OLDPAGES 25 SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2004 Skypilot Robert Register has been accumulating vast lore on the bands of the south and putting the results on his website. Here's what he has to say:
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I've been doing this rock 'n roll research for less than three months on the Internet but it all started back in ' 87 with Bruce Hopper and Dart (Charlie's brother) Hayward down at the Chukker (Pretty sure that was about the time Hinton was hanging out in Tuscaloosa for a short while).
This has been some of the most satisfying work I have ever done.
So many people have helped. I would like to thank Wyker(Magnificent 7/Rubber Band/Sail Cat), Kevin "Big Kahuna" Plemons(Bruce Channel, Larry Henley), Keith Glass (Eddie Hinton), Bruce Hopper (The Omen and Their Luv plus all the Chukker archives he helped initiate), William "Igor" Alford (Lou Mullenix and assorted Tuscaloosa musicians), Ken Babbs (the Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead connection), Bob Nix (Roy Orbison's Candymen/Billy Joe Royal/Larry Henley and the Newbeats/Atlanta Rhythm Section), Jeff Lemlich(the Allman Joys and other Florida bands), Johnny Townsend (Magnificent Rubbers/Rockin' Gibraltars), Kim Venable (The K-Otics/ Classics IV), Greg Haynes (heybabydays.com/ Swingin' Medallions) and Richard Burke (The Chimes/ Candymen/ Wilbur Walton Jr. and The James Gang).
Can't tell you guys how much you have enriched my life and , listen, WE HAVE ONLY SCRATCHED THE SURFACE!-- robert register
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If you want to explore the history of the southern bands and musicians, click on:
ROBERTO FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2004
HURRICANE REPORTI was working at a store in Ft. Lauderdale last Thursday. Nothing happened there but a nice breeze. No news all day, until the end of the night when I asked if anyone was tracking Charley. So one of the helpful Lowes associates pulled the tracking page up on the computer and I saw that it was right over Orlando and seemed to me to be headed for Daytona. So I beat a path home to try to catch the tail end of it.
As I approached the feeder bands, it was a storybook sky; pretty, inspiring youthful images of days of Camelot, a painting of sky over rolling virgin prairies. Even the children of monsters are cute. It then changed, becoming battlefield smoke to the distant sound of arms. Quite suddenly I was in the land of Mordor. Cloud ghosts flew madly across the sky, and as I approached Port Orange, blackness seemed to drip black drops of sky goo, a velvet frothy dark-chocolate blackness, and along the roads trees randomly lay with their crowns upon the shoulder of the road, k.o.ed in a match I just missed. Just here and there, falling from both sides of the highway. I was thinking how odd it was that none of them, besides some small branches and leaves, were actually in the road, when I found an oak tree completely covering the right lane. I began to realize what a force this storm was, to churn all the way across Florida and still rip out centurion oaks like plucking four-leaf clovers from a lawn.
I turned off the highway and entered a darkened Daytona Beach. Careful to avoid large branches, I drove further in, happy to see stoplights blank and often ripped right off the wire - a dream come true! Few cars were on the roads, billboards twisted, ripped, and some knocked down or uprooted like the trees, everywhere; glass signs that once read, Bevelle Plaza, China Empire, McDonalds, now just bones, the meat glittering in headlights, dropped from Charley's sloppy maw into the street.
My apartment complex was blanketed with leaves and branches, some of them quite large, waterlogged and battle-wasted. A young man and woman were at the entrance with flashlights. He told me of seeing a transformer struck by lightning and bursting into flames. A tornado had touched down in South Daytona, just down the street. First news I had of anything, the stupid radio stations droning on like nothing had happened. Parked and went inside my apartment and became a blind man.
This morning I had what may be my last hot shower for a while. I heard Polk County was badly hit so I went to see if my friends down there were okay. The trip was filled with the odd sights of occasional trees uprooted, one cross to the right Jesusí blown to hell on the hill that someone made in their field along I-4, the majority of billboards mangled as though Charley hated them. Heard traffic was literally backed up from Orlando to Tampa, an 85-mile traffic jam as people who had evacuated Tampa and taken every room in the vacation capital uttered a simultaneous grunt and decided to go home. The grunt was an expression of frustration because Charley had roared in a killer category 4 hurricane South of Tampa and gone straight to Orlando, still a category 2, stomping and roaring and cutting power to their rooms. Never touched Tampa. So I took Orange Blossum Trail
through Orlando and Kissimmee. All along the way signs were sucked off their bones and billboards crushed and mangled, here and there roofs opened up, shingles scattered, and even city trees were knocked out and leaning drunkenly against buildings, their roots like underwear showing. Kissimmee was in shambles. Roofers should soon be swarming in like carpetbaggers from the North.
My friend's places were okay. The two in a house had their fence blow down and the family in the mobile home was not touched.
Now I am at one of them's parents' house and I have to wind up this letter because I'm getting to the point of being rude.
-- Airy Ace THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2004 BEATLES FIRST AMERICAN TOUR On this tour, the Beatles performed with Jackie De Shannon, the Righteous Brothers, the Bill Black Combo and the Exciters.
(submitted by Robert Register)19 AUGUST, 1964: COW PALACE, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
we wuz there. took the bus up old 101 through towns becuz the brakes didn't work. I drove becuz cassady was somewhere else. Had to downshift into granny to stop at the red lights. we parked right in front of the cow palace becuz we were a bus. inside it was crazy with so much screaming you couldn't hear the words. people were pelting the band with jelly beans. some guy got on stage and stood behind Ringo with his hands in the air making peace sign. kesey got spooked and said let's get out of here, this place is on the edge of riot. we had a nice slow drive home, downshifting to granny. There was a sign on the gate into Kesey's: The Merry Pranksters Welcome The Beatles but they never showed up.
-- Capn Skyp AUGUST 16, 2004 CONCERT AT WOODSTOCK ATTRACTS 5 MILLION
That's if you count all the people who said they were there 35 years ago today. No matter what you read I was the one who made it a free concert. There were a hundred and fifty thousand people already in the place before the ticket takers arrived and the boss lady said everyone had to go out and present their tickets before they could come back in. The head security guy, an ex marine and the police chief of Santa Monica California, looked at me and said, "What we gonna do?" I said, "Make it a free concert." He went into the security trailer, called the organizers over at the stage and told them what was going on and what he thought should be done. He came back outside and said, "It's a free concert." I told the head lady, she huffed and turned around and led the ticket takers away. The people standing around heard what was going on and promptly
smashed down the chain link fence and rolled it up and made a nice big entrance for people to go in and out as they pleased.
-- Capn Skyp
by Paul Krassner
On this 35th anniversary of Woodstock, everyone who was there has their own specific memories and associations. The 60s were over. Negroes had become blacks. Girls had become women. Hippies had become freaks. Richard Alpert would become Ram Dass. Hugh Romney would become Wavy Gravy. *San Francisco Oracle* editor Allen Cohen would become Siddartha and move to a commune, where everybody called him Sid.
There was the music and the mud. There was the dope and the dancing. There was the free food and the free love. There was the Port-o-Potties and the politics. Most of all, there was a sense of community. The political contingent was encamped in a red and white striped tent called Movement City. In the afternoon, Yippies were churning out flyers proclaiming that the festival should be free, and at night they were busy unscrewing the chain link fences.
While The Who was performing, Abbie Hoffman, tripping on acid, climbed up on the stage with the intention of informing the audience that John Sinclair (manager of the band MC5 and chairman of the White Panthers) was serving ten years in prison for possession of two joints--that this was really the politics behind the event--but before he could get his message out, Pete Townshend-- also tripping, having been dosed backstage-- transformed his guitar into a tennis racket and smashed Abbie in the head with a swift backhand.
My yellow leather fringe jacket, which I had been wearing for the first time, was stolen from the Movement City tent. But I found myself dealing with a much more significant kind of paranoia. I had been informed by a reliable source that a think tank, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, was contracted to determine how Americans might react to a cancellation of the election in 1972 because of ìinternal civil unrestî in response to the Vietnam war. Investigative journalist Ron Rosenbaum was able to determine that I was the fourth person down from a leaker in the White House.
Feeling like the Ancient Mariner waving his filthy albatross in front of anybody who would listen, I did my best to spread the word, regardless of the possibility that I was being used to float a trial balloon. I worked my way up from the underground papers to the reporters in the press tent at Woodstock. I blabbed about it at campus appearances and in alternative radio interviews. Ultimately the story filtered up into the mainstream media.
When Attorney General John Mitchell announced that whoever had started this rumor should be ìpunished, I sent him a letter confessing my sin, but I never heard back. Meanwhile, the RAND Corporation concluded that the average American citizen would not stand for a cancellation of the election. Now, 35 years later, that same possibility has been floated *publicly* from the White House by Condoleezza Rice and others, a trial balloon propelled by the arrogance of power but pricked by the polls. Oh, well, there's always the possibility of declaring martial law.
SHOWER PROJECT
Yas, that time of year again when the carpenter ants come out of their holes to bite you in the ass and remind you to get out the tools and make those repairs been gnawing at the timbers these past years. In this case the home made shower stall already been repaired twice in the past thirty years, sheesh, don't they make these things the way they used to? Not when they're made by klutzos who never knew how in the first place, nor the second place but this time it is the third place team striving for the championship. And strive it is, with all the tools at command. The cement. The wood. The nails. The screws. The drills. The rocks from the creek, lugged bucketsful at a time up the steep bank, into the house, deposited at the site. Like the home improvement show on TV we will take you step by step through the process, starting with the necessity of cutting away the rot. Rot?
When Kesey was a boy chile his daddy took him fishing but the boy had no luck whatsoever even though his pa was reeling them in. When Kesey started complaining and wondering what he was doing wrong his dad said, "Maybe you're not holding your mouth right."
That always became the thing we'd say to one another when something wasn't going right. I've been saying that a lot to myself working on this shower revamping. I even tried physically changing the way I hold my mouth.
Sometimes it worked okay. Other times not so good. But the shower project lumbers on.
The rot on the doorstep up close. The rot gouged out and replaced with mortar and rock and wood filler.
The doorstep repaired with a funky tile job on top.
Window gets first stage repair, after gouging out the rotten wood. The window with the mortar and rock and tile attempt at artistic Martha Stewartism. The shower floor has been mortared over with a smooth coat and has been covered with sealer. Now question is, do I paint or do I start using the shower?
I was painting the filler around the window and dropped the paint can and the paint spilled all over the flower shore and so I ended up having to swirl the paint madly dancing with glee until the floor was painted my feet were painted and the mess got tracked into the living room.
Okay, so I wasn't holding my mouth right. Fortunately, skypilot Darrin was able to correct that oversight, or was it over bite? Maybe a side bite, or was that a side bar to the whole story? Or was that the hole story?p
No need to panic. But there was a need to put some sand in the paint to keep it from being too slippery as the first person to use the shower found out and luckily I was the first person to slip and fall and knock my teeth sideways in a vain attempt to keep from slashing my throat with my straight razor like a doof I use in an old fashioned super manly way of shaving and a brush full of lather went flying, too, so who said get a floor mat, now there's an idea.
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The window nicely painted around with tile windowsill and the dratted floor with the blue slippery paint but the door fits and there's a tile doorstep so let's call the job done for now, okay?f
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