Kelly Cavanagh

Another Story

Chapter 25 to 36

Thai Landing
disappearing in phuket

Lago Life
sleeping under the volcanos

Real Fantasy Band
cosmic folk acid rock jazz fusioneers

Contact Low
through a lens darkly

Dearth of a Salesman
water filter gone akilter

Icebergs on Akpatok
the tide waits for no man

Shopping Spree
how I hit a homer
but nearly got called out at home base

Head Rock Holiday
what to do when a real princess drops by

A Spot of Bother
how to impress a room full of bankers

Maui Owie
how I got water on the brain

Music + One
one man bandleader

Gone Tiki
hair of superficiality

Thai Landing

disappearing in phuket

    I had been warned about so many things to beware of in Thailand before I went that when I arrived at the airport in Bangkok I felt paralysed. I had a two week holiday from my gig in Tokyo, but not much of a plan. I had also taken three plane flights in twenty four hours, spent a frozen night in Korea, been subjected to mass panic in Hong Kong, and oh yeah, a war broke out while airborne over China. But that's another story, Fly Thai.
    At first, I didn't know what to do, so I did nothing. Like I always say, when in doubt do nothing. Then I remembered I had read you could take a cheap local bus to downtown from the airport. I ventured across the highway via the pedestrian overpass, my first experience of a "street market". The buses on the other side somehow did not look like they would be going my direction. Also, a dead dog lay half submerged in the ditch by the bus stop. I took this as an omen. I backtracked to the airport and overcoming my queasiness eventually took some kind of taxi downtown.
    I had not prepared so well for this trip. Sometimes I'm like that. When I got to downtown I opted to book in for one night at the National Hotel, an expensive place I knew about. I needed sleep more than anything else. The next night I found a hostel near Khao San road for about twenty times less than what I'd paid the night before. And slept better.
    Bangkok. What a city! I met my friend Maggie from Tokyo poolside at the Oriental Hotel and she took me klonging through the canals of the city, what's left of them anyway. You could spend a lifetime exploring this city, but I really wanted to go tropical beachside, so I bought an overnight bus ticket to Phuket. What a terrible mistake. Like I always say, once bitten, twice why. Next time I fly.
    Arriving in Phuket (poo-KET) town after a miserable sleepless night on the bus, I started walking, looking for the downtown area. By the time I realized I had already left the town far behind, I came upon a roadside bar, Mayongtom, festooned with flags of all nations. I gratefully perched myself on a barstool, ordered a fancy tropical drink, and began to ask questions of my new best friend, Udon. He told me where to go, how to get there, and who to talk to. I went back to his place a number of times over the next week. I noticed that amongst his many flags he did not have one from Canada. I said I'd mail him one when I got home. And so I did.
    I took the lorry bus to the beach town Patong, found a room, and the bar my new best friend had told me about, and proceeded to have about the best holiday ever.
    The Andaman Sea might be the most beautiful place I've seen, and that's saying a lot. A friend had worked as stage tech for a world wide resort chain which had a club one beach town away, south along the coast of Phuket Island. I decided to go have a look even though he had long departed. Instead of taking the bus back to Phuket Town and switching to another bus going to the neighboring beach town like I should have, I walked. How far could it be? What could go wrong? And think of the scenery! Along the coast road. In the blistering sun. In the heat of the day. Really not such a great idea. At one point, already exhausted and dehydrated, I holed up in a small gully off the road in a patch of shade and disappeared. No one driving by expected to see a pedestrian out here, and so they didn't. That very day I learned, in order to disappear one didn't need to vanish into thin air, only avoid being seen. I've been doing it ever since, at the appropriate moment. When I finally reached the outskirts of the next beach town, probably halfway to heatstroke, I found a bar on the beach and sucked back a couple of cocktails. When I finally did make it to the resort where my friend had worked, they didn't seem to know about him, or else didn't want to know about me, not sure which. I wisely took the bus back to Phuket Town, then back to Patong, stopping off to see my new best friend Udon on the way to thank him for his help and bring him up to date.
    I cruised the beachside bars of Patong looking for live music. All the musicians seemed to be Filipinos. Not a bad thing, as they are possibly the best cover artists in the world. But one duo I saw, I noticed the guitarist kept looking at his watch, when suddenly they stopped and took their break. In the middle of a song! I kept asking where I could hear some Thai musicians, and someone directed me to a place which had an all Thai band. I sat alone in the gorgeous open lobby of the Merlin resort where they played. To no one. Only me. I applauded after every song, all by myself, because damn they played really good. On their break one of the band members came over and sat with me, and asked if I played, and what instrument. As it turned out, their guitar player/singer was suffering from a massive toothache, would I sit in for him? That would be a yes. I played the last set with them, singing classic covers like Under the Boardwalk, still to no customers. And then the band invited me to the after hours club.
    Well, this would be the other side of Thailand that tourists don't never see. A club full of happy Thais, and word got around about me saving the day for one of their local favorites. I got invited to three parties the next night, and who knows what would have developed from that. I went back to the club next afternoon and met the manager, played her my tape of original songs, and planned to return that night, my last night in Patong. Just one thing. The salad of death.
    I had been eating at a local restaurant and done well up to this point. But the last night I made a mistake and accidently ordered a fresh, uncooked meal. Salad. Bad idea, and I knew it. Too embarassed to admit my mistake, I ate the salad of death. Shortly thereafter I began to experience stomach pains like never before. No going to three parties, no going to the club, just laying on my bed watching the ceiling fan go round and round and round. And a trip to the washroom. Maggie even came to Patong looking for me, and danced the night away in the disco right next door to my motel room, which provided a steady thump thump thump to go along with the fan going round and around and around. And another trip to the washroom. And back to bed. And around and around and around went the fan.

Lago Life

sleeping under the volcanos

    Out in the desert, thumbs in the air, Laura and I headed for the border crossing to take a train deep into Mexico. We had a ride with friends to Albuquerque where we turned right, as they headed on to Florida. Now over halfway through New Mexico but getting late in the afternoon, our window for reaching the border before dark narrowed with each minute. Then off in the distance we saw a mirage of some sort, apparently coming our way. Squinting our eyes we soon could see a convoy of vehicles, a caravan, a parade, all headed to the scrapyards across the border in Ciudad Juarez. Trundling along in slow motion, there must have been dozens of cars and trucks single file, following their leader. As they approached the lead truck pulled over, causing the entire line to jitter to a complete halt. A large Mexican hollered at us to jump in, he didn't have all day. 
    Our new best friend, I called him Señor, explained to us how he would take a crew of guys and buy as many used cars and trucks as he could in the States, and drive them all down to his wrecking yard. We blew through El Paso, and when we reached the border the guards knew him, and he wouldn't let them ask us any questions. Not half a minute after we left the border I realized we didn't get our tourist visas! I quickly explained we needed to go back and get them. We would not be able to reenter Mexico from Guatemala later without them. Señor not too happy with this, the caravan of junkers idling while we went back and got the paperwork done. He said he would drive us to the train station, but first he wanted to show us something. We entered the back streets of Juarez and our eyes went wide. It looked like there had been a war, dilapidated and fallen down buildings, craters in the street big enough to swallow small cars. And then we saw his kingdom. An entire city block with twenty foot high fences and barbed wire all around it, enclosing great steaming hunks of twisted metal and junk. Large shirtless men leaned on giant sledgehammers and eyed us as we drove up. I have never felt eyes like that. I can't imagine how Laura felt, with their eyes undressing her mercilessly. And I will never be able to unsee this place. As the jalopies thumped and bumped their way into their new home one by one, Señor gleamed in satisfaction. Fearing that there might be more that Señor wanted to show us, I asked him to please take us to the train. And so he did.
    We bought a ticket to the first big city down the line. We felt like stopping somewhere before Mexico City, to get a bit acclimatized. I had been once to the giant metropolis of Mexico, but I had lost my glasses and all was a blur, but that's another story. So we wanted to spend a couple days in some smaller place before we entered the belly of the beast. When we arrived at the first town in the middle of the night, we could see out the window nothing but giant oil refineries, fire and smoke. Looked like the gates of hell. Hmm. Next town we said, and gave the ticket man some more pesos. We managed to curl up spoon like on our little bench and sleep some. Daytime now, and the next city looked very industrial and not so inviting. Next town we said, and we gave the ticket man some more pesos. We had first class tickets, and we discovered later first class no better than second class, just meant fewer people. We went second class from then on. So cheap! When we left Mexico we travelled twenty four hours from Yucatan to the US border for twelve dollars each.
    Finally the third city looked interesting. We stopped off in Zacatecas for a few days, being very careful what we ate. No time for getting sick! Once we felt comfortable, we took the train to Mexico City to spend one night. What a madhouse! Being able to see this time didn't seem to help, maybe made it worse. We did hook up with a couple of American girls and drove to Chapultepec park with a couple Mexican lads they'd met. On the way back we got stopped by the police. For running a red light? We didn't know. Immediately demanding we pay a fine on the spot, one of the American girls piped up from the back seat, saying there's no way she wanted to bribe our way out of this, we hadn't broken any laws, and blah blah blah. The Mexican lads appeared very nervous, so hushing her up best we could, we forked over many pesos and carried on. Then to the train station and Laura and I bought second class tickets to Oaxaca. Second class always full, so we couldn't believe our luck finding two seats together. Soon we knew why. Right beside the "washroom". The light had blown and men would just step inside and let fly. I don't know the women did. And good luck if you had to take a dump. The stench would make a hyena cry. Somehow we managed. We always did.
    We explored ruins, went to markets, then went up in the mountains, where my flute got stolen. I didn't bring a guitar on this trip, so now I had nothing to play. Here I discovered that my new name, Huckle, did not translate well. My attempts to get my Spanish speaking friend to pronounce it properly could be described as comical. Writing it down produced a sudden gleam of comprehension. "OOK-lay" he exclaimed. I went with Paco after that. From Oaxaca we hitched to San Cristobal de las Casas, getting one ride with an oil tanker. I had to stash our bags on the top of the tanker, and thought I'd secured them well. Well, when I retrieved them the pocket holding all our papers had ripped open in the wind. Our maps gone, and the next thing to fly would have been my passport, now just laying on my packsack waiting for the next gust.
    San Cristobal, our gateway to Guatemala. Probably our favorite town in Mexico, we spent more time there on our way back. They had just discovered a tribe deep in the jungle, the Lacandones. No prior contact with the outside world, nobody even knew about them. About two hundred souls, all wore ankle length white tunics and had long straight black hair. Of course the authorities had to bring two of these deep forest dwellers from the stone age direct into the twentieth century and show them around. Or more like show them off. I'd had a lot of hair cut off before I left, but I was probably pretty shaggy already. One day walking along the street in San Cristobal a car came racing the other way. About to pass me, I saw the two Lacandones in the back seat of the car. One of them saw me and lurched forward like he recognized me! For a nano second I looked right into his eyes, deep into eyes from the stone age. Slightly rattled, I could sense his stress and bewilderment. And poof he gone.
    Now we launched the last leg of our journey to the jewel in the mountains, Lake Atitlan. But first we stopped in Huehuetenango at a lovely pension. In the evening a huge marimba entertained us, played by eight people together in the courtyard. We listened from our balcony entranced. Up into mountains we went, to Todos Santos Cuchumatan. To get there you had to cross Guatemala's altiplano, not as big as the one in South America, but you wouldn't know that once you're there. Looks like it goes forever. But first you had to climb a nasty road, with those crosses and flowers everywhere somebody died, in a bus with no emergency brake. They had a rock. Every ten minutes the bus had to stop, a big rock got thrown under the back wheel, and much water went into the radiator. I swear this bus ran on prayers. Surviving this, now on the altiplano and feeling like we've landed on the moon. So weird. And then down into a spectacular valley to Todos Santos. Loved it there, bought one of their shirts with the crazy collar. On to Chichicastenango, then finally Lake Atitlan. One of the most beautiful lakes in the world, you have to see the color to believe it. A bus ran from Panajachel halfway around the lake, stopping at all the small towns. We did have some friends in San Lucas Toliman, the second last town, but we thought to go further. We always went further. Landed in the last town Santiago Atitlan under the volcano, and we never left for three months. We met some Americans who lived in a house by the shore near town, did we want to rent the bamboo hut by the beach? That would be a yes. Ten dollars a month, a mature avocado tree dropping the best avos ever on our roof at night, to be collected and stored on our shelf to ripen, swimming in the lake right outside our door, and an unparalleled view. Paradise. We did it!
     Just one thing. I did not bring a guitar, would have been too much baggage I thought. This turned out to be very true. By the time we headed back home, our packs stuffed with clothing and materials we bought, now more than totally overloaded even without a guitar. Did I mention I had my flute stolen? Now I had nothing to play. I asked our neighbors if they knew of a guitar anywhere. As a matter of fact Aussie Gareth staying in town had a nylon string guitar, but with the top string missing, so he didn't play it. At first elated, I soon found it more than frustrating with only five strings. Then the light went on. Gesticulating wildly and using sign language I asked a local fisherman if I could buy a piece of fishing line. He laughed, crazy gringo, and he never stopped laughing till I left. I strung this piece of green nylon fishing line where the high E goes, and smiled. I had to tune the string up about once a minute cause it slipped, but now I could play. I wrote a couple songs, one of them ending up on my next album.
    Lake Atitlan is a very large lake. The twelve Mayan villages dotted around the shore each had their own Mayan language and dress, with Santiago being the biggest of the towns and speaking Tz'utujil. I learned two words, hello, bac'ar, and thank you, maltiyozh (sp?). At night a million dogs began barking and howling all night, requiring earplugs at first to be able to sleep at all. When the dogs finally quit the roosters would take over. Loudest place I ever lived! I kept a journal, here's the entry I wrote about our bamboo hut.
 "At night this room seems to come to life. The bamboo grows again, the thatched roof sending out new shoots. In the candlelight patterns change and flicker about the walls. The pine needles and straw mats grow together and tickle our feet. The sound of wavelets washing the shore and bats fluttering in the moonlight. The moon sets the dogs howling and in her splashing light the volcano seems more like a slumbering dragon than a pile of rock. The towering clouds slink and slither their way back down to the hot coastal plain where the sun's light still lingers, and Venus the evening star glimmers in the cold, darkening emptiness of space".
    Three volcanos towered over the lake, Volcan Atitlan being the tallest at twelve thousand feet. The lake's elevation already at five thousand, so seven more would take us to the top of the world. We must climb.
    Six of us made the trek, our two American friends Dave and Miguel, and their two Mayan friends Diego and Diego as our guides in the lead. Up, up, and up we went, through cornfields, tunnels of greenery, sandy fields of flowers. We stopped to fill our bellies with tortillas, eggs, mandarinos, bananas, and peanut butter. Then up into the rainforest we climbed through immense, hoary old trees with jungle vines hanging everywhere and beardlike moss covering all, always watching in vain for the elusive Quetzal bird. Then up some more into the cold, whistling winds and pine forests. Planning to camp out at the very summit, we only made it to the treeline and decided to spend an uncomfortable night sleeping huddled together in a rock crevass we came upon. The clouds covered all, but at times they parted and like a flash of divine insight we saw the world below at our feet. We scrabbled and toiled up the loose and treacherous volcanic rocks to the summit in the morning, the cold biting like knives and the clouds closing in quickly. We huddled again behind a rock shelter waiting for the moments when the clouds would rend themselves apart and the vista would make us stutter in awe. You could see almost the whole country, and across the Pacific you could almost see Japan. Just one thing. So not prepared for the ground to be hot, with steam and poisonous gases escaping from cracks in the rock! Get me outta here now. I could sense the energy of angry molten rock somewhere not far enough below my feet, like I could be shot from a cannon any moment. We spent most of the day coming down the volcano, even harder than climbing up. My knees felt like jelly for days.
    We did take a beautiful walk one day all the way to San Lucas, but our friends weren't there. I took the passenger ferry once a month to Panajachel for supplies. Mostly we hung at our little hut. I would swim out a ways into the lake with a big dried gourd and submerge it to fill it. Our drinking, cooking, and washing water, straight from the lake. A dreamlike view from our little hut on the shore, the lake stretching away to meet the ridge between Volcan Atitlan and Volcan San Pedro. Every day the clouds would build up dramatically from the Pacific side, and often would spill over and drench us with warm rain.
    Blissfully unaware of it when we arrived, the political situation in Guatemala could only be described as dire. Mass killings in the villages, death squads, disappearances and worse. The property we lived on belonged to the "Mayor" of Santiago, a Ladino who had half finished his lakeside mansion up from the beach behind our hut. His caretaker/handyman, a wonderful local Mayan Gaspar, turned out to be that year's chief of the underground Mayan ceremonies, conducted in top secret conditions. Yes, they still continue despite brutal Spanish, and then government attempts to eradicate them and turn all into Christians. On the day he would be leading the ceremonies he could not get the day off work. It almost caused an uprising, but they waited till the next year after we had long gone.
    We decided conquering one volcano wouldn't do, so together with Dave our neighbor the three of us would tackle San Pedro. Dave had climbed it before and said he'd be our guide. OK then. Only a four thousand foot climb. Much easier than Atitlan he said. A cakewalk compared to our gruelling hike up Atitlan. We prepared meticulously. Our go to food for hiking was peanut butter. The neighbors had an old hand cranked meat grinder to make the butter out of roasted peanuts bought at the market in town. We did all our shopping at the market, no grocery store here. Everything got weighed with brass weights, the largest weight containing all the smaller ones like a Russian babushka doll. I asked a lady for a lot of peanuts, I think four kilos, probably her sale of the day. Now I knew how many peanuts I should be getting, I'd bought them before. The biggest weight with all the littler ones inside equalled one kilo. As she weighed them out it my growing pile seemed a little short. I also noticed out of the corner of my eye a couple other of the market ladies watching her closely. As she unloaded another bowl onto my pile, with a lightning fast move I reached down and snagged the weight from her scale and opened it. Empty. A sudden hush all around. She looked up at me, the other ladies nearby holding their breath to see what I would do. I knew what she weighed out for me equalled only half of what I would be paying for. I handed back the weight and quietly said "por favor, mas", please just give me the other half of my peanuts, paid her, and set off to make the butter.
    To get to San Pedro you had to go by dugout canoe. If we wanted a ride I'd have to paddle with them. Off we went at a pretty good clip. About half way across I started to flag. Maybe I put too much into it at the start, trying to show off? Endurance I have, stamina maybe not so much. Laura got up to take my paddle and did so the rest of the way. They never stopped laughing till we got out. I thought well why shouldn't she do some paddling instead of riding like a princess? We stayed in a pension and got an early start. It did turn out to be an easier climb, not so much scrabbling up rocks, and Mayan milpas filled with drying cornstalks almost to the top. Stopping to light a fire and have some dinner, our friend Dave plucked some corncobs and began to roast it with the husk still on. I felt conflicted about this stealing of someone's sacred maize, but once the cobs starting popping I sort of got over it. Popcorn on the cob! The summit definitely a letdown after Atitlan, not above the treeline and you could see peekaboo views only. On the plus side San Pedro is a dormant volcano, cool rocks and no steam escaping from the cracks here.
    Another journal entry from just before we left Santiago. "The furious wind thrashes the trees, throwing the odd one down in its wake, and reducing our poor wan candles into mere ribbons of blue flame. Times the door bursts open and forty mad wind warriors create wild confusion. Outside we totter about in the paws of the Norte, who sends white horses fleeing across the water waves, and the dusty earth comes alive and goes ranting around the street corners of town".
    We found a Mayan lady who did gorgeous embroidery, birds and flowers, for fifty cents each! We got her to embroider all our clothes, even our underwear. I still have some, cut out of the long ago shirts they were sewed onto. I loved the Mayan people, from the first time I saw them in Yucatan years before. And all the Mayans in Santiago made us feel welcome. Except for that lady in the market, she probably didn't want to see me again. I hope as a people they regain their autonomy someday.
    After three months, getting restless. So much to see, so little time now. We went to Antigua, Guat City, then a little town Ipala in cowboy country to the east to visit a friend. He wasn't there. Still Tikal and the East coast beckoned, and a place called Livingston. But that's another story, Latin Serenade.

Real Fantasy Band

cosmic folk acid rock jazz fusioneers

    Laura and I with baby River moved to Nic's cabin at Stowell Lake on south Salt Spring at the end of a glorious summer in Fulford Harbour. Rent only seventy dollars a month, but I couldn't make it just playing on the island. I started going into Victoria to play. My last band had crash landed back at the end of summer so I decided to go solo and had no intention of starting yet another band, or splitting the money up with anyone. Whatever I got paid, it would be mine. All mine. Mine mine mine. But first I had to make some. Somehow I scored a gig at the Medieval Inn one night a week for a month, then regularly at Noos Pizza in Market Square, James Bay Inn, Prancing Pony natural food restaurant in Fernwood, the SUB pub at University of Victoria. Even played opening night for the new hippie restaurant in Market Square, Pilgrim's.
    I had met drummer Bill up in the Kootenays, and we met up again when he moved down to Victoria. He and his bass player Ron had a weekly gig backing Ron's girlfriend Veronica at a pizza joint. One week they asked me to fill in for her. I had minimal passion for starting another band, but I thought what the hell it's one gig, free pizza, a beer and a few dollars, what could go wrong?
    Bill and Ron lived in a former storefront on Esquimalt road across the bridge. Three bedrooms in the back with a large open common area. The former store in front with the big windows facing the street made for an awesome rehearsal room. What a pad! Bill suggested I come over and jam. He also knew a keyboard player Gord who might want to jam with us too. I thought what the hell, it's just a jam, free rehearsal space, what could go wrong?
    Pretty soon I was the leader of a new band, the Real Fantasy Band, and we had gigs. How did that happen. We played at a clothing store on the top floor of Market Square, Beaver Point Hall on Salt Spring (of course), but Gord got cold feet and dropped out.  We had to do a gig at Brackendale Art Gallery near Squamish as a trio, which went well enough, but I realized we needed another member. That's when the fun began.
    Bill invited Hugh over to jam, and it just went from there. The most enthusiastic AND talented musician I ever played with, Hugh went on to great things in the jazz world but at the time so young he had never been in a band yet. His main passion being jazz, but we played all kinds of stuff, my folk rock tunes mixed with Weather Report, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, Earth, Wind & Fire. Also some straight out jazz Hugh would play, sometimes at a show I would just put down my guitar, step off stage and let the three of them rip. The hippie audiences we played to hadn't heard stuff like this. Hugh also played trombone and could write horn charts. For some of our gigs we even had a horn section, which may have lead to a strengthening of my voice. I sang all the vocals and played mostly electric guitar, but I still played some flute. Including the chorus in Birdland, always exhilarating!
    We played a small outdoor festival in Sooke to warm up for our gig at the Courtenay Renaissance Faire. Like I said, the hippies hadn't heard anything like this, they went nuts. We went over to Vancouver and played the Soft Rock Cafe, one of the coolest venues ever. We taped a show for the local cable TV station at the Soft Rock. I have one video online from that show, doing my song She Is the One, as jazzy a song as I ever wrote. We got a three night gig at a disco club Mothers, in Victoria, but not really our scene. At the end of summer we played a big dance at the OAP hall in Victoria for the hippies with our horn section. I tried to revive the spirit of the Fulford clambake on Salt Spring from years gone by. The plan was to have a daytime outdoor mini fest at Drummond Park, then two bands playing at Fulford Hall at night. Well it pissed rain, but we still rocked the hall.
    The Courtenay Faire had gone so well, they decided to have another fest in September. Not a great idea. It pissed rain again, the festival site a mudbath, and the whole event in total chaos. In the midst of this debacle, Bill informed me he quit the band, and he would not be going with me to the gig I had booked on Cortes Island the next night. What!  So foundered the band I founded. I begged Tom and Sue, Dave and Arno, also at this morass of a festival, to come with me to Cortes and play the gig. And so they did.
    Next spring on Salt Spring when Laura I got back from Hawai'i, Jerome had showed up on the island. An excellent drummer though not a jazzoid, I had met him in Ontario, and he had also played with Paul in Island. Uncharacteristically, I thought to start up the band again. I even got Dave to make us a new fabulous poster, like the one he'd done for Wild Blue Yonder. First Jerome and I played a gig as a trio at Noos Pizza with Doug on bass, but they had wrecked the place. Noos had been so successful, place always full, making so much money, that they decided to expand. Opening up a second floor in the basement, they sunk the new stage halfway between floors. It didn't work. I felt like we'd got stuck in an elevator. Almost nobody sat in the lower level, and the people in the upper level couldn't see you. It went from being my favorite venue to nope won't play there again after that. Hugh and Ron joined up again, and we four played Norway House in Victoria. Then when Laura and I decided to get married we threw the greatest party ever at Beaver Point Hall. I hired Real Fantasy Band to be the entertainment, and had to watch everyone else dance with my new beautiful wife. Later that month we played the closing dance in the hall at Banfield Park for a mini fest I organized in Esquimalt, but other gigs did not materialize.
    We went into the studio in mid June to record four original songs of mine. Hugh double tracked his trombone for the horn section on Funky Radio. I made cassettes to sell, side one being Real Fantasy Band, and side two four songs I recorded solo, including Angeline, one of my better songs. But Hugh had to go do his new gig at Banff School of Fine Arts for the summer, so I couldn't book any shows and the wheels started falling off. I set up another mini fest at Drummond Park and dance at Fulford Hall at the end of summer for when Hugh got back, but before he returned I fired myself. I had been the manager of everything for years, but it seemed experience had not made me any more adept. So I fired myself. The beauty of being your own manager. I had plenty of talent, just not the kind you need to promote and organize stuff. As it turned out, I still pulled together the fest at Drummond Park but it pissed rain again and got cancelled, and just the one band Bluebird played at the hall. So I fired myself again. I never tried to organize or promote anything for years. I soon followed Ron and joined a new band, Dolphin in the Sea, but that's another story.
    A year and a bit later, we had a reunion tour and played a spectacular gig at Crystal Gardens in Victoria with Hugh, Ron, and Jerome. The venue decked out like a tropical paradise complete with parrots, but no jazz, no horn section, and the new songs I'd written leaned more to rock than anything else. I do have a live recording of the grand finale for the best band I ever had.

Contact Low

through a lens darkly

      Myopia. That means I don’t need reading glasses, but if I want to drive or see what’s over there, whose face is that, all pretty fuzzy without glasses. I started wearing them in grade four. Strong ones. Nobody, including me, up till then noticed that I couldn’t see jack. Maybe the hours I spent two feet away from the television in my brother’s room? Anyway, I wore glasses for many years.
      Then I tried contact lenses. I really enjoyed not wearing specs, but dealing with contacts can be messy, especially when stupid drunk. Like the time I came home after a gig, taking out my contacts, and I thought one had gone down the drain. Looked everywhere for it. Finally went to bed very upset. Woke up in the morning with it back in its proper place! Somehow it had slid around the back side of my eyeball, then worked its way back out while I slept. Ick.
      So I wore contacts for years with many mishaps and adventures, then finally went back to glasses for good. Before I did I had a morning in Tokyo that helped me make that final decision.
      The third time I went to Tokyo I stayed at Joe and Nadine's in Aobadai, then moved to Nishikoyama at "Maggie's Mansion", which involved a journey on two trains of an hour or more. But the trains shut down shortly after midnight, so I learned to stay up all night drinking and go home on an early train. And TRY to get four hours sleep.
    I planned for this trip to stay six months. You could only stay three months at a time, so I bought a ticket that would get me to Bangkok and back. But that's another story, Fly Thai. Somehow I felt more myself in Japan, even though I would always be gaijin, a foreigner. The energy here, the sheer numbers of people. One day in Shibuya walking on a fairly wide, but very crowded sidewalk, with a sheer wall on one side and beetling traffic on the other, it began to rain. Everyone opened their umbrellas and immediately created gridlock. All umbrellas locked together, no one would take theirs down, everyone pulling hard as they can in whatever direction they headed. Closest I ever got to mass panic.
    Excellent transit, affordable too, but a lotta lotta people all the time. I never got shoved onto a train, but one day in Ebisu station I found myself in a long lineup to buy a ticket. Taking too long, getting steamed, and the lady in front of me waited till she got to the head of the line before she started looking for the money in her wallet. Exasperated now, when she finally got out of my way, I lunged for the coin slot to buy my ticket at the same time as the guy beside me in the other lineup. I turned to growl at him, and out of thirty million people in this town there stood..... my brother Patrick. We went for a beer.
    Early on my third trip to Tokyo I discovered from my sister Clare that Patrick had already been there for two weeks. I tried to find him, but he and Susan had bolted from the lavish accomodations they had been given and moved into a Chinese student apartment. Somehow I found him by calling the university where he worked. He would bring his students to Maggie's and not tell them he knew me. They were duly impressed when I came and sat at their table on my break. Even more so when I started in on my Japanese puns and jokes I invented. For instance at the end of the night you would say "O yasumi nasai" as you departed, meaning something like rest well honorable one, yasumi being rest. I would say "O nasubi yasai" instead, which is nonsense and means something like "Of all the vegetables you are an honorable eggplant". Patrick collected shokuhin sampuru, the Japanese fake food, and gifted me the plastic yakitori which I pranked people with endlessly at Maggie's. One lady finally fell for it and bit hard into the plastic chicken. She still hasn't forgiven me.
    Aside from playing live I also did studio work recording background vocals, then moving up to do lead vocals at karaoke sessions in a top of the line studio. $10,000 an hour for this place! Another company had cornered the market for karaoke machines in pubs and clubs, so this company aimed at the home market. Karaoke (means empty orchestra) is serious business in Japan! With this company's karaoke machine people could practice at home before going out to impress their friends and neighbors. You could listen to the lead vocal until you aced it, then turn it off and you on your own singing to the music. The studio crew hated these sessions, but the company required it if they wanted to work on the big sessions. So I made it fun for them, got the job done but also kept them laughing. This led to me being hired again and again, till one night I sang till dawn and made over a grand in one session. One issue stood out however. Singing the lead vocal to Roy Orbison's Oh Pretty Woman I came to the part where he growls in the middle. Well I can't growl like that. I said my friend Ian could, get him to do it at his next session. Oh no they said, we must finish tonight! After a few miserable attempts the producer opened cupboard near the floor. Inside a bottle of Jack Daniels. I finally recorded a (sort of) growl gargling with the Jack. Hilarious!Yes I have recordings of the songs I did. No it doesn't sound like me.
    I also had a gig helping my friend Misa, who I met at Little Star on my first trip. I transcribed unintelligible taped interviews with Rock Stars for her to translate into Japanese. We translated songs as well, which proved difficult at times. I Am The Walrus by the Beatles being the most treacherous and untranslatable. "What mean yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye?" I said it's just nonsense. "What mean Crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess?" Misa became quite exasperated, almost in tears. "We must finish today! What mean I am the Walrus. What mean Goo goo g'joob?" Hilarious! And quite lucrative.
    My gig at Maggie's Revenge may have been the pinochle of my career in some ways. My one man band could be described as ideal for a room that size that wants to rock. And rock it did! Not much room for dancing, but that didn't stop them. I now also had my midi guitar, which meant I could play sax, organ, harmonica, and even waves for the surf tunes I played at the break. Fun! Other musicians I met made more money than me, but they all wanted my gig. And many came to sit in adding an element of ya never know ya know.
    Maggie's closed around three am. I would then migrate to Deja Vu, Gas Panic or Pickford till it closed, then Bamboo, and continue till I/we would land at Little Star downstairs on the main street that stayed open till seven am. Stumbling up those stairs into the bustling Tokyo morning I never got used to. By then I could take the train home. Or not.
      I learned early on to avoid taking the very first train. A true rogue’s gallery of all night carousers and really not a pretty sight. Better to wait for the second or even third train, when everything would be sort of back to normal. Or not even. Sometimes the night would continue, even though the sun shone brightly overhead. As a place closed, someone might yell “next place” and we would fall to arguing amongst ourselves about our next destination. It sometimes became a contest of who knew the area best and what remained open. A serious gaffe would be leading the group to some place that had already closed. Bad form. So we’d usually go for the safe bet, the sure thing. Or, if we couldn’t reach consensus, we would drift apart and I’d become a party of one. One night someone suggested we go for breakfast in a place she knew across town. And so we did.
      Most of us were entertainers or night workers of some sort, stuck downtown like myself till the trains started running again. This time I found myself with a group of foreigners I did not know well. Soon to leave Japan and return home, I felt more adventurous than usual, even though I approached the weak end of my weekend. At seven am five of us poured ourselves into a cab and rode to Akasaka, another downtown entertainment district in Tokyo not far from Roppongi. I had been to Akasaka before for a one on one drinking contest with an Aussie friend from Maggie's. I say it ended in a draw because he cheated, I saw him pour three fingers to my one as he tried to distract me. But that’s another story.
      On arrival our guide Karen the American proudly led us into a restaurant open for business. Oops. This appeared to be a very Japanese place which catered to business people just starting their day. She may have come here alone for breakfast before, but without this well lubricated sorry lot trailing behind. Too late now. We took a table and fell to talking amongst ourselves, while those around us did their very best to ignore we had ever been born. A good idea to be well behaved in Japan, and I did pretty well all told, but then.....
      Things went okay at first. The others ordered breakfast, I just had a coffee. Then Karen the American said something the rest of us thought funny for some reason, and the giggles began. She didn’t think what she’d said funny at all and said so. That of course made it even funnier and the real laughter began. Now she felt we laughed at her and her annoyance increased. The other four of us now collapsed into hysterical fits of laughter, the like of which I had seldom experienced.
      I laughed so hard I began crying. I tried to regain control. No use. Tears streamed down my face. Every time we managed to calm down, something would convulse us again into gales of laughter. If we hadn’t caused a scene up to this point, now we surely did.
      Finally, utterly exhausted and embarassed as well, I managed to compose myself and wiped my face dry with a napkin. Sitting up straight, I blinked and looked across the table at Karen the American, still clearly not at all amused. I couldn’t see!
      I closed my right eye. I could see. I closed my left eye. I couldn’t see. One of my contacts had floated out of my right eye on a river of tears and landed who knows where! I plumetted from uncontrollable hilarity to abject terror in seconds.
      A frantic search of the the tabletop. Nothing! Now desperate, I got down on my hands and knees and searched the floor. Nothing! The others got down on their hands and knees to help. Nothing!
      I became dimly aware that the other patrons had mostly up and left the restaurant. Even the Japanese have only so much tolerance. But I had no spare lenses and my glasses at home miles away. I would have to negotiate Tokyo legally blind in my stupefied state. I went to the washroom and nearly ripped my eyelid off looking for the lens, thinking maybe it had slipped behind my eyeball again. Nothing!
      Returning to our table thoroughly dejected I slumped into my chair. Taking a sip of my coffee, something stuck on my tongue. Curdled cream? Just as I went to swallow I remembered. This is Japan! Cream not allowed to curdle here! I stuck out my tongue. My lens! Now a deep brown hue, I raced back to the washroom and put it in. Yes! I could see!
      I wore my newly coffee tinted lens for the rest of the trip. Though I now had two distinctly differently colored eyes, I pretended not to notice. When I got home, I bought a new pair of glasses and never wore contacts again.