The Original San Francisco 67’- 69’ - BOOGIE “IN FREAK TOWN” Chapter 2 from the BLB Archives We pick up on BLB after his short stint with the Canned Heat. Read Chapter 1-- LA Pre https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lapre One thing I learned with the Heat was that there were other paths then just playing popular cover tunes. Being a songwriter at heart, I started thinking along more creative lines. I wanted to present more of a show, rather then just being the background music for the drunks and the chicks. I got involved with other players to achieve this goal. We had a singer that was also a gymnast; he would do flips across the dance floor and land on the stage doing the splits with Mic in hand. The group was called, “Bobby Burns with the Boogie Band”. His brother Jimmy knew the manager of the “Sea Witch” on the Sunset Strip, and we got the gig. A drummer that we had auditioned for this band called me from San Francisco some time later. He said; “A good singer and player named Lee Michaels wanted me to come up and check out his scene”. He put Lee on the phone and I explained that I had reservations, as I didn’t feel that the drummer was on the same page with my musical approach. He asked me to just come up and he’d pay my expenses and flight. I think he heard me play at the Sea Witch one time. I arrived in San Francisco around the summer of 1966. I was picked up at the SFO airport by the drummer, Frank Lapika, and the bass player, Cliff Witt, who was playing with Lee at the time, and taken to an old ferryboat in Sausalito called “ The Charles Van Dam” or aka “The Ark”. Lee met me at the door, we walked in and there was “ Moby Grape” on stage, they had been together about a week, three guitars, all turned up to ten. My first thought, why would you have all these guitars when you could have a keyboard or horns? I mentioned this to Lee and he just laughed and suggested that I just hang out. Needless to say, I fell in love with these guys and their beautiful music. I still see Jerry Miller from time to time, even to this day. Later I walked up to the top deck of the Ark, and found this fellow there toking away, he passed me the hit and we talked awhile, he was the first person I hung with that way in San Francisco. His name was Chet Helms of the Family Dog. We played quite a few times for him at the Avalon Ballroom, when I was with the Lee Michaels Group. Although I respected Bill Graham, I always felt a little pissed off with him for his driving push to commercialize the San Francisco Scene. The Family Dog, booked and promoted a lot of up and coming bands, that presented the true spirit of the time, I felt they were kind of pushed off the ladder to success as a result of Bill Graham’s approach. Well you can’t argue with history. Chet later helped me a lot to form another group after the original Lee Michaels group disbanded. The mutual manager of Lee Michaels and Moby Grape was Matthew Katz, Matthew was having friction with the Grape, and I think Lee felt he might avoid the downside of that by moving the group to LA. That was a mistake in my opinion. It took us out of the San Francisco Scene, we no longer had any new “Psychedelphia Experiences” to play about, and the LA life style was taking it’s toll on Roger Dowd, and John Lehey, drummer and bassist. We commuted to San Francisco for gigs, and never once played in LA. Lee and our spirits seemed to be growing apart. One day in the fall of 1967, the band was having a bite at Z’s restaurant on Van Ness and Market Streets in San Francisco. We had been getting some inquiries from a few record companies so we asked Lee how the royalty thing worked. He informed us that we were JUST sidemen and wouldn’t be receiving any royalties, that he was a Single. The band was so offended by this statement that we walked out then and there. I feel our egos caused a great mistake, especially for Lee, as it took him some time to get his momentum back to that level. And by then the scene had changed, it was ending. Our group had already made it, all we had to do was dot the I’s and cross the T’s. We were already getting as good as reviews as the Grape, and we were right on their coattails for success. It’s a shame, for Lee was Special, but then, so was I. The bands then were more then bands they were families, their own Original Creative Scene. The bands that kept it together arrived somewhere, those that broke apart and tried to reform were like Orphans On the Wind, never the same. I kicked around for a few months, went to LA and brought up some old friends that were great players. We put together the “California Memorial Band”, a great experiment with two electric horns, kind of a Rock/ Avantguard/ Jazz approach. We played a few gigs in Marin County, but had trouble keeping personal and living spaces together, and so the band came to a halt. In the end this process brought me in contact with John “JB” Barrett - bassist, and “Fuzzy John” Oxendine - drummer. I started to call him “Fuzzy” because they were both named John. He didn’t like that, but almost 50 years later, all those who love him still call him “Fuzzy John”. We had our first rehearsal at Burry Olsen’s Leather Shop at Gate 6 across from the Ark, were I had played with Lee Michaels and Moby Grape. It was definitely a cosmic event and was no doubt the first - Blues/ Heavy Metal/ Rock Band to come out of the San Francisco Scene. I was staying in a little houseboat just across the water from Burry’s shop. That night I went off to bed while visions of success danced in my head. I was then awakened by a frantic call that Burry’s Olson’s Leather Shop was on fire. I looked out the window and it was ablaze. I just rolled over and slept, it was too much for my brain. The next day I walked over to the shop, JB and Fuzzy arrived about the same time. We walked through the ashes; picking up drum rings and speaker frames, and came to realize what starting from the beginning really meant. We just looked at each other and said; Ok ! “I GUESS WERE A BAND” We scuffled around for equipment to use. JB’s Fender Showmen was toast, my new TNT proto type amp that I had been using with Lee, was in the ashes, and Fuzzy’s good drum kit was in meltdown. JB had some how scored a new amp, Fuzzy had his older set, and I had my old Fender Bassmen, and some driver horns that helped project the highs in the big auditoriums. And so we begin. We more or less put the band together with our first gigs at the Ark, March 68’, we were allowed the use of the Moby Grape rehearsal space at the Heliport in Sausalito, for which we were most grateful. Bruno Cerlotti, San Francisco Historian, has a blog that lists most of the Boogie gigs. http://thesanfranciscosound.blogspot.it/2011/10/rhythm-dukes-family-tree-shows-list.html http://youtu.be/eXfRH-1iksw The “Boogie” - Wade In The Water- music We played where ever we could of course, as all bands that were trying to progress did. The one most memorable to me was our appearance at the “Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair” - August 31, 1968 - Sultan, Washington. ( Woodstock was an awesome event. But, “Sky River 68’, was truly the first outdoor Multi-Band Rock Festival held in the United States. The day started out with wind and rain. The audience were so huddled in their make -shift plastic tents, that from the stage, it almost appeared as some old tobacco road - depression era photo. My heart went out to them. But then things changed. Chief Rolling Thunder took the stage, He said; we’re all going to sing a chant together that will roll back the rain. That was a great moment. We had setup our gear, while all the crowd sang. As The Chief left the stage, the most miraculous thing happened. The clouds all rolled back, like the curtains of some huge theater, the light blazed through, then a plane flew over dropping thousands of leaflets, like snow from the Sun. I turned to Fuzzy, what should we play? Hit ‘em with best we got. We launched into our version of John Lee Hooker’s –“Boogie Chillin”. The Crowd Jumped Up From The Mud, And The Party Was On. “but I can hear Buddha's raspy voice sayin, 'Tha BOOGIIIIE!" "....and The Boogie kicked serious ASS! Pleased to meet you dudes at last - I became a fan that day, but never heard you again, which I profoundly regret. I do recall watching Buddha introduce you, and stood stage right listening as you did your set - You sho nuf had it percolatin along!" "The Boogie were the baddest - loudest! I stood in the wings and witnessed them plundering the arcane depths of boogie blues" -Brian Voorheis, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band The Boogie’s unfortunate, Interrupted Destiny, came about as the result of two undercover Narks. They infiltrated the Gates of Sausalito, the houseboats, and other areas of Marin, impersonating honest people, in other words, Real Hippie’s. At the time it was pretty common to purchase a few bags of smoke, pass a couple to friends for a little higher, and have yours for what you could really afford. The official forces called that dealing, bullshit then, as it is now. This friend got two from me, passed them to these two Narks parked at the Laundromat. The first rehearsal of Boogie was about two weeks later. One night, many months later, I got off our set at the Ark. I was out in the parking lot, when I was approached by these two guys, they asked if I remembered them getting some smoke from this guy Steve, and if I knew were they could score some bricks, I said; no, and that I wasn’t doing anything like that. They walked away, turned around, flashed their badges, and off I went. The short of it - is this. I was asked to occupy one of their cages at Marin County Jail, for 90 days. I was permitted to get out on work furlough to play our gigs, and the last time I was let out we played on May 3,1969, some say Dream Bowl, Vallejo, Ca, I think the Pavilion at Sonoma County Fair Grounds, Ca A couple days later there was a story in the Marin- Independent Journal, about this guy that had been turned on to pot for the first time in the Marin County Jail. Well, all work furloughs were cancelled, an as simple as that, over a couple 10 dollar bags, the Boogie ended. They let me out after 57 days instead of 90, but by then our house was gone, the equipment van, our concert gear, and our family seemed to be in such a scattered array, that it was hard to find the way to pickup the pieces. Also for me, after living in a cage for a while, you start to realize that that’s where you live, and when you hit the streets your not the same, your looking over your shoulder, you don’t feel carefree and loose anymore. You want to stay free. Johnny Cash once said; when they close that door a thousand years of culture goes right down the drain, I can testify to that. I tripped around Marin for a while, hung with friends, and was happy to see Gingerbread and Fuzzy’s baby, Tomra, come into the world. But something different was coming out inside. I decided to go see my dad; he had just retired, and moved to Hawaii with his third wife. It was truly great, the right thing to do, I had not lived with him since I was five. I could right a whole lot about that island adventure. Maybe I will, as the intro to Chapter 3 - Christi’s House – LA Today – Hopefully summer-fall of 2015 I ran across Fuzzy John Oxendine about 35 years after Boogie. He lives in Santa Cruz, Ca. He knew of John Barrett’s where a bouts in Great Barrington, Ma, and we made contact. JB had Boogie photos of one of our gigs at Muir Beach, and I had the tape from our last performance, and a few we recorded in Sausalito. I decided, if only just for ourselves, that I would try and make something from our memories together. When the Boys picked me up for the last time, it was a long ride to the gig. Just time for a little wine, a little smoke. That seems to show in the first part of the concert. But if you can get by all that, Well then, ----- Come Boogie With Us " It is our heartfelt wish, that you hear in this music, not so much an expertise, but the spirit of a time, that changed our world, and still changes the world for all those who live in that spirit" The Boogie BOOGIE “ IN FREAK TOWN” http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/barrylbastian1