On the way home in Sub-A-Lub Jim said, “Ron wants to make you guys Vancouver's first speed band.”
“That's just not going to happen,” said Lindsay firmly.
Geoff laughed, “Unless you want us to play a four hour gig in two hours every fuckin' night.”
I was glad Lindsay and Geoff put the brakes on this one.
Halloween was a school night that year. When I got home at around one o’clock, my mom and dad were asleep. I crawled on top of my bed and lay awake all night. I tossed and turned and chewed the insides of my cheeks raw. When I got up to go to school, I had a splitting headache and a pain in my chest. I ached all over.
I was seventeen years old. I had natural speed. I didn't need to induce it. I never took speed again.
We were quickly earning a good reputation. We started to get more bookings all over town. We played community centres, high schools and one very memorable private gig in November.
We were hired to play a Debutante Ball for a wealthy family at their brick & ivy fourteen-chimney mansion on South West Marine Drive. The occasion was a 'coming-out' party for the family’s eldest daughter on her eighteenth birthday. They had five daughters in all with the youngest being thirteen. We set up in the basement rec-room, which was the size of a nightclub, and watched as the five daughters, their friends and their dates assembled at the other end of the room. The girls, all in formal party dresses, had their hair in elaborate coifs of intricate blonde ringlets. The boys wore ill-fitting powder blue tuxedos. They were a little embarrassed and we were somewhat uncomfortable so, just before the first set, the band dropped acid.
The first set went well. The kids worked up their nerve and began to dance self-consciously. But, by the time we were ready for our first break I was starting to peak.
It was good stuff and I was already hurling down the first hill of the coaster ride. I lost all track of time while exploring the catacomb of rooms in the basement. Steve found a door and opened it. There was a set of stairs. He looked around at us then turned and started up. Geoff grinned a Cheshire Cat grin and went up after him. Lindsay looked irritated but followed. I was right behind him. John never liked an adventure into the unknown but he wasn’t going to be left down there alone. He joined us on the stairs.
My eyes were strobing as I felt my way up the dark passage. We came out into a spacious hallway. The house was opulent with marble floors, carved woodwork and crystal chandeliers. Steve led the way towards a warm light. We entered what I assumed was the den. Father was sitting in a huge leather armchair reading the newspaper. He looked like Ray Milland as the multi-millionaire up-tight father in the movie, Love Story. His wife was sitting nearby reading a book.
There was a full size grand piano in the centre of the room. John went straight over to it, sat down and lifted the lid. The father was speechless when he noticed him. John ignored him and began to play. The wife put down her book and listened.
“Who the Hell are you?” inquired Father more flabbergasted than angry.
“Hi Daddy-O,” said Geoff. “We’re your musicians. We’re taking a break and wanted to introduce ourselves.”
“But, what about the children?” he asked sternly.
“Oh, I think they’re havin’ a ball without us,” Geoff said in his best Eddie Haskel impression. “You know kids.”
The glow from the fire in the massive stone hearth made the room look like it was pulsating; alternating yellow then red, yellow then red, yellow then red.
“Would you boys like some tea?” asked the missus.
Geoff and Steve went off with her to prepare tea. Lindsay sat down with Father and engaged him in a political discussion; the poor man didn’t stand a chance. John’s fingers danced over the perfect black and white keys; sometimes light and airy and then pounding out the smokin’ boogie woogie that he was so good at.
Tea was served and we all settled in for the evening. At times one or more of the girls would come up. Eventually, all five girls were gathered around us all cozy in front of the fireplace. We never played another note. At the end of the night Father and his wife and all five daughters walked us out to Sub-A-Lub and stood outside in the rain waving their best 'y’all cum back now' wave as we drove off up the winding treed driveway.
In December, Vancouver was introduced to an entirely new concept in radio broadcasting, the FM underground. They only experimented late at night with free form music. That meant music that wasn't pre-programmed top-forty. The new deejays like Bill Reiter, Terry David Mulligan and JB Shayne could play anything and say almost anything they wanted. For the first time, we could hear songs like Son of Suzy Creamcheese by Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention on the radio:
Suzy Creamcheese, Oh, baby now
What's got into you
Suzy Creamcheese, Oh, mama now
What's got into you
JB Shayne was pretty out there. He had a whole array of strange and wacky characters and he slipped from one to another whenever he felt like it. There were no rules in the Underground. Sometimes JB would even resort to the number one sin in radio – dead air.
Jim was a good friend of JB's so, on occasion some group of us would drop acid, sneak into the station in the middle of the night and sit on the floor of the control room listening to JB do his show.
On December 9th, Jim arrived at our practice in the small rec-room of Steve’s parents place in Oakridge. He brought us a record titled, Live In Europe by Otis Redding. We spent the next forty minutes spellbound by Redding and his dynamic band featuring Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn and Al Jackson Jr. and the Mar-Keys horn section. Redding’s rendition of These Arms Of Mine made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up and his vigorous strut & scat style of Respect and Can’t Turn You Loose was the most powerful music I had ever heard. We learned Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song) and the timeless, Try a Little Tenderness on the spot.
The next day, December 10, 1967, Otis Redding died in a plane crash near Madison, Wisconsin. I was shocked and saddened, but I had learned that night that there are many forms of incredible music out there and I should open my ears and listen for it without prejudice. I’m not talking about racial bigotry; I believe that all persons, white, black, green, yellow, purple or polka-dot are made of the same stuff and I give each person an equal opportunity to prove to me whether he or she is an asshole, but I am talking about musical bias. I discovered that there is good and bad everything; rock, jazz, opera and both county and western and that I just need to look for the good in each genre.
Chapter Five 1968
We were spending a lot of time at The Retinal Circus. We tried to rehearse there one Sunday afternoon but we had dropped acid and we weren't getting anything done. Every time we tried to play something, we would get stuck playing one note for an indeterminable length of time. It sounded amazing to just bash the snare drum as hard as I could and then sit there and listen as the sound reverberated around the room, each wave getting slightly quieter than the one before but never seeming to die out completely.
Geoff and Jocelyn were all over each other. There was more to it than mere mortal love; they were already connected in a deeper bond. After a long hushed discussion together they disappeared into the band room. When he emerged, Geoff was so stoned he was unable to walk on his own.
It wasn’t much of a rehearsal but I was having a lot of fun toying with the deranged sound. I tried not to notice that Geoff was not having fun. He had collapsed