The Surprise Reunion Talks

Finishing up at the Fairbanks Building here on the Formosa Lot - back to Editorial next door on Monday.

When I say Fairbanks Building, I do not mean a nice, new, glimmering structure built in honor of Douglas Fairbanks. This WAS his building, and I am just on the other side of the wall from a 1920's soundstage that may be haunted. I liked this corner, especially when I'd walk out and see somebody famous like Chris Schauble from Channel 5 News.

Two days ago the nominees for this year's Golden Reel sound editing awards were announced. I had no idea I'd been nominated in the Direct To Video category - 2 out of 5! - so now it looks like I must go, one way or another.

I started getting Linkedin emails from my old drummer friend John Privitelli, and he was asking what year our band Highway Star opened for Van Halen (it was 1975). Everybody but John and I thought VH sucked, so they left the dance hall; John and I sat right in front and had our own, private Van Halen concert. But, back to present.

Our band had 5 members, and soon two of the other guys joined in the conversation. At once point I said: "Maybe we should pick a night, get together, and drink responsibly." Somehow this turned into a band reunion, and now I've desperately got to learn how to play guitar again by late March.

However, I can't think of anything more fun to do right now, even though we were a short-lived band that split up acrimoniously in early 1976 - 39 years ago!

We were basically a band for hire, but there were tensions about how much of the new "disco" sound to adopt, and how much to stick with Hard Rock. I remember the bass player Gary saying we needed our own, signature sound, but I had no idea what that meant at the time. How could I play guitar any differently? Gary was right: what we needed was a singular vision that we could all adhere to. But I was basically along for the ride, so we just tooled along until the tensions couldn't be ignored.

Probably our best performance was our last: an audition for Marlboro High School, near where I'm living now. I have that (and most of our shows) on stereo cassette, and will hopefully be able to clean that up digitally by the time of the reunion.

(The photo above is from our last performance.)