I guess since I have the week off, I can do some blogging.
Today I did only two things: Tax Preparation & Homework. I suppose I also ate on occasion, and I did download an old favorite album of mine to get me in the mood for tax season. The album was “The Completion Backwards Principal” by The Tubes.
Aah, such memories; My old band, Passion, used to cover “Talk to you Later” off that album, and members of the Tubes once stopped by in Monterey (during the Pro Am) to hear us do that song… and they liked it! (We were playing the 5th floor bar, they were playing on the 6th floor stage) Because of that encounter, we later opened for the band in Hanger One at Moffett Field. I do sometimes miss gigging back in my youth. Doing taxes also reminds me that I spent most of the last year working for my now failed start-up in a converted office space that used to be a famous club and 1980’s “meat market;” a place that I used to play at (Gilbert Zapps/Bodega). At that site, we opened up for the Dave Berry Band, and later, did our own shows there. Just across the street, at what is now a very fine Italian restaurant, used to be another famous bar that we occasionally played at (Pumas). This bar was made famous because Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham used to play there before they joined Fleetwood Mac. At that club, we would sometimes open for the local band “Wildfire,” and sometimes, just for fun, they would open for us, or simply pick up our instruments and play when we were on breaks. My band and their band had some serious mutual respect going on. Our two bands were among a select few who had succeeded wildly in the club scene but hadn’t made an album, and didn’t care to; we didn’t want stardom – we played for fun! What I remember most about Pumas was that the stage was four feet off the ground, so hauling gear up to the stage was painful, and after a gig one night, I found a bustier on my car (someone had been fooling around near or on my car?). Not far away, Smokey Mountain was a much easier bar to set up in. We played there a lot. And just across the street from Pumas is (to this day) a recording studio (two actually – the second one belongs to Dave Berry) that I used to record at (Soundtek Studios). While I was still in Passion, we did our demos there; shortly after I left the band, the band started to rehearse there (getting away from the highly questionable “Rock Garden” space – a formerly condemned Salvation Army site that still had that feel of being condemned). After I left the band, I also used to be a “musician for hire” at Soundtek for a few years and even later, when I was running my own studio (the short-lived Heartbeat Records), we would do our final mix-downs there because I lacked the analog equipment that Brett Tyson (the engineer/owner) had. My studio was 100% digital. Alas, once I got my engineering job (in semiconductors, not music), I got out of all studios and clubs and began playing in churches. Twenty-two years later, I’m still at church, loving the hours and the clientele. I also play with a couple other musicians who had club bands back in the day. I guess church is where old club musicians go to die.
Oh well, back to taxes and homework! I gotta go to school soon.