Stories and Tales

I moved to San Antonio in '74 or '75 and was thrust into the racially stratified Alamo Heights Junior School where I met a diminutive guy named Carlos Yaritu. Carlos and I became fast friends and used to perform little skits to entertain ourselves outside in the playground area at lunch. We'd refer to the "cool" looking guys who hung out, ridiculing us no doubt, as the "blue jean gang" - which consisted mostly of the white kids from established SA families of whom I was most envious (ironically, my family was a somewhat established SA name as well, but my parents had moved away for twenty years, thus letting the "membership" lapse). I'd been playing the drums since I was in elementary school, and was better than most drummers my age - I'd even talked my parents into buying me a translucent Ludwig five-piece drumset (which I sold for nothing many years later before discovering that it had become a collector's item!)

One day, Carlos was browsing through the Sears catalog, a Texas tradition, and came across a knockoff of a Stratocaster they had for an unbelievably low price. He finally scraped up enough money to buy it, dubbed it the "Shit-Caster" and, with the help of an old stereo reel-to-reel tape machine, we began recording our jam sessions. When we moved on to Alamo Heights High School in 1977, we played our first gig at the Mule Stall at AH, along with a mutual friend, Larry Estefan. The scheduled band had failed to show up and we grabbed the opportunity for an audience and rushed home to get our meager equipment. Another friend of ours named Trey Gunn who WAS from an established SA family but who'd only taken some piano lessons as a kid decided that he wanted to join the band we'd formed, and we called it "Regent". Problem was, he didn't play an electric instrument, so he bought a shiny red Fender Music Man bass and learned to play well enough that we began gigging at parties and local venues like St. Lukes Church. We'd spend endless rambunctious hours rehearsing at his mom's house in Olmos Park; spewing obscenities through the PA system and into the neighborhood and mutually torturing one another until his mother would return and throw us out.

Eventually, we teamed up with one of the old "blue jean gang" members that we used to mock, Chris Lieck, and Carlos & Larry left the band to be replaced by friend Ed Holmgreen. Chris was a drummer too, but after hearing me play he had decided to give it up and switch to electric guitar (okay, this is how I remember it - but I suppose I could be flattering myself a bit :-) ). Chris had a head for business and promotion, and wasn't a bad guitar player either, and as we left our high school years, we began injecting ourselves into the local professional music scene as The Kids, playing clubs like Johnny Be Good's on Austin Highway, Cooter Browns, and others whos names I've forgotten. We made friends with some of the bands that most resembled our style like the Max and the Mo-Dels. In fact, we even had Bubba Perrone build us one of his proprietary click-track/tape devices that allowed us to pre-record various parts of our songs for playback during performance. Given the prevailing 1980's studio production excesses, this proved useful for "fattening" up our live sound at the expense of some spontaneity. By this time, I'd downgraded myself to soundman so I could focus on my studies, replaced on drums by the late Billy Carey. I'd stand back at the sound board, mixing the band and playing simple keyboard parts to beef up our sound even more. I remember the time Bubba invited many of the local bands out to his impressive house to watch the just released This is Spinal Tap. Though everyone had a great time and laughed throughout, I remember feeling like it had hit a little too close to home and I remarked to him that I'd found it kindof depressing. After he thought about it for a minute, his smile turned reflective and he finally said "yeah, I guess you're right - it is kind of depressing!". The Kids once rented out the vacant Broadway Theater in Alamo Heights (now a bank) and threw a much publicized concert there. Big on dreams, but short on cash and equipment, we talked some local band into being our opening act - partly so we could use their PA system. Unfortunately, we fell victim to our technical limitations and proceeded to play a loud and mostly unintelligible set of original songs, as people began walking out partway through. We vowed then to get our act together and buy the right equipment.

It's now the early 1980's and The Kids have become the darlings of Sam Kinsey's Teen Canteen and Chris has fashioned the band's image and sound after his idols The Knack and Cheap Trick (even down to hair color and guitar type), with the ultimate intent of duplicating a Knack-like
blitzkrieg on the LA music establishment, and eventual stardom. Chris's plan was a highly calculated effort to hone our chops locally while writing original music and building a following before moving to LA to make it big. In the meantime, Trey has left for college in Oregon to study music, replaced on bass by Mike Orbello. I'm attending Trinity University to get a degree in computer science, hosting a music show on Trinity's KRTU FM, and am busy discovering the magic of Kant, Niche, and the Apple II. I had never taken the idea of a career in music as seriously as Chris did, but I agreed to sign on with The Kids as their drummer and move to LA upon graduation. I'll never forget the summer of 1985 after I'd finished school. Armed with a short showcase set of original pop songs written by Chris and Ed, we packed the big white band truck, caravaned out the I-10 freeway and, a couple of all-nighters later, rolled down Sunset blvd. past the multi-colored plastic mohawks and Asian tourists, Grumman's Chinese Theater, and into our newly rented apartment overlooking the lights of Hollywood. We'd arrived.

That first year in LA was a heady time, having escaped our small town past and steeped in boundless optimism about our famous future. Chris had secured the services of a prominent LA music attorney along with an experienced
producer, and within weeks we were in the Clover Studio (where Bruce Springstein had recorded one of his B-sides!) cutting a ten-inch record which eventually ended up getting some national distribution. We also self-produced a music video for one of our songs, "America", which won an MTV Basement Tapes award and went into rotation for a while. After a year of recording and playing our original set at clubs around LA, I made the difficult decision to pursue a career in high-tech and left the band to work full time on a computer game I was writing. That was my last communication with the band which later changed its name to Kid Curry and hired a replacement. I understand that they had some success touring, including a stint with Pat Travers, but eventually disbanded after Chris moved back to San Antonio where he now lives with his wife Julie and runs his own music publishing and recording studio.

Trey graduated from the U. of Oregon and answered an ad in the back of Rolling Stone for a guitar seminar by Robert Fripp. He eventually took up playing the touch guitar and joined Fripp's League of Crafty Guitarists, released albums of his own material, and became a member of the reformed King Crimson in the late 90's. They're touring Japan as I write this.

I went on to sell my computer game to a publisher, had some success writing music professionally in the early 90's, and now write PC software in Santa Monica. Of course, plenty more adventures happened along the way - but those are best told over a few cold beers and a few spare hours.

Some mentions, just in case someone's interested: Although a student of the jazz/rock "fusion" movement of the late 70's and early 80's, I once joined a country band who's singer was Beth Hooker (I had a big crush on Beth but lacked the goombas to tell her). And at some time in the early eighties, we recorded a number of songs with Glen Smith, who had a small studio in his rural home outside San Antonio. We were awed by his Otari 8-track and I'll never forget the giddy, day-long sessions where we learned the art and science of studio recording. A far cry from the experimentations that Trey and I had done with the early Teac Portastudio. I don't know where Glen is now, but I understand he still lives in SA.

Years after I'd left The Kids, I returned to San Antonio for a visit and drove out to the old Teen Canteen behind the airport. To my surprise, it had been completely gutted. But in the rubble I found the photographs that used to adorn the cork-board display case just inside the front door, and I managed to salvage a picture that someone had taken of one of our performances. I examined the freeze frame of my past, which seemed so fresh still, and thought about the entire cycle of events that had followed. Standing there on that clear afternoon inside the gloomy, abandoned metal remains of a place so profoundly a part of my adolescence was one of the most sentimental times I can remember.

- john Oct., 2000