MATT BARRETT’S TALES FROM THE ROCK N ROLL CRYPT: Episode 8
THE WORST BAND IN THE WORLD
Parthenon Huxley and I have the distinction of being told we were the worst band in the world by the Director of the American Youth Association (AYA).
Twice.
By two different directors.
With two different bands.
The first time happened early in our career. Our band was called OFFICER HENRY. I was in 9th grade. Rick (Parthenon) was in 7th. Our drummer Tim Aquilina was in 6th but very mature for his age. It was my only cover band, (except maybe for HANGIN MEAT but that band never performed so technically it doesn’t count). It was 1969 so we played songs like Knock on Wood, Sunshine of Your Love, Hold on I’m Comin, Land of 1000 Dances, I’m Not Your Steppin Stone, Slow Down, Come on Up, Gloria.... you get the idea. When we were awarded the prestigious American Youth Center (AYC) Subteen Dance it was the biggest show of our career, (besides the time we got Susan Akiki to come to one of our practices).
Unfortunately while we would be playing to a bunch of little kids at the subteen dance, all our friends were going to the teen dance at the other AYC at the American Air Force Base in Glyfada. But we were professionals now so we waved goodbye to the bus taking them away to the dance and walked to Kifissia Square to drink beer and eat souvlaki in preparation for our first gig.
We were deep into our first set when the director Mrs W, an attractive, sophisticated, elegant woman who seemed out of place as a director of a youth center in a military Quonset hut, interrupted us to tell us we were now to provide the music for a game of musical chairs. (WTF?!! Was this in the contract?) We would play a song while the subteens, another word for children, danced, skipped or walked around 2 rows of chairs back to back and when Mrs W signaled us with her hand we were to stop the song and the children would rush to sit down. But as often happens in these cruel games for children created by adults there was one less chair then there were kids. So if you were the one kid who didn’t get a chair you were out of the game. This of course created a desperate rush to get a chair at any cost, a valuable lesson for life in the real world of grownups.
It seemed kind of dangerous but who were we to argue? We were just the band. And the first round went well. We saw Mrs W’s hand signal and the song stopped and with a clatter of chairs and children the first loser was eliminated and ran out of the ballroom to hide his shame. We started playing, and again saw the hand signal and stopped on a dime like a tight jazz combo. A little girl was out this time and rushed off to find the first little boy and do whatever little kids do when they know they have awhile before any adults find them. The third round went off without a hitch and another little girl ran off. Ménage à trois. But in the 4th round disaster struck. Tim and I caught the hand signal and stopped. But Rick (Parth) was in the midst of a guitar solo and didn’t see it. Total pandemonium on the floor. Was that a stop or wasn’t it? The whole system was collapsing. Children looked at each other and Mrs W, their traumatized eyes asking “What is happening? What do we do?”
Mrs W screamed at us. “YOU ARE THE WORST BAND IN THE WORLD!”
Eventually the children were consoled and the game reached its conclusion, the winner oblivious that he was the only one excluded from the subteen orgy going on in the library. But the damage was done. OFFICER HENRY had been labeled. We were The Worst Band in the World. At least until 1972.
CC BLUES KING, my 3rd band with Parthenon (again the 2nd if you don’t count HANGIN MEAT) was ahead of its time. We didn’t play any covers. We didn’t play any songs actually. Or not songs in the sense that we had a list of tunes with titles and lyrics that we would rehearse and perform. Basically we just made songs up. I would yell across the stage to Rick the 3 or 4 chords of the “song”, the band would listen to the progression one time and join in, drums, guitar, sax, and bass if we could find one (instrument and someone to play it) and our singers, two brothers named Pete and Christopher Christ (CC). The songs would create themselves. Like jazz. Except we sounded like a terrible sloppy version of the MC5 and the Stooges, our favorite bands and our singers were like a cross between Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Rob Tyner and Mick Jagger. Except they weren’t really singers. But we made a lot of noise and sometimes it sounded like music. Enough so that we were hired to play the New Year’s Eve Dance at the AYC.
The night began as a normal CC BLUESKING show which meant finding a guitar and amp for me, and hopefully a wah-wah and some other effects box that would enable my guitar to make a lot of noise and not sound so much like a guitar. We played our first set and people danced, nobody could tell the difference between us and a real band. Then we took a break and things went downhill from there. Somebody had hash, not uncommon in Athens, and we smoked it, all except the sax player, who we didn’t really know except that he was the brother of the drummer who we didn’t know all that well either. But for most of us being that stoned was normal. But being that stoned in that situation wasn’t.
I was the first to crack. I just put down my guitar in the middle of a song and wandered off, maybe to find something to eat. Our friend George, (whose nickname was George the Drunk not to be confused with our drummer who was George the Mouse), who was equally as stoned as the band, picked up my now feeding back guitar and began doing his best imitation of Peter Townsend. Except he didn’t play guitar. Rick saw the chaos unfolding and decided being behind the drums was the safest place to be, which was fine because by now the two lead singers had also disappeared and George the Mouse had taken over lead vocals. And still people kept on dancing though some suspected that something was amiss. When someone from the audience picked up Rick’s guitar and the song deteriorated further Rick decided to make his exit which opened the door for the next drummer of CC BLUESKING, whoever that was. I was watching and listening from the couch as the dancers started realizing there was nothing to dance to and began holding their ears as they left the ballroom. All this time the sax player, Chuck the Rat (stepbrother of George the Mouse) continued playing as if this was all normal, just another long CC BLUESKING song.
Finally there was nobody left in the building except “the band” and Mr D, the director of the AYA, an English gentleman with an air of sophistication and formality that a British accent gives, and a bunch of tattoos that looked like they came from some far away port or prison. Everyone else was out in the parking lot where they could get away from the noise and count off the new year.
When 1972 rolled in we embraced the new year with enough courage to go into the office to get paid. Mr D was not pleased.
“YOU ARE BY FAR THE WORST BAND IN THE WORLD!!!” He shouted at us. (In all fairness I don’t think he caught our first set.) “That THING that you call a band chased everyone out of a New Year’s Eve Party before midnight and you come in here demanding to be paid?”
“Just give us our money you old coot” replied Peter, instantly taking charge and henceforth banned for life from the AYC.
But Mr D did give us our money. I think he threw it down on the floor so he could watch us battle each other to get it like a pack of wild dogs.
We didn’t get many gigs after that. Peter’s lifetime ban pretty much put AYC dances out of reach for us and most of the people there that night who were not on the stage at some point pretty much hated us.
So were Parthenon Huxley and I members of the two worst bands in the world? It’s hard to say. I think OFFICER HENRY was just a case of miscommunication in a poorly conceived child’s game. Surely there were other bands out there who were worse. It was a big world. Even back in 1969. And CC BLUESKING, who Mr Davis called “BY FAR the worst band in the world”? That seems a little harsh. You can’t really judge a band on one show, or actually on the last hour of one show. Nor can you assume that someone is in the band just because they happen to be on stage.
I recall Frank Zappa saying that he went to an Alice Cooper show and they were so bad that the entire audience left en masse. He signed them at once because a band with so much negative appeal that they could cause a stampede for the exits, must have unlimited potential. He was right.
So in this topsy-turvy world where bad is good I think that maybe for one night at least, CC BLUESKING was the worst band in the world. But it was the best band I ever played in.