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page 31 |
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Bands |
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The Nomads |
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Izzy Alvarado invited me to go with him to a Mexican dance at the California Ballroom, on 6th street in Modesto. This venue had been previously used by James Brown and Bobby "Blue" Bland when they came through town. On this night, it was Mexican music that was played. The band had 2 trumpet players. I remember a dance that was done where the man stands beside the woman, grasps her left hand behind her back with his left hand and holds her right one in his right hand. Great fun. I couldn't have been more than 17, but I was trying to drink beer that night. You got it. I ended up out on the front concrete steps of the entrance, leaning against the wall and puking my guts out. Oh, this was great fun. I was having such a good time. As bad as it was, I did, in fact, have a great time that night. A wonderful family feeling among everybody, with lots of food downstairs in the basement, too. I had just been recently dubbed "gringo Mexicano" when I was initiated at Izzy's house one day while eating a homemade tamale his mom had made. Frankie Serna slipped me my very first Jalapeno pepper inside it as a surprise. Si. A HOT SURPRISE. It took an hour to wipe the grin off Frank's face. His response? "Heyyy Gringo, just put some salt on your tongue." I ended up spending a couple of weeks living at my Grandma Nettie Allsup's house, in the La Loma district of town. I heard that they were holding "The Battle of the Bands" over at the California Ballroom. I walked about 2 1/2 miles to go to this thing. Bands from the central valley of California were competing. The venue was a small hall, maybe holding 900 people, but it had a REAL raised stage, curtains, too, I think. I saw a number bands that afternoon and evening, but I can only remember one, a band from Stockton, CA., called "The Wild Nomads" and they wore masks. Cool masks. Let me explain. They'd buy a regular old Lone Rangers mask from Woolworth's department store, then cut it so it was just a straight piece across the face, being only about 2" wide. Then they would sew on red satin strips at the ends and tie it at the back of the head, letting the ends dangle behind them to about lower back length. The entire band was that way. They rocked and had a "Zorro Thing" going on a rock n roll level. Best band there. I was really taken by them. At the end of the show they went to the dressing room, directly to stage left. I walked up the short wood stairs and entered the dressing room. I walked up to the leader, Roger Skidmore, and told him how they knocked me out and really cooked. He said "Who are you?" I answered, " I'm your new guitar player." He stepped back, kind of smiled, but couldn't quite believe I had said that. He said "Oh really?" and that was the end of it for the moment. I forget all that followed, but he ended up telling me that their guitar player was leaving or something and that were looking for a new guitarist. In a few days, I ended up taking a greyhound bus to Stockton (I had no car) and rehearsing with them. The ambience of a bus depot late at night, in a suspect part of town, was a major adventure for me. A tad spooky, to tell the truth. You know the feeling. I stayed at Rogers house a couple of nights, then at Jimmy Harris' house. Even picked grapes one day to make some money. By the box. Up early. I knew this wasn't what I wanted to do for a living, that's for sure. Still, it was work. Jimmy and I had started a book listing chord inversions. We had minor 7th chords and all the inversions of those notes. It really was like taking the numbers 1,2,3, and 4 and seeing how many different orders you could arrange them in. The same thing ... using notes instead. (i.e. 1234, 1243, 1324, 1342, 1423, 1432 and 2134, 2143, 2314, 2341, 2413, 2431 and 3124, 3142, 3214, 3241, 3412, 3421 and 4123, 4132, 4231, 4213, 4312, 4321) 24 different inversions in all for a 4 note chord. For a three note chord it would only be 6 inversions. The point is, we were expanding musically, but still in the early stages. Fun stuff, really. On some songs, Jimmy Harris would play sax and on other songs, organ. He worked up a routine where he would play the tenor sax with his left hand and the organ with his right. A cool sound. Predecessor of "layering" the way we do with electronic keyboards now. That is, 2 or more different instruments playing the same notes, creating a new collective timbre. Actually, it wasn't new at all, just new to rock n roll. Big bands did it long before us, not to mention the classic composers. Let's just say it was "new to us" and Jimmy came up with a new sound within the band, something unique and definitely desirable. He was a great performer, as well. Not unusual to find him down on the floor during a sax lead. I wasn't beyond that myself. Nyuk. This was cool to "do the mask thing" and play music. An interesting magical response from young females, especially. It helped form my opinion that in good rock n roll of that period, it was like everyday was Halloween. Even through the 70's, 80's, 90's and ... oops, guess it's still around and working. Call it shock value, a bit of mystery, bizarre, weird, strange, different ... all adjectives of the rock n roll persona. |