I had listened to many great drummers on record such as Ringo and Charlie Watts, this was the first time I was consciously influenced by a live musician.
We talked about driving down to Seattle to see The Beatles at the Coliseum on August 25th. The top ticket only cost six dollars to see the greatest band in history but we couldn’t get organized. It turned out to be their third last concert ever (the last being at Candlestick Park in San Francisco a few days later on August 30th.)
As I dragged myself back to Winston Churchill and the beginning of Grade Eleven I was acutely aware that something was going to blow wide open. I didn’t have to wait very long.
On September 30, an aspiring entrepreneur named Jerry Kruz, who had been presenting 'happenings' at the Pender Auditorium with bands like The Tom Northcott Trio (featuring Rick Enns on bass), moved into the Russian Community Centre on Fourth Avenue near Arbutus Street in the heart of Kitsilano. He called it The Afterthought. A band that he managed called The United Empire Loyalists, and another group, The Nocturnals, now with two singles; Because You’re Gone and This Ain’t Love, were the featured attractions on opening night.
The Afterthought was nothing more than a small wooden meeting hall with a proscenium stage and a balcony but it became the focus of the emerging avant-garde music scene. More importantly, it was quickly established as the gathering place for young people who were growing restless with rigid society born out of the materialistic post-war fifties and were looking to discover a new freer way of life.
The United Empire Loyalists was a very good band. Guitarist Jeff Ridley and vocalist Mike Trew attended Churchill High so they were our closest serious rivals now. They had evolved out of a group called The Molesters and developed a distinct 'riffy' sound led by lead-guitarist Anton “Tom” Kolstee. They were miles ahead of us in originality and in creating their own musical sound.
Things were coming to a head at school. I was constantly in trouble for my wild Mod clothing and long, unkempt hair. This was not entirely accurate as I spent considerable time washing and grooming. Hair was an important statement and I took care to say it right. Regardless, my battles with the principal and his sadistic henchman, the vice-principal, now escalated into all out war. I was pulled out of class and sent to the vice-principal's office where I was told that I was “a distraction” to other students. I was charged with an after school detention which I refused to attend. I was penalized with three detentions for each one I ignored. Soon, I had hundreds of them. I was hauled into the office again. This time the vice-principal was standing beside his desk holding a cruel, thick leather strap.
“Hold out your hand,” he ordered.
I took one look at the strap and said, “I don‘t think so.”
He was confused by this and I realized that he had no way of forcing me to extend my hand. That was the end of the strap at Sir Winston Churchill High School.
Like a flower blooming from the ashes, a beautiful thing grew out of all this. On one of my frequent visits to the office, while waiting to further the campaign of freedom, I met Liviana. She was a senior and built like an Italian goddess. She was apprehended for violations to the dress-code ... her dress was too small to have a code. The skin-tight, micro-mini outfit she was almost wearing struggled to contain her abundant assets. She was Sophia Loren in the flesh. But her extroverted style concealed a shy and demure nature. We connected in many ways. Under our flamboyant exteriors, we were both naturally reserved. We were both drawn to the mood of social unrest emerging around us. And, we were both very interested in sex.
I was now afforded a more stimulating activity after school which very nicely took the place of drum practice. Liviana and I would hurry to her house in Marpole and fool around until her parents got home. She encouraged me to explore her naked body, to caress every inch of her. But, for all her promising promiscuity, she was very much a good Catholic girl who was saving her virginity for her future husband. We did everything except put it in.
This was a few levels up the Eros scale from my make-out session with Jennifer. Liviana didn't wear a bra or a garter belt or much of anything else. She usually had her clothes off before I shut the door. I had never touched a naked woman before so the first time I stroked her voluptuous warm body on the bed I did go off in my pants. I tried to hide my embarrassment but she knew what had happened. She wasn't offended; she liked it.
I learned very quickly that the erect penis has some kind of a built-in homing device. Once it's up it must penetrate the nearest vagina or it will self-destruct. I possessed only a vague understanding of how this worked. My grasp of the procedure was so rudimentary I did not even suspect that there was more than one portal that could do the job. (This is an advanced theorem – If I had been informed of these radical options at this stage of naivety, I may have been turned off sex forever).
Of course, in my case, I faced the additional dilemma of Liviana's very firm policy on what could be done with the erect penis. Her solution was to monitor the situation at all times so that, just at the instant that I could not hold back any longer, she’d lend a hand and dismantle the device before it could find its way home. She was an adept, and gentle, demolition expert but my primal urges were powerful and this arrangement was leaving us both somewhat unsatisfied.
Around this time one of Vancouver’s truly great bands, The Painted Ship with vocalist Bill Hays, had a hit with a strong “B” side song called, Frustration. It spoke well of my feelings.
The Seeds of Time was playing gigs most weekends now. We played community centre dances, schools and clubs like Gassy Jacks Discothèque in Richmond.
We even had a fan club with a president and members and everything. They put out a newsletter every month, publishing important information such as what colour Bob liked, whether Frank believed in Santa Claus, that Steve liked girls in miniskirts and “small poor boy sweaters” and what I liked to eat.
It was possible for me to earn a hundred dollars on a weekend when we played two good gigs. We had almost no overhead. We used our parents’ cars to move the gear and we rented a small p.a. system from an electronics store on Seymour Street downtown for next to nothing. The system was comprised of three Phillips microphones, a sixty-watt Bogan amplifier and two enormous round horns that we propped up on stands. A hundred bucks was serious cash in 1966 for a sixteen year old living at home. Cigarettes were twenty-three cents a pack, you could buy an LP album for under four dollars and gas was cheaper than water. I probably had more disposable cash then than at any time in my life.
We scored a gig at a new club in New Westminster called, Denny’s Discothèque. We did pretty well there, especially with some of our new material like Psychotic Reaction by The Count Five, and received our first ever review in the local newspaper. It reported:
The Seeds Of Time made with just a hint of that
new Psychedelic sound.
Greg McCoy
Steve and I hooked up with a couple of girls at Denny's. My girl's name was Hazel. This was an odd coincidence because she was the only Hazel I have ever met and Tommy Roe had a big hit at the time titled, Hooray for Hazel.
A few days later I got my dad’s car and Steve and I drove out to New West to meet up with the girls. Steve had only a learner's permit so he could not drive legally yet. When we arrived, Hazel was waiting but her friend couldn’t get out. This was a little awkward so I had a brilliant idea. I would get in the back seat with Hazel as Steve drove around. Things were going as planned, and it was getting steamy in the back, until disaster
