals were coming out, so I decided to write one myself. Maybe it was getting out some of my religious beliefs or maybe it was using a Yamaha keyboard but it came out more like church music than rock and roll. The characters were ‘Significant Students’ from years earlier.

‘The Musical’ - 1976

         Never Gave A Damn

         Good Time Music

         The Leader

         Whiskey Drinking Song

         Burger Song

         John Boy John

         Jump

         Black Boy Blues

         To Tell You

         You’re A Fool

         Good Time Music (refrain)

         Follow you

All songs composed, arranged, performed by nimrodstudios

 

                  

• • •

 

This was a little up-beat redo of songs as if this was a circus band passing through town. Basically all bands are just nomads stopping for the night and playing some tunes and leaving the next day. The next year I’d be recording in another place than the basement.

‘Clyde S. Meekly 13^th Street Memorial Band and Entertainment Group - bar none’ - 1978

         Spider and the Fly (Jagger-Richards)

         Paradise (John Prine)

         Candy man (trad.)

         Marie (Randy Newman)

         Out of Time (Jagger-Richards)

         Back in the U.S.S.R. (Lennon-McCartney)

         Desperado (Glenn Frey, Don Henley)

         One More Try (Jagger-Richards)

         Take It Easy (Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne)

 

                  

• • •

 

 

Our set list was:

Cliff &/or Joe - 1978

         I Like Girls

         Party Time

         Harvard...

         Long Tall Curley

         State Trooper

         Dump Sweet Dump

         Ming

         The Group

         1975 Cheer  (Cliff &/or Joe)

         Hotel Colorado

All songs composed, arranged, performed by nimrodstudios

 

Then the band broke up.

 

Cliff – guitar (Ovation acoustic, Goya classical, Goya 12-string acoustic, Framus 6-string electric, Rickenbacker 12-string, Rickenbacker bass, Vox bass), Farfisa keyboard, Fender bassman, Fender bandmaster – 2-2x12 cases, maracas, tambourine, recorder, harmonium, Teac 4-track reel-to-reel tape deck, Radio Shack karaoke dual cassette machine

Joel - vocals

         

• • •

 

Chapter 15 – Multiple Inserts

The last ‘live’ band.

 After years of jamming with other bands but never becoming a member, I was on the sidelines of performing.

A couple of guys from work talked about some music and thought it would be good if we got together to jam.

There was no idea of what songs they knew or how good they played but it was spontaneous and adventurous. We’ll call ourselves “Multiple Inserts” after a newspaper phrase (wink, wink)

Rob was a quiet unimposing guy not suited for a newspaper salesman. He didn’t seem to have much personality or sense of humor but he was younger and brought in some 80’s punk songs I was not familiar with.

Jim was more outgoing and boisterous. He was the persona of a salesman, like the others making a sale either for monetary gains or for romantic conquest.

We all played guitar but I had more gear. I loaded up some guitars and an amp and went to Jim’s house. Rob pulled out some cassettes and we drank beer and listened and learned. Jim knew a few oldies that I could remember and thus started the jamming.

Jim was a natural singer but not a good guitar player, so he was handed a Rickenbacker bass. I played a Rickenbacker 12-string until I took off 6 strings to play lead. There was no drummer so the rhythm was in the guitar playing.

I don’t think we ever played for any audience other than when Jim moved over by the raceway in the summer with the windows open. Unfortunately his girlfriend calling or coming over constantly interrupted us.

 

Then the band broke up.

 

 

Our set list was:

Multiple Inserts (circa 1982)

Jumpin Jack Flash (Jagger-Richards)

         Under My Thumb (Jagger-Richards)

         Last Time (Jagger-Richards)

         Josephine (Chris Rea)

         Money (Janie Bradford, Berry Gordy)

         Route 66 (Bobby Troup)

         Talk About The Passion

(Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe)

         Stormy Monday (T-Bone Walker)

         Spider & The Fly (Jagger-Richards)

         Peaceful Easy Feeling (Jack Tempchin)

         Paradise (John Prine)

         Alison (Elvis Costello)

         Powder Finger (Neil Young)

         House of the Rising Sun (Trad.)

         Live With Me (Jagger-Richards)

         Let It Bleed (Jagger-Richards)

         Oliver’s Army (Elvis Costello)

         Wake Up Little Susie (Felice Bryant, Boudleaux Bryant)

         Mr. Bojangles (Jerry Jeff Walker)

         Blowing in the Wind (Bob Dylan)

         Small Town (John Mellencamp)

         That’s The Way The World Goes Round (John Prine)

         Proud Mary (John Fogerty)

         Smoke on the Water

(Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice)

Jim – guitar (Gibson acoustic, Rickenbacker bass), Fender bandmaster

Rob – guitar (Fender telecaster), Fender Princeton

Cliff – guitar (Fender Stratocaster, Rickenbacker 12-string electric, Washburn 12-string acoustic, Washburn 6-string acoustic, Goya classical, Vox bass), Fender bandmaster

 

 

• • •

 

Chapter 16 – ROKOD02

I made my own band.

The turn of the century and I wanted to record some more music.

My classical Goya, 12-string Goya, Rickenbacker bass, Vox bass, Fender Stratocaster and Ovation 6-string were sold to get out of tax debt.  8>(

 

This was the time to buy some new guitars.

 

I attended all my usual guitar shops: ‘Astor’s’, ‘Jacob’s’, ‘Walter D. Moses’, ‘Cary Gee’, ‘Bacharach’s’, and ‘Jefferson Loan’. ‘Don Warner’, a new music shop out in the neighborhood, had some fine guitars with some real fine prices for the rich kids. ‘Jacob’s’ had moved into the neighborhood but never had a very good selection.

One day I walked into ‘Jacob’s’ and a brown guitar caught my eye. It was a thin acoustic with a cutaway and a hidden pickup. The price was right so I went home with a new Washburn E-14 (from Chicago) ‘Woodstock’ 6-string and hard-shelled case. This was one of the first acoustic/electric with a cutaway. The guitar used on “More Than Words” by Nuno Bettencourt became popular. It became my ‘go to’ guitar. I also bought a Roland DC-15 cube amp with solid-state effects. Later I would buy a Washburn ‘George’ 12-string acoustic/electric and had it delivered to the store to set up before I picked it up. Then I got a Washburn HD10SCE12 ‘Heritage’ 12-string acoustic/electric guitar. I was looking at some Les Paul guitars but everyone I saw had a broken head. I did some research online and made some comparisons and found all the features on an Epiphone ‘Tribute’ Les Paul at ½ the price of a Gibson and ordered that. Still looking online a Washburn WCG66SCE ‘comfort series’ 6-string acoustic/electric guitar with a cedar top and spalted maple sides and back looked interesting, so I ordered it delivered and checked. The last guitar was a highly decorated Washburn R320SWRK parlor vintage guitar in a tombstone case. Then ‘Arts & Music’ bought ‘Jacobs’ and I stopped shopping there.

A friend found I had a Farfisa organ so we swapped for a 65’ Fender Stratocaster. The pots were dirty but it had a sweet tone and easy to play. I fell in love with the versatility but had to sell it. I had to get another so I bought a blue Fender Squire Stratocaster that suited my needs, then gave it away to another guy so I could buy a 70’ Fender Stratocaster in natural ash (now discontinued but was an example of the pre/post CBS purchase).

After having two upright pianos (take up too much space and are loud) I bought a Yamaha PRS-16 Portatone keyboard at ‘Best Products’. It had an array of sounds and a built in drum machine. At the same time I bought a curiosity gadget of a Casio DG-20 digital guitar. It looked like a space toy, with loose plastic strings but multiple effects and tones, a drum machine and a built-in speaker. When plugged in, though hard to play, had some great sounds. The best Hammond organ sound than the keyboard. Could not resist getting Yamaha DD-6 and DD-14 digital drums.

Joe(l) and his sister and some of her friends came by my house one night. As the story goes we started to play music. They had a conga drum so I went down into the basement and brought up a bass guitar and the ‘59 Fender bassman amp. They asked if they could ‘borrow’ the amp. Not being of sound mind, agreed and never saw it again.

Steve wanted to sell his Fender Bandmaster so I bought it and the two 2x12 speaker cabinets. It didn’t have as deep of a tone as the Fender ’59 bassman, but sounded better with a Rickenbacker 12-string. Took up too much space so it went to Goodwill.

Wanting another classical guitar, I stopped by ‘Guitar Works’ on Cary Street. Brian Medas, the owner, is a classical guitar player and teacher and luthier. I would go in and buy some strings or picks or a strap and have a chat while perusing his stock. I bought a Guitar Works travel guitar to take outside, but with the temperature change the bridge pulled off the front. I had better success with his Medas 300 CD designed 6-string classical with electronics and a cutaway.

One day at Guitar Works (he was an authorized dealer) a Fender T-Bucket acoustic/electric guitar with a flame maple front and a cutaway became my next purchase.

Since I didn’t have a bass anymore, I bought a Fender Squire bass and a Fender sidekick bass amp. (Note: It is fun to carry home a guitar case and an amplifier on a bicycle). On another walk by, I stopped in and noticed a pile of drums. I asked Brian if he was expanding the stock? He said they were his son’s who was selling them. I was actually looking for a guitar amp but couldn’t decide between a solid-state amp or a tube amp. I left, walked half a block, turned around and went back. “I’ll buy it if you can deliver?” Now I had two new ‘Mustang II’ and ‘Pro Junior III Hot Rod’ amps and a set of drums.

By now I was getting some good discounts. I went online looking for a new Fender Stratocaster. There are lots with similar looks but different names. I came across a 70s natural and checked the specifications. I checked the price and went back into Brian to see if I could order it. He checked and gave me a price that was below wholesale. It was delivered and set up before I brought it home.

I bought another Guitar Works GWTR-1 travel guitar and a Guitar Works 00-GWMA-100 mandolin on my many stops.

I’d traveled to the Martin Guitar factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania and they didn’t give away any free samples (I asked) so knowing ‘Guitar Works’ (an authorized Martin dealer) I started looking for a Martin guitar.

I first got a Martin LXL2 mini in Koa. It was larger than travel guitar and still fun to play. Then Martin came out with acoustic/electronic with cutaway guitars so I bought an OMCPA4 and then a DCPA4 at wonderful discounts (both discontinued now). The next Martin I bought was a Martin Jr. that is between a full size and a mini. It has electronics but no cutaway and still a joy to play. It sits by my desk. I started thinking about an acoustic bass guitar and found a Fender ‘Kingman’ bass with electronics and a cutaway.  Then ‘Guitar Works’ closed.

‘Metro Sound’ was where I sold all my guitars. They paid blue book prices. They were like the old Astor’s guitar shop with old battered guitars and a few rarities. I bought an open back 5-string Horner banjo for less than $100. Also bought a bunch of Horner harmonicas in different keys. Not real good at either.

The big box stores “Sam Ash”, “Sweetwater” and “The Guitar Center” opened but they were too far away. I didn’t want to order a guitar through the mail figuring it would be a order, broken, sent back, resend, broken, sent back proposition.

Still you can’t avoid a chance to go to the toy store. Wandering the aisles of possibilities a blonde double cutaway electric guitar caught my eye. It was an Epiphone Sheraton II ES-335. I’d been thinking about a hollow body 335 electric since the Framus went to guitar heaven in a Pete Townsend moment. Then I saw a burgundy Ovation Celebrity acoustic/electronic in the backroom and found a case that fit perfectly. The Ovation has a special sound so I had to have another one. They also have the sexiest head of all guitars. I also bought some speakers and amp stands and even a Fender Telecaster for a friend (bad decision) but never went back.

Jim (of the S) was working at Don Warner’s and had a selection of guitars when sitting around strumming. He sold me a Rickenbacker 4003 walnut stereo bass guitar and a Rickenbacker 360 blonde 12-string guitar. He decided he wanted the 12-string back and swapped for some Korean guitar. I didn’t like it and took it back and put it on his porch.

 Another bad deal.

Then effect pedals came out and I tried out all I could get. Jim Dunlop Crybaby Wah-Wah, a MXR Phase 90, MXR Dyna Comp compression pedal, Ross Stereo Delay, Cutec Ultra Metal and a TC Electronic Ditto X2 Looper.

Another friend in Pittsburgh said he was given a keyboard that he doesn’t know how to play and would I like it. He brought it down on one of our bike adventures and now I have a Roland Juno-106 synth.

Along with all the toys, the desktop computer came out as a digital audio workstation. Basic ‘FREE’ software ‘Audacity’ got me started copying files from analog cassettes to digital CDs. Started tinkering with recording and found it could do multiple tracks that could be saved as a WAV file and be uploaded to the Internet.

Then I found Apple’s “FREE” GarageBand app and all the features and haven’t stopped. I took some classes with professional recording software but found the ‘FREE’ features were good enough for me. It is still difficult to click the mouse, monitor the levels with headphones and play and read and sing at the same time, but it is fun.

Besides burning CDs to share with friends, decided to upload versions to ‘Reverbnation’ and ‘Soundcloud’ for anyone to listen to. It is FREE and available to download. Did get some interesting comments and request for collaborations. The Internet provided sharing ideas and tours without getting on a plane.

Now is not the time to worry about making a profit from ideas. There are no managers, engineers, studio cost or promotional materials to spend what is left of life’s savings. Just like sitting around a campfire with some friends making music is payment enough.

The idea of touring around the world playing to thousands of screaming kids in stadiums was never the aspiration. While there is an adrenaline rush performing, playing to a group of folks drinking out of red cups late at night is no longer appealing.

There are many more titles that need to be arranged, recorded and shared to the world. ‘Gonna Be A Chicken Farmer Down In Haiti’, ‘They All Drive Trucks’, ‘White SUV’, ‘Bobby Sands’ and many more need to be recorded with all these instruments and digital technology for self enjoyment and perhaps listener pleasure. 

All the girls and accessories are stored upstairs quietly waiting for the next session.

Guarded by monkeys.

 

Then the band...

 

 

Our set list is:

ROKOD02 (circa 2000)

         Ole Time Blues

         Calypso Folk

         Surf

         nstrumental

         English Electric

         Psychedelic

         nstrumental

         Rock Folk

         Xperimental

         nstrumental

         Rock Hard

Cliff Leftwich – vocals, guitar (Washburn Woodstock acoustic/electric guitar, Fender 70’s Stratocaster, Fender Squire bass, Fender T-Bucket acoustic/electric guitar, Medas classical acoustic/electric guitar, Yamaha keyboard, Roland keyboard, Fender Kingfish acoustic/electric bass, Washburn 12-string acoustic/electric guitar, Washburn parlor guitar, Guitar Works travel guitar, Guitar Works mandolin, Martin CPA-OM4 acoustic/electric guitar, Martin CPA-D4 acoustic/electric guitar, Martin Jr. acoustic/electric guitar, Martin mini guitar, Ovation celebrity acoustic/electric guitar, Yamaha electronic drums, Coda acoustic drums, Horner banjo, Roland cube amp, Fender sidekick bass amp, Fender Hot Rod amp, Fender Blues Jr. amp, M-Audio Black Box digital modeling amp)

 

• • •

 

The idea of a band is the interaction between musicians. Some read off pre-programmed pages while others innovate on stage. Still for a moment in time they are a team striving to make a sound others will appreciate and even dance to. Playing music is an art. Getting paid for playing music is a bonus.

Every team or gang or band breaks up, but the memories last. Some find proceeding to play a one-hit-wonder past it’s prime refreshes the thrill of history. Just like the quarterback who displays his helmet or jersey, band members hang their gold records and guitars on the wall. Others continue trying to relive their youth to smaller and smaller venues. Some become tribute bands as we all were covering popular songs.

The occasional band will have a star member who will find a following and while all the other members leave can continue on the mystic. Others will gracefully grow ancient and appreciated with long gone memories.

I’m in the second group.