The First Concert
It took nearly an act of god to make it to my first concert. Bands came through Tulsa sometimes, but getting there was something else. I finally talked my parents into letting me see Grand Funk railroad in the winter of 72-73. They were to play at the Tulsa Assembly Center. If I remember correctly, the tickets were a whopping $5. LPs cost a little less than that, and the shows weren’t much more expensive. Not like today… concerts have astronomical costs. The amount I paid to sit in nosebleed seats to hear Paul McCartney, or the Who in recent years. Definitely more than the CD costs.
It seems like iert was the Eagles who really started the high priced ticket tours. In one of their returns… I think it was the “Hell Freezes Over” tour; the prices skyrocketed, never to return to a price mere mortals can afford. If you are a regular old fan, forget getting front row seats or being able to afford to see lots of bands. That day is gone.
The plan to see Grand Funk was fairly complicated. I, along with my cousin, would take the bus from Sapulpa to Tulsa. It was only a 20-minute ride, but my Mom was unavailable for a ride with all my younger sibs at home, and Norma was without a ride as well. We would arrive in down town Tulsa and walk the 4 or 5 blocks to the Concert venue. This was kind of a big deal. We grew up in little town U.S.A. Tulsa was the BIG city to us. Kiefer’s whopping population of under a thousand people made this city a daunting metropolis.
We would see the show, and then following it, would walk 2 blocks to the Tulsa post office, which is where my Dad worked the 3 –11 shift. His car would be open and we would wait there until his shift ended.
So, several bug events happened the same day. I rode a bus that was not the local school bus route, was independent in the big city and would finally see my first concert of a real live rock band!
When we arrived at the concert hall, I was in awe. Everywhere around me kids rushed to and fro wearing bell bottoms, concert T shirts, guys with long hair and gorgeous girls that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. There, I felt like a beacon to nerddom. I was clean cut with the beginning of ear lobe length sideburns. Kiefer high school had a very strict hair and dress code. No boys could wear hair that reached their collar nor sideburns beneath the ear lobe. The fact that I also wore practical Woody Allen type glasses made me feel like an accountant at a Happening!
It would be a few years till my hair had its way and grew to should length proportions and my facial hair grew in to never leave. In fact, the last time in my 52 years that I shaved my upper lip was on the day of my high school graduation. The college years of wild hair I am sure was something my father and mother quietly tolerated while wishing I would come back around. My Older brother keith even offered me steaks if I would cut my hair!
We found our seats and prepared for the show. I was hyped. I was excited. Ad, when the lights finally went down, my heart rushed with the roar of the crowd. The Opening act, Billy Preston, danced and played for about 45 minutes. I wasn’t his biggest fan but was willing to tolerate him because he had played keyboards on the Betales’ “let It Be” LP. That gave him some credence in my book. We were introduced to the never-ending setup between shows. The lights went up, the Frisbees flew overhead. The beach balls appeared from nowhere to float across the bustling crowd. It was like a magical event! If Grand Funk could match the experience of being in the crowd, I was in for a real treat.
Finally, after innumerable sound checks, the lights dimmed once again. The crowd roared in anticipation. People stood, so I stood too in order to glimpse the dark stage. From dozens of points around the darkness, orange lights flickered as if camp fires were being lit, and the sweet smell of cannabis wafted around the arena. It was the first time I had even smelled pot.
A light flickered on stage, for a brief second it blazed across the seats. Then again. Then again, with the intervals between flashes becoming shorter and shorter. Then as the lights were pounding out at a rapid pace, a wailing sound like a trains horn sang out but it wasn’t just a train’s blast, it was repeating “Grand Funk, Grand Funk” over and over! Suddenly the stage exploded in lights and there stood one of the golden gods of rock guitar, Mark Farner, his power chord echoing across the dark arena. He was shirtless, a band around his bicep, and his long straight hair rocked back and forth to the rhythm of his playing.
As he moved around the stage, reflections of light shoot from his guitar around the hall. At one point, the light shone on my cousin and she screamed “Mark Farner’s Guitar Shined on me!”
“Closer To Home’, “Inside Looking Out”, “heartbreaker”, “Loneliness”, and “rock and Roll Soul” shook the foundations of the assembly hall. My heart beta with every chord of those songs, and ached with the misery of “man Mistreater.” I hated for the long musical solos to end and dreaded the end of every song as it meant the end of the concert grew nearer.
Finally, as the lights rose and the crowd reluctantly began to leave their seats, we sat, exhausted by the experience. The shuffling exit of hundreds from the hall, and the shock of late night winter air as we exited was a sad ad happy moment at the same time. Sad because it had ended, yet, happy because of the experience. I knew that I wanted more of this. It would be one year tillI got to see another concert. That show would also be Grand Funk on a return to Tulsa, and Wet Willie would be their opening act. These shows would be the first of many to follow, from New wave bands of the 80’s, to Nugent and Blue Oyster Cult, from outdoor festivals to seeing Eric Clapton wail on Layla. I still love that live music.
We waited in Dad’s car at the post office. When Dad made his way to the car, he asked us, “How was the concert?”
“It was fine.” We said.
It was great, I thought.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
shaould have been a rock star zen moment 4
Zen Music Moment
The first few years I worked as a teacher, I would rise early each morning, usually six days a week, drive to my parents house four miles away to run in the early morning twilight of the Oklahoma morning. Cold or hot, wet or dry, Tom and I were like the post office. We delivered regardless of the weather.
There were mornings so hot that when we finished, the shoes I wore sloshed with puddles of sweat. There were winter mornings, slightly bundled against the wind, my warm breath would freeze into a white mustache and beard on my face.
On this particular winter morning, Tom and I had just finished our mileage. I went back to my car, and headed back to my house to get ready for school. I turned on the radio, and exhausted, but happy and slightly buzzed with adrenaline from a good run, it was then this Zen moment appeared.
As I crested a hill facing the east, the Beatles song “here Comes The Sun” came on the radio. The first tender guitar notes and the words “Little Darling, It seems the Ice is Slowly Melting.” Almost if on cue, it was then that the crescent of the sun peeked over the distant hills and spilled this yellow orange light across my face and hands.
I have trouble describing in my poor words the sense of joy and well-being that cascaded over me. It was a timeless moment on an Oklahoma hilltop in the midst of winter. It was the universe saying to me, “hang in there. Spring is coming.”
The first few years I worked as a teacher, I would rise early each morning, usually six days a week, drive to my parents house four miles away to run in the early morning twilight of the Oklahoma morning. Cold or hot, wet or dry, Tom and I were like the post office. We delivered regardless of the weather.
There were mornings so hot that when we finished, the shoes I wore sloshed with puddles of sweat. There were winter mornings, slightly bundled against the wind, my warm breath would freeze into a white mustache and beard on my face.
On this particular winter morning, Tom and I had just finished our mileage. I went back to my car, and headed back to my house to get ready for school. I turned on the radio, and exhausted, but happy and slightly buzzed with adrenaline from a good run, it was then this Zen moment appeared.
As I crested a hill facing the east, the Beatles song “here Comes The Sun” came on the radio. The first tender guitar notes and the words “Little Darling, It seems the Ice is Slowly Melting.” Almost if on cue, it was then that the crescent of the sun peeked over the distant hills and spilled this yellow orange light across my face and hands.
I have trouble describing in my poor words the sense of joy and well-being that cascaded over me. It was a timeless moment on an Oklahoma hilltop in the midst of winter. It was the universe saying to me, “hang in there. Spring is coming.”
Should Have Been a Rock Star zen moment 3
Zen Music moment
I had just finished my senior year of college football. For four years my focus had been to get bigger and bigger and now, slowed down by leg and ankle injury and weary of the extra weight, I set out to start a jogging program that would drop weight and put less stress on my weakened ankles.
Since Sterling College set on the edge of town, bordered by wheat fields, there was no lack of flat roads on which to run, but I needed some motivation to make that trek.
Sitting in my dorm room, as usual with the record player going, I stumbled on to the ultimate running beat. It was hidden on Led Zeppelin II in the song “Whole Lotta Love.”
The “Da-Da Da-Da Dump Dump Dump Dump” rhythm of the tune was a perfect pace for the guy wanting to use the music as a focus for averting his discomfort during the jog down a dusty road.
It proved to be the right stimulus. Singing to myself over and over and over, the beat to the song, the words etched in my brain, almost dragging to a stop as the psychedelic interlude arrived in the song, it became a running version of the song in my head longer than Zeppelin probably ever jammed on it live.
But there, with the “Da-Da Da-Da Dump Dump Dump Dump” playing over and over, I managed to jog and keep jogging for the next many years. I spent years and miles ( often logging over 1,500 miles a year) with that tune still buzzing in my head. And at times still, if I happen to be jogging without an IPOD, my mind will still slip back to that habitual beat to get me over the miles of pavement.
I had just finished my senior year of college football. For four years my focus had been to get bigger and bigger and now, slowed down by leg and ankle injury and weary of the extra weight, I set out to start a jogging program that would drop weight and put less stress on my weakened ankles.
Since Sterling College set on the edge of town, bordered by wheat fields, there was no lack of flat roads on which to run, but I needed some motivation to make that trek.
Sitting in my dorm room, as usual with the record player going, I stumbled on to the ultimate running beat. It was hidden on Led Zeppelin II in the song “Whole Lotta Love.”
The “Da-Da Da-Da Dump Dump Dump Dump” rhythm of the tune was a perfect pace for the guy wanting to use the music as a focus for averting his discomfort during the jog down a dusty road.
It proved to be the right stimulus. Singing to myself over and over and over, the beat to the song, the words etched in my brain, almost dragging to a stop as the psychedelic interlude arrived in the song, it became a running version of the song in my head longer than Zeppelin probably ever jammed on it live.
But there, with the “Da-Da Da-Da Dump Dump Dump Dump” playing over and over, I managed to jog and keep jogging for the next many years. I spent years and miles ( often logging over 1,500 miles a year) with that tune still buzzing in my head. And at times still, if I happen to be jogging without an IPOD, my mind will still slip back to that habitual beat to get me over the miles of pavement.
Should Have Been a Rock Star Zen Moment 2
Zen Music Moment
It was a cold night and the Trojans had just won a close game. We came off the field sweating and elated and the heat from our bodies rose into the dark air like clouds of steam.
The locker room was a celebratory wash of testosterone, slapping backs, high fives, and yelling and hooting! Football was a big deal in Kiefer Oklahoma. Everyone knew whom the players were and when you were downtown, old folks were likely to ask what things looked like for this week’s game.
This evening in the locked room had something special to it. One of the linemen, a kid named Ricky Burleson, outgoing and bigger than life, stood up on the bench and started chanting “I Just Wanna Celebrate!” Those are the opening lines to Rare Earth’s song “I Just Wanna Celebrate!”
This big bunch of macho football players all responded, including myself, with a loud “Yeah! Yeah!” and Ricky carried on with “Another day of Living!” and we responded again evolving into a chant of “I Just Wanna Celebrate!”
A lot of people don’t realize how closely football and music are related. It is a rhythm and a beat. It is the loud staccato of pads rattling against each other and light beat of fleet feet of the receiver as he rushes down field to gather in a perfectly timed pass. Football is music in a physical form, and it was an instrument I could play.
It was a cold night and the Trojans had just won a close game. We came off the field sweating and elated and the heat from our bodies rose into the dark air like clouds of steam.
The locker room was a celebratory wash of testosterone, slapping backs, high fives, and yelling and hooting! Football was a big deal in Kiefer Oklahoma. Everyone knew whom the players were and when you were downtown, old folks were likely to ask what things looked like for this week’s game.
This evening in the locked room had something special to it. One of the linemen, a kid named Ricky Burleson, outgoing and bigger than life, stood up on the bench and started chanting “I Just Wanna Celebrate!” Those are the opening lines to Rare Earth’s song “I Just Wanna Celebrate!”
This big bunch of macho football players all responded, including myself, with a loud “Yeah! Yeah!” and Ricky carried on with “Another day of Living!” and we responded again evolving into a chant of “I Just Wanna Celebrate!”
A lot of people don’t realize how closely football and music are related. It is a rhythm and a beat. It is the loud staccato of pads rattling against each other and light beat of fleet feet of the receiver as he rushes down field to gather in a perfectly timed pass. Football is music in a physical form, and it was an instrument I could play.
Should Have Been a Rock Star Zen Moment 1
Zen Music Moment
It was October of my senior year in high school.
Homecoming week.
It was traditional that one class afternoon was dedicated at our small school to building floats for the homecoming parade. That afternoon was everything that a homecoming day should have been, sun shining, a bit of a feeling of fall in the air. There was the smell of paint and crepe paper and glue. Kids ran back and forth, some dedicated to the floats, some making fun of those who were so into the float.
At the senior float area, our group worked slowly and unwillingly. My class had never been guilty of being ‘go-getters.’ But, eventually we finished a float with paper, and mesh wire and bales of hay that carried some now forgotten slogan about our team and the opponent.
We had a transistor radio playing while we worked. It was either KAKC or KELI radio from Tulsa. My class mates and I sprawled around the float, basking in the warm sun as the radio played. I lay on a bale of hay, wearing my red letter jacket with its bright white ‘K’.
It was then that “Hey Jude” came on the radio. Some of the kids sang along with it softly, some hummed and a few tapped their feet. I laid there silent, closing my eyes to a small squint that allowed in only a sliver of sun as that song washed across me.
It seemed like such a perfect moment that can only leave you either elated or sad that it had ended.
It was October of my senior year in high school.
Homecoming week.
It was traditional that one class afternoon was dedicated at our small school to building floats for the homecoming parade. That afternoon was everything that a homecoming day should have been, sun shining, a bit of a feeling of fall in the air. There was the smell of paint and crepe paper and glue. Kids ran back and forth, some dedicated to the floats, some making fun of those who were so into the float.
At the senior float area, our group worked slowly and unwillingly. My class had never been guilty of being ‘go-getters.’ But, eventually we finished a float with paper, and mesh wire and bales of hay that carried some now forgotten slogan about our team and the opponent.
We had a transistor radio playing while we worked. It was either KAKC or KELI radio from Tulsa. My class mates and I sprawled around the float, basking in the warm sun as the radio played. I lay on a bale of hay, wearing my red letter jacket with its bright white ‘K’.
It was then that “Hey Jude” came on the radio. Some of the kids sang along with it softly, some hummed and a few tapped their feet. I laid there silent, closing my eyes to a small squint that allowed in only a sliver of sun as that song washed across me.
It seemed like such a perfect moment that can only leave you either elated or sad that it had ended.
Should Have Been a Rock Star 6 - The Edge of a Dream
The Edge of a Dream
In May of 1974, I finally stood on the edge of the rest of my life. It was a moment of uncertainty, a contradicted moment in which I wanted to stay with my parents, friends and family, and at the same time nervously wanted to find the outside world. On the fall, I would leave home to travel to Kansas and play football at Sterling College.
I was valedictorian of Kiefer High School. It was a tiny class and I had the highest GPA at the end of our senior year. The school did what it could, but there was no way it had the courses and opportunities that a larger school could provide. But, luckily, I was a voracities reader, read ahead in the textbooks, and the librarian had found me early as a devoted reader. She fed me books. She found that I loved Ray Bradbury and ordered all his books for me to read.
Graduation day came. I had not written my speech before to be approved by the teachers. I’m not sure why. I think I didn’t want to say the same old tired things that every gradation speech since Adam has included. I am surprised that they didn’t have me get it approved, but I think they trusted me. I was the dependable guy. I was the go-to guy. There was little question as to whether or not I would be ‘inappropriate.’
I walked the outside perimeter of the football field as the crowd filed into the stadium to take their places on the rough wooden bleacher steps. My brother Tim walked with me and I would say, “Whatta you think of this?” and then give him my idea. He was 4 ½ years younger than I and the good thing about that is he agreed with it all. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to express how I would miss the people at Kiefer High School. It was almost a Mayberry sort of town, with the Town drunk, the loud guy at ballgames, the friendly store clerk and assorted colorful characters that fill out a good story line. The only thing it lacked was Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife.
The evening cooled and the sky grew a darker blue. Our bright red graduation gowns glowed beneath the lights of the football field, just as our red Trojan uniforms had just months before. We marched in. We sat. We stood. The salutatorian spoke. She was a girl I had always had a crush on through high school, only to finally marry my cousin a few years later. Then it was my turn to speak.
I remember moving nervously to the podium and politely starting before beginning to adlib about the teachers and people we would all miss. I had prefaced my speech with the line that today we stood on the edge of a dream… something we had all been dreaming of for years. The words in the middle of the speech are a blur to me now. I finished my speech, not with a quote by a great dignitary, or the poetic words of the poet laureate, but with words from a source more meaningful to me, the words from a song by the Moody Blues. At late nights, anxious and unable to sleep, their haunting orchestral tunes would wash over me with hints of melancholy and longing. The primitive small speakers of radio couldn’t mute the lush exotic sound of their music. “Night In White Satin,” “ Question,” and “Tuesday Afternoon.” But it was these words that I can still repeat today…
“When the white eagle of the north
flies over had
and the blues, reds and golds of autumn
lie in the gutter dead
remember then the summer birds
with wings of fire flaying
come to witness springs new hope
born of leaves decaying.
As new life will come from death,
Love will come at leisure
Love of love and love of life
And giving without measure
Gives in return
A wondrous yearn
Of promise almost seen.
Live hand in hand
And together we’ll stand
On the threshold of a dream.”
In May of 1974, I finally stood on the edge of the rest of my life. It was a moment of uncertainty, a contradicted moment in which I wanted to stay with my parents, friends and family, and at the same time nervously wanted to find the outside world. On the fall, I would leave home to travel to Kansas and play football at Sterling College.
I was valedictorian of Kiefer High School. It was a tiny class and I had the highest GPA at the end of our senior year. The school did what it could, but there was no way it had the courses and opportunities that a larger school could provide. But, luckily, I was a voracities reader, read ahead in the textbooks, and the librarian had found me early as a devoted reader. She fed me books. She found that I loved Ray Bradbury and ordered all his books for me to read.
Graduation day came. I had not written my speech before to be approved by the teachers. I’m not sure why. I think I didn’t want to say the same old tired things that every gradation speech since Adam has included. I am surprised that they didn’t have me get it approved, but I think they trusted me. I was the dependable guy. I was the go-to guy. There was little question as to whether or not I would be ‘inappropriate.’
I walked the outside perimeter of the football field as the crowd filed into the stadium to take their places on the rough wooden bleacher steps. My brother Tim walked with me and I would say, “Whatta you think of this?” and then give him my idea. He was 4 ½ years younger than I and the good thing about that is he agreed with it all. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to express how I would miss the people at Kiefer High School. It was almost a Mayberry sort of town, with the Town drunk, the loud guy at ballgames, the friendly store clerk and assorted colorful characters that fill out a good story line. The only thing it lacked was Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife.
The evening cooled and the sky grew a darker blue. Our bright red graduation gowns glowed beneath the lights of the football field, just as our red Trojan uniforms had just months before. We marched in. We sat. We stood. The salutatorian spoke. She was a girl I had always had a crush on through high school, only to finally marry my cousin a few years later. Then it was my turn to speak.
I remember moving nervously to the podium and politely starting before beginning to adlib about the teachers and people we would all miss. I had prefaced my speech with the line that today we stood on the edge of a dream… something we had all been dreaming of for years. The words in the middle of the speech are a blur to me now. I finished my speech, not with a quote by a great dignitary, or the poetic words of the poet laureate, but with words from a source more meaningful to me, the words from a song by the Moody Blues. At late nights, anxious and unable to sleep, their haunting orchestral tunes would wash over me with hints of melancholy and longing. The primitive small speakers of radio couldn’t mute the lush exotic sound of their music. “Night In White Satin,” “ Question,” and “Tuesday Afternoon.” But it was these words that I can still repeat today…
“When the white eagle of the north
flies over had
and the blues, reds and golds of autumn
lie in the gutter dead
remember then the summer birds
with wings of fire flaying
come to witness springs new hope
born of leaves decaying.
As new life will come from death,
Love will come at leisure
Love of love and love of life
And giving without measure
Gives in return
A wondrous yearn
Of promise almost seen.
Live hand in hand
And together we’ll stand
On the threshold of a dream.”
Should Have Been a Rock Star 5- Larry paul Debbie and Jerry
Larry Paul Debbie and Jerry
Larry
Kiefer High School was by no means the center of the world as far as rock and roll. Kiefer didn’t even sit on a metaphoric exit ramp or side street leading from the center of the world. What it was is this…a small fading oil town that remained after the big oil strikes in pre-statehood Oklahoma. Kiefer had its oil day boom and bust. What was left was a small town of about 800 to 1000 people. It had a few churches, a long time drug store run by the oldest living graduate of Kiefer Schools and a school. There were a couple of gas stations and a tiny family market. It was the kind of place a kid who was short 5 cents on buying a Pepsi and candy bar was told, “Bring it in next time. I know your daddy.”
We had a couple of AM radio stations that played a variety of rock music. KAKC at 97.5 and KELI at 1430 on the dial. Both were from Tulsa, just 20 miles away. They played a mix of music that isn’t seen on radio today. Anyone tuning in might get anything from the Beatles to the Supremes, or Steppenwolf to the Carpenters.
During junior high, my friends and I carried pocket-sized transistor radios. They were just the size that a person could pull out at lunchtime as you walked the 3 blocks to Minerva’s Drug Store and hear a few tunes from the Bee Gees or Temptations. We were never very far from the music even in this little country town.
Larry and I had been friends since we were six years old. He moved in next to my grandma’s house in town. My family lived about 4 miles out in the country. I spent a lot of time at grandma’s house, especially on weekends. Larry and I would play every kind of sport imaginable, listen to records on his stereo or talk while he strummed his guitar. Along that path, we developed a love for similar kinds of music. Larry was really into a boogie style of music that is something most rhythm guitar people like to play. Through high school, that had him playing things like “Long Cool woman” by the Hollies or “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum. Larry was always a huge paul revere and the Raiders fan, they hosted their own shows on TV with variety music such a “Happening” that was on TV around 1968 or so.
Larry was an only child. He lived with his mom and her parents. His grandmother and granddad had always seemed old to me but I loved them. His granddad would tell us army stories dating back to the world war one era. Grandma cooked all the time. She was always trying to get Larry to eat and drink something besides Pepsi.
One of the saddest times I ever knew was when Larry’s Mom passed away suddenly. She couldn’t have been older than somewhere in her thirties. One of my strongest memories of her was a time I brought a small reel to reel recorder to Larry’s house. We would sing in it, amazed at how much we thought we sounded like the Beatles. His mom, Pauline, sang into it too. I still picture her sitting on the edge of the bed singing a hymn into that microphone held in her hand.
When I got to my Grandma’s house, she told me that Pauline had died. She worked with Pauline at a pottery plant. She asked if I wanted to see Larry. She thought it would be a good idea and called Larry’s house.
We met at the fence that separated the two yards. At that time I was unfamiliar with death and was unprepared for the grief that I saw in Larry’s face. One of his family was there with him holding him up to keep him from collapsing. He cried and cried and told me, “I don’t want the money! I don’t want the money! I want my Mom!”
Apparently some idiotic person had told him he would get some insurance money. There, a young kid’s world has just been turned upside down and some asshole was trying to cheer him up with money. Here it is some 40 years later and I am still angry about that. Maybe it is because I felt so inadequate, so vulnerable at that moment. I wanted to help but I didn’t have the tools to assuage his grief. Even today, as I think about those m0oments at the fence, I don’t remember anything that anyone else said except those words “I don’t want the money! I don’t want the money! I want my Mom!”
Years later, it would be Larry who talked me into playing in front of people at the church. He played his electric guitar. I played my standard. We played a couple of reggae style songs we stole from Eric Clapton. Clapton had recorded a reggae version of several songs, but on his “There’s One In Every Crowd” album, he did “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”
We played it. We played two songs. The guitar didn’t break. The fingers all worked. The guy wasn’t sitting in the front row laughing at me like it had seemed in the college recital. Every thing went great except for one old lady who complained later that the electric guitar ‘hurt her heart.’
I still appreciate Larry for doing that with me even if my guitar playing days were numbered.
Paul
In junior high, one of the weirdest kids I knew moved in town. He had one strike against him right away. His dad was the new math teacher and oddly enough, in a small town where nearly every boy at the high school played football, Paul did not.
Paul Lawrence. He was skinny and blonde. He wore wire-framed glasses while I was still wearing the Woody Allen like black frames. He didn’t mind making a fool of himself and was likely to go into his ‘retarded’ act when he entered any store. He made jokes about aardvarks, especially the invisible one he called “Orly.” The only sport he played was basketball, almost unheard of in Kiefer at that time. In fact, we eventually let Paul join our Kiefer Electric Football League. It was made upof myself, my brother Tim, Larry and the Baptist preacher’s son, David. Paul broke all tradtion with our teams that scurried around on those vibrating boards. The rest of us painted and names our teams after NFL teams. Paul painted his named them the UCLA Aardvarks….UCLA meaning University of Car Lubricators at Admond, Ohio.
It only took a bit till we realized that Paul was someone with a quirky sense of humor and after a visit to his house, which sat on school property about 100 yards from the school building, we found a true common interest. Paul was a big music fan. He was especially into Bob Dylan at that time. I can recall the first visit, sitting in his room listening to Dylan singing, “watching the River Flow” with Tulsa product Leon Russell playing the accompanying piano.
I began to draw stories about us as if we were a superstar band. I drew them in the format of a teen magazine with us (I wish I could remember the name I gave the band… some thing like “Asylum”) responsible for every hit song in the past ten years. It was kind of like Bill and Ted’s “wild Stallions” from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” We developed a whole history of the band and the music.
Paul lived in Kiefer two years, then his family moved away when his Dad took a new teaching job. When I found that Paul was going to move, I rewrote the whole “Jesus Christ Superstar” libretto into “Paul Lawrence Superstar” with illustrations. The story went from the last days of Jesus through the eyes of Webber and Rice to the exploits of superstar basketball player Paul Lawrence as he is dared by doubting coaches to “dribble across my swimming pool” as Herod implored Jesus to walk across his swimming pool in the original.
The last thing I ever got to do with Paul involved both his fave Dylan and my Leon Russell. The movie “Concert for Bangla Desh” had just been released. I talked my mom into taking Paul and I to see i8t as a going away gift to him.
I wonder. Is Paul still listening to Dylan? Did he like his ‘religious’ period? Has he been wired at the various biographies made about Bob in recent years?
I hope so.
Debbie
I dated a girl in high school named Debbie. We were inseparable for a long time until eventually she made me suffer seemingly unlimited agony… but more on that later. Debbie would borrow my albums all the time and if she had one fault, it was not her looks or character, it was in the fact that she could not or would not put records back in their sleeve and cover. It drove me crazy. For a collector, it was like a cardinal sin.
For example, she borrowed my 2 lp set of the best of the Four Seasons, only to leave it scratched and skipping. She mangled David Bowie’s “Aladdin sane.” Against my better judgment, I gave into love instead of good sense and loaned her my copy of “Abbey Road.” When we finally ‘found’ it, stuck in the recesses of the stereo sliding top panel, the Beatles could no longer harmonize on “because” or blissfully announce the melting of the ice on “Here Comes the Sun.” Instead they skipped from line to line or repeated over and over “You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your…”
Now, I do have to give Debbie this point in my life’s soundtrack. She was the first person I ever danced with in public. It was a little complicated because I came from a Southern Baptist family. My Dad definitely believed that dancing was something we weren’t supposed to do, so when the school had dances, I and my sister Mary ( she was next oldest to me) sat in the library while the rest of the school danced. It was tough, especially since my girlfriend wanted to go to the dance. I was jealous. I was mad.
So, when it came time for my senior prom, I had decided that I would go, take Debbie and somehow, I would dance with her. After all, how hard could that be? People did it on American Bandstand all the time! Surely the guy who was graceful enough to play football, to play basketball and baseball could muster enough ability to dance?
We actually practiced in my room. I’d put a record on the stereo and Debbie and I would slow dance. It seemed easy enough. We even tried some dancing to faster songs. I thought I could pull it off.
When prom finally arrived, I was a nervous wreck. I was dressed in my suit, had my corsage, but I was sweating like a dog. It wasn’t a first date or anything like that, but the anticipation of dancing on that floor, in front of other people had me terrified. I’m not sure if I could feel the fires of hell threatening to burn to a cinder of desire should I take that fateful step on the dance floor, but the universe was defiantly out of alignment. So bad that when I picked her up, I stepped on the back of her gown, tore it at the waist and her mom had to stitch it before we left.
WE went to the dinner and dance, but somehow the dinner didn’t seem to set well. I was more nervous than I would have been if it had been 4th down and a yard to go for a playoff berth. Hitting someone seemed much easier than swaying to music.
Finally the tables were cleared and the band arrived and set up. We actually had live music instead of canned. Better for those who wanted to play air guitar along with it rather than dance. I even remember the name of the band – “Ram.” The seventies must have n been good times for prom music. One of my college buddies from Chicago had that new band “Styx” as the music for his junior prom. Ram never went anywhere beyond Tulsa as far as I know, but they played an integral part in my fear for that evening.
We sat at the side with friends as the music started. Several songs played as others moved on and off the dance floor, but still I sat sweating. I could tell that she was growing impatient, but fear soaked my jacket and weighted my feet. I think of a song that Nils Lofgren would do later. Nils had his own band “Smile” and also played for Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, but on a solo lp called “Cry Tough” he used the title song to tell the story of a guy who goes to the doctor to find a way to dance with his girl so he wouldn’t lose her.
“Doctor Feelgood, I promised this lady. If I can’t dance, she’s gonna break my nose.”
Time passed. I squirmed. Finally, noting the look of exasperation on her face, I excused myself to the bathroom. There, I carefully checked to make sure no one else was in the room, hidden in the toilets or behind a door. Then, with the echoed booming of a song by REO Speedwagon playing through the door, I watched my self in the mirror as I danced clumsily in the boy’s bathroom. At least I could move and by god, some of the guys on the floor looked pretty bad. Surely I could look less bad than they did.
I returned to our chairs and told her that as soon as a good song started, we would dance.
Luckily for me, and thankfully to whatever vinyl LP gods or muses there are, the band slowed down and started playing Chicago’s “Color My World.” Debbie and I walked on to the floor, and slow danced to the song. I was giddy. I was nervous and perspiring, but I managed to do it without stumbling, stepping on her gown ( a second time) or looking so ridiculous that the rest of my school mates rolled on the floor in agonized laughter.
Since then, I have managed to dance many times, but my wife still thinks I dance like I’m waiting to be struck down by an angry god for the lust the dance inspires in my heart.
And you know what? It does!
Jerry
When I started dating Debbie, I also met another guy in her class, Jerry Reale. Jerry was slightly wired, it seemed. He was always moving and talking. Jerry was a skinny little guy with a Joey Ramone type haircut. Hr wore glasses and had a wide smile that easily reminded me of the Ramones lead singer. He was really into whatever he was doing. One of the things he was into was progressive rock music. I couldn’t think of many people who could have named more than “Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida” when ti came to discussing the Iron Butterfly, or who knew the liner notes to all the Yes albums, but Jerry was it.
In the early ‘70’s, there was no progressive rock radio in the area. It wasn’t until 1974 that the first FM stations that played progressive rock squeaked their way in to our lives. When they did, it was something completely new. Instead of listening to songs like “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” or “Sunshine on My Shoulder” as part of the play list, we heard “White Bird” by David Laflame or tunes by Jethro Tull and Bloodrock. The FM jocks didn’t talk halfway through the songs like the AM DJ’s did and they were laid back, almost as if they had gotten stoned before they went on air.
We did get the occasional progressive tune when someone like Emerson lake and Palmer released “Lucky Man” as a single, but the new FM rock was slowly shifting radio music away from singles on 45 RPM to the album oriented rock. The albums were developing themes instead of being a collection of possible A and B side single releases.
Jerry and I became collectors. We would drive to Tulsa and scavenge the record stores. The two most prominent were Starship records, a business run in a multi colored old house by long haired guys who called you “hey man,” and Greers Records and Tapes which had a series of stores across town all heralded by an annoying Linda Greer in her local commercials. When LP’s were selling for less than 5 dollars each, we bought things in a feeding frenzy.
Jerry lived close to my grandmother’s house in town. It was in his house that my head and ears received something that changed my musical tastes forever. Jerry had me sit in his bean bag chair, pull on the padded over sized headphones while he keyed up the Yes album “Close to the Edge.” It was in that darkened, poster covered room I heard this new rock.
It was like this- the first time my first born tasted ice cream as a baby, he sat, wide-eyed, with his mouth open, absorbing the cold sugary swell of pleasure that came from the first taste of that addictive concoction. I felt the same way as that album played, richly textured and layered. It rocked, but it was something much, much more. It was like Mozart on acid.
No sooner had I finished that Lp than he also had me listen to the entire “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd through the headphones. It was almost too much. Sure I had heard experimental music on Sgt Pepper and the White album, but this was a whole new game. It was something that appealed to the artistic side of the listener. And I had discovered it in the darkness of jerry Reale’s house.
Jerry and I started to visit a new phenomena, the ‘Used Record store.’ We took to trading and searching the racks for lost gems, sometimes finding out of print items or European pressing. I even found an original John Lennon and Yoko Ono “Tow Virgins” LP in the original sleeve and bought it for $2.98. I would hang on to that record till the summer of 1980, when I sold it for $40. Of course, Lennon was killed in the winter of 1980. I have never bothered to see how much that original album became worth after his death. It seemed too morbid. Jerry and I were music archaeologists. We searched for the nuggets of gold where ever and when ever we could. We read about them in the Rolling Stone and other music magazines and traded for bootleg recordings and live bootlegs of our favorite bands.
Long before the Beatles anthology came out, I had most of those songs in LP format, We found live recordings of Rundgren, the Who, Electric Light Orchestra, and Yes.
Ironically, years passed amd Jerry and I drifted our separate ways. I ended up teaching his daughter in high school and actually ran into Jerry at a Yes concert in Tulsa. Jerry had stepped outside for a smoke and my wife and I were forced to leave early due to a really bad asthma attack she was having. I introduced Jerry, we exchanged news and pleasantries and we moved on.
I wonder if Jerry is still a Yes fan, sitting in a bean bag chair, making musical sounds with his mouth while he listens to tunes through some padded headphones?
I hope so.
Larry
Kiefer High School was by no means the center of the world as far as rock and roll. Kiefer didn’t even sit on a metaphoric exit ramp or side street leading from the center of the world. What it was is this…a small fading oil town that remained after the big oil strikes in pre-statehood Oklahoma. Kiefer had its oil day boom and bust. What was left was a small town of about 800 to 1000 people. It had a few churches, a long time drug store run by the oldest living graduate of Kiefer Schools and a school. There were a couple of gas stations and a tiny family market. It was the kind of place a kid who was short 5 cents on buying a Pepsi and candy bar was told, “Bring it in next time. I know your daddy.”
We had a couple of AM radio stations that played a variety of rock music. KAKC at 97.5 and KELI at 1430 on the dial. Both were from Tulsa, just 20 miles away. They played a mix of music that isn’t seen on radio today. Anyone tuning in might get anything from the Beatles to the Supremes, or Steppenwolf to the Carpenters.
During junior high, my friends and I carried pocket-sized transistor radios. They were just the size that a person could pull out at lunchtime as you walked the 3 blocks to Minerva’s Drug Store and hear a few tunes from the Bee Gees or Temptations. We were never very far from the music even in this little country town.
Larry and I had been friends since we were six years old. He moved in next to my grandma’s house in town. My family lived about 4 miles out in the country. I spent a lot of time at grandma’s house, especially on weekends. Larry and I would play every kind of sport imaginable, listen to records on his stereo or talk while he strummed his guitar. Along that path, we developed a love for similar kinds of music. Larry was really into a boogie style of music that is something most rhythm guitar people like to play. Through high school, that had him playing things like “Long Cool woman” by the Hollies or “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum. Larry was always a huge paul revere and the Raiders fan, they hosted their own shows on TV with variety music such a “Happening” that was on TV around 1968 or so.
Larry was an only child. He lived with his mom and her parents. His grandmother and granddad had always seemed old to me but I loved them. His granddad would tell us army stories dating back to the world war one era. Grandma cooked all the time. She was always trying to get Larry to eat and drink something besides Pepsi.
One of the saddest times I ever knew was when Larry’s Mom passed away suddenly. She couldn’t have been older than somewhere in her thirties. One of my strongest memories of her was a time I brought a small reel to reel recorder to Larry’s house. We would sing in it, amazed at how much we thought we sounded like the Beatles. His mom, Pauline, sang into it too. I still picture her sitting on the edge of the bed singing a hymn into that microphone held in her hand.
When I got to my Grandma’s house, she told me that Pauline had died. She worked with Pauline at a pottery plant. She asked if I wanted to see Larry. She thought it would be a good idea and called Larry’s house.
We met at the fence that separated the two yards. At that time I was unfamiliar with death and was unprepared for the grief that I saw in Larry’s face. One of his family was there with him holding him up to keep him from collapsing. He cried and cried and told me, “I don’t want the money! I don’t want the money! I want my Mom!”
Apparently some idiotic person had told him he would get some insurance money. There, a young kid’s world has just been turned upside down and some asshole was trying to cheer him up with money. Here it is some 40 years later and I am still angry about that. Maybe it is because I felt so inadequate, so vulnerable at that moment. I wanted to help but I didn’t have the tools to assuage his grief. Even today, as I think about those m0oments at the fence, I don’t remember anything that anyone else said except those words “I don’t want the money! I don’t want the money! I want my Mom!”
Years later, it would be Larry who talked me into playing in front of people at the church. He played his electric guitar. I played my standard. We played a couple of reggae style songs we stole from Eric Clapton. Clapton had recorded a reggae version of several songs, but on his “There’s One In Every Crowd” album, he did “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”
We played it. We played two songs. The guitar didn’t break. The fingers all worked. The guy wasn’t sitting in the front row laughing at me like it had seemed in the college recital. Every thing went great except for one old lady who complained later that the electric guitar ‘hurt her heart.’
I still appreciate Larry for doing that with me even if my guitar playing days were numbered.
Paul
In junior high, one of the weirdest kids I knew moved in town. He had one strike against him right away. His dad was the new math teacher and oddly enough, in a small town where nearly every boy at the high school played football, Paul did not.
Paul Lawrence. He was skinny and blonde. He wore wire-framed glasses while I was still wearing the Woody Allen like black frames. He didn’t mind making a fool of himself and was likely to go into his ‘retarded’ act when he entered any store. He made jokes about aardvarks, especially the invisible one he called “Orly.” The only sport he played was basketball, almost unheard of in Kiefer at that time. In fact, we eventually let Paul join our Kiefer Electric Football League. It was made upof myself, my brother Tim, Larry and the Baptist preacher’s son, David. Paul broke all tradtion with our teams that scurried around on those vibrating boards. The rest of us painted and names our teams after NFL teams. Paul painted his named them the UCLA Aardvarks….UCLA meaning University of Car Lubricators at Admond, Ohio.
It only took a bit till we realized that Paul was someone with a quirky sense of humor and after a visit to his house, which sat on school property about 100 yards from the school building, we found a true common interest. Paul was a big music fan. He was especially into Bob Dylan at that time. I can recall the first visit, sitting in his room listening to Dylan singing, “watching the River Flow” with Tulsa product Leon Russell playing the accompanying piano.
I began to draw stories about us as if we were a superstar band. I drew them in the format of a teen magazine with us (I wish I could remember the name I gave the band… some thing like “Asylum”) responsible for every hit song in the past ten years. It was kind of like Bill and Ted’s “wild Stallions” from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” We developed a whole history of the band and the music.
Paul lived in Kiefer two years, then his family moved away when his Dad took a new teaching job. When I found that Paul was going to move, I rewrote the whole “Jesus Christ Superstar” libretto into “Paul Lawrence Superstar” with illustrations. The story went from the last days of Jesus through the eyes of Webber and Rice to the exploits of superstar basketball player Paul Lawrence as he is dared by doubting coaches to “dribble across my swimming pool” as Herod implored Jesus to walk across his swimming pool in the original.
The last thing I ever got to do with Paul involved both his fave Dylan and my Leon Russell. The movie “Concert for Bangla Desh” had just been released. I talked my mom into taking Paul and I to see i8t as a going away gift to him.
I wonder. Is Paul still listening to Dylan? Did he like his ‘religious’ period? Has he been wired at the various biographies made about Bob in recent years?
I hope so.
Debbie
I dated a girl in high school named Debbie. We were inseparable for a long time until eventually she made me suffer seemingly unlimited agony… but more on that later. Debbie would borrow my albums all the time and if she had one fault, it was not her looks or character, it was in the fact that she could not or would not put records back in their sleeve and cover. It drove me crazy. For a collector, it was like a cardinal sin.
For example, she borrowed my 2 lp set of the best of the Four Seasons, only to leave it scratched and skipping. She mangled David Bowie’s “Aladdin sane.” Against my better judgment, I gave into love instead of good sense and loaned her my copy of “Abbey Road.” When we finally ‘found’ it, stuck in the recesses of the stereo sliding top panel, the Beatles could no longer harmonize on “because” or blissfully announce the melting of the ice on “Here Comes the Sun.” Instead they skipped from line to line or repeated over and over “You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your…”
Now, I do have to give Debbie this point in my life’s soundtrack. She was the first person I ever danced with in public. It was a little complicated because I came from a Southern Baptist family. My Dad definitely believed that dancing was something we weren’t supposed to do, so when the school had dances, I and my sister Mary ( she was next oldest to me) sat in the library while the rest of the school danced. It was tough, especially since my girlfriend wanted to go to the dance. I was jealous. I was mad.
So, when it came time for my senior prom, I had decided that I would go, take Debbie and somehow, I would dance with her. After all, how hard could that be? People did it on American Bandstand all the time! Surely the guy who was graceful enough to play football, to play basketball and baseball could muster enough ability to dance?
We actually practiced in my room. I’d put a record on the stereo and Debbie and I would slow dance. It seemed easy enough. We even tried some dancing to faster songs. I thought I could pull it off.
When prom finally arrived, I was a nervous wreck. I was dressed in my suit, had my corsage, but I was sweating like a dog. It wasn’t a first date or anything like that, but the anticipation of dancing on that floor, in front of other people had me terrified. I’m not sure if I could feel the fires of hell threatening to burn to a cinder of desire should I take that fateful step on the dance floor, but the universe was defiantly out of alignment. So bad that when I picked her up, I stepped on the back of her gown, tore it at the waist and her mom had to stitch it before we left.
WE went to the dinner and dance, but somehow the dinner didn’t seem to set well. I was more nervous than I would have been if it had been 4th down and a yard to go for a playoff berth. Hitting someone seemed much easier than swaying to music.
Finally the tables were cleared and the band arrived and set up. We actually had live music instead of canned. Better for those who wanted to play air guitar along with it rather than dance. I even remember the name of the band – “Ram.” The seventies must have n been good times for prom music. One of my college buddies from Chicago had that new band “Styx” as the music for his junior prom. Ram never went anywhere beyond Tulsa as far as I know, but they played an integral part in my fear for that evening.
We sat at the side with friends as the music started. Several songs played as others moved on and off the dance floor, but still I sat sweating. I could tell that she was growing impatient, but fear soaked my jacket and weighted my feet. I think of a song that Nils Lofgren would do later. Nils had his own band “Smile” and also played for Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, but on a solo lp called “Cry Tough” he used the title song to tell the story of a guy who goes to the doctor to find a way to dance with his girl so he wouldn’t lose her.
“Doctor Feelgood, I promised this lady. If I can’t dance, she’s gonna break my nose.”
Time passed. I squirmed. Finally, noting the look of exasperation on her face, I excused myself to the bathroom. There, I carefully checked to make sure no one else was in the room, hidden in the toilets or behind a door. Then, with the echoed booming of a song by REO Speedwagon playing through the door, I watched my self in the mirror as I danced clumsily in the boy’s bathroom. At least I could move and by god, some of the guys on the floor looked pretty bad. Surely I could look less bad than they did.
I returned to our chairs and told her that as soon as a good song started, we would dance.
Luckily for me, and thankfully to whatever vinyl LP gods or muses there are, the band slowed down and started playing Chicago’s “Color My World.” Debbie and I walked on to the floor, and slow danced to the song. I was giddy. I was nervous and perspiring, but I managed to do it without stumbling, stepping on her gown ( a second time) or looking so ridiculous that the rest of my school mates rolled on the floor in agonized laughter.
Since then, I have managed to dance many times, but my wife still thinks I dance like I’m waiting to be struck down by an angry god for the lust the dance inspires in my heart.
And you know what? It does!
Jerry
When I started dating Debbie, I also met another guy in her class, Jerry Reale. Jerry was slightly wired, it seemed. He was always moving and talking. Jerry was a skinny little guy with a Joey Ramone type haircut. Hr wore glasses and had a wide smile that easily reminded me of the Ramones lead singer. He was really into whatever he was doing. One of the things he was into was progressive rock music. I couldn’t think of many people who could have named more than “Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida” when ti came to discussing the Iron Butterfly, or who knew the liner notes to all the Yes albums, but Jerry was it.
In the early ‘70’s, there was no progressive rock radio in the area. It wasn’t until 1974 that the first FM stations that played progressive rock squeaked their way in to our lives. When they did, it was something completely new. Instead of listening to songs like “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” or “Sunshine on My Shoulder” as part of the play list, we heard “White Bird” by David Laflame or tunes by Jethro Tull and Bloodrock. The FM jocks didn’t talk halfway through the songs like the AM DJ’s did and they were laid back, almost as if they had gotten stoned before they went on air.
We did get the occasional progressive tune when someone like Emerson lake and Palmer released “Lucky Man” as a single, but the new FM rock was slowly shifting radio music away from singles on 45 RPM to the album oriented rock. The albums were developing themes instead of being a collection of possible A and B side single releases.
Jerry and I became collectors. We would drive to Tulsa and scavenge the record stores. The two most prominent were Starship records, a business run in a multi colored old house by long haired guys who called you “hey man,” and Greers Records and Tapes which had a series of stores across town all heralded by an annoying Linda Greer in her local commercials. When LP’s were selling for less than 5 dollars each, we bought things in a feeding frenzy.
Jerry lived close to my grandmother’s house in town. It was in his house that my head and ears received something that changed my musical tastes forever. Jerry had me sit in his bean bag chair, pull on the padded over sized headphones while he keyed up the Yes album “Close to the Edge.” It was in that darkened, poster covered room I heard this new rock.
It was like this- the first time my first born tasted ice cream as a baby, he sat, wide-eyed, with his mouth open, absorbing the cold sugary swell of pleasure that came from the first taste of that addictive concoction. I felt the same way as that album played, richly textured and layered. It rocked, but it was something much, much more. It was like Mozart on acid.
No sooner had I finished that Lp than he also had me listen to the entire “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd through the headphones. It was almost too much. Sure I had heard experimental music on Sgt Pepper and the White album, but this was a whole new game. It was something that appealed to the artistic side of the listener. And I had discovered it in the darkness of jerry Reale’s house.
Jerry and I started to visit a new phenomena, the ‘Used Record store.’ We took to trading and searching the racks for lost gems, sometimes finding out of print items or European pressing. I even found an original John Lennon and Yoko Ono “Tow Virgins” LP in the original sleeve and bought it for $2.98. I would hang on to that record till the summer of 1980, when I sold it for $40. Of course, Lennon was killed in the winter of 1980. I have never bothered to see how much that original album became worth after his death. It seemed too morbid. Jerry and I were music archaeologists. We searched for the nuggets of gold where ever and when ever we could. We read about them in the Rolling Stone and other music magazines and traded for bootleg recordings and live bootlegs of our favorite bands.
Long before the Beatles anthology came out, I had most of those songs in LP format, We found live recordings of Rundgren, the Who, Electric Light Orchestra, and Yes.
Ironically, years passed amd Jerry and I drifted our separate ways. I ended up teaching his daughter in high school and actually ran into Jerry at a Yes concert in Tulsa. Jerry had stepped outside for a smoke and my wife and I were forced to leave early due to a really bad asthma attack she was having. I introduced Jerry, we exchanged news and pleasantries and we moved on.
I wonder if Jerry is still a Yes fan, sitting in a bean bag chair, making musical sounds with his mouth while he listens to tunes through some padded headphones?
I hope so.
Should Have been a rock star 4 - Video Kills the Boy Scouts
How video killed the Boy Scouts
By 1969, I had turned 13 years old. I was obsessed with a couple of things. I played football, and catcher for the summer league baseball team. My friends (especially Larry Lutts), two younger brothers and my sister Mary and I spent hours and hours playing a board baseball game called “Stat-O-Matic Baseball.” It was a game based on the stats of the major league teams and we dived into the game like it was popcorn.
I was becoming more and more obsessed with the Beatles. I spent hours sitting in a junk car in our pasture sorting through old damp smelling newspapers searching for articles about the travels of the Beatles over the past several years. Luckily for me, my family tended to pack rat things, so I discovered gold in that spider infested car. The car was filled to the brim with every old Tulsa world or Tulsa Tribune that had been carried home from work by my Dad.
I tore out stories about the Beatles landing here and there, but never any where close to the state of Oklahoma.
My older cousin Sharon fed my obsession by giving me tons of “16” magazine that had dozens of pictures of the Beatles and stories of their exploits. I dared the ridicule of salespeople when buying magazines intended for young girls that taunted them with date promises with Paul or John and Davey Jones of the Monkees… anything to get another picture or story of the Beatles. I bought “Tiger Beat,” “16,” and even one called “Datebook” because it hosted a Beatles Monthly publication in its pages.
I papered my walls above the bunk beds with their pictures, including the coveted psychedelic photos from “life” magazine. I made scrapbooks. I sat and carefully scrutinized every song on the Beatles White Album after I could finally afford it. I rated the songs with stars written in the margins of the huge photo fold and lyric sheet that opened like treasure from King Tut’s tomb. I spent hours drawing their pictures and cartoon figures from “The Yellow Submarine” and the Saturday morning Beatles cartoon.
The Beatles cartoons aired on ABC-TV from September 25, 1965 to April 20, 1969. It was based around 2 or 3 episodes a show of a simple story with the “Hard day’s Night” type frolic at the end accompanied by a song. My little brothers and sisters all gathered in our Saturday morning underwear in front of our black and white TV to watch the show and sway to the tunes. Ringo squeezed by a romantically inclined snake as “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me” played. Paul, always chased by girls as the “Cute One.” In the summer of ’68, my brother Keith, older than I by 10 years, found a part time job for me working Saturdays cleaning cages in a chinchilla farm. I was very distressed about missing he cartoons, but with the dollar fifty an hour I made, it did mean more records and magazines.
In 1966 the Monkees also premiered on TV. The show only lasted a couple of seasons. It was 30 minutes of chaotic romp modeled after the Beatles’ movies. It too was centered around a few specific songs each show. So, we had two entertaining weekly sources of music that meant something to me. It was something that continued to feed that spot inside of me that yearned for something musical, something rebellious, something different than the life of a small town teen in Oklahoma.
In 68’, not only did I get the job, and not only did the Beatles White album come out, but two other things stretched my head a little. The Beatles released a pop psychedelic cartoon based upon the “Yellow Submarine.” The Monkees also released the movie “Head,” which was much more mind bending than any of their mild, inoffensive TV shows had been. It was co-written by jack Nicholson and had appearances from the strange and unusual. Cameos by artists like Frank Zappa confused the Monkee’s typical fan, I am sure.
While my thoughts were changing, I, the good son of the Southern Baptist Deacon and Church song leader secretly made notes in the margins of his Bible asking questions such as “if the flood is true, then how can this be true about the family of giants after the flood?” A scary thought, to think that maybe all of the things I had grown up with and accepted so easily might not be the answer, or the only answer. The music was exposing me to a world far beyond the borders of a dying oil town. Meanwhile, raging across the TV news were scenes of beginning student unrest, race riots and fiery speeches from a black man named Martin Luther Ling Jr. King’s name would be splashed across the news that year with his tragic death. The race questions seemed so far away to a kid who lived in a small all white town where the word “nigger’ seemed to come out of Grandpa’s mouth pretty often. I never really thought about race while I sang along with the Temptations or the Supremes on the radio.
We only had one movie theater nearby. Kiefer was too small to have a theater, Sapulpa had the Criterion Theater, an old downtown building that housed a mysterious darkness where we watched a few movies flicker by. The old floors were sticky with ages of spilled sodas and candy, leading to speculation that small kids probably left the theater with their shoes still glued to the concrete floor. With such a big family, we didn’t go to the movies often, but I did watch any movie I could find on the three channels we got on out small black and white at home. A movie with music was a real bonus.
We had been to see a few Elvis movies because my sister Kathy, who is deaf, loved to see him. I managed to talk Dad into taking me to a few, such as an old Herman’s Hermits movie. I still remember “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” from the film. Now, when I think back, I imagine my Dad must have wondered what we had walked into when we went to see the “Yellow Submarine” and it’s Peter Max-like colors and images. The disjointed images and segments of the “happening” type movie the Monkees made must have seemed like gobbledygook to someone expecting a storyline.
There were so few opportunities to see musicians on TV. There was, of course, “American Bandstand.” But, even to a young kid who watched it from desperation, it was obvious that they were lip-synching. I always cringed when some weak song would beat out a rock tune for the number one song of the week. Sometimes, the Carol Burnett Show or the Red Skeleton show would dare a pop music act. Rarely. But, I searched for every one of them. The Ed Sullivan show probably had the most live acts on TV of the time, but since we were at the church every time the doors were open, there was no way that I would ever see a show that aired on a Sunday night. Good Southern Baptists were in the pews on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday evening. The only thing that might interfere with a Wednesday night service would be two-a-day football practices, but even God understood football in Oklahoma.
1969 began, and starved for something to do, I joined the new Boy Scout troop that met at the Baptist church. I became a member of troop 262. I did enjoy the handbook and “Boys Life” magazine. Of course, I read everything I could get my hands on, from newspapers to sci-fi novels to the backs of boxes in the bathroom while I took a dump. I was frustrated with the tying of knots, but did earn my Tenderfoot badge and eventually became a Boy Scout First Class.
We did a couple of summer cookouts and campouts. We hiked to explore “Fat Man’s Misery” outside of town. It was a collection of small caves and passageways that were rumored to be the site of the unfortunate death throes of a fat man who became lodged between the stones and starved to death.
In the Fall of 69’, a new TV show premiered. For weeks the channels had been promoting the new season, which always began in September. As a younger boy, I had waited impatiently for the new seasons of cartoons to be gin in September, and now with my eyes and ears on for rock music, I was excited to find that “The Music Scene” with host David Steinberg would host music acts each Monday night for 45 minutes. The kicker was this – The first show was a blockbuster, featuring a promo film of the Beatles playing their new song “The Ballad OF John and Yoko.”
I was giddy with excitement. A Music show? A Music show with a Beatles film? This was like the second coming that the Baptist minister gesticulated and roared about each and every Sunday, but instead of inspiring dread, guilt and fear, this time I was overcome with a true rapture. Finally, a show for me, and the Beatles would be there!
I could hardly wait to share the news! I told Larry. He shared my love of music. I knew that he would be glued to the tube to see the show. I told my Grandma and brothers and sisters. I told my mom. I am sure that my constant barrage of trivia and discoveries about these things that they had absolutely no interest in left them weary, but they politly listened and nodded.
The only complication was this. It was well known at the Dugan household that Mom and Dad did not push you to be a football player, or a baseball player or join this or that, but if you did, you were going to stick it out. Sticking it out meant getting you there, wherever that might be, even though Mom and Dad were juggling the schedules of church, home and every thing that every kid at the house was involved in. When I finished telling Mom about the show, she said,” But isn’t that on Boy Scout night? You can’t miss scouts.”
The possibility that tying knots and camping in uncomfortable bags and sleeping on hard ground might keep me away from the Beatles never occurred to me. Something in side of me deflated. Suddenly, the universe was not a rapturous thing, but a dark and cold abyss. I was stunned and retreated to the little turntable to sooth my pain with Beatle album after Beatle album.
It was there, that I became bold with the idea of rebellion. I couldn’t wear my hair long. I couldn’t skip church to see Ed Sullivan. I couldn’t do a lot, but the “Music Scene” commercials beckoned to me. They called me. They demanded that I be in front of that TV set on Monday night at 6:30 whether there was boy scouts or not. It was the Beatles, by God!
MY mom finally said, “You either be a boy scout or watch rock and roll.” An ultimatum.
I know now that Mom gave me the choice feeling that I, the responsible son, would choose boy scouts over rock and roll.
Monday night, I sat in front of the black and white TV set as David Steinberg introduced the Beatles and their new song. The tape rolled and I absorbed every small detail, captured every scene, feeling almost guilty with pleasure as if I had become some great heretic by abandoning the boy scouts for the man who had dared to say the Beatles were more popular than Jesus only four short years before. And, at the same time, fearful of some heavenly retribution because John sang, “Christ, you know it ain’t easy. You know how hard it can be. The way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me!”
I had tied my last knot. I had pitched my last tent as a boy scout. Some how, I had made the choice that was incomprehensible to my mom and dad and survived. No bolt of lightning. No fires of hell. No earthquakes and fear of being swallowed up by the earth, as were the errant Hebrews on exodus.
My scout career was over.
Rock and Roll was to blame.
Eventually the television stations started their rock and roll soup kitchens to feed the starving rock fans. In 1973, “Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert” aired live performances and concert segments. It ran at a late night weekend slot for about eight years. “In Concert,” and eventually “Solid Gold” followed it.
In August of 81’, music lovers got the ultimate dose on music on television with 24-hour videos on music television. The early days of MTV featured live performances and theatrical clips. On that August day, the Buggles used their video to kill the radio star, but for me, video had killed the boy scouts some twelve years earlier.
shaould have been a rock star 3 the Stereo
RCA and the first stereo?
We really didn’t have much at the house as far as music goes. Most of the family music was at the church when I was a young kid. Mom led the song service. My Aunt Bonnie played the piano. Sometimes, Mom, Bonnie and Dad would sing a special song at church. It was “surely Goodness and Mercy” which always had a joke in it for we kids. We knew my Mom was “Surely” (Shirley Dugan) but the question was who was goodness and Mercy? Dad? Aunt Bonnie?
Sometimes dad would sing one of two songs in front of the church. It was usually wither “The Old Rugged Cross” or “How Great Thou Art.” Dad has now been gone from us for one and one-half years. He dies at the age of eighty-eight, but I can still hear him singing “How Great Thou Art” in his low voice. He’d take off his glasses, hold them in his hand and sing the song with all his heart.
The 21st century was a little tough on him. He was in his eighties, failing vision and an eroding patience, when the church and it’s new song leader started to bring in a lot of new music and drift away from the old standards that he could sing along with even without a song book.
We did have a couple of transistor radios back then. I know my older brothers; Keith and Randy listened to music. In fact, Keith, who graduated in 1963 along with randy, listed “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by the Four Seasons as his favorite song in his senior yearbook. Later on, after the went into the service, they came back as country and western fans. But, I heard some of the early pop stuff on those transistor radios, and a few tempting offerings from TV variety shows. The only place to really hear rock and roll music was on Dick Clark’s American bandstand. The pickings were pretty slim for chances to hear new music.
My dad had the Tulsa paper every single day. On a fateful Sunday, there happened to be an insert from the RCA record club. I scanned over the offer that screamed out to me with a chance to not only receive a stack of new 45 rpm’s of the latest hits, but also receive with this special offer a new stereo turntable! I thought of all the arguments, the pros and cons before approaching Mom with the possibility of owning our own record player. Mom thought it was a good idea too and she talked Dad into signing and sending off the RCA offer.
The wait was agonizing. It seemed like the thing would never arrive, and just as I had given up hope, one morning, it arrived. After his morning trip to the post office, Dad brought a brown box in stamped with the black letters R-C-A.
We unwrapped the box and in side, the desperately awaited stereo sat. It was light blue and white, with a clasp lid. It had speakers on each side, a spindle, a 45-rpm adaptor and adjustments to play 33, 45 and 78 rpm records. Inside there was a stack of 45 rpm singles. I shuffled through the records greedily, unsure which treasure to play first!
I still remember many of those first discs that were destined to be played over and over and over as I memorized each word, each writer and length of play. There was Skeeter Davis sadly mourning the “End of the World.,” the Troggs and “Wild Thing,” Barry Saddlers “ballad of the Green beret.” Roger Williams snag “My Uncle Used to Love Me (But She Died) and Johnny cash wailed about “The Ring of Fire.” It was a treasure trove of forbidden fruit. The fact that my Mom thought the flip side of the Troggs “Wild Thing” was too suggestive made it even more of a treasure! Just as the world of the 60’s was splashed across the TV news with rebellion and riot, I too was rebellious in my own kid-like innocence. I was a rock and roll rebel from the small country town of Kiefer, Oklahoma.
Civilization had come to the Dugan house. The outside world had invaded in the form of black vinyl discs and tinny speakers that bleached forth single after single unceasingly until it was time for the rebel to go to bed.
Should Have Been a Rock Star 2 - Air Guitar
Air guitar is my life. I can play with the best of them. Clapton may be god, but I can pound the opening licks to “Layla” perfectly, every time. I chop down the edge of that mountain on “VooDoo Chile (Revisited).” My slide makes even George Harrison’s guitar weep.
Inside my car, I sing like Paul McCartney. I wail like Wilson Pickett. I scream from the depths of my soul on “A Little Help from My Friends,” just like Joe Cocker. The music surrounds me. The automatic, power brakes and driver's seat is my stadium to rock, and I’m gonna Rock and Roll all night.
Thank goodness for the tunes. Thank goodness for the imagination. What was it Twain said? “God gave us an imagination for what we are not and a sense of humor for what we are.”
I’m sure someone in another car, perched at the stoplight in the adjacent lane, has looked, thinking I was contorted in pain… not realizing that Brad Delph and I were doing a duet on “More Than a Feeling.” As they stumble in to class, my students, catching a glimpse of my momentary escape by power chording the song playing on the radio, must think their history teacher has lost it.
The trouble is, I was meant to be a rock star, or a writer for the Rolling Stone. I was meant to stand in the middle of mega-watts of feedback that melted the faces of the fans in the first 30 rows and then melt their hearts with the most tortured of love songs and end on just the right note. I was meant to sail through the air like Ted Nugent, windmill like Pete Townshend, and weave an epic song like “Yes.”
Reality is a tough thing. I look a hell of a lot closer to Meatloaf than I do to Robert Plant…. Not that Meatloaf can’t wail with the best of them, mind you. I would be more at home in the lineup of Bachman Turner Overdrive than I would in the Black Crowes. At least C. F. Turner was a defensive tackle in college, and I was an offensive tackle. No one is going to be throwing their panties on the stage for the beefy guy.
There are a couple of other problems that hold me back, probably even bigger than wearing 2X shirts. I can’t play or sing worth squat. Okay, so I’ve always been a big guy, but so were Randy Bachman and Leslie West. Look at the lead singer for Blues Traveler! Even Elvis sold records and sold out shows during his fat period. But they could all sing or play. It’s a big obstacle.
I sang in the church choir some as a kid. Maybe it’s because in a church choir, especially in a really little one, every one is too polite to tell you that you sound like a badly tuned bagpipe. Or maybe I could sing once, and the story that I tell about losing my singing voice is true? You see, my sophomore year in college, while pulling out to lead a sweep, I took a big shot in the throat from the defensive back. My voice box swelled. My throat clicked for two or three months every time I swallowed. I spoke with a hoarse whisper for a long time. It sucked. Maybe I could sing before that, and it wasn’t my imagination or desire to be Paul McCartney that made what I heard of myself sound good.
Maybe.
Then comes the guitar playing. I wanted to play guitar all my life. We ended up finding an old guitar somewhere when I was a kid. It wouldn’t stay in tune. Pretty soon, some of the tuning keys broke. But I would strum on it hoping I would turn into a virtuoso.
It didn’t happen. I agonized over that guitar as my grade school buddy, Larry, got a guitar and got lessons. He learned how to play and pretty soon even had an electric. I was so jealous, but thought it was cool as we went through High School that Larry played in bands and stuff. I could tell you who wrote all the songs, who sang what, and how long the song was…but Larry could actually play it.
Guitar lessons wouldn’t have been a big priority when I was a kid. Hell, we used water from a well till I was about eleven. Our house was heated by one stove in the living room. There were eight kids in my family. I was the oldest of the second batch - three older than me by at least ten years and four younger. The irony is that my youngest sister, Jo, went on to be in marching band, which we didn’t have when I was in school, and got a degree in music education.
In college, I finally got a chance to learn some guitar. It was like a dream come true when I found I could take guitar lessons as a part of my academic courses. Mrs. Powers was my teacher. She was actually a classically trained violinist, but taught guitar as well. Imagine the look on her face as we met and I told her I wanted to study rock and blues guitar. Over a period of two years, I managed to learn some, but still wasn’t much of a player.
I did manage to play with Larry a little. Once, we even put together a few people, including my aunt and sister, to play a couple songs in church. Larry played his electric and I played a standard. We did Clapton’s reggae version of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and some other song that I don’t remember now. Then, life got busy. The guitar gathered dust.
So it goes for the would-be rock star. Frustrated.
But, my car is still my personal concert hall. There, I can play with the best of them and sing like Lennon’s tortured “Cold Turkey.”
I remember riding in our car, on the way home from church late at night. Sleepy. Mom and Dad would sing hymns in the front seat as we drove down the country roads to our small house nestled in forty acres of Oklahoma hillside. It was something soothing and protective at the same time.
And, Mom and Dad could sing. It came from their hearts.
This was the early sixties and music was going through some big, big changes. My mom might have been singing “Mary Ann, down by the seashore sifting sand” to us, but on the AM radio something was bubbling.
Grandpa would give us a fifty-cent allowance in those days. Usually, I used it to buy every sort of comic book known to man and devour them with this insatiable urge. But when I heard the Beatles, I was hooked. There was a purpose for my money.
We had an old car parked, dead and lifeless in the pasture. It became a storage place for old newspapers. When I finally became aware of the beatles, I spent hours and hours digging through the old newspapers, looking for bits of old news about the Beatles, touring here or flying there.
I would talk about rock and roll. I wanted my hair to look like the Beatles. Now, the Beatles, circa 1965, really didn’t have long hair by today’s standards, but for a kid who had used Butch Wax in his flat top, it was a revolution. Of course, Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me grow out my hair, and neither would the school. My grandma tsked-tsked the idea by saying “ Now, Charles, you don’t want to look like a girl, do you?”
The cruelest blow to my pursuit was when Lennon made the headlines with his “We’re More Popular Than Jesus” comment. I had managed to talk Mom and Dad into joining a record club for me. But I wanted Beatles and after Dad heard about Lennon’s comment on our little black and white TV, he said “Whatever you do, I don’t want you spending your money on Beatles records.”
Crushed.
But when you’re eleven or twelve years old and want something, there’s a way to get it. We drove into Tulsa for one of our rare trips into the big town. Tulsa was about twenty miles away, but it was like a whole country away for me. Dad worked there every day, driving into the three to eleven shifts at the Tulsa post office. We went to Kiefer, a town of less than one thousand, for most things. Our house was in the country between the old oil boom town of Kiefer and Sapulpa, a bigger town of around ten thousand, give or take a few. Sapulpa was where we went for groceries on Mom’s weekly foray for food.
Dad took us to a new shopping center on the southwest side of Tulsa. It was a pretty amazing place to me then, but nothing compared to what a mall is today. It was all one store, like an extended five and dime, and even had a concession inside. It was something just to wander through, but I knew what my mission was. I took my little brother, Tim, who was five years my junior, and found the record section of the store. There, wrapped in slick clear plastic, were the Beatle albums that I lusted after with all the powerful d4esire a twelve year old can muster.
I had a moral dilemma. My dad didn’t want me to buy anything by the Beatles, plus, I found I was short on cash anyway. But I wanted them, and they didn’t look bad or harmful or evil on the album covers. They looked happy, and I knew those grooves were just waiting to be opened up by our actual diamond tipped needle at home. Beatles singing to me, unleashed through a diamond and electronically amplified through a single sparkly speaker on the left side of our RCA record club portable phonograph.
I was so nervous, but I set to work. Guilty, but determined, I smoothly convinced Tim to kick in some of the allowance he had saved so that we could both share the new Beatles album. “Something New” was the album, an American release that contained cuts from the “Hard Day’s Night” movie and others culled from the first couple of British releases. Tim agreed, and with contraband under arm and Tim’s hand in mine, we headed toward the cash register with a watchful eye out for Dad.
We paid and I nervously looked around, checking for Dad’s approach as the clerk, almost painfully slowly, slipped the album into a brown bag. Elated but jittery, we took the bag and walked toward the exit. There, we ran into Dad, seemingly oblivious of our purchase. I was frozen with worry. After all, I was proud to be a good kid. I always did what Mom and Dad wanted. I was a “pleaser.”
Dad looked at the package we were carrying and asked, “Charles, what did you buy?”
Here was my moral dilemma. Do I lie to my Dad and take a chance on roasting in hell? I could almost feel the fires licking at my heels. Do I tell the truth and take the risk of embarrassment by having to take it back and then being punished for breaking the rules? Suddenly, like a vision from heaven, I was inspired.
As nonchalantly as any kid could be in this situation, I simply answered “Aw, just ‘Something New.’” Then I tugged Tim along to keep any other conversation from revealing my not-quite-truth comment. “I hadn’t lied,” I rationalized. The name of the album was, after all, “Something New.” I just didn’t give any extra details.
I kept the LP hidden until we arrived home so that Tim and I could sneakily open the wrapper and pull out the dark black vinyl circle. The label from Capitol Records was black in the interior, with a rainbow band circling the album credits. Hungrily, I read and reread the song titles and the writer’s names, and memorized the various lengths of the songs. I knew we could play the record because Dad and Mom really didn’t know the Beatles from any other pop band of the time, or so I thought.
We played the album over and over.
I was hooked.
Should have been a rock star part 1 Turning 52
June 8, 2008
Today I turned 52 years old. Unfortunately, nothing big has happened. Not that I expected it to. I don’t mean something like a party or a big surprise. I mean something like realization. Something likes enlightenment.
I thought, “Maybe 52 will be a big year.” After all, it’s a very important number in the Mayan cosmology. Nothing happened when I reached 42, which is the answer to the great universal question thanks to Douglas Adams and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It didn’t happen at 39, which is when Mohammed heard from the angel Gabriel. Nor did it happen at 30, when Jesus started his teaching, or even at 29 when the Buddha started his quest for enlightenment.
Maybe 52?
I guess I won’t hold my breath for it. The lady that I studied mediation under gave me a cartoon at one point that showed the way to enlightenment. It had this small guy carrying a bundle on a stick like an old hobo. He started on the path to find enlightenment. The instructions said, “Start going.” And then each successive cartoon showed him further down the road… and said “keep going, keep going.”
Maybe there’s no huge truth out there that opens your eyes to some cosmic reality. Maybe, despite all the proclamations of all the philosophers and religions, it basically comes down to a few small truths that we all juggle around.
There is a constant I see as I look back over a life of 52 years. It is something that always made me speculate on Pythagoras and his “Harmony of the Spheres” and the Hindus and the sound of “Om.” No matter what, it seems that I can track my life through the music I have loved and listened to from the earliest moment to now. The soundtrack of my life!
I used to think that the fact I still loved and collected music was a sign of my inherent immaturity or an attempt to hang on to youth. After all, it used to be that when you became an adult, you put away the childhood things and moved on to the mature, adult things. I even thought, the very fact that the rock music of the 60’s and 70’s still survives and permeates the radio might be more than just it is timeless, but maybe a whole generation trying to hold on to it’s fading youth.
But, that very music plays in the IPODs and cars of the 15 and 16 year old students that I teach. Maybe it is timeless. Maybe it does resonate with something beyond a 3-chord progression?
Both Pythagoras and the “om” philosophy of the ancient Hindu defined a musical tone as a primordial something that holds the universe together. It permeates every thing in the universe. It is the Star Wars “Force.” It is the cosmic glue. It is the universal Web on which we browse. It is one thing that all cultures share, some form of musical expression.
Even now, as I type these words, I sit listening as my Itunes play. One of my long time favs, Todd Rundgren sings. His band plays behind him. I tap my foot in rhythm and even my lousy typing skills take on a beat as the music plays.
I can’t imagine a life without this music playing. I collect it. I read about it. I make playlists and write lists of CD’s I need and want. I make lists of the top ten albums ever made and the greatest guitar parts ever played. I alphabetize and spout trivia. I make CD’s for my friends to share this indefinable musical ambrosia. I have used it to enhance my mood or to change it. I sing it loudly in my car!
You would think that with a love of music as I have that I would be a musician. I wish I were. I am not. I think it may be my impatience to make the music that has me playing the MP3 player rather than the guitar. It isn’t like I didn’t give it a try. In college, I took guitar lessons. I learned a few songs. I played at a church once and with friends. But, I never learned it sufficiently to express what I hoped. Ironically, two of the semesters while taking guitar, and playing college football at the same time, I broke and then re-broke my left hand. It didn’t make for very good fret board work. I was unable to press the strings with any strength for a long time. Mrs. Powers, the guitar teacher, was not very pleased with the football injuries that plagued me.
She was patient and the last semester I took guitar, she scheduled me to play in a recital with several other guitar and violin students. She and I set out to put together an arrangement of The Beatles “Michelle” that I would pick out to the thrill of the audience. It was a tough arrangement for a beginner such as I, but I worked on it and over the weeks, she even commented on my progress. I thought, “Finally a break through!” maybe it was finally time, or maybe it was that I was getting to play a song by the Beatles, whom I worshipped.
The week before the recital, I was walking through the dorm hallway on my way back from the lesson when the tragic happened. The guitar was strapped across my back, neck up, when the string tie on the strap broke. It made a horrible sound as the guitar crashed to the floor, like metal scraping across concrete. A jangle of painful musical tones vibrated down the hall.
I snatched up the guitar only to find the neck cracked. It had split width-wise across the bottom of the neck. The break would not allow the neck to hold straight and give tension to the strings. My roommates and I tried gluing the neck. It wouldn’t hold. We even tied the guitar to the posts of the dorms bunk beds and gluing it in place. But as soon as tension was applied to the strings, it gave. No use.
I went to Mrs. Powers with the news. She decided that this late into preparations for the recital, I would use her guitar. The only problem was, Mrs. Powers was a small lady. She used a small guitar with nylon strings. I was a big college offensive lineman who played a full size guitar with steel strings. It was a tough trade, but I was determined to do “Michelle” justice.
The day of the recital came and I sat with the other students in front of the stage. I was sweating. The guitar seemed tiny in my hands. The strings seemed dull and subdued compared to the steel strings I had gotten my calluses from. Sitting next to me was one of those guys who did not like football players. He always seemed to smile with that shit-eating look every time I would pass him as I went in for lessons and he went out from his. The fact that he was there, and I had visions of him plucking out a masterpiece as I stumbled across unfamiliar strings made his presence even worse.
My time on stage finally came. I walked to the chair sat, fingered the guitar and started the longest 4 minutes of my entire life.
I could hear amplified each and every stumbled note, each sound of fingers dragging across string, each odd string sound in a G chord or a C chord as my big fingers crowded onto the small fret board.
When the song ended, I stood, sweating, and sheepishly made my way back to the seat beside the hyena to the sound of some polite applause. I was embarrassed and dejected. It was worse when the hyena went to stage to announce he was playing the song “Classical gas,” and classic guitar song originally by Mason Williams. “Great!” I thought. “I stink and now he will wow the crowd with that song.” I just figured he was good if he was taking on “Classical Gas.”
My only redemption on that day was when he stunk up the stage. Had Mason Williams been dead, he would have been rolling over in his grave. If he were alive, then surely this rendition would have killed him. I hate to admit that I gloated in someone else’s painful failure, but I did. It was Darwinian. Maybe I wasn’t the weakest of the herd?
I have thought since that time that I wish I hadn’t gloated. I imagine he probably wasn’t the hyena, but my own insecurity probably made him out to be. And, I did continue to dabble with guitars. I even bought an electric guitar to pound around on with visions of doing a dual solo with Joe Walsh or Carlos Santana. I would play with John Lennon or play lead over Paul McCartney’s bass. Unfortunately, real life stepped in. I graduated from college and was hired as a teacher and a coach. I eventually gave my electric guitar to a long time friend of mine who was a real guitarist who happened to be down on his luck.
A few years later I read the book, “The World According to Garp.” Then saw the movie with Robin Williams in one of his best roles as Garp. When Robin Williams is courting the young Mary Beth Hurt, he sees her reading and asks if she is going to be a writer. Her reply is that she is going to be a great reader, because great writers need great readers.
I think that’s it. I was destined to be a great listener because great musicians need great listeners.
The family Music letters 08
These are letters I exchanged with "the family"... my great friends from college, hwo will be referred to in other blog entries
Dec 22 Music memories to Scott, Don, Don, Dave and Mack
>Today, I was at the weight room… all by myself, waiting on some high school kids to show for volunteer holiday workouts… listening to the play in the room.
>There was this song, by John Miles, called “Music Was My First Love.” I had hunted for a digital copy of it for years. I first heard it on an LP that Larry Leibrand owned and I loved the song the first time I heard it. >You know, Christmas holiday, music, weights, family and my son Fletch spending the year in China have me pretty sentimental, so I was reminiscing a lot.
>It made me remember sitting in the dark listening to Elton John’s "funeral For a Friend” I remember laying "Todd Rundgren’s “Something Anything “ Lp a million times. I remember some of us standing behind Mack while he listened to the Cars playing “My Best Friend’s Girl” through headphones while we giggled as he wailed parts of the song, oblivious of our presence<
Every time I hear a Blue Oyster Cult song, I remember Don Pitts driving us all to Wichita to the concert only to break down on a frozen night with only Mennonites near by for help.. I remember Don Porter having me record Pete Townshend’s “Pure and easy” over and over on an 8 track tape because he loved the hand claps in it. I remember Scott scoring a bunch of Rush lps and then some Runaway Lps that we listened to all the way through. I can recall jumping around the room like wild men, playing >air guitar to Ted Nugents “Stanglehold.” >Gutty was doing power glides from the top of the desks.
I can remember Stick doing the Skeleton dance to some mindless disco tunes and then playing < Al Stewart’s “year of the Cat” over and over with it’s big sax solo.
One of the best things I can remember is camping out at the river, under the stars… and then that night when it suddenly started raining softly, Larry woke and sang “thunderbolts and Lightning…” and others of us joined in to finish “very Very Frightebning, Me! Galileo!” and another answered “Galileo” “Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figeroa! …Magnifico!”
And remember, if the Barbury pirates don’t get you, then it’s the cold embrace of the sea… and that’s no lover’s kiss!”
Hope all of you have a good holiday! I was thinking about all of you!
;">Charlie
Does anyone have an e-mial for larry or Matt? Does anyone know hwat the hell became of Gutty?
>from Don Dallas Dec 23<
How well I remember. Big Jim loved funeral for a friend
I'll never forget Page 2 and seeing Gene Arrendale dance to "Macho Macho Man". Remember Rita when she said to Gene "Aren't you the neatest thing". Of course, that was immortalized on the refrigerator along with the football scores and Mack's line, "I couldn't work it into the conversation." How about the line dances at Page 2? 50 girls lined up to look at and 2 gay guys for Mack to look at. It never ceases to amaze me how much effect four years of High School and Four (five for some of you) years of college has on the rest of your life. There are 10 yr. periods of my life where I don't remember much detail, but our days at Sterling I can remember like it was yesterday. Mack treated all the ladies on campus to not just a moon, but a fruit basket. Remember when Mack went through the cafeteria line and paid for his lunch with "nothing but this old eraser?" Stick, do you still have my old Adidas tennis shoes
Was Mo better at handling a shotgun,a fire extinguisher or a candy machine. Don, you devil, you lost your designated driver when you made me drink beer. Scott, why didn't you order for Larry at Sonic and thanks for wrestling Stick for all of us.
Charlie, I still like "Pure and Easy". We can't live in the past, but it sure doesn't hurt to take a walk down memory lane now and then.
>Merry Christmas
>The memories were great. They sent me scurrying into a memorabilia box, and here are a couple of pictures that I had. I also have a baseball, signed by Mack, that says "5th College Homerun
One of my earliest experiences in Kilbourn was to hear >Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner nearly blowing the door off of room 212.>
Before I got to Sterling I didn't own an album or a stereo, then I met this guy named Charlie who had the biggest collection of albums that I have ever seen. I started buying albums, and I still have every one of them in a box in my basement. Amazingly enough I still don't have a stereo system to play them. Just yesterday, I heard Argent's song "Hold your head up" and had visions of Big Jim marching down the hallway to this song. I can't tell you how many songs come on the radio and I hear the lyrics to the song that Mo would make up. Usually something perverted, but funny. Of course, my sons are amazed that we all danced to disco, using the term dance loosely. Mostly, we just moved around looking for the "Hot Chicks". This last summer Karen and I went to Cheyenne Frontier Days and saw The Rhythm Sectio , War, Firefall and BTO in concert. There were some old dudes rockin' out on that stage! Brought back a lot of memories.
>Merry Christmas boys.......and bring in the New Year safely......
Scott
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
