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Author: lyndon

Remember The Park Avenue Playground?

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Park Avenue Playground On 45
Park Avenue Playground 45

You’re not alone in your lack of recall of this obscure band, trust me.

Back in the late 60’s I was in a pop rock garage band. I know, I know. So was everyone else. Known then as the U.S.Males, we were performing quite a lot in the Chicago-land area but again, so was everybody. Garage bands were like Starbucks now. On any given day, when we would go outside on a break, we could hear the muffled thump and low tone of a kick drum and a bass with a hint of too loud electric guitar and screaming vocals coming from multiple directions in my south Chicago suburb of Lansing, IL.

I was alternately on rhythm guitar or bass (when the bass player didn’t show up for a gig or practice) and was writing half of the original material along with Mike, the Farfisa player. We performed so much we began garnering bit of attention and backing.

So now we move into a more rarified field. We got ourselves a record! with the help of our friend, manager, mentor and body gaurd, Larry Goldberg who just recently got in touch with me through the interwebs. We recorded up in Madison WI (I coulda swore it was Michigan) and came back with a tasty little pop 45.

After a name change, we got on the bill with quite a few acts in the area. We started playing the same circuit with The Cryan Shames, The Flock, The Shadows of Knight, not to mention opening for Spirit, The Bob Seger System and a host of other bands too numerous and lost in the synapses of my mind at this posting. A few more were; Mason Profit, The Outsiders, The Amboy Dukes (Ted Nugent’s band) and Alice Cooper (if you need a link to find out who Alice is, I can’t help you)

Not everyone was as lucky as my bandmates and I were in those heady days of early american garage rock. We had fun almost always. There was that weekend in Peoria .. but I digress.

Now, all these years later, a label named Sundazed Music Inc. has released a compilation of recordings released on USA and Destination records, available in *vinyl* as well as CD, which includes the A & B sides of our humble 45.

My life is awesomesauciest at this moment.

Makes me wanna make another record.

Remember Boz Scaggs?

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I was humming a song from Boz’s “My Time” circa ’72. I went to my LP collection to see what else was on the record and was reminded, once again, that it was no longer in my possession.

My LPs of artists with names beginning with ~A~ through ~Co~ were stolen when I moved to Seattle back in ’93. My Beatles were in an unmarked box thank goodness but all my Allman Brothers to my 1st couple of CS&N LPs were heisted and Boz was filed under ~B~ not ~S~ like it shoulda been.

It’s now out of print and the butt rash who stole my records probably didn’t even know what he/she had. Everyday’s a never ending rediscovery of what I had and have no longer.

I’m saddened by the fact that I can only repurchase it now for $40 … used.

Keep the “YEE-HAWS” to yourself, ok?

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For those of you experiencing the metaverse known as Second Lifeâ„¢ with me, I have a small rant to get off my chest.

As live musician in this cyberworld, I have a problem with large gestures spamming the chat.

You know, the howling wolf, 2 finger peace sign, cat, lips, the HELL YEAHs and the YEEHAWS et al.

I’ve talked to many residents and have had it explained to me a number of times.

“It’s my way of expressing my appreciation to the musician!”

While that may be your motivation, it appears to everyone else to be nothing more than an attempt by the gesturer to be noticed… by everyone in the vicinity and further if SHOUTED. It seems to be more self serving than expressive.

In reality, there’s nothing really expressive about it. It’s not original. In most cases you simply buy the gesture and assign it to an F key. It’s almost a non effort.

The larger the gesture, the more chance that someone else’s posted request, suggestion, advice or comment will be sandwiched into the gesture and, thereby, lost.

If you want to be originally expressive, type those 20-30 lines of chat manually for every post with different messages and images each time.

Now THAT’s an original expression of appreciation. (No, please don’t try, thanks! No really.)

A good number of residents as well as a lot of live musicians will mute you in a second for gesture spamming the room chat because it interrupts their chat/conversation with their friends in room as well as with the performer.

Kinda defeats your purpose .. right?

One can only hope that the Labs of Linden will, for residents who would choose to ignore gesture spam, come up with something that would auto block spammed gestures more than three lines long.

I could use that. I have friends that could as well.

Mr. Green Beans

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I am, admittedly, a coffee snob, nay an *insufferable* coffee snob.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned …

I buy my beans green from small farms around the globe from Sweet Maria’s and home roast them to my liking (usually just short of charcoal) every month or so. Cost is around $6USD per lb. ($7-8 including shipping) and you lose about 3-5 oz per pound after roasting so cost is better than store roasted but not by much. The experience of home roasted coffee? Priceless!

I prefer beans from Indonesia because I can roast them dark, full city plus and still the coffee produces definite chocolate-y tones. Sumatra Mandheling is the most common and most purchased by Indonesian coffee lovers because of it’s consistency of flavor at all levels of roasting.

I have recently taken to buying my beans ($6USD per lb.) directly from Victor’s, a local roaster, because they seem to buy their beans from suppliers that produce a truly wondrous cup. Plus there’s no shipping applied to the overall cost per pound because I go right to their store.

If you have -never- tasted coffee that was roasted just 12 to 36 hours ago, you’ve never really tasted coffee.

The way to know if your coffee is fresh is to examine the how well the “crown” blooms when you pour water over the grounds (for drip brew, french press or aero-press methods). If the coffee is fresh and the water is the proper temperature, golden bubbles will rise to the top and form what is called a “crown”. The more vibrant and voluminous the crown, the fresher the coffee. When pulling a shot through an espresso machine, you’ll find you’ll get more crema in your cup with fresh coffee

Ever since I received an Aeropress from my daughter for father’s day I have been using nothing but this system to make my coffee. It produces an extremely fine cup. It takes some muscle to force the water through the grounds but so worth the effort.

I usually resort to drip brew for larger gatherings of, say, more than 10 people. I can aeropress cups during a smaller party making two shots at a time but I really have to like the people at my party to do that.

More coffee stuff soon

Island Cowboys meet Don Ho

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In the spring of ’94, I went to Oahu with a country rock band called The Island Cowboys. Two six foot five Samoan brothers, Pele and Maluhki, were the front-men and the focal point. It was a pretty big deal with quite an entourage. We brought our own dance troupe, light and sound engineers, techs and roadies. We were there for a week and played at the Polynesian Cultural Center on the big stage for two nights. We also went to Waikiki and Honolulu to do some shopping mall appearances to promote our CD and we did a locally popular morning breakfast club radio program. We’d tour the island during the day and go clubbing at night, trying our best to be the quintessential Malihini to the delight of the Kamaaina. All in all, a fine time… until…

One night we were invited to the Don Ho show in downtown Honolulu. Our manager, Kanani, (who was also married to brother Pele) toured with Don Ho as a dancer so she had some serious connections and got us into the (sold out) show. We had pictures taken with the Don-man and he made sure we had a very good table at the back of the room that was on a slight riser so we were elevated above the heads of the crowd and could see and hear everything very well. The food was excellent and the rum drinks flowed copiously. The band was getting a serious buzz on.

(Here would be a good place to warn anybody going to Hawaii, be very careful of the colorful rum-laden drinks they serve there. Tasty as all get out. Insidiously potent. I have pictures of myself in a grass skirt and a coconut bra at a night club we apparently ended up in after the following fiasco.)

So, Kanani tells us that Don has agreed to let us perform on his stage some time during the show so we can’t leave our table. We wait and eat and drink and wait and eat, drink and wait some more. Our drummer, understandably worn out from the tour, gets fed up and splits.

Smart man.

We’re down one member.

The Don Ho show is… well, not my cup of rum, so to speak. Songs I was never fond of to begin with being done by the Perry Como/Wayne Newton of Honolulu. It would have been a real snooze-fest if we weren’t sipping on those flavorful island beverages. Don likes to have guests from the audience join him onstage, people with birthdays, anniversaries, guest musicians from around the world. I apparently was the only one in the room to notice that there was only one aisle open to the stage. People would invariably go to stage left which was a cul-de-sac. Groups of people would get caught in the dead end aisle, laugh nervously and turn around and head the other way, which I was enjoying immensely while sliding into the “uncontrollable laughing” stage of a serious drinking binge.

Don brought our manager to the attention of the audience with an invitation to come up and dance for old times. She waves him off but was further persuaded by a round of applause from the crowd, not to mention the “well on the way to being totally toasted” band members, boisterously encouraging her to take the stage. Then, completely unexpectedly, she get up from the table and bolts from the room. Her husband, Pele, sits and steams for a second, then races out after her. They head out of the club in a screaming argument. Don makes apologies to the audience for Kanani’s sudden apparent case of stage fright and goes back to his show.

We’re down two…

So now, at The Island Cowboy table, it’s the keyboardist, Tom, the bass player, Maluhki (the other Samoan brother) and myself. As best as we are able, we discuss what the heck we’re going to do if Don gives us the call before Pele returns. Pele wrote and sang 90% of the material on the CD and we had already decided which of his songs we were going to perform.  Maluhki had written two songs, so we refresh ourselves on the arrangements of both of them, but before we ca get a workable vocal arrangement agreed upon, Don Ho says,

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, all the way from Seattle, Washington, The Island Cowboys!” Maluhki says, “I’ll go look for Pele!” and shoots out the door.

It’s just the two of us now … so much drunkness.

Rum, in certain dosages, can be a hallucinogenic. I stood up and the room was a combination of a ferris wheel and a merry-go-round. I remembered our table was on a little rise and gingerly stepped down. Tom was not that functional. He steps off and falls right into a jack stand full of used dishes knocking them over in a clatter. I also had the presence of mind to stumble toward the aisle stage right, carefully righting myself at each table and chair-back that I could get my hands on. I make to the stage first, slur, “Hello Mr Ho” which made me laugh again while glancing out into the crowd to see Tom stuck at the DEAD END AISLE! He’s so drunk, he can not figure out how to get to the stage. He sheepishly turns around and lurches toward the  back of the room. I’m trying my best to converse with Don while keeping one eye on the entrance to the club room, hoping to see the brothers walk in, and the other eye on Tom’s progress. When I see him go through the  double doors to the kitchen and hear him yell, “Somebody tell me how to get to the fucking stage!” I loose it completely. All I can do is bray with laughter and nearly double over, pointing weakly toward the back of the room.

I give Don Ho credit. He never batted an eye and was able to keep the crowd engaged while these antics unfolded. He’s obviously seen a lot of Mai-Tai handicapped Haoles (sp?) try to function in public. Two waiters bring the keyboardist out of the kitchen and escort him to the stage. I was so useless with laughter, I could barely breath.

Maluhki miraculously shows up to the stage at about the same time Tom and his escorts do. Tom is laughing and thanking his kitchen entourage for their help. Maluhki whispers to Tom and I that he couldn’t find Pele and Kanani. Tom and I find this news unbearably humorous and fall into each others arms in near hysterics. Maluhki explains to Mr. Ho that his brother will be back soon and if we could wait until he returns… I’m sure Mr. Ho is thinking, “Not in this life”… but he graciously lets us off the hook and back to our table. I remember on the walk back to our table people were cheering and whistling and clapping us on the back. I sincerely don’t know why. Maybe they thought we were an act. The Drunken White Guys.

We get back to our table to find fresh food and drink waiting. Pele and Kanani return and ask “Did Don call us up yet?” Tom, Maluhki and I look at each other and just go off. Maluhki is able to sketch out the tale but for Tom and I, it was another side-splitting, stomach muscle cramping bought of levity.

I would like to tell you all that we came to our senses and stopped imbibing at that point, but it would be a lie. As I said earlier in the story, sometime later that same evening, I ended up on stage in a hula outfit with a Mai-Tai in my hand…but that’s another story.