The Night Shift... Continues!

[WildcatOne]

In addition to playing in Pee Wee's band, I've been playing in a couple of other groups and even am at this time in the process of putting the Wildcats back together. It isn't easy...I'm the one who can't make it to practice...I'm just too tired to do it. But I've been having a wonderful time playing with On Time Airline, a local group fronted by Scott Gamlen, a retired airline pilot, who decided he wanted to play rock 'n roll music. Scott and OTA host a Wednesday night open-mic evening at Chelsea Pub on NASA Rd 1 down in El Lago. I've been playing with them since early August and they are some of the most creative, cool people I've met in a long time. Because I've been playing keyboards with them, I've gotten to stretch out and play straight from the heart and it's been a tremendous release for me. They dig my style and I've fallen right in place with the group. Last night a guy named Jeff got up and did 3 songs. He's been hanging out there and he got his guitar and played 2 songs that he wrote which were awesome and another one by Tom Petty, "Last Dance With Mary Jane". He did something that somehow touched me very deeply. When his set concluded, he came over to me and dropped a dollar bill on my keyboard. I have it sitting here in front of me right now. That gesture said more than anything he could have told me. Another guy got up and did "Nights In White Satin" and I put the keyboard on strings and did the mellotron-Moody Blues thing and it went over great. A lady came over and sat next to me and we started talking. She had her guitar but she couldn't decide what songs she was going to do. I said, just do what you feel like doing and we'll all dig it. I didn't know at that moment that I was hanging out with T.C. Smythe, world-class songwriter and musician who proceeded to get up and play an unbelievably great set of original material by herself...she was easily the best guitar player there and her voice was strong, perfectly pitched and her lyrics were funny and poetic at the same time. I was blown away. Andy Eng showed up from The Scene magazine...he's Jim Shortt's replacement...and he took the picture below with his cell phone. That's Rick Valente next to me. Rick plays in Texas Coast along with me and Roger, Pete and Murray. Doing this keyboard thing has opened new vistas of musical experience that I otherwise would have missed. Thanks, Sister Bernard. Cheers, WC1

[23t]

John!!!!!

And you can add me to the ringing ears club! I like to go hunting but it sucks when your out in the woods on a quiet still morning and all I hear is that ringing sound.

[WildcatOne]

That's Jorma Kaukonen's place...he was the lead guitarist for the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna back in the day...he's an amazingly versatile musician and human being. He and Jack Cassidy (the hippie-headbanded and round-sunglassed guy on bass) and the CEO of the Airplane, Paul Kantner, cooked up some of the heaviest psychedelic rock 'n roll ever played while Marty Balin and Grace Slick sang about all the things our parents warned us against. Kaukonen and Cassidy had their blues band with Papa John Creach (fiddle) on the side until it became a conflict of interest with the airline they were working for and they moved on...so did the Airplane, which mutated into the Jefferson Starship, finally just Starship with Mickey Thomas (that's him singing "Fooled Around And Fell In Love" with Elvin Bishop (who himself was a guitar alumnus along with Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) ), Slick, Creach and Craig Chaquico on guitar, replacing Cassidy with Pete Sears and David Friberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service alumnus, also writer of "Come Together", a hit for the Youngbloods in the 60s) for their big hits in the 80s...anyway, Jorma and Jack were into speed skating and every winter they'd fly over to Holland and skate the lakes over there. They probably still do (uh, if the lakes still freeze). Jorma got himself covered with tattoos over the years as well. He's pretty much a soldier of fortune in rock 'n roll...I myself am a soldier of Wheel of Fortune...but I have always admired and respected Jorma for his originality and sense of purpose; he stuck to what he believed was right and he never quit. It's good to see him doing so well. Cheers, WC1

[draglist]

Great info on these guys, John. Thanks. I was proud to see Papa John Creach in a small club here in DC in the mid 80s. I was front row and just feet away. I really enjoyed that concert. bp

[WildcatOne]

I have no doubt you're in for a treat, Wheelz. Jorma's been to the mountaintop. He was one of the original circuit boys for the Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom scene in San Francisco back in the mid-60s...The Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape (short-lived but something else), Steve Miller Band (with Boz Scaggs, by way of Chicago's Blues Circuit) Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Beau Brummels, The Charlatans (with Dan Hicks), Sopwith Camel, Country Joe and the Fish, Santana, and my favorite Bay Area band of all time, Quicksilver Messenger Service. I have family there, but haven't been out to visit them there for quite a long while. Anyway, Jorma was at the top of that scene as long as he was out there. LA also produced some pretty hot bands back then...the record companies were there. The Doors, Canned Heat, My beloved Beach Boys but they were for all intents and purposes, idle during their failed "Smile" era, Vanilla Fudge, The Electric Prunes, Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Mamas & Papas, The Mothers of Invention, Buffalo Springfield, The Seeds with Sky Saxon, and my favorite LA band of all time, Love. Down here in Texas we had the 13th Floor Elevators, The Moving Sidewalks (with Billy Gibbons), The American Blues, The Fun & Games Commission (I went to college with some of those guys, they're still around), Fever Tree, Bubble Puppy, The Red Crayola, Conqueroo, Crowd Plus One (later Bloodrock), Mouse & The Traps, Sir Doublas Quintet, Neal Ford & The Fanatics, and the heaviest band in Texas in the late 60s, Josephus. Bruiser Barton and the Dry Heaves later became Beans Barton and the Bipeds, they still play at DanElectro's here in town once a month...performance art...all across our great nation it was going on. New York and the East had The Velvet Underground, Nazz (from Philly, with Todd Rundgren, arguably the best band on earth for a couple of years), The Rascals (formerly Joey Dee's band at the Peppermint Lounge, where The Ronettes were go-go dancers when Phil Spector discovered Ronnie), The Vagrants (with Leslie West), Blues Magoos, Tommy James, Crazy Elephant, Chocolate Watch Band, Lemon Pipers, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, later to become Spirit and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Moulty and the Barbarians. Dylan. The Band. The midwest had Mitch Ryder, Bob Seger, ? and the Mysterions (some of whom later became Grand Funk Railroad along with members of Terry Knight and the Pack), Paul Butterfield, The Stooges, The MC 5, The Cryan Shames, Chicago Transit Authority, and an early REO Speedwagon...H.P. Lovecraft...across the pond were of course the Beatles and the Stones, Yardbirds, Who, Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett blew them all away with their first album "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" and a live show beyond anything anyone had ever imagined before...RIP Syd...The Move (later ELO). Procol Harum. Spooky Tooth. Small Faces. Status Quo. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Donovan. Lulu. The Bee Gees. Them. The Animals. Great stuff going on back in the 60s. That's where Jorma hit his stride...he knows all those guys...there are many, many more but I have to take a tender vittles break...Cheers, WC1

[WildcatOne]

Uh

[Billy Mac]

You, my friend, are a walking, talking, encyclopedia of musical knowledge and trivia.