My dad loved to sing.
He sang in church all the time. At times, he even sang duets with MOM, or as a trio with Mom and Aunt Bonnie.
His favorites were always the old classic hymns. They would sing “The Old Rugged Cross” and the three of them would often sing “Surely Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me…”… always to our youthful whispered jokes about which one of them was Goodness and Mercy since Mom was named Shirley.
At times, Dad would sing alone.. Something I always found to be very brave since I have a voice that creaks and cracks. The tune he sang most often was “How Great Thou Art.” His strong but untrained voice would boom out the lines “I see the Stars, I hear the rolling thunder. Thy power throughout the universe displayed” with all the conviction and passion of a real believer.
That he was.
It was comforting for Mom and dad to break into song as we drove in the car. Many a night as I dozed in the bad seat, it was a warm feeling of security as they sang together the familiar hymns.
As Dad grew older and ventured into his 80’s, a new song leader arrived at the church with newer songs and some different tempos. Dad had never been able to read music, and with his diminishing sight felt as if his chances to sing were being taken away. It left him angry and frustrated. He even walked out of choir practice at one time, according to Mom, because that wasn’t the way those songs were supposed to be sung. He sat in the car alone, singing his songs loudly in his very own tired and trusted beat and timber.
The most memorable, and something that has stuck with my sons and my wife, is that in the last years of his life, my dad one day, while the family was gathered in the house, kids running here and there, TV blaring and adults gossiping, dad took a break from watching NFL games to limp slowly outside and sit alone on the front porch swing.
His knees ached and his vision was blurred for everything except to grumble at the TV referees, but sitting there on the porch, he slowly rocked back and forth and begun to sing.
He sang strong and loud the old hymns that had given him so much comfort through out his life. The same songs that a young man sang as he shoveled grapes in a California field in the 1930’s. The same words that had buoyed him in the hold of a ship crossing the Pacific towards the war in Asia. The same ideas that made him the man he was.
Dad didn’t need a pew, or choir or song leader to sing the praises he so fervently believed. It was just between him and his God while we listened from the inside of the house.
Friday, January 30, 2009
I Should Have Been a Rock Star- Zen Moment 6
My family had undertaken the dream trip of a lifetime. In mid-June, we flew to England with the intent of taking three weeks to drive the length and breath of England, Wales and Scotland.
We traveled cheap, eating lunch from grocery stores, breakfast at our B&B and eating at a pub for dinner. We stayed in London the first several days before renting a car and striking out across the island. On our 3rd or 4th day out of London, traveling first across the south of England, from Canterbury to Salisbury before turning north, we stopped in a small town, located a music store and bought “Queen’s Greatest Hits” on cassette for the boys. Wayne’s world” had recently made a new generation aware of Queen and so listened and sang Queen’s hits, especially “Bohemian Rhapsody” as we drove.
Our pace was mad, but Ash and I were determined to cram as much of the British Isles into this trip as possible. The boys did great, even though they were both young. I think Fletch was about 10 and Cor6. They behaved like troopers and from time to time were rewired such as when we stumbled onto a 12th c farmhouse Bed and Breakfast near the city of Bath. We stayed the night and the boys were able to run and play with the animals.
On one of our stops, in the late English afternoon, near the border of Scotland, we unloaded our gear into the B&B and walked to a nearby park. The air was cool with sea breeze and the grass and trees were a bright green. The boys immediately ran towards the swings positioned inside a small fenced area while ash and walked behind them.
In the park, we pushed the boys in their swings and ran with them, playing chase and tag. As we played, we began to sing Beatles songs, beginning with “The Yellow Submarine” and rolling from one song to the next. The boys knew the songs by heart, as many had served as their bedtime lullabies.
We skipped through the late afternoon to the tune of a dozen songs by our favorite Liverpudlians, and then tired and happy, arm in arm, made our way back to expected rest and beds of the small B&B.
The Beatles never sounded so good as sung on their own soil.
We traveled cheap, eating lunch from grocery stores, breakfast at our B&B and eating at a pub for dinner. We stayed in London the first several days before renting a car and striking out across the island. On our 3rd or 4th day out of London, traveling first across the south of England, from Canterbury to Salisbury before turning north, we stopped in a small town, located a music store and bought “Queen’s Greatest Hits” on cassette for the boys. Wayne’s world” had recently made a new generation aware of Queen and so listened and sang Queen’s hits, especially “Bohemian Rhapsody” as we drove.
Our pace was mad, but Ash and I were determined to cram as much of the British Isles into this trip as possible. The boys did great, even though they were both young. I think Fletch was about 10 and Cor6. They behaved like troopers and from time to time were rewired such as when we stumbled onto a 12th c farmhouse Bed and Breakfast near the city of Bath. We stayed the night and the boys were able to run and play with the animals.
On one of our stops, in the late English afternoon, near the border of Scotland, we unloaded our gear into the B&B and walked to a nearby park. The air was cool with sea breeze and the grass and trees were a bright green. The boys immediately ran towards the swings positioned inside a small fenced area while ash and walked behind them.
In the park, we pushed the boys in their swings and ran with them, playing chase and tag. As we played, we began to sing Beatles songs, beginning with “The Yellow Submarine” and rolling from one song to the next. The boys knew the songs by heart, as many had served as their bedtime lullabies.
We skipped through the late afternoon to the tune of a dozen songs by our favorite Liverpudlians, and then tired and happy, arm in arm, made our way back to expected rest and beds of the small B&B.
The Beatles never sounded so good as sung on their own soil.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
I Shoauld Have Been a Rock Star - BOC and Trippin in Wichita
Blue Oyster Cult in Wichita and Trippin’
The guys and I at Sterling College heard on the Wichita Rock station that Blue Oyster Cult was coming to play in Wichita. It was like a musical black hole there. Sterling was a farm and small college town, surrounded by other small farm towns. The nearest city of any size was 60 miles away.We grasped at strands to hear and find anything new. There we were. In the midst of the AOR rock and Roll era, and all we could see what that it was all being taken over by Disco… the spawn of Satan.
We hated Disco. At least, most of us. We wanted our Ted Nugent ( long before his apparent right wing psycho era), Kansas, BOC, Boston and BOC. Even the one time 60’s rock band, the Bee Gees, had converted to disco, and the club we had traveled to in near by Hutchinson had converted form a rock and blues club to a disco club.
The chance to see and hear BOC was something none of us could pass up. We scraped and scrambled, borrowed form each other and finally bought several tickets to the mid-January concert. When the date finally arrived, we all piled into Pitts’ converted van to travel to the show. The van itself was a wonder of mechanics. It had been one of those vans where a huge lump rose between the front seats to house the engine… but Pitts and his brother had decided to do some work on it, welding an extension onto the frame, and moving the engine forward out of the interior. They created a boxy nose cover that protruded out of the regular van grill to house the newly extended motor.
So, this mutant van, loaded with longhaired and clean-cut college students alike, lurched out of Sterling and pointed south in the cold, cold Kansas winter late afternoon in search of rock and roll. Two sat in the newly spacious front, while the rest of us piled in the empty back, sprawled atop blankets and pillows.
Almost half way to Wichita, the worst of situations. The rear left tire went flat under the weight of a hefty crew of college football players and civilians. We fell out the van into the darkening cold on the side of a 2 lane state road that stretched both ways without break. There was no convenient service station. No cheerfully lit convenience store awaiting our arrival. It was a frigid lonely highway and flat tire that threatened our dose of metal and mayhem in the shape of Blue Oyster Cult.
Pitts jacked up the van, removed the tire. We stood staring at it with dumb expression. The ugly fact surfaced that the spare had been taken out of the back to make room for our bulks in the van.
Stranded.
There we stood, my long hair and whipped by a bitter Kansas winter wind. Pitts stood silently, but defensively as others said “ what a dumbass thing.. Taking out the spare!” “How else would we all fit?” Piitts argued. Of course, none of us planed for the worst. And as far as giving Pits hell, that was part of it. Each of us would catch our appropriate amount of shit when our turn arose. The others sat inwait of a screw up 9n order to drag you kicking and screaming across the coals. It wasn’t personal… we all got it.
Shifting from foot to foot, unequipped to stand in the unexpected cold, finally, Scott said, “ We passes a town a few miles back there.” “But that was haven.” We all chimed in.
Haven was a Mennonite town nestled on a broad turn in the high way. We went o college with some of the Mennonite students who liv4ed on the farms surrounding the town. The sight of horse drawn carriages trotting along the side of the roads in Rice County was not an unfamiliar event. We couldn’t conceive that Haven would have anything that would propel us toward the warm confines of the Wichita Convention Center and the thunder of electric guitars.
Scott volunteered to walk back to haven with the tire. Pitts went as well. Scott had always been our get-things-done guy. His all American looking 6’4 frame grabbed the tire and began moving quickly toward that Mennonite haven. The rest of us, all 6, stood, shifting from foot to foot, walking and flapping arms to stay warm since we were unable to reenter the van as it perched precariously on a jack in the gravel side of the road.
It was then that the weirdness began. Our starting quarterback Dan and our middle linebacker Steen announced that they had dropped acid shortly before getting into the van for the one and one-half hour drive to the concert. “Things are getting weird,” Dan said.
Apparently, the weirdness permeated the entire area. Pitts and Scott made t to haven, where they finally located a group of people who stared at them suspiciously. It was in a small bar like building where we always suspected they met t0o exchange secret plans and handshakes. Pitts was able to convince someone to help him and they opened a tractor store to fix the tire. Pitts always said it had been a twilight zone experience in haven, but they were inflated and began the cold trot back to the stranded mutant van.
Meanwhile, both Dan and Steen had started to enter a deep experience that resulted in both running around without their shirts screaming, ‘It’s not really cold! Just think about Florida!!”
I thought I was going to found at morning light, frozen and sitting beside the road, ice caking my Fu Manchu and eyebrows. Even my bones seemed to be creaking from the biting winds that drove from the North across the flat prairie.
Finally, Scott and Pitts arrived, red cheeked and triumphant. We quickly remounted the tire with frozen fingers, crawled in to the dark corned of the van as the heater sparked to life and warmed our frosted bodies.
The lucky thing about most concerts I the 70’s was that nothing started on time. BOC was no different. We handed our tickets to the man at the door and hustled in to find standing space in the open seating that was so common then. It would take a tragedy at a Who concert to end that style of seating. Several kids were killed, literally trampled to death as people rushed the doors to get the best standing spaces on the floor at the Who show in Cincinnati.
We were mostly big guys. We created our space on the floor and shifted from foot to foot waiting for the show to begin. Dan leaned toward me and whispered suspiciously, “Duge, this check over here is trying to talk to me I think. Dies she have a dog head because all she’s doing is barking?”
At last, the lights dimmed, the crowd roared and hundreds of lighters flickered in the darkness to welcome the band and to light the rolled paper crops that they had smuggled into the arena. None of the guys I was with lit up. Most of us had come to see the show, and it as something I could never understand, even after I finally tried pot. Why pay so much to be messed up at a concert? I wanted to hear every note and feel every sound. I know a lot of people disagree with me, and say it enhances the experience, but I never saw a concert stoned.
Now, Dan and Steen were a different story. They were in a groove. The bass guitar shook the floor, and laser lights shone out at the crowd and ricocheted off the huge glass ball suspended over the auditorium. The wall of sound BOC cranked out thundered through us and we were filled with music and the presence of others swaying and screaming to the same beat.
As the show drew close to an end, the band members started playing a song that had a long, throbbing, building rhythm. As the grinding rhythm grew louder and louder, a wall of laser light appeared over the crowd. The wall, stretching from the stage to the back wall, inched lower and lower over the standing audience, looming like a solid object set to crush us beneath the weight of the heavy beat. Dana and Steen were freaking out. The apparent solidness of the wall of light had them bending lower and lower as the wall moved closer and closer. They held their hands upward as they bent lower to hold back the wall if possible. “man,” shouted Steen, this is gonna crush us!”
I held my arm above me, creating a break in the light, to show them that the wall was only an illusion. Then they, in obvious relief began poking their hands into the light timidly and laughing with relief with the pardon forma death by being crushed.
The wall lifted and BOC finished with a thundering rendition of “Buck’s Boogie.” All five members of the band, keyboardist and drummer included ended up at the front of the stage, al with guitars played in sync as Buck dharma finished the show with a blazing guitar solo.
We exited the auditorium, refreshed and tired. Hungry, we found a burger King and ate before making the dark, and thankfully, uneventful return to our small campus in the center of the state and plains of Kansas.
The guys and I at Sterling College heard on the Wichita Rock station that Blue Oyster Cult was coming to play in Wichita. It was like a musical black hole there. Sterling was a farm and small college town, surrounded by other small farm towns. The nearest city of any size was 60 miles away.We grasped at strands to hear and find anything new. There we were. In the midst of the AOR rock and Roll era, and all we could see what that it was all being taken over by Disco… the spawn of Satan.
We hated Disco. At least, most of us. We wanted our Ted Nugent ( long before his apparent right wing psycho era), Kansas, BOC, Boston and BOC. Even the one time 60’s rock band, the Bee Gees, had converted to disco, and the club we had traveled to in near by Hutchinson had converted form a rock and blues club to a disco club.
The chance to see and hear BOC was something none of us could pass up. We scraped and scrambled, borrowed form each other and finally bought several tickets to the mid-January concert. When the date finally arrived, we all piled into Pitts’ converted van to travel to the show. The van itself was a wonder of mechanics. It had been one of those vans where a huge lump rose between the front seats to house the engine… but Pitts and his brother had decided to do some work on it, welding an extension onto the frame, and moving the engine forward out of the interior. They created a boxy nose cover that protruded out of the regular van grill to house the newly extended motor.
So, this mutant van, loaded with longhaired and clean-cut college students alike, lurched out of Sterling and pointed south in the cold, cold Kansas winter late afternoon in search of rock and roll. Two sat in the newly spacious front, while the rest of us piled in the empty back, sprawled atop blankets and pillows.
Almost half way to Wichita, the worst of situations. The rear left tire went flat under the weight of a hefty crew of college football players and civilians. We fell out the van into the darkening cold on the side of a 2 lane state road that stretched both ways without break. There was no convenient service station. No cheerfully lit convenience store awaiting our arrival. It was a frigid lonely highway and flat tire that threatened our dose of metal and mayhem in the shape of Blue Oyster Cult.
Pitts jacked up the van, removed the tire. We stood staring at it with dumb expression. The ugly fact surfaced that the spare had been taken out of the back to make room for our bulks in the van.
Stranded.
There we stood, my long hair and whipped by a bitter Kansas winter wind. Pitts stood silently, but defensively as others said “ what a dumbass thing.. Taking out the spare!” “How else would we all fit?” Piitts argued. Of course, none of us planed for the worst. And as far as giving Pits hell, that was part of it. Each of us would catch our appropriate amount of shit when our turn arose. The others sat inwait of a screw up 9n order to drag you kicking and screaming across the coals. It wasn’t personal… we all got it.
Shifting from foot to foot, unequipped to stand in the unexpected cold, finally, Scott said, “ We passes a town a few miles back there.” “But that was haven.” We all chimed in.
Haven was a Mennonite town nestled on a broad turn in the high way. We went o college with some of the Mennonite students who liv4ed on the farms surrounding the town. The sight of horse drawn carriages trotting along the side of the roads in Rice County was not an unfamiliar event. We couldn’t conceive that Haven would have anything that would propel us toward the warm confines of the Wichita Convention Center and the thunder of electric guitars.
Scott volunteered to walk back to haven with the tire. Pitts went as well. Scott had always been our get-things-done guy. His all American looking 6’4 frame grabbed the tire and began moving quickly toward that Mennonite haven. The rest of us, all 6, stood, shifting from foot to foot, walking and flapping arms to stay warm since we were unable to reenter the van as it perched precariously on a jack in the gravel side of the road.
It was then that the weirdness began. Our starting quarterback Dan and our middle linebacker Steen announced that they had dropped acid shortly before getting into the van for the one and one-half hour drive to the concert. “Things are getting weird,” Dan said.
Apparently, the weirdness permeated the entire area. Pitts and Scott made t to haven, where they finally located a group of people who stared at them suspiciously. It was in a small bar like building where we always suspected they met t0o exchange secret plans and handshakes. Pitts was able to convince someone to help him and they opened a tractor store to fix the tire. Pitts always said it had been a twilight zone experience in haven, but they were inflated and began the cold trot back to the stranded mutant van.
Meanwhile, both Dan and Steen had started to enter a deep experience that resulted in both running around without their shirts screaming, ‘It’s not really cold! Just think about Florida!!”
I thought I was going to found at morning light, frozen and sitting beside the road, ice caking my Fu Manchu and eyebrows. Even my bones seemed to be creaking from the biting winds that drove from the North across the flat prairie.
Finally, Scott and Pitts arrived, red cheeked and triumphant. We quickly remounted the tire with frozen fingers, crawled in to the dark corned of the van as the heater sparked to life and warmed our frosted bodies.
The lucky thing about most concerts I the 70’s was that nothing started on time. BOC was no different. We handed our tickets to the man at the door and hustled in to find standing space in the open seating that was so common then. It would take a tragedy at a Who concert to end that style of seating. Several kids were killed, literally trampled to death as people rushed the doors to get the best standing spaces on the floor at the Who show in Cincinnati.
We were mostly big guys. We created our space on the floor and shifted from foot to foot waiting for the show to begin. Dan leaned toward me and whispered suspiciously, “Duge, this check over here is trying to talk to me I think. Dies she have a dog head because all she’s doing is barking?”
At last, the lights dimmed, the crowd roared and hundreds of lighters flickered in the darkness to welcome the band and to light the rolled paper crops that they had smuggled into the arena. None of the guys I was with lit up. Most of us had come to see the show, and it as something I could never understand, even after I finally tried pot. Why pay so much to be messed up at a concert? I wanted to hear every note and feel every sound. I know a lot of people disagree with me, and say it enhances the experience, but I never saw a concert stoned.
Now, Dan and Steen were a different story. They were in a groove. The bass guitar shook the floor, and laser lights shone out at the crowd and ricocheted off the huge glass ball suspended over the auditorium. The wall of sound BOC cranked out thundered through us and we were filled with music and the presence of others swaying and screaming to the same beat.
As the show drew close to an end, the band members started playing a song that had a long, throbbing, building rhythm. As the grinding rhythm grew louder and louder, a wall of laser light appeared over the crowd. The wall, stretching from the stage to the back wall, inched lower and lower over the standing audience, looming like a solid object set to crush us beneath the weight of the heavy beat. Dana and Steen were freaking out. The apparent solidness of the wall of light had them bending lower and lower as the wall moved closer and closer. They held their hands upward as they bent lower to hold back the wall if possible. “man,” shouted Steen, this is gonna crush us!”
I held my arm above me, creating a break in the light, to show them that the wall was only an illusion. Then they, in obvious relief began poking their hands into the light timidly and laughing with relief with the pardon forma death by being crushed.
The wall lifted and BOC finished with a thundering rendition of “Buck’s Boogie.” All five members of the band, keyboardist and drummer included ended up at the front of the stage, al with guitars played in sync as Buck dharma finished the show with a blazing guitar solo.
We exited the auditorium, refreshed and tired. Hungry, we found a burger King and ate before making the dark, and thankfully, uneventful return to our small campus in the center of the state and plains of Kansas.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Should Have Been a Rock Star Channeling Jimi
Channeling Jimi Hendrix
I believe that it was the summer of 1976 when my brother Tim and I went to an all-day outdoor concert in Tulsa to see Bob Segar and the Silver Bullet Band. The weather turned nasty, rain and mud, so the promoters moved the show from the fairgrounds to the huge fairgrounds exposition building.
The stage was located at the end of a huge concreted floor area. Fans who had expected an outdoor show in open summer sunshine instead were greeted with an enclosed, stuffy building, filled with the echo of bustling long-haired guys and girls in an array of bell bottoms and halter tops. Lawn chairs and ice chests, intended for the outside, littered the expanse of the room as pre-concert tunes vibrated through the concrete floors. I could feel the thump of bass speakers in my chest.
The show was scheduled to open with a new band called Ruby Star, and followed by Mahogany Rush and Black Oak Arkansas before the day’s headline act of Segar and mates took the stage. Ruby Star was a “find” of Black Oak and Mahogany Rush was the new heavy metal band with a twist of Medieval and fantasy, as were most of the metal bands of that period. Uriah Heep, Rainbow, and dozens of other progressive Rock bands played in pseudo-medieval wear and sang about magic, dragons and the power of Rock.
The sweet smell of hundreds of joints wafted across the arena mixed with cigarettes and beer. At this point in my life, just after my sophomore year in college, I still had not tried either pot or beer. I had been around it plenty, but seemed to always be the driver for those who were in pursuit of an altered state of consciousness.
Ruby Star took the stage and played a hectic rock and blues 45 minute set. The curly haired female lead singer, wailed and stomped the stage, and despite the fact I thought she was sexy, we had drifted to the back of the concert crowd with an apathetic eye on the stage. The Girls drifting around the crowd were more interesting than the Ruby Star stage show. They ended up releasing one album with little fanfare before disappearing.
The stage cleared and the second band began set up. I had one of Mahogany Rush’s albums and had read somewhere about their fabled beginnings. The story went that Frank Marino, their lead guitarist and songwriter had at one time been hospitalized with a drug overdose. Before going into the hospital, he had never played a musical instrument. There, he lapsed into a coma and experienced something that changed his life.
While drifting in the fog of his drug induced coma, Marino supposedly said that he had a vision of Jimi Hendrix. Now, Jimi had died just five years before the concert that I was attending, and only two years before their first LP release. According to these rumors, when Frank awoke form his coma, he was able to play guitar just like Hendrix.
When they took the stage, Marino never said a word, just went straight into his set of pounding drum and wailing guitar. The first song was one of his own, which he immediately followed by the old Tornados instrumental classic “Telstar.” Frank was playing some screaming guitar!
Without a break, he launched into Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” The song was perfect. I couldn’t imagine Jimi doing it any better. The set followed with Hendrix song after Hendrix song, until by the end of the set, I found myself and my brother standing in front of the stage, having been drawn form the back of the crowd. I stood; wide mouthed as, I swear, I saw Jimi Hendrix channeled that day through Frank Marino. The set left me exhausted and wanting more, but after using his warm-up band allotted time, Marino and Mahogany Rush disappeared.
The rest of the show, despite a great performance by Segar, was simply postscript for me. If anyone had asked me that day, I would swear that the ghost of Jimi Hendrix possessed Marino. It was a near divine experience.
Now, Marino’s web suite discusses the rumor of the LSD overdose and Hendrix visitation, and denies that Marino ever told anyone that story. It even goes into the growth of the tale and its mutations. But, if you had asked a19 year old Charlie on that day in a hot, stuffy building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he was a believer
I believe that it was the summer of 1976 when my brother Tim and I went to an all-day outdoor concert in Tulsa to see Bob Segar and the Silver Bullet Band. The weather turned nasty, rain and mud, so the promoters moved the show from the fairgrounds to the huge fairgrounds exposition building.
The stage was located at the end of a huge concreted floor area. Fans who had expected an outdoor show in open summer sunshine instead were greeted with an enclosed, stuffy building, filled with the echo of bustling long-haired guys and girls in an array of bell bottoms and halter tops. Lawn chairs and ice chests, intended for the outside, littered the expanse of the room as pre-concert tunes vibrated through the concrete floors. I could feel the thump of bass speakers in my chest.
The show was scheduled to open with a new band called Ruby Star, and followed by Mahogany Rush and Black Oak Arkansas before the day’s headline act of Segar and mates took the stage. Ruby Star was a “find” of Black Oak and Mahogany Rush was the new heavy metal band with a twist of Medieval and fantasy, as were most of the metal bands of that period. Uriah Heep, Rainbow, and dozens of other progressive Rock bands played in pseudo-medieval wear and sang about magic, dragons and the power of Rock.
The sweet smell of hundreds of joints wafted across the arena mixed with cigarettes and beer. At this point in my life, just after my sophomore year in college, I still had not tried either pot or beer. I had been around it plenty, but seemed to always be the driver for those who were in pursuit of an altered state of consciousness.
Ruby Star took the stage and played a hectic rock and blues 45 minute set. The curly haired female lead singer, wailed and stomped the stage, and despite the fact I thought she was sexy, we had drifted to the back of the concert crowd with an apathetic eye on the stage. The Girls drifting around the crowd were more interesting than the Ruby Star stage show. They ended up releasing one album with little fanfare before disappearing.
The stage cleared and the second band began set up. I had one of Mahogany Rush’s albums and had read somewhere about their fabled beginnings. The story went that Frank Marino, their lead guitarist and songwriter had at one time been hospitalized with a drug overdose. Before going into the hospital, he had never played a musical instrument. There, he lapsed into a coma and experienced something that changed his life.
While drifting in the fog of his drug induced coma, Marino supposedly said that he had a vision of Jimi Hendrix. Now, Jimi had died just five years before the concert that I was attending, and only two years before their first LP release. According to these rumors, when Frank awoke form his coma, he was able to play guitar just like Hendrix.
When they took the stage, Marino never said a word, just went straight into his set of pounding drum and wailing guitar. The first song was one of his own, which he immediately followed by the old Tornados instrumental classic “Telstar.” Frank was playing some screaming guitar!
Without a break, he launched into Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” The song was perfect. I couldn’t imagine Jimi doing it any better. The set followed with Hendrix song after Hendrix song, until by the end of the set, I found myself and my brother standing in front of the stage, having been drawn form the back of the crowd. I stood; wide mouthed as, I swear, I saw Jimi Hendrix channeled that day through Frank Marino. The set left me exhausted and wanting more, but after using his warm-up band allotted time, Marino and Mahogany Rush disappeared.
The rest of the show, despite a great performance by Segar, was simply postscript for me. If anyone had asked me that day, I would swear that the ghost of Jimi Hendrix possessed Marino. It was a near divine experience.
Now, Marino’s web suite discusses the rumor of the LSD overdose and Hendrix visitation, and denies that Marino ever told anyone that story. It even goes into the growth of the tale and its mutations. But, if you had asked a19 year old Charlie on that day in a hot, stuffy building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he was a believer
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Should Have Been a Rock Star- Zen Moment 5
Zen Music moment
My niece Ellen got married. It was a pretty big affair. The wedding was filled with people from both families. Dugans poured out of every corner. Ellen’s dad, my brother Keith, was actually dressed up… an unusual thing since he lived in his jeans and cowboy boots. Ellen was dressed in Ashley’s wedding dress that she had worn the January day we walked down the isle together.
The wedding was you r typical bride and groom exchange “I do’s”… and both of them looked nervous and radiant. They bounced down the aisle after being declared “husband and wife.”
After the wedding, and the family receptions, we adjourned to another place for serious post-wedding celebration. Ellen had rented a dance floor at one of south Tulsa’s hotels. There was music and the booze flowed like… well, like wine! The group of us there drank, and ate and danced to the music. It was mixed in with various drinking games, moments of Karaoke by Ellen and her brother Brian. They sang a duet together, something by Kiki Dee, I think.
The best moment of the evening was, as the music pounded louder and louder and the crowd became less and less inhibited, when Metaloaf’s song, “Paradise by the dashboard Lights” came on the system. Metaloaf has always been one of my favs. I remember featuring his first LP, “Bat Out Of Hell” when I was a DJ on campus radio. It has the only song I ever ‘soloed’ on at a Karaoke bar…”You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)”
“Paradise” just has some sort fo appeal… a song that runs about 9 minutes long, but ti had every one up on the floor, dancing and singing. As the song played on into a dialogue between the horny guy and the reluctant girl, the dance floor divided into male and female sides, the males singing the Meatloaf parts and the females singing the Ellen Foley parts. A raucous and loud, drunken rendition of Meatloaf that ended in sweaty, joyful musical reenactment of the never ending battle of the sexes.
Even I, the dancing wallflower, played my part, caught up in the swirl of m music and dance.
“And I never had a girl
Looking any better than you did
And all the kids at school
They were wishing they were me that night”
My niece Ellen got married. It was a pretty big affair. The wedding was filled with people from both families. Dugans poured out of every corner. Ellen’s dad, my brother Keith, was actually dressed up… an unusual thing since he lived in his jeans and cowboy boots. Ellen was dressed in Ashley’s wedding dress that she had worn the January day we walked down the isle together.
The wedding was you r typical bride and groom exchange “I do’s”… and both of them looked nervous and radiant. They bounced down the aisle after being declared “husband and wife.”
After the wedding, and the family receptions, we adjourned to another place for serious post-wedding celebration. Ellen had rented a dance floor at one of south Tulsa’s hotels. There was music and the booze flowed like… well, like wine! The group of us there drank, and ate and danced to the music. It was mixed in with various drinking games, moments of Karaoke by Ellen and her brother Brian. They sang a duet together, something by Kiki Dee, I think.
The best moment of the evening was, as the music pounded louder and louder and the crowd became less and less inhibited, when Metaloaf’s song, “Paradise by the dashboard Lights” came on the system. Metaloaf has always been one of my favs. I remember featuring his first LP, “Bat Out Of Hell” when I was a DJ on campus radio. It has the only song I ever ‘soloed’ on at a Karaoke bar…”You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)”
“Paradise” just has some sort fo appeal… a song that runs about 9 minutes long, but ti had every one up on the floor, dancing and singing. As the song played on into a dialogue between the horny guy and the reluctant girl, the dance floor divided into male and female sides, the males singing the Meatloaf parts and the females singing the Ellen Foley parts. A raucous and loud, drunken rendition of Meatloaf that ended in sweaty, joyful musical reenactment of the never ending battle of the sexes.
Even I, the dancing wallflower, played my part, caught up in the swirl of m music and dance.
“And I never had a girl
Looking any better than you did
And all the kids at school
They were wishing they were me that night”
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Should Have Been a Rock Star - The first concert
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.
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.
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.”
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