RP History

by Alex Arrowsmith

It is 6:50 pm and Richard Prior is nowhere to be seen. The sound guy wanders around the Grange waiting for something to do, for a band to come in and plug their stuff into his stuff. This band is supposed to play at 7:00, and they were supposed to be here by 6:00 at the latest. Still, no opening band to be found. Just then, two scrawny guys and one buff guy burst into the venue with instruments in hand. They quickly assess the situation and within ten minutes they set everything up and being the endeavor of rocking White Salmon, Washington, acting as if they are the first band to introduce the town to rock and roll. This band is Richard Prior. This band features the best songwriting duo since Lennon and McCartney, the best two-song-per-album songwriter since George Harrison and together, the three best rockers this side of the Columbia River. Completely devoid of any kind of rhythm section, this band just goes for it, suck or no suck...it matters not. That is Richard Prior, and this is their story.

Jump back to January 1999, the peak of The Spies' musical career. We catch wind that Amelia Puffin and Heather Struck are organizing a surprise birthday party for Ky at the Sprint building in downtown Hood River and eventually she ends up asking us, The Spies, to play at his party. We figured this would be a great opportunity to showcase some new material that we had been working on. It had, after all, been over two months since we had last played a show (the disaterous Halloween party at Amelia's house). However, the day before the party Aaron comes down with the flu. Needless to say, he is completely unfit to play at a show. Now you must understand that being shafted out of a gig is one of the worst things that can happen, especially for Nick and I who have a passion and hunger for playing shows. We decide to play at the show anyway, with only Jeff's guitar and amp, our crappy PA system, and a snare drum. Along with Jeff, we thought it would be fun to just entertain people with music and merriment. Hell, it's a party after all. We decided we should come up with a name, because it's not a band unless you have a name. A couple weeks earlier Nick came up with what he thought would be a great name for a hardcore punk band: Richard Pryor. I thought this would freakin' hilarious...of all people, why Richard Pryor?! Such is the magic of band names. Or something. Once the party gets under way, we take up the "stage" under the name Richard Pryor and start pumping out cover tunes like "Born to Be Wild," "Friday I'm In Love," and "Immigrant Song." We keep playing and playing...and playing. Not for a half hour. Not for an hour. Not for two hours. We played for a honkin' three hours! Of course we played horribly, but we thought it was funny and (eventually) everyone else thought it was funny. I think at one point we even did the required "Stairway to Heaven" much to everyone's dismay. After the party Nick, Jeff, and I decided it was better than any Spies show. I felt more exhilarated than I did after Spies shows (even though we only played cover songs), I really felt like I worked! It was crazy, and I would realize soon enough that Richard Pryor is like a drug.

Our next "show" came two months later at a cast party for the play we were in, Twelfth Night. Nick and I had recently been infatuated with a song Nick wrote called "Depoe Bay" a month or two before for a side project he called Grover Cleveland featuring his sisters. Backstage during the performances we would play the song over and over (with Nick on guitar and me on congas usually). Nick and I thought it would be cool to play some songs for people at the party, hopefully to recapture to some extent the horrible-but-somehow-funny spirit of Ky's party. Nick brings his guitar just in case we get the chance. Somehow we ended up playing for our castmates, I don't remember how exactly. We played "Tainted Love," some other random crap, and "Depoe Bay." I have to say that ever since that night I was totally jealous of Nick for writing such a damn catchy song, because people thought it was funny and stuff. We improvised the "Have you ever made out with a seahag before? No but I made out with a merman once. [uncomfortable silence]" part too, and everyone (including Nick and I) just lost it then. Ever since then, we've been putting that part in the song (although it's a little harder to do with a full band!). Although we didn't play under the name of Richard Pryor, it was the premiere of our first Richard Pryor song, the fan-favorite(?!) "Depoe Bay." Okay I'm starting to sound a pretentious ass now. Thus is Richard Prior.

Keeping our experience with the cast party in mind, Nick and I start writing stupid little songs on accordian and acoustic guitar like "Richard Nixon," "Calvin Coolidge," and "Ronald Reagan" that spring. For what purpose was unknown however. Ultimately we wanted to record them and perform them for people, but The Spies was our first priority so we didn't really get a chance to do anything about it until after The Spies broke up in June of that year. By August we had a lot of songs we wanted to record. I had been working like a boar on getting down the keyboard solo to "Runaway" and Nick was becoming more and more obsessed with his JFK accent. The song "Magical Clothing" came from a little experience I had in a motel room in Ashland. I was just watching TV by myself at about 1:00 am (Aaron, Ky, and Andy Miller had snuck out to find action elsewhere) and a John Spencer Blues Explosion video came on MTV called "Magical Colors." Maybe it was my groggy late-night haze, but I later recalled the title as "Magical Clothing" to Nick. Nick thought it was an awesome song name so we improvised a song about it (sort of). We recorded our CD on my four track in a span of three days, August 9-11 I believe it was. So after we finished our CD, titled simply Richard Pryor, complete with all of the stupid songs we had a CD release party at Rosauers and Shari's with Camille Smith, Brian Capovilla and Megan Klantchnek. That was pretty much the last anyone saw of that CD.

Well Nick and I didn't stop there. We just couldn't get the Richard Pryor demons out of us. From September - October 1999 we randomly recorded random songs after school, like "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," "Jackson 12," "We'll Never Write a Song About Bill Clinton," and "Totally Bill Gates." We also decided to change the spelling of the name to Richard Prior, because we didn't want that guy on our backs. Richard Pryor should not be reckoned with. Finally, we were offered our first real gig with The Dragonflies at the Hood River Armory. The show was on December 17th, and we were informed in October so Nick and I decided that was enough time for us to get a real band together and debut to our friends all these songs we'd recorded. It was to be just supposed to be a one-off gig. After playing the show, any "band" that we had would just break up and Nick and I would continue to record weird crap on our own. We recruited Ky to play bass and Will Thompson to play drums. We practiced only two times before we realized that things wouldn't work out with Will. He just couldn't ever practice. Practicing was the one thing we really needed, so by November we decided to just play the show with a trio, with Ky on drums. With only a month and a half to get about 15 songs together, we practiced in Ky's room as much as possible. It's not like our songs are complex, so it didn't take us long to make them sound decent.

When the big night finally came around, our desire was to make a monumental impact on the psyche of the town. Dressed in leather pants, we proceeded to build the city on rock and roll. Although we were clearly not comfortable playing yet, we gained a few fans...I think. Well, Martial Law and Dan Silver anyway. It also didn't help that the show was plagued with technical diffculties, like microphones cutting out constantly. It was a really fun show, the audience was pretty cool (although bamboozled by us) and we went uber crazy. I think our version of Hound Dog pretty much bewildered everyone...as well as our deliberate butchering of "Back to Good" by Matchbox 20. After we finish the song, the room is filled with complete silence. Nick finally says, "So how did you like that?" and we hear some guy in the audience say back, "Sucked!" If every audience member was like this guy, the world would be a pretty place for the RP. This was supposed to be the end of Richard Prior.

The strange thing is, as we were practicing for the show we really started to get attached to playing the songs. It began to feel like an actual band, not a disposable one as we had planned. It was all just supposed to be for fun at one show, nothing else...but we decided we liked playing too much to just break up. Ky thought that there were too many bad elements from The Spies for it to work and he expected Richard Prior not to last long at all. It was beginning to look like it would last longer than we thought. We kept practicing into the New Year (the New Millennium even) and we started writing more songs like "Bowling With Presidents" and "Yo Theo." We spontaneously played a party at Joey Appel's house on February 4th, which Nick and Jake Van Dlac affectionately called The Dude-Ass Party featuring Jennifer Flink. The party was nothing but a bunch of Brandon Boots' and James Munks, but it was actually a really fun show. Everyone in the audience was either ripped or drunk...that could be why. When we walked into the house to set our stuff up in the living room we all thought "What's that smell? Is that weed? Figures." We packed the living room and people were way more responsive than at the Armory show. We were a lot more into our "game" than before too, we could carry off our schtick a lot better. Although the sound system sucked (as usual), that didn't stop us from playing completely improvised versions of "My Sharona," "Immigrant Song," and a made up "Jennifer Flink" song. The show rocked, what can I say. I mean how can you beat a hardcore dance-off between Brandon Boots and Dan Pritchett? You cannot.

Our next "show" is hardly worth mentioning, but it's an interesting story nonetheless so I'm going to tell it. On April 15th, our chum Ashly Will was having a party that she wanted for us to play at. We figured that it's just going to be a small party that ten people will go to...so we agreed but instead of playing with all of our instruments we wanted to play an acoustic set with minimal drums, congas, accordian, no PA, and a small casio keyboard that Nick stole from Mr. Steighner instead of my trusty Kawai. We took that afternoon to rehearse the songs in our newly devised way and in theory it should have been a pretty wicked show. We opened with "Truly, Madly, Deeply" by Savage Garden and "King of Wishful Thinking" by Go West followed by the first ever performance of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." It also featured the debut of "Bowling With Presidents" with just me playing it myself with my accordian. It should have been pretty cool. But we were right...about ten people showed up, including one huge guy from White Salmon who I'd never seen before named Kendall. He seemed to like us...in fact, he is now one of our leading fans along with Marshall Law, Dan Silver, and Portland band UHF. He's rad. Anyway, the show sucked. I think I was the only one who had any fun. Nick played in the corner the whole time and Ky just kind of looked really uncomfortable. I think I just acted like a complete idiot. We couldn't even get a rockin' opening...we wanted to hide behind a couch and have someone announce us before we jumped out from the couch to save the party from rock and roll dehydration. We got Eric Parker to open for us with a couple of his band's songs, but Ashly was getting all antsy so we just said screw it and came out and played the infernal Savage Garden song. We drew out the show to at least an hour...it ended with a complete whimper. But hey I did eat a ton of Oreos, I learned how to play a bunch of Madonna songs, and I'm pretty sure I danced shirtless to Matchbox 20 at one point. Rock.

While the first half of 2000 was pretty uneventful, things were going to start picking up for Buddah's band Richard Prior in the summer. In July, we had a date with destiny at Jackson Park playing with a whole slew of bands, including Maxwell Prod (they rule) and a Korn-esque band of middle schoolers from Camus that was on Oprah mere months beforehand. It was virtually the Glastonbury festival. However, after we were committed to the gig I realized that I couldn't make it due to a stupid University of Oregon orientation thing. It would not be the first time that this infernal college would get in the way of the band. It sucked for all three of us because it had been a dream for us to play Jackson Park someday. Well old Zeus must have been looking fondly upon us because I happened to get home early from Eugene the day of the show and once Nick and Ky found out that I was back they rushed over to Gretchen's house where I was taking a shower (my house had no plumbing for about three weeks that summer) and told me that we could still play if we hurried over to the park. Twenty minutes later, we were setting up onstage at the park, where about 20-30 people had congregated. And get this, the sound guys in charge of this show had done sound for the Rolling Stones in the past. I mean, I hate the Stones but that's pretty cool! One of the sound guys was quoted as saying about us, "The Sex Pistols got nothing on these guys." We took that as a compliment. It was a really fun show, one of our best for sure. The audience, although small, was really rad. We pulled out all the stops, such as my somersaults during "Depoe Bay." They were nothing compared to Nick's infamous Sensational Guitar Dive but that was still yet to come. The whole thing was very rushed and as a result we played very frantically. Sure, we kind of sucked, but it was a good suck. I don't think there is such thing as a bad suck for Richard Prior. Our limits of suckness would be tested at our next gig...and boy did we suck.

The most procrastinated thing ever is undoubtedly the elusive Hood River Teen Center. When I was in sixth grade they said they'd build it within a couple years. Well I'm in college now and they haven't built squat. Instead they're building a casino. However, every once in a while they still have fund raisers for the Teen Center and some local band band Everclear was supposed to play at the Hood River Expo Center in August for a fund raiser. Once we heard this, Nick tried like mad to get us this gig by calling Maya Yasui, the woman in charge of the whole Teen Center extravaganza. After about a week of phone tag, we realized that Everclear was not going to play at the show, instead a DJ named Juan was taking their place. He is also known as Tito of Tito's Wine and Dance fame. If you learn anything from this biography, learn this: never let a DJ organize a rock show. Here's an idea, why don't we put the show in a building with some of the worst acoustics in town, not advertise it (except for the skate ramps), and screw over the bands playing? Sounds like a recipe for crap to me! Such was this Expo Center show. We used Juan's sound system as the PA, and he even brought a cool stage to elevate us. That's about where the coolness ends though. The band featuring Eric Parker and co., Friends of the People, opened for us while Ky manned the mixing board throughout their set, providing a satisfactory mix for all. There were probably at least 30 people there during FOTP's set so we were figuring that more people would show up by the time we start playing. That's is not quite what happened.

After FOTP's set, Juan had to butt in and play some dance crap for fifteen minutes. What happened in those fifteen minutes baffles me to this day. It seems that almost everyone in the audience thought, "Hey dude Richard Prior set all their stuff up and will be on in about fifteen minutes. I guess they're not playing, I'm leaving." Amber Nelson would be one of these people. We didn't see this happening though because we were in our dressing room (which was actually the electrics room behind where we set up the stage) changing and getting pumped for the show. We had a killer set lined up because we thought this would be a big exposure show. We were opening with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," followed by other seldom-played songs like "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," "Older," "Shiny Thing," and "Why Bother?" FOTP, who said they'd run sound for us, didn't even do that; they set up the mix for the first song then left the mixing board for the rest of the show. Ky was kind of peeved at this since he had mixed their sound through their whole set, making it so you could actually hear everything. Well no one could hear our vocals or the guitar...it was pretty much all just muddy drums and sharp cutting keyboards. We realized from the beginning that the audience was evil. The few people that were there just stood staring at us with glazed looks on their faces, with the exception of our friends. After about five songs Nick got fed up and turned his mike stand around so that his back was facing the audience. As the show started sucking more and more, Nick and I started saying things between songs like, "Hey Nick, do you want to keep practicing since there's no one here?" "Sure Al, let's practice!" We would then proceed to sing the songs even more unintelligable and often times yell "Duh duh duh duh!" in place of the words or even just insult the audience. Of course they couldn't hear it because our sound mix was so horrible. No one was even reacting to our intended suckness.

Finally we'd had enough. Before our last song "Richard Nixon," the three of us huddle up and Nick and I say, "Big long crap ending?" Ky replies, "Yes. Big long crap ending." We then proceed to play through the song, but where it should have ended...well, it didn't. Nick starts making lots of noise on his guitar while I play a bunch of annoying and random things on my synth, every once in a while just yelling into the microphone. Meanwhile, Ky just lays on his drum set completely still. Nick then begins singing the most random songs...terribly. Let emphasize terribly. When I hear the words "If you want to view paradise, all you have to do is view it" I realize that we are reaching a new level of suckness. It is complete noise, and everyone in the audience is looking really confused. We were trying to be as annoying as possible, if not to the audience than to Juan for being a tool. He looked like we was just ignoring us if I remember correctly. So the Big Long Crap Ending goes on for about fifteen to twenty minutes, and it finally ends with Nick screaming "And she's buying a stairway to heaven!!" We then leave the stage and go into the dressing room, leaving the entire place in an uncomfortable silence. As soon as we're out of sight, we say, "YES!!! That was awesome!" and give each other high fives. "We have reached Rotundo!" Nick exclaims in excitement. I then realize that we had just accomplished something that only Richard Prior could be proud of. In return for the audience comepletely sucking, we sucked back a hundred fold. It was the most annoying spectacle you could ever see at a rock show, and we still consider that to possibly be our best moment yet. Yes, we had reached Rotundo.

All summer, we had been wanting to record another Richard Prior CD, this time with the full band. However, the main reason that we wanted to do a CD so badly is because we planned on breaking up after the summer. I was going to Eugene and Nick and Ky were in Gresham...it just wouldn't work out. We figured it had gone on long enough anyway. We had been wanting to record the CD at the Mission Alliance church because they had a miked drum cage and a sweeeet mixer board. The guys from FOTP said they could hook us up, but we had been waiting for about six months and still they had done nothing to take action. We decided we could to it on our own, on Ky's eight track. So at the beginning of August we started recording what would eventually become Intense Tennis With Dennis. We rushed it a lot, I mean we were trying to record 20 songs in a month so it had to be rushed. Although it may be half-assed, it still pretty much captures the spirit of the RP. I think. Anyway, it was a record recorded under lots of stress and annoyance, but it was released to rave reviews (MichaelX from the Dragonflies says we sound like surf-punk. Cool).

At the end of August, Dan Silver offered us a gig at a party at his house in Mosier on September 2nd. We thought it would be cool to play, but Ky wasn't sure if he could make it. However, Nick and I told Dan that we would find something to play anyway, even if it's just Nick and I. So for the next week Nick and I thought of what we could play. We decided on playing Dragonflies songs, some of my songs, and some of Nick's songs including "Dude Do the Dishes." As it turned out, Ky could make it to the party after all. In fact, he let us borrow his high hat and a snare drum. We were actually recording "Abe Lincoln" that night too. And since it was a costume party, Nick dressed up in a suit and I dressed up in a very uncomfortable silver plastic suit that Gretchen and Traci bought for me for my birthday. As we arrived at Dan's house in the middle of nowhere, we discovered that White Salmon's own Mosaic was also going to play. They had a keyboard, drum set, amps, and guitars and all Nick and I had were a couple drum pieces, a guitar, and a tiny amp. Casey from Mosaic sees Ky and says to us, "Why doesn't Richard Prior play?" Ky, Nick, and I look at each other and say, "Okay sure." Casey tells us that if we talk to the other guys in his band then we can probably use their instruments. We chat with Casey a little longer and we decide that Nick and I will open for Richard Prior. After all, we had all these songs we still wanted to play. A couple minutes later we take the stage with Nick on drums and me on the mike and guitar to slap out some classic Dragonflies tunes such as "Critical Nature" and "Brenda Mars." After a few songs people in the audience (which was pretty good by the way) start yelling out "Where's Richard Prior?" "We want to hear Richard Prior!" Casey finally comes up to us after a song and says "Hey, why doesn't Richard Prior play now." So basically Nick and I got kicked off the stage, but that's okay...better to give the audience what they want. Ky jumps on the tubs and Nick and I man our respective instruments and we launch into the 2001 theme followed by "Bowling With Presidents." We actually play two sets (and "Why Bother?" was played in both), one before and one after Mosaic. We played for a pretty long time over all, and it was a pretty fun gig because everyone in the audience was cool and there were actually peple interested in seeing us. Of course, half of them were drunk but that's beside the point. Now remember since we had planned on breaking up after the summer, we pretty much figured that this would be our last show. To go out with a bang, we played an extra long version of "Killitor" with a long jam at the beginning. It was actually pretty boring for me, since jamming on a keyboard isn't really that fun. But hey it was a good closer and we ended Richard Prior with gusto.

As the summer wrapped up though, we decided to keep the band going yet again. Obviously we couldn't play many shows during the school year but in summer we would be back to set the trends yet again. With gusto. We still had yet to release Intense Tennis With Dennis too, so that would keep the RP fresh in people's minds for a while at least. As of this writing, we have probably given out at least 50 CDs to people, and we've received postive responses from almost everyone, including our new favorite local band UHF. All three of us kept writing Richard Prior songs throughout the school year like "Zero Zero," "Bible Scripture Throphy Theme," "Why Won't You Back Down Linda Elerbee?" and "Let's Vote God For President." We finally received the chance to debut several new songs when The Dragonflies asked us to play with them at the White Salmon Grange on February 23rd. We agreed, and although it was the hugest pain in the arse to get to Hood River and back two weekends in a row (not just for me, but for Nick and Ky too) the gig still ruled, and is probably our best yet. We played three new songs ("Zero Zero," "Bible Scripture Trophy Theme," and "I Know You're Fronting") and everyone reacted very well to us. It featured Nick's notorious Sensational Guitar Dive and me running around shirtless during "Depoe Bay." If you weren't there, you should have been. Not just for us though, UHF and The Dragonflies were awesome too.

Now you know that you have not seen the last of the RP. We shall be back with gusto summer 2001 and you will like us more than Bruce Springsteen, I gaurantee it. We have awesome stage names now: Nick is Ormando Ormando, Ky is Tennessee Sabastapole and I'm Al X. We'll also be recording another fat album, and this one will be ten times better than Intense Tennis. Keep in mind that Richard Prior really really likes you, unless you were at the Expo Center show. Ha, just kidding. The only person we don't like is Juan. Richard Prior keeps the faith yo, just like Billy Joel advises us all. And sometimes, if you look up into the tall, swaying trees you can see old man Reagan sitting there, eating things like bark and leaves...

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