Captain & Crew

I ben capt'n & crew, knew all what to do, had the tools, played the fools, for a folly, la-la-la. Slipped and slided, peeked and hided my way through foamy muck and thousand-fold waves; splashed and sloshed, and splooshed my way toward the shore. Near there, my hook found a grip in the 12 feet thick mud of the bottom there, about eight feet under the surface. Shore beckoned, and waterfront reckoned with all sorts of mysteries & intrigues; both imaginable and unknown. And my friends there always welcomed me as one of their own, and we partied, making much musical throbbing in the process. And if all else failed, at least my post office box contents might spice up the espresso at the cafe next door. There might be a female or two worth looking at, maybe, but I know that none of them would agree to live like I do. Life based from a working boat as home base, coats one such as me (I was then) in the salt-slimed methane odor of the mud along shore; in much the same way as the fishermen get so saturated in fish scales & guts & slime that after many showers, the odor still clings. Scratched up, scraped, bruised & stank y from my perennial efforts in waters, mud, reed-marshes, and sands of marine salvage along the 1000 miles of inland shores of the San Francisco region; so, I never really 'chased'--at least, not very actively, anyway--the wimmim. The 95% female care-givers during my upbringing had been overly (I thought) strict, while also being at times overly-indulgent and patronizing, spoiling me rotten, left me rather skeptical about females-in-general, and skittish when finding myself too close around them. So, water rat that I'd become: I boated my boat & salvaged my salvage & kept to myself a lot during those first few years of living & breathing the being & doing of a waterborne human salvage machine; while so emotionally-distraught over the divorce deal; with all the poor self image factors of such a situation, thrown in for good measure. A few years later, I was again surfacing toward more positive pursuits. Such is the really-astounding and astonishing amount of inborn resilience of our inheri-tance.  ¶   Throughout the whole of my late teens & young adulthood, I kept up regular music-making with the many other musical-performance-inclined whom I had known from my 10 yrs. sojourn into this aspect of a musician's business. Going & confronting possible other bands, bandmates, or  bar jobs was never my strong suit. I was a wild-eyed rock and roll wannabe imitator rather stupid, slow-brained, singer-while-playing of cover tunes popular in the mid-50s to mid-60s, unable to go & face the music of trying to sell a job—or myself. Except for my clear correct toned singing voice that somehow managed to recollect on demand any number of dozens and dozens of songs, music, their word progressions and solos while dancing in a white shirt, tie, and monkey suit of many colors. Our band leader had 5 different sets of 4 suit-coat: fire engine, red, gold la-may, blue, white, and a paisley green that shimmered in the stage lights. In the picture that serves back cover of this collection, I am wearing the gold la-may one. The oft-referred-to hated Farfisa electronic organ is what I am playing. Joe Thompson, (the guy behind me) who had encouraged me to come help him finish off this gig he'd had with his soon-to-be-former band-mates, and who kept me employed for over the approximate four years directly after this photograph was taken, in the early fall of 1961, shortly after I had turned twenty-one years old and could finally earn more than the ten or twenty bucks teen dance jobs provided. I'd joined the Musicians Union Local Number 6 so I could get union wages of thirty-two fifty, I think it was when I started that bar band era of my life. Because the contracts paperwork didn't seem that difficult, I was elected by Joe and sweet voiced drummer, Larry, to be the union's designated 'leader', who was responsible for delivering the completed contracts between band & the bar to the union's (SF) office by early evening before the gig at the latest. For this, I was paid an extra $3-per-night. Self-awareness issues of early 1965—divorce proceedings instituted by wife & inlaws, left my musical involvement(s) at some loose ends, with the gigs farther and farther apart. Hell: I had a boat now and was merging to a new life off of the land. Even so, I had more than a dozen gigs that year, after the Joe Thompson Trio broke up. The drummer's girlfriend was pregnant and he had to go take a job in his daddy's Cadillac dealership in San Rafael (CA). And I was getting dumped by my wife and had bought a boat!!?? Still: There was a whole summer of weekend gigs at the same tiny English pub style bar at number one main street in Tiburon; the Sunday gig of which ran from 1PM to 10pm, or sometimes: 2 to 11 in the summer of '66, at 26. As a duo: me and drummer.