We were scheduled to play a date in Edmonton but Geoff was in jail serving his time for storming the police station. It was a big gig at an arena called the Kinsmen Field House. We were broke, as usual, and needed the money so we hatched an idiotic plan to stick Terry out front as our lead singer/mascot. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was the best we could do on an empty stomach.
I was about to take my first ever airplane ride. We arrived at the old Vancouver Municipal Airport on a beautiful, clear day. There, gleaming in the sunshine out on the Tarmac was our shiny four-prop Viscount. The Viscount had forty-three seats but there were only nine passengers in total on board; Lindsay, Steve, John and I plus our stand-in singer Terry, Geoff's former brother-in-law who was also our new soundman Jeff, and three businessmen.
We sat together at the back and the businessmen huddled together at the front. Even with such a small contingent there were still four stewardesses on board to cater to our every need. All four of them spent the entire flight back with us mixing cocktails and flirting like schoolgirls. The poor businessmen went dry. This was in an age before the Women’s Movement had taken over, so 'fly-girls' was still a euphemism for 'party-girls'. These girls bent over backwards to enlarge their reputation. They poured us off the plane in Edmonton happy, satisfied customers. One of them filled my pockets with tiny liquor bottles for later.
The Kinsmen Field House was an enormous hangar-like room with a dirt floor. Edmonton is in northern Alberta, home to cowboys and oil barons, and can get bitterly cold in winter, so the Kinsmen Field House was built so that humans could play soccer in the winter without freezing to death. Unfortunately, they also used it for rock shows. It was cruel punishment for all the bands on the bill including the great local bands, Willy & The Walkers with Willy McCaulder and Graham & The Wafers featuring organist/vocalist Bruce Nessel.
In a normal situation the terrible acoustics would have made us sound like shit but, in this case, it actually helped us because few people could tell that we had no lead singer and generally stunk the place up. The only person who did notice was the promoter, a pretty young hippie/cowgirl with plenty of curly hair and wearing a fringed buckskin jacket. Her name was Sorelle Saidman. She didn’t seem too pissed off and paid us anyway.
After the show, we booked into the Greenbrier Hotel in downtown Edmonton with a newly acquired entourage of partiers in tow. We had two adjoining rooms for the whole group. Almost instantly Jeff had the connecting door open and had instigated a nude party. John was appalled and I still hadn’t acquired a taste for public nudity so we went off and found a booth in the hotel lounge. We sat in there, drinking Blue Mondays until they threw us out.
Twice during the evening we laughed, watching through the lounge window, as the police arrived to quell the noise from our rooms. On the third try, they shut it down. When I got back Jeff, Lindsay, Steve and Terry were passed out naked on the floor with all of the doors open and all of the lights on.
We were all hung over when we flew home the next day; much to the disappointment of the sky waitresses who were hoping to party with us again.
Geoff got sprung and life returned to its usual chaos. We played a week at the Village Bistro. John Hall & His Orchestraopened the show with The Spores coming on for a set before the headline act, The Seeds of Time.
With John on piano and organ and me, his orchestra, on drums we were a drastic departure from the music of The Seeds of Time. We played a blues instrumental titled, Watermellon Man and Sunny by Bobby Hebb and even a version of Blue Rondo a la Turk, the experimental jazz masterpiece from The Dave Brubeck Quartet album titled, Time Out. The piece was radical in 9/8 time. It was blasphemous for me to even attempt to cover drummer Joe Morello’s brilliant work on this tune, counting 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3 all the way through the piece, but I was nothing if not profane.
The Spores, with Geoff on drums, was more of a raw rock trio. Lindsay and Geoff wrote a song titled, My Home Town, which they debuted that night.
We were booked to go right back up to Edmonton and play at the Kingsway Hotel. The Kingsway featured what was considered to be the biggest beer parlour in Canada. We played Friday and Saturday and the place was jammed both nights.
Edmonton was a city with a rich musical scene. There were many great bands like Willy & The Walkers, Stoney Plain(who had just changed their name from Graham & The Wafers), Privilege, The 49th Parallel and Wes Dakus & The Rebels. The city was home to many incredible musicians such as guitarists Pat Coleman and the exquisite Gaye Delorme. Even though Gaye was a world class guitarist he would achieve immortality in the 1980’s for a profanity-laced novelty song he wrote titled, The Rodeo Song. Radio stations had fun playing it with bleeps over all the “fucks”.
With Geoff back we rocked the joint and made a lot of new fans that weekend. We were provided with rooms upstairs. They weren't fancy but there were lots of them. We each had a room to ourselves so we left our doors open to allow the party to extend from room to room.
After the gig on Saturday night Steve met a girl and presented her to the band. Her name was Donna; she was just seventeen. She looked like one of those luscious Vargas Girl drawings that men drooled over in the Playboy Magazines. It wasn’t just her cascading blonde hair and gorgeous face, those big blue eyes and pouting red lips, it wasn’t just her long legs, and fabulous breasts ... she was more; much more. Her most impressive asset was her attitude. Many girls have mastered the 'come fuck me' look, which men are powerless to resist, but Donna went way beyond that. Hers was more like an 'are you worth it?' assessment. She’d size you up in such a way that made you know that she could eat you alive and spit you out if she felt like it and you had no say in the matter. And she did all this with a sex-kitten purr; like a real life Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy.
Donna took us to a late night party at a house in the University district where Geoff put the moves on her. She was impervious to his advances; she only had eyes for Steve. Geoff was unused to rejection. He was about to take another futile shot when he noticed something slide past his foot. He looked down and saw a ten-foot Boa Constrictor slither out from under the sofa. He froze in fear.
“Get me outta here!” he screamed and was led from the house by Jeff never to return.
The snake’s name was Rosie and she turned out to be very sweet. She loved to smoke pot. She curled up behind me on top of the back of the sofa and held her head out in front of me; watching as I puffed on a giant spliff. I was told to blow the smoke on her face and I did. As Rosie inhaled, her head drooped until it rested in my lap like a puppy. With Geoff out of the picture Donna grabbed Steve and they disappeared into a bedroom together.
When we flew back to Vancouver Donna followed. She was smitten with Steve and hitched a ride with two male friends to be with him. The friends turned out to be junkies. They infuriated Donna when their first stop in Vancouver was at a house in Kitsilano where they scored a large quantity of heroin. She was sickened as they made her sit impatiently in the living room of the filthy shack while they both did up. They kept her there as a virtual prisoner for several days as they hit up over and over again.
Her anger turned to frustration and then into fear as her companions floated aimlessly in a junkie high; giving no indication that they would ever let her go. She was a tough broad and finally convinced them to drive her to Steve. She was disgusted by the scene she had been forced to witness. Sadly, it wouldn’t be long before this beautiful young girl would make those guys look like tea-totallers.
She showed up at our doorstep unannounced and jumped into Steve’s arms. The two newly united lovebirds rushed into Steve's room, shut the door and were not seen again for three days. Our house was never the same. During this and future odysseys the house would be rocked to its very foundation.
My own love making efforts next door with Trisha were hardly earth shattering. I was still just as uptight and self-conscious between the sheets as I was on the street. I was a fumbler - I poked around without any purpose. I had no strategy.
One day, I would discover that great sex is derived from intense rapture. One