Still life

The Vegas paintings did not turn out as well as expected. Disappointing. 

Back at home, I decided to paint fruit and veg in the studio. Generally I paint still lifes every year for auctions or whatever, but this turned into a whole series.

My sister was always telling me to get rid of stuff. “Take a picture of it and then get rid of it.” I added some objects to the pictures but I did not get rid of the objects.

I am pleased with the results. I like the paintings and they were fun to do. They are not very exciting though the way a plein air painting seems to be, when it turns out well. 

This is still painting reality, but easier—much easier. No wind, no running out of sun time. And you can eat some of the stuff when you are done.

What happens in Vegas, comes back in a suitcase

I went to Vegas to paint. I hadn't been there in a long while. I wanted to paint new housing developments and figured there would be a lot of them. Well I didn't know what I'd find.

I first went to Vegas as a kid, with Mom and my sister, Jeanne, after "our" divorce. We always called it "our" divorce for some reason, when my stepfather got divorced. We had been in Reno for 3 months, then San Francisco, then LA and then back to Nevada.

Mom stopped at the Tropicana or some hotel to see if we could get Harry Belafonte tickets. It was sold out. However while she was in there, Harry Belafonte came out and talked to Jeanne and I sitting in the car.

We ended up at the Saharan and we smuggled the poodle into the room. We ended up seeing Bob Newhart who was complained about a howling dog in the room across from him. Oops. Anyhow, Mom passed recently and I also went there to think about her and life.

I stayed at the Venetian as I heard there were gondolas and wanted to see it. A pastiche in typical Vegas style but I really loved some parts, especially this floor. My room was lovely. I was checked in by the hotel manager and thought I might be able to paint on premises but it was so crowded that I never did that.

I was utterly fascinated by this parking garage across the way and wanted to paint that.

I had a cool rental car and the first day drove out east to have a look at it. I was desperate to find a view in this crappy suburb but it took some time. It was Thanksgiving and wanted a place where no one could see me out there, alone, when I should have been in some dining room. I felt ashamed, a bit, though there was really no where else I would rather have been. The weather was just perfect.

On Friday I drove the other way and found a nice view of a housing development and mountains behind a sound wall from a parking lot of a closed church. There were sound walls everywhere, possibly the defining characteristic of Vegas views.

I was going in and out of Target for pee breaks. Target is great for landscape painters as the bathrooms are always in the front in the same place and you can get in and out quickly. I also got hooked on this protein drink they carry which has something like 4 apples, 3 carrots and a bunch of other stuff in it. Oh and I guess I went in Ross and bought a belt and something else.

Since it was black friday I later went to an outlet mall which was mobbed. I wanted to do a night painting there but it really seemed too crowded, at least for my energy level. I did a bit of shopping leaving my dirty water and brushes sitting in the rental car.

I talked to my guitar player on the phone and he thought I was crazy not to get out into the desert. So on Saturday I went to red rocks. I got there late and went right to work next to the visitor center parking lot. No one bothered me. I have never painted the desert before and I am bad at mountains and nature in general so it didn't turn out that great. The image here is in progress. I reworked all the foreground later.

The light collapsed really early, everywhere I went, I guess because of the mountains. Around 3:30 it just sort of died, the shadows disappeared. And you can't paint outdoors once the light has completely changed, unless you are finishing from memory.

I had only a quick look at the actual red rocks but I had hiked on them many years ago. The thing is that I was there to paint and it takes a lot of time to find a view and then paint it.

On Sunday I decided a nice view of the crazy skyline would be good. I found a perfect spot, a bit too close but it had a perfect secluded parking spot and some SHADE. Just perfectly comfortable. A lady security guard came by and said it wasn't safe and didn't want me there. "People try to blow stuff up." I convinced her I would not blow up anything and I just needed another 40 minutes. She let me stay.

It went ok except when the light swung around the whole view changed and I had to just stop pretty much. The fatal mistake was my drawing was off. I didn't zoom out the scene enough. I didn't get enough of the skyline in (though to do so would make it all smaller) and it's just a lame painting.

I found another park on the map and headed for it. Found another Target for pee break and protein shake. Again parked next to the visitor's parking lot facing more mountains and more desert.

This painting went a bit better but I was trying to paint all the plants in the foreground and there were so many of them I just couldn't do them very well. The light died and I just stopped.

I went back to town and ran around a lot. Caesars lived up to the hype. Loved the Bellagio awnings and tile floors. Like some of the art deco touches in New York, NY (had to go there as a New Yorker!) What a crazy place. I spent a lot of money and not much to show for it but I did work very hard. I didn't gamble a cent!

thoughts on hoarding versus saving important items

Every since I was a little girl I thought I was going to be rich and famous. I don't know where that idea came from. I guess Mom encouraged us. She gave my sister, Jeanne, the middle name of Holden and me, Ritchie, which was to indicate that we had important blueblood ancestors but I always considered Ritchie to be an auspicious name.

Mom spoke about how a lack of a father figure in our lives could adversely affect us. (Unfortunately this meant she brought various questionnable men into our home -- alcoholics such as Malochy McCourt, later a writer but then an owner of a bar in NYC where Mom, and we, used to hang out, who apparently wanted to run away with me when I was 3 or 4 year old.) I remember sleeping in the bar and at home, being in my pajamas and these guys sitting us on their laps or hugging or kissing us. I guess it would be before they went out. There were quite a few wild parties at the house with guests staying overnight in the 'country'.

Mom wanted to make us try harder. She told us we had high IQs. Our grades were never good enough.

Anyhow I thought I was really special. I used to wonder how I ended up in this family. I used to think I was adopted or from another planet. My logo in 4th grade contained a symbol for 'the great' and I was signing my name "Carolyn the great" on everything. [Probably we were studying Catherine the Great in grade school. I remember being presented with her, Amelia Earhart and maybe Madame Curie as great women role models over and over. Actually the woman I really dug as a role model was Mae West whose films I used to see on TV in the daytime. She seemed clever and fabulous and worth emulating.]

I knew that I was absent-minded. I heard that Einstein was absent-minded. I am sure people say that as a way to humanize him, but I took it as a signpost that I was just like him....utterly brilliant and destined for a great future.

Since I was going to be famous I saved everything. I saved every school test, every poem, drawing, you name it. Mom saved all my ceramic items. I have tulip watercolors that I entered into an art show at age six and all my early paintings.

(Mom had an oil set that she used to make one painting. She gave it to me and showed me how to paint in the basement laundry room (where it was ok to get paint on the floor). She suggested it was a good thing to do very early on Saturday mornings. We went to the art store and bought a few panels and a canvas or two. I filled a few up right away. I started doing horses, of course. My sister showed me how to draw horses and it helped my popularity in school. Girls would pay me to draw them a horse. I started doing portraits of girls at school, a sad little girl in a Jackie Gleeson dramatic film, and later some giraffes and a 'memory of Florence'.

I saved doodles from high school notebooks. College papers. Punk rock posters, flyers from my bands and others, every scrap of paper from every song I ever wrote. Tickets to every concert including my childhood Beatles at Shea Stadium ticket!

Every time I moved, even if it was back and forth to New York, Colorado, or wherever, all this stuff came with me or eventually found me.

Things I have gotten rid of -- such as my soap collection: a branded and wrapped soap from each of the hundreds of motels we stayed at on our trip out west in the 60s -- so cool; I have regretted. As a graphic designer I would love to have it now. And our childhood, space age 60s table and chairs that was too hard to get to California but so nice.

At my first art open studio in San Francisco, two guys from a gallery told me that it was important to save one's early work. Not that I needed the encouragement.

I have done life drawing for most of my life. I still have every drawing that was half decent. I have painted over many many paintings but I have only thrown out one and that's because I thought it could be radioactive (a college with a radioactive sign that I found on the road affixed to it.).

Like most artists I have lots of slides....3 or 4 binders of originals and dupes. Hundreds or thousands of dollars there. All basically useless now except for the ones which are the only record of pieces now sold or destroyed.

For many years I have been a graphic designer. I had a four-foot stack of papers and various portfolio stashes around the apartment. I have at least one copy of every sample I could get my hand on, as well as a printout (and digital file) of every comp and early revision. I have most of the books, dvds, cd, tshirts, and packages I have designed. I have client files and now even some student files.

Mom recently passed on and I was helping my sister sift through and clear out some of the stuff. It was pretty bad. My mother was a borderline hoarder. Her husband died tragically and early and she never could let go of any stuff that reminded her of him. Jeanne had already gone through the bulk of it when Mom sold her house. But there was still a lot of stuff. Clothes, papers, letters, books, all kinds of stuff. I still have a collection of all the menus we received when we came back from Europe on the QE2 and I was sort of shocked to see that Mom still had a bunch from her earlier trip.

Luckily I could not fit into the clothes or the shoes but I did take a few scarves, some jewelry, my mom's portrait which is very nice, and odds and ends. Jeanne wants to sell or donate most of it. Jeanne and I are sort of opposite in that regard.

We read through a bunch of letters and thought they would make a great book. But we are not writers. Jeanne says you should just take a photo and then let it go.

I realized that any kind of collection if not archived, is practically useless. And if you don't curate your stuff before you die, no one else will have the time or energy to do it.

And that it's just stuff. You don't have to save every drawing. Some of them are not that good. And it might be more valuable to have the space that these items take up.

So I am trying to down-size.

It is hard emotionally. It takes time. But I think I can do it.

painting staycation: why does it have to be about paint?

Trying to remember who I am. Spend the week painting outdoors. Outdoors is like life drawing practice. Is like master class. That sun will not stay in the same place. Why can't I spend my vaca on the beach somewhere like other people. What is this? Just a waste of time? Life is getting so busy and painting takes up a lot of time.

Did not, almost did not start. But said, what the heck. It will be bad but just do it. It was lousy but done. Very weird view. My subconscious right there staring back at me. Embarassing if people knew.

Yesterday freezing my butt off on Monterey Avenue. Had to work at the easel as I could not get the car into the right location. Stuck it out for 4 hours. I was shaking and trembling when I ran into Safeway to pee and get a sandwich. Then drove to Dogpatch and started another one.

Today I went to San Mateo where it was warmer but a difficult view of a river in an office park. Lots of geeks walking around. Who would ever want a painting like this? Am I mad? However it needed to get done and it did. Started in the car but could not see and got out and set up the easel. Must had painted the river about 30 times and it still is not right. Kept blowing over. I want to disown it.

Did some more Dogpatch -- gosh Dogpatch is now all yuppie assholes with dogs -- and then a quick one on Potrero Hill...a sketch in 45 minute which is better than anything I've done all week. This is creating a crisis in my mind...why freeze my butt off and try so hard for hours and hours when a sketch is better? So much pressure, so little time.

Maybe I should just do sketches. But then how does it fit in with a body of work? Well I never cared about a body of work before. It's not like I have a gallery calling the shots.

Why waste my time with any of this stuff when I could be snorkeling or overeating or something more fun? But painting does give me a stillness. I sit there with my feelings about the view which usually mirrors whatever is going on inside. Then I run out of sun and see that the painting doesn't work. Why does it have to be so hard? Is it that it is so hard, that is why I want to do it? I do work hard at everything....

Was looking at some art on on the internet from a guy who paints with a projector. So easy. You don't have to draw, you just trace. It gives the work a lot of style. There is no sitting in the fog or wind involved. He doesn't try to draw straight lines, he lets them go where they want. It has a relaxed style. Who cares how it is done? It's really about the act of painting. It doesn't matter what he is painting. It all looks great. My work looks ludicrous in comparison...looks like a tense 4th grader did it.

My accountant keeps touting another artist who takes a photo, makes a large printout and traces it and then paints it in the studio. Much more accurate and much more saleable. Beautiful, accurate work. But no high wire act there either.

Why do I have to do the high wire act?

But more important: my paintings are about the views that I find. People are always telling me to be more painterly, looser, more this or that. They want me to have more style. But my paintings are not about paint. They are about places and how I feel about them.

My heros are from the 17th and 18th century when they still had history paintings.

Since when does painting have to be about paint?

first day of spring

Painting with two other women on Mt. Diablo on the first day of Spring. Feels pagan.
It was so green and wet. The ground was mushy everywhere.

My second effort possibly the fastest painting ever.
Jury is still out on the quality...must wait til daylight.

Is it worth it to touch up such a thing and fix mistakes?
Not sure about that. Perhaps better to leave it.

Both efforts were sacrifices, i.e., painting over another canvas to make a new painting.

I want only good paintings.
Am painting over lots of stuff.


what else?
Am working on a novel, and even weirder, am playing in a band with friends. We call ourselves The Insufferables. I am playing guitar--my very old guitar.
Very strange. How did this happen? Like I don't have enough going on already.
It's fun though.

Can someone invent something so one doesn't need to spend 7 hours sleeping each day?

Rocky Mountain low, more

I am still reminiscing about these old times....

In the batch of British 45 records that my friend brought to Colorado directly from the scene in England was one of the Adverts 'Gary Gillmore's Eyes'. It was a song about someone who got a serial killer's eyes in a transplant and was a good song. But what electrified me was the sleeve with a photo of Gay Advert, the girl bass player. She had Egyptian eyeliner and looked totally cool. She looked sexy and dangerous and accomplished. In a minute I decided I wanted to be just like her. I realized that punk rock didn't just have to be for the boys.

You should never underestimate the importance of a role model.


The other thing I was thinking about was when my second band played around Colorado, we made money. We were usually opening up for a friend's band (unless we put on the gig ourselves) and perhaps the other bands were being unusually nice, but for a good evening we would get $300 or more. I think the headliner would get $500 or more, not sure. The headlining bands knew that if we were opening we and our friends would be there dancing down in front for their set as well. The bands got the door money or a lot of it. 200 people times $5 or so adds up.

There were bands in Colorado that made their living playing music. People went out to dance and the bands in Colorado had to be danceable. There were some really great country swing bands in every town around there who could really 'cook'. And I don't think most of the bands every left or became known outside the area.

Anyhow, later in San Francisco, for a large gig, a New Year's Eve or a headlining gig at Fab Mab or some club, we'd make $7 to be split 7 ways. Oh, maybe we would get $30. It was pathetic. Many of the shows were benefits. In San Francisco we had a sound girl and a lighting girl to pay too, plus a rehearsal studio. Usually the money just went towards repairing our van, or sometimes for recording expenses. The shows we played in Santa Cruz and Sacramento and maybe even Berkeley made decent money but San Francisco was the worst.

At the Palms the owner would ring up the bar tab at the end of the set to see how many drinks the band sold. At the Stone, the bands had to sell tickets ahead of time to be asked back.

Rocky Mountain low-life indeed

I received a copy of Rocky Mountain Low and it is a pretty incredible compilation of early punk rock in Colorado. It has a whole booklet of the history of that time by one of the key players. For Jello Biafra/Dead Kennedy collectors it is a must-have.

My only regret is that the book doesn’t have more about me.


So here is my sordid memoir and more than you'd ever want to know:

I worked at a record store ‘on the hill’, Discount Records [a chain store] in Boulder, Colorado. We specialized in classical records but carried everything. [I got hired as an assistant manager because I had long blond hair and was a rock expert…the manager hired two girls with long blond hair…the other was a classical expert.] Our store was near the indie record store run by Rick Stott that Joe talks about in the booklet.

Joe Pope used to ride around town on his bicycle in long curly hair and long black leather coat—a strange sight—but he was a friendly fellow and knew everyone. Joe was literally in high school, along with John Greenaway [of the Healers] they were pals or classmates (?) with Jello/Eric and Sam [of the Healers].

What Joe neglects to mention is that I ordered many of the import singles, Stiff records and things like the Damned that the other store couldn’t carry and we had them right in front of the cash register because they were cool and expensive. Joe and the gang used to come in and talk to me and possibly stuff records up the back of their shirts. Well, I’m just saying. The records disappeared and the store didn’t sell many of them. I can’t remember if Jello/Eric was in attendance but he may have been. Seemed like he left town really early to go to San Francisco but he returned from time to time.

My intro to punk rock was reading Marc Campbell of the Raver’s electrifying articles for the school paper where I was an art student. I quickly ordered the records he talked about such as the Ramones and on weekends would take the hour long bus ride to Denver to buy more rare records for my collection. I went to the Ravers gigs—alone—even though I was painfully shy…it seemed desperately important. I was also reading Marshall McLuhan at the time and somehow that factored into this life-changing time. Art was old hat...punk rock was the future.

I took the Amtrak to NYC and back for just two days in the city. Luckily I was able to see the Ramones the night I arrived and got a friend from the burbs to accompany me. During the day I bumped into Marc Campbell in ManicPanic though was too shy to talk to him and traded my green jacket for a used black leather jacket. I also saw 2 or 3 amazing art shows...a retrospective of Cezanne and another one of Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing the Delaware -- I liked his drawing style.

Rick Stott had a radio show that taped on a reel-to-reel tape deck [I traded an original painting, a Beatle mirror, and a Jackson Brown water bag for the tape deck]. Rick played bands like the Ravers (who I thought he managed), Cheap Trick, Bob Seger, Velvet Underground, Wayne County and the Dictators.


Early on I met Andrew Sharp [we all had so many phony names as we changed them often] who was an exchange student from England and arrived with a fabric bag full of British punk rock 45s. He let me borrow the records to tape them. There were the Adverts ‘Gary Gilmore Eyes’, Buzzcocks first singles, Clash, Sex Pistols—gosh a lot of great stuff.

One day I asked Andrew if he wanted to start a band and he said that if I could write the lyrics for 10 songs by Monday and if he liked them, he would do it. On Monday I showed him the lyrics. He only liked one which went “down down down, down on the floor” but we did start the Teflons. Andrew found me a semi-acoustic bass to buy and a lousy amplifier with a blown speaker. This may be the amplifier that I am using with guitar on these recordings: it sounds like a tuba.

My boss let us rehearse at night in the basement of the record store. Andrew had this theory that one had to practice at top volume. This drove the people who lived upstairs crazy. Andrew’s other theory was that one had to be quite drunk to play punk rock properly. We never had a practice without a bottle of Cuervo or a 12-pak of Old Milwaukie. Andrew found some guy to play guitar, probably in a bar. I studied violin as a kid but other than borrowing my sister’s guitar to play “This land is your land” I really had no idea what I was doing. I broke up that band when I had two guys constantly criticizing my playing. This inspired “You’re always better than me”.

Later one of the college art teachers formed a band [Joey Vain and Scissors] and had a gig in the school gallery at a mail art show. All the ‘punks’ in Boulder showed up and we were drinking, stealing or mangling parts of the art and generally acting what we thought was punk-rocky.

At one point I moved back to New York [got transferred to Sam Goody] with the intention of moving to the lower east side and forming a band, but could never find a place to live that didn’t have roaches the size of dragonflies or that seemed remotely safe in any way. While I was there I saw many of the bands I was ‘into’ from their records: the Police (with brown hair), part of the New York Dolls playing with Sid and Nancy, and later playing when Sid came, out on bail after killing Nancy, and everyone turned around and stared at him until he left, the B52s, Devo, Talking Heads with David Byrne shaking sweat all over me in the 3rd row (could never stand his voice but they had a girl bass player who was an important role model), the Cramps with Brian Gregory, Lydia Lunch…and so many bands. One night I sat across from Springsteen at one of these gigs and at another I met Lance Loud who had a band and had been in the first reality tv show “The Loud Family and at another I sat next to Cheeta Chrome who was from the Dead Boys and yelled really loud to show how cool I was.

I moved back to Colorado about 5 months later and started a fanzine ‘Not New Wave News’ and a band.

I talked the only girl punk rocker I knew, Nicole, into forming the Profalactics and I switched to guitar. She played my bass. We used to write songs by both wearing headphones and plugged into the same lousy amplifier with the blown speaker. Since there was another female punk rocker in town in the Dancing Assholes, Connie Clit, and we borrowed her to play drums. We rehearsed in a room in the student union building.

For our first gig, an all ages benefit that was packed, I got properly lubricated beforehand as per Andrew’s instructions. I had my finger locked in a car door the week before and had to duct tape the pick onto my right hand. Connie was so nervous she was coughing up blood in the bathroom. She bought us all condoms which we unwrapped and wore as jewelry [the first time I had seen a condom actually].

After the show a guy came up to me with a card offering a free guitar lesson. I did indeed take my first and a few more lessons from the guy, and later from some other rocker guy. These guys didn’t understand punk rock. I never did master any of their Chuck Berry licks but I learned the concept of playing notes instead of bar chords.

Later on I taught cartooning in a high school for troubled teens, I met this whole other group of kids who were turned on to punk rock because of that show and went on to play in other bands in LA and various places.
I booked another gig…a dance on campus for the local lesbian club. We got the Guys, the girl band from Denver to headline it since they sounded more like music than we did, but after a few of our numbers, the club’s managers shut us down. They preferred disco. I was surprised at the lack of feminist feelings on their part.

Connie and I cruelly fired Nicole, our bass player for some reason, when we found Sue Digby. Sue was sort of into the Stones and Rock but she was cool and really wanted to play. Sue wanted to finish her degree in journalism before we launched our music career and convinced me to go back and finish up my art degree while I was waiting for her, for which I am still grateful. And then we planned to move away to ‘make it’. I moved into her living room so that we could all save money.

That year Sue, Connie and I were really busy, putting on live shows, writing and putting out a fanzine, having a radio show, going out to see a lot of music, working and going to school. The Dancing Assholes came up with the idea of forming the Students Union for Tomorrow, a campus club, which allowed us to use the spaces in the football stadium for rehearsals and gigs for free and made for some amusing poster censorship issues around campus.

The Saturday all-night punk rock radio show on KGNU was run by the Dancing Assholes, then by Sue Digby, my bass player and later by yours truly. The scene was really small and we thought we knew everyone but tons of people who listened to the radio show. We got calls from people all over. People visited the radio show and we finally got thrown off the air because we were accused of stealing Ramones records. I never could convince the management that we already owned Ramones records but it probably was a case of not watching the guests closely enough.

We spent all our cash on records. Once I got the fanzine going, ’Not the New Wave News’, the first of it’s kind in Colorado… record labels were mailing me disks from San Francisco and elsewhere to play.

There was a guy named Rumor who helped me with the first issue and probably got fired for our use of his company’s facilities. I was inspired by the handwritten ‘Punk’ magazine and wanted to publicize what was going on in Colorado. I put later issues out financed by my student loan. Sue, the budding journalist, handled many of the band interviews. She was a whiz at contacting managers and labels (and eventually spent most of her career booking road trips living in London). We interviewed the Ramones, the Specials [Sue and I sitting on their hotel room bed before their show and smoking about 3 packs of cigarettes), Devo [Sue and pals interviewed them while eating at a diner but the recording was all plate clattering noise], the Police, and others.

I sent copies of the fanzine to everyone I could think of and received a request from ‘New York Rocker to write an article about our scene. I wrote the main copy and asked the bands write their own bios. The ‘New York Rocker’ didn’t believe Jello had been in one of our bands and edited it out but they did run it and called it “Rocky Mountain Lowlife”. By this time there were enough bands touring such as Devo, Elvis Costello, The Specials, Ramones and I distributed the fanzine to kids waiting in line for these shows.

(Later Stan Flouride, brother of Klaus Flouride of the Dead Kennedys, told me that he came to Colorado from San Francisco after reading the article to see the ‘scene’. He could not find any punks though.)



After the Profalactics broke up (Connie probably wanted to focus on her math degree or something), Sue and I formed the Varve with the lead singer of the Guys, the girl band in Denver. When we finally did leave town, most of the other punk rockers in Boulder followed us out to San Francisco. I was reluctant to go to NYC because of the cockroaches, LA was full of hair bands, the Instants had tried England with bad luck, but the Corvairs had been to San Francisco and had great success.

Sue found a drummer and a keyboard player by going up to cool looking girls at our concert and asking them if they wanted to join a band. These two said they knew nothing about music but that was ok with us. Actually our drummer Ann sounded totally original and gave us a quirky sound because she had no idea what drummers did. She could speed up and slow down and play along with another instrument.

We had a garage sale and bought a van. Kelly, Jo Ann, Sue and I put everything in it and drove to San Francisco. Someone knew these city girls who were willing to put us up for one night only. We took turns sleeping in the van on an insane incline. The next day we spread out all across town and managed to find a 4 bedroom apartment in one day. We paid the guy cash. He liked the idea of an all-girl band living upstairs. This was above the Hot and Hunky restaurant on 18th Street in the Castro.

Our house rule was that anyone could practice at any time. I remember listening to Jo Ann learning to play sax night and day. We rehearsed in my bedroom in the beginning as it had no windows but it was directly above the counter where people were trying to order their hamburgers. Hot and Hunky finally asked us to get a rehearsal space which we did -- at Iguana Studios on 10th and Folsom.

We held auditions for drummers and ended up with Kat Apostrophe Cascone who was a good, trained drummer and had been in several SF bands. Our sound changed drastically and frankly it seemed easier to play with a good drummer.

The band Translator “You’re everywhere that I’m not” lived across the street and also rehearsed at Iguana. We became good friends and were often asked to be their opening band.

I’ll stop this here as the Varve didn’t make it on the record and there are too many stories to tell now.


Bands I wish had been included on the compilation were LeRoy’s band—a spin off of the Jonny Three, the Visitors from Fort Collins with whom the Profalactics played a hot tub party, and there was another band on the Denver scene that was pretty good and had a cute bass player that most of the girls were gaga over.


I was happy to hear some old songs that I remembered: I always liked the Nightflames song “All Cried Out” and can remember dancing to it.