Test Driving Life combines my interest in music with my longtime association with cars. That means sometimes it's one and sometimes the other (or if I'm lucky, both). Or--sometimes it's something else--I call that stuff "the third half."In any case, I woke up today knowing I had a one-hour set to play with Red Paint and remembered a time long ago, when I was starting out on my brief solo "minstrel" career. I was occasionally playing open mike nights at places like the Coffee Gallery in North Beach (San Francisco) but what came back to me was the several times I drove up to Stockton (1-1/2 hours away) to play at the Beauty and the Beast Coffee House. I have little 8-1/2 x 11 posters to prove it!
A guy I'd met locally in an extremely brief band association, Pat Kelley, called me and up I went. We were in our late teens, and he was living with his parents, but he had the garage apartment. That meant we were free to enjoy smoking some substances--I know that I remember little of those musical weekends today because I was not normal during much of them.
My plan was to sit on stage with my guitar and sing my songs. I enjoyed it immensely, but alas, the world was filled with "Bob Dylan's Understudies" back then and I was not exceptionally talented or driven.
Now--the car part. My sweet mother lent me her beautiful baby blue 1966 Dodge Dart convertible to drive to Stockton and back. I was pretty much recovered from my indulgence by the time I slipped behind the wheel on the way home (clear and sharp on the way up, of course). It was a joy to drive that car around with its quick-drop electric top. It had a three-speed manual transmission -- on the tree. What a beauty. Try finding one today.
That car is long gone, and my dream of a strumming and singing career had faded away by 1972. I went off to college instead. But I still remember something of Pat and the Beauty and the Beast Coffee House (and those lost weekends).
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