Retros pt. IV

Word was getting out about the punk scene in St.Louis. Well, at least other news was slow enough that people were looking for things to write about and some would stumble upon accounts of the punk scene and it would raise their antenna. They may have heard about the goofiness that went on in England and think, "oh cool, I could break this underground anti-social movement story happening right under our noses." Well, the initial notice was regards some "radical" behavior. Steve Pick, Duwan Dunn, George Dunn and myself (if there was someone else, I can't remember) showed up to protest outside KSHE radio that they were refusing to play punk (or alternative or new wave or whatever you want to call it now) music. While KSHE was no longer the top-rated radio station in ST.L, it was still an influential beast at that time. And for all the experimenting and ground breaking that FM radio used to do, by the time the late seventies rolled around, all the dj's were pretty ensconced in their persona's and very resistant to change. They were especially resistant to something that was critical of their behaviour, which punk (especially US punk) was very much so. If you can imagine an entire body of music from the early 70's to the mid 80's being ignored by popular radio, you can start to get the gist of what was going on in radio back then. All of these radio stations that sought out "new" music and challenged the status-quo in the late 60's, hid behind those very same discoveries and avoided any further "discovery" of the newer musical trends that were just cracking out of the seed in those days.
Anyway, I digress...The four of us protested/picketed across the street from KSHE. We had signs, marched around up and down the sidewalk. Probably hardly even noticed. But, we had one "in." Steve Pick was interning at a local newspaper and had some connections. Elaine Viets was a rising star at the St.L Post Dispatch in those days and decided to do a story on us.
The article consisted of the four of us with supplemental interviews with Dave Thomas of Cool Jerk. By my inclusion, the Retros were also featured in a photograph. Unfortunately, we had no upcoming gig to capitalize on the notoriety. But, publicity is publicity and it didn't hurt to get the pic and the mention. The funny story on that is when the photographer (Karen Elshout) showed up for the first photo session at our rehearsal space. While I'm sure it was interesting, with the porn posters (prominently displayed above one of the doorways) and junkiness of the space probably didn't present a good background. Subsequently, we got called down to the Post studios and had a photo shoot downtown. It was not a great photo but, it got published. I remember we were like little girls, trying to decide what to wear. Photo reproduction being what it was in those days, it turned out pretty low quality in the paper regardless of our preparation.
I've yet to scan that or some other articles from that period.

Later...more gigs, more media

Retros pt. III

So, my memory is getting to the point of not remembering all of the things we did or the places we played. That, coupled with the other bands I was in later, I have a hard time remembering where we played, when we played there or what band I was in when we played there.
So, Somewhere along there came VFW Post 555. Once again, Cool Jerk founder, Dave Thomas found the place. It was what is says it was. You could rent out the place for arond $100 or $150 for the Saturday night and throw a gig. The bands charged $1 per band on the bill so, 3 bands = $3 admission. Bands generally came away with a couple of hundred dollars. Enough to pay bills, cover some music related expenses, etc. Plus, the beer was 35¢ a glass. That alone was worth the price of admission. The Vets didn't seem to mind too much, at least they didn't voice any displeasure during our gigs playing there. That trouble came later.


I think our first gig there was either opening or closing with Brown and Langhrer(sp?). You were pretty much assured an audience back in those days, as there wasn't anything else going on. That's not to sound pathetic because, the quality of bands playing was really spectacular. I'd put our scene at that time up against anything happening on the East Coast (West Coast hadn't really gotten organized yet) and we'd hold our own without apologies. Back in those days, the bands supplied everything, sound system, lights, everything. It was really frustrating and challenging because you were band, sound technician (thank goodness we had Don Hollenbeck, the "fifth" member as far as I'm concerned), management, door, etc. There was no system in place. At least, not at the places we would normally play. The clubs had it good, no investment in equipment, just clear a space on the floor and get the band to do the rest. They didn't even pay the bands. We worked strictly off the door take.
Anyway, VFW 555 quickly became nirvana for punk rock in St.Louis. It was all ages entry. The bar was a seperate room off the man hall so, booze sales was "controlled" that way. What happened to the booze after it left the little room well, let's just say it was consumed and leave it at that.


Our gig went really well. We played for about an hour. One of our encores we worked up a little surprise where, I played guitar and Don played bass on "You Know You Can't Help It", a Buzzcocks song. Since I played guitar before I became a Retro, and switched to bass in the band, I was still itching to play a little guitar and this was my little shot. All I remember about it was I couldn't hear a fucking thing I played so, had no idea how any of it sounded.
I'll post about the other gig we had a VFW 555 another time.

Retros pt. II

So, it continues...
I left out one parties the Retros played. It was pretty minor as it was basically a private house party. I don't remember what the connection was that got us the gig but basically, someone hired us to play for their party at their house. It was a really small turnout, maybe 30 people and we got maybe $100. Which wasn't bad in those days. It was kind of weird playing to that small of a group. Made more so because we were basically set-up in the living room (which was small) and were facing a couch and stairs. But, it was a gig and it was a tune-up before playing out at our first paying gig. I'm mentioning it here more as historical fact. Otherwise it was pretty insignificant (other than the idea of someone paying us specifically to play for them-a first for a punk band in St.Louis?).

The first gig in a club came at No Name Disco (currently/recently the Funny Bone). Mondays were slow for them so, the manager decided to try "punk night." Cool Jerk made the initial foray into the club and the rest of us found the opening to get a gig.

We were all nervous about going out. While playing a party for free was one thing, expecting people ot pay for us was totally another. The expectations were completely different. We decided to "show" it up a bit. One of us would go out first, start a riff then, be followed by each of the others, until the full band were on stage. While it made more sense for Steve to go out first and lay down the beat, somehow I was drafted to be first. Nice, not only did I go out and start the bass line of an instrumental we come up with but, Steve, who was next to come out, left me hanging there for a good long time (seemed like hours) before he graced his kit. While I had set a pace, when Steve came out, he immediately sped it up by double. Don came out and then Chuck who, proclaimed "I'm Chuck and we're the Retros!" And we set off into what became out signature opener "One Chord Wonders," an Adverts cover. Great song for starting out our show. The audience consisted of mostly the folks who came to our party gigs and friends. It was good. I remember us performing a pretty good set. After the nerves settled down in the first few songs, we even had some fun. There were a couple of live recordings of the show (back then it was portable cassette recorders. None of this digital recording technology of the current era) that sound pretty decent. Not audiophile quality but, a very listenable document of the performance.

More to come...

The Retros - part I

So, without going into my personal music history, I'll just give a little rundown of the life of The Retros. Memory and all being what it is, I may not get the exact details right but, the story will be there. Feel free to correct.
Late fall of 1977 I met some folks at a local college station. KWUR is a radio station run by Washington University in Saint Louis. On Friday nights in those days there was a punk show dj'd by Dave Thomas. It was a 10 watt station so, if you wanted to hear it, you had to literally drive to the parking lot outside, tune in and listen. Punks or people who were fans of the Punk Rock movement were scarce then and news on new music was scarce. Folks started to congregate at the station to hear the latest sounds, bring in their latest find to share on the air and just hang out.
I'm a guitar player and a bass player. Back then, I was just a guitar player. One of those Friday nights, I met bunch of folks who I hadn't seen before. They all played music and were looking to form bands. One of the guys, Tony Cornejo, asked me over to audition. Don't know how much later it was, maybe a week. Most of the guys that were at the station that Friday were also at this audition. We played a few songs and were doing a Stones song, Sympathy for the Devil. I got the nod to do the solo break. I nailed it. I mean, Keith Richards or Brian Jones (whoever did that solo) couldn't have done a cleaner take of that solo. I floored myself because I'd never played that song before (or since) and only heard the solo but, never played it. Anyway, it obviously impressed some people. Before the day was over, Don Green, Chuck DeClue and Steve Fairchild asked me to join their fledgling band, essentially stealing me away from the band I was there to try out for. They didn't ask me to audition rather, join a forming band. The Retros were born.
Over the period of a few rehersals, it became clear that a bass player was not forthcoming. Don (the other guitar player of the moment) and I talked it over and decided I would take up bass guitar. I was able to borrow a bass and we went to work putting together our songs.
Meanwhile, the holidays were approaching and Tony Cornejo, who I auditioned for originally, had gotten together a band and wanted to play at a Christmas party he was hosting. Being new, they didn't have a lot of songs so, they asked us to open up for them. We had about 8 songs we rehearsed to a point we could play them for a gig. Our debut gig was set. It was a party so, critical review wasn't the point. We played well and worked out the first gig jitters. Most of the attendees were friends of the bands and just enjoyed the entertainment.
Next gig was another party. It was at the house of another band we knew, The Dinosaurs. This was different. The attendees were mostly people we didn't know. It was a longer set. We had issues with the sound. I won't go into details but, we were suspicious it wasn't accidental. We got through the gig and learned we have to watch out for ourselves and become self sufficient.
After the issues of the last gig, we agreed to another party with the Dinosaurs. This time, we enlisted Don Hollenbeck, a good friend of the band, to keep an eye on the sound and us. Don would basically become the fifth Retro. He was the objective opinion we would always seek to keep us on track.



This third party was played at a residence on Forest Park Blvd. The house was vacated as it had been sold and was between occupants. Having Don running our sound gave us the confidence to push our boundary. We played a great gig. We won over the crowd and pretty much established ourselves as a serious band to be reckoned with. We had a full set of material and didn't mess around too much. We just played.
Chuck (vocals) and Don (guitar) did a bulk of the songwriting. I contributed a chunk of songs. I had free range to write bass parts as they came to me and I gave the same freedom to the rest of the band on my songs. Chuck did all the vocals and I did some harmony or backup vocals. I hadn't learned how to do it very well and I don't know if we ever played with monitors for us to hear ourselves. Steve kept a pretty solid and straightforward beat. He had chops and gave us a good foundation to work from.
So, we've cut our teeth playing for free. We started building our catalog of original songs interlaced with a handful of covers of some of our favorite songs. Next up was to see if anybody wanted to pay to see us and see if we could build a following.

Later.

What's UP?

Not like what's happening, what's up but rather, what's positive? What is up as opposed to down? I don't know about you but, I'm not in the mood any more for being negative. It sort of gets drilled into us. Be negative. Be pessimistic. Whatever you do, don't be cheerful or upbeat. What's wrong with you?

You have a choice. Times can be tough. Times can be absolutely terrible. Losing your house? That's really bad. Losing your job. That can be downright devastating, because if you haven't done so yet, you will lose your house too. STOP! We get trapped in the cycle of negativity. Something not good happens and we dwell on it over and over. We tell our friends how terrible things are. They tell you back how terrible your situation is. You're just circling the drain at an alarmingly accelerating rate. The blackness is reaching up and pulling you in! What's left? I'd like to offer a twist to the plot.

Bring down your expectations. Reel in your expectations. The world isn't going to flick you off like some unwanted insect that's causing an annoying itch. Relax. Even though it feels like the last thing you want to do...maybe the last thing you think you should be doing. Relax and think through what you've got. I say you've got at least two things. You have the ability to make a choice about what to do next and you have tomorrow. Don't let the memory of what was, keep you from taking stock of what is and moving forward from that point. It's cliche. It's easier to say than to do.

I had a couple of pivotal revelation points in my life. One came when Michael Jordan made a comment that's since become pretty often referenced. He talked about how he kept practicing a particular shot even though he kept missing it. Even though he was missing the shot, he was learning from each attempt. He said after about 1000 practice shots, he finally started making them. Later on, a journalist asked him if he regretted all the time he wasted before he started making the shot he was practicing. Jordan's response was something along the lines of, you don't start succeeding at attempt 1001 unless you do the 1000 "learning" steps first. So, basically, every unsuccessful result is only defeat if you let it beat you. What you should do is get back up and learn how to improve the next attempt. As long as you don't settle for failure, you haven't failed. Life is a process that keeps on going.

The other revelation came in two parts from reading The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama. He said you can whittle down everybody's life's goal to achieving happiness. Once you clear away the "noise" of what you want to achieve, you can begin to get there. The other point I got from Dalai Lama is, you can live life two ways. You can let life happen TO you or you can make the choices of how to live your life. It's hard to explain/understand until you start doing it and seeing/feeling it happen but, it is true. It works and it makes sense. You want to take responsibilty for your life. You want to make the decisions about how your life is going to be. So, it's like this. You lose your job, your house, your spouse, whatever. Are you going to just stop and say, oh my, what's going to happen to me now. Or, will you pick yourself up and go from there. You may feel compelled to argue that you don't have any money, a roof over your head,etc. Or, instead of dwelling on what you don't have, what you had, you start using the two things you have. Remember? You have tomorrow and you have the ability to choose. It may not seem like much but, it's all you've ever really had, isn't it. All the wealth, all the things. What are they. They are a result of choices. You've always had it and still do, no matter the circumstances. And tomorrow, well, that's just another word for hope, isn't it. By moving towards tomorrow, you free yourself from having to live with past results. You start to get closer to 1001, when you start making the shot.

To sum it up, there are three keys: You'll reach your goal when you learn how. Make choices that lead to your happiness. Take control of your life and the things that happen in it. These may not sound like much but, they're everything. They're what everything is built on and grows from.

Go for it!

Small things

Change is hard. It requires undoing habits. THAT'S really hard because you have all of these subconscious cues planted all over the place to push you back "onto track." Well, I did something different. I rearranged the bedroom. I just did it. My wife was off making jewelry and I got a wild hair and went to work. I'd had an idea of how I wanted to rearrange the room for a while and just put plan into action. It took all afternoon but, I just about got done before my wife came home. Oh, shit. I never talked it over with her. She may want to kill me. So before she came upstairs, I yelled down, I'll put it back if you don't like it. Fortunately, she liked. And it opened up the room into a bigger feeling space. You walk into an open space where as before you walking in to a path created by the bed and the wall. Gives the room a whole new feel. Bigger. More possibilities. That's why I rearranged. I tried to remove a lot of the cues. Lose the cues and change doesn't get challenged by the innate so much. Change has a better chance if you remove the old guideposts and allow yourself to move to the rhythm of the change and not have to fight the old rhythms.
This change is more mental. Trying to get my mind out of the rut it's rhythm has created. In St.Louis City, when there's serious snow they plow the main streets but, generally not the side streets. If it stays cold enough long enough the passing cars create ruts where the tire tracks the road. You could let go of your steering wheel and let the rut guide you down the street. Pretty funny...until you try to pull out of the rut into a parking space or alley or some turn not often driven on. The rut goes straight down the road but, you want to turn. The ice in the rut just keeps you sliding forward as you turn the steering wheel all the way in the direction you want to go. There's not enough traction to make the car go over the rut and make the turn. Changing around the bedroom was a cut I made in the rut to give the tires a chance to get some traction and complete the turn. There's music down that turn. There's a different city down that turn. There's change down that turn.
It's a new year and it's a good a time as any to make a change. I can feel the tires getting some grip already.

Rolling Stones

I think I may be the one person from "my" era of growing up that is not a big fan of The Beatles or Rolling Stones. I think I just missed that boat. There were a lot more shiny sparkly musical things happening during my imprintable moments. It's not that I don't like The Stones, it's just that I didn't catch them in the right time of my life.
I have come to appreciate what they and The Beatles and the countless other bands of the mid to late sixties did to change not just the music scene but, the world.
What got me to this was watching Shine A Light the other night. It is a Martin Scorsese film of a benefit concert the Stones did a few years ago.
Those fuckers are old! They look corpse like on the surface but from the inside, they project that wild eyed teenager who sees him/herself as the center of the universe, if only for that one moment. Mick Jagger struts and gyrates and dances around like a teenager with all the confidence of a 60+ year old icon. Keith and Ronnie are a bit sloppy on guitar but, they are animated. Charlie Watts is just solid. They miss Bill Wyman but, after seeing that Keith was probably doing most of the bass parts when they recorded anyway (via Sympathy For the Devil), I came to understand that musically he was expendable. His replacement (I confess to not knowing his name) is almost to "studio musician" like. Evidence that he's a hired hand as he doesn't play the song from "living it" but from just knowing it. It comes across. Though maybe they need that to keep them grounded. Keith and Ronnie play the songs but, they "spread out" all over the place and sometimes, thanks to the recorded quality of the performance, they get a bit annoying. It's like they've been doing the same songs for so many years, they don't need to play all the notes or play them in all the right places. The luxury of being a musical entity for 40+ years.
On a side note, Keith Richards played a couple of his solo songs and should never ever again attempt to make a solo record. Sorry, man. It's crap. Only reason he got away with it at any level was because of who he is and not the songs. I won't go on and on about why I think this way but, he just should say no.
I believe the Stones still have integrity. I think they teetered for a bit in the 80's and early 90's but, in the end, they wouldn't have been as interesting on their own and I think they realized it. This is one of those instances where the whole unit is greater than the sum of it's parts (I think that's how the saying would apply here). If often works that way.
Anyway, this is probably as close to seeing the band as I'll come during my life. There were opportunities over the years but, like I said, I am not a big fan and there were other things distsracting me at the time. No regrets but, I am glad that I came to know and get a handle on the band and it's musical affect over the years.