Sometimes it’s best to just change your plan…

The item below is a setlist. From the Corrupters 1982 tour of parts of the western United States. NO, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, etc. were not included destinations. However — Breckenridge, Estes Park, Alamosa, Laramie, Casper, Someplace-in-Nebraska that beings with an L (maybe named after a president) and has lot of of corn-fed college students around, and oh, yeah Denver and Boulder were among the debark-setup(ok we didn’t set up, our roadies Sam and Scotty did)-teardown-and-back-on-the-road destinations.

In addition to Laramie and Casper, we visited several other burgs further-up north where — how do they say it? “Where men are men and sheep are nervous!” But I digress. The image below refers specifically to three tour stops: Estes Park Colorado, Rifle Colorado, and Vernal Utah. Please note that the motel logo on the setlist is from where we STAYED, not where we PLAYED. The thing was basically set up for a year on the road, both one-nighters and week-long gigs. Estes Park and Vernal were each a week long, and Rifle was a one-night-stand. Estes Park was a week in Heaven – Vernal, a week someplace else… (sorry Utahans). Oh yeah, I think I already mentioned it, but in comparison Rifle was your typical middle-of-the-road one-night stand. Not Coyote ugly but not “let’s hop on a plane to Vegas and get married” either.

Vernal was the third leg of that particular trip. First stop was Estes Park – setup July 12, 1982 hit the road July 18. But there was a glitch.

I should tell you that for a while we’d been planning a new setlist that put a couple of our most tunes at the stroke of midnight. Living Disaster by Gary Myrick and the Figures, and Sympathy for the Devil by Messrs Jagger and Richard. Living Disaster and Sympathy back to back – what could be wrong with that? So, Wednesday night July 14, at the stroke of midnight we hit it. Got to the end of Disaster and nothing terrible had happened. Killed the night and went about musician stuff – getting into the rack about 4:00 – finally asleep about 5. Six AM. POUND, POUND, POUND on the door “Get out the dam broke! You have about ten minutes to get out of town.”  — I’ll leave the details for another story…

We hung around Estes for an extra few days (only because we couldn’t get out of town) and helped with the cleanup. We were able to leave just in time to make it to a recording session at Caribou Ranch (woot! Yet another story.)  Then the one-nighter in Rifle. Yes, Rifle Colorado. What better place for the Disaster/Sympathy set list?  The next day we were delayed in getting out of town because heavy rains had caused a mudslide on the highway. That’s TWO!

As we pulled into the venue in Vernal, a nice little Utah bar, and no that’s not an oxymoron. Across the road was a dam. A huge one. HUGE. It was getting dark so we couldn’t really see it, but from the sounds of the water it was a very big lake, BIG. While Sam and Scotty were setting up the gear we took a look at the setlists – outside on the porchy-thing where could hear the pounding waves. One of us, don’t remember who, picked up the Disaster/Sympathy setlist, wadded it up, and tossed it in the trash. The list below is what replaced it. No Disasters or Devils anywhere. When we finished playing about 2:00 AM, we got a non-refusable invitation for some skinny dipping in the lake across the highway.

No dam, just a lake. But I swear there are times when I can see the tall mass of concrete in my dreams — cracking.

musica potest, occidere potest vos

Hoarseman

So, Day 12 is Two Days Late… Why?

Well, there is a reason for it, actually two reasons. I added two more guys, two very special guys.

Top row: Bob¹, Buddy², Charlie, Gene², Jimmy^2,3

Second row: Keith², Larry, Levon, Max, Mitch²

Bottom row: Peter, Phil, Ringo, Stewart

Bonus points if you can come up with ALL the last names. (Sorry, I cheated a little and intentionally blurred the photos a little.)

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

¹Drummer-Boomersaurus 2006-2007 – now drumming with Hindsight, Boulder, Colorado
²Now drumming with Elvis – Pound on in peace, boys!
³Drummer – Mary Jane Bann’d 1968-1972, Corrupters 1981 tour, Boomersaurus 2005-2006, RIP cuz, tell Elvis “hi” for me.

 

*I wanted to create drawings of these gentlemen, but I ran up against a deadline so I did my best to find photos in the public domain, or available as fair use. If you hold the copyright to one of the above photos and do not want it include in this collage, let me know and I will black it out.

 

5 Best Reasons for Opening an All Original Music Nightclub

Why we're born with two hands...

• Five (5) Cinco* — Original musicians are usually better looking — not this guy, though.
• Four (4) Cuatro* — The women who like original musicians are always better looking.
• Three (3) Tres* — Original musicians are — well — more original.
• Two (2) Dos* — Minimal fees to licensing agencies, sometimes none at all.(++)
• One (1) Uno* — No one screaming “Free Bird” in a drunken stupor.

*bi-lingual notes:
Important, no seventh-grade Spanish teachers were injured in the making of this post.

• Uno – as in “Uno that guy what plays the harp on the sout’ side?”
• Dos – as in “Dos, a Deerse…” or is it Homer and his identical twin?
• Tres – 1) as in Amigos, from the globally — no, universally — famous trio of Denver Broncos players in the late 1980s, 2) what you pick up from the deli when you’re having a party.
• Cuatro – All wheel drive
• Cinco – hmmm… I know it’s not the network guys – maybe a corporation that runs whorehouses?

(++) Disclaimer: This could be bullpucky. How do I know? I’m not a lawyer. It just sounded like a good idea at the time.

Saxa Cantum,
HM

PS, Okay, maybe I miss playing… just a little bit.

Do the Songs in Your Head Have a History?

The Mystery (mk I), June 1986; standing Dave Ford, Paul Stenvig, Gene Treppeda, Mark Devere; sitting Craig Devere; photo by Ron Heimbecher

Since the Memorial Day weekend I’ve had some songs playing in my head. Not too unusual but these songs are all from the same album, one that hasn’t been heard by too many people. I have two copies of the CD, both of which are numbered (3 & 4) and signed by the producer. I think the reason this album is in my head is that it was recorded, all nine songs, and mixed over a single Memorial Day weekend twenty-five years ago.

My lifetime friend Paul Stenvig owns a company called Beyond Sound, which in turn owns the Capture Communications Group record label. Just before Memorial Day weekend in 1986, he had the opportunity to give a new model Tascam one-inch multi-track recorder an evaluation run.

“Take it and ‘play with it’ over the weekend,” they said. They didn’t understand how seriously Paul ‘played’ with things. A few phone calls later, a marathon session was set, and I was invited to co-engineer. The musicians, a group of friends Paul had been working with, weren’t really a band but had been playing together for a while and had a few songs laid out. The songs had been composed by brothers Craig and Mark Devere and friend Dave Ford, and I hadn’t heard any of them prior to the start of the session.

With the exception of Paul, everyone had regular day jobs, I was working in the local cop shop, so the session started at 5:30 on Friday night. By about ten, we had laid down reference tracks for ten songs and set up a schedule for each of the musicians to work separately on overdubs. Paul and I crashed at the studio for a couple of hours at a time while we swapped engineering tasks. We scheduled mixdown for Monday. Seventy-five hours after we started, we had master tapes for an album called How Many Pieces and a new band named The Mystery.

Craig Devere, vocals; Mark Devere, keyboards and vocals; Dave Ford, guitars; Paul Stenvig, bass; and Gene Treppeda, drums. More songs, and a number of music videos later, I joined The Mystery (mk.II) on vocals, keyboards, and guitars.

How Many Pieces back cover

Here’s the track list. Perhaps I’ll have more in the future about some of these songs.
1. R.E.R.E.S.T.B.
2. Glass Wall
3. Carpenters & Builders
4. Solid Ground
5. Angels Pin
6. Make a Wish
7. Man No Eat
8. Rock Slide
9. So I

 

We didn’t do video for any of these tracks, but over the period of several months following this amazing weekend, we did a number of music videos featuring the same musicians, many of which were incorporated into the television comedy series Detective Rock Hound, from Beyond Sound.