Being in the Band; The First 15 Years in a Nutshell

 The first working band I can remember being in had many incarnations as do most bands. The bass player, Rick, lived in Mims, Fl. He had been playing with a guitar player that regarded playing music mostly as a hobby and not even his first choice come hunting season.

 I was in a transitional phase in life as I realized I no longer possessed the will to be a company man. I was put off by the, it’s not what you know but who you know, aspect of a real job.

 I thought the adult world would be a meritocracy as advertised but just like religion, it’s all about kissing somebody’s ass for the promise of a reward later.

 I myself had been playing with people who didn’t prioritize being in a steady, working band. It was frustrating to be around people that didn’t share my vision.

 I’m not sure how I met Rick, maybe it will come back to me… Maybe it won’t.

 At any rate, his side hustle was selling weed and back in the Reagan era, marijuana was hard to come by. Could get all the cocaine anyone could want because the CIA was importing it. That was really a thing. Look it up.

 He and I had a hard time finding a drummer. We also had a pretty boy singer/rhythm guitar player, Jamie, who would show up, sometimes.

 Jamie once told me that since it was my PA, he refused to help with load ins and load outs, even though he played through the gear same as everyone else. He said, “I carry my own stuff- you carry yours…”

 We played Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Brooksville and then he didn’t show up for Friday and Saturday. The bar only paid us for the 3 days we had 4 guys on stage and refused to pay the 3 of us our cut for Friday and Saturday.

 Jamie left his guitar and amp at the gig, so when I loaded up the truck, I refused to load his guitar and amp in my truck, the bass player lied and said the amp belonged to him, otherwise it would’ve met the same fate as Jamie’s guitar, left behind. The crook that ran the bar sold it.

 A year or so later, Jamie called and said I owed him for the guitar. I reminded him of what he said about me having to carry my own gear and that he would carry his…

 Rick was established in the local scene and being the hustler type, hustled up some gigs in north Brevard county like the Roadrunner Inn out on SR46, the Citrus Lounge (Home of the Citrus Painkiller). They were known to be pretty rough joints and none of my high school buddies were into that scene.

 I lived in the southern end of north Brevard; I went to Titusville High. Rick went to Astronaut High with the famous linebacker, Wilbur Marshall. My freshman year, Heather Locklear was a senior at THS. We didn’t hangout.

 I had worked for a company called Electronic Systems Products or ESP for short. One of the girls in the parts room was dating a guy that was in a popular local band called Martial Law.

 The next thing I know, he was in the band with Rick and I- the band had many names but at this point in time we were using the current drummers’ band name.

 His name was Tom, but we called him Smoothy. He was a drunk, a full-blown alcoholic. He was the old man in the group. The name he had been saving until he got with the right band deserving enough to use it was, drum roll please, Innocent Friends. That’s what his wife would tell him when he would ask her who her other male acquaintances were, allegedly.

 His ex-wife was a beauty. He drank her away like he did his drivers license and every good gig he ever had. He accused her of fucking around on him every time he drank. He crashed every car they owned, on purpose, just to get back at her for her perceived insults and cheating.

 When we finally kicked him out of the band for good, he called my Alzheimer’s ridden dad and said I was the guy to call for drugs to get revenge for being fired. Ruined what little respect my dad still had for me.

 Tom died from liver failure not long after. My dad lived almost 10 more years with a grudge against me he didn’t even remember what for…

 We had a drummer called Big John; he was an intense character who loved his crack cocaine. He had a wife and family and was working as a clam digger in the Indian River Lagoon.

 I liked him, he was a good enough drummer, but he just couldn’t stay out of jail. His brother was the first person I met that had AIDS; we drank beers, smoked pot and hung out until he passed. He got it from grabbing a rig or syringe out of a passed-out junkies’ arm and finished the hit that was in it.  Bad choice. I remember him being a carny until he was too sick to work.

 Eventually, just as the band was about to throw in the towel, I drove over to East Coast Pawn and Music in Cape Canaveral/Cocoa Beach to check out the bulletin board of musicians wanted and place an ad. There was no internet or social media.

 A drummer from North Carolina, Kelly, had just put up his telephone number. I went out to the payphone and called right away because good drummers are hard to find.

 He had played with the Classics Four who had a hit with “Spooky” in 1968. He also had an engineering degree and had worked in the studio in Atlanta as both a player and a sound engineer.

 Our song list was mostly country music for the first set, then we played more and more rock and roll as the night progressed.

 Bill, the other lead guitar/singer knew a better bass player than Rick and Rick had been busted for weed enough times to where he couldn’t leave the county to play or probation wouldn’t allow him near a bar, hard to recall the specifics but the new bass player was a guy named JD.

 He was from WV like me and in no time, we were one of the tighter bands around our area doing originals and working 5-6 nights a week. This was when we also decided to use Bill’s old band name Martial Law.

 Unfortunately, JD worked at Sea-Ray Boats in Merrit Island and when the band wanted to take road gigs, he had to bow out. Might have also had something to do with his wife finding out about his girlfriend, too.

 We found one of Molly Hatchet’s many discarded bass players, a guy called Eddie Rio. Hatchet left him and all of his stuff on the side of the road after they couldn’t take anymore.

 Eddie just couldn’t shut the fuck up and his playing just wasn’t quite up to par. He had been in prison and loved talking about prison sex. It was the first time I heard a guy say he busted a nut from being fucked in the ass. For him, it wasn’t a gay thing. It was a bored and horny thing. The rest of the band was much more reserved as far as range of sexuality went.

 The last bass player in the final incarnation of Martial Law was Joe. He was a solid player, and we had 4-part harmony. Our originals were well received.

 Then it happened. We were playing Dirty Harry’s in Key West. A local radio DJ took a shine to us. He interviewed the band, played some songs from our demo on the air… It was a lot of fun being special for a minute.

 That night, the bar was packed and we were having one of those rare nights where everything was clicking, the energy was good, the crowd was jumping…

 At the end of the night, a guy associated with Criteria Recording Studios in Miami handed the drummer a business card and said he would like to record us. The same studio where the Allman Bros, Skynyrd, Seger, Fleetwood Mac and more made famous recordings.

 The next morning, I was still me. The drummer was still the same guy, but the other two had grown giant heads during the night and, all of a sudden, the drummer and I weren’t good enough to be in the band anymore.

 We had one more night of our two weeks stay and when a huge crowd showed up expecting the kind of set we delivered the previous nights, they were sorely disappointed. Our sound and light guys couldn’t believe how bad we sounded. It was the sound of a band imploding on stage for all to see. By the start of the third set, the place had cleared, the momentum was dead.

 All these years later, I’m the last one standing. Kelly died from what he believed was a hoax, Covid, real or not he’s just as dead.

 Bill died from a heart attack. Neither one of them was 70 years old yet.

 Joe went back to DJing at the strip club and then one night, he answered a knock on his front door and whoever it was, shot him in the face and blinded him.

Goes to show you just never know. ☮️❤️😊🎶🖖

L-R: LSG, Jamie and the lost guitar, Rick on bass... Don't remember who is obscured on the drums, probably Smoothy.