The Adventures of the Bass Player Returns

The Adventures of the Bass player returns.

Over the last week I have found about a thousand pictures from my early childhood up to the day we went digital. I found picture from when I raced to when I gigged in Hollywood.

One of the adventures I had was my first show with a band called Skully Beach, we played at Gazarri’s on the Sunset Strip(by the way it’s the Key Club now).

This was a band that we put together to kind of have fun with the whole 80’s glam scene in Hollywood.

Lets go through the list of what made a top 80’s Glam band first and I will tell you if we had that in our band.

1- Long Hair- nope, we all had short hair, we all went and bought wigs on Melrose Ave.

2- Makeup- Nope, none of us really knew how to do this so we asked our guitar players sister who was going to cosmetology school to bring her and her friends to help us out.

3- Roadies-- Nope, the cure was we used all the girls from cosmetology school to set up our stage in mini skirts, we found our niche, all girl roadies.

4- Catchy songs-- Nope, we wrote all 11 songs in two days, some were catchy but were off color or they sucked.

5- Talent- this one is a catch 22, in the 80’s glam scene you either had talent of you had catchy songs that made up for lack of talent.
We had two guys who were almost done with MIT (Musicians Institute) so we had major talent. Our singer was an actor trying to break into the movie business, the guy could scream to the High Heavens but wasn’t that great.

So there is the five things you had to have to be a good Hollywood band, one thing we did do was cause a raucous at every show. We would walk in with no wigs so no one knew who we were and then go on stage and act like total morons. Pouring drinks on people who booed us, insulting the club and owners all that.

I look back at it, what a bunch of jerks. But it was our stiche, we had nothing else.

We would trash our gear and everything else in the mean time, I played one bass that I knew I could throw at the singer at the end of a song, it was all staged and people bought in. SMOKIN’ mirrors.

So there’s the set up for the next article.

Bonus tip for a 80’s Glam Band-- Have good stage names.

Jonny Fingers- Guitar
Diesel Dirt- Drums
Bob Screamer- Vocals
TT THUDD- Bass

TT THUDD out.