MY FIRST FORAY INTO SHOW BIZ

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

It took all of two months after I picked up a guitar for the first time for me to form my first band. I was a sophomore at Palo Verde High School in Tucson, Arizona, and struggling to get any recognition for being the cool person I believed myself to be. My biggest problem there was trying to impress the people I wrongly believed were worth impressing. I believed that being in a band would give me some credibility and gosh, maybe even a girlfriend. Plus the notion of performing didn’t scare me, which was a good start.

I had one friend named Bill who was up for it and was even willing to play bass, which was great, except that he had no equipment, and academically he was failing almost every subject. His parents weren’t happy, and blamed the band for his failures. Still, we persevered and found a drummer, Richard, who had a decent space where we could rehearse. Main problem for both me and Bill was we had to borrow amplifiers from musician friends, some of whom charged a rental fee, damn them. But Bill also had a friend named Marvin who could play decent lead guitar, plus he had his own gear, and thus a band was born.

My brother had suggested we name our band The Pride, which I thought was a cool name on several levels, foremost being that a pride is the collective word for a group of lions. The other members agreed, and we would try to rehearse every weekend. My time playing the cello helped me in transition to guitar, in that I could hear a song and be able to tell what key it was in, and figure out most of the chords. It helped our band too, as I was able to shout out chords to Bill and Marvin as we played, and I knew the words to most of the tunes too.

Then for some reason, Bill decided we needed to get a charismatic lead singer, and the one he enlisted, Mark, always wore Beatle Boots with Paisley shirts and tight trousers. Unfortunately, his singing wasn’t particularly good. This came to its fruition the first time we performed in public at a Battle of the Bands. When he had the chance to use the mic to say anything, he would speak in a fake jive accent, i.e. “Awraht, bay-beh, we Da Pride, and we gonna start with a little bit of Glow-ree-ah” (Gloria, by Van Morrison & Them, a garage band staple of the 1960’s) We were totally awful that day, and yet somehow, when the judges were narrowing the field down to ten bands to perform at the final a week later, we made the cut.

Were we on our way? We thought so. We went and rehearsed as much as we could over the next week, and in the meantime got an actual paid booking at a college fraternity party for a few weeks later, paying the whopping sum of 60 dollars. We got rid of Mark and replaced Richard on drums with a guy named Steve, who played with us at that battle of the bands audition, and was clearly better anyway. At the final, we were vastly improved over that first performance, and the momentum went to that college gig, where we felt a shred of dare I say confidence, especially since the band had finally agreed I was the best alternative as lead singer. Unfortunately, we would only have three more paid gigs, and to add to our uncertain future, our family was moving to California by end of summer.

Still we went ahead, and conveniently, the lady who owned and operated the Monterey, the cool teen night club all the bands wanted to play at, lived across the street from me. She was familiar with us, as she had heard us playing in my garage several times. We booked an audition at the club, and it would have gone better if the audience hadn’t included a coterie of some of the same guys who had given me the biggest amount of grief during the just-ended school year. They would clap mockingly at the end of each song, but to our pleasant surprise, the lady in charge said she liked us and would give us a night. I thought screw those guys, we’re good, but that promised night never happened.

Before we did that audition, the band also outvoted me to change our name from The Pride to The Weeds, which prompted one of my hecklers at the Monterey to shout out “Let’s get some Weed Killer!” Our career ended about a month before the California move, with Steve finding us a gig that he thought would be great exposure: Playing at a drag strip, set up right where souped up cars would be revving their engines for time trials. All that exhaust and the noise from the engines was coming right at us, and not only were we sometimes unable to hear ourselves, but we were inhaling god knows how many pollutants. Marvin decided after we finished our torturous 30 minutes that his time with The Pride/Weeds was now officially done. I think we got maybe $40 for that debacle. I didn’t blame Marvin for quitting.

When we moved to California, I envisioned forming another band in Redlands, where we were now living. I did have a band in my senior year, called The Toad, but I remember going to Tucson over the Christmas holiday, and by the time I got back, two of the band members had quit. Gawd, I’m glad I found people when I was in college who just wanted to play and have some fun with it. It was with those same guys that I would move up to San Francisco less than two years later, and for the next fifty years or so continue to make a living doing what I enjoy.

June 27th, 2022



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