Table Of Contents

1. Cassette Decks—That Are Really Radios

2. Equalizers : With Free Reverb—Whether You Want It Or Not

3. Multitrack Recorders—“Rocky The Flying Squirrel” & Fostex The Flying Multitrack

4. Amplifiers—That Die Like The Terminator (Impedance Is Important)

5. Power Supplies—Polarity Is Important, too)

6. All Things Must Eventually Come To An End—Like This Post And Other Things.

1. Cassette Decks—That Are Really Radios

Here’s a story about a young boy’s inquisitiveness about how cassette players work :

Back in 1975, when I was 12 years old, I had a monoaural cassette recorder/player very much like the one pictured above.

One day, the unit’s wheels stopped “moving”—i.e., pressing the “play” button generated a hissing sound, coming out of the lone speaker, so I knew there was current flowing in the circuitry; but the tape wheels would not move (e.g., no play, fast forward, or rewind).

So, I turned the unit over on its belly, removed the five or six tiny screws that held the back plate on, and removed the plate, to expose ALL the electronic guts of the machine.

My goal, of course, was to see if there were any immediately-visible reasons to indicate why the wheels weren’t moving (perhaps a large rubber band inside had snapped, or the hamster died or whatever).

I learned MANY years later that there were two types of drive systems—direct drive and belt-driven; but I was NOT aware of those aspects at that time; I was just a clueless freckled-face kid with a screwdriver and a boatload of questions of “how things work”, or why they weren’t working.

Instead of seeing any glaringly obvious causes for the cassette deck’s refusal to operate correctly, all I saw was a circuit board with a billion solder points.

With the unit still plugged into the wall’s live electrical outlet, I started poking around with my screwdriver, randomly touching solder points with an inquisitive “I-wonder-what-would-happen-if-I-touched-THIS?” experimental approach.

You’re probably thinking I’m going to say that I caused a spark and got shocked. LOL. But no.

Instead, at approximately the 15th or 20th “touch” I suddenly heard……RADIO.

Specifically, the “W-C-F-L” station identification musical jingo. LOL.

“Wow! A cassette deck can also be a radio!” I realized as I kept touching and untouching that particular contact point.

I would later learn that a variable rheostat, and some additional current-modifying components like resistors and capacitors, were the only things needed to turn a cassette deck into a radio, as well.

But, I decided to just buy a radio instead. Much cheaper that way. LOL. I wasn’t going to try to convert my cassette deck into an AM transistor radio.

2. EQUALIZERS (With  Free Reverb—Whether You Want It Or Not)

Another piece of gear that had presented me with questions  was a Radio Shack® stereo equalizer that, in its last days, started to ADD REVERB to any signal passing through the unit.

How?

I have no clue.

The EQ itself, did not contain any reverb features—hence, NOT EVEN a BUTTON to press to “engage” a reverb effect.

Nor, did I have a reverb unit in the chain.

Just a turntable, the equalizer, and a cassette deck  that I monitored through HEADPHONES, NOT SPEAKERS and nothing else. There were neither amplifiers nor any effects hooked up.

Yet, with only a turntable, an equalizer, and a stereo tape deck, I was somehow generating “reverb”—and lots of it; too much, in fact.

Moreover, the unwanted effect was NOT adjustable in any way (e.g., choices between “large hall”, “small room’, “spring reverb”, “early reflections”, etc).

The effect had an extremely long decay (i.e., longer than 8 seconds) which made it very “long tunnel”-like in its effect.

I started to notice the problem, when my sister, Linda, asked me to record her a couple of Elton John tapes—in this case, “Goodbye Yellowbrick Road” and “Elton John’s Greatest Hits, Vol.1.

I booted up the system, put side one of the first album on, and I saw the two VU meters responding WITHIN range , and that’s usually indicative of a good, strong signal,  so, I didn’t bother to put on the headphones to verify the “quality” of the sound being recorded, and instead, I just walked away to go upstairs go take care of other matters while side one played and was recorded on tape.

20 minutes later, or so, when I came back down the stairs into the basement, a moment or so after the album side had already finished playing and the turntable’s arm had automatically returned to it’s non-playing position in the cradle, I had to rewind the tape back a few seconds, to VERIFY that something was recorded, and that the signal was not too strong or two weak. 

But the moment I pressed the “Play” button, I heard what I thought was a LIVE recording—you could hear a  heavy dose of reverb—even though the albums were studio recordings, not live.

“Huh. Wow! Where’s that effect coming from?” I kept asking myself while I stared at the unit, completely dumbfounded by “how” it was happening.

I had NO standalone “reverb unit” hooked up in the system. In fact, at that time, I’ve DIDN’T even have any reverb units in my arsenal of equipment—I never did. I still don’t! 

To be sure, I have TONS of reverb effects at my disposal, but they’re all part of a multi-effect unit that has other effects, as well, such as modulation effects ( chorus, flanger, resonator, etc) and delay units, but nothing like say, the Yamaha REV500  which was, at that time, a high-end standalone unit

In any case, the EQ’s “unintended” reverb effect was unmistakable; you couldn’t “not” hear it.

I was so perplexed.

I then connected the turntable directly to the cassette deck, and Presto, no reverb!

Returned to the previous 3-way setup, and there it was again. LOTS of Reverb.

“What the…?” was all I could think of as I stared at the EQ.

“How in the heck are you adding an effect that you don’t even officially offer?” I wondered as though the unit could somehow telepathically answer my question.

Unfortunately, the effect was so intense, that it made the studio recordings sound NOT like live music from a stage, per se, but rather like a band playing down a very long tunnel.

It was an ugly sound that killed all clarity, including making the vocals ( hence, the lyrics) difficult to hear—almost like those recordings where the vocals have been digitally removed from a recording for Karaoke applications, but the band is still “playing down that long tunnel”.

So, I disconnected the unit, and never used it again—well, I couldn’t, unless I wanted a ton of unwanted non-complimentary reverb added to a mix, which, of course, I wouldn’t want.

3. Multitrack Recorders—“Rocky The Flying Squirrel” & Fostex The Flying Multitrack

One four-track unit that I had back in the mid-1980’s, was the Fostex® X-15, which generates two stories I’d like to share.

A. “Coming To An Expressway Near You.”

The X-15 had a pretty cool feature that no other unit (that I was aware of) possessed at that time in the history of portable multi-track recording equipment : it could be operated via either :

[a] alternating current (AC—plug into the wall); or

[b] direct current (DC—battery-operated).

The only real negative to the battery-use option, was that the unit used something like six or eight “D” batteries (I forget the exact count—it’s been more than 30 years now—but I know it was not a tiny” three AA-Battery setup).

In any case, because of the fact that the unit would drain those batteries ultra quickly, I didn’t use the battery option at all at home (and you’re probably going to laugh when I tell you where I did use the battery option—my buddy, Jim [R.I.P., Jim] , laughed).

Specifically, at that time, in the spring and summer of 1989, I was living at my parents house on Elm Avenue in Brookfield, Illinois, when my father was incapacitated from a stroke triggered by a brain tumor (i.e., brain cancer).

When my parents first moved into the house, my father was healthy (or so we thought) and his bedroom was up on the second floor; but after he had his stroke, and he was largely paralyzed with aphasia, going up and down those stairs was no longer an option, so, we set up his bedroom in the dining room on the first floor with one of those hospital beds bestowed upon us from the American Cancer Society (Thank you, ACS).

My studio? Was directly below him in the basement.

Since I never really recorded with amps and microphones, and instead elected to go direct into the recorder NON-acoustically, and use headphones to monitor the recordings and playback, “noise” was never a problem.

But, when it came to vocal tracks, that was something that could not be recorded in a way that my father wouldn’t hear the noise, so, I really couldn’t record vocal tracks in the basement.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a garage either.

So….

I’d wait until dark, because I didn’t want to be seen, I’d pack the X-15 with the batteries, and load up my 1987 Chevy Nova (it was identical to the Toyota Carolla of the same year—it was a Chevy/Toyota venture)  with the recorder, a microphone, and a modified mic stand that was taller than those mic stands used to record drums, but shorter than a typical mic stand for a vocalist standing up. Somewhere in between, thanks to a Sawzall.

I’d set up the stand in the passenger section of the front seat of the car, position the mic to reach my face while I sat in the driver’s seat, and put the recorder in record mode, on pause.

Then…onto the expressway (LOL) .

Yep, you guessed it, I did my vocal tracks while driving down the highway.

Ok, you done laughing yet?….

I know, when I told my lifelong buddy, Jim, that story, he just busted a gut laughing at the top of his lungs, and said, ” I can just see it if you ever make it famous, your concert promotions will entail posters that read “Floyd…Coming To an Expressway Near You!” and everyone else joined in on the laughter.

It’s difficult to deny that the joke was pretty funny.

Anyway, the reason that I didn’t want to be seen, had nothing to do with a fear of looking “silly” or anything like that, but rather a fear that, if a cop saw me in the plain light of day, with headphones on  while  singing, and driving down the expressway at 60 miles-per-hour, he would’ve been likely to pull me over for “distracted” driving, a charge that didn’t officially exist back then (I don’t think) , but in actuality, I’ve seen cops pull people over for all kinds of reasons like having the radio blaring too loud, or whatever, and I just didn’t want to give any officer an opportunity to take away my only avenue to recording vocals uninterrupted.

Recording while being parked was not a realistic option, it seemed, because I didn’t know where I could go, to park, record my tracks, without being seen and interrupted by bypassers. 

Specifically, on the one hand, if I was to, say, pull into a parking lot at a mall when it’s open, my car might blend in with the hundreds of other cars in the parking lot with me, but there are shoppers everywhere walking through the parking lot either leaving, or returning to, their cars, so, I was only going to encounter other shoppers walking through the parking lot and witnessing some dude singing into a microphone, inside his car, with the windows closed, and no audible music to hear along with the singing—just the singing alone.

I wouldn’t want to be “on stage” in that way.

On the other hand, if I went into those same parking lots after hours (with no customers around), I’d be the only car in the lot, and I’d stick out like a flashing neon sign, and surely, mall security police, doing  their rounds, would undoubtedly see me parked there, and then come to investigate the reasons for my presence, because I’d understandably look like I was “up to no good”—someone loitering after hours? Always suspicious.

Either way, it would have been either daytime customers or nighttime police/security that would be interrupting me…constantly.

So, the one place that I knew no one would bother me, is when I’m moving—especially at high speeds like 60 mph or faster; and, in the dark of night, when fellow drivers can’t see through closed windows—especially tinted ones).

The MOST PRIVATE recording studio on wheels that you can get.

B. Not “Bats in the Belfry” But “Squirrels In The Basement”.

I had opened this post with the story of a monaural cassette deck whose wheels stopped moving. That unit was a direct drive unit—i.e., the capstans were driven directly by a tiny motor.

But, the X-15 was belt-driven. I found that out, when , just like the mono deck, the wheels stopped moving, and I took off the back plate to investigate if the problem was “user-serviceable” or not, and fortunately, it was. 

Immediately, I saw the broken belt just laying against the circuit board , which, if it wasn’t broken, would’ve measured approximately three inches in diameter.

Not having any rubber bands of the same size just laying around the house , I ended up going to a place in Berwyn, Illinois that is now defunct, but I think it was called B&W Electronics which was on Cermak Road (22nd Street).

I ordered the EXACT belt from them and picked it up about a week later.

I put it on, and despite being the exact belt spec’d for that machine, it fell off the drive system frequently, and I got tired of taking out and putting the machine’s back plate screws back in, so I decided to just put the unit back together with no screws, so that every time the belt fell off, it was just a matter of flipping the unit on its face, wrapping the belt around the motor pulley, and laying the unit face up with its underside inside the backing plate, and continue working.

My “no-screws-installed”  approach cut my downtime from five minutes to 20 seconds per incident; that was a major time-saver.

Here is where it gets kind of funny—I say “kind of” because it wasn’t funny at that time. In retrospect, though, it’s difficult to not laugh when “cute” animals are involved.

The way I had my studio set up was NOT like a stage with all the gear spread out, but rather, more like the cockpit of an airplane ( i.e., I was completely surrounded), where everything was squeezed within arm’s reach—keyboards, recorders, effects units, guitars etc.; and pretty much everything was shoulder-high if you were standing in the middle of it all.

Specifically, what happened was one evening, I had my headphones on, and I was playing on my Yamaha SY22, and suddenly…..

The big bushy tail of a squirrel walked right past my face along an eight-foot long 1″x8″ at shoulder height in the basement.

I freaked out (i.e., being that most people don’t have squirrels in their basement—so I wasn’t exactly accustomed to having my face come within six inches of the razor-sharp claws of non-domesticated rodent) and I tripped over the cord that was going from the mixing board into the inputs on the Fostex.

When I tripped on that cord, I ended up inadvertently yanking the X-15 off the table and as it was airborne, the backing plate (i.e., with no screws in it to keep it attached to the unit) fell away immediately to the floor, while the rest of the unit took a less direct path, and flew about ten feet or so, in my direction, and when the exposed circuit boards of the unit hit the concrete floor in the basement, I saw sparks fly from the unit’s underside, and I knew that wasn’t good.

Sure as shit, when I stood above the unit, it showed that Track 1 was in record mode–permanently!

Pressing the stop button, and disarming the track would not turn the led lights off. Track one was now in permanent record mode. The X-15 was now a three-track unit.

I took it to a one-man operation who worked out of his garage in Brookfield near the tracks at Prarie Avenue, and when I walked into his place, I saw hundreds of pieces of gear, which were all current units waiting ahead of me.

I was not confident that I’d get the unit back quickly, but I didn’t see any other options, since the unit was no longer under any kind of warranty, and I wasn’t aware of any Fostex-authorized service centers in my area.

And I was right. In fact, not only did it take forever (about three months) , when I got it back it was NOT fixed.

Why not?

The guy told me he couldn’t get his hands on the parts since the unit was no longer in production, and no vendors that he dealt with had access to Fostex parts.

So, the unit came back to me in the same condition it was when I dropped it off—broken.

As far as the subject of the squirrels is concerned, they got into the house, when the roofers forgot to patch a hole in the side of the house they left.

We called the Humane Society of Hinsdale, and they brought us several non-lethal traps to catch them, and they worked.

But, I’ll never forget the sight of that unit “surfing along the concrete” with sparks flying out from underneath.

It literally took me about a year to get up the “courage” to retire the unit to the great landfill in the sky. It was heart-breaking to throw it into the garbage can.

It was nowhere near the pain of losing, say, a family, pet, but it had sentimental value attached to it in other ways.

4. Amplifiers—That Die Like The Terminator (Impedance Is Important)

The particular piece of gear that I’d like to elaborate on in this section, didn’t even belong to me, but rather, the company that I worked for in the mid-90’s : The Soundpost—a three-store chain of musical instruments (i.e., guitars, keyboards, drums, and P.A. systems mostly—everything a garage band needs to get started)  located in the three Chicago suburbs of Lagrange, Evanston/Skokie, and the headquarters, in Mount Prospect, all of which closed for good in the early 2000’s, because of the competition from the Guitar Center (and I might be wrong—but I think Sam Ash was also on the Chicago scene in the mid-90’s) : what we sold for $99, GC gave away for $49. Any informed person who wanted to save that $50 knew they weren’t going to buy from us.

In this case, a young kid approximately 15 years old ( I don’t think he was even old enough to drive a car yet) came into the store looking for a beginner’s setup, and he was walking around the guitar department just scoping things out, when I walked into the room and he explained to me what he was looking for, and the answer was simple. He needed the beginners rocker setup which entailed :

[1] A “strat” style Fender Squier (Squiers also came in “Tele” styles, as well) ; and

[2] a Fender Champ Amp, which was a tiny either 15- or 20-watt single-speaker combo amp for beginners.

I believe we sold the two pieces together as a kit, for around $159 (whereas GC, always had us beat by $60—$99, when their promotions were on) and we had one setup in the front window for the general public to see, which is what brought a lot of young guitarist-wannabees into the store in the first place.

In any case, it was obvious from the fact that he had neither a thick wallet in his back pocket nor any monied parents standing right next to him, that he probably wasn’t going to be buying anything that day anyway. He was simply window shopping from inside the store.

But there was nothing else going on on that dead day, so I was game to play along this kid’s imaginary shopping spree, just to keep me busy and help time pass by much more quickly.

He told me his price range, and our $159 setup in the store front window was exactly what he needed.

So, I grabbed one of the Squiers he was looking at, off the wall hook, and walked it over to a The Champ Amp that was sitting on top of a Marshall 4-by-12 cabinet, plugged it in with a 1/4″ instrument cable, turned down the volume to a low setting , flipped the power switch on, handed him the guitar, and said something along the lines of “Check it out, man. I gotta go to the storeroom for a second, and I’ll be right back, and let me know what you think of the setup.”

With that, I walked away to give him a couple of minutes to fiddle around with all the buttons and knobs on the guitar and amp and decide if he wanted to go with that kit, or something else that I might not have anticipated.

When I returned to the guitar department, he was pretty much doing the exact same thing he was doing when I left :  touching snobs and listening to things.

Not knowing any chords or scales, there really wasn’t anything that he could do to “operate” the gear in any “playing” sense, so, I walked over to him to bring the kit to life, by actually playing something for him to listen to.

Next to the Champ / Marshall display, was another amp bottom, with an effects pedal on it that a previous customer was checking out, which we had not yet had a chance to put back in its display.

That was convenient. I plugged the guitar into the pedal and the re-routed the pedal into the Champ amp, so he could hear how it all sounded out of the setup we were using.

I forget the exact model of effects pedal, but I think it was a Digitech® and I seem to remember the letters RPG or something along those lines. The cool thing about that pedal is that it had built-in accompaniment (i.e., drums and bass patterns to jam along with) and there was this one patch that had a “galloping” drum and bass pattern that was similar to UFO’s, “Lights Out”, so I pulled that patch up and started to jam along in A Minor pentatonic, and the kid’s eyes opened up like, “Whoa! WTF! Wow! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! I just gotta gave it!”.

“I wonder what that would sound like coming out of that Marshall on the bottom.” the kid inquired.

Here is where the story gets “funny” :

Growing up, my understanding of amps was pretty much limited to : [a] “a 100-watt bottom can handle a 50-watt head; but [b] the opposite is not true, that a 50-watt bottom can take a 100-watt head, since the 100-watt head could blow the speakers that are rated for only 50 watts.

My understanding was limited to the output of watts (power). What I was not familiar with, was the opposite: “resistance”, or “impedance” which is measured in Ohms.

What I didn’t know at that moment in time, was that even though :

[1] The 100-watt bottom was in no danger of being hurt by the 20-watt amp;

[2] the 20-watt head was in danger from the 100-watt bottom.

How?

The impedance load was not correct for that application. When I plugged the amp into the bottom, the mismatch of the impedance loads, burned the head within 10 seconds, or so.

If you remember one of the last scenes in the original Terminator movie, the character, Sarah Connors, finally terminates the terminator by crushing him in some hydraulic machinery, and says, “You’re terminated, Fucker!” and when the terminator finally “dies” you can see his eye ( lit up brightly like a red LED ) slowly fade to black.

The Terminator was dead.

Well, that’s exactly how the LED on the Champ amp faded to black when I plugged that tiny head into the high-powered bottom.

The LED was bright red, but when I started to play the guitar, the sound got fuzzy, and died out almost immediately, as I watched the red led die out slowly.

Then, there was nothing. No sound; no LED.

“Hmm. What happened there?” I wondered as I gave the amp a smack on the side of the cabinet just to see if something shorted out, or whatever.

It was pointless. It was dead. We had plenty other Champ amps in stock, but this one was going nowhere, at least, as far as a sale was concerned.

Unfortunately, the kid didn’t have a penny on him, so that was a “no sale” anyway.

My assistant manager later told me to write up the amp as a “defect” and send it back to Fender for warranty replacement, even though he knew it got fried as a result of an employee who didn’t understand impedance loads, as they related to relationships between amp heads and bottoms.

Well, now I know. LOL!

5. Power Supplies—Polarity Is Important, too

Lastly, back in the pre-internet days, classified ads came in the form of printed newspapers , in this case, the Trading Times ( I wonder, is the Trading Times even around anymore?).

I used to peruse that periodical on a weekly basis just to see if there were any “deal of the century”-type of sales going on in regards to the equipment I sought.

In this particular incident, I saw a synth for sale : a Korg Poly 800, which, was being sold by a private party somewhere in the Bensenville area. So, I went and bought it from some guy, who gave me the wrong (unbeknownst to me) power supply. It had the correct power rating, but the polarity of the keyboard was the exact opposite of the polarity of the power supply—i.e., what the keyboard defined as the red lead, the power supply defined as the black lead.

When I got the thing home, plugged the power supply in, and turned the unit on, it got blown up that very second : a $300 purchase fried the moment I plugged it in. Talk about a short life span; and unlike the Champ amp’s “slow” fade to death, the Korg’s was immediate–the digital readout got real bright, as the elements that form the characters in the screen flickered mometarily and shut off.

“That’s not good.” I thought to myself as I shook my head in disappointment having not heard a single sound from the keyboard before it’s electronic demise.

So, I ended up taking the unit to a place called ATS (Advanced Technical Services) which was located up in Schiller Park, who ended up keeping it for almost three months by the time I got it back. They did great work, it just sucked that I had to wait so long to get it back repaired. 

I knew it was not going to be a quick turnaround once I saw all the equipment ahead of me—it made the guy I took my Fostex to, look like he had “no customers” compared to these guys. There was a shelving rack that went almost to the ceiling, and those items, were still waiting to be looked at.

Anyway, by the time I got it back, they had supplied me with a new power supply that was correct in power specs and polarity settings, and explained to me what had happened—i.e., why the unit got smoked in the first place.

. 

6. All Things Must Eventually Come To An End—Like This Post And Other Things.

Over the years, I’ve had so many pieces of gear that there are some I don’t ever remembering having in the first place.

I was looking at some old photos taken back in the day, and I’ve seen things in certain pictures like particular acoustic guitars, and thought, “Who’s is that?”only to realize it’s sitting next to gear I do remember having. So, It must’ve been mine. I just don’t remember having it.

I’ve also had gear that I do remember having, but I don’t remember ever selling, trashing, or otherwise lending out to someone.

One minute I had it; the next, it was gone.

“Where did it go?” is a question I’ll probably never find the answer to 30-plus years after the fact.

I also remember building a purple velvet-covered 6×10 cabinet (with six  100-watt Jensens, I think they were called “Celestions”, if memory serves) when I was in either late 8th-grade or early high school, that I had blown up more than once.

The speakers had to be re-coned, as they called it, probably four or five times at approximately, $60 a pop ($10 per speaker—in the late 1970’s dollars— at The Music Stop, in Lagrange on Lagrange Road about a block south of 47th street, on the east side a Lagrange Road—it’s been gone for decades!).

I also tried to pull a ” Jimmy Page/Roger Fischer/Alex Lifeson” by incorporating a violin bow into my guitar technique, but I never quite got the hang of it the way those pros did, so, that idea fell by the wayside—even though I still have a violin bow should I ever want to experiment with that technique again in the future; and I do—I just want it to sound awesome , and not like crappola.

If you ever listen to Alex Lifeson’s violin-bow-on-a-guitar solo on “By-Tor And The Snow Dog” on Rush’s live album, “All The World’s A Stage”, that was the sound I wanted to emulate with my violin bow.

For a while, I thought the guitars had special curved bridges to make the strings in the middle (i.e., strings two through five) more accessible; but no. There’s nothing “modified” about those guitars to make the violin bow more usable.

Below is a linked video to a YouTuber by the name of johnny crank, who used a violin bow on this recording—and he just happens to have on a Led Zeppelin tee shirt for the occasion. But you get the idea of what I was trying to do. 

But the pieces of “gear” that I miss the most, aren’t the instruments, speakers or tape recorders, but rather the musicians I used to jam with.

Specifically, there were three musicians that have long since departed life here on earth.

Danny

The first one was a drummer by the name of Danny Masicka, who was a year older than me, and although we jammed regularly throughout my  7th and 8th grades in Junior High, by the time Danny got into his sophmore year in high school, he ended up transferring to a different school and ultimately hooked up with musicians that were a little more  accomplished in their achievements in the way of having  played out professionally (i.e., for money) which we had not yet achieved : all our jam sessions were impromptu arrangements at house parties, whereas Danny’s new band mates were playing at Youth Centers and the like.

Even though we hadn’t played together in 30 years, Danny and I still kept in touch, and talked on the phone probably once every two or three weeks between 2010 and 2016.

Sometimes, I wouldn’t be available to answer the phone when he’d call, so he’d leave me a message and hang up.

Well, I saved a few of those messages, which lets me hear Danny’s voice, even though he’s gone forever.

Danny passed away in 2016 or 2017. His phone number is somebody else’s now.

Recently, I “talked” in a Facebook private message with one of his sisters, Lauren, and I asked her whatever became of Danny’s drum kit (thinking that if it was still in the family somewhere, if I could buy it from them, for sentimental reasons). But, unfortunately, Lauren told me that the drums were sold with his house after he passed.

Mark

Mark was our bass player back in the same band with Danny.

Although I was nowhere near as close to Mark as I was with Danny, after our band dis-banded, I ended up rubbing shoulders with Mark far more often than with Danny, because Mark’s circle of friends were geographically closer to me than Danny’s were.

Mark hung around the Lyons area, where I lived and knew a lot of other people; whereas Danny’s friends were in Oak Park, where I didn’t know a soul and I never traveled to, without an official need to.

After Danny split for his new band in Oak Park, Mark and I didn’t have a drummer, which really didn’t affect Mark for very long, since he soon joined a group that was headquartered just a few blocks from his house, with a guitarist by the name of Scott Riskie (not sure of the correct spelling of Scott’s surname) who had a band that, utilmately ended up calling themselves “Rescue” (I think—again, it’s been decades since then and a lot of details have gotten fuzzied along the way ).

They had been together for many years, throughout the eighties and into the nineties, and I remember seeing them play at a bar called Franik’s in Berwyn, on a Saturday night.

Then, in 2005 or 2006, Mark passed away.

I was working the day of his wake at Tower Funeral Home in Lyons, but I made it there on time to pay my respects.

Jimmy

Jim Spolar. was my best friend throughout grade school.

We had done so many things together—especially in the realm of substance abuse.

We started smoking cigarettes with each other; we started drinking alcohol with each other ; we started smoking weed with each other; we started having girlfriends; and a whole lot of other cool things that I’ll save for another post.

If there was a “first” for everything, Jim and I did it together. We were inseparable; and I miss those days.

We even started playing guitar with each other.

First I got an acoustic, then Jim immediately asked his mom to buy him one, too, and she did.

Jim and I sat in his back yard plucking away on our six-strings for hours at a time.

But, exactly like with Danny and Mark, high school spelled the end of a relationship I thought was going to continue on unabated .

But that was not to be.

The problem was not any conflict between Jim and I, but rather Jimmy was not a good student ( his grades suffered from Day One—and so did mine, but I’ll save the details on that subject for another post ), and showing up for “daily failure” had him understandably “down in the dumps” from the moment he set foot inside school; and, as expected, he seemed to be “elated” when he’d leave.

But Jimmy was not looking to improve his academic standing, but rather to eliminate it from his life entirely, (  he ended up cutting out of school way more often than he attended ) and ultimately ended up simply quitting school, even before he was legally able to do so, yet.

But, back in the late 70’s, school authorities did not make “too big of a deal” out of chronic truants. They must’ve figured that the other students were better off without such disruptive influences sitting in the same classroom as those students who actually wanted to learn something.

Within the first two months of Freshman year, Jimmy started to hang out with this other dude, who was about three or four years older than us.

If I remember, his name was Kenny Eisman (again, spelling of surname? Not Sure) who was from Riverside, whose residents went to a different high school—in this case, Riverside -Brookfield, or “RB” as they were called.

That didn’t matter anyway, since Kenny was not in school, either.

One morning, though, for whatever reason, Jimmy did show up to school—with Kenny, and his acoustic guitar.

Kenny sat down on the school’s front lawn, closer to the student parking lot, where he played a series of tunes—and very well, I might add.

Plus, Kenny could sing. That was something that none of us could lay claim to—Danny didn’t sing; neither did Mark, Jimmy, nor myself.

Then, Jimmy suggested to Kenny that he allow me to play a couple of things on his guitar, trying to introduce me to Kenny and his group of friends.

At any rate, as the weeks went by, and the early-autumn weather turned from “late summer” temperatures of 70’s and 80’s, to early winter temps of 40’s and 50’s, Jimmy and Kenny decided that since they were not in school, anyway, they might as well go out to California and become “rock stars” by playing on the seashores, since “that’s where all the talent scouts hang out”.

No, they never actually said that, but Kenny talked about playing out in that fashion, and I just couldn’t see how their paths would cross with decision-maker, record label executive types, who would somehow theoretically “take notice” of their musical talent, and catapult them into fame and fortune.

I, myself, was so unsure of my own abilities right here in the near-west suburbs of Chicago, where all my family live, the last thing I wanted to do, is go be even a bigger loser 2,000 miles away in California, where I had no family to turn to, should something bad happen and I needed some degree of familial support.

So, I didn’t quit school, and go with them, and instead, I remained behind, as they hitched a ride to California. They didn’t even have their own car to travel to California in.

They were so unprepared for the trip from the very beginning; and I couldn’t see myself accompanying them—especially not in their car-less “nomadic” way of traveling to Cal.

But that didn’t matter to them; they had a dream, and they were going to try to achieve it.

Although they did come back the following spring, I believe they went to California one more time after their initial trip, and them returned again for good.

But those two trips built a gap in our friendship, and I hadn’t seen Jimmy for probably 10 more years until the late 80’s nor early 90’s.

We resumed our friendship for sure in the early 90’s , because I remember attending many band-type parties at his house—that he inherited from his divorced mother who had passed away.

And, then, somehow we drifted apart again, probably in the late 90’s, and I ran into him only one more time since then.

My car was in the shop, so, I had to walk to work, and since Jimmy didn’t have a car, he also had to walk to work.

By some strange coincidence, we were both walking along Gage Avenue—I was walking southbound, and Jimmy, northbound.

Amazingly, even though he was a solid two blocks away ( where you can’t see any details of someone’s face ) from where I was at the moment I noticed someone was walking toward me, I could tell it was Jimmy—from his walk.

He had this unique style, that was unmistakable to identify from even two blocks away.

As we got within a few houses of each other, he realized who I was, and when we got within arm’s reach of each other, we shook hands, and even hugged.

Although I never saw Jimmy again, I did talk to him on the phone, when, another friend of mine, Bill, said he saw Jimmy, talked to him, and got his cell phone number for me.

The first time I called him, I had not yet been diagnosed with cancer yet; but the second time I called, it was a good two years later, or so, well after my treatment ( chemo, radiation, and tumor-removing surgery ), and I just called to tell him that I “made it” —i.e., I survived.

I think, I called him one more time after that, probably somewhere in 2015, or so, but I got his voice mail, left a message, and never heard from him again.

Then, in January 2018, a friend of mine, Kim, on Facebook, PM’d me that she saw Jimmy’s obituary on the internet.

“What? He died?” Wha…whaddaya mean?” I thought frantically before I clicked the link, only to see that the service was at Tower Funeral Home (the same place Mark was waked at), and there it was : the ugly truth.

Jimmy was gone.

So, no Danny; no Mark; no Jimmy = no fun in life.

I actually have a copy of Jim’s voice on tape, too, but I’d have to dig through maybe a hundred cassette tapes to find it. It’ll be worth it, once I do it.

In any case, in the end, I just want to say I miss you guys. Life is no fun without you.

Take care.

Index of Articles