Dark Winds

Dark winds are blowing over this great land. Perhaps reading The Banana will bring a needle point of light.

Phase 12

            Tig and I began to jam more often together until I became the keyboard player in the remnant of his old band. The singer I’d previously replaced got tossed again, and the guy who’d played keyboards moved over to bass. What a waste. The Cobbler (not his real name) could play rings around me with just his thumb. The Cobbler had a musical gift, and instantly played any instrument he happened across. He also allowed me to use his incredible double keyboard Whitehall organ (from which The Cobbler could coax a symphony) and was game for any crazy shit the band conceived. OJB came on as the singer and brought a wide open fuck you attitude that suited the rest of us very well. We chose Juicy Root (suggested by Hook) as the band’s name, and began to practice in earnest.

            I think one of the reasons Tig and I had started to bond was that we like a lot of the same music. We sort of competed to out-trump each other on album and artist finds. I really got him on Johnny Winter. I remember playing him Be Careful with a Fool. He got me with Derek and the Dominos (though he confessed he’d had the album, via the automatic function of his family’s record club contract, for several weeks before realizing that Eric Clapton, one of Tig’s favorites, was Derek). We were also huge fans of Vanilla Fudge (as stated earlier).

            Another reason we were such good musical buddies was that I loved (still love) great guitar playing. Until 1971 my favorite instrument wasn’t organ but guitar, especially if pushed loudly through an amp and/or other devices. I could list many reasons, but I think mine closely resembles Frank Zappa’s when he described the electric guitar as the most blasphemous thing on the planet. “It spews blasphemy,” he was quoted as saying. Whether mean, ugly, smooth, sweet, raw, or refined, the guitar just cannot be suppressed. But it can be used for good or ill, right? Hell, no. The power of a guitar to possess a human soul should never be underestimated.

            The summer of 1971 was the Summer of Love in Madisonville. Young longhaired males became more common. The hippie ethos and fashion flooded into town in all directions at once. Marijuana, despite the efforts of crusading editors and overly zealous police chiefs, appeared in commercial quantities for a growing marketplace. Total acceptance of the tenants of hard, improvised/extended song parts flew because the range of what was considered dance music had widened because of this new attitude. Face it, The Pusher is hardly a club mix, but people stood and stared as a little band of high school geeks hacked away, so bands could get by with quite a bit. Needless to say, for good and ill, personal expression became important.