Reflecting on The Reflections - 2

March 01, 2010

Depending on the immediate situation of course, to this day if I’mm the one to do it, I’ll keep a medium but steady pace while building the little erector set/drumm kit. What’s taking you so long, MMick? Was always the question Chuckey’s mom would ask as she grew more and more impatient to hear her favourite beginning band of brothers. The little time it took for this to happen was like an eternity to her.

Ms. B was like someone who really needed to go to the bathroom in the forest but with only poison ivy leaves to pick for comfort and cleaner jeans. It seemed the shear fact of her survival was at stake with every turn of the drumm key. When we were ready, so was she. Her pent up energy would be like a hot boiler ready to blow until the release valve of the first song began her dancing with all extensions flailing.

Unfortunately I don’t remember her name but I can still see her long red hair and very thin, short body. Her face read warm. I especially remember her wild ways. She smoked like a fiend and loved to drive really fast. Her pride was a sparkling white convertible, top down with red leather interior. She was everybody’s favourite mmusic crazy woman; fun to have around and definitely our most important fan.

Whenever we drove as a band on a break with her, Chucky just egged her on by yelling, “Come on ma, put some lead in your foot and give ‘er the gas!” At which point she did. It was like one of those speedy Steve McQueen in Bullet kind of rides.

I think it was an Oldsmobile; had to be around 1958 to ’61. The big car’s souped up carburetor was installed by dear old Chuckey himself. We could always hear when it would just suck in the gas while emptying half the tank. The vehicle would morph into a NASA rocket ship every time her dainty foot plunged hard onto the gas pedal.

Because it was a convertible, with no seat belt laws back when, our hair would fly like we were riding in a wind tunnel. Forget about wearing hats or small talk. Chuck and we would scream like cowboys just let out of the shoot while holding onto the thick rope of the buckingist bronco this side of Amarillo, Texas or Psycho’s Victorian.

Dave our bassist had an amplifier almost as tall as he was and just as heavy. I remember his sound was so clear, defined and refined when in his nonchalant knob turns he knew what he wanted his sound to be. It wasn’t Stanley Clark; more like Chas Chandler, the bassist in the famous House of the Rising Sun/Animals. Although Dave wasn’t like Flea his notes were still steady and always in the groove.

Dave was constantly there when as a drummer I needed him to be and still there when I didn’t; which wasn’t that often. A happy chap with blue/black hair like Elvis; the original. Like Elvis, his smile could melt a clay Venus DeMilo statue. His laugh was infectious. His height in low shoes made mme feel like I could parachute off a dollar bill; or at least a dirty dime threw in a dice game played by all little people in flip flops or bear feet.

Bob on the other hand was at least as blond as or blonder than Lady GaGa. His guitar was an off white and black DanElectro. Don’t quote mme on that one either. I’mm not one of those guitar aficionado’s. As a drummer I didn’t pay much attention but have seen a lot of them as well as other guitars made through the years.

After more years than passes through a time machine, I just phone talked to Bob the great who informed mme and core wreckedly so, that indeed the change you see here but don't notice now because it was his doing was from a Telecaster to the DE. The mman knows his guitars. Unfortunately Regina past his synapse.(Thanks Bobbymman!)

Bob was now that I remember, more than a pretty good guitarist; simple but effective. MMusic back then was mostly instrumentals. He played like the revered, often copied guitarists of that era; in groups like The Ventures, The Beach Boys, The Champs, and any number of bands whose names I can’t remember off the top of mmy head but whose radio sounds came wafting through loud and almost clear from the tinny car or transistor radios of the day. Mr. Bob was also a short guy which didn't get in the way of his ear for blues and soul. No matter his height his notes rose like the brilliance of the sun on the next new day. I always loved his playing.

Chuck was tall. Back then everyone seemed tall to yours truly. Chuck always wore dirty jeans, a cowboy shirt with snap buttons and of course the mandatory muddy boots. He never had cleaned hands or nails as I recall. Grease was his sheriff’s badge.

Chuck was always working on his cars. Black hands and oil were forever part of his DNA. He was our lead guitarist who always had the loudest amplifier. Unlike later in life, while rehearsing at his house no one ever told us to turn down the volume. If anything, his mom always asked us to turn it up. Damn the neighbors, it’s mmusic!

The other day, I was talking to Dave for the first time in over too many years ago when I remembered an image I had of Chuck playing his guitar. He had one of those real dark red, solid body Fender, Les Paul guitars. Chuck would play the high notes on the thinnest strings. The sound coming out of his amplifier could break Plexiglas.

The tones could be really ear-piercing. Probably why I’mm half deaf to this day. Not really, that happened in later stadium venues. Chuckey’s amplifier was verging on the upper ranges of loud enough to crack and maybe topple the Empire State Building from forty miles away. Dave and Bob couldn’t nor would want to compete.

One night we were playing one of the high school dances we were lucky enough to get. Drummers were always set up in the rear as bare cement block walls were mostly our security blanket. The ceilings were high. Dances were always packed with screaming teens and other intoxicated adolescents from different high schools.

We usually set up on the floor. There was no stage except in the auditorium but dances weren’t held there. If it wasn’t the basketball court in the gym it was the hard, foot square linoleum type floors in the cafeteria. All solid surfaced, square angled walls and such; the sound always atrocious. Every band sounded like a busy steel factory pounding out metal notes like a Titanic was being built inside an empty gym.

Each note bounced and echoed around the giant rooms like twenty five bowling balls being thrown against the walls, ceiling and floor all at once. Nothing was too defined. Most times it was one big blur of boom, boom bah doom like canons of a pirate ship exploding against the English Armada in a rough ocean battle to the end.

The High School dance lighting was usually dark with barely enough light to see the person standing next to you. I don’t remember the song we were playing at the time but it doesn’t matter really. We were basically in the throes of playing a medium fast song. Chuckey was in the middle of an even faster and very loud guitar solo which sounded like we were performing in a packed with fans, Madison Square Garden.

Chucky always had longer guitar chords then anybody. He liked to roam around while playing. No jumping to or fro or rolling on the floor for him. He sounded like he was really into it. One time before I turned to look, I pictured him with his eyes closed and grooving like Stevie Ray Vaughn or any guitar soloist under a spotlight. He’d be sweating with drips of soulful perspiration getting into his eyes and the corner of his mouth. He’d be bent over or leaning back gripping the edge of heaven.

At this point he was already behind mme and to the right when I finally turned around to see what he was doing. I took a double take in the dark because as he was scurrying through his guitar solo, I also saw one of the high school girls saddled up next to him. They were in full conversation, both smiling and talking a mile a minute.

It could have been a recording for all I knew because as I looked at Chuckey’s hands I noticed they were doing the correct thing alright, but he looked very casual. He might as well have been across the street or at Macy’s having the same conversation with a salesperson, but without his guitar going full blast. The guy was funny and a pretty amazing guitarist even in those days. Where is that guy now, I wanna know.

Needless to say like someone’s first date, love, girlfriend or boyfriend there’s so much more to reflect on when it’s the first ever, together High School rock band. The Reflections members were quite a crew. Future stories about the band abound.

One day or two, now that the synapse has been awakened from decades of past history naps I’ll have to enter a few blogs of the old neighborhood friends who tried to be a band once or twice. Rehearsing above their parent’s appliance store and walking mmy drumms in a line like a safari or an unofficial parade; we were definitely something not to miss in sight and sounds. Our neighborhood awoke.

Those and other stories about childhood, the bus garage, grammar school and Levy Playground are ones to consider. Hopefully more will be written before the people in white coats come to ask for the car keys while directing their find on how to slip into the coat and pants with all the belts, straps, buckles and locks.

Being able to type on this computer during a ride back with the red dome circling on top, the institution I may have left behind will be a welcome serenity scene once more. Reflecting on The Reflections does that to a guy. Chuckey’s mom would agree.