To those of you who have followed my BLOG you might have wondered where I’ve been for the past 3 weeks. Well, much has been going on in my life, but most of it has been typical everyday kinds of things that have just taken too much time from me to get another posting ready. However, I have started a couple of HUGE projects that I hope will be of interest to you when they are completed. First, I am working on a complete overhaul of my website. It will feature not only my music, but also my photography and it will be where my BLOG will be easier to access. The other major project that I am working on is what I am going to likely call “The Soundtrack of My Life”. That could change though.
I have been recording music for over 40 years now. In fact, since I was about 14 years old. Thankfully, you will never hear any of the really ancient stuff. Take my word on something - that’s a good thing! The point is I have been going through hours upon hours of recorded music on old reel-to-reel tapes and transferring a great deal of it to the computer for the “Soundtrack” project. I’ll explain as things go along what all this is about, but for this entry in my BLOG I want to talk about some things that have been happening while listening to these old tapes. Most of them have not been played in many many years. I certainly remember a lot of the recordings, but amazingly I have “discovered” some old recordings that I had forgotten about. Some of them I simply don’t remember doing at all. That’s kind of humbling.
What has happened though is hearing all of these recordings and listening through the typical things that you never hear when you hear a song on someone’s album (such as the starts and stops, background talking, joking around, noises, and in a few cases some pretty amazing exchanges between people) a curious thing has happened to me. I have quite literally been hit with a myriad of emotions while hearing these things. Things like just before starting a recording you can hear my ex-wife in the background asking how long I’ll be so that she can plan on when to have dinner. The exchange ends with an audible kiss and mutual “I love you” expressions. Hearing that strips away the hard years that were to come and I am reminded that I was indeed in love with her and she was in love with me. We were young, just staring out really, and all of life was still before us. It was before all the “stuff” that eventually crushed our love and our marriage. Hearing it makes me ask the inevitable question, “What the heck happened?” Well, of course I know the answer because the memory of all the bad stuff still lingers too. But it makes you wonder how you can let something that was good just die. No, I’m not hung up on my ex now. I have a good life now. But the “what if” game does play through your head and that’s a game that is hard to play.
Other things have hit me while listening to these old recordings. The dreams and goals and vibrancy of youth that seem to just ooze off the tapes. Everything seemed possible then. There’s some pretty funny stuff on those tapes too. Things that remind me that I’ve been kind of nutty all my life!
If all goes the way I plan, then you will have a chance to hear many of the songs recorded over a nearly 40 year period of time. The idea is to combine two forms of media for this project. I will be writing an auto-biography of sorts (where music in my life has been concerned) and the reader will be able to access a digital jukebox on the new website that will allow you to hear some of those songs when they were new and before the magic of a professional studio “cleaned them up”. There will be a lot demons exorcised in this project and that part is for my benefit. I’m hoping that to anyone interested in my life and my music their benefit will be to share it with me. Let me know what you think. I really would like to know.
Take care dear friends,
Randy
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Missing Links or "The Apes of Wrath"
When you’re 17 life can be pretty amazing. It was for me. If I were to decide to write about the experiences I had in my 17th year it could turn out to be at least a full book and perhaps a 3 volume set. For now I’m going to tell about one particular event. It was in June of 1973. I was working at a movie theater and among my co-workers were my best buddy Lonny and my cousin Philip. The new feature that week was the final movie of the original 5 movie set of “Planet of the Apes”. This one was called “Battle For The Planet of the Apes”. As a promotional we ran all five ape movies starting at 10 a.m. The current movie was featured both at 6 and 10 p.m. The original movie was also featured twice. Once at 10 a.m. and again at 8 p.m. It was such a popular event that it was held over for 3 weeks. Back in those days it was rare for a picture to stay in the theater for more than a week. Oh it would come back around as a second feature (remember getting to see 2 movies for the price of 1?) sometime later. It would also spend some time in the drive-ins after it’s run at the indoor theaters like the one I worked at.
The second night we were showing these movies the manager came to Philip and said he needed something picked up from another theater across town. When I say across town you must understand that meant about 40 miles. Houston is a big town! My friend Lonny and I were just getting off for the day and had nothing else to do so we tagged along with Philip. It was one crazy cool cruising night. We took Philip’s car, a 1968 Chevy Camaro which was suped-up with loud exhaust, slicks on the back, and a faster than it should have been V-8 under the hood. It took about an hour to get across town and get the items we were after. Little did we know that the “items” were yet another promotional tool for the ape movies. What were they? Would you believe 3 very lifelike ape masks just like in the movie! Well, our fertile 17 year old minds immediately seized the day. As soon as we drove out of the parking lot of that other theater we stopped and dawned those ape masks for the ride back across town.
Now there’s a couple of things you might want to picture along with this. First, Philip was restricted from driving without his glasses. So, he found a way to get those glasses of his on the mask which made for a very intelligent looking ape. Second, no A/C in that car meant the windows were down. So, to keep the image going we slumped down so that just our heads were visible to other drivers. We had to drive through the center of downtown Houston and there was a red light every 10 feet or so. The reactions by people were quite funny. We were deadpanning the whole time acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world for 3 apes to be driving a 1968 Camaro through the streets of Houston. Some kids screamed with fright while others laughed. Some adults, too old for such nonsense (in their minds that is) simply ignored us while others pointed and shook their heads in wonder.
So the idea came up that perhaps we should stop by Lonny’s house and scare his little brother and sister. From what I can tell his brother has never gotten over it while his sister relates the trauma she endured in a stand-up comedy routine! Lonny’s mother was not amused however and I seriously wondered for years if she ever forgave me. Lonny tells me she did.
Finally, we get back to the theater and we walk in among the movie-goers wearing the masks and generally got a lot of laughs. I tell this story because it reminds me that sometimes we forget how to let our hair down (sorry about that) and take a light-hearted approach to life when perhaps being light-hearted is just what the heart needs. Philip lives in Alaska these days having been banned from Texas for aping around too much. Lonny lives in the Dallas area and is perhaps the first bald ape in history. As for me, I live in the country of East Texas and over the years have become as big as an ape. I tell Lonny that between the two of us we’re bald and fat. But that night in 1973 when the world was hearing about the fighting in Israel, some really sick men who had murdered 27 young boys in our hometown of Houston, and questions were flying about something called “Watergate” three 17 year-old boys were not to be deterred from the joy that everyone should get to experience in their youth.
The second night we were showing these movies the manager came to Philip and said he needed something picked up from another theater across town. When I say across town you must understand that meant about 40 miles. Houston is a big town! My friend Lonny and I were just getting off for the day and had nothing else to do so we tagged along with Philip. It was one crazy cool cruising night. We took Philip’s car, a 1968 Chevy Camaro which was suped-up with loud exhaust, slicks on the back, and a faster than it should have been V-8 under the hood. It took about an hour to get across town and get the items we were after. Little did we know that the “items” were yet another promotional tool for the ape movies. What were they? Would you believe 3 very lifelike ape masks just like in the movie! Well, our fertile 17 year old minds immediately seized the day. As soon as we drove out of the parking lot of that other theater we stopped and dawned those ape masks for the ride back across town.
Now there’s a couple of things you might want to picture along with this. First, Philip was restricted from driving without his glasses. So, he found a way to get those glasses of his on the mask which made for a very intelligent looking ape. Second, no A/C in that car meant the windows were down. So, to keep the image going we slumped down so that just our heads were visible to other drivers. We had to drive through the center of downtown Houston and there was a red light every 10 feet or so. The reactions by people were quite funny. We were deadpanning the whole time acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world for 3 apes to be driving a 1968 Camaro through the streets of Houston. Some kids screamed with fright while others laughed. Some adults, too old for such nonsense (in their minds that is) simply ignored us while others pointed and shook their heads in wonder.
So the idea came up that perhaps we should stop by Lonny’s house and scare his little brother and sister. From what I can tell his brother has never gotten over it while his sister relates the trauma she endured in a stand-up comedy routine! Lonny’s mother was not amused however and I seriously wondered for years if she ever forgave me. Lonny tells me she did.
Finally, we get back to the theater and we walk in among the movie-goers wearing the masks and generally got a lot of laughs. I tell this story because it reminds me that sometimes we forget how to let our hair down (sorry about that) and take a light-hearted approach to life when perhaps being light-hearted is just what the heart needs. Philip lives in Alaska these days having been banned from Texas for aping around too much. Lonny lives in the Dallas area and is perhaps the first bald ape in history. As for me, I live in the country of East Texas and over the years have become as big as an ape. I tell Lonny that between the two of us we’re bald and fat. But that night in 1973 when the world was hearing about the fighting in Israel, some really sick men who had murdered 27 young boys in our hometown of Houston, and questions were flying about something called “Watergate” three 17 year-old boys were not to be deterred from the joy that everyone should get to experience in their youth.
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