My Short-lived Musical Career

Hi Bob,

I loved your reminiscence.  I'm betting a lot of us guitar players have a similar story about their "first guitar".  Currently, in my living room I have a Schecter strato-caster type guitar hanging on my wall.  I got it back in the Mix magazine days.  The magazine's benefactor was a fellow named Rudi Hurwhich.  He had been the CEO of Dymo labels.  Remember that device that would make plastic labels?  You'd punch in the letters and numbers and the device would spit out (not really the right term) the label which had adhesive on the back and you could stick it on any hard surface.  His company got bought out by some large European conglomerate and he got a very handsome golden parachute for his forced retirement.  Rudi was a venture capitalist and he bet on our Mix Magazine by guaranteeing us a $ 150,000 line of credit.  It doesn't seem like much in these days of mega-million dollar investments, but to our struggling (at the time) magazine it meant a lot.  I was not a partner at Mix, I was the money and numbers guy (Treasurer/Controller).  Because I had prior business experience and could do the books and produce financial statements, Rudi wanted me on the signed guarantee.  I was only working there three days a week.  I had another, similar gig in the city and we were also trying to get the new Tres Virgos built.
  

If I was going to put my name on the promise to Rudi and be the official "CFO" I wanted to be compensated for it.  Penny and David and I came up with this scheme.  In lieu of additional pay (real money was a scarce commodity at The Mix, in those days) I was to be compensated thusly:  As the guy who was in charge of the accounts deceivable, I mean receivable, it was on of my duties to try and get the guys who owed us money to pay up.  At the time, we, as a business, did not always operate in the most professional manner.  In the magazine biz., when you sell an ad to a company, they're supposed to send you an "insertion order" which is a contract to pay the agreed upon amount (hopefully in thirty days) for the ad.  Ideally, that amount comes from a thing called a rate sheet which sets the price for the different kinds of ads.  The biggy is usually a double truck full color ad (two page spread); next comes a full page on down to a sixth of a page.  The recording studios could buy a square inch picture to go with their listing in our recording studio listing section.  These guys were supposed to send in their $ 50 in advance.  A few actually did.  The rest I had to call.

  We wanted certain big companies, like Sony and Ampex; Dolby Labs and Solid State Logic (the guys who made automated mixing boards that cost hundreds of thousands) to be in our book and we would often place ads without the signed insertion order.  Our big competition was a magazine called Recording Engineer/Producer.  They were IBM and we were Apple.  It was pretty easy to get an ad printed in our mag.  We could send our art director to the printer of the other magazine and pick up the artwork for the ad we wanted and take it to our printer to be included in our next issue.  With the big established guys things were done by the book.  Getting them to pay in a timely manner was another matter.  With the lesser outfits, getting them to pay at all was often a problem.  I soon realized how shaky our sales agreement was with them without a signed insertion order.
  

There's a particular problem with accounts receivable collections in the magazine business.  I'm trying to collect for a service that has already been provided.  Without the insertion order, the vendor can claim there's no proof that he ordered the ad.  The music equipment manufacturers and retailers were a particular problem because theirs is a very cut-throat business.  The retailers operate on very thin margins and if they can get "something for nothing" they would often jump at the chance.  This is where my deal with Mix came in.  In my attempts to cajole these guys to pay their advertising bills, I was authorized by Mix to cut deals:  Some Cash; some product.  The product would be mine to keep.  I would look over the sales catalogues of these deadbeats and figure out what I'd like to have for my own home studio.  Under this arrangement, I acquired two electric bases; two electric guitars; a bunch of signal processing gizmos; a digital drum machine; a gorgeous blond oak twin speaker 120 watt tube guitar amplifier with a Tom Schulz power soak; (that baby could wail...) and various other musical goodies.  And that, Bob; ole buddy, is where the electric guitar, hanging on the wall, came from.  (you did ask what guitars I have...)  I also have a great acoustic six string that used to be my twelve string that I played in my Steakhouse duo (Redeye!).  In Marin, my partner David and I played at the Refectory that used to be in the Bon Air Shopping Center and that's where you and Rob saw us play.  I also had a Martin D-28 six string.  I sold the Martin many years ago because the neck kept warping.  I took my twelve string and had a local luthier of some renown convert it to a six string.  I also have a classical guitar leaning against my fire screen but one of the winding machines is broken; rendering it unplayable.

In my mid fifties two things happened that curtailed my guitar playing.  First;  I had been playing for forty years and my enjoyment of this hobby was beginning to wane.  Second; I developed a condition called Dupuytrens Contracture where the pinky and ring finger start to draw in towards the palm of the hand.  It is a hereditary condition that mostly afflicts men over fifty whose ancestors hailed from the British Isles or the Scandinavian countries. (26% of Dutch men over fifty have Dupuytrens).  Mine started in my left hand and restricted my digital acrobatics on the fretboard.  I gradually gave up playing and the guitars are now just fixtures in the living room.  I still like to look at them to be reminded of my playing days.

 Playing my Guild twelve-string in '74 when I was playing professionally

Here's my Schecter strato-caster style electric.  With the right signal processing this baby could really sing.  It was tweaked by Rick Turner who used to be half of Alembic Guitars, the guys that made instruments for Jerry Garcia and the like.

You asked about my, so called, professional playing career.  I hooked up with this Hawaiian guy who was playing solo at various venues.  He had a very endearing voice and a competent style on his acoustic steel string (Martin D-35).  David's problem was that he was very shy and had trouble 'connecting' with audiences.  We started jamming together in the little house across the street that Debbie Hutchinson and I used to share before we moved here.  I would sing harmony, mostly, and play lead guitar.  I wanted to try my hand at playing for money, as I didn't have much at the time, and I could also cross it off my bucket list...  David wanted a playing partner up there on stage.  He saw my natural ease with people and my extrovert personality and thought I could be the guy who talks to the audience between songs.  "What me?  Up on stage?  Addressing a room full of strangers?  Sign me up!"  Thus began the modest and short-lived career of Redeye.  We named ourselves for the concoction consisting of tomato juice and beer.  We could drink during our three sets but straight beer made us burp, which didn't enhance our performances, so we cut it with tomato juice.  I had a lot of fun doing this.  On some nights we really clicked and the audience spent more time listening then chatting amongst themselves.  I was still young, slim and handsome in those days with a full head of surfer-blond hair.  I actually garnered some female fans.  ("Hi Mike.  Remember me?  I'm not wearing anything under my dress!"...)

We played at various venues around the bay area;  Corte Madera, Belmont down on the peninsula and one night a week in Livermore.  Dave was married with two kids and he had a house in Clovis, a suburb of Fresno.  On the four nights that we played, Dave would crash on the sofa here at Happy Acres.  After about eight months of this, Dave's wife put her foot down and demanded that we find a gig closer to home.  Thus, we finished our partnership playing at a steakhouse in Fresno, near the local college campus.  That was the summer of '75 and my little VW bug, of course, had no A/C.  Those trips to Clovis every weekend from Happy Acres to Dave's home became quite odious what with the valley heat.  Luckily I had a sunroof to help circulate air which was necessary as the heater was broken in the "full on" position.  My route took me past a large reservoir off the Pacheco Pass road.  It was about midway to my destination.  My habit was to park in a secluded spot, hidden from sight and go skinny dipping to cool off.  Luckily, I never got caught.  So one day I'm driving along, about to make the turn south on Hwy 99 and I started thinking about my future.  Before moving down to Marin, I had spent three years enjoying not being in school anymore.  I was mainly a ski bum and surf bum who supported himself tending bar at night.  Back in the early seventies that was a preferred life style and I thought:  "Hey, I'm a pretty jiggy dude, living a pretty cool life!"

So I'm thinking to myself; what exactly does the future portend?  The "next step up" in the music biz. looked like it might be a side lounge at a two-bit casino in Reno; wearing polka-dot stretch jump suits...  As Fagin said to Oliver:  "I think I better think it out again!"  We wound things down and finally had our final night after playing together three or four nights a week for almost a year.  I often think fondly of my "Redeye" days; standing up there on the stage (David always sat) wailing away on my amplified twelve string and singing:   "You fill up my senses like a night in the forest, like the mountains in Spring time, like a walk in the rain..."  Hey, that's what the steakhouse crowd was into back in 1975...  We did cooler stuff too.  I sometimes dream I'm playing the guitar.  I wake up with a wistful smile on my face.          

     L&K Mickey da Mayor

                            Senior year at Stanford, 1970