DClog

Both Ends of the Spectrum

Music Biz: The jazz trio played a nice little wedding reception this afternoon for some old friends of Mack's. Over the years I have performed at wedding receptions of all types from the million dollar events to the quaint family gathering in a park pavilion or church recreation hall. Today's event was the later of the two types and I was reminded of the excesses I witness at some of these other receptions. I have seen custom-made hand-sewn wedding dresses that cost about as much as my house (and seen the tipsy bride spill champagne all over it). I've watched a huge ice sculpture (which cost more than our 9-piece band) just melt away right in front of me. I have seen gigantic cakes like you would not believe, sculptured desserts, $500-a-plate dinners for for hundreds, amazingly huge elaborate floral arrangements on every table, thousands of dollars of fresh oysters, shrimp and seafood flown in that morning from the ocean and most of it tossed in the dumpster at the end of the night, and on and on...

Every weekend, no matter what is happening with the economy or the rest of the world, people will get married and many families will spend their entire savings. From absurdly extravagant to small family gatherings, I get to see it all.

Nice Day in L'ville

Fitness Activity: The weather is so fine I had to try to resume some sort of outdoor activity. For the first time in 18 days I got out and "exercised", and I use that term very loosely. Wearing my Hear Rate Monitor to enforce the low-to-no intensity thing, I walked for several miles with Samantha. I know that slow pace had to be tedious for her, but at least it was something.

Monday I will go see the chiropractor again. I haven't been since before the crash 4+ weeks ago. It would have been too painful to be adjusted while injured like that.

We started looking through the directory of cardiologists at St. Joseph's Hospital. Bev found a woman named Dr. Quinn and thought I should see her. I was never quite as impressed with that TV show as most folks. It would be nice to find one that is an endurance athlete of some sort.

Web Dev

Website Biz: With aeruscomp.com now going live and the updating of my usual sites under control for the moment, it's now time to start on the "BLUE competition cycles" new website, rideblue.com.

Here's some of the current buzz from cyclingnews.com

Tech News – February 25, 2004 The Genesis Scuba women's team has a new bike sponsor for 2004 - and we don't just mean 'new to the team'. Blue Competition Cycles is a whole new company - so new in fact, that their website is still under construction. Based in Norcross, Georgia, Blue is about to introduce a range of carbon fiber and aluminium frames. Seen here are the RC4 Genesis Scuba team bikes, as ridden to victory in the criterium stage of last weekend's Valley of the Sun stage race by team member Laura Van Gilder. Available in six sixes from XS to XL, the RC4 features ten-speed Shimano Dura-Ace components, Aerus Composites C4 carbon bars, stems, and seatposts, Velomax Wheel Systems Ascent II wheels with Maxxis Columbiere tyres, and Speedplay pedals. A bike in size M is claimed to weigh 7.0kg with pedals and bottle cages.

If I ever get well enough to resume bicycle riding, let alone racing and winning, I might request a new BLUE bicycle as part of the payment for the website project.

It's Been a Busy Week

I finally have some time and inclination to post something new here. So let me look back and review a few recent highlights.

Music Biz: DC3 performed Valentine's night at the Piedmont Driving Club with Mack McKibben and Keith Runfola. It was a very exclusive party in a great sounding room that included a beautiful sounding grand piano. We were briefly joined by a older gentleman with a clarinet. The man is apparently an extremely successful doctor and told me he is a professor at Emory, everyone at the Piedmont Driving Club knew and loved this guy. His clarinet playing was fair but he was totally oblivious to "jam session etiquette".

The next evening the Duo performed at an enjoyable wedding near the horse park in Conyers. I pulled in after driving for an hour, to discover I had arrived without my guitar! Wow, talk about a "senior moment" -- I had done that once before about 15-20 years ago at the Café 290. Anyway, there was some time to spare so Bev met me halfway with my instrument and no one was the wiser.

Again, the following night (Monday), I spent 6+ hours in Dogwood Recording Studio recording a demo with Moxie. Geez! well over 50 songs, actually partial songs, like just a verse or chorus or whatever for demo purposes.

The usual Tu-W-Th at Violette with the Duo, a sweet gig that is easy, fun and usually musically satisfying.

This past Saturday I was on stage at the Debussy ballroom in Château Élan with Susan Taylor performing for a big fancy wedding. The families were all doctors and the bride's family was Jewish, so we got to play a rousing medley of Hora's while everyone danced around and around with the couple being hoisted up in chairs. Ya know, it's funny kids think they invented "crowd surfing" and the "mosh pit", but it's a really old concept, folks!

Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon I was part of a really big concert that Mack put together, it was a benefit for children with special needs. I performed with Peter Vogl, Jan Smith, David Leonard, Derek St. Holmes, Susan Taylor, Dave Lienweber, Marshal Choka, George Sandler, and several more... We played a bunch of Allman Brothers songs, and lots of crowd-pleasing hits from the Classic Rock and R&B eras.

Tonight (Monday) I head back down to Dogwood Studio to put some finishing touches on the Moxie demo recording.

Notable Family Activities: We celebrated Ruth's 24th birthday and Friday night the entire family went out to dinner and then down to Phillips Arena to see the Ringling Bros. & Barnum Baily circus - cotton candy and everything. That was great!

Health & Fitness: It's sad. The heart problems have resurfaced and have totally stopped ALL my fitness activities. Not a single bike ride or even a walk since the Feb 10th ride! The current suspected, although still undiagnosed, condition is cardiac infection or myocarditis. I am facing a relatively long period of enforced inactivity, probably several months. Hopefully I will eventually get the guts or motivation to go to a cardiologist. I just fear that it will cost a fortune and I will get little to no actual help.

My Early Influences in Atlanta

I found this website of photos taken around Atlanta from about 1969-1972.

http://www.messyoptics.com/bird/contact_sheet.html

There are images from some of the most influential elements of my past. You can see glimpses of the Hampton Grease Band and Glenn Phillips, who inspired me to become a guitarist. Images from the Twelfth Gate, run by Robin Eden, where I witnessed (and usually got to meet) Weather Report, Oregon, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Larry Coyell, Elvin Jones, Roland Kirk, Little Feat, Pharaoh Sanders, Gary Bartz, and more. I eventually played there one night doing a duo with drummer Donald Gentry. You will find photos from the "Atlanta Hippie Scene", free concerts at Piedmont Park, the 2nd Atlanta Pop Festival, and the Great Speckled Bird.

This led me to the discovery of the following article, written by Glenn Phillips, about the history of the Hampton Grease Band. I am compeled to archive it here because it is so important to me as those guys were heros to me. Later some of us became friends and even shared the stage together.

Hampton Grease Band

by Glenn Phillips

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Listen to Music To Eat by the Hampton Grease Band, and you'll know the answer. At the time of its release in 1971, the HGB's double record was purported to be the second-worst selling album in Columbia Records' history (beaten only by a yoga record). It has since gone on to become a highly prized and costly collector's item, both in America and overseas.

The band's beginnings can be traced back to 1965, when guitarist Harold Kelling was playing high school dances with his group, The IV of IX. They used to haul their equipment around in an old funeral hearse, and their specialty was the instrumental hits of The Ventures. Kelling recalls, "Our bass player told us that a school friend of his named Bruce Hampton was going to professional wrestling matches and had a mighty unusual sense of humor. He brought Bruce along to practice one day and with a lot of encouragement and some coercion he started coming to gigs." Hampton says, "It was completely an accident that I became involved with music. Harold called me on stage one night out of the blue."

Soon thereafter, Bruce started showing up at their jobs with a guitar, even though he couldn't play it at all. Harold would call him up on stage, and then hide behind the amps. The band would go into a song, with Harold playing out of the audience's sight. Bruce would stand up front with his guitar, and start jumping around and going crazy, making believe he was playing the guitar parts.

A year later, in 1966, I began playing guitar myself. One day at school I told Bruce, "I'm going to be the best guitar player in the world." Bruce responded, "I'm going to be the world's best vocalist." "Well," I said, "we ought to start a band together." When Harold's band broke up in '67, the three of us joined forces and became the creative core of the HGB. We asked my older brother Charlie Phillips to play bass and close friend Mike Rogers to play drums, despite the fact that neither of them had any experience on their prospective instruments.

Harold remembers, "I went to New York with Charlie and Bruce after the IV of IX broke up. We saw Frank Zappa on the street and I just walked up to him and said `Grease' with no particular context in mind. Somehow we communicated to him our compatible weirdness, and he invited us to the recording studio, where part of our conversation was recorded and used on `Lumpy Gravy'. We put `Grease' together with `Hampton' for the band's name because he was our only vocalist. He was not the leader. After we returned to Atlanta, we picked up on blues music. We wanted to play it, but there were no white blues bands anywhere in the South, so we were unique and alone."

We soon discovered that there were no clubs in our hometown Atlanta area that were interested in hiring us to play. Bruce observes, "We went through a lot of struggles just to get gigs, it was a pretty rough road." Eventually we did find a club that would have us, the Stables Bar & Lounge. It was there that a patron pulled a gun on Bruce in the middle of a set and told him to "play some James Brown or I'm gonna blow your fuckin' head off." Bruce turned around to the rest of the band and yelled out "Popcorn, parts 1 and 2!" The club was run by Abner Jay, who was paying us 50 cents each a night. He routinely advised us to "sell those goddamn guitars and amplifiers and buy you some pussy."

1968 brought the summer of love and a growing population of hippies to the Atlanta area. Our music had evolved into something quite different from what was considered "hip" at the time, possibly because most of the band never did drugs. Also, most of us came from troubled homes, and coupled with the energy and anger of youth, we had unconsciously adopted a very strong `us against the world' attitude.

We began playing regularly at the local underground club, The Catacombs, where the peace and love generation found themselves frequently under attack at our performances. The band's stage show had grown increasingly aggressive and Bruce would often throw tables and chairs into the audience. We also made a habit of swinging from the water pipes in the ceiling during our sets. One night the pipes snapped under our weight, and sprayed the audience with water. Harold describes the band as "building such insane energy that we'd just fly off the handle."

The band was also performing at Piedmont Park, a large park near downtown Atlanta. Prior to us, no other electric band had played there before, so the city never bothered to turn off the power to the outlets. We'd just drag our equipment down there, set up, plug in and play. The local underground street paper, The Great Speckled Bird, began to promote our free shows at the park, and the hippie movement started to embrace the band. Before long, the park shows became major events. Other local groups and more well-known national acts began playing there with us. We did numerous free concerts with The Allman Brothers, as well as with Spirit and The Grateful Dead. A few hours before one park show, a struggle between the hippies and the police erupted into a riot. All of us, except Bruce, managed to sneak through the police lines and performed amidst the haze of tear gas that had engulfed the park.

Harold and I constantly pushed each other to greater heights as guitarists, and it was only a matter of time before we began to have the same effect on each other as songwriters. Harold comments, "Glenn and I started to pursue a broadened and more eclectic compositional mode. This evolved gradually and came to its head with the material on Music To Eat." We were writing long involved pieces of music, usually without words. When we showed them to Bruce, who was never involved with the writing or arranging of the band's music, he was often at a loss for lyrics. One day while we were playing Harold's song "Hendon", Hampton picked up a can of spray paint and began reading off the label. Another time, I was trying to show Bruce the melody to a new song of mine that didn't have lyrics. We opened up the encyclopedia and began pulling lines from the page on Halifax.

Harold says, "Some people who hear the band have absurd ideas about the meaning of the lyrics, talking about `psychedelicized multi-level innuendo' and `mystical revelation'. Horsefeathers. Some of the lyrics are obviously lifted from printed material, but most of it was a tribute to friends, inside jokes and playful abstractions-with the possible exception of `Hey Old Lady', which was about a mentally ill old lady who did just what the song says. Charlie Phillips wrote the lyrics to that one, while Glenn wrote the music and lyrics to `Maria'. The song `Six' however does contain some veiled references to a very bizarre and unexplained series of events that occurred to Bruce and I on June 6, 1966. Overall though, the lyrics have about as much philosophical depth as a sheet of Saran Wrap."

The band's sound was also influenced by the personnel changes we had gone through. Charlie had been replaced by Mike Holbrook on bass, and after going through several drummers, Mike Rogers was eventually replaced by Jerry Fields. Although Charlie and Mike were integral to the formation of the band, they weren't naturals on the instruments we had thrust upon them. Considering they had never played before we asked them to, they did an incredible job, but as our material grew more complex, we needed someone else.

When we worked up our material with Mike and Jerry, they infused the music with their own energy and ideas. Jerry elaborates, "We got into playing with different time signatures simultaneously. There are sections in `Evans' that are like that. Half the band would be playing in 5/4 while the other half was in 4/4. It would create a tension and then it would resolve every 20 beats (4 bars of 5, or 5 bars of 4 equals 20). Everything would be going apeshit and it seemed like everybody was doing their own thing and all of a sudden we'd just hit this one place at the same time."

We began to play out more and more, doing everything from small clubs to pop festivals with audiences of over 300,000. We played with Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefhart and the Magic Band, the original Procol Harum (the best live band I ever heard), Mahavishnu Orchestra, Peter Greene's Fleetwood Mac (the loudest band we ever played with), John Mayall, N.R.B.Q. (the first time Al Anderson played with them), B.B. King, and Country Joe and the Fish. We started the Country Joe concert by shouting at the audience, "Give me an S, Give me an O, Give me an F, Give me an A. What's that spell?"

Mike Holbrook describes his first road trip with the band. "We were playing in Charlotte, N.C. We got there early, and it was raining and drizzling. We went out walking in the rain, and came upon a junk yard. We gathered up car parts and junk and dragged it all back to the club. We put it all on stage and then put our speakers on it. The whole stage was covered in junk. When we played that night, Bruce came out and had on shorts and flip flops and sang standing on a pizza. Then we went up to New York, driving in my old van that had a piece of pipe for a gear shift lever. We got there at 8:00 in the morning, right at rush hour. We were in the middle of the Holland tunnel when the gears to the van locked up. We blocked up traffic all through the tunnel. Bruce got out and crawled up under the van to pull the linkage, and he pulled out a yoga book of Jerry's. That's what caused the linkage to lock. Then we drove off real fast and ran into a bus."

Our shows grew increasingly weirder. The stage was frequently filled with friends doing anything from watching TV, doing a duet with the guitar on a chain saw, or sitting at a table eating cereal. Hampton, who at one point sported a crew cut with an H shaved in the back of his head, would tape himself to the microphone stand while talking to the audience about the supposed Portuguese invasion of the U.S. through Canada. At an outdoor show, Bruce slept through our set under a truck, while at another show, he turned around in the middle of a song, jumped in the air, and kicked Mike in the chest. Mike flew back into his amp, which he knocked over and short-circuited. Holbrook recalls another time when "we got the idea that we wanted to put mayonnaise all over our friend Eric Hubbler. We got a gallon of mayonnaise and Hubbler came out and sat down in a chair while the band was playing. I stuck my hand down in it and glopped it all over his head."

One night at The 12th Gate (our favorite local club), drummer Jerry Fields stood up in the middle of a song, froze motionless and stared off into space. We played the rest of the set without drums, and he stayed that way for over an hour, until everyone had left the building. Jerry recalls, "I went into a trance and I mentally told myself I wasn't going to move till everybody had left. I got way out, I don't know how I did it. People we're asking if I was ok, and wondering if they should call a paramedic. I just held that pose while the rest of the band was going apeshit. Hampton was literally climbing the walls. He was up in a corner near the ceiling with one foot on each wall, in a split with a microphone. There was a booking agent in the audience that night to hear us. After the show he told our manager `I don't know what they sound like, but I guess it doesn't matter'."

People seemed to either love the band or hate it. Harold recalls the time the band was chosen to warm up a crowd of ten thousand people at a Three Dog Night show in Alabama. "We went on stage and opened with `Apache' (a Ventures song). At the end of the song, the audience was hushed. They didn't know how to react to us. We went into `Evans' and about halfway through we heard the bleachers banging and people yelling and ranting. Then they started throwing jawbreakers and cups of ice at the stage." Holbrook, who was hit in the head with a flying object, remembers Harold going to the mike and telling the audience "C'mon down here, and I'll whip your ass."

At another show, we opened up for Alice Cooper in New Jersey. At the end of our set, half the audience was booing for us to get off, and the other half was yelling for more. As their cries grew louder and louder, they started standing up and yelling at each other, instead of at the band. It got so bad that the house lights had to be turned on and the ushers had to break up the crowd.

Columbia Records had heard about us, and was interested in signing the band. They didn't know how to contact us, so they called up Phil Walden, the head of Capricorn Records in Macon, and asked him if he knew how to reach us. Walden told them that the HGB was signed to a production deal with his company, despite the fact that none of us had ever met him. The band was in fact signed to Frank Hughes and Steve Cole, two well-intentioned but inexperienced local promoters who ran Discovery Inc. As soon as Walden got off the phone with Columbia, he contacted Discovery and told them that if the HGB signed with him, he thought he could get them a deal with a major label. Hughes and Cole went for it, and convinced us to sign with Walden. Both Discovery and the band were too naive to know we could have signed to Columbia without Walden's involvement. Walden recalls, "Some people at CBS were interested in the band because their Atlanta Pop Festival performance had a lot of people talking. I knew the two young guys who were handling the band, so when CBS called me, I called them up and we put the deal together."

Columbia advanced $75,000 for recording and promoting the band--a large amount at that time for a group's first effort. By the time the money made its way through the band's new "business arrangement", all that was left for recording and promotion was $17,000.

We went into the studio with recording engineer and close friend David Baker on Halloween weekend of 1970 (three years after the band had started). We recorded one album's worth of material (`Halifax', `Hendon' and `Evans'). Holbrook comments, "We did the whole thing in a couple of days. On `Hendon', we played straight through and only did one take. Right before we went into the studio to do `Halifax', Glenn added all of these little parts to it. We worked those things up in about 2 days. It was real quick. When I listen to it now, I wonder how in the hell did we do that? I mean, the song's 20 minutes long and there's a zillion parts and they're all different."

Jerry remembers us "recording it on an old 8 track that only had 5 tracks working. David Baker was real skeptical about the tape machine working at all. That's what he's talking about when you hear him say `Do it again, I don't trust this tape recorder' at the end of `Halifax'. We also had all these people in there for the yelling at the end of `Evans'. They were just walking around opening and closing doors, and you can hear some of that on the record." Mike remembers "everybody sitting around listening to the end of `Evans', the part where just Glenn and Harold are playing together. Everybody in the room knew that it was great. That moment stands out as a real point in time."

We sent the tapes to Columbia and they didn't know what to make of the music. The shortest song we sent them was 18 minutes long, and to them, it all sounded incredibly weird. They wanted something shorter and more commercial so they could get the record played on the radio, but they felt it was hopeless to try dealing with us. As one Columbia exec put it, "They were the straw that broke the camel's back, the most outrageous group anybody here ever had to deal with."

Columbia came up with the idea of releasing a double record, in hopes that if we had to do another album's worth of material, something on it was bound to be more commercial. They also sent down their new employee, Tom McNamee, to try to "work with the group". Unfortunately for Columbia, Tom was actually a fan of the band and had no real interest in trying to make us more radio-friendly. We recorded `Six', `Maria', `Hey Old Lady/Burt's Song, and two improvisational pieces that each featured one guitarist, instead of our usual double guitar lineup. `Lawton' was a one-take, live improvisation in the studio between myself and Jerry, while Harold's jam with Mike and Jerry occurs midway through `Six'. When we finished the 2nd album's worth of material, we sent it to Columbia. After they heard the tapes, Tom was fired.

Harold then began to put together the cover artwork. The front cover was a painting he had done with Espy Geissler. He filled up the inside with pictures of our friends. You couldn't tell who the band members were from the pictures. The largest photo was of four old high school friends with a drawing of a green lizard-guy in a suit, looking at them and saying "The 4 people (fraben) pictured here have complete control of the North American continent at this very second." The band's road manager Sam Whiteside (pictured with the acoustic guitar on the inside cover) drew the lizard and also most of the other inside art. There's also a reprint of a bad review of one of our shows which read in part:

On stage with the Grease Band were friends who danced, watched TV, listened to the music and marched around stage as if at home in their living room. One girl even read a book and another sewed on an American flag during the Grease Band's performance.

As to their `music'--and I use the term loosely--the band performed much the same way. Very little of what they did had any context within itself. The casual actions on stage relayed directly to the audience and caused wandering, talking and virtual unrest.

When Harold showed me what he had for the cover, I told him, "it's great, but this is for a double record. You need four pieces of cover art, but you've only got three. You don't have a back cover." He looked up and noticed a picture of a tank hanging by a thumbtack on his wall. He had drawn it years ago back in high school. He pulled it down and said, "we'll use this."

When Music To Eat was released in 1971, it received very little support from the label. Columbia felt they had already put out the money for promotion to Walden, but he didn't seem interested in putting any of the money he'd made on the band into promoting the record. Both Columbia and the band felt cheated.

Complicating things further, the sales people at Columbia didn't know what to make of the record. They frequently marketed it to stores as a comedy album, where it was filed alongside Don Rickles and Bill Cosby.

In a desperate attempt to try to straighten things out, our manager, Frank Hughes, began to hold frequent meetings with the band. Before the meetings, the band would make up a catch word, like "strenturgent". We'd use the word throughout the meeting, to see if we could get Frank to start using it. We'd continually complain of Columbia's "strenturgent" treatment of the group and by the end of the meeting Frank would be saying, "I don't think Columbia is treating the group strenturgently."

Holbrook recounts another incident. "We were at the Chelsea hotel in New York and Frank was on the phone doing all his business stuff. He was getting ready for a big CBS meeting and had his papers spread out all over his bed. Bruce came in the room and poured water all over them. Frank went nuts and Bruce started cackling." In retrospect, Frank was one of the best friends the band ever had, although I'm not sure he feels the same way about us.

Soon after the record came out, the band encountered a more serious problem than our relationship with the record company. We began to degenerate into petty infighting. We were all incredibly close and would sometimes argue, but things had grown worse and escalated to the point where Harold and the group split apart. Harold comments, "We began to go in different directions musically as well as spiritually and as these tensions increased, a split was inevitable." Although we had survived several personnel changes in the past, losing one of the 3 founding members was devastating to the band's chemistry. Although we continued playing for another two years, it was the beginning of the end of the Hampton Grease Band. I remember going home after the split and crying for a long time.

The band continued on, sometimes just the four of us, and other times with a different fifth member. Mike Greene (who went on to become the president of NARAS, the organization responsible for the Grammys) played with the band for a while, as did Syd Stiegal. Syd was a classical pianist who had never played a band job in his life. His first job with us was at the Fillmore East. Duane Allman, who was a fan of ours, had told Bill Graham that he should book us. We played there with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, the weekend that John Lennon sat in with them and they recorded a live album.

We played 2 nights and did 2 shows a night. We were told that we went over better than any new band that had ever played there. Kip Cohen (who ran the Fillmore East) wrote a letter to Clive Davis (who was at that time the head of CBS):

Dear Clive:

As you know, this is the first time I've ever written a letter like this one to you--but even though John Lennon and Yoko Ono guested on our stage last night, my memories of the past weekend will reside exclusively with the Hampton Grease Band.

Aside from their totally delightful, unique brand of humor, and the obvious fact of their being good people, there is a musical intelligence within that band that truly excites me.

I can only hope that they enjoy the total success they deserve. They were one of the most pleasant surprises we have had on our stage in many, many months.

An internal CBS memorandum to Clive Davis dated June 8, 1971 reads:

The Hampton Grease Band's Fillmore appearance on the weekend of June 5/6 was a total success. They received two encores and a standing ovation for every set they played.

Kip Cohen searched me out to tell me that the HGB members are among the finest musicians ever to grace the stage at the Fillmore. Glenn Phillips, their guitarist, was involved in a jam session with Frank Zappa and his enthusiasm was equal to that of Cohen.

The Hampton Grease Band could become cult heroes with the right kind of publicity.

The Fillmore job was a welcome morale boost. It was one of the only positive things that had happened to the band in a while. When we returned to Atlanta though, we were surprised to discover that neither our booking agency nor anybody at CBS would take our calls. To put it in the vernacular of the music business, the record company pulled the plug. Maybe CBS was pissed because they felt burned by the Walden deal, or maybe it was because they felt we were just too weird to deal with. After CBS dropped the band, we signed with Frank Zappa and Herb Cohen's Bizarre/Straight label and management. Although Frank was very supportive of the band, our experience with Herb was a complete nightmare. At one point, he actually sent the guy who produced `Snoopy versus the Red Baron' to try to produce us.

In 1973, Bruce heard that Frank Zappa was holding auditions for a vocalist. He quit the band and went to California to try out, but didn't get the job. Although I was disappointed when Bruce left, in retrospect I'm glad he did. The band broke up as a result of his leaving, and had he stayed we probably would have made a second record. To be honest, if we had recorded at that point in time, I don't think it would have been very good. I'm glad that Music to Eat is left on its own to represent the times that the band shared. We were all incredibly lucky to have run into each other when we did.

Trying to sum up what the Hampton Grease Band was all about is difficult. It was an intensely musical group with an intensely non-musical singer, or as Jerry Fields put it, "music versus anti-music". We were also definitely a product of the 60's, yet we were oddly out of step with the times. I guess this joint interview with Harold, Bruce, and myself from 1968 explains us as well as anything could.

What's Grease?

It's a concept of music.---It's a concept of life.---It means lobster eggs and ointment.---It means basically to suck, yeah, basically to suck.---It's hard to define.--- See, our main ambition in life, aside from growing a bosom on top of our heads is to die on stage. When we die on stage that will be when we ultimately reach Grease.

What kind of music is it?

Suckrock. It's a combination between suckrock and ointment.---It's all a form of eggs; it all leads back to eggs.---The goal is complete expression. When you completely attain this expression, you won't sound like anybody. You have your own sound and you just destroy. What we want people to do is just come in and hear Grease and to destroy.---Yeah, that's it.

Since the band's breakup:

Harold Kelling formed the Starving Braineaters after he left the HGB, and released a single under his own name in 1982. He's currently playing with two groups - Creatures del Mar, and Masters of the Edge.

Bruce Hampton formed the Hampton `Geese' Band after he left the HGB. He later re-signed with Phil Walden, and released two albums with The Aquarium Rescue Unit. He's currently performing with the Fiji Mariners.

Glenn Phillips has released 10 instrumental albums, including the double CD retrospective Echoes. He also plays with the Supreme Court, whose recent CD featured cover art by Harold Kelling.

Mike Holbrook played with the Mike Greene Band, who released two albums in the 70's. He currently plays part time with the Supreme Court and the Glenn Phillips Band. He appears on two of Glenn's albums.

Jerry Fields went back to college, where he graduated with a degree in music. He was a member of the Late Bronze Age with Bruce, and played on their recording, as well as on three of Glenn's albums. He also teaches percussion.

Special thanks to:

Phil McMullen, for his in-depth interviews both with myself and Harold Kelling, which were printed in his superb publication Ptolemaic Terrascope. They were invaluable.

I also drew freely from other articles on the band, including those written by Tony Paris, Jeff Calder, Mitchell Feldman, David T. Lindsay, The Great Speckled Bird and The New York Times.

I also greatly appreciated the band members taking the time to let me interview them. They were essential in my attempt to accurately recount the band's history.

Frank Hughes and Steve Cole for putting up with an endless barrage of bullshit from the band.

Bill Fibben, Carter Tomassi, Miller Francis, Linda Fibben, Cliff Endres and everybody else at The Great Speckled Bird. It's hard to imagine the HGB without their friendship and support.

Charles Mingus, for coming to our album release performance in New York, even if it was just for the free food.

Lastly, thanks to my dad. Although he initially disapproved of the band, when the record was released he took it to the main building of his company, Metropolitan Life Insurance, in New York. He tapped into the skyscraper's sound system and played the double album non-stop throughout the entire work day.

© 1996 Glenn Phillips / all rights reserved. The Hampton Grease Band is also featured in the book, "Unknown Legends of Rock n' Roll" by Richie Unterberger.

CREDITS:

HAROLD KELLING-guitar, vocals
GLENN PHILLIPS-guitar, saxophone
BRUCE HAMPTON-vocals, trumpet
MIKE HOLBROOK-bass
JERRY FIELDS-percusion, vocals

CD 1 (69:10)

1. HALIFAX (19:36)-music by Glenn Phillips lyrics by Glenn Phillips and Bruce Hampton
2. MARIA (5:27)-music and lyrics by Glenn Phillips
3. SIX (19:31)-music by Harold Kelling lyrics by Harold Kelling and Bruce Hampton
4. EVANS (17:48)-music by Harold Kelling and Glenn Phillips lyrics by Bruce Hampton
5. LAWTON (7:48)-Glenn Phillips and Jerry Fields

CD 2 (51:50)

1. HEY OLD LADY/BURT'S SONG (3:19)-music by Harold Kelling lyrics by Charlie Phillips and Bruce Hampton
2. HENDON (20:13)-music by Harold Kelling, Glenn Phillips, Jerry Fields and Mike Holbrook lyrics by Bruce Hampton

Cycling News and Therapy

Lance Armstrong and seven of his U.S. Postal Service teammates will race in the Tour de Georgia, April 20-25. The 7-stage race starts in Macon and features one mountaintop finish. The event's 630 miles will include 30,000 feet of climbing.

This will be Lance's first appearance in a U.S. stage race since beginning his streak of five victories in the Tour de France. www.tourdegeorgia.com

[the following is an excert from "Uncle Al's Rant" of roadbikerider.com]

Your Two-Wheeled Therapist

Ever notice that when you're forced off of your bike for more than a week, your mind starts to crumble?

Small tasks become larger than life. You get a little short with everyone around you. You feel like kicking the dog, the cat looks like Satan (probably is) and the fish in your tank mock you.

That's because you're missing sessions with your therapist: Dr. Colnago, Dr. Serotta, Dr. Merlin, Dr. Waterford, Dr. Klein -- whoever your doc is.

I can't think of anything more calming than a couple of hours on my bike. Group therapy might be fine, but nothing works better than a one-on-one session with the pedals.

Fifteen minutes into the ride, you feel yourself starting to open up and talk about what's bugging you.

At 45 minutes you realize it's pretty damn silly to get so uptight about how your spouse brushes their teeth or that a seemingly rude person is just trying to be a comedian.

After an hour, you move into a state of reflection and calmness. You start to notice the scenery and appreciate how lucky you are to be able have these sessions and sort through all your gremlins.

You cruise back home with all the planets once again aligned. Aaaahhh! Endorphins are so cool!

Tips for these sessions:

---It's okay to talk out loud. Non-cyclists already think we're nuts.

---Primal screams are fine and can be very effective (particularly if a dog decides to interrupt the session). However, I don't recommend it when police are within earshot.

Wet and Overcast

Coaching Biz: I was working with my athletes this morning for hours. As the 2004 racing season is rapidly approaching and the months of preparing are behind most, the time for race-specific workouts is now upon us. For some, high-priority events are only weeks away, others have their sights set on championships which happen later in the season. Either way the pressure of soon standing on the starting line with a hundred other well-prepared racers is being felt by all, including the coach.

The folks that are putting together the official Tour de Georgia race guide want me to place an ad for my coaching services. I currently have as many athletes as I can handle at this time so I may opt-out.

Health and Fitness: Even though the weather was not very inviting and the activities got started late, I had a good ride around the 25-mile loop with Doug on my wheel most of the way. I'm so glad to be feeling a little better and slowly regaining some of my focus and form.

Fifty-Three Miles

Along with Matt and Doug, I took a ride around the "Walton County" loop. This route has a couple of good hills, but mainly it's rollers. The course uses a few of the same roads as the "Harbins Winter Ride", including the high-speed off-camber turn onto Jack Pittman Road, the scene of my crash two weeks ago. The weather was great and the wind was blowing in an unusual direction providing us with a tailwind for the ride back home.

I started recording my ride from home but stopped the computer at Doug and Matt's house while I waited for them to get ready (I was a little early). Anyway, I forgot to turn it back on until we had gone about 9 miles, 26 minutes later. So the following graph is not complete and the huge altitude drop at at mile 2.3 is not a cliff, it is just when I remembered to turn on the HRM/computer.

Working Hard

Web Biz: Aerus Composites website is online as of today. The site is not totally complete yet, there will be a "random image" script at the top of each page instead of the big static logo that's there now. The images will be action shots from the 2004 professional bicycle racing season.

Next on the agenda: Wood & Fullerton Goodyear coupons, tire locater and store updates.

Music Biz: This evening I'll be playing with Susan Taylor at the 755 Club located in Turner Field, "club level" overlooking left/center field.

I received the contract for a job at another big venue, Phillips Arena, on June 9th. Actually we (Dan Coy trio) are a small part of some huge event that day which includes entertainers of all sorts throughout the arena.

The Dan Coy Trio will perform this coming weekend for an exclusive Valentine's Day dinner at the Piedmont Driving Club. Francine Reed will be performing in main ballroom that same evening.

25-Mile Loop

Rode around the "Mt. Moriah-Doc Hughes" loop this afternoon, with Doug in tow. The headwind seemed steady but the sky was clear and the temp was almost 50º Fahrenheit - basically a great day for a ride. Road rash is clearing up nicely but the fractures of the left elbow and clavicle require extra care still.

Mostly steady "top of zone-1" workout.

Georgia Birds

A couple of days ago, when there was ice hanging from the trees, I noticed a bluejay in our yard looking for food. I remembered that we had a partial bag of bird seed in the cupboard so I threw it on the front yard. Yesterday I noticed that a squirrel had finally discovered the seed. This morning, as I sit at the computer looking out the window, I am watching mostly bluejays, but in the past several minutes there has also been red-bellied woodpecker, cardinals, sparrows, robins and wren. I am using these great little binoculars I got for Christmas and the internet to identify the birds.

On last Saturday's bike ride, as I rode along Union Grove Circle, a rural road on the edge of Gwinnett and Barrow counties, I came upon about 25 huge Black Vultures sitting on the fences and along the road. Some of them flew away as I approached but most of them stayed, less than 10-feet away from me. I've never seen anything like it. Finally I spotted what the attraction was; a large deer laying in the ditch beside the road, it looked like it had just died.

Unfortunately, around here the dead deer on the side of the road are rarely the victim of traffic but usually the result of a "hunter" who spots them from his vehicle and simply rolls down the window and shoots them.

Yesterday while Samantha and I walked/jogged up Waldrop Rd. we stopped not far from the pond and watched the Canada Geese, Mallards, and ducks swimming and diving about. I wasn't aware how fast those birds can swim. I meant to go back with my camera, while the light was so perfect, but it didn't happen.