Those were the days

I would kill for some video of my old bands. We were all pretty bad, but it would still be fun to see.

God, I miss my hair.
No videos... but I've got some basement recordings of early bands. Basically 2 or 4 track with one mic in the middle of the room stuff. A couple songs don't sound too bad but the others are just mud.
 
No videos... but I've got some basement recordings of early bands. Basically 2 or 4 track with one mic in the middle of the room stuff. A couple songs don't sound too bad but the others are just mud.

Beats what I've got, which is a couple of pictures and that's it.
 
Baby we were born to run...

TAE, you have lived one gloriously fascinating life!

Brother I am truly overpaid...but I'll take it...I have had my fair share of bumps in the road and still hitting some now and then but damn I am still truly living the dream so PLEEEEEEEZE DON'T WAKE ME UP!
 
He didn't race or do burn-outs, just put the top down and did the slow boulevard cruise thing wherever he went.

Yeah Impala's were for low riding and they were cool..a few friends had them.....Me and that GTO on the other hand........OY! The day after I bought it I pulled into Radio Shack to buy some stuff to install the Muncie 8 track...The manager of the store was just staring at me when I came in and then staring at the car...I mean he was old like maybe even 30...he comes up to me and ask if I just bought it from Folger Ford ..I said yeah...he shook his head...Man I wanted to buy that so bad....Next thing he says is do you want to take it to Irwindale tonight and run money bracket? I'll pay for everything....Sure man! The dude knew about racing and knew my car ...I was a a 16 year old clueless fool still figuring out how to shift the manual trans....
Holy shit it was awesome......He taught me how to catch the christmas tree and power shift...pedal to the medal going through the gears without lifting your foot off the gas.....We both took several runs that night and by end of night I beat his best time....all I remember was it was in the low 13's pretty bad ass for a street car... Can;t remember his last name but his first name was Sandy what cool cat....

Yes those were the days....
 
No videos... but I've got some basement recordings of early bands. Basically 2 or 4 track with one mic in the middle of the room stuff. A couple songs don't sound too bad but the others are just mud.

We did some basement recordings to play for club owners but nobody knows whatever happened to them. Overdub city, ping ponging down between two cassettes with the typical blankets, etc.
 
I would kill for some video of my old bands. We were all pretty bad, but it would still be fun to see
Any videos I was ever on, I've never seen anyway and couldn't remember when recorded. But I used to have about 50 or more jams on tape that I recorded between 1982 and 1992. Many of the pieces on there formed the basis of songs that I've been recording since '92. But I wiped all the tapes clean and sold the cassettes on ebay last year. I was never going to listen to them again. I used to listen to them quite a bit but for me they only ever existed as a conduit to actually fleshing out and recording the songs.
 
I was the keeper of our studio R-R 8/16 track tapes.. until they were lost when I moved out of state. I have mixes of all that stuff but it would still be fun to play with remixes, especially with today's ITB tools. I've been listening to all the old mixes as mp3s with new, open headphones to readjust my hearing.
 
No one took 'pictures all the time' back in the early 70s. Cameras were not convenient. I remember my first 110 camera around 1976, about 8" long, 1" thick, so uncomfortable to keep in a pants pocket.
No idea who took these photos from my very first high school band gig in 1973. I'm on the right in the first pic, playing the white Tele. Our PA system was a Bogen amp (made for store PA system, I think) and two old Fender cabinets with Allied Electronics speakers in them. So we borrowed amps from friends, hooking up 2 amps each in parallel - if we couldn't sound good, we were at least loud.

beowulf1.jpg

beowulf2.jpg
 
Man, I don't even remember the equipment we used when we played our first school gig. These were teen dances every Friday night at a local elementary school. Our band leader supplied all the guitars and amps and all I can remember was the bass had 4 strings. That's it.

Of course no one carried cameras, but I did have one at home.
 
So along with being in a band "Back in the daze", drugs kind of went hand in hand with most of us hippie type musicians at least here in LA LA Land..( Though Zappa WAS NOT A FAN of drugs) I was a major Marahoochie connoisseur and had access to "The Kind" before it it was "The Kine" ...TAE sticks fresh off the boat from Vietnam vets..some of my high school buds were the first Nor Cal "Humboldt"mass producers of killer Bud...Beaver brand :eek: I was a pipe smoker but I lived the smoke two joints mentality / lifestyle...Most often pretty much from when I got going in the morning to when I closed my eyes at night I was staying high most of the time...Built up a very strong tolerance and could function in life quite well as such...wasn't much of a drinker...but I did drink on occasion...Though I dabbled with speed a smidge for a breif period "cross tops" a rack of 10 in foil for $1..I was not into pills, LSD or the like..Totally was OK with naturals like Peyote and Shrooms...but they're not the kinda thing you get hooked on or do every day like Pot

I digress......

So

Unlike myself, a few of my band mates, our semi so called manager and most of the hang arounds Did like pills, LSD and yes even the evil Cocaine...:eek:
I watched all of them do their thing kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion...
I worried about them..but they knew what they were doing right? ( not so much) OY

So one day while banging away on the old upright a song was dropped into my lap that came to be a pretty good song for the band..It was about how sneaky and debilitating cocaine addiction can be...with several devious metaphors running through it... Mind you I had not ever done a single line of coke prior to writing this song..it was all just observation... As crazy as it sounds....I actually did step right into that stinky dog shit world for a year or so of my life just a few years later...Thank God ( seriously I thank God) that he shined the light for me to get out of that twisted wicked world. Like getting a reprieve from the governor...

Understand I was not the main lyricist nor the lead singer but on this one it was 100% all mine..every part for all instruments mine...and I sang the song...The leader was not real thrilled that it was getting a good response nor did he like the message. We did perform live a few times once at a really big concert at the local college and it got a great reaction there. Some chicks came up to me after the gig wanting to meet me and tell me they really like my voice...cool! Sadly the band took a left turn with that bad ass guitarist leaving...we had to re-configure the whole show and "stop the train" somehow got shelved...

Dang...and it was never recorded..:cursing:

So the wife who pretty much see's me and my addiction to playing n singin kind of as "the other woman" in our marriage out of the blue tells me I should produce Stop the train and try and "get it out there" because it still is relevant today... Hmmm? weird but I decided to pull it out of the cobwebs and brush it off.....

I owe this thread a recording of "Those were the days my friend"......and to your poor ears and eyes I hereby promise I will do a disgusting live version for ya's and post it here as soon as it cools off a bit...WTF 108 here in Covina today...

In the mean time here's those prolific lyrics I wrote a mere 44 years ago as a 23 year old local rock star...and maybe...just maybe I'll double down and post a horrific live recording of it too!


Stop the Train

Stop the train at the station
Got to get off , now's the time
Then you give me invitation
I can't say no it's the same old line

You know she's not good for you
In fact she's probably very very bad
But the lady's got her hooks in your heart
She's driving you mad

Got to get off
But I just can't find the time to get off
Cause I'm having too much fun while I'm on
Someone help to get off this crazy train I'm riding

Stop the train at the station
Got to get off now's the time
Then you give me invitation
Can't say no it's the same old line

You're penniless and destitute
Psychologically you're broke
But you're hooked all the same
It ain't no joke

Stop the train
Stop the train
Stop the train

STOP!
 
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Interesting reading some of these stories.

For me ‘those were the days’ were short lived (thankfully)
Left the east coast for the west in the 70s. Always felt guilty like I had abandoned my roots or something.

Turned out it was probably the best thing I could have done. All my high school buddies and bandmates, save for one, have died.

All drug related. They’ve been gone for over 20 years, yet I’m still here rocking.

These are the ‘days’ :)
 
These are the ‘days’ :)

All we have is now my friend....... Love this relatively new song with a great message...."Nobody told me THESE were the good old days"..

Quite a nice little diddly...

 
Isn’t it funny how the term ‘those were the days’ is past tense?

No one seems to realize they were ‘in’ those days at the time of experiencing them.

It’s only recognized as such after the fact.

Brings to mind the term ‘ you don’t know what you got till it’s gone’
 
I almost left the East coast for the West coast in '76. My girlfriend worked for the program director at a large D.C. area fm station. The director was moving to a station in L.A. and she was making the move with him. She invited me to go along, offered to put me up at her place and pay all the bills. I was in the middle of building a nice band and things were looking real good in that direction so.. I declined her offer, kissed her goodbye at the airport and rode off into the sunset.
 
Well for sure hindsight is 2020 and the stories get better the more ya tell em :o In retrospect I have had a very blessed life right from the get go to even right now..Life is going to dish out good and bad no matter who you are or what you do.. I remember telling a really well educated and financially successful friend of mine of how I kind of regretted not getting the intended law degree and went and chased rock stardom....He laughed and said "are you kidding?" You got to live a life most of us can only dream of... I did get to live the dream of a rock star ( and lived to tell the tale) and in my rainbows and loli pops world view I am still living the dream so Pleeeeeeeze DO NOT WAKE ME UP!
 
We had real Christmas trees up until I was about 7 or 8 years old. After the family split up, mom jumped on the all aluminum tree wagon which we had from then on - we used the same tree for years. Oh yeah.. a had to have item for that tree was the rotating color wheel flood lamp. The only thing topping that set up was our first lava lamp.

Something I think is odd is that Home Depot, of all places, carries a great selection of lava lamps - in store. Who knew!?

P.S. There's a whole mess of Lava Lamp threads in the basement here, but I didn't want to dredge one up just for this.
 
I would kill for some video of my old bands. We were all pretty bad, but it would still be fun to see.

God, I miss my hair.

I was hoping my Dad had caught some 8mm film of my brother and me playing music on the patio. I was 11-12 yrs old. The fellow a couple houses away would sit in the back yard drinking beers, and after a half dozen or so, he would come over and offer us $1 to play that "money" song (Money by the Kingsmen). Alas, dad never filmed us.

I only have a couple of old cassette recordings of bands from the later years.
 
I was hoping my Dad had caught some 8mm film of my brother and me playing music on the patio. I was 11-12 yrs old. The fellow a couple houses away would sit in the back yard drinking beers, and after a half dozen or so, he would come over and offer us $1 to play that "money" song (Money by the Kingsmen). Alas, dad never filmed us.

I only have a couple of old cassette recordings of bands from the later years.

Wow how cool would that of been if he'd only recorded it.......... I'd love to hear some of my early jams as a naive 16 year old drumming for the cat that turned me into a keyboard player shortly thereafter..He was 15 and for certain was the baddest ass under 20 years old Hammond player on the planet..dude was a beast...B3 with two 122 leslies LOUD! we covered Lee Michaels, Three dog night and Procol Harems whiter shade of pale ..I Loved playing the part of Frosty...I was untrained and green and beat the shit out of that drum kit ..Keith Moon had nothing on me ;) what a blast
 
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