I’d seen a few other bands at the Farm Bureau. One band, with the brothers who gave lessons to CEP and me, played there twice with a new six, and sometimes seven piece group on stage at the same time. The lead singer, a new member, had not been long out of the army when he joined The Cowls (not a real name). Along with him, his brother also sang and played harmonica and 12 stringed guitar, and every once in a while his wife would join for a few duos with her husband lead singer. The addition of these players increased the band’s song list to about a hundred songs. The old pop song list had been waded up and tossed. This new version of The Cowls covered lots of Bob Dylan and other slightly more obscure but more challenging artists. The guys that taught us left not long after the new people came aboard.
I also saw a band from Athens, The Rotts (not a real name), who played at the FB a few times, once at a gig sponsored by an Athens radio station. One of the players in The Rotts told me that when the members had inquired about the possibility of renting the FB for a solo venture, they were accosted by The Heroes’ parents. “We thought we were going to have to fight The Heroes’ parents just to play here.” They guy told me. I don’t recall the band playing Madisonville after that.
Somewhere along the line there was a battle of the bands held in the Madisonville High School gym. Four bands competed for a chance to on to another level of competition. A band from Athens was very slick and good, and had a neat playlist. There was another, less polished band. The band wasn’t pitiful, but was green. I was a little disappointed with The Heroes’ set. They were unusually nervous and appeared to me to be pressing too much. The guitar player’s chord popped off the fuzz box as he danced during Land of a Thousand Dances, a killer most nights, (which, with its wonderfully primitive beat, was executed to perfection by The Heroes drummer), and he somehow got behind on Hooked On a Feeling. Other bands might have crumbled, but the guys pulled it back together and finished strong.
The Thumbers followed The Heroes and played a very laid-back, professional sounding set. Billy D played MC from behind his recently purchased Farfisa, and I marveled at his smoothness and ease with the audience. It appeared to me that the band had no set list for the evening and chose instead to select numbers on the fly. I thought the band’s set was very effective. Now, I don’t want to take anything from The Heroes (I loved The Heroes then and still do), and even though the judges deemed The Heroes the winner of the contest, I thought it was the third best band that evening.
Problem, the band from Athens, exhibited good technical musicianship and delivered a glitch free performance. The Thumbers had two musicians who were better than anyone in Problem, and both bands gave slicker performances than The Heroes. The glitches killed a lot of The Heroes’ momentum. I don’t want to imply that the guitarist singlehandedly spoiled the show because sometimes when bad stuff happens it keeps piling up. I’d seen the guitarist dance as he had done that night many times before without a single incident. The stars just didn’t line up for him at the battle. But maybe they did, since his band won. I want to go on record by saying that when it came to getting great, full, psychedelic sounds, The Heroes blew everybody else away. The guitar player was among the very best fuzz tone and wah wah jockeys Monroe County ever produced, so please realize that I’m not trying to slag anybody. I’ve never played a glitch free gig.
The free Christmas dance was about the end of the run for The Heroes. When The Pug-a-Nut opened it took about three weeks for The Heroes’ crowds to vanish. I was shocked. I went to a dance at the FB one Saturday night, and with CEP and Lawman turned out to be one of only four guys there. The Heroes’ girlfriends and about two others girls made up the crowd. The band members packed up and left without performing. Same thing happened the next week. Crowds are fickle.
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