Stone City Acoustic Showcase 3/31/19 One For Bruce Stanley

Setlist


Go Out And Get It
Long Black Veil
Games People Play
Good Time Charlie

(Glen Gardner: photo, 'cuse me while I kiss the mic)

Today is Bruce Stanley's Birthday.  He would have been 60.

I dedicated my set to his memory with the Guild guitar he sold me about 15 years ago.

I cannot shake this fucking cough whatsoever and whatever I did on my set of songs I have to deal with gobs of mucus and snot running down my throat and feeling like shit.  I crashed big time soon after my set and called it a night.  I think the songs turned out well, but I fumbled through a rough go at Games People Play.  I must be getting better covering up my mistakes.  I had a few people complimenting how well I did.  But I was so out of it, that I didn't have any pizza that Donna Jo ordered. But then again even if I was well, I would have passed anyway.


Notes: Glen Gardner returned back to Stone City, Other notables were Ray Larson, Bill Schlatter, Steve O, Bubs Mahones, Dave Bonham, Angie Marie, Rocky Smith, Bart Bock  Steve Black Wolf, and Donna Jo Elsner.  Lane Gaffney hosted.   Angie Marie might have taken a better picture of me, maybe she'll share it when it comes available.  And she provides this photo of me.

The Boy Scout Hippies played the Office Lounge, Dreams Of Arcadia recorded some songs with Brook Hoover producing and recording.  Ron and Dakota did arrive later to play after I called it a day.

Other events of the month (stolen from another blog)

Dan Johnson invited me to the Checker's 2nd Wednesday get together.  I told him about me helping the Boy Scout Hippies out and he asked who they were and I told them it was Ron and Dakota. Like many others he shook his head about Ron.  The guy has a notorious reputation around C.R it seems.  I'm not mentioned in any of the Boy Scout Hippies announcements, and didn't expect to be, after all, it remains their band, their vision.  I just filled in with the beat that's all.  I'm sure there's postings of us somewhere on the internet and if I can find them, I'll post them.  But I don't hold out much hope over that.   But I know Fran, Ron's wife did take some videos out there.  I'd be interested to hear how we sounded.  Despite the constant hacking and coughing, I played very well.

For five days, I struck up a conversation with Kraig Spratt's demented sister on Facebook.  I wouldn't mind hearing stories on her brother, but not at 3 AM in the morning and each day I posted something, she would reply for the praises of her brother.  The last straw was Monday, another bad day to which I almost freaked out the car wash dude trying to wash the salt off a rusting car to which she tried to hi jack my posting on Drums at Stone City.  After naming other great drummers, she insisted that her brother was the all time legend best and our opinion doesn't matter.  To which I said goodbye to Psycho and told her to piss off.   I'll grant Kraig this, he does wonders with the original Stone Garden band in town, but his tenure with Hostage, turned out an album of subpar originals and his Harvey Headbanger CD made Spinal Tap sound like Led Zeppelin.  He's good, but his originals didn't impress me much.  Kevin Sinmacher had mentioned that Kraig was the best that he's played with, that's saying something. But there's other drummers that can compete with the Wildcat, myself included. If I didn't think so, I would never post that, but you have Bruce Chadima, Don Timmons, Gordy from Cruise, Jim Viner, Bill Neff, Terry McDowell, Jon Wilson, Troy Mitchell, Tiffany Z, and a few others that I can't remember.  And to try to have somebody that I never known before come and explain otherwise will not help the argument.  I have no qualms with Christine Spratt and wish her well in her strange adventures in life and maybe she should put up a tribute page for her brother somewhere out there.  But you will not convince me of the importance of somebody, who from what I heard just didn't impress me and it waters down the significance of his contributions from a overzealous sister.  But it is hard for me to not go against my past and note of the drummers that influenced me to play.  And the best drummer from my time was somebody in high school that played in the pep band and did Ted Nugent songs better than the Nuge himself.  Only a handful of people knew about the talents of Lonnie Washburn and I kept his memory alive by playing in his style.  I'm not sure if Lon still plays drums (my guess is no) but he was the one that got me serious about playing drums.  Wildcat remains a rock legend around here, but my influences were from Lonnie and Neal Machen and the dude from Galen/Hallen band from Dubuque that played Garfields back in 1981.

Of course Wildcat's is better known than me. Life is like that. Some get their name in the lights, others toiled in the darkness of the garage.  It's too late for me to ever eclipse the legends but I have made a nice little discography of my own.

And I think I'm a damn good drummer too.