Every young man has the dream of strapping on a guitar and playing his ass off for throngs of adoring fans. I was no different. All through my teens and twenties I played in bands. Like most burgeoning guitar gods it began in dirty garages with our like minded friends and acquaintances, or any one else we knew who had the bug, second hand equipment, and a high threshold for ear-bleed noise. And maybe a truck. We did better than most of our peers by actually leaving the garage for the club and bar scene of SoCal in the early 90′s. Fortunately I tried to capture what I could, just to have some record of a time in my life that I knew would be fleeting. I don’t think any of us thought about becoming career musicians, albeit some of us did just that, for a while at least, or came damn close.
I doubt there is anyone out there that will give a damn about this stuff, beside a handful of participants, but I thought it would be fun to catalog it anyway.
This is definitely going to be a work in progress. I have a ton of stuff to go through and edit. It goes as far back as cassette tapes of ramshackle garage sessions back in the mid 80′s to demos and photo shoots for our more successful incarnations in the early 90′s. So if you are just stumbling on this and checking it out for kicks I hope you find some of the enjoyment in it that we had making it.
Masto.
Hundred Acre Wood
The most successful of all my musical projects.
As pictured above. Chuck Gough – Bass | Ric Kavin – Drums | Rich Mailhiot (yours truly) – Guitar | Jose DeRosas – Guitar.
Chuck and I had made noise together for years, going back to ’84, with the various friends we shared. But this is another story. This one starts in the summer of ’89 when Chuck and I, with another friend of ours who had partook in our garage music sessions, went to check out the opening night of the Doll Hut (new owners. the building had been there since the 40′s). For those of you familiar with the OC music scene, yes that Doll Hut. While sitting there enjoying our beers we met Jose. After finding out we shared a similar taste in music, and learning he played sets at OC coffee shops, we decided to get together to “jam” as the kids say. After getting together a couple of times we all agreed we should find a drummer and give it a go as a band. Jose knew how to write songs and had experience playing in public. Chuck and I didn’t unless you call 3 or 4 inebriated friends “the public”. We set down to learn a couple of covers, and a some Jose written numbers, while looking for a drummer. We put the word out and tried to recruit from the musicians we were hanging with at our new home away from home the Doll Hut. No dice. Everyone was already committed.
Jose finally found a guy who wanted to tryout. We gave him a shot. He was not that great a drummer, we were not that great a band, but considering we had been working for awhile with no drummer we were kind of desperate. So he got the nod. Kelly was 4 or 5 years younger than myself. Short, heavy set, Latino, and a mean drunk. I think he joined in the end of ’89 by the summer of ’90 he was ousted. With Kelly we at least felt like enough of a band to get a good rehearsal space and work on our set. At first all we had was a hand full of Jose originals and some covers. I kept hammering him to write more material. He hated that kind of pressure. So instead of churning out the work he insisted I step up to the plate and start writing my own songs to contribute. I don’t know why this had not dawned on me. I just assumed it was not something I was particularly gifted at. Well I owe him a great thanks. Because he really helped me get the ideas I had in my head down on paper and help solve our material problem. Learning how to write my own songs sped up Kellys demise. Trying to work out my songs with the rest of the band was an all new experience to me. I didn’t need some dork constantly changing it up and playing what ever the hell he felt like at the time. He was sacked without even a replacement in mind.
More too come…