More Words
Wow! Major fucking Lance? Link Wray and the Wraymen? Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers? How about Ivory Joe hunter? You guys are playing hardball! Who'd be in Gray's shoes now? I'll bet he wishes he never asked!
In reality NGC wasn't a band, but a bubble. A permutation. A number 5 bus on the bone road to . . .? A possibility amongst many of what to do next for lots of lives across the country and beyond, for whom the only certainty remaining was that something had to give somewhere. This one drifted by to break my fall just as my fingers slipped away from my last handhold. I climbed on to see where it might go, if it was going my way, how far it could take me. Others got on too, with various impressions and agendas, but more or less headed in the same direction, and so we went a-ways until it started to deflate and it was time to see where we were - and where we were going. When we looked back the bubble had gone, vanished as in a dream. In a bandman's band, this would never happen. There would be Band discussions of what The Band should do, Band changes that could be made in direction, location, personnel, whatever it took to preserve The Band. Here however, we never quite attained the level of self-obsession necessary to survive, and the band blinked out of existence as quickly as it blinked into it. Ceased to be physically directly it ceased to be spiritually. Very trippy. I mean who ever heard of a proper band folding out of mere poverty and homelessness? The truth is it was never a stand alone thing, but something which evolved -almost accidentally - from the energy around it.
By the end of '67 some people had moved on from pop bands towards wider more radical expressions of consciousness - notions of urban communes, self sustaining homesteads etc, whilst others sought to find re-entry points into the world formerly known as 'real' - and others still, attempted to reside somehow in the no man's land in between - but that's all another tale.
That a more enlightened approach to life appeared not to materialise as expected is really neither here nor there, nor is the fact that the band appeared not to achieve a successful reflection of those ideals. Appearances are deceptive. Subjective even. What is it you want to see? Has there ever been a period of time since, that remotely compares in what was being idealised then, however childishly? Peace? love? compassion? understanding? inclusion? wonder? Look where we are now for fuck's sake with the human race falling all over itself on every level to self-destruct! To change! It takes time! Lots of people know all this on some level, whatever their state of denial, probably through their manifest need for some fare that is fundamentally different than what they are getting. Whatever energy was being pushed out then still abides. It does not go away. It is leaking quietly out of the general consciousness into the ether. Why else do you think we are all re-pondering over this nonsense, this reissue, this not very good representaion of the best the time had to offer? Because it is authentic. A genuine curio from a time that needs reassessing to see if there is anything there for us. You boys sell yourselves short with your talk of tall egos. You forget yourselves. You were(are) singing it, living it, spinning it out at the centre of the wheel. Like the dark matter surprised physicists now realize comprise the vast majority of the universe - nothingness in fact - 'real' life would appear to consist chiefly of inconsequential scatterings: creative scribblings to no obvious purpose, playings for no obvious ears; chance encounters, serendipitous occasions, nonproductive moments enjoyed with friends and loved ones; pointless meditations and fanciful pursuits; idle meanderings at the sheer inventiveness and diversity of life. The rest is a fucking nonsense as far as I can tell. Well thats my story anyway, and I'm sticking to it.
Say, none of you has mentioned the naming of the band, although you all have seen a few comments Steve and i made some time ago. Should any of that be mentioned inasmuch as it was such a bizarre choice? Also, do you think it appropriate to have a 'for Chas' or something at the very end, or other 'credits' to those around us?
"If it feels right, just drive for the light,
that's the groove-essential fact.
One day we'll all meet at the end of the street,
at the tea house on the tracks."
(from 'Teahouse on the Tracks' ('Kamakyriad', Donald Fagen) - one of the best songs you will ever hear regarding the healing properties of playing/hearing music)
Danny’s Thoughts…
Rashamon Part IV: The Band from Coventry
Before I start,I should point out that my memory of the time line of all this as very fragmented. Maybe it’s the effect of the forty some years since it happened… maybe the effect of the chemicals that were so much a part of those years, or maybe the effect of the massive stroke I suffered nearly three years ago. Whatever, I have absolute clarity with specific scenes, words,feelings and sounds experienced. But there are high gaps (the “white and gray shadows” on my last brain MRI. And maybe there’s some difficulty with context.
How did it end? After the west coast trip originally planned for NGC was handed to Spanky and Our Gang in August of 1966 (for I forget what potential hit) we all had pretty much had it. With St. Marks place, with the frustration, with the waiting, and maybe, just maybe, with each other? That’s when we threw in the towel. Just one positive affirmation would have held it together for at least another couple of months. But I get ahead of myself. The story began perhaps a year before, maybe two. Or, for me with an awakening to the power of Rock when Dylan Brought it all Back Home on “Highway 61 Revisited”. In any case, we could maybe start in 1964?
The Beatles were making creative waves high enough that they swept along the Beach Boys, Four Seasons, Barrie Gordie’s tribe and many others; all were finding legitimate ways to grow the music that had started with Peggy Lee singing “Fever” and Frankie Lymon when I was in sixth grade growing up in Brooklyn,. But now I’m too far back.
Storrs Connecticut in 1962/63/64 had a strong musical life on campus … Rock cover bands played at least a half dozen fraternity house parties every weekend. I was in “The Enchanters”, a five piece combo with a front man whose voice sounded like Bobby Comstock of the Righteous Brothers. We played soul music more than top forty. I remember sets including Major Lance, Temps, and Impressions back to back with “Paperback Writer” and “Louie Louie” . On the other end of the spectrum, the hootenannies in Hillel house (or was it one of the Churches?) were a great opportunity to meet and jam with some interesting characters, as we covered Erik Darling, Hedy West, and of course Seger and Josh White.
The outside world was a place to hide from. Our generation dove under desks in the first through fifth grades, and UConn was a nice shield from the complexity of the newly erected Berlin wall and the continuing threat of nuclear escalation and devastation. JFK took the bullet and went down with all of our dreams of a cultured egalitarian world. But things in Boston soon changed that.
The New Culture in Storrs was probably way ahead of the rest of the country when I arrived in 1962. Maybe including most of California. Alpert (not Herb) and Leary were already waist deep in their exploration of the internal worlds, and although little white tabs of Osley and Tan caps of I’m-not- sure-what hadn’t quite started spilling down the Mass Pike and Merritt Parkway from Boston, there were fields of home-grown in the area surrounding UCONN. The “scene” consisted of a blending of Folkies joining together and showing off at open mike “Hootenanies” which I recall were monthly affairs; various “thinkers” ( in addition to intellectuals?) from the Theater, English, Philosophy and Psychology departments; also from Physics and Chem grad students, and the general riff-raff hanging out at the subterranean Campus Restaurant … the independents’ alternative to the Student Union on campus.
Music was undergoing changes… Dylan’s first electric album, Blonde on Blonde (is that what it was called?) was startling. Tyner and Coltrane were taking us deeper into the pure spirituality of music. Lambert, Hendricks and Ross were blending scat, jazz and vocals into something I had never heard. Gil Evans “Out Of The Cool” added another dimension to big band stuff. And Cecil Taylor had abandoned all the technicalities of classical music altogether for jazz, save the neurological imprints in his wrists and fingers when he threw his hands at the piano.
Against this backdrop, Acid struck our little enclave in Storrs like the brilliant white blast of a Nuclear Bomb… blowing down everything and everyone away in its’ path. A Cerebral Tunguska event, if you will. From the Hoots at the Hillel House to the basement of the Campus Restaurant, people started jamming… and talking. Who got the idea for a band I don’t know. I think it was when Starger showed up. A VERY silent ex-military guy. But it didn’t take three minutes to realize that this was not a militaristic guy. We must have jammed somewhere, because it was a given that he could play. It turned out he was a ‘townie’ … which meant nothing to me (my town was Manhattan, and we didn’t know from “townies”). Someone else from the band will have to help remember exactly how the band got started. All I know is I woke up one morning in Minty’s folks house in Stamford and there we were. The den, I suppose it was, had a big picture window looking out over Long island sound, and that’s where we set up our equipment permanently to live and write until we had enough songs to play out, Which we did.
. Silly stuff (“Sea Ballad”) and music from heaven (David’s solos… particularly the second half of his two parter on “Imagination Dead, Imagine”) all rerupted there. Chas brought “Colors” to the party and would have created a lot more honey stuff had the magic lasted.
I must admit for myself, that for a bunch of guys singing about ego death and all, mine was so strong that I hardly remember anything about anyone else in the band, around the band, etc. Well … not exactly, but it sure is difficult to nail down some chronology.
Perhaps the most significant single thing that occurred for me was finding a record called Bass Strings by a California group called Country Joe and The Fish. It was about seven or ten minutes long. It was an instrumental. It was on 33-1/3, but the size of a 45. And it was on their own label. They did it alone. It heralded the new music for me. We never got that far, but I still think if we’d had a little more time, we might have brought some new things to the party.
The next move… to “The City”. Cov’s amazing find on West 24th Street took us into phase two. I remember an occasional groupie passing through by this time. I remember being amazed that we had attracted groupies. Justine. I name that only for the other guys benefit. I was younger than everyone… maybe David was a babe too, but I was still wet behind the ears. I had no idea, until perhaps five years later, that Justine climbed over the roof with me to the vacant apartment next door (as she had with two or three of the guys by that time) for a reason. I was so clueless that we chatted a while, and climbed back! Big rock star.
Did anyone mention the orphans at the loft yet? Three young things, from Boston showed up and hung with us for a while. None of the guys touched them. At least, I don’t think so. I hope not. They were kids) It wasn’t that they were jailbait. I can’t say why. Maybe, because they felt like family. One of my crystal clear memories is the three of them coming back up to the loft after a ferocious rainstorm looking like so many sorry cats left out overnight.
I think our best gig was at the café Au Go Go. Al Koopers band was just playing out for the first time. I had seen him when he was
Grey: If you want more of this type of trash I’ll keep going.
Meanwhile, here’s comments on tunes for liner notes:
Going home –A work of remarkable courage. Usually, anyone who explains the secrets of finding your way “home” pays for it.
Skipping Through The Night: One comment only: the image “a bag of roses in your hand” refers to the bright red bloom of blood backing into the eyedropper…
Nova Express: After “Dream Street” not yet recorded) Tthis was David’s best? Bob’s “Yeah yeah yeah, yeah carried the joy to a new level.
So Bright: Actually, on this one, the Wurlitzer sounded fine.
Imagination, Dead Imagine My favorite. Except for the vocal “style” But I loved this song. What a tune
“Forever Gone” was done in David’s best pirate voice. He has such a fabulous twinkling self deprecation that carries a tone of sinistrality. Who could better a line like “If you wanna quench that Godly thirst, give up this world of life until death”. Yes, baby, the wheel will turn and there’s still more to come.
In reality NGC wasn't a band, but a bubble. A permutation. A number 5 bus on the bone road to . . .? A possibility amongst many of what to do next for lots of lives across the country and beyond, for whom the only certainty remaining was that something had to give somewhere. This one drifted by to break my fall just as my fingers slipped away from my last handhold. I climbed on to see where it might go, if it was going my way, how far it could take me. Others got on too, with various impressions and agendas, but more or less headed in the same direction, and so we went a-ways until it started to deflate and it was time to see where we were - and where we were going. When we looked back the bubble had gone, vanished as in a dream. In a bandman's band, this would never happen. There would be Band discussions of what The Band should do, Band changes that could be made in direction, location, personnel, whatever it took to preserve The Band. Here however, we never quite attained the level of self-obsession necessary to survive, and the band blinked out of existence as quickly as it blinked into it. Ceased to be physically directly it ceased to be spiritually. Very trippy. I mean who ever heard of a proper band folding out of mere poverty and homelessness? The truth is it was never a stand alone thing, but something which evolved -almost accidentally - from the energy around it.
By the end of '67 some people had moved on from pop bands towards wider more radical expressions of consciousness - notions of urban communes, self sustaining homesteads etc, whilst others sought to find re-entry points into the world formerly known as 'real' - and others still, attempted to reside somehow in the no man's land in between - but that's all another tale.
That a more enlightened approach to life appeared not to materialise as expected is really neither here nor there, nor is the fact that the band appeared not to achieve a successful reflection of those ideals. Appearances are deceptive. Subjective even. What is it you want to see? Has there ever been a period of time since, that remotely compares in what was being idealised then, however childishly? Peace? love? compassion? understanding? inclusion? wonder? Look where we are now for fuck's sake with the human race falling all over itself on every level to self-destruct! To change! It takes time! Lots of people know all this on some level, whatever their state of denial, probably through their manifest need for some fare that is fundamentally different than what they are getting. Whatever energy was being pushed out then still abides. It does not go away. It is leaking quietly out of the general consciousness into the ether. Why else do you think we are all re-pondering over this nonsense, this reissue, this not very good representaion of the best the time had to offer? Because it is authentic. A genuine curio from a time that needs reassessing to see if there is anything there for us. You boys sell yourselves short with your talk of tall egos. You forget yourselves. You were(are) singing it, living it, spinning it out at the centre of the wheel. Like the dark matter surprised physicists now realize comprise the vast majority of the universe - nothingness in fact - 'real' life would appear to consist chiefly of inconsequential scatterings: creative scribblings to no obvious purpose, playings for no obvious ears; chance encounters, serendipitous occasions, nonproductive moments enjoyed with friends and loved ones; pointless meditations and fanciful pursuits; idle meanderings at the sheer inventiveness and diversity of life. The rest is a fucking nonsense as far as I can tell. Well thats my story anyway, and I'm sticking to it.
Say, none of you has mentioned the naming of the band, although you all have seen a few comments Steve and i made some time ago. Should any of that be mentioned inasmuch as it was such a bizarre choice? Also, do you think it appropriate to have a 'for Chas' or something at the very end, or other 'credits' to those around us?
"If it feels right, just drive for the light,
that's the groove-essential fact.
One day we'll all meet at the end of the street,
at the tea house on the tracks."
(from 'Teahouse on the Tracks' ('Kamakyriad', Donald Fagen) - one of the best songs you will ever hear regarding the healing properties of playing/hearing music)
Danny’s Thoughts…
Rashamon Part IV: The Band from Coventry
Before I start,I should point out that my memory of the time line of all this as very fragmented. Maybe it’s the effect of the forty some years since it happened… maybe the effect of the chemicals that were so much a part of those years, or maybe the effect of the massive stroke I suffered nearly three years ago. Whatever, I have absolute clarity with specific scenes, words,feelings and sounds experienced. But there are high gaps (the “white and gray shadows” on my last brain MRI. And maybe there’s some difficulty with context.
How did it end? After the west coast trip originally planned for NGC was handed to Spanky and Our Gang in August of 1966 (for I forget what potential hit) we all had pretty much had it. With St. Marks place, with the frustration, with the waiting, and maybe, just maybe, with each other? That’s when we threw in the towel. Just one positive affirmation would have held it together for at least another couple of months. But I get ahead of myself. The story began perhaps a year before, maybe two. Or, for me with an awakening to the power of Rock when Dylan Brought it all Back Home on “Highway 61 Revisited”. In any case, we could maybe start in 1964?
The Beatles were making creative waves high enough that they swept along the Beach Boys, Four Seasons, Barrie Gordie’s tribe and many others; all were finding legitimate ways to grow the music that had started with Peggy Lee singing “Fever” and Frankie Lymon when I was in sixth grade growing up in Brooklyn,. But now I’m too far back.
Storrs Connecticut in 1962/63/64 had a strong musical life on campus … Rock cover bands played at least a half dozen fraternity house parties every weekend. I was in “The Enchanters”, a five piece combo with a front man whose voice sounded like Bobby Comstock of the Righteous Brothers. We played soul music more than top forty. I remember sets including Major Lance, Temps, and Impressions back to back with “Paperback Writer” and “Louie Louie” . On the other end of the spectrum, the hootenannies in Hillel house (or was it one of the Churches?) were a great opportunity to meet and jam with some interesting characters, as we covered Erik Darling, Hedy West, and of course Seger and Josh White.
The outside world was a place to hide from. Our generation dove under desks in the first through fifth grades, and UConn was a nice shield from the complexity of the newly erected Berlin wall and the continuing threat of nuclear escalation and devastation. JFK took the bullet and went down with all of our dreams of a cultured egalitarian world. But things in Boston soon changed that.
The New Culture in Storrs was probably way ahead of the rest of the country when I arrived in 1962. Maybe including most of California. Alpert (not Herb) and Leary were already waist deep in their exploration of the internal worlds, and although little white tabs of Osley and Tan caps of I’m-not- sure-what hadn’t quite started spilling down the Mass Pike and Merritt Parkway from Boston, there were fields of home-grown in the area surrounding UCONN. The “scene” consisted of a blending of Folkies joining together and showing off at open mike “Hootenanies” which I recall were monthly affairs; various “thinkers” ( in addition to intellectuals?) from the Theater, English, Philosophy and Psychology departments; also from Physics and Chem grad students, and the general riff-raff hanging out at the subterranean Campus Restaurant … the independents’ alternative to the Student Union on campus.
Music was undergoing changes… Dylan’s first electric album, Blonde on Blonde (is that what it was called?) was startling. Tyner and Coltrane were taking us deeper into the pure spirituality of music. Lambert, Hendricks and Ross were blending scat, jazz and vocals into something I had never heard. Gil Evans “Out Of The Cool” added another dimension to big band stuff. And Cecil Taylor had abandoned all the technicalities of classical music altogether for jazz, save the neurological imprints in his wrists and fingers when he threw his hands at the piano.
Against this backdrop, Acid struck our little enclave in Storrs like the brilliant white blast of a Nuclear Bomb… blowing down everything and everyone away in its’ path. A Cerebral Tunguska event, if you will. From the Hoots at the Hillel House to the basement of the Campus Restaurant, people started jamming… and talking. Who got the idea for a band I don’t know. I think it was when Starger showed up. A VERY silent ex-military guy. But it didn’t take three minutes to realize that this was not a militaristic guy. We must have jammed somewhere, because it was a given that he could play. It turned out he was a ‘townie’ … which meant nothing to me (my town was Manhattan, and we didn’t know from “townies”). Someone else from the band will have to help remember exactly how the band got started. All I know is I woke up one morning in Minty’s folks house in Stamford and there we were. The den, I suppose it was, had a big picture window looking out over Long island sound, and that’s where we set up our equipment permanently to live and write until we had enough songs to play out, Which we did.
. Silly stuff (“Sea Ballad”) and music from heaven (David’s solos… particularly the second half of his two parter on “Imagination Dead, Imagine”) all rerupted there. Chas brought “Colors” to the party and would have created a lot more honey stuff had the magic lasted.
I must admit for myself, that for a bunch of guys singing about ego death and all, mine was so strong that I hardly remember anything about anyone else in the band, around the band, etc. Well … not exactly, but it sure is difficult to nail down some chronology.
Perhaps the most significant single thing that occurred for me was finding a record called Bass Strings by a California group called Country Joe and The Fish. It was about seven or ten minutes long. It was an instrumental. It was on 33-1/3, but the size of a 45. And it was on their own label. They did it alone. It heralded the new music for me. We never got that far, but I still think if we’d had a little more time, we might have brought some new things to the party.
The next move… to “The City”. Cov’s amazing find on West 24th Street took us into phase two. I remember an occasional groupie passing through by this time. I remember being amazed that we had attracted groupies. Justine. I name that only for the other guys benefit. I was younger than everyone… maybe David was a babe too, but I was still wet behind the ears. I had no idea, until perhaps five years later, that Justine climbed over the roof with me to the vacant apartment next door (as she had with two or three of the guys by that time) for a reason. I was so clueless that we chatted a while, and climbed back! Big rock star.
Did anyone mention the orphans at the loft yet? Three young things, from Boston showed up and hung with us for a while. None of the guys touched them. At least, I don’t think so. I hope not. They were kids) It wasn’t that they were jailbait. I can’t say why. Maybe, because they felt like family. One of my crystal clear memories is the three of them coming back up to the loft after a ferocious rainstorm looking like so many sorry cats left out overnight.
I think our best gig was at the café Au Go Go. Al Koopers band was just playing out for the first time. I had seen him when he was
Grey: If you want more of this type of trash I’ll keep going.
Meanwhile, here’s comments on tunes for liner notes:
Going home –A work of remarkable courage. Usually, anyone who explains the secrets of finding your way “home” pays for it.
Skipping Through The Night: One comment only: the image “a bag of roses in your hand” refers to the bright red bloom of blood backing into the eyedropper…
Nova Express: After “Dream Street” not yet recorded) Tthis was David’s best? Bob’s “Yeah yeah yeah, yeah carried the joy to a new level.
So Bright: Actually, on this one, the Wurlitzer sounded fine.
Imagination, Dead Imagine My favorite. Except for the vocal “style” But I loved this song. What a tune
“Forever Gone” was done in David’s best pirate voice. He has such a fabulous twinkling self deprecation that carries a tone of sinistrality. Who could better a line like “If you wanna quench that Godly thirst, give up this world of life until death”. Yes, baby, the wheel will turn and there’s still more to come.
posted by Danny Cabeza de Calabazo at 11:40 AM
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