My First Band

[brian]

Hi Guys ! Be sure to check out myfirstband.com . I know that for Sylvan, the Florida Bands will bring back a Host of memories ! I am listed in the Massachusetts Bands (Conquered Grape).

[Blues Dues]

Mar 8, 2010 17:25:47 GMT -5 brian said:

Hi Guys ! Be sure to check out myfirstband.com . I know that for Sylvan, the Florida Bands will bring back a Host of memories ! I am listed in the Massachusetts Bands (Conquered Grape).

Quick link to "Conquered Grape":

www.myfirstband.com/FirstBandConqueredGrape.html

[Blues Dues]

Many of us became musically inspired in the 60's after witnessing the fairer sex's reaction to the Beatles. Figured, if that's what it takes, gimmie a guitar.

My one and only band was called "Ronnie and the Rejects".

"Ronnie" was Ron Parkinson of South Weymouth. He couldn't play
a single chord, so he played the bass line on the de-tuned low E string of his guitar.

I learned "C", "F" and "G" on my Harmony acoustic in which I had mounted a Radio Shack microphone from a cheap tape recorder.
Played it through a modified AM radio.

Our drummer initially played on pots and pans, but we finally found a beginner's drum set.

Only song we ever performed in public was "Twist and Shout".

Ron went on to take guitar lessons and became a local, one man hummer and strummer at the local Chinese Restaurants. He took my last name as his "stage name" and was known as "Ron Eriksson". He later went to Vegas and I understand he regularly opened for Wayne Newton. That's what he told me anyway.
Haven't seen him in many years.

Me? I can now play three or four more chord progressions.

Blues Dues

[papajohn]

Funny you mentioned "My First Band". I was in a band "Myst" out of Weymouth in the 60's. The keyboard player posted some pix and a bio which I found by accident. Managed to track him down after so many years. He's still playing and so am I. Great to see so many familiar faces from back in the day.
John

[brian]

Hey Papa John ! That means you must have played in the band with the 'One and Only' Skip Tuttle !!! Could this be TRUE ?

[tim]

Hey, this is a cool subject. My contribution is long, but I'm going farther than my "first band" Here's some of my band history:

In High School, we had sort of a band. and I mean sort of. We called ourselves "Indian Ridge" Bob Collins on Teisco guitar, Jan Collins (Bob's brother) played an old Conn drum set which consisted on a snare small crash and a high hat., and me on a Kingston "Beatle bass" and a 35 Watt Checkmate Amp (Which I still have both!) We tried to do some Steppenwolf and Guess Who but we butchered those songs in our own way. When I lived in Lincoln Ill, I had acquired a 68 Gibson EBO-L "Slot head" for $140.00 (My dad about died and killed me over that one) which for a college kid was big money then, but I had sharpened my skills and had learned to read upper bass clef and played bass at college with a men's choir and did some work in play productions, but not much. There was a guy at college who had just gotten out of the Navy and had the frets pulled on a '69 Jazz bass. and was quite a fretless and URB player. His name was Randy Evans and he had played in a US Navy Jazz Ensemble. He really taught me a lot about bass in general.

Then I ran into some guys from work who played and were looking for a bass player. I said "I play bass" and the next thing going was the Verl Prather Band which was a Country band consisting of Bass, drums, Lead guitar, rhythm guitar and occasionally Fender Rhodes keys. , and we played on weekends in various dives and some pretty cool parties. Well, that worked alright then Earl moved and we disbanded. In the mid- 70's I now had a great rig. a '73 Jazz bass, a Gallien -Krueger 250 watt tube amp, and a couple of Traynor GMT stacks. Then came an opportunity to play with a metal band called Pearl Buck. It was great. Now we did Steppenwolf, Mountain, The Guess Who, Bob Seger, GFR, and did it right! It was a cool gig.

Then rotten things happened in life. I lost my job, lost my wife (She was married two weeks after we divorced), I had to get some ready cash and had to sell my Gibson and my G-K and Traynor rig, but kept the J-bass. Then I moved back to Vincennes Indiana and went to work making wire for United Technologies, There I hung around in a few places and was on Vincennes University campus at a "Bring and play" gig. where people sat around , tossed down some and jammed. That's where I met a moppy haired VU student named John Mellencamp. Yep, THE John Mellencamp. We got to play some stuff really well just hanging out, and he said he wanted to go out on the road and asked me if I'd play bass in his band. I thought about it and declined because I had bills and child support to pay and knew that your typical on the road tour band usually starved to death or was in it just for party scene. So, knowing my financial situation, I declined, besides who wants to hear home grown material anyhow?

Shall I shoot myself now, or later?

Now several years later. I play bass at church, do a CW trio gig a few times a year with a Hot-Rod country picker, and play fretless in a jazz band consisting of old standards. We've done several wedding receptions and some dinner parties. Anyhow, that's as up to date as I can get.

[Blues Dues]

I think that's pretty awesome. John Mellencamp, huh? Never heard of him.

(just kidding)

Cool story, Tim.

RCE

[brian]

I Loved those Traynor Amps and Cabinets !! I used to play Bass through a Traynor Bass Head and a cabinet with Eight 10 inch speakers. That amp could move mountains !!

[tim]

Youre right Brian. Those Traynor columns I had were both 4x12 inline and the GK looks so cool sitting on top of them. Yep we're talking 250w tube power which was probably the equivilnt of about 450 solid state today.

that rig could handle about any situation I needed. It's a far cry from all the stuff I have now, but I wish I still had it!

[tim]

Cool story, Tim.

RCE

-------


Well, when you look back on things, situations may not be cool some times but usually life in general is, but if anything else, it's "interesting"

[teafran]

Ah - well, I was only in one - "The Knightmen". We started off in late '62 as an instrumental band formed entirely by accident as one of my football teammates, Wayne "Sticks" Breden, had a drum set and was pretty good at them. I had my Dad's old Gibson Jumbo which had been modified with a acoustic pickup and an old tube amp - I want to say it was an Ampeg. As it happened, there was a talent show and Wayne wanted to show off so we did the prototypical Sandy Nelson's "Let There Be Drums" (circa 1961) - loud, but it sounded pretty good - just the two of us whacking away. We actually placed second in the talent contest which was a surprise.

Subsequent to that, another one of our teammates approached us - played bass and wanted to play with us, so that was the core group - me, Wayne and Rick "The Stork" Giles. Wayne's sister was dating a guy in Lynn - Johnny "Ant Man" Florio who had some experience playing in a band - eventually he joined up playing rythym and by the end of that school year "The Knightmen" were official. Mostly instrumentals as none of us could really sing lead, but we could sing backup really well - in fact, we did a lot of acapella singing just for amusement in the backstage of the Marblehead High School auditorium. By the end of that summer, everybody had been together for a while and we had a stock set, but we needed a singer. At that point one of the major talents of the Drama Club heard us singing in the basement, came down and started singing with us - we had our lead singer - Larry Slack.

The Beatles came along and the next thing you know, we won a couple of "Battle of The Bands", got a manager, matching suits and somehow our manager whose name escapes me at the moment, talked the owner of Howard Music into letting us purchase Fender gear at cost - Jaguar Bass, two Telecasters, a Bassmaster, two Bandmasters and a Gibson amp we used for vocals.

Our Dad's used to alternate taking us to gigs before we got our driver's licenses - we used to play the weekend teen dances at the Boston Yacht Club, Corinthian, Lynn Jewish Commuity Center, Salem State, Gordon College, private parties - can't remember them all.

We did well for a high school band. We had some competition - Bobby (Hutchins) and The Diamonds who were all friends of ours. One of my best memories was a Battle in which Bobby and his group and the five of us tied even steven thus we had a play off which was judged a tie so Bobby and his group and us played a set together - Bobby and I swapped off on lead, Larry and Bobby's singer (who I can't remember the name of - he was from Swampscott) swapped singing lead and it brought the house down - there were a good 350 people in the place (it was up on Route 1 in Saugus - can't remember the name).

It stayed that way until my Senior year of high school when we added a keyboard player Judy Small. Immediately, it became Judy and The Knightmen - she was really good singer too so Larry and Judy swapped off lead. Good times.

Didn't play much after that. I tried playing in a country/western band (it was still country/western back in those days) after I returned from SEA - the guy who was the lead singer was a great slide steel player and had a pretty good voice, but he had this fixation with George Jones and used to mimic Jone's locked jaw singing style - I hated it to tell the truth so that didn't last long. I did play a lot when I worked for Texaco in New Orleans - one of my Technician's brother had a recording studio and was a session player. I used to go with him to a club off Bourgon Street which that had an open mike night and jam with other guitar players - mostly blues stuff. Got to play with Fats Domino one night - he wandered in on open mike night, sat down and just started playing with us - that was pretty cool.

Oh well, I've killed enough electrons.

[Blues Dues]

All these famous musicians ... makes me feel humbled.

No question about it. For those of us "Vintage" types, the Beatles had a major influence or motivation to grab a guitar and learn to hum and strum. It wasn't George, Paul, Ringo or John.
It was all the girls' reaction to them.

RCE

[tim]

"I had my Dad's old Gibson Jumbo which had been modified with a acoustic pickup and an old tube amp - I want to say it was an Ampeg. "

Tom, I may be wrong, but instead of "Ampeg" might it have been an "Ampro?" Ampro would have been about right in that era. I can invision that it was a wood cabinet with a contoured top.

There were also popular with the 16mm movie projector crowd and sold for small sound systems. They were a way cool bare-boned old school amp .

Fortunatly for a classic vintage piece, they dont' bring much. I've seen them go wit the matching extension speaker go for less than this one.

www.bazaar-world.com/guitar-amp-12656-VINTAGE-AMPRO-CAB-W-SILVERTONE-TUBE-AMP-GUITAR-HARP

The whole rig looked like a Samsonite suitcase where the amp was in one side and the matching extension latched onto the back . You unlatched it then took the extension speaker off it's hooks and corded the two.


Way cool!

[tim]

All these famous musicians ... makes me feel humbled.


Famous?


Show me the money!!!! ;D

[tim]

Subsequent to that, another one of our teammates approached us - played bass and wanted to play with us, so that was the core group - me, Wayne and Rick "The Stork" Giles. Wayne's sister was dating a guy in Lynn - Johnny "Ant Man" Florio who had some experience playing in a band - eventually he joined up playing rythym and by the end of that school year "The Knightmen" were official. Mostly instrumentals as none of us could really sing lead, but we could sing backup really well - in fact, we did a lot of acapella singing just for amusement in the backstage of the Marblehead High School auditorium. By the end of that summer, everybody had been together for a while and we had a stock set, but we needed a singer. At that point one of the major talents of the Drama Club heard us singing in the basement, came down and started singing with us - we had our lead singer - Larry Slack.

.. the next thing you know, we won a couple of "Battle of The Bands", got a manager, matching suits and somehow our manager whose name escapes me at the moment, talked the owner of Howard Music into letting us purchase Fender gear at cost - Jaguar Bass, two Telecasters, a Bassmaster, two Bandmasters and a Gibson amp we used for vocals.

Dang Tom! A cool band name like the Knightmenn? Nick names like "The Ant man?" A manager and music house sponsorship? Matching suits?


DUDE!

Some guys have all the luck....