Yo, Jimbo, so what’s with the cryptic reference to Colorado in the previous post?
I know you lost sleep wondering what I was referring to, so here are some of the preliminary deets.
I played drums and sang in a band in the sixties. I wrote about the band here and included links to the two sides of the record we made in 1966. [Note: I had to update the links to the songs in the referenced post, and they are type of files that may not work with certain types of players. They worked for me in iTunes. If I knew what the hell I was doing, I could probably fix it.]
Anyway, back to the story. This year, our biannual band reunion (We waited 34 years to have the first one in 2002) will be in Colorado, as was the case in 2002. Two of the guys live there. Typically, at these get-togethers, we spend a couple hours a night for two or three nights massacring playing songs and laughing our asses off. It’s just the guys, some spouses and old friends of the band from Jersey, so we can safely stink up the room.
This year, one of the Colorado guys (Hideo) surprised us by announcing that he booked the band to play at the Maya Cove Restaurant in Fort Collins. You know, like, in public. I almost shit a pickle when I heard that.
The back and forth e-mails went something like this:
Me: Yo, Hideo. Are you out of your mind? We haven’t played publicly since 1968! This could be a major train wreck.
Hideo: Don’t worry about it. I know the owner, and he knows we’re a bunch of old farts who want to have some fun. Besides, it won’t cost the owner anything, although we may get free drinks, but I’m not sure about that.
Me: [Slamming my head on the keyboard] Instruments! We’ll need a drum set. I sure as hell can’t bring mine on a plane to Colorado, and I don’t think your brother wants to schlep a keyboard all the way from Hawaii. We’ll need a sound system too. I think you’re nuts.
Hideo: No problem; we’ll rent stuff.
Me: What songs are we going to play? What about practicing? If we just walk onstage and start playing, we’ll never make it out of the place alive.
Hideo: No problem. We can circulate song lists via e-mail and we’ll get together a couple hours before the gig. Oh, and one more thing…..
Me: Oy! What!
Hideo: I gave the owner a copy of our record, and he wants us to perform the songs.
Me: [Still slamming my head on the keyboard and now wanting to strangle Hideo] Do you realize the last time we even played those songs was the day we made the record in 1966? Do the math. That was forty-four years ago.
Hideo: Stop worrying. It’ll be great.
So, there you have it. A bunch of old farts who haven’t played together publicly in more than forty years and who are spread across the U.S. from New Jersey to Colorado to Hawaii are putting together song lists and sharing them in e-mails in order to prepare to do two nights in Fort Collins, Colorado.
If you show up, you’ll be able to pick me out right away. I’ll be the guy wearing body armor and a hockey goalie mask, specially modified to protect against flying produce.
Update: Blogger pal, Jerry, converted the format on both sides of the record in the post linked above to MP3, explaining that the MP4 format is limited to Apple stuff. I don’t pretend to understand it all, but here they are in a format that should open on media players other than iTunes.
Baby Come My Way
Little Girl
I understand that the Fort Collins Police Department is already making plans to deal with the August Gridlock.
So, why is it that you progressives seem to dislike Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?
Well, we disagree with his view of the Constitution as being a document that limits the extent to which the federal government can play a role in our everyday lives.
