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Post something from the PEAK of your musical career!


MrKnobs

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Peak of my musical career? hmmm....and hmmm... I'll let you guys decide if I'm serious or making fun of myself....lol

 

I was the keyboardist/rhythm guitarist in my Big Hair 80s band. But I did come out and sing lead a few times a night over the course of the 4 sets a night/5 nights a week gigs we did. We all took part in reliving the lead singer. No way she could have done 4-5 hours a night 5-6 nights a week. Here's me fronting the the band for our oldies medley. This would have been around 1985.

 

Laugh all you want. I certainly have. But Respect The Hair. haha

 

 

 

Here's the same band with our proper lead singer.

 

 

 

And while we were doing the 5 nights a week/50 weeks a year cover band circuit, we were also working on originals. Here's one of those.

 

 

 

 

Fun times.

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While I can't post immediate proof. Waaaay back in 1987 (or maybe 88) I was in a band that opened for Blue Oyster Cult at a place called the Country Club in the San Fernando valley of Los Angeles. It was truly a rush.

 

My band did the same thing around the same time! On the "Imaginos" Tour. Opened for them at a small concert hall (4000 people maybe?) in Las Vegas.

 

Opening act gigs like that I never really enjoyed much though. They rush you on and off stage so fast, and you're playing for virtually no one most of the time. More trouble than they were worth except for getting to say "We opened for Band X!"

 

My best/worst story about opening for an act was we were playing a club in Bakersfield, CA in 1983 and Quiet Riot gets booked to play a night so we're asked/expected to open for them. They were just starting to break and I actually hadn't heard of them yet. But one of our roadies had. He tells me "yeah...they're the band that does that "Bang Your Head" song". I didn't know it. Well, the band shows up and says that this is the last date on their tour and they are all anxious to get back to LA and they want to go on early and have us play after them so they can get home earlier. Fine by us!

 

Well, the place ends up being packed with young kids. And we go on AFTER Quiet Riot for a packed house. That's the best part of the story.

 

Worst part: One of our stagehands gets over-excited by the packed house and way over does it with the fog machine. We can't see ANYTHING when we go on stage. We have no idea where we are. Our lead singer is unfortunately standing RIGHT OVER a flashpot at the opening of the first song and gets burned very badly. I have no idea what is going on except I hear her singing HORRIBLY and have no idea why. Poor thing, being the trouper that she was, kept trying to sing even though her eyebrows has just been burnt off her face.

 

We have to end the night halfway through the first song as she gets rushed to the hospital. The crowd was livid and I'm at the mic trying to tell them "sorry, we'd love to play for you guys, but we just set our singer on fire...."

 

Luckily, she survived with no permanent scars or injuries. But if that isn't a classic 80s Big Hair Band story, I don't know what is!

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Peak? Well there've been many up and downs...

 

I was in a country band called the Good Ol' Boys (way before the Blues Brothers movie came out, BTW) with 2 elderly alchoholics that had some of the best music I ever did. We did a lot of old school stuff; Jimmy Reed, Hank Williams Sr, Bob Wills, stuff like that. I probably earned more money doing this than anything else I've done in music. We were the house band for a place called My Brokers at the height of the urban cowboy days, and the place would fill up with lawyers, executives and accountants all dressed up like a Dolly Parton nightmare. Lots of fun...

 

When I was mixing FOH for a local band, we ended up opening for Toto once. Sounds good... but wasn't. There was a lot of arrogance and hostility coming from the band and their crew. This was the year they swept the Grammys. I could hear them yelling about how they didn't get their case of Perrier and stuff like that. They had a custom built 128 channel board, and allowed me only 4 submix faders. They said if I touched anything else, or tried to use talkback, they'd throw me off the board. I still get strong negative feelings any time I hear their music.

 

I was in a band in the '70s that covered Prog Rock, stuff like BOC, REO, JoJo Gunne, Joe Walsh, etc. This was probably the best time I had, and we were pretty successful moneywise. We had an agent who would hook us up with gigs that paid obscene amounts of money, and never more than 200 miles from home. I have a lot of fond memories of those times.

 

As far as posting stuff, I was generally too busy doing the job to collect much in the way of photos or whatever... I think I have a couple photo albums stuck away in a box somewhere, though.

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All I've had musically are valleys I'm afraid. I think I peaked in 1969 when I set a guitar on fire then smashed it to bits for the finale at a party we played. It was a cheap guitar, never regretted it.

It was a rush and I got to third base with a girl that night.

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I don't know if I've really peaked or what.

 

I've headlined with a Goth band in front of 2000 people, played at the Whisky for hundreds of Japanese people who were jumping up and down screaming our name, heard my music on MTV, and other stuff. I dunno. Pretty good stuff.

 

This web page has some music that I like. I'm really bad at updating the music here, but nonetheless, here it is:

 

http://elevenshadows.com/studio/index-studio.htm

 

1. Rae and Ken - that's my friend. I'm doing an album with him which should be released. That's a rough mix from the upcoming album that I stuck up for someone and never took down. It's not bad for a rough mix. Hard to separate what I play, but most of the "lead" or melodic instruments, I guess you could say.

 

2. "Cosmic Dancer" is something is a personal recording project I keep working on and abandoning for long periods of time, but hey, I finished one song! :D I play guitar and keyboards here and wrote the song.

 

3. I recorded at Doors tribute band at my recording studio. This is it. I didn't play any of the music.

 

4. Nectarphonic "Undone" is a psychedelic song. I play keyboards and guitar and recorded it. This is my old rock band that I played in for about ten years.

 

5. Old collage of stuff I recorded at my studio. I didn't play on any of it.

 

6. An old song from twenty years ago that I wrote and recorded and played on. I like this still, so I figured I'd keep sharing it.

 

7. A really beautiful, somewhat psychedelic sounding song I recorded at my studio some years ago. The singer's voice is amazing. The drummer is fusion drummer Kofi Baker, son of Cream drummer Ginger Baker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I think I had a few high spots on a plateau.

 

There was the time that Lionel Hampton came to town. To our surprise he began pointing around the orchestra for solos in the middle of one of his charts. Two players, 1rst clarinet and principle second violin went first and then my colleagues volunteered me. Somewhere, somehow my solo wound up at *Go Johnny Go* and a large portion of the crowd jumped up out of their seats and cheered. It was so spontaneous. They erupted! The concertmaster said to me afterwards, "I hope you were awake for that." I was.

 

5 years later I'm broke down by the side of the road. I walk up to a really nice nearby house and knock to see if I can use their phone. A man answers the door and says yes, and as he's walking me to the phone he says, "Hey, aren't you the guy in the the orchestra that played that solo at the Lionel Hampton show a few years ago?"

 

 

That moment in the sun warms me still. smiley-happy

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