Here's a long personal story which rambles and sidetracks a bit, but has a vague reference to Bo Diddley, so indulge me by reading it or just skip it if you wish:
While I was a sophomore in high school, the various bands I was in had a rough time getting hired. There were very many high school age bands in the SF Bay Area, and the ones I played in were just some among the herd. We got most of our gigs at local, tiny, battles of the bands... where three to five bands would show up, play for 30 minutes each, and the crowd voted as to which band got paid. The rest went home with experience only. We discovered that if the band covered the current top songs on the pop radio stations, they won, regardless of talent, or they were in tune, or anything... when "Eight Days a Week" was #1, playing it twice could win you the cash.
I hated playing just the hits -- I liked playing music which was taken from certain styles: folk-rock, blues-rock, surf music, etc. We always played at least as well as any other band at these battles, but never got paid. Like most of the other bands. The winning bands just went from battle to battle, covering whatever was on the top of the local charts, and shut out many good bands who played originals, or covered better songs. The organizers of these battles were beginning to have a rough time gathering bands to play. They didn't want to book three or four bands who played the same songs, in as close to the same arrangements as the hit records (many of these promoters actually liked music), and these top of the pops bands didn't want to compete against each other.
So one of the promoters approached me to get me to create disposable bands for the battles. After he induced a band or two to compete in a battle, he'd call me, letting me know what type of band(s) he'd signed up. We'd chat and create a theme for a band or two who would compete at the battle. This band I'd form (or bands) would compete knowing we were unlikely to win, so we'd get paid between 50% and 100% of what the winning band would get. We were there to enable the battle to exist, and to please the musical taste(s) of the promoter. So we'd be a surf band, or a folk-rock band, or a blues band, or whatever. Sometimes he'd need two bands, so I'd play guitar in one and bass in another, and both would get paid at least 50% of the amount the winner would take home. After a few months, he told other battle of the bands promoters of his arrangement with me, and I began to create bands who would do the same for other, outside Redwood City, battles. During the summer between my sophomore and junior years, I must have created at least one band for every Friday and Saturday night, playing at two battles every week. I'd keep 1/3rd the winnings, whether the band was a trio, quartet or quintet, and I'd share the other 2/3rds of the payment equally among the musicians in that band.
I had a half dozen guitarists, a bass player or two, about three keyboard players, a sax player, four drummers, two girl singers, three guy singers (one played blues harmonica, all played tambourine or maracas, as did the female singers), a flute player, and a few other oddball instrumentalists. I'd call the musicians I thought would work best with the type of band(s) I was forming and make sure they were available. We'd rehearse once -- Wednesday night for Friday battles, Thursday for Saturday battles. We only had to play for less than half an hour, so two hours rehearsal was all we'd put into it. The pay was always cash, so it was easy to split up after the gig.
I formed dozens, perhaps hundreds of bands. All but one never played a second time, although different bands (with different names) might have the same personnel. I would be in virtually every band (I might have missed one when I had to book two battles on the same night in two widely distant places), but each was as unique as its name. The one band that played more than once played three times.
I played a hollow-body archtop electric 12-string guitar: Coral Fallstead played a Stratocaster; Steve Marincik played blues harp, maracas and sang; Gary Mora was on drums, and I don't remember who played his Danelectro bass. We called ourselves "Holy Cow & the Hindus" -- I wore a white pullover sweatshirt we had painted "The Cow" on the front. Coral and I switched off playing lead and rhythm... and every song we played was either a Bo Diddley song, or a song based on the Bo Diddley beat... "Bo Diddley" "Diddley Daddy" "Say Man" "I'm a Man" 'You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover" "Road Runner" "Who Do You Love" "Mona" "Not Fade Away" "Willie and the Hand Jive" and maybe a few more. Needless to say, we never had enough time at any one battle to play all these... these are what we played over the three different battles we were in. The only reason (beyond the fun of playing nothing but Bo Diddley music) for the repeats that this erzatz band played was that we won the first battle we were in. We got paid the winning amount + $10 for each of us, less than what the promoter would have had to have paid the winning band plus us. We were happy/he was happy. So two other promoters wanted the one-beat band. So Holy Cow played in a church in Redwood City in June, a high school gym in Belmont in July, and a shopping center parking lot in San Mateo in August. We didn't win in June or July, but... oh, well.
So yeah, I've played Bo Diddley stuff often since 1965.
Nobody ever took our picture that I know of. |