Past

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Hark Robottom
AKA Obscure Oudess
1979
(comedy and experimental noise-music)

    "WHERE IS THE MOOG !?!?!?!?!?"

Paul McKinnon:  guitar, vocals & accessories (d. 1979)
Thomas Gogo:  vocals & percussion
ME:  vocals bells, violin & stuff

This act was named after the next-door people The Robottoms, who didn't enjoy our music, and also after Truus Oud, from the CWL, who looked after us when we were kids.

Well, we were not gigging, we were disapointed with the last gig, and we are all a bunch of social drop-outs, and we didn't do much other than going to big parties every weekend, so why not be total buffons, go crazy and record it ?

I feel weird about this period, because we could have been a whole lot more productive. But we had a ton of laughs. It was all about experimenting with sound and emotion. The whole idea was to hear something NEW, a new idea, a new sound. I dreamed of synthesizers, and on weekends we would make our pilgrimage to Fergusons Music at Harbour Park Mall and space-out on whatever keyboard they had on display. One day there was a space echo too.

We had a friend who claimed that his cousin had a MOOG, but as I dug into his story, he emblished it with "oh it doesn't work" and "Oh it is way far away"and the best one "Oh he doesn't want it, you could just take it" Of course I believed every word of it, and he slipped-up by saying that it was in Qualicum Beach......not far away enough......and I told him that my sisters were doing a vaudville show there this week, "so let's go get the MOOG !"

He didn't back down, but came along in the Econline van, up and down every street "Uh, I think it is this street...." and my mom driving and yelling:
    "WHERE IS THE MOOG !?!?!?!?!?"
    "WHERE IS THE MOOG !?!?!?!?!?"
    "WHERE IS THE MOOG !?!?!?!?!?"

There wasn't a MOOG, anywhere.
Only in my dreams, and in this guy's imagination.

But the Vaudville show was awesome, and I got to play with a spotlight and pull the curtain.

I used to read the paper, looking for people who were selling organs, and call them up and go to their houses with a tape deck. One old lady down the alley had a tape deck built into this 3 manual organ with some wild WOW sounds, so I called her up, went to her house, crammed in a cassette and riffed-out until she booted me out. She said "My husband used to play the organ, and he just died, and I just CAN'T TAKE IT !!!"  I thought that was uncool 'cos I hadn't finished my recording yet. Why didn't she just go out for a while or something ?

My sister had another tape deck and I was trying to get an epic for her to use at her dance class. It was called 'Old Lady Afternoon.'

Tommy, Paul McKinnon and I would also wash-out Olly's Piano and Organ shop on weekends with 3 organs going at once, Tangerine Dream style. There were some great space jams, especially with 3 rhythm units going, and Olly never complained. In fact she was the one that got me the job playing organ at the Hockey games......Olly was great.

 Mr. Natural
 1978
 (commercial rock, prog rock)

    "Oh we didn't get it cos we weren't very good."

Thomas Gogo:  lead vocal, drums, tympani

Richard Francoeur:   lead guitar

Alyster Lin:  lead guitar (d. 1990)  

Chris Meyers:  bass
 ME - multi-keyboards
 Paul McKinnon:  drums

 Guests: Jay Shick:  bass
 Gary Sharmin:  drums

 Ok, Ok, we will do a gig.
Alyster Lyn's Mom was a school teacher, and he told us that "if we play a dance at his high school, we will all get $40 each!" Well, that is dandy, but what matters here is we get to do a gig !!!!!!!!!!!

I think of it now, and had we organized a bit better, we could have been playing all the schools all of the time, of course.......but it was so difficult.........here:

Alyster was a fluent rock guitar player, about 17 years old, (compared to me still being 12)....and he was putting this band together with his buddies who were all Rolling Stones fans. They needed a drummer and a keyboard player, and I had never heard that kind of music, but Tommy and I soon began to arrange big intros from the main themes, and with the two school tympanies, two drum kits, and every keyboard that I could borrow, we decided to put on a real rock show.

Tommy was going to be Mr. Super Phill Collins for real this time, running from his drum kit to sing leads and play tympani solos, (as he had shocked audiences with at the high school band concerts). We had this all figured out, big Genesis-type production, it was going to be huge. Nothing was cooler.

The problem was, that half of the band guys were drunk, or on mushrooms at every rehearsal, and as the gig date got closer, the band was not any getting any more organized, other than those few progressive intros. So, on the day of the big show, I packed-up and assembled the big home-made lighting rig, (not by myself) got the keyboards all stacked-up and stage ready, and when the guys arrived to play, they were all on acid, still not knowing the songs, and our second drummer was too scared to go onstage, so he didn't.

Finally, ex-JUD guitar player Paul McKinnon sat in on drums and we prog-rocked our way through 'Brown Sugar" and 'Satisfaction' until the show grinded to a hault and we all had to walk off stage. I remember trying a straight-out jam, but I wasn't loud enough and there was and the bass was up full with a BASS BOOST effect installed, just this loud bass wash. wwwwwoooooooooooooooooooooo

Fortunately, Jay Shick, ex-JUD bass player also happened to be there (the gym was packed with kids) and he offered to run through some of the old tunes, with no vocals, so we did, and it rocked. It was a mini JUD reunion, and went down with many kids as a legendary awesome gig......but not with the people who were actually booked to play it.

By the end of the show, the wannabe-Rolling-Stones-on-acid guys had split, so Tommy and I were left to tear down the stage, return all the borrowed instruments and pack-up the light show. We asked Alyster, the next day, about the $40 each and he said "Oh we didn't get it 'cos we weren't very good."

I am one of those people who believes everything I am told, but looking at it now, I doubt if the kid's Mom stiffed him like that. She had a budget, right ?

Thf Source
1977-78
(prog-rock and electronica)
(named from a stencil set used on lighting boxes that was missing the 'E')

    "well, if you can't go to school, then you can't go to Vancouver either!"

ME:  drums, keyboards
Thomas Gogo:  drums, percussion, keyboards

What had happened was that my big brother Joe had bought a wonderful stereo and was filling his cabinet with new albums every week. From there, this whole city full of teenagers was becoming serious progressive rock fans. And then all my big brothers bought tickets to see YES, and they were all so excited that they all skipped out of school that Friday.

The pricipal called my Dad, who then announced, "well, if you can't go to school, then you can't go to Vancouver either!" Most of them went anyway, but I wound-up with Tommy's YES ticket, 'cos I was not a part of this conspiracy......so I went to the last festival-seating YES concert, when I was 12.

I had no idea who YES was, really, (I knew Donovan who opened) and I became this huge Rick Wakeman fan (his hair was even longer than mine !) and I decided that this is what I was going to do.......be a prog rock guy.

In some ways, prog-rock was a curse to us, because there were guys in town who were playing dances at the legion halls (alcohol dens for retired veterans) on weekends and making real money, and here we were suddenly looking down our noses on the commercial pop and rock scene........to the point where we were not gigging at all, 'cos we felt it was all so meaningless and cheap.

We attempted to arrange some pop tunes to create a commercial gigging band, a few times, but by the end of every session, we had added enough odd-time-signature tricks and the music had turned terribly  into a symphonic-fusion. Our hearts were simply not into commercial rock anymore, and we couldn't even fake it, 'cos, I guess, we didn't have to. And there was NO live market for what we wanted to do, or so we thought.

Not that we tried to go out and sell our act..... I don't know, we just wanted to experiment.

But prog-rock did force us all to take our musicianship more seriously, and we soon found that we were not alone in this, because most of the great young players in town were jamming at houses, and not in the bars. This was also the disco era, so it was all very strange.

Big brother Tommy and I set-up to write and record again, taking it where we left off, but this time with no vocals. We were loud now. The idea was to string one idea after another and create epic instrumentals, which we most certainly did. It was hard to find other players who were up for this, because most guys our age were just starting with instruments and not really into this prog rock mentality. We were serious, and everything had to be awesome, or not at all.

'Not at all' generally ruled.

 Papa Luigi
1977

    "your love, is drifting me higher, than I have ever been drifted before....."

    
Marie Gogo - vocals 
Paul McKinnon - bass
Thomas Gogo - drums
ME - organ & piano

    Richard Francoeur is one of the great guitar players of our age, and the best visual artist of us all, and he was our main guy when Paul McKinnon was away........I don't know what happened, why we couldn't have 2 guitar players when Chin-McKin came back, but a rivalry started and Richard got a bad deal here.

My Dad, meanwhile, stopped logging and started to manage pubs, and he told us that there was a party booked at Papa Luigis, with a bunch of young people, so could we put something together to play on Saturday night? --------SURE !

My dad, Ken Gogo (KG) did a piano and guitar lounge act, and my mom was also playing pub piano on weekends at the Black Bear, as well as being session pianist for the dance school, so they gigged way more than their kids did at that time. My dad had had a comedy and dance duo when he was a teenager, in the 1940s, and he knew hundreds of songs, so he could gig anywhere, and he did.

Marie was also always very organized, and she was out making a fortune singing with THE CONTINENTALS, featuring an cordovox accordion player and a drummer.....they were like this mobile corporate mini-orchestra. And when she took breaks, my other sister Ann would fill in for her, singing. Both my sisters are ridiculously talented, and they were very productive.

Meanwhile, I had joined the ranks of anti-scocial church-quitting party boys (this was the only time I tried to smoke pot for a while) and I went as long as I could without a shower just to see what would happen. (what hapened was I saw my reflection in a store window and went OH MAN !!!!) I even quit dance class, which was stupid 'cos I was the only boy in the whole dance school, and it was really fun.

If I could do it all again, I would never have quit the dance lessons, and I don't reccomend that 12-year-olds smoke pot, or quit church either.......oh well. I even quit piano lessons for a while too. Bullshit, man.

So we rehearsed this song "... Your love, is drifting me higher, than I have ever been drifted before....." and my dad walked in on our rehearsal for about 10 seconds, gave us 2 thumbs up......and I don't know what we were planning to play for the rest of the night. Our attitude was terrible. We made fun of everything (Marie held it together, mind you...)

The night of the big gig, we set up and started playing our big number, (my ace-tone had a borrowed Small Stone Phaser on it), we sounded great. And then the young people stepped into the room, looked at us, looked at each other, and walked right out again.

Marie finished the set with her folk rock songs to an empty house, and on the way out, I accidentally dropped the phaser and scratched the piano. My dad didn't get mad. I think he had a lot on his mind back then.

Blitz
1977
(party jam and psychadelic rock)

    "Is that a real Les Paul ?"

Richard Francoeur - electric Red Hagstrom guitar and SUNN amp
Thomas Gogo - drums
ME - organ & electric piano
Jay Shick - bass

   

This band never had a name, but I called it BLITZ, in a story I wrote, 'cos everyone played  "blitz-licks"......I thought the whole thing was wild.

JUD broke up, and there was a lull in our local rock scene while everyone concentrated on being wild teenagers. JUD's super-talented guitarist Paul McKinnon moved to the mainland for a year (I think it was a probation thing from breaking into the bowling alley), and one night the jams started up again in the basement. We had rows of bus seats form one of my Dad's groovy camper bus conversions, and we made a concave back-drop out of white bed shets. It was total basement theatre.

I had taken a break from bands, and was getting into lighting. It was a very strange time in our city of Nanaimo, 'cos there were tons of vacant old houses, many being torn down and empty lots left in their place. One whole block was going down once, and there was nothing more fun than climbing around through those doomed old Victorian houses. And while we were there, we may as well salvage the light switches and sockets to build into a huge double lighting console.

We had never seen a lighting board before, in fact I figured that I was inventing this thing. Every week, my gang would scout-out new condemned houses, and we would attack them on Saturdays with screwdrivers and pliers. It was a good thing that the hydro was always off, cos we never even knew to check that.

I also liberated every 150 watt flood light that I could get my hands on, and I figured out how to twist them out without getting burnt. We saved up enough big peanut butter tins, bought coloured plexi-glass with my paper route cash and mounted these par-cans on camper stands. We built a huge and very colourful light show, and wow did it ever work great. The colours were very pure. I think very fondly of ths project.

As with my drumming, I thought that lights had to FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH really quickly, so they did, as this new band rocked in the basement. No gigs, just weekend jams, and tons of them. All the bigger kids were quiting church, smoking grass and going to parties, so I gave them the wildest light-show in town. And the local funeral home eventually replaced their flood lights with regular bulbs.

My friend Jim Blair told me years later that he used to go into these empty houses lookng for light switches and be bummed cos they were already gone. I guess I did not invent the home made light show. Another guy in town built a really good, one, and still has it. In fact he has a huge production company.

I set-up the lighting rig at the JUNE SHOW, (the big yearly blow-out for the McLeod School of Dance). My sister Marie was hanging out with this French Canadian drifter who hated the English, (but not to the point where he would refuse food), and he was my roadie that day. I blinded a row of little ballerina girls, and I thought the effects were awesome. Ben Boulet on house lights one one side of the stage, me on the other with the lighting board.

My Mom thought the lights were the shits, and was very vocal about it on the way home.

I was not always IN this band, BLITZ. I was still the tag-along kid, so I would sit at the piano upstairs sometimes and play along with them, and I learned all their tunes. My Mom liked this story, and she told it to her friends: one day I walked in and started playing along with them, 'cos I knew all the tunes.......and I guess I was IN.

I guess the part of the story that my Mom didn't know was about the gang of teenagers from Gabriola Island who were sitting on the row of bus seats, on acid, laughing cos this kid (me) ran into the room and started to spazz out on this red organ like a wild troll hahahahahahahaha.......one teenager had a paper grocery bag full of stalk from a pot plant, and he was chewing on it all night. My Mom walked in and asked "WHAT IS THAT !?!?!?" He said "stalk" so she went upstaire and looked up STOCK in the 1974 World Book Encyclopedia........it was our job to keep her in the dark.

Guitar player shows-up to jam, he is very stoned on mushrooms (psilocybin mushrooms grown here, and they are like doing acid)  - he closes his eyes, zones out and plays his heart out.  The whole band was loud, and a neighbour, an old lady from next door, still shell-shocked from the war, knocked on the door with the intention of telling the band to turn down (or stop all together).  Nobody answered the door so she walked right in. The stoned, soloing guitar player, with his eyes still closed, was right close to the door and he didn't see her ...  she gave him  a shove to get his attention, and that woke him from his soloing daze.  Freaked him right out.
The band stopped playing and she started in on "It is later than the bylaw allows at this volume ... blah blah blah ... stop this noise!"  Big brother Tommy stood up behind the drum set and yelled, "That's bullshit!"  The old lady got flustered and ran out of the room in tears.  Later, my dad
somehow found  out about it and told Tommy that he had to go and buy some flowers, deliver them next door to the old lady and apologize to her, which he did.  She took it very well.

Sometimes the neighbours would call the cops on us for being so loud, especially the bass, and the cops would arrive but they would be really cool and show lots of interest in what we were doing.   Once one of them asked, "is that a real Les Paul?"   They didn't shut us down.

Anyway,  I was writing a lot of things down at the time, and my mom saw my handwritten story about what happened and she read it.   She didn't freak out about it, but I thought  "Oh NO I mentioned that he was stoned on mushrooms!"  which was not something that you would ever want mom to know about!

Dad said something much worse to the same women's husband next door when he came over to complain about our firewood pile ......and Mom tried to get HIM to apologise.....

Meanwhile, I had put an advert in the 'buy-sell-and -trade' paper, offering to do odd jobs, and I got a call from a fake-farmer, and for $3 an hour each, my brother Joe and I built a chicken coop in one day, and onwards until his hobby farm was looking really good. Joe is now a full time tradesman......he should thank me for that some day (kidding)......but I blew all of that saved-up money $350 on an acetone organ........and it buzzed like eeeee-ooo-aaaaa......so I quit being the lighting guy.

My big brother Lawrence took over the lighting rig, and is now the lighting guy for the Commodore in Vancouver, in fact he has never had a non-lighing job since. He too, should thank me for that some day...........

Kitty and Marie
1976

    "Your thing was the shits....."

Marie Gogo - piano & vocals
Kitty Chevarie - melodion &  vocals
Tommy Gogo - bass guitar & vocals
ME - drums & vocals

My sister Marie is a virtuoso singer, actress, dancer, arranger and so on.... but, back then she was a folk guitarist and singer. I got to see real hippies at the coffee houses where she played, often with her friend Kitty.  Summer rolled in and the City's Parks and Recreation people decided to have a big blow-out party-concert at the new Beban Park Recreation Auditorium.  JUD had opened this huge venue shorty before this (they billed with LAZY,  who had way bigger amps) and I think that was actually JUD's last gig.

So Marie volunteered (nobody got paid for anything back then; never even thought about it) to play for the Parks and rec Summer Blow-Out party. She arranged a band with Tommy on bass guitar...me on Ludwig drums... Marie on piano and Kitty on a melodian, front of the stage, right on the microphone.

Marie picked 2 songs: "Happy Together" by the Turtles, and "Peaches En Regalia" by  Frank Zappa. She was 16 ( I think) and had a boyfriend that looked like Zappa, who drove a '57 Chevy (that's how I got over to see YES that year in Vancouver).  We practiced, and nailed 'Peaches', and one of my favorite pre-teen memories is driving around town singing "Happy Together"  ... "ba-ba-ba-ba......." all in counter-point. The American Bi-Centennial summer, MAD magazines, banana-seat bikes, The Bad News Bears........all the stuff that gives me the warm and fuzzies now.

So ALL the kids in town who participated in Parks and Rec programs, (or simply hung-out at parks, and all the parks had little swimming pools), were invited for free, to this event, and the hall holds about 800 people (I guess) so the place was PACKED. We set-up, I did the roll into "Peaches" and we ROCKED both tunes, flawlessly....then Marie and Kitty filled the rest of the set with Neil Young and GODSPELL songs.

The kids ate it up, of course, and while signing autographs, a girl, my age, came right up to me and said,  "your thing was the shits."  I think she liked me.

My Mom ranted on the way home how Kitty's melodion was too close to the mic and that it harsed-out her ears. She was really upset about it.

I think about it now, and really, it is rediculous that we didn't get SOME kind of honourarium or gratuity for doing that kinda gig. I did a million dance shows back then as well, and not once ever got a thank-you note or free Dairy Queen Voucher....nothing, ever. Bullshit, man.

There really wasn't a youth culture back then. Kids did not rule the media...not even close. We were nothing more than pain in the ass for society.

And I didn't like that girl either.

The Kevin Kneifer Band
1976
(full-out rock and roll, and parody)

" I hopped into that scummy van
thinkin' I was quite the man
I smashed May's flowers
doin' one mile and hour
sayin' let those shingles fly 10-4 !"

Kevin Kneifer  - bass
Thomas Gogo - electric piano & vocals
ME - drums


Ok, Tommy was like Junior Phil Collins; gigging more than any kid in town, yet he still had time to jam and arrange with other acts.

The Kevin Kneifer Band never gigged, but we recorded some decent original rock. One big instrumental with a jam section, and one less original song CONTRACT.....to the music of CONVOY, that was a big hit at the time.  We made a parody of a local roofing family, singing in all of their voices.

"Now we got a great big contract, we get to fix a roof.  Now we can get a new car so we won't look like goofs...CONTRACT !!!!!"

Nice. The song went downhill from there, but we laughed and jammed.... by this time, Peggy Groven had moved out of the basement suite and it was now the BAND ROOM......um, party room.  I think my parents had the house paid-off, and they wanted a place for all of their kids, and their kids' friends. And that is what they got.

At one jam session we decided to learn how to smoke, and by the time my Dad got home we were all laying around sick. He got really mad.

Double Bubble Blues Band
1975
(A short-lived song-writing duo)

"I was walkin' down the street and guess what I seen?
I saw a double bubble limosine..."

ME - guitar & vocals
Ronald Ward - vocals


Ronnie was my best friend, across the ally, and we did everything together, Grannying  around the neighborhood.....so we started writing songs together, as well. (There were complete Granny costumes in the hallway downstairs that fit perfectly, so we would get decked-out and go down the street to yell at people.)

I don't know how or when it all came about, but one day my brother Tommy and I switched instruments. He was always a mulit-instrumentalist, so he told me I had to switch from drums to keyboards.  I really should thank him for that some day.

As I think about it now, there was a period where we were both drummers.

Tommy was always a great percussionist, for real, and he got hired by big-brother Johnny's
(lead vocals, keyboard and rhythm guitar) band JUD.

JUD was named after 'Judge Hunter's Haunted Mantion' in Victoria...shortened to
JUD, which was one of Tommy's many nicknames.....so yeah, he got the gig, at 11
years of age.......and gigged, and gigged......

Then, things changed. Dad traded the mystery electric piano for a Hohner Pianette, and he bought a little RINGO set of Ludwig drums. And somehow a fender amp showed-up. No more kids stuff.  Some guys also broke into a school to take some instruments, but that didn't work out.  But the quest for gear was on.

JUD was awesome, they played teen dances every weekend, and I would go and dance around all by myself like a free hippy kid. They did an Alice Cooper bit, Sabbath....they were hard rock, really. They were also writing an opera about Jehovah's Witnesses, and ants eating people's brains at a picnic, but it was never recorded.

I loved that band, even though I was left behind.....so I wrote blues with Ronnie. I was car-crazy, so our main song was about a limousine full of farm animals. We were terrible, made one cassette, that got mocked, and we broke up.

In A Hollow Tree
1974
(rock and roll ! Played the Scout Hut featuring the original song "In a Hollow Tree," with a drum solo.)

"You and me...in a hollow tree....."

ME - Drums
Thomas Gogo - electric piano & lead vocal
Paul Gorosh - tenor sax
Ronald Ward - second drummer

We got a gig !!!!!!!!!
We forgot to tell our Dads, until after supper, and they got really mad 'cos they had to carry this little electric piano into the van. So it started with a bad vibe, but it all picked up once we hit the Scout Hut...(a long log building downtown FULL of kids).
I don't know how this was arranged, but we set-up the green plastic bucket drum set, electric piano and the kids all sat on the floor around us.....and (tenor sax) Da-da-da-da dadadadada !!!!!
HEY !!!!!!
"You and me ---- in a hollow tree"

The spazz drumming started and the kids all had the same expression of disbelief. They were all on shock. And then they went CRAZY, and I loved it. This was Tommy's big rocker-song, and we followed with a churchier number, and Ronnie on drums, 'cos he get's his turn too, you know. Well, despite being handsome and popular enough to win the election over me 2 years later for school president, he did get booed off of the stage that night, 'cos the kids were chanting for me. So I did another drum solo......and next cub meeting, we all lined up for our troubadour badges.
Even Ronnie.

Man, school president.
I lost.
I guess it didn't help that I had hired a psycho campaign-manager who told people "to never fuck with the cosmic policies" and threatened to "beat the crap out of you" if you don't vote for Gogo.

Paul and The Red and Blue Stars

1970 - 1974
(modern folk-church-pop)

ME -   drums, piano vocals
Thomas Gogo -   piano, autoharp, guitar, vocals

Ronald Ward -   we needed another guy to make a band

 " you can go in an airplane
    helicopter too
    you can go in a rocket ship
    right up to the moon...... "

One of my earliest memories was of my Mom playing piano, and the thing was the size of an apartment building. I don't know if I could walk yet, but I figured out how the pedals worked, and I would crawl under her bench and press the soft pedal down, 'cos it was SO LOUD. She played organ at Saint Peter's, and every priest told her to turn down...but she never did.

She was very Vatican 2, a radical, very aggressive, I mean, she put together a CWL choir and YELLED at them.... and they loved it. VERY high energy!

Dodie (my Mom) had what she called "an artistic temperament" which means, (I learned), the opposite of "mellow." She ate standing up and needed every detail on everything. She was always well-informed of pop culture but couldn't care about fame, money....it was all about family and unshakeable faith.

She taught her kids the word NO, but rarely used it on the rest of the world.  A Ford Econoline van filled with kids, mostly her own (7 kids in 7 years) going from dance class to hockey to some hospital gig......  Every minute of every day was full. She was some kind of genius, I am sure.  She had  perfect pitch (as have several of my siblings) and she would yell "C-SHARP" or whatever was the wrong note being played on any of the 3 pianos the house. 

My Mom arranged youth bands for guitar masses, and I would sit around listening.  I could tune a guitar by ear before I ever touched one, 'cos everyone was always tuning, and singing. I still love all those songs.

My brother Tommy and I used to sit around by the piano, write and arrange our own songs during the afternoons, and perform them whenever anyone visited.  This was how we played, 'cos the house was full of music. There were 2 autoharps, and our songs were very much 70s churchy, mostly written by my brother Tommy, who was always a music manic.  I think I got into the band 'cos he told me that I had to ...  "but only if the band was named after me."   My Mom bought a tin bass drum with a cymbal and small tin drum at the Harbour Park  mall (exciting !!!) and we rigged-up 2 ice-cream buckets for toms and a laundry pail as a floor tom. We painted the kit dark green, and it sounded great!   I played drums, beacuse Tommy already had the melodic stuff covered, and I never broke the paper bass drum skin.

I thought that the music had to be exciting, and I thought it was my job to play all the wild stuff, so my drumming was pretty darn spazzy.  Nobody ever said anything different, so I just soloed away......

I have recordings of almost all of these songs, but no photos. I know there is one with me on a pump organ and Tommy on an electric piano, somewhere.

Song Titles
    1) For the LOVE of the World
    2) Flying People (my first song !)
    3) Do You Remember
    4) All Around the World
    5) Lost in Town

Tommy's songs had complex progressions and lyrical imagery.  My song had 2 chords and a dumb lyric.

Polar Bear Band

Dodie and Ken Band
1969- onward
(gigs Gogo did with his parents)

::: 'Cos we're going ... to the hukilau :::

This is an annual  December 26 event, started by the mayor Nanaimo, Frank Ney

(a genius promoter).  Each year hundreds of people jump into the freezing sea - it is big hype.  My Dad played this gig every year since the 1950s...minus 2 years, for a mid-life-crisis, and the ones since he died. I don't have any early pictures, but lt looked like winter Woodstock. I danced at these gigs when I was a little kid,  and then took up some instruments,  and still play this thing every year.  I tried to assemble the largest Hawaiian band on earth, and got dozens of people involve for some years, but lately I just wanna go mobile.  We get on the national news every year with this one.

I did a million gigs with my parents when I was a kid, but this one has never ended.

Top left photo from the 1990s, my sister Marie, and my Dad; top right photo from the 1950s, Frank Ney, from my book about him; bottom photo is from the new century...Mr. Chriss, Me, Mo, and Brad Ney.