We caught up on all the real music news, as opposed to the Craigslist brand. Big Jim is out of town for a month, up in Pensacola. Hollywood Johnny’s has returned to Boston Johnny’s, apparently a management dispute. The lady who ran their Tiki bar is gone along with my best chance at getting hired there (she played bingo). I reminded Arnel about Tango Whiskey’s ad for a single act.I didn’t know Dave-O was from a wealthy family, who sent him to Rome and Paris for his education. Can you just imagine suggesting to my daddy that you’d "like to study in Europe this season"? I have no malice, Dave-O, but how can somebody with such rich parents never learn to play guitar? I asked that same question when I was twelve. I had to learn my rock music by sneaking around town after dark. To some, that sounds so inspirational, all I can tell them is blow it out their ass. Inspiration, my eye.
Responding to fan mail, I will answer some questions about my electric bass background. I’ve never had a bass lesson in my life, I consider "bass lessons" to by an oxymoron. A few months before my 13th birthday, I figured out what a bass was, not the easiest task on the fringes of civilization. You know, for a small town so chock full of specialists, nary a one was any authority on the electric bass. Until after I did it on my own, that is, whence they (experts, goddamed experts) materialized all over the damn place. Similar factors in this vein made starting my first band immensely more fun than it should have been.
I still managed to get a group together, called “Ides of March”. This had nothing to do with the Texas band years later that stole the name and had the audacity to go somewhere with it. My first band had the germs of its own ruin, in that I had to incorporate two of my older sister’s friends. Grade niners, yuck. Old people, from "that other" generation.
Ted W. and Wendy R. went from knowing absolutely not the first thing about organizing and managing a band to experts who knew more about running your business than you do. And in record time. As with my own family, this overnight process is breathtaking to behold. Even unto this day, it renders me speechless.
My next group, “All The Kings Men” was more enduring, but again ultimately busted up by my family, although it took them much longer as I had gained experience in defense. I knew my family secretly admired and supported my music, even though they did a credible job of hiding it behind threats, insults, gossip, sabotage and constant smear campaigns. I’d never seen them so united. They worked desperately hard to save me from getting a fat head and, you know, I never had the decency to thank them.
This time around, the mistake was to hire the younger brother of one of my band members. (This was the known avenue of attack by my brother—“make friends” with my friend’s younger brother. Remember David Buckingham? Mitch Lycar? Paul Burns? John Campbell?) Still, it took my brother eight entire years to destroy what I had created in six weeks, and even then, he failed to do so until two years after I left town. I had since joined a city band, “Little Joe Hill”, and turned the management headaches over to others.
I did not start my own band again for another twelve years, when a friend of mine desperately needed a bassist. That was “Three Good Reasons”. It was this interval that saw the rise of the dreaded self-proclaimed guitar-gods that are still messing up the music scene today. They don’t have what it takes to form their own bands so they think they are going to take over yours. After all, the rest of you guys only play second-class support instruments and need to be set in your places.
Today, my band is called “Not Half Bad”. We have no lead player.
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