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Name this drummer(without cheating by looking it up).

re:


what the hell happened to the "D" as the final letter in that "J. GEILS BAND" album cover

even the period uses a graphic form as with every other letter except the "D"
and why the different spacing of the "D"?

"serious" questions about something which happened almost 50 years ago
Interesting. I had this album my entire life, and never noticed it. Could be artistic license though; the artistry of the late 60's/early '70's in conjunction with prevalent drug use.

You know, the old saying? "If you remember the sixties, you weren't there!"
 
Interesting. I had this album my entire life, and never noticed it. Could be artistic license though; the artistry of the late 60's/early '70's in conjunction with prevalent drug use.

You know, the old saying? "If you remember the sixties, you weren't there!"

i too, have owned that album since it first came out
never noticed that strange "D" before
likely always too stoned while it was in play
 
So you're saying that was an American harp player on that live version on "The Turning Point" album? I wasn't aware.

No no no no nooooooooo....
Look at the poster hanging up on my wall.
Citizen, my little blues band in Minneapolis in the 70's and early 80's.

Local_rock_BREAM3.jpg

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A bunch of young kids who cashed in on the relatively new rediscovery of blues music thanks in part to The Blues Brothers movie, who catapulted to regional notoriety after a love letter in the Minneapolis paper, suddenly found ourselves OPENING FOR John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers at a local club in "Nordeast" Minneapolis.

Curtis Blake is a two time W.C. Handy Award winner and along with our recently deceased female vocalist, was one of the "real musicians" in the band. He seldom if ever held a "straight job" during his entire career and neither did Mary Michaels, they didn't have to, they were that committed and that good.
The rest of us went on to careers outside of professional performing on stage and for us, our little band was just something exciting to do as a youth but Curtis and Mary were serious about their craft.

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Saw John Mayall, jefferson airplane and the mothers at one time or another. Love lofgren's guitar playing but never saw Grin. I was lucky enough to grow up in a large northeastern city and was in my teens in the sixties and I've seen a lot of concerts from the day. Went to the atlantic city pop festival and the one at pocono. What a time to be a teen.

Nils was a fixture in Garrett Park, MD.
Everyone was wowed by the dude who could do backflips while he jammed.
Some comments about his days at our alma mater, Walter Johnson High School, he was Class of '69, I was Class of '75, so although I "knew" him as that "fixture" and can show you where he lived, we didn't go to school together.
But my older brother remembers him.

Nils Lofgren: "Growing up it was always gonna be my high school. Back then there was this division of musical taste between the greasers and the long hairs. I was one of the long hairs. The greasers were these Richard Montgomery (high school) soul music guys, of course soul music was great, but it was this whole look of black leathers and slick short hair. It was this period in the ‘60s, when greasers thought that everyone with long hair was a sissy and they’d come over and beat a couple sissies up. One day a couple guys came over, got out of a car, looking for some long hairs. My buddy Fred was there and called them out. He had a reputation as a fighter. I was a couple years younger so I was watching from afar, but he backed them down and sent them on their way. He drew a line in the sand like it wasn’t going to be tolerated, and it wasn’t.

It led to these spectacular full contact tackle football games with no equipment, between the greasers and long hairs at the WJ field. We had this whole gang of sports lovers that played football regularly, and all of a sudden we had this common enemy, and it was a pretty amazing couple months. We beat them more than they beat us; a lot of us got hurt, but it was fun anyway."

I didn't know him, I knew of him...but everyone in town "knew of him". He was and still is a very approachable and down to earth guy. To this day I don't understand why "Grin" didn't break nationally, except that maybe they didn't get enough promotion from the record label.
 
No no no no nooooooooo....
Look at the poster hanging up on my wall.
Citizen, my little blues band in Minneapolis in the 70's and early 80's.

View attachment 67249561

View attachment 67249562

A bunch of young kids who cashed in on the relatively new rediscovery of blues music thanks in part to The Blues Brothers movie, who catapulted to regional notoriety after a love letter in the Minneapolis paper, suddenly found ourselves OPENING FOR John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers at a local club in "Nordeast" Minneapolis.

Curtis Blake is a two time W.C. Handy Award winner and along with our recently deceased female vocalist, was one of the "real musicians" in the band. He seldom if ever held a "straight job" during his entire career and neither did Mary Michaels, they didn't have to, they were that committed and that good.
The rest of us went on to careers outside of professional performing on stage and for us, our little band was just something exciting to do as a youth but Curtis and Mary were serious about their craft.

View attachment 67249564
Whoa!

Well thanks for filling me in, here. I was in garage bands in my teens through very early 20's too, but my best band never got bigger than neighborhood bar gigs. It was far more love, than money. But the drinks and everything else flowed, and I'm sure you know how it goes!

Also, I saw your post on Nils, and have got to admit you've been in interesting places during interesting times. "White Lies" got a fair amount of local play in my city, but not very many of us had the Grin album. Of course later tunes like "Keith don't go" and "Valentine" received extensive airplay, and were well known.

Now the Twin Cities band that first made an impression upon me, were the guys below. Damn, that was a big hit!


 
Whoa!

Well thanks for filling me in, here. I was in garage bands in my teens through very early 20's too, but my best band never got bigger than neighborhood bar gigs. It was far more love, than money. But the drinks and everything else flowed, and I'm sure you know how it goes!

Also, I saw your post on Nils, and have got to admit you've been in interesting places during interesting times. "White Lies" got a fair amount of local play in my city, but not very many of us had the Grin album. Of course later tunes like "Keith don't go" and "Valentine" received extensive airplay, and were well known.

Now the Twin Cities band that first made an impression upon me, were the guys below. Damn, that was a big hit!




We headlined with the remnants of CROW. Wayne Cafferella was a good friend, and I "dated" his two sisters for a while.
They were both crazy but sweet, it is what it is. Actually I think Wayne was in COPPERHEAD. It has been so long I get fuzzy on some of this. But the guys in CROW and COPPERHEAD all knew each other and hung out together and even lived together.

Our little band started as a basement band. We didn't think we were any good.
Well, some of us didn't, put it that way.
The moment that review hit the paper the phone began to ring itself off the wall.
Almost everyone was shocked, and grateful.

I was a little kid when my brothers turned me on to Nils Lofgren and Grin. I'm sure I probably didn't get it right away, probably because he wasn't The Beatles? Anyway, I saw him play a high school dance and he was jamming and doing those backflips and holy crap, I sure as Hell got it then!
Yes, he would STILL COME BACK and do a few high school gigs every now and then. Nils is the kind of guy who really bought into the whole "be true to your town and true to your school" thing, which is very much "jock" philosophy but he was a longhair who just loved his little corner of the world.

From there I discovered The Nighthawks, and proud to say I am friends with those guys. And THEY came up to the Twin Cities and we opened for THEM!
 
Here's one for you Chomsky, another huge Twin Cities band that made it around the world right about the time their founder DIED, believe it or not.

This one deserves your speakers on "11".
James Walsh Gypsy Band.

NOTE: This song PREDATES SANTANA....yes....it's incredible.
 
We headlined with the remnants of CROW. Wayne Cafferella was a good friend, and I "dated" his two sisters for a while.
They were both crazy but sweet, it is what it is. Actually I think Wayne was in COPPERHEAD. It has been so long I get fuzzy on some of this. But the guys in CROW and COPPERHEAD all knew each other and hung out together and even lived together.

Our little band started as a basement band. We didn't think we were any good.
Well, some of us didn't, put it that way.
The moment that review hit the paper the phone began to ring itself off the wall.
Almost everyone was shocked, and grateful.

I was a little kid when my brothers turned me on to Nils Lofgren and Grin. I'm sure I probably didn't get it right away, probably because he wasn't The Beatles? Anyway, I saw him play a high school dance and he was jamming and doing those backflips and holy crap, I sure as Hell got it then!
Yes, he would STILL COME BACK and do a few high school gigs every now and then. Nils is the kind of guy who really bought into the whole "be true to your town and true to your school" thing, which is very much "jock" philosophy but he was a longhair who just loved his little corner of the world.

From there I discovered The Nighthawks, and proud to say I am friends with those guys. And THEY came up to the Twin Cities and we opened for THEM!
Yeah, I never saw Nils (or a picture or video of him) doing backflips, but a buddy of mine told me about it back-in-the day.

But I've really got to thank you for that Spectator article you posted, because in it Nils makes some really great observations of urban life during the times when greasers & hippies co-existed. Actually it was a transitional period, as many of the greasers eventually joined the freaks to some extent - but it took years. It's a very misunderstood time for anyone that didn't live through it, and that's complicated by it only lasting a few years.

Everyone (H.S. age kids) was divided into one of three groups: Greasers, Dopers, Dupers. The dupers were the boring straight-laced plain-cut & clean-cut kids, whose parents dressed them like out of the Sears catalog. The other two groups - being more fringe & antisocial - saw the dupers as mainstream & boring, lacking in spirit.

Greasers of course were the blue-collar often juvenile delinquents, often of immigrant stock (in my neighborhood), and often had parents that had economic or other social problems. Greasers never went to college, often dropped-out of school, and they often got into trouble.

Dopers were, well, dopers. But it didn't necessarily imply hardcore drug use. Despite the name, it was about far more than drugs, even though pot was the universal object & symbol. It was about coming out of the greaser era, and embracing the experimental counter-cultural peace-love-dope era. That, and it usually involved embracing the anti-war movement too.

I originally started out as a greaser from a very young age, then in high-school transitioned to some of the counterculture lifestyle. But I never seemed to make the full transition into it, as some did. I was accepted by both groups, though when I grew my hair my freak friends affectionately called me a "greasy hippie"; meaning I looked like them and partied with them, but still hung-on inside to some of my earlier Catholic immigrant-parents' hard-tack roots.

It is that hanging-on to my core values, beliefs, and behaviors, that I believe spared me of some of the loses and hardships many of my more hardcore friends succumbed to. David Crosby said it best, I think: "Peace, Love, Dope. Well, we got two out of three right!
 
Here's one for you Chomsky, another huge Twin Cities band that made it around the world right about the time their founder DIED, believe it or not.

This one deserves your speakers on "11".
James Walsh Gypsy Band.

NOTE: This song PREDATES SANTANA....yes....it's incredible.
Interesting. Sounds vaguely familiar, but yes very Santana-like.

With your Midwest roots, you may remember this local (and locally very popular) hit:


 
Nils was a fixture in Garrett Park, MD.
Everyone was wowed by the dude who could do backflips while he jammed.
Some comments about his days at our alma mater, Walter Johnson High School, he was Class of '69, I was Class of '75, so although I "knew" him as that "fixture" and can show you where he lived, we didn't go to school together.
But my older brother remembers him.



I didn't know him, I knew of him...but everyone in town "knew of him". He was and still is a very approachable and down to earth guy. To this day I don't understand why "Grin" didn't break nationally, except that maybe they didn't get enough promotion from the record label.

I was lucky enough I had a friend who had a massive album collection, every week he was buying something different and that's how I got turned on to grin. One of my favorites is his quick little rusty gun. Nice acoustic work.
 
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