index.page

In late 1963 and early 1964 the folk music wave was just about to crash onto itself, with a little help from it's own inertia and the right wing pols. Bob Dylan was about to shock his folkier-than-thou fans with the reality that he was primarily an artist, not a social activist. Joan Baez was beginning to follow Woody Guthrie's kill-a-fascist-for-peace admonitions, leaving her art strewn among the bodies.

The New Christie Minstrels were getting hits with "Green Green", sung by Barry McGuire, the same person that in less than a blink of the cosmic eye and stomach shudder would sing "The Eve of Destruction". At times a pre-Byrds Roger McGuinn would show up at my small Hollywood apartment on Yucca and Vine, long gone now, where we would smoke massive joints of Acapulco gold or Panama red, sing Beatles songs and play our guitars, mine an electrified Martin acoustic and his, a Rickenbacker 12 string. Roger would go on and on about how the Beatles were the folk music of today and we should all realize it. He was absolutely right of course. The Apartment was on the corner of Yucca and Vine, a block north of Hollywood and Vine, when Hollywood and Vine looked like Hollywood and Vine, not downtown Calcutta on a Saturday night.

I shared the single room with Terry Kirkman, a multi talented musician who could play a little of everything fairly well and the recorder very, very well. It was in a semi-Hotel-apartment building where mostly musicians lived and stayed. In 1964, it was still the age of old Hollywood, however tottering and near to it's own rapture and the romanticism, the 1950's bohemian musicians' lifestyle was still the active paradigm. Not like today, not like today at all.

At the time New York City was Folk music's intellectual center, it's third eye, it's Ajna Chakra. LA was its Heart, its gut, and it's crotch. In La within a few very short miles, within walking distance of each other actually, were the three Chakras. The heart or Anahata Chakra, the gut Manipura Chakra, and the crotch, the Svadisthana Chakra, the 6 petal lotus of the folk music body. They were masquerading as Folk clubs.

      The Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd in what's now West Hollywood, Ledbetters on Westwood Blvd, and the Ash Grove/McCabes (Same building) on Melrose. Some would argue about which club was the heart and which the crotch, but there was not much argument about the Manipura, gut chakra, the white college-boy hangout of Ledbetters. Before gluttony had taken on the name of conspicuous consumption, it was manifested at Ledbetters. It was where the confused playboy image of young hip manhood tried to find a place to exist amid the striped shirt banjo players, the Brentwood ing�nues, the artist and the starlets. Perhaps it was the sparks generated by that less than holy mix of realities and semi realities that finally burned the place to the ground. I prefer the story that a witch cursed it to death, either way, good riddance. The place sucked.

Forget San Francisco where the Beatniks were born and died and later the Hippies manifested and regularly   attempted ascension Via Mt. Tamalpias compliments of a certain Mr. Owsley. Though great place it was, and is on this planet, San Francisco was still a bit too "jaaazzzzz" for folkdom to really anchor solidly and neighboring Berkeley was far too socially active for folk music to be more than a soundtrack to it's poetry of protest. Gritty old blue-collar LA was da place. And the Troubadour was the true fulcrum of the folk Seesaw.

The folk clubs at the time had one night a week designated as "Hoot" night Hootenanny was the folk term for what's known as open mike night nowadays. At the Troub it was Monday nights, the farthest away from the weekend, in financial kilometers anyway. The club bar, if any particular club had one, never, ever made any money on hoot nights, everyone there were broke musicians coming to see who was playing or there to play, in which case you were allowed in free. For everyone else the door fee was cheap, at the Troub, one buck.

Oh there were "talent scouts" there, they always looked very comfortable and nonchalant usually wearing expensive loafers with no socks, sort of like the sandaled musicians and sort of not at all like the sandaled musicians. There were the civilians, the non-musicians, the non-show business people, not many though, except for the four-tops of college girls checking out the players or the occasional couple from Orange County up to the city for the evening. There were a few actual music aficionados there, geeks. It was pretty much peers.

The Hoots at the Troub were all agony or ecstasy and little in between and If one had the whatever-it-took to go play the Troubadour on a Monday night it might indicate that the player was either truly talented and knew that he or she had a chance to come off well or was absolutely delusional about their abilities. Of course there were the occasional madmen and women that would perform at the hoots that gave a certain gritty Gong Show (Oohh remember that one?) flavor.

One of the madding crowd was Wild Man Fisher. This guy would get on stage and do the weirdest stuff that I'd ever seen yet. He would start some song or comedy bit then get off into some rant scream about the music business or PGE or his ingrown toenails and wouldn't quit until he was physically dragged off stage. He did it almost every Monday. There would always be the completely stoned out players who would get on stage and forget to play. It happened more than once. There were the proto performance artists, nobody knew what to do with them, one of whom was an incredibly beautiful woman who was over 6'2", barefoot, and way before her time. The audience tended to want acoustical protest and denim dreams not bare breasted women's angst. Not yet anyway.

Those who played the Monday night hoots were the stars, and some of the scars of a tomorrow now past, right along with the low candle power players. Some of the names were, Steve Martin (Yes there was quite a comedy presence there, as comedy clubs were very few and none in LA then), David Crosby, McGuinn, Messina, Stills, Nash and Young, all separately and together, members of the Eagles, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, John Kay, the lead singer of Steppenwolf was the doorman for a season, Mason Williams, Judy Henske, The Dillards, Fairport Convention, Jennifer Warnes, Jerry and Myrna Music (Jerry, later Lorenzo, who was to play the doorman Carlton, and a writer for the Mary Tyler Moore show), oh the list just goes on and on and the names have already dropped too far for me to continue dropping them here. Suffice it to say there was more destiny on that stage than almost any other one I've ever seen or played on. There may still be destiny lurking in the footlights there. One should be careful however not to confuse it with the ghosts.

                                                                                                                               Next Page


.

Header from the original flyer for the first performance of The Men

Pictures

A short history of the band before the band, "THE ASSOCIATION", as told by Jules Alexander.