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.