A story about a 60's garage band that didn't make the big time and some of the reasons why it didn't.
March,1965
We played our break song, put our instruments down and got off the stage. One more 30 minute set and we would be done for the night. Sylvia had just finished “Ruby Baby”. The kids liked to dance to it so we had played it three times in the last 90 minutes. Our gig was for 2 hours plus 2 twenty minute breaks. Good thing, too. Our song catalog only had 17 songs so we did a lot of repeats. I kept track of which songs got the kids dancing and which ones didn’t. We played “Ruby Baby” one more time.
As we headed out the door Jer asked me how many kids we had in the audience. I said the ticket guy told me 143. I thought Jer was figuring out our ‘take’ from the receipts but he was thinking about the heat in the club. Jer kept to himself a lot. It was hard to tell his mood just by looking. His quirky humor put some people off so maybe that’s why he was a quiet guy most of the time – once burned, twice shy.
As we headed out the door Jer asked me how many kids we had in the audience. I said the ticket guy told me 143. I thought Jer was figuring out our ‘take’ from the receipts but he was thinking about the heat in the club. Jer kept to himself a lot. It was hard to tell his mood just by looking. His quirky humor put some people off so maybe that’s why he was a quiet guy most of the time – once burned, twice shy.
“Average body temperature is 98.5 x 143 means it's about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit in there!”, he said. Well, it was not exactly the way to gauge the ambient temperature, but he had a point. It was hot under the lights all the time but we didn’t feel hot and sweaty until we put our instruments down between sets. The low ceiling, which was ok for the retail store it used to be, was too low for masses of sweaty, fast dancing teenagers giving off heat like animated kerosene heaters.
We were playing at a Teen Club in a strip shopping center that was going to seed because larger shopping centers were siphoning away the tenants. Tonight we were playing for a half fee but we had gotten another job out of it for next week. I went outside to cool down. Sylvia was there. She was the spark plug of our group. Her charisma and great smile made us and our audiences feel good. “We need new songs”, she said.
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| Teen Club: You could dance, meet your friends, but no alcohol was served |
That wasn’t all we needed. We were high school guys who
knocked together a rock and roll band in an age when rock and roll was fairly
simple. All we had to know was a handful of chords on our guitars and have
enough musical sense to arrange them in the order required by the cookie cutter
songs of the day. Or to put is as humanely as possible, we were a notch or two
below an average garage band.
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| Typical 60's garage bands. Note the "massive" guitar amplifiers. The one at the far right was probably about 50 watts, max. |
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| Delicados Ovalados |
I could see Alex across the parking lot chatting up a girl as usual.
Our lead player, Vic, and our drummer, Jer, were smoking nearby. They were
sharing one of Vic’s awful cigarettes. We never let him smoke those things in
the car. They were called Delicados and Vic thought they were really cool. They
were oval instead of round and the tip that touched the lips was lightly
sugared. But, God, they stank. We could tolerate Jer’s Camels and Bobby’s
Luckies but the Delicados? No.
Bobby was nowhere in sight but I knew he and his long time
girlfriend were in his car making out. They had been dating for over a year and it looked as ‘serious’ as any relationship between any pair of 17 year olds – volatile then treacly by turns - depending on who knows what. I don’t remember how he became our bass
player but he was better at bass playing than Alex, Jer, or I, were with our
guitars and drums.
When the break was over we went in and finished our last
set. Next week would be playing at the Army base for money.
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April, 1965
By the time I dropped everybody off at their houses it was 1:30 AM, Sunday morning. I stopped off at Tiko’s
Tacos for a nightcap. It was nearly full. Well, it was a small walk-in diner
across the street from a cemetery you wouldn’t know was there because of the
tall evergreen hedge. The only thing missing now was the beer to go along with the tacos
and the tasty salsa. You had to be 21 to buy beer unless you went across the
border to the bars in Juarez where the legal age is nobody’s
concern. I was wishing I had taken my girlfriend dancing at the Copa Banana
just over the Mexican border instead of driving 18 miles past the city limits to
play at the EM club on the Army base.
After paying for gas our split was $15 each for a 3 hour
performance in front of 100 or so freshly recruited Army boots. After nine weeks of womanless basic training anything resembling a woman looked sexy to them. Sylvia could have commanded them to do 100 laps around the club if she wanted. With only 17 songs, we didn't have a "repertoire", just 17 songs, so we repeated a lot of them. As she sang “Ruby Baby” for the fourth time, she looked like she was ready to pull up a chair and sing it sitting
down instead of rocking with the music. That was trouble. Sylvia could almost
always be described in one word – upbeat. If she was down, that meant that
tonight we were so stale even she can’t save us.
I decided to talk to Alex and Jer about adding new songs but
that would have to wait till Monday at school. And the other problem was where
can we practice? The last time we practiced at Bobby’s house his mom caught Vic
and his girl making out in the kitchen. I don’t think they were doing anything
really heavy or she would have made us all leave. She just made the girl leave.
No problem for Vic. He’s the lead guitar. He has lots of groupies. Whoever that
girl was, there’ll be another one to replace her. Vic and Alex were in a silent
competition to see who could attract the most girls. By my calculations, Vic
was up by about three since Alex had fallen in love with one of his victims and
had been dating her steadily for a couple of months. Alex was a social climber
but Vic was a collector. We all envied Vic.
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| Alex could sound as though he actually played tennis. |
Alex’s criteria for girlfriends were simple but fairly high
for a guy from a lower class background. The girls had to be good looking and
they had to be two or three steps higher than he in the social ladder. He was a
charming guy, able to affect a sort of sophistication that
fooled a lot of girls and some adults. He never found out that for three months
last Fall his girlfriend and I had been busy learning about each others bodies
in her parents’ bedroom. For all his charm, pseudo-sophistication and numerous
girlfriends, Alex’s explorations with sex were very timid and his girl was
really curious about the carnality she was feeling. She confided her
frustration to me and to use a time worn cliché, one thing led to another and
we managed to satisfy each others curiosity. They continued dating for a few
more months then broke up when Alex found what he thought was a better looking girl.
We got together at Bobby’s to practice but Bobby couldn’t
get the bass runs and that threw Jer’s drumming off which threw Alex off so we
gave up on two new songs after two and a half hours of trying. Bobby’s mother looked in and counted heads. Satisfied that everybody’s feet and hands were where they were supposed to be she went back to her gardening in the back yard.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
May, 1965
The next show was in a little farming town about 30 miles south. We had to go with the
same 17 songs again but we figured we’d be ok. The kids there were starved for live
entertainment even if it meant hearing the same songs several times. It was a
school dance in a good sized auditorium called El Rancho Grande. It was on a
Friday night so we had to hustle out of school, pack our stuff and race to make
it in time. The problems started right away. Bobby wanted to bring his girl and Sylvia’s
cousin visiting from Colorado
wanted to come too. So we were eight people, guitars, amplifiers and a full set
of drums stuffed into a smallish station wagon and a 4 door sedan. It was
summer. It was hot. We were packed in so tight we could barely breathe. Ten
miles out of town Sylvia’s cousin announced that she had to pee. There were no
bathrooms for miles around this farm country so I told her she’d have to hold
on for the next 20 miles
or get out of the car and pee by the roadside. Five miles later she said I
gotta go now. So we stopped. We all laughed when Jer said, “I wonder if she’ll
be pissed off when she comes back”.
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| The Blue Rocker's Tour Bus |
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| If I meet him I'll ask him to forgive us |
I guess there were about 150 kids at the Rancho Grande
waiting for us to arrive. The stage was about 4 feet above the dance floor, much higher than at the other places where we played. The kids had to look up at us at steep angle which made them look like hungry puppies waiting for us to give them treats. The chaperones assigned to guard the virtue of the girls were stationed at the entrance, the three exits and at various points along the walls. We started the show as usual with Vic playing a
credible version of “Memphis”. Vic
was good and the rest of us were just adequate for this number. It didn’t
matter to the kids. They jumped and danced, working off weeks worth pent up
energy. Then we did “Johnny Be Good” with me and Alex singing a duet followed by an extended version of “Twist and Shout”. The dancing kids were exhausted
and some of them looked to us hopefully, as though asking us to give them a
slow dance so they could rest a little and to have an excuse to rub their
bodies against each other. It was time for Sylvia to show her stuff. That girl had a mellow voice that belonged in a bikini, and her body was a perfect 34-34-34. She sang
“Sixteen Candles”, another slow song then ripped into “Kansas
City”. We took our first break.
Vic had already singled out a nice looking girl who was
alone at the dance. He’d given her several looks as he played so when we took
our break he moved fast to cut her out of the herd. Alex watched from the stage, biting his
lip as he mentally added one more win in Vic’s column. Jer and Bobby went
outside to get some air. I went to get Sylvia a coke while she talked with several
guys who had gathered around her.
We were about to begin the second set when we noticed that Vic
wasn’t there. Jer hustled out to look for him but came back a couple of minutes
later shaking his head --- no Vic. We
had to go without him. Alex said let’s play “Green Onions”. Good choice. It was
simple to play and he knew that I had been practicing the lead portion of the
song. But there were two problems. I would have to use Vic’s guitar because his
amp had more power than mine and he played with the guitar high up on his
chest so the strap was too short for me. To solve this I sat on a chair off
stage and we played it through. Towards end of the song we saw Vic out in
the crowd stretching his neck up, standing on his toes trying to see who was
playing the lead. He was angry about us playing without him but got over it
when he saw that I was the usurper.
It was over at 11:30.
Our audience was tired but excited. A few of them told us they liked our band and
when were we doing another show. I helped Jer with his drums while Bobby and
his girl were cooing at each other against a wall. Alex was trying to score
some points with the girl Vic had captured but she only had eyes for Vic who
had most likely promised to call her the next day. Sylvia, whose only gear was
an enormous purse, watched us pack up.
Driving home everybody was in a good mood. We kidded each
other about playing the wrong notes or losing the beat but we were tired and
soon a few of us nodded off.
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| $2 would buy 6 gallons of fuel |
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| The guy couldn't break my $20 bill |
I leaned on the counter as I waited. Outside, the guys were
leaning against the cars. Vic had set fire to one of his stinky Delicados and was probably
bragging to Alex about the girl he corralled at the dance. I could see Alex
giving Vic his man-of-the-world smirk, “Yeah, I did that, too”. But Vic knew
better. Jer was drumming on the fender with his fingers, apparently explaining
to Bobby some new rhythm he wanted to try. I could tell Bobby was listening
because every time his girl pulled his arm he would shrug it off. Sylvia and
her cousin were talking, their heads close together.
What a crew. We were the Blue Rockers who together could
string enough guitar and drum sounds in unison to make people dance. None of us
had enough talent to play at a higher level than the one we occupied. None of us had
aspirations to move on to better bands. We didn’t kid ourselves that we would ever
be any better than we were now. But, damn, it was fun.
Disclaimer 1: Some of the characters in this writing are fictional and some are not. Some of the events described actually happened and some did not but more than 45 years on, I don't remember which is which
~ Time Served
Disclaimer 2: No musical instruments were harmed by the Blue Rockers, unlike the music on which they visited much violence.
~ Time Served
Disclaimer 2: No musical instruments were harmed by the Blue Rockers, unlike the music on which they visited much violence.
~ Time Served
