ROCK OPERA +
NOVEL-IN-STORIES PROJECT
SELECTED EXCERPTS
"Corduroy Feelings"
A Derek Moment Short Story in Seven Disasters
Copyright © 2025 Derek Morris. All rights reserved
A Derek Moment Short Story in Seven Disasters
Copyright © 2025 Derek Morris. All rights reserved
1. Real Trauma Energy
It all started with a favor. A favor I would live to regret the moment the subwoofer started dry-humping my pancreas.
"Derek, you're the only one I trust," said Marianne, my old friend from grad school, now a yoga- sculpted widow who still wore crop tops unironically at 64. "My daughter, Chardonnay, is performing tonight at this amazing little club in Santa Barbara. It would mean the world to her if you went."
"Chardonnay?" I said, trying not to blink too fast. "Like… the wine?" "She changed it from Jessica. Branding." Of course she did.
Marianne pressed the flyer into my hand. DJ ShaNaNa—spelled with a backward "N" and an accidental umlaut—Live @ Club Diphthong. Doors at 9. $25 cover. "It's hip-hop meets feminist trapcore with hyperpop influence and real trauma energy," she said proudly. I had absolutely no idea what any of that meant. I went anyway.
Why? Because I'm Derek Moment. A musician whose first paid gig was at age thirteen. A guy who saw Hendrix light up the stage at Monterey Pop. The kind of person who skipped his senior prom because he had a gig playing guitar in a Yardbirds cover band called Heart Full of Nazz. Someone who believes songs should have at least three chords - preferably six or seven, with actual melody and harmony (Is that asking too much?). I’m the type who thinks samples are something one gets at Costco. And I know the difference between reverb and delay, even if kids today think both come from a phone app.
But most of all, I'm a guy who can't say no to a woman who once helped me move a Vox AC- 100 amplifier up a flight of stairs in 1979.
2. Pre-Save My Heart
The bouncer at Club Diphthong had a man bun and a QR code face tattoo. His arms were like vegan watermelons: all natural but with enough tattoos to make you question whether they were organic. He scanned me repeatedly like I'd walked in from a PBS pledge drive. "You here for DJ ShaNaNa?" I nodded. "I'm on the guest list. Derek. DerekMoment. One word." He smirked and waved me in. The music inside was already leaking out of the bricks like a seizure in sound form.
The room was pitch dark except for flashes of magenta, acid green, and whatever color anxiety was. Fog machines pumped out a mist that smelled faintly like Juul pods and disappointment. I squeezed through a crowd of kids who looked like they were trying to dress like aliens who'd studied Coachella on mushrooms.
In the corner, a guy in a bucket hat was selling "limited-edition" ShaNaNa t-shirts for $45. One of them just said "VIBE HOE" in Comic Sans.
I sat at the back, ordered a club soda (because I like my liver and don't want to end up on Dateline), and waited for the future of music.
The house lights dropped. The bass rose. An earthquake of trap beats shook the room like a seizure in a laundromat. Out stormed Chardonnay, AKA DJ ShaNaNa, dressed in a Day-Glo ski mask and a mesh bodysuit that left very little to the imagination—and even less to dignity. Her opening line?
"Y'ALL EVER BEEN GHOSTED BY A GUY WHO'S STILL ON YOUR FAMILY PLAN?" The crowd roared. I blinked. Was that the lyric? Was that… the song? What followed was a 45-minute assault of Auto-Tuned tantrums, rhythmic glitching, and songs that sounded like Siri having a breakdown at Burning Man.
One track was called "CANCEL ME, DADDY." Another was "FYP or DIE." The chorus of that one was just her yelling "algorithm" over a beat that sounded like a fax machine mating with a jackhammer.
At one point, she held up a copy of The Feminine Mystique and screamed, "THIS ONE GOES OUT TO BETTY WHITE!" I clutched my soda like it was morphine.
About halfway through the set, I leaned over to the kid sitting next to me—some skate punk with glitter in his nostrils. "Hey," I shouted over the 120-decibel beat drop, "is this supposed to be ironic?" He turned to me with genuine confusion. "What's ironic?" My soul left my body for a brief moment and hovered above the dance floor, watching itself slowly give up.
She started her "encore" (we hadn't even clapped yet) with a song called "Pre-Save My Heart," a breakup anthem in which she rhymed "emotional bandwidth" with "OnlyFans myth." I experienced the first existential sneeze of my musical life at that moment. "I, Derek Moment-- a man who remembered when musicians actually played their instruments—was watching a person pretend to DJ. At the same time, her Spotify playlist played under her vocals, which were auto-tuned to a key unknown to Western music theory.
I thought of Lennon and McCartney, of the first time I heard 'Stairway to Heaven,' of real music made by real musicians. Then I thought of even faking a stroke so I could be wheeled out.
3. Who Are They?
When the lights came up, Chardonnay found me by the bar. "Uncle D!" she squealed and threw her arms around me. "What'd you think?!" (She's not my niece. I don't know why she keeps calling me that, but it's both sweet and deeply confusing.)
"You've got… presence," I said diplomatically. "And a powerful command of… mic volume." She was peeling off her neon arm warmers while checking her mentions. She beamed. "I'm building a following. It's not just about music anymore. It's like—emotional branding. I was channeling Megan, Rico, and Lana but like in a post-cis, sub-crypto kinda way, you know?" No. No, I did not know.
"I didn't recognize any of the songs," I offered. "Do you ever do any covers?" "Covers?" she repeated, horrified. "Like… of old stuff?" "Well, yeah. Maybe like a hip-hop twist on something classic. Stevie Wonder. Marvin Gaye. Even Blondie?" She blinked. "Who are they?"
After the show, DJ ShaNaNa and I had a little backstage chat. "Backstage" in this case meant a folding chair next to a mop sink behind the bar, under a flickering LED that gave everything a faint nuclear glow. Someone had Sharpied "NO POOPING" on the wall above a bucket of spilled Red Bull.
4. Was That The Queen?
"Have you ever listened to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?" I asked, against all better judgment. She paused. "I mean… yeah? That's the Beatles, right?" "Yes." "Was that the one where they did the cartoon? With the blue dudes?" "Close. That's Yellow Submarine. But Sgt. Pepper was earlier. It changed everything." "Is that the one with the walrus song?" "That's Magical Mystery Tour, technically." "Oh. Was that before or after Wings?" I blinked.
She continued, thoughtful. "'Cause I know Paul McCartney was in Wings, and my mom said he was in the Beatles too, but like… I thought Wings came first?" I stared at her like I'd seen someone bite into a cassette tape. "No," I said slowly. "Paul started Wings after the Beatles broke up." "Ohhh okay," she said. "I get them confused with Led Zeppelin. Wait—was Led Zeppelin the one that did 'Imagine'?" Or was that The Queen? "I need to sit down," I said, already sitting.
5. Mellotron… That's a Pokémon?
"Oh! Before you go, did you mention some other band during the show? Something… Moody?" I froze. "Yes. The Moody Blues." She nodded. "Are they… emo? The name feels emo." "Not exactly," I said. "They were British. Started in the mid-sixties. A little rock, a little classical. Very lush. Philosophical. Like if Tchaikovsky started doing acid and reading Carl Jung." "Wait—are they the ones who did that song that's like, 'Timothy Leary's dead'?" I stood up. "Yes. Yes, they are."
"Okay that one I've heard. It was in the background of a TikTok of someone feeding their bearded dragon to the sound of wind chimes."
"The song is called Legend of a Mind. It's a tribute. Leary was a Harvard psychologist who became an LSD guru."
"Oh my god, that makes sense. That track totally sounds like an edible hitting on a lava lamp." "They were the biggest band in the world in 1972. Their albums were spiritual experiences. Days of Future Passed. In Search of the Lost Chord. The 'classic seven.'"
"Mellotron… that's a Pokémon?"
"It's a keyboard that plays orchestral tape loops."
"So, like… analog Spotify?"
"Sure. But if Spotify could trigger an out-of-body experience."
6. Joni Michelle
I then made the fatal mistake of mentioning Joni Mitchell. It just slipped out, like a sigh from a wounded record collector. "You know," I said, "you'd probably lose your mind if you actually listened to Joni Mitchell." ShaNaNa perked up. "Ohhh yeah, I know her! Didn't she do that song about the taxi?"
I inhaled.
"Yes. Big Yellow Taxi. But that's like saying Mozart wrote the jingle for Pizza Hut. There's a lot more going on."
"Wait," she said, squinting. "Is she the one who dated Bob Dylan and then started Greenpeace?"
"That's... no. That might be seven different women mashed into one."
"No she's not the one who sang at that 'We Are the World' thing?"
"Nope. That's Cyndi Lauper. You're thinking of Joan Baez. Or Judy Collins. Or maybe Grace Slick if you accidentally took a gummy."
"Wait—she’s the one who sang with The Queen, right?"
"No. That's… again, not even close."
ShaNaNa nodded like she was entering a trance. "It's confusing. That whole 60s ladies-with- guitars thing. Like you could swap them out and it's still... vibes."
"No. No you could not." I was gripping the edge of my plastic chair. "Joni was—is—on another plane. Nobody wrote like her. Nobody played guitar like her. She used these wild open tunings that made the strings ring like they were trying to explain the universe to you." "Wow," she said. "Like... alternate tunings? Like lo-fi glitch chords?"
"No. Like soul chords. Space chords. She was the Hubble Telescope with a blonde perm. She leaned forward. "So did she, like... stay pure to her roots? Or did she sell out in the 80s like Sting?"
"She followed her muse into jazz. Some of it worked. Some of it confused even the muses." "But she's super peaceful and earthy, right?"
I hesitated. "Well... yes. But also, secretly, a chain-smoker."
Her eyes widened. "No way."
"Way," I nodded. "Like, kiss-her-and-taste-the-apocalypse levels of nicotine."
ShaNaNa frowned. "That feels off-brand." "Exactly! You'd expect incense. Maybe patchouli. But nah. Ashtray. Industrial-strength Marlboro poetry."
"She dated a lot of rock guys, right?" "Yes. Suppose you were a male singer-songwriter between '69 and '79, and you had feelings. In that case, odds are you either dated Joni Mitchell, wanted to, or were emotionally dismantled by her from across a coffeehouse."
"Damn," she said. "Power move."
"Listen to Amelia," I said quietly. "Just once. Put your phone away. Check out the YouTube video of her performing live at Santa Barbara Bowl in 1979. Let Jaco's bass crawl under your skin, and Pat Metheney's guitar envelop you. Let her voice float above you like a soul that's been to the desert and didn't quite make it back."
She stared at me. "Is this, like, on Spotify?"
"Yes."
"Is it a vibe?"
"It's the vibe."
She typed "Joni Michelle" into her phone. I didn't have the strength to correct her.
7. The Algorithm Cracks
It was late. The club had mostly emptied out. The fog machine had finally stopped exhaling trauma. ShaNaNa—technically, Chardonnay was sitting on a milk crate, sipping from a mason jar full of something aggressively purple. A half-eaten acai bowl was slowly curdling on a bass amp. I should've gone home hours ago, but something inside me—a tragic combination of boomer concern for the cultural soul of the nation and morbid curiosity—wanted to understand. So I asked her. "ShaNaNa—real talk. What do you actually love about all these rappers you're always talking about?" She lit up like someone had activated her PR software. "Ohmygod, okay, so like—Eminem is a genius lyricist, Kanye's a visionary, Drake is a vibe, 2Pac was real, Megan Thee Stallion is empowering, and Lil' Kim was, like, the original bad bitch." I held up a hand.
"Okay. Slow down. One at a time." She blinked.
"Wait… are we gonna do like a lyrical analysis?"
"We're going to do a reality check."
She looked intrigued. Also terrified. Now here's the thing. I've listened to this stuff. Not because I like it. Not because I believe in it. But because I made a real effort. I tried to distinguish between artists. I streamed the albums, read the lyrics, and watched the think pieces. I gave it more attention than she ever gave Blue or Abbey Road. And after all that? It's garbage. So, when I talk about these artists, it's not from a place of dismissal. It's from a place of informed disgust. I'm not the crank yelling, "Turn that crap down!" from his porch. I'm the guy who sat through it, took notes, lit the notes on fire and walked into the ocean.
"Eminem," I said aloud. "Fast rapping. Rhymes about trauma, spaghetti, and bathtubs full of homicide. Let's not act like he's Leonard Cohen."
"But his flows—"
"Yes. The ability to spit a dozen syllables a second over a Casio preset. That's not melody. That's auctioneering."
"Kanye? Used to sample soul records. Now he's a paranoid billionaire shoe-designer with the messiah complex of a failed Vegas magician."
She laughed nervously. "Okay but Yeezus was, like, raw."
"Raw like an undercooked Hot Pocket."
"Drake?" "He makes Instagram captions for people who confuse horniness with depth."
She clutched an invisible string of pearls. "You're brutal."
"I'm honest."
"2Pac?"
"Flashes of brilliance. But half the discography is just posturing over bad synth bass."
"Megan?"
"Great abs. Strong voice. But yelling 'bad bitch' over a bass drop isn't revolution—it's cardio class with branding."
"She's about empowerment!"
"She's about endorsements. It's not art. It's a guided meditation for twerking."
She went quiet. Her makeup looked like it was losing the will to live.
So I leaned in. "Be honest. When you listen to this stuff... do you actually love it? Or do you love that other people think you love it? That it plays well in the gym, in the Uber, on socials? Is this about music—or about the soundtrack of your curated identity?"
She stared down at her vape like it owed her an answer. Then said, "It slaps, though." I nodded slowly. "That's not an argument. That's a confession."
She paused. Then: "Honestly… I think I used to like it more. But now I feel like I'm listening to it because I'm supposed to. Like... if I play Joni Mitchell in the car, people think I'm old." "You're not," I said. "You're just awake for a moment. Savor it."
She looked around, like the room had suddenly gone out of fashion. "But like... if I start listening to Moody Blues and Neil Young, do I have to buy a vest?"
"Only if it's corduroy." We laughed. She didn't even know why. Then she added, almost a whisper: "Sometimes when I'm alone, I put on Blue. That one about California kills me. But I always skip it if someone else is around. I don't want anyone to think I'm… soft."
I nodded. "That's not soft. That's music. And you know what? It's okay to like something that wasn't designed by a marketing team in a strip mall."
"Yeah…" she said, trailing off. "But it doesn't get likes."
And there it was. That was the whole damn thing, right there. Not just music. Not just taste. An entire generation raised to confuse visibility with value. And in that moment, for just a flicker, I saw something in her eyes—a crack in the algorithm, a hesitation in the loop. Not enough to change her world. But sufficient to plant a seed. Maybe someday, years from now, she'll be driving alone. She'll hear A Case of You or The Story in Your Eyes or Southern Man, and she won't skip it. And maybe, just maybe, she'll remember the night her non-uncle called bullshit on the entire soundtrack of her curated life. It came at 1:12 a.m. A text. No emojis. That alone told me something was off. Hey, Uncle D (not my uncle), can u listen to something? Promise not to roast me? The link below it was a file labeled: “corduroy_feelings_(rough_take).m4a” I stared at it, as if it might explode. Now, I’ve received many things late at night from younger humans—angry Spotify links, blurry selfies, unsolicited crypto pitches—but this one felt different. Like it had weight. Or shame. Or maybe both.
I put on my headphones. The track was raw. Not in the “real talk over trap beat” kind of raw. I mean actually raw—finger squeaks on nylon strings, a voice cracking mid-syllable, no effects, no filters, no digital guardrails.
Jessica—yes, her actual name is Jessica, though she’d rather die than admit it in public—was playing an acoustic guitar in some alternate tuning I couldn’t place. Might’ve been open D. Might’ve been heartbreak. She wasn’t rapping. She wasn’t even trying to sound cool. She was... singing. Quietly. Like she was hiding from herself in a closet and letting the truth out through a crack in the door.
The lyrics hit harder than I was ready for: “I wear sarcasm like mascara / smear it when I cry” “I used to think silence was scary / now I press mute just to survive”
“This isn’t a flex / this is a hymn,” I said, closing my eyes. And there it was—the ache—the ache that real music carries when you stop trying to impress and just bleed.
Halfway through the song, a ghostly Mellotron came in, soft as memory. No beat drop. No twerking reference. She found air, space, and maybe a brushed snare on some lo-fi sample pack and used it with restraint.
Then came the bridge. “She drifted through a canyon hush/chords and silence in tandem.” “I think Joni would’ve liked me / if I hadn't learned to brand them.”
That one stopped me. After it ended, I just sat there. Not evaluating. Not critiquing. Just... stunned. And then she texted again: Pls delete if it’s cringe - i don’t want ppl thinking I like - chords - it’s not me. It’s just a version. I replied: “It’s the most you I’ve ever heard.” She didn’t answer for a few minutes. Then came this: “I listened to Blue again last night. All of it. I think I’m fkd up.”
I wrote: “That’s step one.” Then: “Play Amelia next. But don’t shuffle it. Sit with it.”
A long pause.
Then: “OK, but if I turn into a folksinger, pls smother me with your boomer vinyl.”
I smiled. “No promises. But I’ll bring Hejira to the intervention.”
Epilogue:
She kept it on her phone. 'It's just for me,' she replied a few weeks later when I texted her about the song. 'My secret stash of actual feelings.'
Maybe she shared it, maybe she didn't. I'd like to think it changed everything, that she traded her neon ski mask for a Martin guitar and never looked back. But I'm not her biographer. I'm the guy who just happened to be there the night the algorithm cracked.
I figured that was the end of the story. But three months later, she texted me a photo of her guitar leaning against a wall without a caption. I knew what it meant—she was writing again.
END
"My First Band (Age 13)"
Guitars, Glory, and the Cosmic Fork in the Road
A Derek Moment Short Story
Copyright © 2025 Derek Morris. All rights reserved
Guitars, Glory, and the Cosmic Fork in the Road
A Derek Moment Short Story
Copyright © 2025 Derek Morris. All rights reserved
Act 1. The Band That Never Was - Walk, Don’t Run (But Definitely Trip)
If you rewind the tape to Monterey, California - circa 1964 - you’ll find a twelve-year-old version of me standing on the existential fault line between childhood and adolescence. One foot still in Little League glory - grand slams in back-to-back All-Star games, a regional tennis tournament trophy on the shelf - quarterback of my junior high 7th grade football team … obsessed with sports, convinced I’d someday become a professional athlete in either baseball or tennis. Meanwhile, the other foot wobbled toward the unknown world of music, hormones, and hair growing in previously unremarkable places.
Enter: The Beatles.
February ’64. Ed Sullivan. Boom. The cultural asteroid hits. Life as we knew it - gone. Every kid with a pulse suddenly knew what they wanted: a guitar. Or at least to appear as if they had one.
My best friend since the age of four, Bob Stanton, was already a musical prodigy, playing the piano since before kindergarten. By sixth grade, he wasn’t just playing well - he was legitimately good. I went to his recital at Monterey Peninsula College that year - a room full of stiff-backed chairs, stiff-backed parents, and a nine-year-old Bob utterly owning it. Scales, phrasing, musicality - all there.
I caught him after the show by the soda machine.
Me: “Hey man… that was… actually really good.”
Bob: (grins) “Yeah?”
Me: “Yeah. Not kidding. Nailed it.”
Two eleven-year-old dudes trying not to admit we gave a damn - but we both knew. Bob had the gift.
By then, the guitar virus had mutated into a full-blown outbreak.
By age 13 in 7th grade, three of us decided to get together to play music together. Bob showed up with a Fender Jaguar—candy-apple red fading into radioactive orange, chrome hardware blinding enough to redirect aircraft, and more knobs and buttons and gizmos than the cockpit of a 747.
I countered with an Epiphone Wilshire - a solid-body in a vaguely teal, possibly algae-inspired finish. It was the poor man’s Les Paul, the budget icon of suburban garage-band mythology. (Back when Epiphone was still Gibson’s subsidiary - a scrappy but respectable little brother.) My amp? Semi-embarrassingly, a not cool but functional Sears Silvertone - solid-state, affordable, and scientifically proven to generate its own minor electric field. Crank the treble past 7 and you could fry an egg, demagnetize your house keys, and possibly sterilize small rodents. Not a Fender amp tone but loud enough to be heard. Bought, of course, from the same store where America sourced its washing machines, socket wrenches, and those backyard trampolines with no safety nets. A Fender tube amp? Please. That was luxury tech for trust fund kids and child actors - mere mortals, non-nepo-babies like me, stuck with enough Silvertone-generated invisible electromagnetic force field to sterilize houseplants.
A third musketeer joined us: classmate in almost all of our prior Vista Elementary classes, Nello, with his sunburst Aria hollow-body - the affordable import that said, “I care about tone... but I also care about allowance money.”
The Pre-Eagles Eagles
We all thought we were pretty cool guys by age 13. Actually—correction—we knew we were cool. Certified. Back in sixth grade, we even formed a club to make it official. We called ourselves The Eagles—a full seven years before some long-haired Southern California opportunists named Don Henley and Glenn Frey blatantly ripped us off. You're welcome, fellas.
Bob’s mom, who was wonderfully artsy and crafty and a talented painter - and a beautiful woman at the level of "model beautiful" with a very kind heart, made us these badass felt eagle patches in the shape of... what else ... cool eagles! We proudly sewed them (actually our mothers sewed them!) onto T-shirts and strutted around campus like junior Mafiosi in gym shorts. And man, it worked. Other kids were desperate to get in. Instant social capital. Applications pending. Membership: exclusive.
But then—bam—our brief taste of power got kneecapped by The Man. The principal called us into his office (cue ominous music) and, in that faux-gentle, condescending adult tone, informed us that we had to disband. Why? Because having a cool-kids club would make the other kids feel—wait for it—“left out.”
Left out.
We were stunned. Outraged. Our young minds immediately recognized this for what it was: early-stage social engineering. The first crude beta-test version of participation trophies. Reverse discrimination before we even knew there was a word for it.
This was teacher interference. A crime against natural selection. An assault on the sacred right of kids to self-organize into completely arbitrary pecking orders like every generation before us. Welcome to Monte Vista Elementary School folks, the "Worker Bee Training Facility for Early Kid Indoctrination" (WBTFEKI - an acronym that smoothly rolls off the tongue). We were prisoners in an institution lovingly designed to crush free expression, creativity, and any whiff of nonconformity. All streamlined for maximum efficiency using Henry Ford’s assembly line model, seasoned with a pinch of military obedience, and garnished with just a dash of middle-class guilt.
In hindsight, it was probably our first encounter with the brutal machinery of The System. We just thought we were making cool T-shirts.
The Living Room Sessions Begin - Disaster in C (or A?) Minor
Our little three-person band - without a name practiced in Bob’s shag-carpeted living room—very plush, very civilized—for a band of 13-year-old delinquents. His house sat at the top of Cuesta Vista, one of the highest spots in Monterey, with sweeping views perfect for contemplating your inevitable failure. Unlike most garage bands, we weren’t exiled to some freezing, oil-stained dungeon with exposed wiring and the scent of dead rodents. Nope. We set up right next to the family piano—elegant, respectable—like proper young gentlemen about to ruin someone’s afternoon.
Bob’s mom was cool. The dad was out of the picture by then—divorce, drama, the usual suburban opera. First song on the chopping block: “Walk, Don’t Run” by The Ventures. An instrumental—thank God. Not one of us possessed the intestinal fortitude to open our mouths and sing. Honestly, we barely had the spine to tune. The tension was so thick you could slice it with a Fender pick—medium gauge.
Bob: “Alright… one, two, three, four—”
SKRANG. Instant sonic carnage.
Bob: “Alright… one, two, three, four—”
SKRANG. Instant sonic catastrophe.
It sounded like someone threw a toaster into a bathtub... full of angry bagpipes... during an electrical storm.
Bob (grimacing): “Wait, wait—it’s in C minor.”
Nello (blinking): “What? I thought it was in A minor.”
I couldn’t stop myself.
Me: “Pretty sure it’s in ‘Holy crap, we suck.’”
Bob whipped his head around, eyebrows climbing into his hairline.
Bob: “Nello, you’re thinking of that ‘50s chord progression—C, A minor, F, G. That’s doo-wop, man. This ain’t a sock hop. This is surf rock. Different ocean. Different century.”
Nello shrugged and strummed something that sounded vaguely like music, or possibly a small appliance dying.
Nello: “Yeah, yeah... fair. But c’mon... it’s 1964. We’ve been bombarded with that do-wop crap since birth. It’s like polio - you think it’s gone, and then boom, it’s back in your spinal cord.”
Bob sighed, adjusted his Jaguar’s whammy bar, and gave me a look that said, “We are so screwed.”
Me (grinning): “Don’t worry. By the time we figure this out, the Beatles will have broken up anyway.”
But somehow… we locked in. Eventually, the riff started to click. It felt… real. Primitive. Electric. Like we’d accidentally tuned into some secret frequency only the three of us could hear - and frankly, the neighbors wished we couldn’t.
Pipeline was almost impossible to screw up. The melody is one of those dead-simple but instantly unforgettable surf riffs - practically designed for teenagers who barely knew where C was on the fretboard. I held down the fundamental pedal tone-rhythm guitar part - repetitive as hell but a great counter to the lead solo, but let’s not pretend it was anything more than plunk-plunk-plunk on the same two or three notes. Bob handled the lead - if you can call it “lead” - that unmistakable twangy melody that does all the heavy lifting. Nello used his sunburst Aria to crank out a bass line that was more or less functional - solid, root-note stuff with the occasional mistake (aka accidental jazz note) thrown in.
Shockingly... it worked. We actually made it through Pipeline without the wheels coming off. And for the first time, it felt like we were... well... a band.
Not a good band. Not a coherent band. But a band nonetheless.
That feeling - locking in together, staying in sync, creating something vaguely recognizable as music - was electric. Addictive. Pure dopamine in soundwave form.
Of course, that buzz led us to get cocky and immediately launch into Misirlou - which lasted about thirty seconds before it devolved into a chaotic wrist-destroying blender of tremolo picking, wrong notes, and mild physical injury.
But still - Pipeline was the proof of concept. For one glorious afternoon, we weren’t just three kids in a garage.
We were a rock band.
Sort of.
The Crash and Burn
And then, after a few more practices and a few more songs learned ... the band imploded.
Bob (one day, flatly, as he was prone to do. He didn’t sugar coat things, especially then. He is still one of my closest friend todays but is much more diplomatic): “Yeah, I don’t really need a band. If I need a bass part, I’ll just teach it to Joe Solis. It’s simple.”
Ouch. Straight to the chest. Joe Solis? The loud, non-academic but athletically gifted classmate in the dumb class who could barely read or spell? Who had no known musical interest or knowledge or skills but was a good football and baseball player and fellow athlete? I guess he could learn the bass. Was Bob right? Could anybody do this stuff? It was a rude awakening. Joe didn’t even own an instrument. Frankly I don't think he ever did. He was a symbolic reference. Bob wanted to do his own thing. Talk about getting dumped by text before text existed.
I tried to play it cool. “Yeah... okay... sure...” But inside? That was my first lesson in the brutal economics of band life: everyone’s replaceable. Even when they’re not. And here I was thinking this was perhaps the beginning of a Beatles-type future - three kids who had known each other since grade school on their way to fame and glory, just like Paul, George, and John. Hell, we were younger than the Beatles when they first met. We had that going for us. A head start! Illusions shattered.
So that was the end of the “band” with no name. Nello soon shifted from guitar to bass and then to drums. He was a poor guitarist at that age, and he knew it, lacking natural skills. Still, he became an excellent drummer, working professionally and moving to LA, where he nearly landed a major label record deal in the mid 80s with his band’s phenomenal demo single “Saturday Night Special.” (No you’ve never heard it before - it sadly never was released ... anywhere... to anybody). I still believe it could have been a big hit - it had 80's anthem quality . But it never reached the level of a record label contract, which back then was everything. Over time, Nello became more involved in production and sound engineering, eventually winning three Emmys for sound design on The X-Files. No joke. The kid who could barely find C minor became the mastermind behind every alien abduction you ever lost sleep over.
And me? I was left with my Epiphone, my Silvertone, and a sudden, burning resolve to try again.
Act 2: Nobody’s Children - The Garage Band That Almost Grew Up
The next band wasn’t some loose weekend jam in someone’s bedroom. This was a real band. A Monterey dream team assembled straight from the fertile soil of ABC Music - the second-largest music store in town, owned by Mike Marotta Sr., patron saint of half the Peninsula’s teenage musicians and supplier of bad financial decisions to every kid with a paper route. I was neighbors with Mike Jr and Dave and Mike and I were baseball teammates. We got together to play songs with each other once. These two young musicians liked what they heard from me and they immediately invited me to join the band.
We were ridiculously lucky. Thanks to Mike Sr.—father, music store owner, and part-time patron saint of teenage delusion—we had access to everything: amps, mics, PA gear, and even early gigs through his connections. Plus, the coveted ABC Music van, a glorious step up from cramming ourselves, two guitars, three amps, and a snare drum into Anthony Lucido’s pickup truck, which doubled as both tour bus and gear hauler for most of our early career-slash-mistake.
But the thing is... we actually got good. Fast. Developed a name. And pretty soon, we were booking our own gigs—no longer riding the coattails of our bandmate nepo-babies. Though, let’s be honest, we were perfectly fine exploiting the perks while they lasted.
The Lineup:
Alex Tumparov — Lead vocals, harmonica, stage presence, and a pair of sideburns so advanced they probably qualified for their own Social Security number. His voice? Gravelly. Jagger-ish. Sounded like a man who’d seen things—things a 14-year-old absolutely hadn’t. Looked older, too. Quasi-burned-out 18 going on 47. The perfect frontman for a teenage garage band teetering between ambition and chaos.
These days, Alex is a minister somewhere in the Phoenix area. Maybe found Jesus after a particularly sketchy opening act called Life. Not entirely sure. We reconnected by phone a few years back. Strangely, he remembered almost none of it—the gigs, the gear, the glorious mess. Meanwhile, I remember everything. Apparently, I was the designated future archivist of our collective disaster.
Mike Marotta Jr. - Keyboards, vocals, peacemaker. An eventual pro on the local circuit, playing accordion in a solid middle-of-the-road band that has covered Italian festivals, weddings, and private parties for decades. Very talented, especially on accordion, but adapted surprisingly well to his two handed (w no accordian buttons) little red Farfisa. Age 15-16.
Dave Marotta - Lead guitar. A seventh-grade phenom whose fingers moved faster than most people’s thoughts. A bit of an attitude, was prickly and a bit of a hot head. He knew he was pretty good; probably thought he was better than he actually was. But a committed musician. Not sure if he and Mike liked each other then. But they played music together well. A musical family for sure. Dave played a gorgeous cherry red Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow body, easily one of the most beautiful guitars ever made - the same model Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues played and still plays when he emerged a couple of years later in 1967. Dave went on to become a top-tier session bassist in LA. Age 13-14.
Bill Catalano - Drums. Age 16-17 Very solid drummer with real chops. Did not rush it - kept the beat well and was versatile. Very importantly, not only owned his own drums but also had a car. Which, in band economics, made him worth roughly his weight in gold. Having two band members with cars and drivers licenses was essential for transporting band members and equipment, said captain obvious. Remember that half the band including me was too young for drivers licenses. And it's not cool to have mom or dad chauffer the rock band to their own performances.
Anthony Lucido - Bass. The quiet one (every band needs one). Age 17-18. Solid, reliable, learned the parts and locked in, but didn’t exactly flood the room with creative ideas. Also had a pickup truck, which guaranteed his permanent spot in the band whether he liked it or not.
Derek Morris (Me) - Rhythm guitar, occasional lead, backup vocals, and general keeper of the vibe. Second youngest at age 14-15. I introduced at least a third of our cover tunes to the band (we didn’t write any songs then - that seemed too daunting) - though I often ran them through Mike, our de facto political frontman, so he could sell them to the others like it was his idea. I wrote out chord sheets for everybody in whatever key Alex could sing it in - which was often a negotiation in itself.
My guitar? An Epiphone Wilshire - a sweet little beast I’d picked up used from Dave a couple of years earlier when he leveled up to his Gibson ES-335. To this day, that ES-335 is still one of my all-time favorite guitar designs - elegant, flawless, absolutely iconic. Clean curves. Perfect balance. And the fact discovered later that Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues played one? Yeah... that sealed the deal on its cool factor.
Full disclosure - I finally now own an ES-335 myself now. Not the classic cherry red like Dave’s… or Justin’s… but in white with gold hardware. Because apparently, I have a thing for white guitars.
I also now own a white Epiphone Wilshire now - silver hardware, sleek as hell. Light and so comfortable to play. Epiphone’s answer to the iconic Gibson SG, but with no visual resemblance like the devil horns, but some of the same tonal qualities. A spiritual replacement for that original blue-green Wilshire I foolishly sold sometime in high school when I drifted away from bands for a while and was focused on good grades, going to a good university, and pleasing my parents, perhaps. Dumb move to sell it, but hey - I was a kid - life happens.
What can I say? Some guys collect watches. I collect guitars. White ones.
The Setlist: British Invasion with Swagger (and Selective Standards)
Our setlist was a curated tour of the British Invasion’s finest—Yardbirds, Kinks, Stones, Animals, Them—each song chosen for its ability to ignite a room and let us unleash maximum attitude with just the right amount of musical muscle. We weren’t interested in bubblegum pop, surf music, or Motown—not because we couldn’t handle it, but because we had standards. If it didn’t come with a side of grit and a riff you could play loud enough to rattle the windows, it didn’t make the cut.
We approached these songs with the confidence of musicians who knew their way around a fretboard and a backbeat. The Kinks’ power chords? Child’s play. The Stones’ swagger? We had that in spades. The Animals’ raw energy? Please, we practically bottled it. Our guiding principle: if it could be played with conviction, style, and just enough complexity to keep it interesting, it was in. And if it required a 12-string Rickenbacker and a choir of angels, we’d let someone else take that detour.
Now, about the Beatles. We respected the Beatles—who didn’t? But we also respected our own sanity. Their catalog is a minefield of tricky chord changes and harmonies that sound effortless on record but turn into a Rubik’s Cube in a garage with a couple of amps and a PA system that occasionally picks up the local AM radio. We did “Day Tripper” because that riff is iconic and, let’s be honest, it’s the Beatles at their most rock-and-roll. Anything more complicated, and we’d have needed a music theory PhD and a crash course in group therapy.
YouTube tutorials and rock songbooks? Not a thing yet. We learned the old-school way: by dropping the needle, rewinding the tape, and trusting our ears (and egos). If someone wanted to request “Good Vibrations” or “My Girl,” we’d politely suggest they take it up with the DJ at their cousin’s wedding.
So, our setlist was no accident. It was a deliberate, stylish, and occasionally defiant celebration of the songs that let us play to our strengths, crank up the volume, and remind everyone that attitude and talent, when combined, are a force to be reckoned with. Even when played by a bunch of teenagers aged 13-18.
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
Danceable? We didn’t care. Not for a second. Never even crossed our hormonally overloaded little minds—even though, yes, technically, we were playing dances. If you couldn’t figure out how to shimmy to “Get Off My Cloud,” well… that was your problem. Just get out there--ask her, you spineless wonder. You don’t need a “danceable” song to scrape together a shred of guts. Move. Your. Feet. Teenybopper. (Easy for me to say, of course. I was just as clueless. But from the stage? Oh, the sweet, temporary illusion of superiority. Up there, I was untouchable. Rejection wasn’t on the line for me—I didn’t have to risk the ask. I just had to play the chords, crank the amp, and let the music do the flirting. And if you struck out? Hey, buddy—not my fault. I was busy being awesome.)
The Name Change
Sometime in late ’66:
Alex: “How about... Magic Mushroom?”
Me: “Uh... what’s that mean?”
Dave: “I think it’s... y’know... a thing. Like... cool.”
Me: “Sure. Let’s do it.”
No one was doing mushrooms yet. As far as I knew. Perhaps the older guys did, but they never mentioned it. The name just felt... inevitable.
Gigs Galore
We were in demand. John Gardiner’s Tennis Ranch dances for their summer youth camps. That is where we started via the Marotta Sr connections. Then many private parties and business events. Some Elks Club teen dances and Monterey Youth Center dances - the two pinnacles of adolescent Monterey nightlife. Full PA. Lights. Applause. Pizza. Girls who thought we were cooler than we actually were.
Act 3: The Meagher Studio Incident - One Take to Immortality
If God ran a recording studio, it would look nothing like Meagher Electronics. This was Frankenstein’s lab with reel-to-reels.
Jim Meagher (the gruff overlord): “Two songs. One take each. No overdubs. You screw up - it’s on the record.”
Enter: Rusk & McGowan. Two Fort Ord soldiers moonlighting as crooners. Great suits. Great hair. Even better ambition.
Track One: “What Your Eyes Say, My Heart Hears” - syrupy ballad, heavy on sincerity, light on subtlety.
Mid-song, Dave flubs the short simple solo guitar fill at the end of the song as it fades out - a half step too high. Very noticeable, but at least it is at the end during the fadeout.
Dave (desperately): “Can we do that again?”
Meagher (without looking up): “Nope.”
Stamp it. Press it. Immortalized. Mistakes and all.
Track Two: “Baby Let Me Follow You Down.” A Dylan cover, half-baked and half-swing. We held it together with duct tape and caffeine.
Me (to Mike): “Think anyone notices we’re making this up on the fly?”
Mike: (shrugs) “Nah. They’re watching Rusk’s tie.”
The record got pressed - maybe a couple of hundred copies. Fifty went to the singers, and the Sable Knight club owner who funded the recording. No record deal resulted. Shocking! Each of us band members got two 45s. The rest eventually scattered to flea markets, Goodwills, and the occasional attic. Decades later, one surfaced at a Santa Cruz Goodwill 35-40 years later, got digitized, and ended up on MontereyBayMusic.com, a memory lane site for 1960s Monterey garage bands.
Proof: We existed.
Act 4: The Sable Knight
The Nightclub Debut Nobody Asked For
The Sable Knight was Monterey’s answer to Vegas... if Vegas was one room with sticky floors and a bartender named Earl.
We were underage. Nobody cared. Different era.
The crowd? Think: half-full, half-drunk, half-paying attention.
Rusk & McGowan took the stage.
Rusk: “This next song... is what your eyes say...”
Me (to Dave): “...my ears hear pain.”
We played both tracks from the record. Polite applause. Maybe someone dropped a tray of shot glasses - hard to say.
Me (to Dave, post-show): “Hey, man... do you think this counts as making it?”
Dave: “Depends. Do we get paid?”
Me: “No.”
Dave: “Then no.”
Act 5: Monterey Pop vs. Babe Ruth
The Great Escape
June 17, 1967.
Two worlds. One choice.
Babe Ruth Baseball: Monterey Merchants vs. Kiwanis Pirates. Noon.
Monterey Pop Festival: Quicksilver, Country Joe, Big Brother/Janis, Electric Flag. Starts 1:30.
I was the starting pitcher. Our team was leading 4–1 after four innings. Against the best team in the league.
Me (to the team coach): “I’m leaving after the fourth inning. Gotta go.”
Coach: (glares) “To where?”
Me: “...Look, it’s the Monterey Pop Festival. Kind of a big deal. Like... literally the biggest rock event in the history of the planet is happening this weekend. I was at Friday night’s show, and I’m hitting today’s afternoon and evening sets. So... here’s the deal. If I leave after the top of the fourth after pitching four innings, I can make it to the show by 1:30 when it starts. Sorry... but yeah, that’s what is happening.”
Shockingly, my coach was pretty cool about it. Probably figured, “Eh, it’s Derek. Let him go chase whatever teenage nonsense this is.” My teammates? Same. Most didn’t even realize I was leaving until they looked around and noticed the guy who was throwing the curveballs that was surprsingly stopping the most dominant team in the league wasn’t on the mound anymore.
And here’s the wild part — almost none of them even knew the Pop Festival was happening. I mean, this was Monterey, not some cow town in Nebraska. On the coast, one hundred miles south of San Francisco, the epicenter of the rock music world. It was 1967, later known as the Summer of Love. Yet somehow the fact that the single most important rock music event in human history was unfolding literally down the street went right over their heads. This was local yokel Monterey head-up-one's-ass cluelessness on a grand scale!
Which is still kind of shocking, considering none of them — that I’m aware of — had (yet) suffered any baseball-induced brain trauma. But hey life is long.
My Dad was waiting in the car - I was age fifteen with no driver license. We bolted. Straight to the fairgrounds. Missed half of Canned Heat's set - no loss. Way overrated. Then saw Quicksilver rip reality in half, Country Joe melt time, and then Janis Joplin and Big Brother & The Holding Company.
Janis. Holy. Hell.
Ball and Chain. Not a song - a nuclear meltdown in real-time. The sound of every broken thing in the universe being set on fire.
Back at the ballpark? Total collapse. Without me on the mound, the Merchants fell apart like a cheap lawn chair. Kiwanis steamrolled them 12–5. Absolute implosion.
Later, teammate and former bandmate Mike Marotta gave me the look. (By then, our band - Nobody’s Children / Magic Mushroom - had quietly folded a few months earlier. No drama. No fights. Just life pulling everyone in different directions.)
Mike: “Dude... you bailed and we fell apart.”
Me: “Yeah... but the Pop Festival? Unforgettable. Seriously, man - why didn’t you go? You’re a musician.”
Mike had no answer. Just this awkward dead-air pause… followed by a sudden subject change, like I’d asked him why he doesn’t floss or whether he believes in UFOs. To this day, I have no idea why Mike - a guy wired for music down to his mitochondria - didn’t go to the Monterey Pop Festival. Total unsolved mystery. Still fries my circuits.
I’ll give Mike this much — at least he never lied and claimed he was there. Can’t say that for everyone. There’s one guy — an acquaintance, classmate since elementary school — who still, to this day, swears he was at Monterey Pop. He wasn’t. I know it. Everybody knows it. Hell, his own dog probably knows it.
But he’s clung to that story for over fifty years like it’s printed right on his driver’s license — “Monterey Pop Attendee, Blood Type A+, Organ Donor.”
The closest this guy ever got to the festival was maybe catching a faint echo of Janis Joplin’s scream from his beach house two miles away — if the wind was blowing the right direction and if he stood perfectly still, cupped his ears, and prayed for a strong onshore breeze.
And honestly, even that’s probably generous. Retroactive musical cred? Desperation? Baffling. But somehow... on-brand. He always had this peculiar combination of arrogant blowhard meets subtly stealth bullshitter—carefully selective, only lying in areas where he figured nobody would call him out. Hard to describe. Not a chronic liar at all but somehow you didn't believe him. The sad part? I honestly think the guy just never had the brain wiring to truly appreciate music. He wanted to—badly—but couldn’t decode it, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t tell a G chord from a garage door spring. And that’s... well, tragic.
I might forgive him—if he weren’t, frankly, such an insufferable prick with zero true friends - he was perpetually distant - something off about the guy.
This is, no joke, the same guy who, at the tender age of 22, asked two of my best friends—guys who barely knew him—to be his best men at his wedding. Not one best man. Two. Both were utterly baffled—stunned to be invited at all, let alone drafted into the ceremonial inner circle.
To this day, they still joke they don’t remember which one was technically the best man. Frankly, neither does the groom. Honestly, maybe... nobody was.
Where Are They Now?
Meanwhile, brothers and former bandmates Mike and Dave regrouped soon after our band broke up, forming a trio with another great drummer who was more of a super-skilled, soft-playing jazz drummer. They leaned into the dinner-party circuit - playing smooth standards for older crowds who didn’t want to hear “Gloria” but loved “Misty.” Honestly? Smart move. Steady money, no cops breaking up the gig, no teenage drunken bar brawls, and people clapped whether you were good or not.
Mike still does it today - a well-respected, in-demand local musician in Monterey. His band’s a fixture at festivals, weddings, private parties - you name it. And credit where it’s due: the guy built a solid career doing what he loves.
Even if he somehow totally skipped the most important rock festival of all time. Still mystifying. Still weird. But hey we were kids.
Final Score:
Baseball: 0
Rock & Roll: Infinite
Coda: The Echo That Never Died
Looking back, it’s hilariously obvious. I wasn’t choosing between a game and a concert. I was choosing between who I was supposed to be... and who I actually was.
That summer locked it in: Music wasn’t a hobby. It was the main event.
Even today, when I pick up a guitar - a proper one now, white, clean, beautiful - and crank out “Walk, Don’t Run” or “Gloria”, it’s like flipping a switch straight back to Bob’s living room. Or the Elks Club. Or the Sable Knight. Or standing under a Monterey sky with Janis screaming the world apart.
It never left. It never will.
That was my first band. But it sure as hell wasn’t my last.
THE END - FOR NOW
(Cue feedback, applause, and at least one beer hitting the floor.)
If you rewind the tape to Monterey, California - circa 1964 - you’ll find a twelve-year-old version of me standing on the existential fault line between childhood and adolescence. One foot still in Little League glory - grand slams in back-to-back All-Star games, a regional tennis tournament trophy on the shelf - quarterback of my junior high 7th grade football team … obsessed with sports, convinced I’d someday become a professional athlete in either baseball or tennis. Meanwhile, the other foot wobbled toward the unknown world of music, hormones, and hair growing in previously unremarkable places.
Enter: The Beatles.
February ’64. Ed Sullivan. Boom. The cultural asteroid hits. Life as we knew it - gone. Every kid with a pulse suddenly knew what they wanted: a guitar. Or at least to appear as if they had one.
My best friend since the age of four, Bob Stanton, was already a musical prodigy, playing the piano since before kindergarten. By sixth grade, he wasn’t just playing well - he was legitimately good. I went to his recital at Monterey Peninsula College that year - a room full of stiff-backed chairs, stiff-backed parents, and a nine-year-old Bob utterly owning it. Scales, phrasing, musicality - all there.
I caught him after the show by the soda machine.
Me: “Hey man… that was… actually really good.”
Bob: (grins) “Yeah?”
Me: “Yeah. Not kidding. Nailed it.”
Two eleven-year-old dudes trying not to admit we gave a damn - but we both knew. Bob had the gift.
By then, the guitar virus had mutated into a full-blown outbreak.
By age 13 in 7th grade, three of us decided to get together to play music together. Bob showed up with a Fender Jaguar—candy-apple red fading into radioactive orange, chrome hardware blinding enough to redirect aircraft, and more knobs and buttons and gizmos than the cockpit of a 747.
I countered with an Epiphone Wilshire - a solid-body in a vaguely teal, possibly algae-inspired finish. It was the poor man’s Les Paul, the budget icon of suburban garage-band mythology. (Back when Epiphone was still Gibson’s subsidiary - a scrappy but respectable little brother.) My amp? Semi-embarrassingly, a not cool but functional Sears Silvertone - solid-state, affordable, and scientifically proven to generate its own minor electric field. Crank the treble past 7 and you could fry an egg, demagnetize your house keys, and possibly sterilize small rodents. Not a Fender amp tone but loud enough to be heard. Bought, of course, from the same store where America sourced its washing machines, socket wrenches, and those backyard trampolines with no safety nets. A Fender tube amp? Please. That was luxury tech for trust fund kids and child actors - mere mortals, non-nepo-babies like me, stuck with enough Silvertone-generated invisible electromagnetic force field to sterilize houseplants.
A third musketeer joined us: classmate in almost all of our prior Vista Elementary classes, Nello, with his sunburst Aria hollow-body - the affordable import that said, “I care about tone... but I also care about allowance money.”
The Pre-Eagles Eagles
We all thought we were pretty cool guys by age 13. Actually—correction—we knew we were cool. Certified. Back in sixth grade, we even formed a club to make it official. We called ourselves The Eagles—a full seven years before some long-haired Southern California opportunists named Don Henley and Glenn Frey blatantly ripped us off. You're welcome, fellas.
Bob’s mom, who was wonderfully artsy and crafty and a talented painter - and a beautiful woman at the level of "model beautiful" with a very kind heart, made us these badass felt eagle patches in the shape of... what else ... cool eagles! We proudly sewed them (actually our mothers sewed them!) onto T-shirts and strutted around campus like junior Mafiosi in gym shorts. And man, it worked. Other kids were desperate to get in. Instant social capital. Applications pending. Membership: exclusive.
But then—bam—our brief taste of power got kneecapped by The Man. The principal called us into his office (cue ominous music) and, in that faux-gentle, condescending adult tone, informed us that we had to disband. Why? Because having a cool-kids club would make the other kids feel—wait for it—“left out.”
Left out.
We were stunned. Outraged. Our young minds immediately recognized this for what it was: early-stage social engineering. The first crude beta-test version of participation trophies. Reverse discrimination before we even knew there was a word for it.
This was teacher interference. A crime against natural selection. An assault on the sacred right of kids to self-organize into completely arbitrary pecking orders like every generation before us. Welcome to Monte Vista Elementary School folks, the "Worker Bee Training Facility for Early Kid Indoctrination" (WBTFEKI - an acronym that smoothly rolls off the tongue). We were prisoners in an institution lovingly designed to crush free expression, creativity, and any whiff of nonconformity. All streamlined for maximum efficiency using Henry Ford’s assembly line model, seasoned with a pinch of military obedience, and garnished with just a dash of middle-class guilt.
In hindsight, it was probably our first encounter with the brutal machinery of The System. We just thought we were making cool T-shirts.
The Living Room Sessions Begin - Disaster in C (or A?) Minor
Our little three-person band - without a name practiced in Bob’s shag-carpeted living room—very plush, very civilized—for a band of 13-year-old delinquents. His house sat at the top of Cuesta Vista, one of the highest spots in Monterey, with sweeping views perfect for contemplating your inevitable failure. Unlike most garage bands, we weren’t exiled to some freezing, oil-stained dungeon with exposed wiring and the scent of dead rodents. Nope. We set up right next to the family piano—elegant, respectable—like proper young gentlemen about to ruin someone’s afternoon.
Bob’s mom was cool. The dad was out of the picture by then—divorce, drama, the usual suburban opera. First song on the chopping block: “Walk, Don’t Run” by The Ventures. An instrumental—thank God. Not one of us possessed the intestinal fortitude to open our mouths and sing. Honestly, we barely had the spine to tune. The tension was so thick you could slice it with a Fender pick—medium gauge.
Bob: “Alright… one, two, three, four—”
SKRANG. Instant sonic carnage.
Bob: “Alright… one, two, three, four—”
SKRANG. Instant sonic catastrophe.
It sounded like someone threw a toaster into a bathtub... full of angry bagpipes... during an electrical storm.
Bob (grimacing): “Wait, wait—it’s in C minor.”
Nello (blinking): “What? I thought it was in A minor.”
I couldn’t stop myself.
Me: “Pretty sure it’s in ‘Holy crap, we suck.’”
Bob whipped his head around, eyebrows climbing into his hairline.
Bob: “Nello, you’re thinking of that ‘50s chord progression—C, A minor, F, G. That’s doo-wop, man. This ain’t a sock hop. This is surf rock. Different ocean. Different century.”
Nello shrugged and strummed something that sounded vaguely like music, or possibly a small appliance dying.
Nello: “Yeah, yeah... fair. But c’mon... it’s 1964. We’ve been bombarded with that do-wop crap since birth. It’s like polio - you think it’s gone, and then boom, it’s back in your spinal cord.”
Bob sighed, adjusted his Jaguar’s whammy bar, and gave me a look that said, “We are so screwed.”
Me (grinning): “Don’t worry. By the time we figure this out, the Beatles will have broken up anyway.”
But somehow… we locked in. Eventually, the riff started to click. It felt… real. Primitive. Electric. Like we’d accidentally tuned into some secret frequency only the three of us could hear - and frankly, the neighbors wished we couldn’t.
Pipeline was almost impossible to screw up. The melody is one of those dead-simple but instantly unforgettable surf riffs - practically designed for teenagers who barely knew where C was on the fretboard. I held down the fundamental pedal tone-rhythm guitar part - repetitive as hell but a great counter to the lead solo, but let’s not pretend it was anything more than plunk-plunk-plunk on the same two or three notes. Bob handled the lead - if you can call it “lead” - that unmistakable twangy melody that does all the heavy lifting. Nello used his sunburst Aria to crank out a bass line that was more or less functional - solid, root-note stuff with the occasional mistake (aka accidental jazz note) thrown in.
Shockingly... it worked. We actually made it through Pipeline without the wheels coming off. And for the first time, it felt like we were... well... a band.
Not a good band. Not a coherent band. But a band nonetheless.
That feeling - locking in together, staying in sync, creating something vaguely recognizable as music - was electric. Addictive. Pure dopamine in soundwave form.
Of course, that buzz led us to get cocky and immediately launch into Misirlou - which lasted about thirty seconds before it devolved into a chaotic wrist-destroying blender of tremolo picking, wrong notes, and mild physical injury.
But still - Pipeline was the proof of concept. For one glorious afternoon, we weren’t just three kids in a garage.
We were a rock band.
Sort of.
The Crash and Burn
And then, after a few more practices and a few more songs learned ... the band imploded.
Bob (one day, flatly, as he was prone to do. He didn’t sugar coat things, especially then. He is still one of my closest friend todays but is much more diplomatic): “Yeah, I don’t really need a band. If I need a bass part, I’ll just teach it to Joe Solis. It’s simple.”
Ouch. Straight to the chest. Joe Solis? The loud, non-academic but athletically gifted classmate in the dumb class who could barely read or spell? Who had no known musical interest or knowledge or skills but was a good football and baseball player and fellow athlete? I guess he could learn the bass. Was Bob right? Could anybody do this stuff? It was a rude awakening. Joe didn’t even own an instrument. Frankly I don't think he ever did. He was a symbolic reference. Bob wanted to do his own thing. Talk about getting dumped by text before text existed.
I tried to play it cool. “Yeah... okay... sure...” But inside? That was my first lesson in the brutal economics of band life: everyone’s replaceable. Even when they’re not. And here I was thinking this was perhaps the beginning of a Beatles-type future - three kids who had known each other since grade school on their way to fame and glory, just like Paul, George, and John. Hell, we were younger than the Beatles when they first met. We had that going for us. A head start! Illusions shattered.
So that was the end of the “band” with no name. Nello soon shifted from guitar to bass and then to drums. He was a poor guitarist at that age, and he knew it, lacking natural skills. Still, he became an excellent drummer, working professionally and moving to LA, where he nearly landed a major label record deal in the mid 80s with his band’s phenomenal demo single “Saturday Night Special.” (No you’ve never heard it before - it sadly never was released ... anywhere... to anybody). I still believe it could have been a big hit - it had 80's anthem quality . But it never reached the level of a record label contract, which back then was everything. Over time, Nello became more involved in production and sound engineering, eventually winning three Emmys for sound design on The X-Files. No joke. The kid who could barely find C minor became the mastermind behind every alien abduction you ever lost sleep over.
And me? I was left with my Epiphone, my Silvertone, and a sudden, burning resolve to try again.
Act 2: Nobody’s Children - The Garage Band That Almost Grew Up
The next band wasn’t some loose weekend jam in someone’s bedroom. This was a real band. A Monterey dream team assembled straight from the fertile soil of ABC Music - the second-largest music store in town, owned by Mike Marotta Sr., patron saint of half the Peninsula’s teenage musicians and supplier of bad financial decisions to every kid with a paper route. I was neighbors with Mike Jr and Dave and Mike and I were baseball teammates. We got together to play songs with each other once. These two young musicians liked what they heard from me and they immediately invited me to join the band.
We were ridiculously lucky. Thanks to Mike Sr.—father, music store owner, and part-time patron saint of teenage delusion—we had access to everything: amps, mics, PA gear, and even early gigs through his connections. Plus, the coveted ABC Music van, a glorious step up from cramming ourselves, two guitars, three amps, and a snare drum into Anthony Lucido’s pickup truck, which doubled as both tour bus and gear hauler for most of our early career-slash-mistake.
But the thing is... we actually got good. Fast. Developed a name. And pretty soon, we were booking our own gigs—no longer riding the coattails of our bandmate nepo-babies. Though, let’s be honest, we were perfectly fine exploiting the perks while they lasted.
The Lineup:
Alex Tumparov — Lead vocals, harmonica, stage presence, and a pair of sideburns so advanced they probably qualified for their own Social Security number. His voice? Gravelly. Jagger-ish. Sounded like a man who’d seen things—things a 14-year-old absolutely hadn’t. Looked older, too. Quasi-burned-out 18 going on 47. The perfect frontman for a teenage garage band teetering between ambition and chaos.
These days, Alex is a minister somewhere in the Phoenix area. Maybe found Jesus after a particularly sketchy opening act called Life. Not entirely sure. We reconnected by phone a few years back. Strangely, he remembered almost none of it—the gigs, the gear, the glorious mess. Meanwhile, I remember everything. Apparently, I was the designated future archivist of our collective disaster.
Mike Marotta Jr. - Keyboards, vocals, peacemaker. An eventual pro on the local circuit, playing accordion in a solid middle-of-the-road band that has covered Italian festivals, weddings, and private parties for decades. Very talented, especially on accordion, but adapted surprisingly well to his two handed (w no accordian buttons) little red Farfisa. Age 15-16.
Dave Marotta - Lead guitar. A seventh-grade phenom whose fingers moved faster than most people’s thoughts. A bit of an attitude, was prickly and a bit of a hot head. He knew he was pretty good; probably thought he was better than he actually was. But a committed musician. Not sure if he and Mike liked each other then. But they played music together well. A musical family for sure. Dave played a gorgeous cherry red Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow body, easily one of the most beautiful guitars ever made - the same model Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues played and still plays when he emerged a couple of years later in 1967. Dave went on to become a top-tier session bassist in LA. Age 13-14.
Bill Catalano - Drums. Age 16-17 Very solid drummer with real chops. Did not rush it - kept the beat well and was versatile. Very importantly, not only owned his own drums but also had a car. Which, in band economics, made him worth roughly his weight in gold. Having two band members with cars and drivers licenses was essential for transporting band members and equipment, said captain obvious. Remember that half the band including me was too young for drivers licenses. And it's not cool to have mom or dad chauffer the rock band to their own performances.
Anthony Lucido - Bass. The quiet one (every band needs one). Age 17-18. Solid, reliable, learned the parts and locked in, but didn’t exactly flood the room with creative ideas. Also had a pickup truck, which guaranteed his permanent spot in the band whether he liked it or not.
Derek Morris (Me) - Rhythm guitar, occasional lead, backup vocals, and general keeper of the vibe. Second youngest at age 14-15. I introduced at least a third of our cover tunes to the band (we didn’t write any songs then - that seemed too daunting) - though I often ran them through Mike, our de facto political frontman, so he could sell them to the others like it was his idea. I wrote out chord sheets for everybody in whatever key Alex could sing it in - which was often a negotiation in itself.
My guitar? An Epiphone Wilshire - a sweet little beast I’d picked up used from Dave a couple of years earlier when he leveled up to his Gibson ES-335. To this day, that ES-335 is still one of my all-time favorite guitar designs - elegant, flawless, absolutely iconic. Clean curves. Perfect balance. And the fact discovered later that Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues played one? Yeah... that sealed the deal on its cool factor.
Full disclosure - I finally now own an ES-335 myself now. Not the classic cherry red like Dave’s… or Justin’s… but in white with gold hardware. Because apparently, I have a thing for white guitars.
I also now own a white Epiphone Wilshire now - silver hardware, sleek as hell. Light and so comfortable to play. Epiphone’s answer to the iconic Gibson SG, but with no visual resemblance like the devil horns, but some of the same tonal qualities. A spiritual replacement for that original blue-green Wilshire I foolishly sold sometime in high school when I drifted away from bands for a while and was focused on good grades, going to a good university, and pleasing my parents, perhaps. Dumb move to sell it, but hey - I was a kid - life happens.
What can I say? Some guys collect watches. I collect guitars. White ones.
The Setlist: British Invasion with Swagger (and Selective Standards)
Our setlist was a curated tour of the British Invasion’s finest—Yardbirds, Kinks, Stones, Animals, Them—each song chosen for its ability to ignite a room and let us unleash maximum attitude with just the right amount of musical muscle. We weren’t interested in bubblegum pop, surf music, or Motown—not because we couldn’t handle it, but because we had standards. If it didn’t come with a side of grit and a riff you could play loud enough to rattle the windows, it didn’t make the cut.
We approached these songs with the confidence of musicians who knew their way around a fretboard and a backbeat. The Kinks’ power chords? Child’s play. The Stones’ swagger? We had that in spades. The Animals’ raw energy? Please, we practically bottled it. Our guiding principle: if it could be played with conviction, style, and just enough complexity to keep it interesting, it was in. And if it required a 12-string Rickenbacker and a choir of angels, we’d let someone else take that detour.
Now, about the Beatles. We respected the Beatles—who didn’t? But we also respected our own sanity. Their catalog is a minefield of tricky chord changes and harmonies that sound effortless on record but turn into a Rubik’s Cube in a garage with a couple of amps and a PA system that occasionally picks up the local AM radio. We did “Day Tripper” because that riff is iconic and, let’s be honest, it’s the Beatles at their most rock-and-roll. Anything more complicated, and we’d have needed a music theory PhD and a crash course in group therapy.
YouTube tutorials and rock songbooks? Not a thing yet. We learned the old-school way: by dropping the needle, rewinding the tape, and trusting our ears (and egos). If someone wanted to request “Good Vibrations” or “My Girl,” we’d politely suggest they take it up with the DJ at their cousin’s wedding.
So, our setlist was no accident. It was a deliberate, stylish, and occasionally defiant celebration of the songs that let us play to our strengths, crank up the volume, and remind everyone that attitude and talent, when combined, are a force to be reckoned with. Even when played by a bunch of teenagers aged 13-18.
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
Danceable? We didn’t care. Not for a second. Never even crossed our hormonally overloaded little minds—even though, yes, technically, we were playing dances. If you couldn’t figure out how to shimmy to “Get Off My Cloud,” well… that was your problem. Just get out there--ask her, you spineless wonder. You don’t need a “danceable” song to scrape together a shred of guts. Move. Your. Feet. Teenybopper. (Easy for me to say, of course. I was just as clueless. But from the stage? Oh, the sweet, temporary illusion of superiority. Up there, I was untouchable. Rejection wasn’t on the line for me—I didn’t have to risk the ask. I just had to play the chords, crank the amp, and let the music do the flirting. And if you struck out? Hey, buddy—not my fault. I was busy being awesome.)
The Name Change
Sometime in late ’66:
Alex: “How about... Magic Mushroom?”
Me: “Uh... what’s that mean?”
Dave: “I think it’s... y’know... a thing. Like... cool.”
Me: “Sure. Let’s do it.”
No one was doing mushrooms yet. As far as I knew. Perhaps the older guys did, but they never mentioned it. The name just felt... inevitable.
Gigs Galore
We were in demand. John Gardiner’s Tennis Ranch dances for their summer youth camps. That is where we started via the Marotta Sr connections. Then many private parties and business events. Some Elks Club teen dances and Monterey Youth Center dances - the two pinnacles of adolescent Monterey nightlife. Full PA. Lights. Applause. Pizza. Girls who thought we were cooler than we actually were.
Act 3: The Meagher Studio Incident - One Take to Immortality
If God ran a recording studio, it would look nothing like Meagher Electronics. This was Frankenstein’s lab with reel-to-reels.
Jim Meagher (the gruff overlord): “Two songs. One take each. No overdubs. You screw up - it’s on the record.”
Enter: Rusk & McGowan. Two Fort Ord soldiers moonlighting as crooners. Great suits. Great hair. Even better ambition.
Track One: “What Your Eyes Say, My Heart Hears” - syrupy ballad, heavy on sincerity, light on subtlety.
Mid-song, Dave flubs the short simple solo guitar fill at the end of the song as it fades out - a half step too high. Very noticeable, but at least it is at the end during the fadeout.
Dave (desperately): “Can we do that again?”
Meagher (without looking up): “Nope.”
Stamp it. Press it. Immortalized. Mistakes and all.
Track Two: “Baby Let Me Follow You Down.” A Dylan cover, half-baked and half-swing. We held it together with duct tape and caffeine.
Me (to Mike): “Think anyone notices we’re making this up on the fly?”
Mike: (shrugs) “Nah. They’re watching Rusk’s tie.”
The record got pressed - maybe a couple of hundred copies. Fifty went to the singers, and the Sable Knight club owner who funded the recording. No record deal resulted. Shocking! Each of us band members got two 45s. The rest eventually scattered to flea markets, Goodwills, and the occasional attic. Decades later, one surfaced at a Santa Cruz Goodwill 35-40 years later, got digitized, and ended up on MontereyBayMusic.com, a memory lane site for 1960s Monterey garage bands.
Proof: We existed.
Act 4: The Sable Knight
The Nightclub Debut Nobody Asked For
The Sable Knight was Monterey’s answer to Vegas... if Vegas was one room with sticky floors and a bartender named Earl.
We were underage. Nobody cared. Different era.
The crowd? Think: half-full, half-drunk, half-paying attention.
Rusk & McGowan took the stage.
Rusk: “This next song... is what your eyes say...”
Me (to Dave): “...my ears hear pain.”
We played both tracks from the record. Polite applause. Maybe someone dropped a tray of shot glasses - hard to say.
Me (to Dave, post-show): “Hey, man... do you think this counts as making it?”
Dave: “Depends. Do we get paid?”
Me: “No.”
Dave: “Then no.”
Act 5: Monterey Pop vs. Babe Ruth
The Great Escape
June 17, 1967.
Two worlds. One choice.
Babe Ruth Baseball: Monterey Merchants vs. Kiwanis Pirates. Noon.
Monterey Pop Festival: Quicksilver, Country Joe, Big Brother/Janis, Electric Flag. Starts 1:30.
I was the starting pitcher. Our team was leading 4–1 after four innings. Against the best team in the league.
Me (to the team coach): “I’m leaving after the fourth inning. Gotta go.”
Coach: (glares) “To where?”
Me: “...Look, it’s the Monterey Pop Festival. Kind of a big deal. Like... literally the biggest rock event in the history of the planet is happening this weekend. I was at Friday night’s show, and I’m hitting today’s afternoon and evening sets. So... here’s the deal. If I leave after the top of the fourth after pitching four innings, I can make it to the show by 1:30 when it starts. Sorry... but yeah, that’s what is happening.”
Shockingly, my coach was pretty cool about it. Probably figured, “Eh, it’s Derek. Let him go chase whatever teenage nonsense this is.” My teammates? Same. Most didn’t even realize I was leaving until they looked around and noticed the guy who was throwing the curveballs that was surprsingly stopping the most dominant team in the league wasn’t on the mound anymore.
And here’s the wild part — almost none of them even knew the Pop Festival was happening. I mean, this was Monterey, not some cow town in Nebraska. On the coast, one hundred miles south of San Francisco, the epicenter of the rock music world. It was 1967, later known as the Summer of Love. Yet somehow the fact that the single most important rock music event in human history was unfolding literally down the street went right over their heads. This was local yokel Monterey head-up-one's-ass cluelessness on a grand scale!
Which is still kind of shocking, considering none of them — that I’m aware of — had (yet) suffered any baseball-induced brain trauma. But hey life is long.
My Dad was waiting in the car - I was age fifteen with no driver license. We bolted. Straight to the fairgrounds. Missed half of Canned Heat's set - no loss. Way overrated. Then saw Quicksilver rip reality in half, Country Joe melt time, and then Janis Joplin and Big Brother & The Holding Company.
Janis. Holy. Hell.
Ball and Chain. Not a song - a nuclear meltdown in real-time. The sound of every broken thing in the universe being set on fire.
Back at the ballpark? Total collapse. Without me on the mound, the Merchants fell apart like a cheap lawn chair. Kiwanis steamrolled them 12–5. Absolute implosion.
Later, teammate and former bandmate Mike Marotta gave me the look. (By then, our band - Nobody’s Children / Magic Mushroom - had quietly folded a few months earlier. No drama. No fights. Just life pulling everyone in different directions.)
Mike: “Dude... you bailed and we fell apart.”
Me: “Yeah... but the Pop Festival? Unforgettable. Seriously, man - why didn’t you go? You’re a musician.”
Mike had no answer. Just this awkward dead-air pause… followed by a sudden subject change, like I’d asked him why he doesn’t floss or whether he believes in UFOs. To this day, I have no idea why Mike - a guy wired for music down to his mitochondria - didn’t go to the Monterey Pop Festival. Total unsolved mystery. Still fries my circuits.
I’ll give Mike this much — at least he never lied and claimed he was there. Can’t say that for everyone. There’s one guy — an acquaintance, classmate since elementary school — who still, to this day, swears he was at Monterey Pop. He wasn’t. I know it. Everybody knows it. Hell, his own dog probably knows it.
But he’s clung to that story for over fifty years like it’s printed right on his driver’s license — “Monterey Pop Attendee, Blood Type A+, Organ Donor.”
The closest this guy ever got to the festival was maybe catching a faint echo of Janis Joplin’s scream from his beach house two miles away — if the wind was blowing the right direction and if he stood perfectly still, cupped his ears, and prayed for a strong onshore breeze.
And honestly, even that’s probably generous. Retroactive musical cred? Desperation? Baffling. But somehow... on-brand. He always had this peculiar combination of arrogant blowhard meets subtly stealth bullshitter—carefully selective, only lying in areas where he figured nobody would call him out. Hard to describe. Not a chronic liar at all but somehow you didn't believe him. The sad part? I honestly think the guy just never had the brain wiring to truly appreciate music. He wanted to—badly—but couldn’t decode it, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t tell a G chord from a garage door spring. And that’s... well, tragic.
I might forgive him—if he weren’t, frankly, such an insufferable prick with zero true friends - he was perpetually distant - something off about the guy.
This is, no joke, the same guy who, at the tender age of 22, asked two of my best friends—guys who barely knew him—to be his best men at his wedding. Not one best man. Two. Both were utterly baffled—stunned to be invited at all, let alone drafted into the ceremonial inner circle.
To this day, they still joke they don’t remember which one was technically the best man. Frankly, neither does the groom. Honestly, maybe... nobody was.
Where Are They Now?
Meanwhile, brothers and former bandmates Mike and Dave regrouped soon after our band broke up, forming a trio with another great drummer who was more of a super-skilled, soft-playing jazz drummer. They leaned into the dinner-party circuit - playing smooth standards for older crowds who didn’t want to hear “Gloria” but loved “Misty.” Honestly? Smart move. Steady money, no cops breaking up the gig, no teenage drunken bar brawls, and people clapped whether you were good or not.
Mike still does it today - a well-respected, in-demand local musician in Monterey. His band’s a fixture at festivals, weddings, private parties - you name it. And credit where it’s due: the guy built a solid career doing what he loves.
Even if he somehow totally skipped the most important rock festival of all time. Still mystifying. Still weird. But hey we were kids.
Final Score:
Baseball: 0
Rock & Roll: Infinite
Coda: The Echo That Never Died
Looking back, it’s hilariously obvious. I wasn’t choosing between a game and a concert. I was choosing between who I was supposed to be... and who I actually was.
That summer locked it in: Music wasn’t a hobby. It was the main event.
Even today, when I pick up a guitar - a proper one now, white, clean, beautiful - and crank out “Walk, Don’t Run” or “Gloria”, it’s like flipping a switch straight back to Bob’s living room. Or the Elks Club. Or the Sable Knight. Or standing under a Monterey sky with Janis screaming the world apart.
It never left. It never will.
That was my first band. But it sure as hell wasn’t my last.
THE END - FOR NOW
(Cue feedback, applause, and at least one beer hitting the floor.)
Derek, Bob & Nello - actually band photos were never taken.
Photoshopped from our 7th grade football team photo.
Photoshopped from our 7th grade football team photo.
The enchanting Sable Knight night club where we debuted the two singles, backing the two crooners
These singles went straight to #1 in the Billboard 100. With a bullet!