Roots of the Dentones-- 1982

Spring- Po sees the Mudflaps (with Mike Austin, Les Black, and Donal Hinley) play "Suffragette City" in the DHS auditorium and is impressed by the sound of the bass guitar, which he had never before heard in a live, loud setting. Po (tuba) tells Mooky (trumpet) that if Mooky ever buys a guitar, Po will buy a bass.

DHS talent show also includes Matt Johnson’s band that plays “Freewill” by Rush.

Fall-- Po's brother Deeb buys a beginner's electric guitar and amp. Po is surprised at how cheap rock n' roll gear can be.

Late Fall, Po begins to buy a Kay bass guitar from Trey Darby on a payment plan. Mooky buys a guitar and an amp. In December they begin playing with BM and The Toy in an unheated shed in BM's backyard. The inside walls are covered with old, hippy-ish paintings from kids of the previous owners of the house. The Toy uses pots, pans, a Sprite bottle, and his motorcycle helmet as a drum kit.

Mudflaps play New Years Eve party at Pod’s house, put on by his brother D'Erik; hardwood floor is permanently damaged.

Roots of the Dentones-- 1981

1981
Satsy sees live band play at Michael's Arcade. Band consists of David Hineman, Robert Van Cleve, Eric Moorehead, and Scott Marder; plays "Summertime Blues" and "Breakin' the Law."
Po meets Pod in August when both are members of the Denton High School marching band. That same month, MTV debuts on cable television. Pod and Po remain only acquaintances for years. MTV slowly devolves into something that has little to do with music.

Roots of the Dentones- the 60s and 70s

Note: Most entries are in the words of the person they are about.

1964
Satsy and Pod born in Denton, Texas

1965
Po born in Atlanta, Georgia. Interesting note: Po is younger than Sandy Marshall.

1968
Big A born in Stillwater, Oklahoma

1969
Satsy given first guitar by father. Between now and 1983 would learn to tune.

1971
Po moves to Denton, Tx.

1974-75
Po takes piano lessons and writes his first song: "Cristobalito".

1975
Pod begins trumpet lessons with member of NTSU 1 o’clock lab band on his old high school cornet.

1976
Satsy attempts to write songs. At this point knows how to play recorder and some musical notation. Nothing ever completed. Nothing survives to present.
Pod plays trumpet in Woodrow Wilson Elementary School band, continues playing trumpet and taking lessons.

1977
Po begins learning trombone in the Frank Borman Elementary School band.

1978
Following his interest in lower tones, Po switches from trombone to tuba.

Summer 1984-- When Clowns Go Bad

I didn't remember this at all until I found it in my journal, but soon after Big A joined the band we started calling ourselves "The Hotel Puppets". What the?!? This unfortunate moniker appears in the May 30th entry. Fourteen days later we had our first gig, under the name "When Clowns Go Bad" (taken from the caption of a Gary Larson cartoon). This circus-theme-as-band-name thing would stick around for another eight years.

Summer '84 songlist:

"We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" Velvet Underground
"Sixteen Tons" traditional
"Sweet Jane" Velvet Underground
"Do You Love Me" Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers
"Submission" Sex Pistols
"Substitute" The Who, via the Pistols
"Wipe Out" Ventures?
"You Broke My Heart in Little Tiny Pieces" ?
"Chinese Rocks" Heartbreakers
"I Wanna Be Your Dog" The Stooges
"I'll Be Your Mirror" Velvets
"London's Burning" The Clash
"1969" The Stooges
"My Face is on Your Lunchbox" The Vomit Pigs
"Louie Louie/Wild Thing" Kingsmen/Animals
"Captain Soul" a 60s instrumental by the Byrds
"No Fun" The Stooges
"Purple Haze" Hendrix

Three Funerals and a Wedding

Two days after the band meeting in which we decided to find a new drummer, my brother Rev. Bunny graduated from TCU. I rode down to Ft. Worth with my parents and grandparents but ended up riding back home with my brother's friend Randy. As my journal records: "We had a nice chat. He suggested {Big A} as a drummer. He dated {Big A's} sister." That was May 12, 1984.

Rev. Bunny arrived home the next day, and I remember asking him about Big A. "Yeah, he's a good little drummer. I've heard him playing down in their basement." Now Rev. Bunny had been a high school friend of Big A's sister, so the "little" part was more of a memory than a current description, but still it was a positive endorsement.

Now for the complication. As if things weren't going to be complicated enough because of the Toy. I had also been talking to Matus, a new friend of mine and a longtime friend of Big A's, about trying out for the band.

We arranged to hold auditions at the First Presbyterian Church in the very room, as chance would have it, that had been Big A's Kindergarten room. As I remember it, Big A was going to play first, then I would call Matus, who lived close by, and he would come play. I'm pretty sure they were meant to be on the same day- May 19, 1984.

The first song we tried with A was the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog", and to this day I remember Mookie playing the three-chord guitar intro and A's drums coming in with a shubba-dup shubba-dup bubba-dubba-dubba-dubba on his tri-toms. We only played one other song (lost to history?) when Jimmy Fred invited him to be in the band. I recorded "{Big A} is very, very good" and added with no further comment "{Matus} was going to perform for us, but I guess we've got {Big A}."
Jimmy Fred, seven or eight years our elder, had a lot of influence in the band. He was in a hurry to go somewhere, he liked Big A's drumming, and didn't want to wait around to try out anyone else.

Matus was, understandably, upset and remained so for years. And years.

Still Jimmy Fred's decision was a good one-- not only because Matus left that summer and the next few consecutive summers for music camp in Illinois, but also, as many of you know, Big A is STILL playing drums with what is very arguably just an evolved version of that same band almost 24 years later, and he quickly became a very near and dear friend. We are working on our third decade of shared memories, but the friendship is still fresh.

Alas, the story of the day is not over. From my journal:

At home, as our dog Rommel was causing much confusion by killing a squirrel in the back yard, the Toy came by wearing a tophat and asked to borrow my black shoes for the prom tonight.

Upstairs he asked, "So how long have ya'll been planning to kick me out?"

"About two weeks."

"Who is my replacement?"

"Big A."

"I'll have you know that the one who wants to kick me out the most knows fewer lyrics than I do and isn't there 40% of the time."

"Well." silence "How did you find out?"

"Oh, the rumor is running rampant out at EOC." (where both Toy and J.Fred worked)

"I'm sorry you had to find out like this." silence "We'd like to keep you on singing back ups."

"F--k that!"

"Well."

long, long silence

(Toy, talking about the shoes) "I'll get these back to you Monday."

"Sorry."

Then I went outside and saw my grandfather using a baseball bat to adminster the coup de grace to the mangled squirrel. Afterwards, I took a shovel and buried it.

That night was the prom, which started out well but the ending of which might well qualify as the fourth disaster of the day.

The one bright spot-- getting Big A into the band--- outshone all the other events of the day, the title of this entry notwithstanding, for it was chosen more for its seeming wittiness than for its accuracy.

The Paisley Ascot

The members of the Paisley Ascot could barely play their instruments. We did manage to book a couple of gigs at the EOC, but the lustre of these first forays into public performance is diminished, perhaps, by the fact that the EOC was a large residential facility for the mentally handicapped down in Lewisville. Somewhere there is a cassette tape of one of these gigs. On it you can hear one of the "clients" start to wail like a banshee halfway through our version of "Purple Haze". The screams gradually become fainter as the client runs from the auditorium.

In another incident, one of the clients began glowering at Mookie and moving ever so slowly toward him, like she was about to pounce. His courage seriously withering under that awful gaze, Mookie took refuge behind his large Yamaha guitar amp until the danger had passed.

By the Spring of 1984, hours of practice were paying off and we were actually becoming proficient at our instruments. Well, this is mostly true.

I choose my words very carefully here, for hurtful mistakes were made all those years ago and I wish to avoid adding insult to injury. The Toy was, and is, a naturally gifted musician. He currently lives in California and plays in the Atomic Love Bombs. But, as he freely states now, back in highschool he simply didn't practice like he should have. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the rest of the band was progressing and he was not.

This was openly discussed, and it seems like there was something like the equivalent of a growth plan or something, but by early May nothing had changed. Girlfriend problems were not helping, especially since the girlfriend in question started coming to the practices. After a string of particulary awful rehearsals, the other three members of the band decided that a change was necessary. This was on May 10, 1984.

Roots Rock

In the Fall of 1982 my oldest brother Deeb bought an electric guitar and a small amp. When he told me how much he had paid for the set I couldn't believe it. I had always figured that such things, being the accoutrement of demi-gods such as Hendrix and Clapton, were prohibitively expensive. Not so.

An invisible barrier had been breeched.

I was 16 and played tuba in the marching band, and my best friend Mookie played trumpet. We had both been into rock music for years, so it was natural that in our shared pipe dream of musical stardom he would play guitar and I would play bass.

That Christmas break I got ahold of a cheap Kay bass (that had black nylon strings!) and used Deeb's old 1977 Pioneer stereo to amplify it. Mookie got a guitar. The Toy, a good friend and drummer in the marching band, was a natural choice for drums, even though he didn't own any. A buddy from California rounded out the combo. We called him "BM" because those were his initials and they described his personality and we were rude and thoughtless teenagers.

At the time we were all totally into the 60's, and we were very thrilled when we had our first, uh, rehearsal at BM's house in Southridge. The house dated from that hallowed decade, which intrigued us to no end, and had a small detached building out under the trees in the backyard that had once served both as a storage shed and, as evidenced by the many psychedelic paintings and chalk drawings on the walls, as a sort of hang out for teenagers who had long-since grown up and moved away.

I vividly remember us all plugging in and noodling around individually and getting up the nerve to try something and, as noted, The Toy had no drums so he made do with what was available: a pot, a Sprite bottle, and his motorcycle helmet. The only legit part of his set up were his drumsticks! Still, he was musician enough to make that odd assortment of things work for him, and it was a real thrill to play with percussion. Mookie and I had fiddled around- just bass and guitar--- but the addition of the makeshift drumset added a whole new dimension. It started to sound "real".

Over the next several months the configuration of the band was this:
(Mookie = guitar) + (Po = bass) + (Toy = drums) + y
where y = any one of over a dozen people including, oddly enough, Pod!

At one point we played at a pretty big party in our neighborhood, at the home of a schoolmate who was sort of in the band. He had a Jim Morrison fixation and we would jolly him by letting him moan away incoherently as we struggled through "The End". He is now a plastic surgeon living in Dallas.

The house where the party was held was infamous for having to be kept up like a museum-- don't sit on the sofas lest you mess up the pillows, don't walk on the carpets lest they become worn, and don't even look at the paintings too hard. They might fade. The under 20 crowd understood perfectly well that they were fundamentally unwelcome in that home and were under constant suspicion of being potential sources of disarray. Just imagine our horror, that parentless evening, when we discovered that the bass drum pedal had left a big greasy stain right smack dab in the middle of an expensive Scandinavian carpet. To make matters worse, when our teenage host was kneeling down to assess the damage to Exhibit A, another friend grabbed a tall columnar candle that had been burning for hours and had accumulated a goodly quanitity of molten wax and poured it down the host's back.

We were rude and thoughtless teenagers.

At some point we finally found a permanent 'y' in the person of Jimmy Fred, who was much older than the rest of us (25 or 26, which now seems so very young) and had stage presence and a more-than-passable singing voice.

With a real singer, a growing songlist, and, by this time, real amps and drums, we counted this as our first real band. We called ourselved The Paisley Ascot.