Whats on your turntable tonight?

In the Summer of ’71 the band I was in did an audition to replace The Doobies as the house band at The Chateau (they had resigned after signing their Warner Brothers’ deal), the hippie/biker bar up on Summit Road in the Santa Cruz mountains (we didn’t get the gig ;-). In the middle of our set this real longhaired guy came up to say "Hey" to our main singer/songwriter/guitarist/organist (talented guy ;-), Lance Libby (he’s up in very northern Washington state now, right below the Canadian border, living on a farm). I hadn’t yet heard of them then, but learned afterwards it was Doobies lead guitarist Patrick Simmons, who knew Lance from Lance having been in local band Christian Rapid. Christian Rapid had changed their name from Stained Glass after having had two albums out on Capitol Records in the late-60’s. Their lead singer/songwriter/bassist Jim McPherson left the group to join John Cipollina in his post-Quicksilver Messenger Service band Copperhead. Amazingly, I had been in a band in my senior year of high school with the younger brother of Stained Glass drummer Dennis Carrasco!

Four years later, I was driving down a residential street in Campbell (a San Jose suburb) when I saw Dave Shogren, the Doobies original bassist (debut album only). He was on the driveway of his tract house, washing his Rolls Royce ;-) . He may have been on only their debut---which stiffed, but apparently had made enough dough to buy a Rolls and make at least a down payment on the house. After The Doobies gave him the boot, he was in a band named SF Star (how’s that for a crappy name?), whose drummer I knew well; he told me he was inspired to take up drums after seeing me playing at a local Teen Center when I was 14 years old---my first band. All the other guys in my Frat band (what bands like Paul Revere & The Raiders, The Standells, and The Kingsmen are called by Rock ’n’ Roll historians) were in college, and their precious drummer had left to join a group that is now semi-legendary---The Chocolate Watchband, seen in the Roger Corman teen-exploitation movie Riot On Sunset Strip. That drummer just happened to go to my high school (Cupertino), and was in both the marching band and the orchestra. He lives in Santa Cruz now, and plays Jazz.

San Jose was a kind of small city at the time, and many musicians were related somehow to others. I saw and heard a number of local bands I consider "better" than The Doobies (the drummer and lead guitarist of The Chocolate Watchband had a band together after TCW called it quits---The Electric Tingle Guild, who were really, really great), but you can’t argue with success.

Before The Doobie Brothers put San Jose on the Rock ’n’ Roll map, we had The Syndicate Of Sound (who had a national hit in ’66 with "Little Girl". By ’68 they playing at high schools again, and at my Senior All-Night Party, held in a bowling alley ;-), People (a regional hit with a cover of The Zombies "I Love You"), The Count Five (famous for their Garage classic "Psychotic Reaction", a shameless rip-off of The Yardbirds), and the aforementioned Stained Glass (I first saw them in ’65 as a 4-piece, when their name was The Trolls. They did the best live versions of Beatles songs I’ve ever heard) and The Chocolate Watchband (three albums on Tower).

And of course Fritz, the San Jose Garage band whose members included Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. There are pics on the 'net of them playing on the stage at Mother Butler High School (I played their once), Stevie wearing a 1-piece A-line dress (ask your mother ;-), her hair done in the bouffant style! She was barely out of high school then, but looked like a student at one of them.

Mott The Hoople "All The Young Dudes" Absolute Analouge

The Trolls

lol @slaw

@bkeske, The Trolls did one 45 I believe, a cover of a Beatles song.

There was a guy who headed the Garage Band resurgence of the late-70’s---Greg Shaw of Bomp Magazine and Records fame. He was (R.I.P.) a great Rock ’n’ Roll historian/writer, with a particular love of regional music and singles by Garage Bands. His 7"/45 RPM collection was massive---over 100,000 of ’em! I filled him in on some of the finer details of the San Jose Garage scene of the mid-to-late 60’s. Such as:

The history of The Watchband on Wikipedia contains one glaring mistake: it names Pete Curry as their original drummer. That is incorrect. What happened was, The Watchband had been rehearsing (in the garage of my Jr. High and High School School friend (Chuck Kemling) parents house for months. Chuck’s brother Jo was in the band at that point, playing a Vox Continental organ. When they were ready to play out (during the Summer of ’65), they decided to hold a giant party near the California coast (slightly north of Santa Cruz iirc). They rented a portable power generator (running on gasoline), and placed it in a hole they had dug in the sand, which they then covered with boards and blankets (it was very noisy). On the very day of that maiden voyage Watchband drummer Gary Andrijasavich took sick, and Pete Curry (a very good friend of both Chuck and I. It was on Pete’s drumset that I did my first practicing) was enlisted as his replacement, for that one show only.

By the way: Pete’s been playing bass in Los Straitjackets for over 20 years now. He and I played together in a coupla bands over the years. He is also a good recording engineer, with a 16-track 2" 3M machine is his home studio. He recorded the demo my late-70's Pop group made for Howie Kline of 415 Records, the label that gave us some of the best San Francisco groups of the Punk/New Wave era. That Pop group (The, ugh, Donuts ;-) can be heard on the 415 Records label sampler LP.

Anyway, Greg Shaw also had a mail order record business, with an office/warehouse on San Fernando Road in Burbank, which I visited on several occasions. He served as The Flamin’ Groovies manager for awhile in the 70’s, and put them together with Dave Edmunds. Dave took them to Rockfield Studio in Wales, and the resulting album---Shake Some Action---is fantastic, the best English Invasion-based album I’ve ever heard.

@tomic601, Thanks mate, I’ll keep an eye out for your package.