MUSIC
My 1960's High School-Era Garage Band,
Rusk & McGowan Demo Record
and Meagher Electronics Recording Studio
Rusk & McGowan Demo Record
and Meagher Electronics Recording Studio
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NOBODY'S CHILDREN / MAGIC MUSHROOM
We had a six-person rock band in high school called "Nobody's Children." I was one of the two youngest people in the group and when the band broke up after our one and a half year existence I was about to begin my sophomore year of high school.
Band Members:
Alex Tumparov - Lead singer, harmonica
Derek Morris - Guitar, backup vocals
Mike Marotta Jr - Keyboard, backup vocals
Dave Marotta - Guitar, backup vocals
Bill Catalano - Drums
Anthony Lucido - Bass
We played covers only - no originals. Back then at our young ages we never even attempted to write songs - songwriting seemed way too myterious and difficult and almost intimidating! We mostly performed British Invasion songs by The Animals, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds, Them, Spencer Davis Group, etc. Plus maybe three or four songs by the American bands Love, Question Mark & The Mysterians (96 Tears), The Standells, and of course the obligatory Louie Louie by The Kingsmen.
But no bubble gum pop, and only British Invasion-style songs that we liked. We didn't attempt to cover any Beatles songs simply because the Beatles were at another level - we loved them but their songs were just too difficult to figure out and perform; too many complex chords and sophisticated 3-part vocal harmonies! There were no "Beatles Song Books" in existence back then to help you learn the chords to a song; you had to figure out the chords yourself, resulting in lots of wear and tear on vinyl records and needles as song passages were repeated over and over again; I remember being endlessly frustrated trying to figure out Beatles' songs back then. And we were not alone; I remember very few local Monterey area garage bands ever trying to cover Beatles songs. The Beatles were always in their own league.
I will say, in looking back, that though we were a high school garage band, there was a consistency to our band's playlist - which probably numbered about 30-35 songs. Enough for maybe an hour and a half or so before we had to start repeating! We only played rock songs that we really liked, and never played any fad pop hits or songs because they were overtly danceable (which a lot of girls seemed to want back then). We didn't do any soul type of songs because we weren't into it then, though today I really love 60's soul in retrospect. As it turned out, our music was still somewhat "danceable" but I never recall us even discussing whether a song was "danceable" - it was not an issue in our minds. We just played songs we liked and just expected people just to figure out how to dance to it if they wanted to dance; kids would dance to anything back then. Dancing was generally just an excuse for guys to get close to a girl and vice versa anyway. Though I remember some girls really being into difference types of dances. Most of us just shuffled around on the dance floor. There was no such thing as a "disco" or "dance" genre of pop music yet where crazy chicks just want to get on the dance floor and dance with each other or whoever. That was more of a late 70's and 80's thing. (Disco that began in the mid 70's was the beginning of the end as far as I was concerned and is directly tied to today's Madonna-Lady GaGa disco hip hop rap garbage that proliferates and pollutes our consciousness! Ah, but I digress).
Here is my recollection of our playlist (I may be off on a couple of songs since I was also playing music with other people at the same time):
All Day And All Of The Night - Kinks
Boom Boom - Animals
Day Tripper - Beatles
Dirty Water - Standells
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - Animals
Evil Hearted You - Yardbirds
For Your Love - Yardbirds
Get Off My Cloud - Rolling Stones
Gloria - Them
Heart Full of Soul - Yardbirds
Heart Of Stone - Rolling Stones
Here Comes The Night - Them
House of the Rising Sun - Animals
I Ain't Got You - Animals
I'm A Man - Yardbirds
I'm Crying - Animals
I'm Gonna Dress In Black - Them
I'm Not Talking - Yardbirds
It's My Life - Animals
Keep On Running - Spencer Davis Group
Louie Louie - Kingsmen
Mercy Mercy - Rolling Stones
Mystic Eyes – Them
Ninety-Six Tears – Question Mark & The Mysterians
Not Fade Away - Rolling Stones
Paint It Black - Rolling Stones
Satisfaction - Rolling Stones
Seven and Seven Is - Love
Somebody Help Me - Spencer Davis Group
Til The End Of The Day - Kinks
Time Is On My Side - Rolling Stones
Tired Of Waiting - Kinks
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place - Animals
You Really Got Me - Kinks
You're A Better Man Than I - Yardbirds
Our paid gigs consisted of local teen dances including the Elks Club, Monterey Youth Center and a other teen dance venues, some youth tennis camp dances and related events at John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch in Carmel Valley, private parties, and backing up some local night club crooners a few times as well as in a demo recording session.
We were fortunate in that two of the people in the band, brothers Mike and Dave Marotta, had a father Mike Sr. who owned ABC Music on Alvarado - one of the largest retail music equipment stores in the area. Though we had a lot of our own equipment already, Mike Sr. was very generous in loaning us extra microphones, PA equipment, amplifiers, and outboard equipment. and accessories. And it was a great learning experience getting that first exposure to setting up the music and sound reinforcement equipment and accessories. Mike Sr. was also plugged in to the community as a performing musician himself and he referred some initial gigs and contacts our way, including the recording studio work discussed below. He was a great supportive person and definitely helped accelerate our initial progress. But we were a good band and and got a lot of work on our own after we started. For a bunch of kids we were professional and reliable in that we showed up on time, started and finished on time, and got along well with those who hired us and entertained the kids we played for who seemed to like our music. We were a "known quantity" with the blessing of Mike Sr. and that certainly helped. Our lead singer was the oldest in the group - in his first year of community college - and he was a pretty good singer and harmonica player. His presence even made the rest of us look a little older and more experienced than we were. We did almost exclusively British Invasion songs from the mid 1960's and didn't do any bubble gum, pop or dance oriented music. Funny because though we played a number of dances I don't recall us making decisions about songs we played based on "danceability." Our attitude is that if it is a good song kids will figure out a way to dance to it. Dancing was just the means for guys meeting girls anyway - guys and girls can dance to anything if they want to connect with each other. That was sort of our attitude. Plus we had a few slow songs like the Rolling Stones' "Time Is On My Side," and "Heart of Stone," or Them's "Here Comes The Night" or The Animals' "House Of The Rising Sun" that were good for slow dances. We didn't have a lot of slow songs in our playlist but could always repeat a slow song if necessary.
At some point the band's name was changed to "Magic Mushroom." I'm not quite sure how this happened - perhaps to give ourselves more of a psychedelic image in keeping with the times? Who knows. The name change was not my call but was brought up by two of the oldest guys in the band; maybe they wanted to be more psychedelic fitting in with the times - who knows. I remember at the time that I only had a vague idea of what a "magic mushroom" actually was.
Unfortunately, no band photos or live recordings of Nobody's Children / Magic Mushroom have been located so far. But there is the demo recording of two songs discussed below, along with a link to listen.
MEAGHER ELECTRONICS RECORDING STUDIO
We were hired to work with local vocal duo on a demo recording project. With Rusk & McGowan we recorded two "demo" songs - both with "one take" - at the legendary Meagher Electronics studio** on Webster Street in Monterey in 1966.
Meagher Electronics was a professional audio sales, installation, and repair business which also contained a recording studio; Jim Meagher began Meagher Electronics Co. in 1948, repairing radios and televisions. He later built the recording studio within the facility. It served many local artists over the years. Meagher was an electronics genius and did anything and everything related to sound, including providing public address and music systems for regional conferences and public events. He did sound for the Feast of Lanterns, Merienda, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Big Sur Folk Festival and was part of the team designing and installing the audio equipment for the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He later was involved in setting up systems at Winterland and Fillmore for Bill Graham. The Monterey Pop Festival was held outdoors at the Monterey County Fairgrounds horse arena. In 1967, in the early years of outdoor rock festivals, it was a monumental task to get amplified rock band sounds delivered to an outdoor audience of 6500, especially when they were spread out sitting in a long, narrow horse arena facility!
During this time period, Meagher's was reputed to be the only audio recording studio between SF and LA. This historical distinction is actually mentioned in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meagher_Electronics Jim Meagher was an electronics wizard and innovator; he was rather a rather quirky, highly intelligent, electronics genius type. He was not too good with people but very good with electrons. I don't recall an effusive outgoing warm personality. He was more of a serious technician and a bit of a nerd who was rather terse in his interactions and communications, but everybody who knew him well seemed to really love the guy. He even was a bit of a mentor to one friend of mine who was friends with Meagher's son and who was a musician/electronics student and who went on to get a degree in electronics at San Jose State.
(As an aside, Meagher Electronics was located just a couple of doors down from the popular Kimball's Barber Shop; any guy who grew up in Monterey in that era will remember Kimball's - it was one of maybe two "family friendly" barber shop sin town (the other being Hagio's) catering to adults and kids - or more specifically boys! I remember getting haircuts at Kimball's when I was in elementary school and every time I was there I'd see other boys my age or younger, often with one of their parents - sometimes the kid and father would be getting haircuts at the same time or the kid would get a haircut first with Mr. Kimball and then the father would get a haircut from Mr. Kimball while the kid waited. It was a classic old-timey style small town friendly barbershop - owned by barber Floyd Kimball and staffed by two other barbers. Kimbell was a great guy. This was an era before the advent of specialized "hair salons" for men! Guys got their haircuts at barber shops by licensed barbers and not by licensed cosmetologists / beauticians! haha I read recently that Floyd Kimball had moved to Encinitas upon his retirement, after having run the barber shop for 40 years; Mr. Kimball passed away in 2003 at age 93. Many of us have great memories of that barber shop!
Oh well, I digress ... back to Meagher Electronics and the demo record.
RUSK & McGOWAN DEMO RECORD & SABLE KNIGHT
Johnny Rusk and Jimi McGowan - Rusk & McGowan - were a local duo playing many days each week at a local night club / restaurant / bar called The Sable Knight; they were a couple of slick crooners with a good banter and some comedy thrown in. They had developed quite a local following as evidenced by a their frequent shows as the "house entertainment" at a local nightclub - that is quite impressive for a small town town like Monterey!
For the Rusk & McGowan demo recording project, studio time and engineering fees and record pressing expenses were funded by an investor - Bob Oberg, the owner of The Sable Knight and a few other clubs in Northern California. I also assume that Jim Meagher worked at a reduced fee or perhaps arranged some sort of exchange of services or equipment with Oberg. Part of the reason I assume this is that Meagher did not spend a lot of time on our recording project and only allowed us to do one "take" on each of our songs! If he was getting paid big bucks he would have spent much more time with us! We spent more time setting up for the recordings (with mic placements, volume checks, etc) than we did actually recording the songs. But it was a great experience and we jumped at the opportunity to do the project for free. And I personally learned a lot just from seeing Meagher operate the studio and the "cutting edge" Ampex recorder, which was one of the few in operation at the time.
Our band got connected with Rusk & McGowan and Oberg and Meagher through Mike Marotta, Sr., a prominent local musician and at the time a music equipment store owner (ABC Music on Alvarado). Two of Mike Sr.'s sons, Mike Jr. and Dave, were in our band and Mike Sr. knew Oberg. Our band did the work for free and we were very happy to do it! The experience of working in the recording studio was exciting. We each received two copies of those '45' demo singles when they were pressed. The singles are pictured above! (I don't have a vinyl record player anymore but did convert the songs at one point to mp3!)
The Sable Knight owner Oberg was apparently excited about these two crooners Rusk & McGowan and perhaps thought that their two songs (one original, and one "public domain") had "hit potential" in the exploding mid-60's pop/rock music business. And pop/rock music was really exploding into the culture in 1965-1966. It was on a real upward path; the Beatles had been unleashed on the world in 1964 and by 1966 there were a number of prime time or near prime time rock and pop music shows all over TV, from The Monkees, to Shindig, to Hullabaloo, to Where The Action Is, to Hollywood A Go-Go, to Shivaree, and a number of others. Lots of TV commercials had rock and pop music themes. Major rock acts like Jefferson Airplane and Moody Blues and Cream were actually doing commercials for Coke and Levi's. So this was truly the beginning of the "garage band era," with lots of independent bands on independent labels releasing songs and a few of those bands breaking through, getting airplay and charting. So Oberg and Rusk & McGowan were perhaps looking to roll the dice and get a foot in the door of a growing segment of the entertainment business. The crooners were really not a rock or pop rock act at all - they were more in the style of Pat Boone crooners from 1960. But they were easy to work with with zero diva attitudes.
As it turned out, this was another demo that went nowhere. Rusk and McGowan didn't get a record deal. I actually don't know what was done with the demo by Oberg and Rusk & McGowan and what was done to "shop" it. But after performing with them at the "record release party," that was the last we heard from Rusk and McGowan - I believe they continued performing at the Sable Knight for about another year or so before leaving the area. They had formed in Monterey and throughout the time Rusk was stationed at Ford Ord as a draftee. He reportedly left the area when he was released from the service. (His military timing was perfect - this was the pre-Vietnam era - he got out of Fort Ord just in time!)
The currently unoccupied former Sable Knight building still stands near the Monterey Fairgrounds on Fremont Street. Restaurants in the building later were The Blue Ox and Oberg's, all under the same ownership. Robert Oberg passed away in 2006 and after the building was sold it went through a few different restaurants. Last time I checked, the building was empty and presumably slated for teardown as a future site of another CVS or Rite Aid or food market or whatever. An old postcard photo of the Sable Knight from the mid-60's that I found online is below.
(**Update January 2018: I see that now the long-vacant Oberg's/Sable Knight building on 2200 Fremont Street is now finally torn down and there is a For Sale / Lease sign on the vacant lot.)
In this recording project, we were simply the hired backup band for a couple of crooners and tried to do the best we could for the genre and style they were looking for; we just rehearsed the songs a couple of evenings with the crooners prior to the recording session; they were simple songs and and as you can hear the recordings are pretty basic tracks! Unfortunately, no other recordings of our band except for this "demo" record exist. And I haven't been able to find any band photos either. But I'm still looking! Someday something might show up - perhaps taken by somebody at a dance where we performed. I hope!
The story from the Monterey Bay Music website is linked and also reproduced below. Following that is more info on Meagher Electronics and the subsequent musical career of Johnny Rusk - who later became a one of the earliest successful "Elvis Impersonators." Rusk was even featured in a 1977 People Magazine article below, 11 years after recording with us. The thrust of that article was "what will happen to Elvis impersonators now that Elvis has just passed away."
One last thing: the MontereyBayMusic.com website was put together a few years ago by a local Monterey musician, Michael Brooks, in order to point out various Monterey garage bands from the 60's and 70's. And there are many more Monterey bands that could be included on the site. Interestingly, a friend of Brooks discovered the Rusk & McGowan record in a Goodwill store in Santa Cruz sometime around 2007! It was in excellent condition and it is the source record used in creating the digital link below. It sounds like there isn't one scratch on that vinyl record! I would love to know how that vinyl "45" in pristine condition ended up at a Goodwill store in Santa Cruz forty years later; only a small number of promotional copies were pressed to begin with, and the records were never "distributed" for sale to any retail outlets. Quite the mystery! I still have my two copies that I was given back then - tucked away in a file cabinet in the garage!
http://montereybaymusic.com/Rusk&McGowan
~DM
RUSK & MCGOWAN
Johnny Rusk - Vocals
Jimi McGowan - Vocals
BACKUP BAND - NOBODY'S CHILDREN
Derek Morris - Guitar
Mike Marotta Jr _ Keyboard
Dave Marotta - Guitar
Bill Catalano - Drums
Anthony Lucido - Bass
Special thanks to Chris Loecher for the label scans and audio files!
(CLICK ON A SONG TITLE BELOW TO HEAR THAT SONG:)
What Your Eyes Say, My Heart Hears
Baby Let Me Follow You Down
Musician Don Lampson knew Rusk & McGowan for a short time when he was stationed at Ft. Ord military base near Monterey, CA. He performed at a local restaurant/nightclub called The Sable Knght. Here are some of his recollections:
"I played Sundays and Mondays. Johnny & Jimi did the rest of the week. It was a great time for me! I was paid $15 per night, and usually got another 10 in my tip jar. It was big money compared to my $100 per month army pay! I had a girlfriend who was a topless dancer at "The Library" and felt like I was on top of the world for a couple of months! It ended when I was sent to Ft. Lewis, WA in route to Vietnam. One of the guys on the record, Johnny Rusk, was stationed at Ft. Ord. I didn't really know Johnny very well but he was a real entertainer. Johnny was a great comedian and did several impersonations as part of their act along with playing a snare drum. His style of comedy was a lot like Johnathan Winters. He was getting out of the army in the Summer of '66. Jimi was a successful lounge singer in SoCal but had lived in the Monterey area earlier. I was overseas when the record was done. I suspect the song he wrote was inspired by the Kingston Trio's "San Miguel", which he learned from me. He was about 30 years old when I knew him, so he'd be pushing 80 now? I'd love to find out what ever became of him? Jimi got me started playing in bars in SoCal when I was just 19. He's the one who got me the gig at the Sable Knight. Jimi was a talented piano man & singer. They planned on becoming big stars in show biz ... I was only at Ft. Ord for 10 weeks in '66. I never saw either of them again after the war ...
Derek Morris was in the band that backed up Rusk and McGowan. He shares some of his memories of the recording session.
"Our band name was Nobody's Children (later changed to Magic Mushroom). We had played a number of local gigs including maybe three Elks Club teen dances , a few John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch events for their summer youth tennis school, a number of private parties, and of course backed up Rusk and McGowan recording these two songs. We also played at their "single release party" at Sable Knight on Fremont Street in Monterey. We were junior high/high school kids and they probably sneaked us in to play at the bar since we were underage!
"We recorded at Meagher Electronics on Webster in Monterey around 1965 or 1966. Jim Meagher was sort of a legendary but quirky guy who helped with sound reinforcement at the Monterey Pop Festival. He was doing the recording for free as a favor for Mike Marotta Sr - a well known local musician and at the time owner of a music store on Alvarado - ABC Music. The band included myself Derek Morris (guitar, backup vocals). Mike Marotta Jr (keyboard,backup vocals), Dave Marotta (guitar, backup vocals), Bill Catalano (drums), Anthony Lucido (bass), and Alex Tumparov (vocals). Alex was not involved with the recording session as I recall since he didn't play an instrument and was not involved with vocals on the recording. So it was "one take and out". We weren't allowed to re-record the mistake at 1:47 in 'What Your Eyes Say My Heart Hears.' That part always made me and my friends crack up! I don't want to point any fingers but it wasn't me! Meagher was really kind of a jerk about not letting us just do one more take. I don't know if it was time, or tape, or just his personality, but now that song with the mistake is memorialized for eternity. Of course it was a live recording and not multitracked. The most time was spent setting up the mics and making adjustments in advance of the recording. The recordings themselves only took about 3 minutes each. So why he wouldn't let us re-do the song with a mistake is still a mystery to me. I know tape was expensive - but I just blame it on Meagher's personality."
Click link below to visit the MontereyBayMusic.com website
( From story in montereybaymusic.com/Rusk&McGowan )
Johnny Rusk - Vocals
Jimi McGowan - Vocals
BACKUP BAND - NOBODY'S CHILDREN
Derek Morris - Guitar
Mike Marotta Jr _ Keyboard
Dave Marotta - Guitar
Bill Catalano - Drums
Anthony Lucido - Bass
Special thanks to Chris Loecher for the label scans and audio files!
(CLICK ON A SONG TITLE BELOW TO HEAR THAT SONG:)
What Your Eyes Say, My Heart Hears
Baby Let Me Follow You Down
Musician Don Lampson knew Rusk & McGowan for a short time when he was stationed at Ft. Ord military base near Monterey, CA. He performed at a local restaurant/nightclub called The Sable Knght. Here are some of his recollections:
"I played Sundays and Mondays. Johnny & Jimi did the rest of the week. It was a great time for me! I was paid $15 per night, and usually got another 10 in my tip jar. It was big money compared to my $100 per month army pay! I had a girlfriend who was a topless dancer at "The Library" and felt like I was on top of the world for a couple of months! It ended when I was sent to Ft. Lewis, WA in route to Vietnam. One of the guys on the record, Johnny Rusk, was stationed at Ft. Ord. I didn't really know Johnny very well but he was a real entertainer. Johnny was a great comedian and did several impersonations as part of their act along with playing a snare drum. His style of comedy was a lot like Johnathan Winters. He was getting out of the army in the Summer of '66. Jimi was a successful lounge singer in SoCal but had lived in the Monterey area earlier. I was overseas when the record was done. I suspect the song he wrote was inspired by the Kingston Trio's "San Miguel", which he learned from me. He was about 30 years old when I knew him, so he'd be pushing 80 now? I'd love to find out what ever became of him? Jimi got me started playing in bars in SoCal when I was just 19. He's the one who got me the gig at the Sable Knight. Jimi was a talented piano man & singer. They planned on becoming big stars in show biz ... I was only at Ft. Ord for 10 weeks in '66. I never saw either of them again after the war ...
Derek Morris was in the band that backed up Rusk and McGowan. He shares some of his memories of the recording session.
"Our band name was Nobody's Children (later changed to Magic Mushroom). We had played a number of local gigs including maybe three Elks Club teen dances , a few John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch events for their summer youth tennis school, a number of private parties, and of course backed up Rusk and McGowan recording these two songs. We also played at their "single release party" at Sable Knight on Fremont Street in Monterey. We were junior high/high school kids and they probably sneaked us in to play at the bar since we were underage!
"We recorded at Meagher Electronics on Webster in Monterey around 1965 or 1966. Jim Meagher was sort of a legendary but quirky guy who helped with sound reinforcement at the Monterey Pop Festival. He was doing the recording for free as a favor for Mike Marotta Sr - a well known local musician and at the time owner of a music store on Alvarado - ABC Music. The band included myself Derek Morris (guitar, backup vocals). Mike Marotta Jr (keyboard,backup vocals), Dave Marotta (guitar, backup vocals), Bill Catalano (drums), Anthony Lucido (bass), and Alex Tumparov (vocals). Alex was not involved with the recording session as I recall since he didn't play an instrument and was not involved with vocals on the recording. So it was "one take and out". We weren't allowed to re-record the mistake at 1:47 in 'What Your Eyes Say My Heart Hears.' That part always made me and my friends crack up! I don't want to point any fingers but it wasn't me! Meagher was really kind of a jerk about not letting us just do one more take. I don't know if it was time, or tape, or just his personality, but now that song with the mistake is memorialized for eternity. Of course it was a live recording and not multitracked. The most time was spent setting up the mics and making adjustments in advance of the recording. The recordings themselves only took about 3 minutes each. So why he wouldn't let us re-do the song with a mistake is still a mystery to me. I know tape was expensive - but I just blame it on Meagher's personality."
Click link below to visit the MontereyBayMusic.com website
( From story in montereybaymusic.com/Rusk&McGowan )
** ADDENDUM: MORE ON MEAGHER ELECTRONICS **
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Remember that in the mid-60's there were very few professional recording studios and there were zero home recording studios. This was ten years before the Apple I and twenty years before the first Macintosh and twenty-five to thirty-five years before home digital audio recording became more affordable for the home studio market. In the mid 60's, everything was recorded "analog" on expensive professional reel-to-reel tape recorders using expensive recording tape. Two and four track multi-track recording was state-of-the-art.
Professional recording studios in the mid-60's typically had expensive sound-proofed isolated rooms and the equipment included costly mixers, amplifiers, monitors, microphones, and other auxiliary equipment - way out of reach financially of the typical musician/band. Many studios were just huge, in order to accommodate orchestras. Small studios for five-six person rock bands were just emerging. Due to high costs, many up-and-coming young bands in the mid-late 60's never got to set foot in a recording studio to do a demo; plus most towns didn't even have a recording studio to begin with. To record a demo, an emerging band would typically have to go to the "big city" to find a recording studio. This meant taking the time to go out of town to look at various studios, negotiating the booking of the studio often from a distance, dealing with transporting amps, drums, mic stands, guitars, keyboards and other equipment to the recording studio, providing some sort of security for the equipment while on the road, travel, food and lodging expense, taking time off day jobs or school, and the actual expense of paying for the studio and recording engineer time. Then there was the mixing of the recording and mastering and manufacturing the vinyl demo record itself ... all involving additional costs and specialists at each stage. Contrast that with today, where reasonably priced home recording equipment exists and the "final product" - a downloadable mp3 or streaming audio or physical CD - can be created and then distributed independently by musicians themselves. So even though big labels still dominate the mass market, the music business has undergone radical transformation over the years along with democratization - mostly for good but in some ways for bad; today we have a glut of crappy music, but that I guess is the consequence of the democratization of music technology - an oversupply of perhaps mediocre artists is inevitable when there are no record company gatekeepers. But that is a whole other subject! So Meagher's studio served a real need for local artists wanting to record demos, and it appears he was in demand, though he was so busy with the rest of his pro audio sales and repair business that the recording studio seemed to be a bit of a secondary pursuit. My sense is that the studio was not very aggressively marketed and that they could have done a lot more business if they pursued it more. Plus, Meagher |
was a one-man band type of person who did not delegate recording duties to subordinates. He would have to be present at all times - at least that was my sense of how he worked.
Meagher's studio on Webster Street where our band set up was not a big room to begin with. And because it was also used for storing Meagher's other audio equipment in boxes and various parts, speaker cabinets, etc it barely accommodated the five of us and our amps, drums etc. We had to move a few boxes around to squeeze in our equipment and we were sort of scattered throughout the room, finding open spaces to stand or put our equipment where there weren't equipment boxes and spare parts. The recording studio certainly was not luxuriously appointed by any standards - it was functional and designed with zero glitz. It did have the requisite high ceilings, soundproofed walls and floor, and a separated glass-walled recording booth for recording equipment and mixer etc. The overall acoustics were at the level that would be expected for a decent recording studio. It was quiet in there like a recording studio should be; not dead quiet like some high end studios I was in later, but quiet enough. It was quite functional but totally lacking in any visual appeal. As the recording and music business got bigger in the late 60's and 70's, higher-end private or record label-owned recording studios were often designed for visual appeal to attract the discriminating recording artist with a big record label recording budget seeking a creative and fun working environment. Meagher's was a bare bones studio and he did not bother with any visual amenities. As an electronics and audio wizard, Meagher did a lot with what equipment he had. I can't list the range of auxiliary equipment used, but I do know the studio revolved around two 3-track Ampex recorders and the other equipment was of the highest quality. At some point Meagher added 4-track and 8-track Ampex recorders. Meagher did end up recording a number of demos for various local and national artists including Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina. I'm still trying to find out if Meagher recorded any records that were ultimately released by any established record labels. I recently did learn that Meagher recorded the demo for the Salinas-based E-Types' regional hit "I Can't Do It." The final version of that E-Types single that was ultimately released was recorded at the legendary Golden State Recorders on Harrison Street in San Francisco about a month after the Meagher demo sessions, according to Bob Wence of the E-Types. Golden State, run by Leo De Gar Kulka (known as "The Baron") was one of the most active San Franciso rock music studios in the mid 60's and Kulka was kind of a legend. Golden State recorded the first Beau Brummels album (produced by Sylvester "Sly" Stewart); "Hey Little Girl" by the Syndicate of Sound; Grace Slick's Great Society (with the song "Somebody To Love") before Grace left for Jefferson Airplane, and The Warlocks before they became The Grateful Dead. ~ DM |
MY FIRST GARAGE BAND IN 7TH GRADE
MY FIRST GARAGE BAND IN 7TH GRADE
We had an instrumental "surf guitar trio" in 7th grade in our home town of Monterey. The trio was comprised of myself, Bob Stanton, and Nello Torri. We were also part of the Beatles-inspired garage band "movement" that was happening all over the USA / UK / Western world.
Bob had a Fender Jaguar and a Sears amp - later Fender Twin Reverb, I had an Epiphone Wilshire and a Sears amp (Sears was making a ton of decent sounding affordable amps then) and Nello had a Japanese hollow body Aria, along with a Gibson amp. We had three guitars only - no bass, no drums. One of us would play the bass part on their guitar.
Our "setlist" - if you call it that - was about five songs. I recall Pipeline by the Chantays, Wipeout by the Surfaris, Walk Don't Run by the Ventures, Misirlu by Dick Dale, and Apache by the Shadows (later by the Ventures). It was a thrill playing with others and it gave me my first taste of the fun of being "in a band."
Where are they now? Bob in high school played at the Monterey Jazz Festival - he followed Miles Davis (!), and went on to graduate with a B.A. in classical guitar performance from San Francisco Conservatory. He later moved to L.A. and completed a demanding one-year certificate program in guitar at Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT) / Musicians Institute in Santa Monica. He has had a number of solo and band albums released and toured all over the country with his band Freeway Philharmonic in the 1980s through mid-2000s. Nello, after playing drums in the L.A. rock band Keyz for a number of years, developed into a highly-regarded recording engineer. Nello has won four Emmies, and has been nominated for twelve (!) Emmies, in post-production recording studio sound engineering. Myself? Well, I specifically at the time chose to NOT become a touring rock star. This was a conscious decision. My reasons: 1) I prefer living in Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. 2) Don't like the commute from SB to LA with all the traffic. 3) It is such a hassle traveling all over the country/world playing big arenas and stadiums, getting cheered by big crowds, meeting groupies, etc.
4) Touring throughout the world, with all the shows in different time zones, is disruptive to circadian rhythms and sleep hygiene. 5) It is not healthy to eat in all those fancy restaurants while constantly being on tour; organic home cooking is best. 6) Additionally, my tennis coach back then said that in order to qualify for Wimbledon, I had to maintain my "amateur status." So just to be on the safe side, I also maintained my status as an "amateur musician." Yep, that's the ticket. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Wow ! This just in. What a total surprise. After digging through some boxes in the garage, I just found a photo of our 7th grade surf guitar trio! Phenomenal! I didn't realize that our band photo even existed! Not quite sure how that black & white / color photo combination happened; I guess the photographer then was simply ahead of his time. But be assured: this photo is absolutely real and is NOT (contrary to some rumors) some half-assed photoshopped version of our Colton 7th-grade football team with random copy-pasted guitar images added. I swear, with all the honesty and integrity and character possessed by our beloved King Troompa Loompa (see below), that this photo is definitely very close to being almost nearly quasi-pseudo-authentic!
UPDATE: Just found the original untouched black & white photo. The photo editor from Time Magazine must have created the above colorized version for the cover. Unfortunately that entire Time cover story featuring our trio was pulled at the last minute when some new flash-in-the-pan one-hit-wonder band called the Beatles (?) arrived on the scene with a couple of very forgettable pop songs. I knew they would not last. Anyway, here is the original B&W photo. Oh yeah, those Time Magazine covers of King Troompa Loompa hanging at Mara Lago? Like his bleach blonde combover hair, those framed covers are also fake.
We had an instrumental "surf guitar trio" in 7th grade in our home town of Monterey. The trio was comprised of myself, Bob Stanton, and Nello Torri. We were also part of the Beatles-inspired garage band "movement" that was happening all over the USA / UK / Western world.
Bob had a Fender Jaguar and a Sears amp - later Fender Twin Reverb, I had an Epiphone Wilshire and a Sears amp (Sears was making a ton of decent sounding affordable amps then) and Nello had a Japanese hollow body Aria, along with a Gibson amp. We had three guitars only - no bass, no drums. One of us would play the bass part on their guitar.
Our "setlist" - if you call it that - was about five songs. I recall Pipeline by the Chantays, Wipeout by the Surfaris, Walk Don't Run by the Ventures, Misirlu by Dick Dale, and Apache by the Shadows (later by the Ventures). It was a thrill playing with others and it gave me my first taste of the fun of being "in a band."
Where are they now? Bob in high school played at the Monterey Jazz Festival - he followed Miles Davis (!), and went on to graduate with a B.A. in classical guitar performance from San Francisco Conservatory. He later moved to L.A. and completed a demanding one-year certificate program in guitar at Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT) / Musicians Institute in Santa Monica. He has had a number of solo and band albums released and toured all over the country with his band Freeway Philharmonic in the 1980s through mid-2000s. Nello, after playing drums in the L.A. rock band Keyz for a number of years, developed into a highly-regarded recording engineer. Nello has won four Emmies, and has been nominated for twelve (!) Emmies, in post-production recording studio sound engineering. Myself? Well, I specifically at the time chose to NOT become a touring rock star. This was a conscious decision. My reasons: 1) I prefer living in Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. 2) Don't like the commute from SB to LA with all the traffic. 3) It is such a hassle traveling all over the country/world playing big arenas and stadiums, getting cheered by big crowds, meeting groupies, etc.
4) Touring throughout the world, with all the shows in different time zones, is disruptive to circadian rhythms and sleep hygiene. 5) It is not healthy to eat in all those fancy restaurants while constantly being on tour; organic home cooking is best. 6) Additionally, my tennis coach back then said that in order to qualify for Wimbledon, I had to maintain my "amateur status." So just to be on the safe side, I also maintained my status as an "amateur musician." Yep, that's the ticket. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Wow ! This just in. What a total surprise. After digging through some boxes in the garage, I just found a photo of our 7th grade surf guitar trio! Phenomenal! I didn't realize that our band photo even existed! Not quite sure how that black & white / color photo combination happened; I guess the photographer then was simply ahead of his time. But be assured: this photo is absolutely real and is NOT (contrary to some rumors) some half-assed photoshopped version of our Colton 7th-grade football team with random copy-pasted guitar images added. I swear, with all the honesty and integrity and character possessed by our beloved King Troompa Loompa (see below), that this photo is definitely very close to being almost nearly quasi-pseudo-authentic!
UPDATE: Just found the original untouched black & white photo. The photo editor from Time Magazine must have created the above colorized version for the cover. Unfortunately that entire Time cover story featuring our trio was pulled at the last minute when some new flash-in-the-pan one-hit-wonder band called the Beatles (?) arrived on the scene with a couple of very forgettable pop songs. I knew they would not last. Anyway, here is the original B&W photo. Oh yeah, those Time Magazine covers of King Troompa Loompa hanging at Mara Lago? Like his bleach blonde combover hair, those framed covers are also fake.
EDITORIAL
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
THE ONGOING MYSTERY:
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE CONTINUE TO LISTEN TO THIS DEMENTED
DECOMPOSING JACK-O-LANTERN
SACK OF GILDED LUNCHMEAT
TANGERINE-TINTED TRASH-CAN-FIRE ????
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS COUNTRY?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
THE ONGOING MYSTERY:
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE CONTINUE TO LISTEN TO THIS DEMENTED
DECOMPOSING JACK-O-LANTERN
SACK OF GILDED LUNCHMEAT
TANGERINE-TINTED TRASH-CAN-FIRE ????
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS COUNTRY?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
AGENT ORANGE
ADOLPH TWITLER
CHEEZ WHIZ
HAIR FUROR
HAIR HITLER
CHEETO BENITO
ORANGE JULIUS
SCREAMING CARROT DEMON
THE TANGERINE TORNADO
KING OF THE OOMPA LOOMPAS
COWARDLY LYIN'
FASCIST CARNIVAL BARKER
(King Troompa Loompa, 70-Year-Old Toddler, Adolf Twitler, Agent Orange, America’s Burst Appendix, Angry Creamsicle, Assaulter-in-Chief, Baby Fingers, Blitzkrieg Bozo, Boiled Ham in a Wig, Boss Tweet Bratman,Bribe of Chucky, Bully Boy, Bumbledore, Butternut Squash, Cancer in a Wig, Captain Chaos, Cheddar Boy, Cheeto Benito, Cheeto Führer, Cheeto Jesus, Cheeto-Dusted Bloviator, Cheeto-In-Chief , Cheez Doodle, Cheez Whiz, Chickenhawk, Cinnamon Hitler Comrade Cheetolino Creep Throat Darth TaxeVader, Decomposing Jack O’Lantern, Dehydrated Orange Peel, Demander-in-Chief, Diaper Donald, Donald Tax-Duck, Fascist Carnival Barker, Golden Wrecking Ball, Gossamer-Skinned Bully , Groper-in-Chief, Hair Apparent, Hair Furor, Hair Hitler, Human-Toupee Hybrid, Humble Cow Pie, King of the Oompa Loompas, Maladroit, Man-Baby Meathead, Mein Furor, Orange Julius, Orange Manatee, Orange Slug, Orangeback Gorilla, Panda Hair, Pander Hair, Peripatetic Political Showman, Pile of Old Garbage Covered in Vodka Sauce, Political Gutterball, Poster Child of American Decline, Putin’s Bitch, Queens’ Reich, Rabble-Rousing Demagogue, Riptide of Regression, Ronald McDonald ,Trump-Bozo, Sack of Gilded Lunchmeat, Screaming Carrot Demon, Scrooge Grinch, McGrump, Serial Feeler, Short-Fingered Vulgarian, Silver Spoon Donald, Snake Oil Salesman, Sociopathic 70-Year-Old Toddler, Stubby Baby Fingers, Stuporman, Tan Dump Lord, Tangello Fruit Roll-Up Stretched Over Cat Litter, Tangerine Tornado, Tangerine-Tinted Trash-Can-Fire, Terroristic Man-Toddler, The Big Cheeto, The Boychurian Candidate, The Cowardly Lyin’, The Emperor with No Balls, The Fomentor, The Germinator, Human Bullhorn, Human Corncob, Man of Steal, Michelangelo of Ballyhoo, New Furor, Predictable Endpoint of Republicanism, Puerile Sophomoric Sniveler, Shambling Sasquatch, Silver Spoon Scion, Sophomoric Sniveler, Spinster, Sinister Spinster, Teflon Don, Tiny Fisted Emperor, Twitter Terror, Wedgie from West Palm, White Kanye, Winning Whiner, Tic-Tac-Dough, Tie-Coon, Trumparius, Trumpdozer, Trumpelthinskin, Trumpenstein, Trumpinator, Trumple-Doodle-Doo-Doo, Trumpocalypse, Trumptastrophe, Two Pump Trump, Two-Bit Caesar, UNA (Unrepentant Narcissistic Asshole), Vanilla ISIS, Vet Evictor, Walking Talking Human Combover, World’s Greatest Troll, Xenophobic Sweet Potato, Agent of Deranged Change, Angry Cheeto, Antichrist, Bag of Toxic Sludge, Bald-faced Crier, Bigoted Billionaire, The Bilious Billionaire Blowhard, The Bouffant Buffoon)
(END OF EDITORIAL. NOW BACK TO MORE MUSIC!)
THE E-TYPES
THE E-TYPES
The E-Types were sort of local rock heroes to some of us in the early / mid-60's - a great Monterey County / Salinas-based group that had the talent and songs and regional recognition but never quite broke through nationally to the big time. With the right record label, right promotion, right timing, etc. things might have been different. A number of their songs were played on local radio stations KMBY in Monterey and KDON in Salinas and they opened for a lot of major bands in the Bay Area like Jefferson Airplane. They played a ton of gigs up and down the central coast. Three of their best original songs include I Can't Do It, She Moves Me and Put The Clock Back On The Wall. They did a lot of British Invasion covers - personally I wish they devoted more time to creating originals but they were trying to get gigs and cover songs helped get a band work at clubs, teen dances, etc. Those original songs all hold up really well today in terms of innovative songwriting, inventive chord changes, instrumentation, production, and vocal harmonies. As a 13-year-old kid in 1965, I never got to see the E-Types perform at any of the rock venues in Central California / Bay Area. However I did see them "live" once, at a 4th of July event at Holman's Department Store parking lot in Pacific Grove. I was there with childhood friend Nello Torri. I think it was also a radio promotion and KDON Radio was there doing a live broadcast - something like that. I remember lots of equipment, big amps, lots of mics and wires, and shiny dark electric guitars, one or two now rare Martin hollow body electrics - deep maroon in color - same guitar as played by the guys in Music Machine (Talk Talk). Some of the E-Types - who were then probably in late teens / early 20's, appeared to be wearing wigs. But hey that's OK - it took time to grow long hair and not all schools at that time were accepting of with long hair - especially in a hyper conservative agricultural backwater town like Salinas! In fact my friend Nello Torri himself got suspended from school in 7th or 8th grade just for wearing "hound’s-tooth patterned pants! He refused to compromise and I think Walter Colton Jr. High in Monterey relented and let him wear those pants. Thanks Vice Principal Akard! Another downer soul crushing move by the vice principal of "discipline!"
Many years after the mid-60's, around the year 2000, I was talking with another childhood friend about the E-Types in a "whatever happened to them, whatever happened to their music, what is their story" type of conversation. The E-Types were such a big part of our early formative musical past - a "local" group that was putting out great records back then but somehow never broke out. Some (probably their PR agent) even called them the "Salinas Beatles," which is still such a hilarious bit of hype that somehow diminishes both the Beatles and Salinas. But they did have the English vibe to their music and certain magic to some of their songs. How did a local band based in Salinas put out such great records? And why weren't they getting more national attention?
Anyway, we got quite nostalgic about the E-Types. And yet still in that year 2000 we were clueless about the band's history and their song catalogue. There were no records of theirs for sale in any record stores - which still existed at the time. Nothing. (This was later changed with the issuance of the Sundance "greatest hits" record; now Rhino carries that recording). This time period was essentially the pre-Internet / pre-mp3, pre-Wikipedia / pre-YouTube era of record stores with limited inventory and music from the 60's was harder to find except for the big hit records.
So with so little resources available for tracking down E-Types songs, I came up with the crazy idea of calling up the only music equipment store in Salinas from the 60's that was still in business - Gadsby's Music - to see if "anybody there” was by chance in touch with someone from the E-Types. A crazy idea perhaps ... but it worked!
So I called Gadsby's on the phone and after getting transferred around a bit and re-telling my story to multiple people, I miraculously was connected with a longtime store employee / musician / Salinas native who actually knew E-Types bassist Danny Monigold! Perhaps they grew up together; perhaps Danny was a regular store customer, or both. I don't know. Remember the E-Types disbanded around 1967 - it had been over 35 years at that point. I was just trying a "hail Mary" pass by calling the only possible remote connection to the E-Types that I could think of - a Salinas music equipment store that actually existed when the E-Types were active in 1965-1966. I left my name and number and message and asked that it be passed on to Dan Monigold. I was hopeful but didn't expect a response. When I called back a day or two later the same store employee told me that Dan Monigold had said yes and to go ahead give me his phone number. I call Dan and we had a great conversation. Very friendly guy. Monigold told me a great story - that back in the mid 60's, the E-Types had a friend they grew up with who was then living in London. The friend would send the band all the newly released hit records from The Beatles and other major British invasion bands before the records were big hits in the UK and before they were distributed to the United States and other parts of the world. So the E-Types were on the cutting edge of the British Invasion, and would learn the songs and be already by playing the covers at their local shows before the songs were big hits in the USA, getting a jump on competing "cover bands" and getting more gigs. The E-Types most famous "get" was the Beatles demo of Love Of The Loved Decca audition tape, which was perhaps played on BBC Radio many years before it got released in the US as part of the Decca audition tapes released in 1992. Meanwhile Cilla Black had done the song quite poorly in 1963. The E-Types version is really quite good - I think it is even better than the original Beatles version that finally didn't get released until 1992 with the other Decca audition tapes. Anyway, shortly after speaking with Danny Monigold, I received in the mail from Danny a cassette with maybe 20 E-Types songs - the entire soon-to-be-released Sundazed album, now distributed by Rhino Records.
Below are a couple of YouTube E-Types song links. One is a nicely-done 1966 video of "Put The Clock Back On The Wall" - the song and this clip are reportedly from a 1968 movie titled "Blonde On A Bum Trip" the video was apparently filmed in New York City, presumably in a sound stage. The other is a lip-synced version of "She Moves Me" from Dick Clark's 1966 "Where The Action Is" TV show.
And below the videos is a 2011 obit for George "Sid" Gadsby, second-generation owner of Gadsby's Music, which had been founded by his father in 1936. Sid was also a former mayor of Salinas for six years. Sounds like he was quite a guy. That store was in business for over seventy years!
The E-Types were sort of local rock heroes to some of us in the early / mid-60's - a great Monterey County / Salinas-based group that had the talent and songs and regional recognition but never quite broke through nationally to the big time. With the right record label, right promotion, right timing, etc. things might have been different. A number of their songs were played on local radio stations KMBY in Monterey and KDON in Salinas and they opened for a lot of major bands in the Bay Area like Jefferson Airplane. They played a ton of gigs up and down the central coast. Three of their best original songs include I Can't Do It, She Moves Me and Put The Clock Back On The Wall. They did a lot of British Invasion covers - personally I wish they devoted more time to creating originals but they were trying to get gigs and cover songs helped get a band work at clubs, teen dances, etc. Those original songs all hold up really well today in terms of innovative songwriting, inventive chord changes, instrumentation, production, and vocal harmonies. As a 13-year-old kid in 1965, I never got to see the E-Types perform at any of the rock venues in Central California / Bay Area. However I did see them "live" once, at a 4th of July event at Holman's Department Store parking lot in Pacific Grove. I was there with childhood friend Nello Torri. I think it was also a radio promotion and KDON Radio was there doing a live broadcast - something like that. I remember lots of equipment, big amps, lots of mics and wires, and shiny dark electric guitars, one or two now rare Martin hollow body electrics - deep maroon in color - same guitar as played by the guys in Music Machine (Talk Talk). Some of the E-Types - who were then probably in late teens / early 20's, appeared to be wearing wigs. But hey that's OK - it took time to grow long hair and not all schools at that time were accepting of with long hair - especially in a hyper conservative agricultural backwater town like Salinas! In fact my friend Nello Torri himself got suspended from school in 7th or 8th grade just for wearing "hound’s-tooth patterned pants! He refused to compromise and I think Walter Colton Jr. High in Monterey relented and let him wear those pants. Thanks Vice Principal Akard! Another downer soul crushing move by the vice principal of "discipline!"
Many years after the mid-60's, around the year 2000, I was talking with another childhood friend about the E-Types in a "whatever happened to them, whatever happened to their music, what is their story" type of conversation. The E-Types were such a big part of our early formative musical past - a "local" group that was putting out great records back then but somehow never broke out. Some (probably their PR agent) even called them the "Salinas Beatles," which is still such a hilarious bit of hype that somehow diminishes both the Beatles and Salinas. But they did have the English vibe to their music and certain magic to some of their songs. How did a local band based in Salinas put out such great records? And why weren't they getting more national attention?
Anyway, we got quite nostalgic about the E-Types. And yet still in that year 2000 we were clueless about the band's history and their song catalogue. There were no records of theirs for sale in any record stores - which still existed at the time. Nothing. (This was later changed with the issuance of the Sundance "greatest hits" record; now Rhino carries that recording). This time period was essentially the pre-Internet / pre-mp3, pre-Wikipedia / pre-YouTube era of record stores with limited inventory and music from the 60's was harder to find except for the big hit records.
So with so little resources available for tracking down E-Types songs, I came up with the crazy idea of calling up the only music equipment store in Salinas from the 60's that was still in business - Gadsby's Music - to see if "anybody there” was by chance in touch with someone from the E-Types. A crazy idea perhaps ... but it worked!
So I called Gadsby's on the phone and after getting transferred around a bit and re-telling my story to multiple people, I miraculously was connected with a longtime store employee / musician / Salinas native who actually knew E-Types bassist Danny Monigold! Perhaps they grew up together; perhaps Danny was a regular store customer, or both. I don't know. Remember the E-Types disbanded around 1967 - it had been over 35 years at that point. I was just trying a "hail Mary" pass by calling the only possible remote connection to the E-Types that I could think of - a Salinas music equipment store that actually existed when the E-Types were active in 1965-1966. I left my name and number and message and asked that it be passed on to Dan Monigold. I was hopeful but didn't expect a response. When I called back a day or two later the same store employee told me that Dan Monigold had said yes and to go ahead give me his phone number. I call Dan and we had a great conversation. Very friendly guy. Monigold told me a great story - that back in the mid 60's, the E-Types had a friend they grew up with who was then living in London. The friend would send the band all the newly released hit records from The Beatles and other major British invasion bands before the records were big hits in the UK and before they were distributed to the United States and other parts of the world. So the E-Types were on the cutting edge of the British Invasion, and would learn the songs and be already by playing the covers at their local shows before the songs were big hits in the USA, getting a jump on competing "cover bands" and getting more gigs. The E-Types most famous "get" was the Beatles demo of Love Of The Loved Decca audition tape, which was perhaps played on BBC Radio many years before it got released in the US as part of the Decca audition tapes released in 1992. Meanwhile Cilla Black had done the song quite poorly in 1963. The E-Types version is really quite good - I think it is even better than the original Beatles version that finally didn't get released until 1992 with the other Decca audition tapes. Anyway, shortly after speaking with Danny Monigold, I received in the mail from Danny a cassette with maybe 20 E-Types songs - the entire soon-to-be-released Sundazed album, now distributed by Rhino Records.
Below are a couple of YouTube E-Types song links. One is a nicely-done 1966 video of "Put The Clock Back On The Wall" - the song and this clip are reportedly from a 1968 movie titled "Blonde On A Bum Trip" the video was apparently filmed in New York City, presumably in a sound stage. The other is a lip-synced version of "She Moves Me" from Dick Clark's 1966 "Where The Action Is" TV show.
And below the videos is a 2011 obit for George "Sid" Gadsby, second-generation owner of Gadsby's Music, which had been founded by his father in 1936. Sid was also a former mayor of Salinas for six years. Sounds like he was quite a guy. That store was in business for over seventy years!
Oldtown music store owner,
former Salinas mayor Sid Gadsby dies at 89
By DENNIS TAYLOR , Monterey Herald Staff Writer
POSTED: 01/09/11
The first thing George "Sid" Gadsby taught his grandsons and great-grandsons was a firm handshake. That's how deals often were made among people of his generation, when a man's good name meant everything and his word was his bond.
"Dad's grandson, Tony, was very sad when he heard his Papoo had passed away," said Susan Diehr, one of Mr. Gadsby's two daughters. "I told him, 'Tony, the best way to remember him is with that firm handshake, and by honoring him with the way you live your life.'"
Mr. Gadsby, a stalwart businessman who served six years as mayor of Salinas, died Thursday after about two years of failing health. He was 89.
He became best known in the community as the longtime owner of Gadsby's Music Co., a store on Salinas' Main Street founded in 1936 by his father, George Victor Gadsby. They sold musical instruments, records and electronics.
"He was a strictly business kind of guy, but very, very fair about it," said Larry Tharp, who married Mr. Gadsby's other daughter, Georgia, and worked at the store before buying it in 2005. "Sid was an easy guy to work for because he took good care of his employees, and because he was very customer-service oriented."
Generations of Monterey County's budding musicians purchased or rented their first musical instrument from Gadsby's, often with their very first line of credit. Sid was generous that way, his friends say. Lessons were given in the store's adjacent studios.
Gadsby's also instituted an ahead-of-its-time method of selling the hottest records of the day — listening booths, in which customers could hear a record before making a purchase.
Sid Gadsby was born in Oakland on Aug. 12, 1921. He graduated from Salinas High, where he sneaked love letters into the locker of Lucille Brevin, who became the love of his life.
"My dad would take her on dates in his old car — I can't remember what kind it was — and they always wound up pushing it to get it started," his daughter Susan said. "A lot of the couples they double-dated with in those days were their friends for the rest of their lives."
Sid and "Lou" were married 68 years. Susan Diehr says she can't remember a single time her father failed to thank his mother for dinner. "He loved my mom the way anybody would want to be loved," she said.
Mr. Gadsby had a competitive streak. He played basketball at Hartnell College. He became a solid golfer with a 12 handicap. He was good at card games.
"He always told me he was the best gin rummy player in the county," Tharp said with a laugh.
He served in the U.S. Navy on the USS Ross, a guided-missile destroyer that was involved in numerous missions during World War II, one of which was in the Gulf of Leyte, where the ship was disabled and became a sitting duck for kamikaze pilots. Fourteen of his fellow crewmen were killed and buried at sea.
"I can't imagine the terror he must have felt, but men of his generation rarely talked about their service in World War II," said Diehr, a Vietnam veteran. "It was just something you did — something everybody had gone through — so the subject never came up."
Mr. Gadsby became a savvy businessman, understanding the value of networking. He joined the Jaycees, the Rotary, the Elks and the Masons. Sid and Lou were among the first members of Corral de Tierra Country Club.
His community involvement led to two-year stint on the Salinas City Council. He was elected mayor in 1965 and served until 1971, overseeing the city's planned growth, and helping with negotiations when the farm and trucking unions went on strike — service that earned him a mention in the autobiography of legendary union activist Cesar Chavez.
"In those days, a citizen would wander into my dad's office to talk about any subject at all — a problem in their neighborhood, or a school, or whatever," Susan Diehr recalls. "The times were much simpler and innocent than today."
After his term as mayor, Mr. Gadsby remained a force in Salinas politics, not only wielding influence on major issues, but advising many of the mayors who followed.
He was famous for his sense of humor — a master joke-teller, who embellished his stories with accents and affectations. He was well-known for bursting into infectious laughter as the punch line drew near.
"As a father and grandparent, he was like the 'Leave It To Beaver' or 'Father Knows Best' dad," Susan Diehr said. "For my sister and me, that was the norm. We thought everybody grew up the way we did.
"I visited him last week at the convalescent hospital, and held his hand, Dad looked at me and said, 'When you're 89, I hope you have somebody who loves you the way you love me.'"
In addition to his wife and two daughters, Mr. Gadsby is survived by granddaughters Cindy Tharp, Jennifer Nava and Cristy Grieg, six great-grandchildren, and a great-great-granddaughter.
Visitation is scheduled 1 to 7p.m. Tuesday at Struve and Laporte Chapel, 41 W. San Luis St., Salinas, with private services and entombment at a later date.
Friends are asked to honor him with donations to their favorite charity, and condolences can be posted online at www.struveandlaport.com.
https://www.montereyherald.com/2011/01/09/oldtown-music-store-owner-former-salinas-mayor-sid-gadsby-dies-at-89/
THE SABLE KNIGHT
As a side note, I noticed that the postcard below was photographed by Lee Blaisdell of Monterey, a well-known local photographer who ended up starting his own postcard sales-distribution business a few years later. I went to elementary through high school with two of Lee's sons, Mike and Allen. ~DM
As a side note, I noticed that the postcard below was photographed by Lee Blaisdell of Monterey, a well-known local photographer who ended up starting his own postcard sales-distribution business a few years later. I went to elementary through high school with two of Lee's sons, Mike and Allen. ~DM
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MORE ON JOHNNY RUSK
I recently connected via email (August of 2016) with Don Lampson, who is quoted in the Monterey Bay Music article. Don knew Johnny Rusk back in the mid-60's and occasionally subbed for Johnny and Jimi at the Sable Knight in Monterey, singing and playing guitar. Both Don and Johnny were stationed at Fort Ord at the time. Lampson totally lost touch with Rusk in 1968, but told me that last time he checked a few years ago, Rusk seemed to have had established a successful "Elvis Impersonator" act in the 70's. Lampson is very appreciative of Rusk for the musical impact he has had on Lampson's life as a singer songwriter himself. Well, I checked on Google - and Rusk indeed was a serious and successful Elvis impersonator - especially in the "early years." There are many articles about him - including a 1977 article in People Magazine! (attached). It appears that Rusk was one of the first Elvis impersonators in the country, starting in 1972 and making big money performing a many good sized venues in the US and Japan. And this was all happening before Elvis died in 1977! The attached People Magazine article from Oct 10, 1977 states that Johnny at the time wondered if there would be any future in Elvis impersonation now that Elvis was gone! Well Johnny got his answer; the market exploded with Elvis impersonators. Many many competitors emerged and Johnny's thriving Elvis business went into decline. He had to compete in price with many talented performers when initially he could name his own price! Rusk continued doing the act for another 20+ years it appears, at least into the mid-late 1990's, though he never quite made the big money that he made in the early years. He apparently lives in the Pacific Northwest now but it is not clear - the guy is apparently close to age 80 now according to Lampson. I might add that Don Lampson says that Rusk was a phenomenal entertainer and comedian and always did a lot of impersonations in his act. Lampson said Rusk really was much more of a comedian than a musician or singer back then - with a Jonathan Winters improvisational style of comedy. To be honest, our band only worked with him for a couple of days and I never really got to know the guy. ~DM |
(from People Magazine article on
"Elvis impersonators" - Oct. 10, 1977) |
FRIENDS' MONTEREY AREA BANDS
FROM THE 60'S ... AND BEYOND... ?!
FROM THE 60'S ... AND BEYOND... ?!
ROBERT STANTON
BAND: "BLACK ARM BAND"
CONCERT FLYER FROM 12/1968 SHOW SUNSET AUDITORIUM
BAND MEMBERS:
Bob Stanton - Lead Guitar, Vocals
Frank Eubanks - Lead Vocal, Rhythm Guitar
Jerry Whitney - Bass
Sonny Gunnels - Drums
Lights: Cole Weston
Projectionist: Sam Harrison
Poster & Programs: Sarah Coleman
THIS WAS A CONCERT PLUS SHORT FILM - "BALLAD OF THE HARP" - WHERE BLACK ARM BAND DID SOUNDTRACK
PRODUCED BY SID FROHMAN
BAND: "BLACK ARM BAND"
CONCERT FLYER FROM 12/1968 SHOW SUNSET AUDITORIUM
BAND MEMBERS:
Bob Stanton - Lead Guitar, Vocals
Frank Eubanks - Lead Vocal, Rhythm Guitar
Jerry Whitney - Bass
Sonny Gunnels - Drums
Lights: Cole Weston
Projectionist: Sam Harrison
Poster & Programs: Sarah Coleman
THIS WAS A CONCERT PLUS SHORT FILM - "BALLAD OF THE HARP" - WHERE BLACK ARM BAND DID SOUNDTRACK
PRODUCED BY SID FROHMAN
SHOW AT UC SANTA CRUZ THEATER, 1983
BAND MEMBERS (L to R):
Annamarie Stanton - Vocals, Guitar
Denis Simard - Keyboards
Robert Stanton - Vocals, Guitar
Gary Keogh - Percussion / Drums
BAND ALTERNATIVE NICKNAME (HUMOROUSLY INSPIRED BY THE PHOTO):
"THE POCKET POOL MOUSTACHE BAND" !
BAND MEMBERS (L to R):
Annamarie Stanton - Vocals, Guitar
Denis Simard - Keyboards
Robert Stanton - Vocals, Guitar
Gary Keogh - Percussion / Drums
BAND ALTERNATIVE NICKNAME (HUMOROUSLY INSPIRED BY THE PHOTO):
"THE POCKET POOL MOUSTACHE BAND" !
Monterey Pop Festival
June 16-18, 1967
June 16-18, 1967
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Above: Scan of some of my ticket stubs from Monterey Pop Festival plus a scan of my original Monterey Pop Festival program. (Other Monterey Pop images were found on Internet.)
MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL
JUNE 16, 17, 18, 1967
JUNE 16, 17, 18, 1967
Much has been said about the Monterey Pop Festival by "Rock Historians."
The trouble is, most of those who have written about it over the years were never there!
Well I was there, and I feel very lucky to have experienced it. Though young at age 15, in many ways I was at the perfect age - the Beatles had broken out in America in early 1964 when I was 12 years old (I saw them on Ed Sullivan on Feb. 9, 1964) and they changed my life. Three and a half years later, the Pop Festival took place and it continues to have a HUGE impact on my life. Without getting too "high falutin'" or "academic" remember that this was basically the first "major" rock festival in history. I know that today it is hard for many to think that there was a time where there were no rock festivals at all. But rock (or should I say "Rock" with a capital "R") was so new and just starting to gain a major foothold in the national consciousness as the baby boomers were increasingly having their effect on the cultural landscape. It was soon to be a big big business but Monterey Pop was so innocent - all volunteer musicians together for a non profit foundation (except Paul Simon who got paid $5,000!) Of course the 1969 over-hyped and over-rated (by New York-based media elite) Woodstock got a lot of press and a massive movie and lots of hippies frolicking in the mud in upstate New York, but Monterey Pop was the original.
Note: I'm hoping to add others' memories of the festival here eventually - anybody who was there who can give some personal experiences - particularly those friends who I grew up with in the Monterey Peninsula who were in attendance - some of whom volunteered at the festival. And I hope that the City of Monterey someday will digitize and put online the excellent Monterey Pop Revisted Symposium of 2001 (see below)
Random Stream Of Consciousness Memories Of Monterey Pop (Part 1)
- Saturday afternoon: "Section 43" by Country Joe & The Fish. The crowd was mesmerized. I was, too. A great song delivered perfectly. And the D.L. Pennebaker film Monterey Pop captures it perfectly. The hypnotic vibe that comes across in the movie is exactly how I felt in the audience during this song. A real high point of the festival for me. The original studio recording of the song is a classic and still holds up as an instrumental psychedelic landmark. Very acidic. Very psychedelic. There were very few memorable psychedelic era instrumentals back then; "Section 43" is by far the best.
- It just occurred to me that about a year later Jefferson Airplane released the song "Saturday Afternoon" on the album After Bathing At Baxters. I wonder if there is any inspiration from that Saturday afternoon at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Airplane performed in the Saturday night show and were probably in the audience that Saturday afternoon ... I've always assumed that the lyrics were a dreamy reference to tripping on a Saturday in Golden Gate Park - but maybe the Pop Festival also influenced the creation of the song. Here are the Airplane's lyrics to "Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon" (written by the late great Paul Kantner):
Saturday afternoon
Yellow clouds rising in the noon
Acid, incense and balloons
Saturday afternoon
People dancing everywhere
Loudly shouting "I don't care!"
It's a time for growing
And a time for knowing love
- Somebody To Love - the opening song that the Jefferson Airplane started their set with on Saturday night. I remember the "intermission" before they played - the stage is dark but if you pay attention you see flashlights and roadings moving around equipment in the dark preparing for the next band. There was no stage "curtain" and between most bands the stage was typically lighted and you would see roadies and techs moving amps and equipment around - but this time I remember the stage was lighted for a while as equipment was moved around and then the stage went dark for a long time. The crowd got a little excited and nothing happened... so the crowd goes back to talking and milling around mode..... people are going to concession stands etc ... at this point most of the audience is not really very focused on the stage .... but I'm watching everything.... I see some flashlights on the dark stage and then what looks like a reflection of an electric guitar or two or three ... then more of a delay.... FINALLY THE SILENCE IS BROKEN with Grace's voice the just hits the crowd like a lightning bolt: "When The Truth Is Found .... To Be Lies" ... the band starts up powerfully AND THE CROWD GOES WILD! The audience has been taken totally by surprise with a stealth start to the song Somebody To Love. It was completely thrilling; you had to be there; a goosebumps producing moment!
- Sadly, despite that initial thrill of their opening son, the Airplane show turned out to be a little disappointing to me personally; I loved and love the Airplane knew their first two albums backwards and forwards and the sound system could not reproduce their songs adequately. That was the state of 1967 technology. Plus, and I'll never forget this, Jorma's solo was horrible! Now Jorma Kaukonen is a major talent and a very likable person - I had the chance to hang out with him a bit at the "Monterey Pop Revisited" event in 2001 - but that is another story. I was disappointed because he did more of a spur of the moment improvised solo that had elements of the original but not nearly enough - it was very disappointing to me because that is such an iconic guitar solo. That was typical of shows in that era - many bands didn't want to reproduce the exact recordings - that was not cool enough for their free spirits. So to me the song fell flat. On the other hand, She Has Funny Cars was awesome and Kantner's Rickenbacker provided that unique sound that I've always loved the Airplane for. Twenty-two years later I saw the Airplane in their "reunion" tour in 1989 at Hollywood Bowl and then they finally delivered! Awesome awesome concert. And the technology was able to convey their sound fully. All the songs I had grown up with delivered perfectly; one of the most thrilling concerts I've ever experienced and I've seen over two hundred major venue shows. Of course on that reunion tour they had the entire original band except for drummer Kenny Aronoff. Spencer Dryden was not in sufficient health to do a tour. One more quick aside: At the Monterey Pop Revisited three-day symposium in 2001, I mentioned to Jorma that at the Rock Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where I had just visted a year before, there was a great permanent display of memorabilia from the late 1960's San Francisco era. There was a letter (presumably donated by Jorma) from at the time Airplane manager Bill Graham written to Jorma's parents around 1967. It was reassuring them that Graham would watch over the "kids" (including Jorma) in the band and the letter detailed what his plans were for promoting the group with shows, recording releases, live album releases etc. It was a very professional well written letter designed to assure concerned parents etc. What a perspective! This band, who heroes and counterculture vanguard musical revolutionaries to us at the time - were just a few years older than those of us in high school. They were just kids. Graham's letter to the parents was quite telling and sort of put things in perspective, altering my dreamy idealistic memories of the era. The Airplane were not visionary gods, just kids with great musical talent and a message that needed to me "managed." As it turned out nobody could manage this group - as Jerry Garcia said, the band fought a lot and there were always internal disputes going on and battles over songs, etc - that was part of the dynamics. The result was genius music. Jorma made a great comment when I told him about the Rock Hall of Fame letter. When they played the Pop Festival, to him it was just another gig. It was one of many shows they were doing that summer of 1967. Graham's letter details all the upcoming shows. The Monterey Pop Festival did not have legendary status - it was just another gig for Jorma and the band. Again that is a great perspective.
- The Association on Friday night. It is hard for a six person band/vocal group to pull off a show with all those complex harmonies, especially given the weak sound reinforcement technology / speakers / PA systems of the era, but The Association pulled it off pretty darn well as they opened the evening. I've always love the Association and their harmonies - they did not fit the hippie vibe of the festival at all and looked a little out of place at first in a festival dominated by San Francisco-based bands - they all had suits and ties on and were pretty "clean cut." But there was quite a bit of humor and professionalism and tightness in their show and it worked; the audience loved them. They played the hits Windy and Along Comes Mary and Enter The Young - but did not perform Cherish which is surprising.
- Simon & Garfunkel followed The Association on Friday night. Just the two of them and one guitar of Paul Simon. The audience was very quiet and "respectful" allowing the guitar and their voices to ring out beautifully.
- Moby Grape on Saturday night. I was really into their first album and they played four or five songs from that album so all songs were familiar. Their show didn't seem to rely on the kind of studio technogy and feedback and guitar effects that was hard to reproduce like the Airplane. They were able to recreate the sound of their classic first and essentially only decent album. Could have been a little louder with a clearer separation of the three lead guitarists but still pretty darn good. Too bad they are not at all in the movie or the CD that came out - I blame it on their evil manager who screwed them out of even their band name! He probably was too demanding and the organizers told him to go to hell. Hopefully he is rotting in hell somewhere!
- I remember seeing Brian Jones of the Stones walking around and I remember asking a friend if that was Brian Jones - "it sure looks like him," etc. He was definitely prancing around with supposedly the strange talentless Nico of Velvet Underground (a horribly overrated band fronted by the highly overrated Lou Reed!) with the intention of being seen. We both thought it was Brian Jones and indeed it was... and were thinking that maybe the Stones were going to get on stage at some point. Never happened of course. Rumors of the Beatles showing up were also in the air ... of course that never happened either!
- The entire Saturday afternoon, dedicated to San Francisco bands, was unreal. Simply an all-star lineup of the great bands of the era (except Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead and Moby Grape, who all played Saturday night). Quicksilver was great but they did not do The Fool - maybe because it was too long a song -what a great song that is - would have fit in perfectly since it is so much an instrumental before vocals kick in. One of the best all time songs of the psychedelic San Francisco era. It was on Saturday that Janis Joplin first did Ball and Chain that brought the house down. That Saturday performance however wasn't filmed for some reason - I think she and her band got talked into banning filming of their show like the Grateful Dead foolishly decided to do. Anyway, Janis came back Sunday night and did the song again so it could be filmed and it was a big part of the Monterey Pop film. I wasn't there Sunday, but most critics who were there (and what the hell do they know anyway) say that her Saturday afternoon performance was better. To be honest, at the time I appreciated Janis Joplin and Big Brother and liked some of their other songs much more - such as Piece of My Heart, and wasn't in to their blues style songs as much as their other material - I'm not a blues fan in general and they all tend to sound alike. In fact, at the time, in hearing it for the first time, Ball and Chain just sounded like another three chord blues song and it was a little weakened in that she was backed up by a creative but average group of musicians - Big Brother and The Holding Company. But after watching the performance in the film, I now more appreciate the performance. She was so unique. What a voice.
- Eric Burdon & The Animals played Friday night - Paint It Black (the Stones' song) was their finale and the crowd went wild - their version is mesmerizing and the pacing and dynamics were phenomenal - Burdon really worked the audience. The original Animals had of course broken up and some historians say this was where Eric Burdon reinvented himself with a totally new band and I must agree. He had a great lead violinist playing solos on an electric violin, trading off licks with the lead guitarist.
- "In '67 ... for three days ... Who and Hendrix played Monterey ... Monterey Pop .... I was there."
I've heard that lyric in some song somewhere....
- Eric Burdon's Monterey was a classic big hit that Burdon co-wrote and released in December 1967 following the Pop Festival. It was of course not played at the Pop Festival. It had not been written or recorded yet! I love this song and it tells a great upbeat story of the festival, with band names and instruments associated with that artist - like a sitar for Ravi Shankar and screaming guitar for The Who. Best song about the Monterey Pop Festival - if not the only one! I am inserting the lyrics for Monterey here. Great song.
Monterey
The people came and listened
Some of them came and played
Others gave flowers away, yes they did
Down in Monterey,
Down in Monterey.
Young gods smiled upon the crowd
Their music being born of love
Children danced night and day
Religion was being born
Down in Monterey
The Byrds and the Airplane did fly
Oh, Ravi Shankar's music made me cry
The Who exploded into fire and light
Hugh Masekela's music was black as night
The Grateful Dead blew everybody's mind
Jimi Hendrix, baby, believe me,
set the world on fire, yeah
His Majesty, Prince Jones,
smiled as he moved among the crowd
Ten thousand electric guitars
were groovin' real loud, yeah
You want to find the truth in life?
Don't pass music by
And you know I would not lie, no, I would not lie,
No, I would not lie
Down in Monterey
All right!!!
Three days of understanding,
of moving with one another
Even the cops grooved with us
Do you believe me, yeah?
Down in Monterey, down in Monterey
Down in Monterey, down in Monterey
I think that maybe I'm dreaming
Monterey, Monterey
Down in Monterey
Did you hear what I say?
Down in Monterey
Songwriters: Barry Jenkins / Danny Mcculloch / Eric Victor Burdon / Johnny Weider / Vic Briggs
Monterey lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc
- Burdon did actually perform the song San Francisco Nights at the Pop Festival - I just looked up that song on Wikipedia - it is was not formally released as a recording until August of '67 so I guess to us in the audience it was brand new. I remember not liking it that much when I first heard it that night - I felt that it was a bit pandering ... but I've come to accept it since as sort of an accompaniment to the Monterey song - a Brit's tribute to the spirit of SF / Monterey Pop or whatever .... the song could be labeled as another version of If You're Going To San Francisco (be sure to wear some flowers in your hair) - which some say was sung by some guy working with John Phillips in LA trying to jump on the emerging San Franciso hippie trend. But I have to admit I still love that Scott McKenzie song and do not have any cynical attitude towards it - very very uplifting, great melody, great voice. I forgive McKenzie and Phillips - it's a great song and I like it more than anything Mamas and Papas ever did! That was one of the original reasons I did not fork out my hard earned cash for tickets for Sunday night - I didn't care for the Mamas and Papas then - they were supposedly "headlining" or closing the show. (I appreciate them much more now). But McKenzie sang San Francisco Sunday night at Monterey Pop on Sunday and I would have liked to have heard it in retrospect. Yes, I missed the Sunday night show (see below) and seriously regret it! Bad move! Arrrggghh! I need a time machine to do it over again!
- The Byrds were a little disappointing Saturday night. Their finale So You Want To Be A Rock n Roll Star was good, but they didn't play Turn Turn Turn or Mr. Tambourine Man or any of their great early folk rock stuff like Feel A Whole Lot Better etc. Very disappointing. And big mouth David Crosby must have been high because he was rambling between songs about politics, anti war stuff, etc. Hey David shut up and play the music! Please note he was canned shortly after the Pop Festival disaster. McGuinn had had enough. And the Byrds essentially broke up soon thereafter. I love David's music and he is a great talent but in that era he was such an arrogant ass ... he played that Sunday Night with Buffalo Springfield, who had just lost Neil Young. But to me the Byrds show was a bit of a letdown since I expected so much.
- Regrettably, as a 15 year old kid paying for tickets from my part time junior high jobs as a busboy, mowing lawns, subbing on a friend's newspaper route, even babysitting!, etc, I could only afford Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night tickets. Prices then then were equivalent to about $45 per show today. Mom and dad were not footing the bill for the tickets. They were cool about letting me go as a 15 year old kid, but weren't about to encourage this rock and roll addiction by spending money on it! So I of course skipped Sunday day with Ravi Shankar because I just didn't care, and decided to not go Sunday night because I wasn't that excited about the Mamas and Papas and Johnny Rivers and though I liked The Who they were just emerging and not yet the huge act that they later became. Actually, Hendrix was originally scheduled for Friday night as was Buffalo Springfield - and both later got moved to Sunday night. I was much more disappointed by missing Buffalo Springfield - I was curious about Hendrix but he was so new with only one recently released song out and as revolutionary as the song was nobody knew what a monster guitarist and legend he would become ... he wasn't the world-wide phenom guitar wizard / best guitarist in history of the world ... yet! But he had already been moved from Friday to Sunday so his reputation as a guitar phenom was growing - and he was slated to close the show on Sunday night which in itself is quite a tribute for such a "new" emerging artist. Anyway, skipping that Sunday show was a bad bad decision on my part! And I continue to beat myself up over it! haha. I missed the two legendary performances of Jimi Hendrix and The Who and missed Buffalo Springfield.
- I can only semi-console myself (not too successfully) and semi-rationalize (again not too successfully) not going Sunday night by the fact that many of my peers living in Monterey at the time did not even go to the Pop Festival at all! And they were right there in Monterey at the center of the music universe for the weekend! WTF!!!
- I remember Friday night after the opening night's shows. I was so excited I didn't sleep that much. And all night I heard music and drums and chanting coming from nearby MPC where people were camping out. I think MPC had opened itself up to camping to handle the hippie hordes descending on the town. It was a hypnotic sound that I'll never forget - I would drift in and out of sleep, only to wake up to more drumming and chanting and what sounded like singing and dancing and laughter around campfires. It seemed like it was taking place almost in my back yard and very well some people could have been camping in an open space between my house and MPC. If they did, I must say that there wasn't any evidence of campers having been back there - the area was clean with zero trash and zero evidence of people camping out there. It really was a very well behaved crowd the entire weekend.
- Yeah somehow Simon managed to get paid for it but the rest did not and it was promoted as benefitting a non-profit etc. I still wonder where the money went - there was some controversy over that - the foundation is being run now by Lou Adler, though money has been given out over the years to small groups - don't know if Michelle Phillips was involved in the foundation - would be curious how much money has been generated over the years from the Pop Festival via broadcast rights, recordings etc... probably not that much
- By the way Buffalo Springfield hardly ever seems to get mentioned by "rock historians" from that Sunday night - and the YouTube clip of them playing (audio only - no video that I have found) sounds very good - Clancy Can't Even Sing and For What It's Worth ... still no Neil Young - he had quit and Crosby subbed for him that night ... the Buffalo Springfield performance on Sunday night sure got overwhelmed historically by the Who and Hendrix for sure. When the time machine gets discovered I'm going back to see that show!
- One note re Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan Feb. 9, 1964. I remember in 6th grade at age 12, around the time of the Sullivan show, my friend Nello Torri and I took a bus from Monterey to Pacific Grove to buy the Meet The Beatles album. This little shop on upper Lighthouse in PG was one of the few record stores in the Monterey Peninsula at the time and was the only store to carry the album.
- By the way Buffalo Springfield hardly ever seems to get mentioned by "rock historians" from that Sunday night - and the YouTube clip of them playing (audio only - no video that I have found) sounds very good - Clancy Can't Even Sing and For What It's Worth ... still no Neil Young - he had quit and Crosby subbed for him that night ... the Buffalo Springfield performance on Sunday night sure got overwhelmed historically by the Who and Hendrix for sure. When the time machine gets discovered I'm going back to see that show!
- One note re Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan Feb. 9, 1964. I remember in 6th grade at age 12, around the time of the Sullivan show, my friend Nello Torri and I took a bus from Monterey to Pacific Grove to buy the Meet The Beatles album. This little shop on upper Lighthouse in PG was one of the few record stores in the Monterey Peninsula at the time and was the only store to carry the album.
FRIENDS' COMMENTS & STORIES ABOUT MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL / MEAGHER ELECTRONICS / MONTEREY MUSIC
RE: POP FESTIVAL
"I didn’t know all the musicians volunteered except Simon?!
I do remember Hendrix and Brian Jones hanging out in a Teepee
Bill Sciarinno went up to both of them and got their autographs
We knew who Hendrix was and were excited to see him perform
Joe Lucido had gotten a hold of an English copy of Are You Experienced
So we had already heard him in advance
We were also huge fans of the Who and knew what was coming
That Sunday night with the Who and Hendrix blew all of our minds
and with NO DRUGS!!
Best natural high ever
It’s been down hill ever since
At least we're alive to reminisce about a once in a lifetime event
Good job on your recollections
Keep the memories flowing…………."
FROM ROBERT STANTON
=========================================
"Hey DMZ
My only experience with Jim Meagher was getting blown speakers fixed
As a slight aside I do remember going to Safeway and testing my amp tubes
They actually had a tube tester and you could buy new tubes
But you’re right,there was no way for small town bands to do multi tracking at all
I remember my first tape recorder had sound on sound* which did not allow you to sync up
but you could layer trax on top of of trax but with no control to really do true multi tracking
You are the only person I know that did a recording there."
~FROM ROBERT STANTON
* ("Les Paul invented "Sound on Sound" recording using an Ampex tape recorder given to him by Bing Crosby. He placed an additional playback head, located before the conventional erase/record/playback heads. This allowed Paul to play along with a previously recorded track, both of which were mixed together on to a new track. This was a destructive process because the original recording was recorded over." - from a Wikipedia Ampex article)
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RE: POP FESTIVAL
"I didn’t know all the musicians volunteered except Simon?!
I do remember Hendrix and Brian Jones hanging out in a Teepee
Bill Sciarinno went up to both of them and got their autographs
We knew who Hendrix was and were excited to see him perform
Joe Lucido had gotten a hold of an English copy of Are You Experienced
So we had already heard him in advance
We were also huge fans of the Who and knew what was coming
That Sunday night with the Who and Hendrix blew all of our minds
and with NO DRUGS!!
Best natural high ever
It’s been down hill ever since
At least we're alive to reminisce about a once in a lifetime event
Good job on your recollections
Keep the memories flowing…………."
FROM ROBERT STANTON
=========================================
"Hey DMZ
My only experience with Jim Meagher was getting blown speakers fixed
As a slight aside I do remember going to Safeway and testing my amp tubes
They actually had a tube tester and you could buy new tubes
But you’re right,there was no way for small town bands to do multi tracking at all
I remember my first tape recorder had sound on sound* which did not allow you to sync up
but you could layer trax on top of of trax but with no control to really do true multi tracking
You are the only person I know that did a recording there."
~FROM ROBERT STANTON
* ("Les Paul invented "Sound on Sound" recording using an Ampex tape recorder given to him by Bing Crosby. He placed an additional playback head, located before the conventional erase/record/playback heads. This allowed Paul to play along with a previously recorded track, both of which were mixed together on to a new track. This was a destructive process because the original recording was recorded over." - from a Wikipedia Ampex article)
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"Monterey Pop Revisited" Symposium
June 15, 16 & 17, 2001
The "Monterey Pop Revisited" symposium in 2001 was sponsored the Monterey History and Art Association (MHAA). The three-day event included two full days (Saturday and Sunday) of panel discussions at one of the Monterey Fairgrounds buildings, along with a great opening night Friday "gala" upstairs at the very nice Monterey History and Art building at Custom House Plaza in downtown Monterey. Many of the original people involved in organizing, presenting, and performing at the festival were there; the program graphic below is just a partial list of those who actually ended up participating. And some of the best participants were people like legendary local citizen Sam Karas, who contributed a lot to civic affairs in Monterey and who was instrumental in making the Pop Festival happen. His stories alone need to be preserved digitally for all to see. (Mr. Karas passed away two years later in 2003.)
The symposium ran from Friday night through Saturday and Sunday ... just like the Pop Festival thirty-four years earlier. Country Joe McDonald, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Cassady, D.L. Pennebaker, Michelle Phillips, and many others participated in panel discussions and Q&A sessions and even some live performances. There even was a tour of the Monterey Fairgrounds stage where Jimi burned his guitar, etc. Lots of history and anecdotes and remembrances. Everybody mingled for the entire weekend. I surprisingly even got to spend quite a bit of time talking with Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane) and filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker ("Monterey Pop"), both of who were very friendly and accessible.
Unfortunately the Symposium did not get near the attendance they were hoping for so it was not a financial success. Perhaps 150 at most attended when I believe they hoped for perhaps 800-1000. I believe that the lack of financial success of the event spelled the beginning of the end for the existing MHAA management who had created the event. More "proof"sadly in the eyes of some Monterey officials that there was "no money" in remembering and celebrating the Pop Festival as part of Monterey's history. All the video and audio recordings of the symposium were stored in a City of Monterey storage facility and to this day none of that material is available online. Hopefully City officials will see the value of these archives and do the right thing and someday make the entire event accessible on the Internet. The "civic leaders" in Monterey seem to have never ever fully embraced the Monterey Pop Festival and this is just one more example.
Flash forward to the present: last time I checked, the Monterey HIstory and Art Association can't even locate the audio and video records and the still photos in storage! This organization is so dysfunctional it is pathetic. There has been an ongoing turnover in MHAA management over the year that has taken its toll; something like 10 executive directors in the last 15 years, etc.
It is sad that the City of Monterey civic leaders are letting these great Monterey Pop Revisited archives rot in some warehouse. They could get volunteers to help digitize the material and put it online. The technology is there these days to make it happen pretty cheaply. I have volunteered to help out remotely (I don't live in Monterey) but my offers fall on deaf ears. But I'm hoping that someday soon somebody will step forward and lead the effort locally. Perhaps the new Salvadori Dali museum will help with stabilizing MHAA finances so other projects like digitizing Monterey Pop Revisited can take place!
June 15, 16 & 17, 2001
The "Monterey Pop Revisited" symposium in 2001 was sponsored the Monterey History and Art Association (MHAA). The three-day event included two full days (Saturday and Sunday) of panel discussions at one of the Monterey Fairgrounds buildings, along with a great opening night Friday "gala" upstairs at the very nice Monterey History and Art building at Custom House Plaza in downtown Monterey. Many of the original people involved in organizing, presenting, and performing at the festival were there; the program graphic below is just a partial list of those who actually ended up participating. And some of the best participants were people like legendary local citizen Sam Karas, who contributed a lot to civic affairs in Monterey and who was instrumental in making the Pop Festival happen. His stories alone need to be preserved digitally for all to see. (Mr. Karas passed away two years later in 2003.)
The symposium ran from Friday night through Saturday and Sunday ... just like the Pop Festival thirty-four years earlier. Country Joe McDonald, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Cassady, D.L. Pennebaker, Michelle Phillips, and many others participated in panel discussions and Q&A sessions and even some live performances. There even was a tour of the Monterey Fairgrounds stage where Jimi burned his guitar, etc. Lots of history and anecdotes and remembrances. Everybody mingled for the entire weekend. I surprisingly even got to spend quite a bit of time talking with Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane) and filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker ("Monterey Pop"), both of who were very friendly and accessible.
Unfortunately the Symposium did not get near the attendance they were hoping for so it was not a financial success. Perhaps 150 at most attended when I believe they hoped for perhaps 800-1000. I believe that the lack of financial success of the event spelled the beginning of the end for the existing MHAA management who had created the event. More "proof"sadly in the eyes of some Monterey officials that there was "no money" in remembering and celebrating the Pop Festival as part of Monterey's history. All the video and audio recordings of the symposium were stored in a City of Monterey storage facility and to this day none of that material is available online. Hopefully City officials will see the value of these archives and do the right thing and someday make the entire event accessible on the Internet. The "civic leaders" in Monterey seem to have never ever fully embraced the Monterey Pop Festival and this is just one more example.
Flash forward to the present: last time I checked, the Monterey HIstory and Art Association can't even locate the audio and video records and the still photos in storage! This organization is so dysfunctional it is pathetic. There has been an ongoing turnover in MHAA management over the year that has taken its toll; something like 10 executive directors in the last 15 years, etc.
It is sad that the City of Monterey civic leaders are letting these great Monterey Pop Revisited archives rot in some warehouse. They could get volunteers to help digitize the material and put it online. The technology is there these days to make it happen pretty cheaply. I have volunteered to help out remotely (I don't live in Monterey) but my offers fall on deaf ears. But I'm hoping that someday soon somebody will step forward and lead the effort locally. Perhaps the new Salvadori Dali museum will help with stabilizing MHAA finances so other projects like digitizing Monterey Pop Revisited can take place!
Monterey Pop Revisited Article
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001
Writer: Chuck Thurman
Marijuana was illegal but LSD was not. The Beatles had just released Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1967, as hordes of hippies poured into the sleepy backwater village that was Monterey, no one really knew how much power they would soon hold. The Monterey International Pop Festival inaugurated the Summer of Love and, for a moment in time, remade the culture in its own image.
Monterey was a strange place for the cultural revolution's launch. The town was still suffering from the after-effects of the sardine bust, and it had yet to establish its identity as a major tourist destination. Urban renewal had not yet transformed Alvarado, which by all accounts was a pretty seedy stretch of tattoo parlors, pool halls and beer joints. Cannery Row was a combination ghost town and giant jungle gym, a rusted labyrinth where kids explored deserted buildings looking for old cannery labels and hobos slept amidst abandoned machinery.
Monterey native John Laughton was an usher at the Pop Festival. He had just finished his freshman year at UC Berkeley, where he caught the tail end of the Free Speech movement and watched the birth of the black-power, flower-power and women's-rights movements. He remembers his hometown as an isolated place. "We were out in the sticks," Laughton recalls. "It was a small town. Everybody knew everybody, but we were removed from the body politic of the larger happenings."
According to Linda Jaffe, executive director of the Monterey History and Art Association, the seeds of the idea for a pop music festival were generated by music promoter Alan Pariser, a regular at the annual Monterey Jazz Festival. If Monterey could host a successful annual jazz celebration, he wondered, why couldn't the city also do a pop festival? Nurtured by music producer Lou Adler, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, and music publicist Derek Taylor, that seed grew into the largest gathering of flower children the world had ever seen.
Attendance estimates vary wildly, but nobody disputes that at the time, the Pop Festival was the biggest event of its kind in history. Somewhere between 100,000 and twice that number of long-haired, paisley-clad, dope-smoking young people converged on this small town of about 20,000 residents. They slept on the football field at Monterey Peninsula College, in their cars and vans on the streets of Monterey, in vacant lots and in the yards of people who lived near the fairgrounds.
National and local press pored over the event, bringing pictures of a new generation to the world. Long after the last wisps of marijuana smoke disappeared into the Monterey fog, young people were traveling to and through Monterey looking for some reminder of the concert that changed everything.
Journey to the Past
This weekend, the Monterey History and Art Association is sponsoring a three-day symposium examining the effects of the First Annual Monterey International Pop Festival. Panelists will include a variety of musicians who played there as well as organizers and artists who were involved. [See schedule below] During the three days, the various speakers will be analyzing and proselytizing about the ways in which the festival defined and changed music in the late ''60s. They have plenty to work with.
In retrospect, we can see a musical roster that included some of the biggest names in rock and pop history: the Byrds, the Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas & the Papas, Lou Rawls, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Simon & Garfunkle, Country Joe & The Fish, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Hugh Masekela, Laura Nyro, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the time, though, many of these were new and emerging bands.
Besides altering the national cultural landscape, Jaffe says, the festival changed the way musicians were viewed. "It was significant in a couple of different ways," she says. "I'm going to quote Lou Adler: ''Prior to that event, musicians were treated as second-class citizens. After the Monterey Pop, the musicians were in the driver''s seat.'' And because of when it happened historically, it was the catalyst for the Summer of Love. Monterey Pop was a catalyst for getting people to come together to hear the music that would be the mouthpiece for what was happening in America."
It was also something of a career-maker for many of the musicians. If there''s any single enduring image of Jimi Hendrix, it may be the one where he''s onstage at the Fairgrounds, prayerfully dousing his guitar with lighter fluid, setting it on fire and watching it burn. Janis Joplin virtually sealed her date with fame during her blistering performance at the festival; The Who found an American audience with "My Generation"; and the Grateful Dead showed their music would appeal to more than just boutique San Francisco audiences.
John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas was instrumental in bringing the Monterey Pop Festival to life.
Of course, that's all hindsight, with 34 years separating fact from analysis. At the time, not everyone was so impressed. In its debut issue of November 1967, Rolling Stone panned the festival as simply a bit of ego-gratification for Adler and Phillips. Billboard said Hendrix''s "chicken choke handling of the guitar doesn''t indicate a strong talent."
But critics aside, the festival''s musical importance might only be important as a corollary to its social significance.
Cool Cops
Woodstock was bigger. But it can be argued--and probably will be argued this weekend--that the Monterey International Pop Festival was more important. Woodstock illustrated the peace-love-dope movement as it reached critical mass. But Monterey Pop showed us a generation bathed in idealism as it was born.
It also showed us a never-repeated example of two generations working in harmony, even if they didn''t understand one another.
Film actor/director Dennis Hopper was one of those in attendance (see "Heavy Photo Mama," page 24.) He's been quoted as saying, "Monterey was the purest, most beautiful moment of the whole '60s trip. It seemed like everything had come to that moment. It was a magical, pure moment in time."
With the publicity power of Adler and Phillips, word of the concert was spread around the country. It soon became obvious that this concert had the potential to be big. Although Monterey city officials were nervous about the anticipated crowds, they overcame their anxiety and not only allowed the show to go on, but supported it.
While the police in Berkeley and elsewhere took confrontational measures to control crowds, the police in Monterey took a more hands-off approach. Sam Karas, who would later rise to prominence as a Monterey County supervisor and who had been previously involved as an organizer with the Monterey Jazz Festival, had been hired by festival promoters to "put together everything but the performers--ushers, vendors, security and the whole bit." He says an understanding had been worked out with Monterey Police Chief Frank Marinello "to work with the crowd, not against them." That included turning a blind eye to the rampant smoking of marijuana that was going on inside and near the fairgrounds.
According to Karas, cops were instructed not to make arrests for smoking pot. Many of the cops even went beyond passive acceptance of the flood of strangers in their midst, wearing flowers in their caps and helmets, if not exactly in their hair.
It was an approach to security that seemed to work: Despite the huge numbers of stoned hippies outnumbering the entire population of Monterey - never mind the police - there were no instances of violence throughout the three-day festival. It was as peaceful an event as could have been imagined.
But even with the success of the festival behind them, city officials freaked out at the thought of a repeat concert.
According to historians, Adler and Phillips had already reached an agreement with the Monterey Fairgrounds for a second pop festival in 1968. City officials balked at the idea, fearful that the second concert might not be as peaceful. They ultimately demanded such a high security deposit that the promoters gave up on their plan.
Monterey Police Chief Marinello was one of those who never quite comprehended the reasons behind the city's reluctance to host the second festival.
According to Tim Thomas, the History and Art Association's historian, "[Marinello] said he couldn't understand why they didn't want to do it again. He said it was the easiest festival ever, that Monterey Jazz Festival was 10 times more of a powder keg."
It's interesting to ponder what kind of musical legacy the Monterey Pop Festival would have had if it could have become an annual event. But instead, the one-and only-Monterey International Pop Festival left us with visions of almost everything that was good about the ''60s: An innocent and true belief that peace and love could conquer the world''s problems, that even The Establishment''s intolerance would melt under the power of music.
"I would just say it captured and epitomized what it meant to be under 30 and living in the '60s: Young, vital, fresh," Laughton says. "You still had the enthusiasm that you could make a difference and change the world. You could change American culture in a positive way. All the energy was extremely positive.
(End of article written by Chuck Thurman from MontereyCountyWeekly.com June 14, 2001)
(Note: I recently discovered this phenomenal article by Chuck Thurman, Associate Editor of Monterey County Weekly. I looked up the author in order to email and thank him for his comprehensive and insightful article. I soon learned that Chuck Thurman is no longer with us; he passed away in 2008 at the age of 53. ~ DM)
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001
Writer: Chuck Thurman
Marijuana was illegal but LSD was not. The Beatles had just released Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1967, as hordes of hippies poured into the sleepy backwater village that was Monterey, no one really knew how much power they would soon hold. The Monterey International Pop Festival inaugurated the Summer of Love and, for a moment in time, remade the culture in its own image.
Monterey was a strange place for the cultural revolution's launch. The town was still suffering from the after-effects of the sardine bust, and it had yet to establish its identity as a major tourist destination. Urban renewal had not yet transformed Alvarado, which by all accounts was a pretty seedy stretch of tattoo parlors, pool halls and beer joints. Cannery Row was a combination ghost town and giant jungle gym, a rusted labyrinth where kids explored deserted buildings looking for old cannery labels and hobos slept amidst abandoned machinery.
Monterey native John Laughton was an usher at the Pop Festival. He had just finished his freshman year at UC Berkeley, where he caught the tail end of the Free Speech movement and watched the birth of the black-power, flower-power and women's-rights movements. He remembers his hometown as an isolated place. "We were out in the sticks," Laughton recalls. "It was a small town. Everybody knew everybody, but we were removed from the body politic of the larger happenings."
According to Linda Jaffe, executive director of the Monterey History and Art Association, the seeds of the idea for a pop music festival were generated by music promoter Alan Pariser, a regular at the annual Monterey Jazz Festival. If Monterey could host a successful annual jazz celebration, he wondered, why couldn't the city also do a pop festival? Nurtured by music producer Lou Adler, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, and music publicist Derek Taylor, that seed grew into the largest gathering of flower children the world had ever seen.
Attendance estimates vary wildly, but nobody disputes that at the time, the Pop Festival was the biggest event of its kind in history. Somewhere between 100,000 and twice that number of long-haired, paisley-clad, dope-smoking young people converged on this small town of about 20,000 residents. They slept on the football field at Monterey Peninsula College, in their cars and vans on the streets of Monterey, in vacant lots and in the yards of people who lived near the fairgrounds.
National and local press pored over the event, bringing pictures of a new generation to the world. Long after the last wisps of marijuana smoke disappeared into the Monterey fog, young people were traveling to and through Monterey looking for some reminder of the concert that changed everything.
Journey to the Past
This weekend, the Monterey History and Art Association is sponsoring a three-day symposium examining the effects of the First Annual Monterey International Pop Festival. Panelists will include a variety of musicians who played there as well as organizers and artists who were involved. [See schedule below] During the three days, the various speakers will be analyzing and proselytizing about the ways in which the festival defined and changed music in the late ''60s. They have plenty to work with.
In retrospect, we can see a musical roster that included some of the biggest names in rock and pop history: the Byrds, the Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas & the Papas, Lou Rawls, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Simon & Garfunkle, Country Joe & The Fish, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Hugh Masekela, Laura Nyro, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the time, though, many of these were new and emerging bands.
Besides altering the national cultural landscape, Jaffe says, the festival changed the way musicians were viewed. "It was significant in a couple of different ways," she says. "I'm going to quote Lou Adler: ''Prior to that event, musicians were treated as second-class citizens. After the Monterey Pop, the musicians were in the driver''s seat.'' And because of when it happened historically, it was the catalyst for the Summer of Love. Monterey Pop was a catalyst for getting people to come together to hear the music that would be the mouthpiece for what was happening in America."
It was also something of a career-maker for many of the musicians. If there''s any single enduring image of Jimi Hendrix, it may be the one where he''s onstage at the Fairgrounds, prayerfully dousing his guitar with lighter fluid, setting it on fire and watching it burn. Janis Joplin virtually sealed her date with fame during her blistering performance at the festival; The Who found an American audience with "My Generation"; and the Grateful Dead showed their music would appeal to more than just boutique San Francisco audiences.
John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas was instrumental in bringing the Monterey Pop Festival to life.
Of course, that's all hindsight, with 34 years separating fact from analysis. At the time, not everyone was so impressed. In its debut issue of November 1967, Rolling Stone panned the festival as simply a bit of ego-gratification for Adler and Phillips. Billboard said Hendrix''s "chicken choke handling of the guitar doesn''t indicate a strong talent."
But critics aside, the festival''s musical importance might only be important as a corollary to its social significance.
Cool Cops
Woodstock was bigger. But it can be argued--and probably will be argued this weekend--that the Monterey International Pop Festival was more important. Woodstock illustrated the peace-love-dope movement as it reached critical mass. But Monterey Pop showed us a generation bathed in idealism as it was born.
It also showed us a never-repeated example of two generations working in harmony, even if they didn''t understand one another.
Film actor/director Dennis Hopper was one of those in attendance (see "Heavy Photo Mama," page 24.) He's been quoted as saying, "Monterey was the purest, most beautiful moment of the whole '60s trip. It seemed like everything had come to that moment. It was a magical, pure moment in time."
With the publicity power of Adler and Phillips, word of the concert was spread around the country. It soon became obvious that this concert had the potential to be big. Although Monterey city officials were nervous about the anticipated crowds, they overcame their anxiety and not only allowed the show to go on, but supported it.
While the police in Berkeley and elsewhere took confrontational measures to control crowds, the police in Monterey took a more hands-off approach. Sam Karas, who would later rise to prominence as a Monterey County supervisor and who had been previously involved as an organizer with the Monterey Jazz Festival, had been hired by festival promoters to "put together everything but the performers--ushers, vendors, security and the whole bit." He says an understanding had been worked out with Monterey Police Chief Frank Marinello "to work with the crowd, not against them." That included turning a blind eye to the rampant smoking of marijuana that was going on inside and near the fairgrounds.
According to Karas, cops were instructed not to make arrests for smoking pot. Many of the cops even went beyond passive acceptance of the flood of strangers in their midst, wearing flowers in their caps and helmets, if not exactly in their hair.
It was an approach to security that seemed to work: Despite the huge numbers of stoned hippies outnumbering the entire population of Monterey - never mind the police - there were no instances of violence throughout the three-day festival. It was as peaceful an event as could have been imagined.
But even with the success of the festival behind them, city officials freaked out at the thought of a repeat concert.
According to historians, Adler and Phillips had already reached an agreement with the Monterey Fairgrounds for a second pop festival in 1968. City officials balked at the idea, fearful that the second concert might not be as peaceful. They ultimately demanded such a high security deposit that the promoters gave up on their plan.
Monterey Police Chief Marinello was one of those who never quite comprehended the reasons behind the city's reluctance to host the second festival.
According to Tim Thomas, the History and Art Association's historian, "[Marinello] said he couldn't understand why they didn't want to do it again. He said it was the easiest festival ever, that Monterey Jazz Festival was 10 times more of a powder keg."
It's interesting to ponder what kind of musical legacy the Monterey Pop Festival would have had if it could have become an annual event. But instead, the one-and only-Monterey International Pop Festival left us with visions of almost everything that was good about the ''60s: An innocent and true belief that peace and love could conquer the world''s problems, that even The Establishment''s intolerance would melt under the power of music.
"I would just say it captured and epitomized what it meant to be under 30 and living in the '60s: Young, vital, fresh," Laughton says. "You still had the enthusiasm that you could make a difference and change the world. You could change American culture in a positive way. All the energy was extremely positive.
(End of article written by Chuck Thurman from MontereyCountyWeekly.com June 14, 2001)
(Note: I recently discovered this phenomenal article by Chuck Thurman, Associate Editor of Monterey County Weekly. I looked up the author in order to email and thank him for his comprehensive and insightful article. I soon learned that Chuck Thurman is no longer with us; he passed away in 2008 at the age of 53. ~ DM)
Monterey Pop Revisited Article
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001 - Writer: Chuck Thurman
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001 - Writer: Chuck Thurman
MY DILEMMA:
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
MY DILEMMA:
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
Well, this was 1967, the "Summer of Love," and Monterey was the center of the world for a weekend with the Monterey Pop Festival on June 16-18. As a huge music fan and youthful musician myself, attending the Pop Festival was VERY important to me; it was a great opportunity to see some of the best bands in the world at the world's first major rock festival. Performers that Saturday afternoon included Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe & The Fish, Big Brother & The Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Steve Miller Band, Electric Flag, Al Kooper, Paul Butterfield, and Canned Heat. The Friday night before I had just seen Simon & Garfunkel, The Association, Eric Burdon & The Animals, and even 60's pop star Johnny Rivers.
But there was a conflict. I was supposed to pitch in a Babe Ruth League game that Saturday, June 17, beginning at Noon at El Estero Park with my team, Monterey Merchants, against the Kiwanis Pirates, the best team in the league. The Pop Festival was scheduled to start at 1:30. I didn't want to let my team down but there was no way I was going to miss the Pop Festival either. So I told my manager that I'd pitch through the top of the 4th inning but then had to leave for the show. He didn't like it but said "OK." (I figured that if each full inning lasted say 20 minutes, then I could get to the Monterey Fairgrounds [via my father, who was my "ride" - I was 15 and not yet driving yet!] in time for the first band scheduled at 1:30.)
Well, I did finish pitching the first 4 innings and our team actually was doing very well against the undefeated Kiwanis team that ended up winning the league championship. I don't remember feeling like I was throwing anything special - a few strikeouts but not that many; a bunch of hanging curves that they probably would have eventually adjusted to and then started drilling the ball. But for whatever reason they weren't effectively hitting me (yet!). So after keeping Kiwanis to one run after their four innings at-bat, I left right away after the top of the 4th; we were ahead 4-1 and our team was about to go to bat at the bottom of the 4th.
As I found out later, the rest of that game did not turn out well. We didn't score in the bottom of the 4th, and starting in the top of the 5th, Kiwanis proceeded to totally blow the game wide open. They scored five runs in the top of the 5th off the new pitcher. It got uglier and uglier; our team didn't hit and also made a bunch of fielding errors; Kiwanis continued to run up the score and ended up winning 12-5.
To their credit, Kiwanis was an explosive team with some very good singles hitters who got on base a lot; they also had some hitters with power. And I was surprised that I had pitched so well up to that point; it probably would not have lasted but who knows. Maybe I left at the perfect time, with my dignity still intact! Kiwanis had four all-star 15-year-old players including Curtis Monar, Sal Rombi, Tim DiMaggio, and John Pira along with some strong younger players like Fermin Sanchez and Jeff Millington. Kiwanis had good depth at most positions, and people with the ability to get on base and steal bases. They also had probably the best hitter and pitcher in the league - Curtis Monar. Luckily Curtis was not pitching that day - don't recall who it was. Anyway, maybe I was so amped up about the Pop Festival and so eager to end each inning as quickly as possible that my pitching somehow got better? I don't remember it that way at all but who knows.
I arrived at the Pop Festival maybe twenty minutes after the first band started playing and only missed a couple of songs by the opening act Canned Heat - which I couldn't have cared less about! Overrated,boring blues band (boring and blues are synonymous to me). I frankly never understood why they were invited to the Pop Festival to begin with.
After Canned Heat left the stage, the rest of the afternoon was phenomenal; maybe "miraculous" and "life-changing" might be a better description. I still remember Country Joe & The Fish's trippy and mesmerizing "Section 43" - the highlight of a great day along with great performances by Quicksilver Messenger Service and John Cippolina, along with Janis Joplin/Big Brother & The Holding Company. Janis sang the legendary "Ball and Chain;" that song got such an ovation that Janis was brought back to perform it again on Sunday night. (This is indeed a blues style song and I don't care for blues, but her performance here was off-the-charts brilliant and totally compelling; jaw dropping is a good description. She was on fire. Her whole performance was transcendent and she took that one song far beyond the three-chord predictable boring typical blues form - even with a pretty "average" band backing her up!)
That Saturday afternoon show that I saw with Janis / Big Brother wasn't filmed because of some sort of "rights dispute" over eventual use of the footage and recording; it somehow later got resolved before Sunday night; her filmed Sunday night performance of "Ball and Chain" is the one that is in the D.A. Pennebaker "Monterey Pop" movie.
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
Well, this was 1967, the "Summer of Love," and Monterey was the center of the world for a weekend with the Monterey Pop Festival on June 16-18. As a huge music fan and youthful musician myself, attending the Pop Festival was VERY important to me; it was a great opportunity to see some of the best bands in the world at the world's first major rock festival. Performers that Saturday afternoon included Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe & The Fish, Big Brother & The Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Steve Miller Band, Electric Flag, Al Kooper, Paul Butterfield, and Canned Heat. The Friday night before I had just seen Simon & Garfunkel, The Association, Eric Burdon & The Animals, and even 60's pop star Johnny Rivers.
But there was a conflict. I was supposed to pitch in a Babe Ruth League game that Saturday, June 17, beginning at Noon at El Estero Park with my team, Monterey Merchants, against the Kiwanis Pirates, the best team in the league. The Pop Festival was scheduled to start at 1:30. I didn't want to let my team down but there was no way I was going to miss the Pop Festival either. So I told my manager that I'd pitch through the top of the 4th inning but then had to leave for the show. He didn't like it but said "OK." (I figured that if each full inning lasted say 20 minutes, then I could get to the Monterey Fairgrounds [via my father, who was my "ride" - I was 15 and not yet driving yet!] in time for the first band scheduled at 1:30.)
Well, I did finish pitching the first 4 innings and our team actually was doing very well against the undefeated Kiwanis team that ended up winning the league championship. I don't remember feeling like I was throwing anything special - a few strikeouts but not that many; a bunch of hanging curves that they probably would have eventually adjusted to and then started drilling the ball. But for whatever reason they weren't effectively hitting me (yet!). So after keeping Kiwanis to one run after their four innings at-bat, I left right away after the top of the 4th; we were ahead 4-1 and our team was about to go to bat at the bottom of the 4th.
As I found out later, the rest of that game did not turn out well. We didn't score in the bottom of the 4th, and starting in the top of the 5th, Kiwanis proceeded to totally blow the game wide open. They scored five runs in the top of the 5th off the new pitcher. It got uglier and uglier; our team didn't hit and also made a bunch of fielding errors; Kiwanis continued to run up the score and ended up winning 12-5.
To their credit, Kiwanis was an explosive team with some very good singles hitters who got on base a lot; they also had some hitters with power. And I was surprised that I had pitched so well up to that point; it probably would not have lasted but who knows. Maybe I left at the perfect time, with my dignity still intact! Kiwanis had four all-star 15-year-old players including Curtis Monar, Sal Rombi, Tim DiMaggio, and John Pira along with some strong younger players like Fermin Sanchez and Jeff Millington. Kiwanis had good depth at most positions, and people with the ability to get on base and steal bases. They also had probably the best hitter and pitcher in the league - Curtis Monar. Luckily Curtis was not pitching that day - don't recall who it was. Anyway, maybe I was so amped up about the Pop Festival and so eager to end each inning as quickly as possible that my pitching somehow got better? I don't remember it that way at all but who knows.
I arrived at the Pop Festival maybe twenty minutes after the first band started playing and only missed a couple of songs by the opening act Canned Heat - which I couldn't have cared less about! Overrated,boring blues band (boring and blues are synonymous to me). I frankly never understood why they were invited to the Pop Festival to begin with.
After Canned Heat left the stage, the rest of the afternoon was phenomenal; maybe "miraculous" and "life-changing" might be a better description. I still remember Country Joe & The Fish's trippy and mesmerizing "Section 43" - the highlight of a great day along with great performances by Quicksilver Messenger Service and John Cippolina, along with Janis Joplin/Big Brother & The Holding Company. Janis sang the legendary "Ball and Chain;" that song got such an ovation that Janis was brought back to perform it again on Sunday night. (This is indeed a blues style song and I don't care for blues, but her performance here was off-the-charts brilliant and totally compelling; jaw dropping is a good description. She was on fire. Her whole performance was transcendent and she took that one song far beyond the three-chord predictable boring typical blues form - even with a pretty "average" band backing her up!)
That Saturday afternoon show that I saw with Janis / Big Brother wasn't filmed because of some sort of "rights dispute" over eventual use of the footage and recording; it somehow later got resolved before Sunday night; her filmed Sunday night performance of "Ball and Chain" is the one that is in the D.A. Pennebaker "Monterey Pop" movie.
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to those who have contributed to this site so far: Robert Stanton, Jeanne Stanton, Don Davison, Mark Smith, Joan Chapin, Kyle Wyatt, Martin Bradley, Marla Martin Anderson, Debbie Langdon Bradford, Lilly Hespen Menezes, Alan Herren, Mike Welch, Mary Jane Porter Perna, Susan Turner Pohlmann, Mark Bibler, Joe Cutrufelli, Jeff Sumida, Alice Valdez Gerschler, Jon Wren, Duke Quinones, Susie Rochon Henderson, Pat Duffy, Gerald Armstrong, Carl Becker, Mike Ventimiglia, Chuck Della Sala, Steve Martin, Tom Russo Sr., Mel Hagio, Rick Hattori, Randall Harris, Eddie Van Houtte, Jack Frost, Dennis Taylor, Pat Hathway, Victor Henry, and Dennis Copeland. We expect to be hearing from others soon!
Special thanks to those who have contributed to this site so far: Robert Stanton, Jeanne Stanton, Don Davison, Mark Smith, Joan Chapin, Kyle Wyatt, Martin Bradley, Marla Martin Anderson, Debbie Langdon Bradford, Lilly Hespen Menezes, Alan Herren, Mike Welch, Mary Jane Porter Perna, Susan Turner Pohlmann, Mark Bibler, Joe Cutrufelli, Jeff Sumida, Alice Valdez Gerschler, Jon Wren, Duke Quinones, Susie Rochon Henderson, Pat Duffy, Gerald Armstrong, Carl Becker, Mike Ventimiglia, Chuck Della Sala, Steve Martin, Tom Russo Sr., Mel Hagio, Rick Hattori, Randall Harris, Eddie Van Houtte, Jack Frost, Dennis Taylor, Pat Hathway, Victor Henry, and Dennis Copeland. We expect to be hearing from others soon!
