t o i l i n g  m i d g e t s

THE BLUEST SKIES YOU'VE EVER SEEN ARE IN SEATTLE (continued)

BY PAUL HOOD

Little Magnet's drummer Lee and I drove to San Francisco in a rental truck with all our possessions, those of guitarist Dave Demetre, my first girlfriend Jeri and my own. We'd gotten probably as far as Olympia or Portland when Lee told me he was quitting the group and moving back to Seattle. Having arrived in San Francisco armed with this knowledge, I realized I had to familiarize myself with the local scene. To that end, my new roommate, Ken Fowler, provided me with much of the information I would need.

The month that I lived at his flat I discovered that Ken was from south of Seattle, had seen the TMT show, and shortly after had moved to San Francisco. His record collection was at my disposal and he introduced me to most all of the local efforts, most notably the Sleepers' five song EP and Tuxedo Moon's collaboration with Michael Belfer of the Sleepers. There were striking similarities between guitarists Michael Belfer and Eric Werner, of Seattle's Telepaths. Both were played left-handed Les Pauls, and their band's singers were dark expressionists. Also interesting, were the dissimilarities between drummers Tim Mooney of the Sleepers and Bill Reiflin of the Telepaths, though their styles were both powerful and influential. Ken informed me also, like the Telepaths, the Sleepers had bass player problems. When I asked Ken if the Sleepers were still together, he told me no and I instantly knew who I wanted to play drums in my own new band. The trouble was finding Mr. Mooney, who lived in Menlo Park.

In the mean time, Ken introduced me to his friends, including Jello Biafra, various members of the Mutants, Ricky Williams--the Sleepers self-destructive singer, various artists, and a young fellow named Aaron Gregory. He also suggested that I call the Dils' and Zeros' manager Peter Urban about the recently formed New Youth organization. New Youth was a collective of, primarily, punk fans and band members, with a sprinkling of others, such as band managers, promoters, etc. who were concerned over the lack of places to play and other aspects of a network for the germinating kernel of the scene. Two things gave the primary impetus to the founding of New Youth, Dirk Dirksen's Mabuhay--San Francisco's lone punk club at the time was forced to raise its age limit, thereby provoking a boycott by a number of bands and fans at the scene's inner core, and the collapse of Maniacts--a earlier fan collective that promoted shows, chiefly at the Gay Community Center--after intense police harassment. New Youth had managed to get the Clash to play a benefit concert for them, which I'd heard about previously and was impressed by. Suddenly having a large sum of money, New Youth set out to create a guide to permit networking between bands in various cities, independent record companies and clubs or sympathetic show promoters (thanks, Peter).

At New Youth's meetings, I began to learn who was instrumental in the development of the music scene in San Francisco. Soon I began to work with a group called Pink Section, doing live sound and helping with equipment--the most amazing collection of modified musical toys I'd ever seen or heard, and it presented unique problems, properly translating the music language of a toy to that of a professional PA system--culminating at a show with the Dils at a hall in the Mission, where some skateboard kid stole a leather satchel containing my journal. Just when I thought it was gone for good, the kid reappeared with a familiar looking Marilyn Monroe-esque girl: it was Debbie Sue! She pushed the kid into returning my belongings and introduced him as Negative Trend's bass player. Debbie Sue then re-introduced herself to me as the girlfriend of Craig Gray, whom I'd met the year before and she told me that Craig had just got back into town and I should get together with him to play music.

It was around this time when the Ian Hunter Band played San Francisco's Old Waldorf, featuring guitarist Mick Ronson, and I was going there to try and meet him before the show. Hanging around in front of the club was a pretty Latina named Rhoda, who was also a fan of Ronson's and had met him earlier, and we chatted, waiting for her boyfriend to arrive. She thought she could get me backstage to meet my hero, and she took my Ronson scrapbook which made it to the band before I did. When Rhoda's boyfriend arrived, he introduced himself as Javier Escovedo, a cousin in the famous musical family of Coke, Pete, Sheila and brother of Alejandro of the original Nuns, a punk band of some notoriety from San Francisco in the late '70s. For his part, Javier was also the guitarist/singer-songwriter for the Zeros, transplanted from San Diego. Javier was also a big fan of Mick Ronson's and we became fast friends. At the show, I took pictures with my Instamatic with less than spectacular results, save two photos--when Ronson ended the set, stepping out onto a catwalk to play Slaughter On Tenth Avenue. I maneuvered myself to the lip of the catwalk where Ronson stood, less than five feet from me, feedback spilling from his guitar. I felt unlucky to be alive with no more film in my camera...

Rhoda was true to her word. I went backstage and met the entire band, who seemed anxious to meet the crazy person who had created the scrapbook, and when I met Mick, we were both too embarrassed to speak much to each other. Rhoda took my last picture of us and I wish I had actually had time to talk to him about guitars.

Seeing my musical boyhood hero close up was another turning point for me, filling me with a desire to carry on the tradition of the 'Les Paul heat' to steal a phrase from Ian Hunter. I came away from my encounter with Ronson with a new plan. I sold my bass, and within a week I was at Guitar Center trying to choose between a Gibson Les Paul and a Yamaha double-cutaway. When I left the guitar shop, another case of serendipity, or divine providence, began to unfold. Walking four or five blocks, I again ran into Debbie Sue and . . . Craig Gray! whom I had not seen since Negative Trend played at the Bird in Seattle a year earlier. After dispatching pleasantries, I asked Craig if he'd heard of a band called the Sleepers, hoping to glean information about drummer Tim Mooney.

Craig's laughter kind of stunned me momentarily, I hadn't expected him to tell me that Mooney was already drumming in his band, but '...if I wanted, I could play with them.' The last time I had seen him I was a bass player and I politely refused his offer and opened my guitar case why I couldn't play bass for his band. He remained unconcerned with my rejection, stating that they already had a bass player, who turned out to be the kid who stole my satchel, Jonathan Hendrickson, a true punk. I was flabbergasted really. He just asked me to play, without hearing me play guitar or even knowing I'd changed instruments. On top of that, I hadn't even gotten my guitar home yet!

I told him that I'd certainly try out for the remnants of Negative Trend, now called Toiling Midgets, but I didn't feel too confident about my abilities as a guitarist in a real band. I was beginning to think that some strange magic was at work in my world, with so many timely coincidences happening suddenly and all around me. When we finally got together for our first rehearsal, there was no Tim--a perfect example of typical Tim-behavior, Craig and Jonathan explained to me. At first I put it down to living so far south, which seemed logical, but eventually the truth was revealed over time.

When I finally met the legendary Mr. Mooney, it was at a performance of England's Buzzcocks at Temple Beautiful, now a vacant lot next to the old Fillmore West. Jeri had been up to her groupie-esque behavior again, my band mates and I could easily see her sitting on the edge of the stage to the side, where she hoped to be noticed, picked out, picked up, or something , and I decided not to go home that night, in a singular act of defiance; an act which lead Jeri eventually to move to New York in pursuit of rock stars of more stature. Meanwhile, I gladly put my personal interests away, for the 'good' of the band. The good of the band? What did that mean exactly? We began rehearsing 3 or 4 days a week at a place called China Blue. Jeri loaned me her Fender Twin Reverb as I had spent my roll on the guitar. Other than kindness, her motivation for the loan was most likely that she didn't use it much herself; when she left for N.Y. in early '81, transportation was an issue (she didn't have any for it) and she would '...figure it out later.'

The winding down of 1980 was more like an ugly grinding. Jeri and I drifted further and farther apart and while we lived together in a little studio apartment, we kept opposite schedules--my dishwashing job downtown vs. her Broadway strippers' hours. I must have been terribly naive not to suspect that she was using drugs (which in retrospect was really obvious).

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