Change....
“It doesn’t matter who you are....
It’s all the same....
What’s in your heart will never change…….”
John Wait – 1982
I actually bought my first Marshall amp from Evan’s Music. It might have been in 1981.
I’m not really sure. I do remember Kelly and I living in some apartments I did carpenter work on a few years prior. The Marshall 100 watt half stack stood in our bedroom. It was about the best sounding amp I had ever owned. To this day, nothing has been able to replace it. I still can’t figure out how or why I let it go away. I wanted to exploit it to its capacity when I first got it. Unfortunately, all my musician friends were all off making lives while I was making mine.
Heather was probably about 3 years old staying at home with mom and trying on mom’s shoes. But about that time is when I read an ad in the Rolling Stone and contacted an agency which led me to join a working lounge band called Super Fox. The name really doesn’t give the clearest picture of just how completely hideous this venture was. In any case the repertoire was precisely what the name implied. Management was determined to keep its hotel lounge operators satisfied with current top 40 hits and ruminants of disco. I could have done worse (or better).
I was only on the road with Super Fox long enough to get a few pay checks and meet up with John and Marie Hollenbeck, a married couple with the determination to overthrow the band and make some kind of point. I never got the point. But, my parents put them up, I found some carpenter work for John and I and later the three of us made our way to Connecticut which of course and according to John was superior to Texas. Naturally my van was their means to return home. All the while John promised me a place to stay and a band to work with for money. All was well upon our arrival until John’s wife got into an argument with John’s father over some
door to door sales lady trying to sell John’s wife place settings from the Hollenbeck’s kitchen table. (homeless people living in Vince’s van shopping for place settings. Only in ....Connecticut....). By now I was certain I had made a foul judgment decision and sincerely missed the convenience of knowing where I could find drugs back home. Connecticut was the only place I had ever seen and heard a Rolling Stones tribute band. They weren’t awesome.
Later in the day, we converged to Marie’s father’s house to stay the night. We did. The next day Mr. Percel was kind enough to thank me for coming to visit and should I return to please call ahead. I was then glad I fucked his 19 year old daughter when she came to visit her sister and John back in Dallas. At least I had my van and my gear. I then drove to New Jersey to see and stay with Bill Flynn in Point Pleasant Beach. After a thorough 4 month stay, I called my wife, got some cash and headed home with my tail planted firmly between my legs. I did, however meet Frankie Infante of Blondie. Too bad my thing wasn’t heroin. Frankie was an expert on that one. He certainly couldn’t play the guitar and any philosophical uttering was lost with the missing brain cells. Who am I to talk?
When I made my triumphant return back to the wife and back to my home stomping grounds, I was determined to make the best use of my new found road savvy I obtained playing in Super
Fox, traveling the north east part of the US and of course meeting the likes
of Blondie’s guitar player. I hit the pavement and landed at Parker Music.
When I moved to Texas in the summer of 1973, Parker Music was the closest music store around my area. Parker Music had several locations strewn about Houston, but Northline Mall was the one within my reach. My friends and I went there whenever transportation permitted. While my friends were guys that liked the thought of playing guitar or whatever, I was truly the only real musician they had ever really ever known. What they pictured as a means to acquire more girls was vastly different than my ambitions as a guitar player. At Parker’s I saw a Gibson Flying V or a new Les Paul, both of which over shadowed my beat up SG I bought used in California with my Fender Mustang trade in. Parker’s had all the stuff that I thought I needed. Even the shitty Peavey PA stuff was the closest I could get to live performance gear. Parker’s was the place where I bought a brand new Les Paul Custom burgundy and my first full scale PA system in all its Peaveyness.
I looked up Parker Music in the phone book. The phone numbers for the location on the north freeway and Memorial City were switched by accident. This probably didn’t deter Parker’s from making a killing selling LP and Peavey to the local Hispanics and rednecks. I called the number that was supposed to be for the freeway location. Linda Kroger answered the phone and I asked if I could please come in and talk to the manager. She informed me they were always looking for new talent and to see Tom (what’s his name). I thought to myself what a nice lady that was on the phone. I proceeded to embark to the north store and talk to this Tom person. Tom was a tall over weight red haired goon that looked down at me and was a complete jerk off. He afforded the larger portion of our time together telling me how he was Parker’s main guy and I wasn’t to waste a second of his precious time. I explained the phone numbers being switched and that I spoke to Linda. Time seemed to stand still as I felt alone making sense. I found out some basic important facts from our “made guy” Tom regarding phones are never switched, I am in error, why would I expect to get hired with less than zero knowledge of music gear etc. ....
The hard part was long over and ended very quickly and quietly as Tom and I become great pals. This may have been due to my impeccable ass kissing skills and the fact that I swept and
mopped the restroom without being asked. To think I would take a shit in that shithole?
I was introduced to Lysol at a young age and I wasn’t about to drive all the way home for periodic relief and privacy. At any rate, I was at home at the North store. Since my counterpart, Roy Briggs didn’t like to work night shift hours; I was always in complete control and could virtually do whatever I wanted to in the confines of the guitar side of the store.
The north store was a large building the owner built from scratch on a property located on the west side of the feeder road of interstate 45 between West Road and West Mount Houston Road. Rudy built the north store somewhere around 1980 whenever he got tired of paying rent to Northline Mall. The north store was a fortress impenetrable by drunk drivers, missiles or virtually anything else including the elements. There is no glass front facing any part of the perimeter. The entrance is a high and large wooden cast door combined with metal that you can’t break into or escape from. There is no access to the roof without a ladder not to mention any real means by which to escape elsewhere. The north store did accommodate convenience when it came to loading large pieces of gear and big pianos and organs to your truck or Parker’s trucks for eventual delivery. But inside lay the magic.
The room occupying the guitars and amps and all the other cool gear was as huge as an automobile showroom times two (or three or more so). It was the marvel of the business in those days. There were wall to wall guitars hanging on every side of the room. Evans was still in a strip center as were most of the other competing music stores. In fact Evans is still in the same spot! The north store was and still is one of a kind in respect to the industry and dare I say, culture embodying musical gear. We sold orchestra and school band instruments as well. But guitars, amps, drums, PA and such were the main stay regardless of the fact most of it didn’t produce a relative dime of profit. The majority of a guitar store’s cash flow resides in strings and accessories unless you sell pianos and organs which Parker used to for many years.
Wilson Boone was the resident peripheral manager. Boone counted and ordered sheet music and had done so for 20 years (or longer). Boone was with Parker’s before Rudy and Linda
bought it when it was a chain of retail outlets called Parker Brothers. Boone reached the peek of his career and was well on his way to retirement years at that time. Boone was a WWII veteran and was acutely meticulous in all his efforts due to his regimen and discipline. Boone was also a drinking buddy on the weekends. Boone made stringent efforts to get his work done in order to
maintain his prompt cocktail calling at the appropriate hour of the day. I joined him regularly, counting sheet music and drinking. Boone never counted money but he did carry keys to all six of the locations that were in operation at that time. He served his purpose and Rudy kept him around. Boone may have been a little outdated, but Boone knew where everything was located in every crevice throughout the entire chain of Parker’s stores notwithstanding storerooms and the like.
Roy Briggs at first seemed like a nice guy that was fun to talk to about music, gigs and what not. Roy used to play in a band called the Eyes. Without delving into the 10 points of Kevin Bacon, I actually saw the Eyes when Cardi’s first opened many years ago. Roy, for the most part, appeared interesting and knowledgeable. Roy was an alcoholic. His life was always in disarray and he always had a bone to pick with the world. I found myself avoiding Roy on all levels. He made me uneasy. In general Roy made allot of people uneasy. The only real fun I had with Roy was when we played a gig with Ray Carroll in Magnolia and Roy couldn’t stay standing after countless Jack and cokes. Roy played bass and I was the guitar player. It was a country and western gig. No matter. I learned absolutely nothing from my association with Mr. Briggs.
Tom, on the other hand, taught me allot in terms of operating a music store the wrong way and with the least amount of effort. Whenever I began working for Parker Music, Tom was the
manager of all the locations and couldn’t keep track of one of them. Whenever Rudy took his keys away from the other locations and left him with the north store, Tom wasn’t capable of running a newspaper route much less an extreme music store concern as colossal as Parker’s northern most location. And Tom was our absentee manager. He popped his head in now and then yet managed to be around whenever Rudy was in the store. Rudy came to work at 5AM.. and left for the bank by 10AM.. almost daily. With the exception of inventory season, Tom was scarce most of the time. Calling Tom on the phone in a time of need was completely useless and futile, especially when there was a real problem like the store getting robbed. I failed to see how Rudy decided to keep him as long as he did. I wonder in pure disbelief to find an example of Tom’s competence other than to say that Tom was so very incompetent I can’t even site
an example to allocate to him even to his credit. Tom and Roy were both completely worthless human beings. Tom was addicted to coke and Roy Jack Daniels. They both finally got fired. Both men were dicks. Sorry if I am being reiterative. It merits repeating.....
Rudy fired Tom. I was glad and also in disbelief that morning and I was not going to miss that fool at all. Neither was Linda. Linda even told me she thought he was a drug coated wind bag
wanting for unemployment benefits. But the ultimate moment in Parker history was when Roy was fired. Steve Baker fired Roy Briggs. I wish I could write that louder. I certainly will repeat it for my own entertainment and joy. Fuck Roy Briggs. Roy Briggs is a jerk. While Roy was telling me, my drummer friend and Ed Mumford he was better than any of us at a jam session, Steve Baker was touring with the Teddy Boys across the ....United States..... Roy Briggs toured liquor stores. Steve Baker played clubs. It was like going to a fight and watching another kid beat the Be Jesus out of the local bully. Except, Roy was a little guy by most standards while Steve was tall and thin. Neither Steve nor Roy were in any capacity to brawl. But let me regress: Steve fired ....Roy..... He fired ....Roy.... because Rudy agreed with him to do so. Let’s take a closer look at this because this is important. Steve possessed the wherewithal to recognize a true asshole and convey it to Rudy as such. “Do you really think we should fire Roy”? “I think so. Yes. He’s bad for the company”. “You want to do it”? “Yes. Absolutely”. “Done”. Maybe it didn’t start out that eloquent. Who cares? Mission accomplished! Steve did the right thing.
Steve should have had a parade in his honor as far as I was concerned. Steve stifled the little pig
headed thief...oops. I forgot to mention Roy and Tom were pilfering the place blind. (More on that later). Steve came back from the road and was rehired by Rudy and Linda. Steve had skill and experience in this business and made it into what it was meant to be or once was. Parker’s was back into the business of stocking and selling good gear. Where Roy and the coke head squandered Parker’s reputation, Baker brought back the fundamentals that were tradition and replenished Parker’s dignity. I held the highest of account(s) for this man that demonstrated fearlessness and highest integrity beyond any base or premise. Baker was a good guy who was unpretentious and down to Earth. Now I was working at the Parker’s I remembered years earlier. Time to get to work.
Steve invented a new logo to bring Parker’s to a current style of being while delivering Parker’s into the mainstream with the rest of the 80s. It started with a new business card and some bumper stickers. It stuck. It remained. It remains today and as we speak. With Steve long gone selling custom homes in Sugarland, it can be seen on the side of the north store’s building! You can see it from the freeway as you drive by. You can recognize it anywhere else you might happen upon it. For years musicians had the bumper sticker on their guitar cases and road gear not to mention the cars they drove. Rudy used to call it “Steve’s guitar”. That’s what it was. It
was a guitar. It was jaggedly drawn by someone Steve knew or maybe it was drawn by Steve Baker himself. I don’t remember. Rudy’s remarks on the matter were “Steve seems to think this guitar thing will work. I don’t know”. Rudy knows now because it did! It was “Steve’s guitar”. So be it.
The downtown store was actually located on interstate 45 south near the University of ..Houston.... in an old strip center next to a carpet outlet. Rudy used to love to hate that location. He hated paying rent and he hated thieves breaking into the store via busting the cinder blocks with a sledge hammer. But, Rudy is a numbers man. Rudy realized the location’s consistent bottom line and reluctantly wrote a check every month for the rent and had a brick mason, more
than a few times, replace the broken bricks. The slang name for the downtown store was the Drum store.
Baker exploited the Drum store’s legend. Many of the then well known local drummers worked at that store over the course of the seventies and beyond. The clientele and the drummer
employees were legend (although the only name I can remember is Lalo) and were the harbingers of the newest and the latest percussion and the like. But also, it’s important to be reminded; the Drum store also housed Pete Ware the electronic repair emperor and Lauren Davies the piano tuner slash band instrument expert. Speaking of which, Parker’s at one time in history had an elite crew of band instrument specialists that extended their power and influence from the Drum store.
Steve exploited the Drum store’s incumbent and undefeated legend and legacy. He renamed it. He renamed it appropriately and prudently using mindful consciousness and maintaining
compliance with a standard and a tradition. He renamed it The Drum Company. It wasn’t the downtown store any longer and it certainly wasn’t just the drum store. We called it Drum Company for short and we answered the phone Drum Company. Steve had cards printed that said Drum Company and Drum Company had its own logo. A logo that sits in its rightful place next to the “Steve’s guitar” on the north store building.
Rudy enjoyed getting up at the crack of dawn and doing books and counting money. Rudy picked his venue regularly. If he so desired, he worked from home, the north store, Drum Company
and sometimes Memorial City. Rudy paid bills. He preferred to write checks for inventory over paying rent and other expenditures like utilities. Little by little locations like Pasedena and others become obviously absurd to keep operating. Rudy didn’t shed a tear over closing some of these, especially Pasadena. The Pasadena store looked like a used auto parts store inside with a trifle of amps and guitars with broken strings. Towards its last days, Gordon made sure the store looked somewhat presentable in spite of the fact Rudy hardly allocated any of Parker’s resources or inventory out there. Pasadena was a dead shoe. Gordon was more than happy to go over and run the guitar side of the Drum Company leaving Pasadena to die a lonely death. In fact Gordon was overjoyed to make the move. Drum Company had an abundance of gear and plenty of paying customers.
Rudy, as he has always done in the past, sent two trucks that loaded up what was meaningful and then disconnected the phone. The trucks, of course, had Steve’s guitar painted on the side that served as message to the lingering dust in the ....Pasadena.... store and the rest of the world. This is a new era. This is a new Parker’s. No remorse for the dead.....
The first year I worked at Parker’s, Boone gave me the task of moving the music books racks. I was pushing one of the larger wooden bins when a leg collapsed and landed on my foot. My
foot swelled up and I had to go to the local clinic at Parker’s expense and have it examined. No big deal. Rudy ordered polygraphs that week due to his suspicions of Roy, Tom and some of their pals stealing gear or money or both. I reported for my polygraph soon after I left the clinic. The problem was I didn’t pass the polygraph. My foot was killing me and I wasn’t real cooperative
anyways. Rudy had me meet with Linda at the Memorial store to do some painting until the whole matter got resolved. It did. I will never figure out why they wanted everything painted mostly yellow.
I met some of my fellow workmates at the store and was in wonderment with the scenery of women walking in the mall. The surroundings were more laid back and the mood was liberating.
The musicians were more of the artistic culture in comparison to Drum Company’s blue collar clientele and north store’s rugged redneck and Hispanic crowd. This was appealing to me as a person. I liked it there. I could sell guitars and talk to what I might consider my peers. My transfer wouldn’t happen for another year.....
With Tom and Roy defrocked from grace and the new regime in place, a new and prevalent motif stood in plain view. Parker’s certainly was on a new path in a new and glorious time; the 80s. We had our growing pains. We spent nights and days counting and extracting old junk that wasn’t ever going to get sold and replenishing old inventory with newer more updated products. It
wasn’t hard to do. It was fun! While Tom would order loads of crap because it was in the Midco catalog which didn’t require much effort or thought. Steve would scour all the publications in search of something he saw on a MTV. At about that time Charvel Guitars started appearing on MTV. Naturally Steve was all over it! We ordered Charvel guitars and Parker’s was the first to have them. Steve was starting to make sense to Rudy because apparently, Rudy was paying attention. The bottom line was growing and losses were minimal. Rudy ordered and installed a television with cable access and MTV was to be viewed all hours of the day on the guitar side of the store.
Memorial City didn’t have all the trappings of the large exclusive building on the north freeway and it certainly didn’t have the prestige. Memorial had pianos and organs. Memorial had spiders in the closet with lots of dust. Memorial had some very old instructors. Memorial had a couple of Tom’s leftovers. Sherrie wasn’t one of them though. Steve sent over truck loads of new gear and colorful accessories. Sherrie and I started cleaning the store and arranging and rearranging newer stuff while weeding out older and outdated stuff. Speaking of older and outdated stuff, Tom’s leftovers eventually quit.
People like Tom always made people like me and Gordon worry about getting fired. Looking back, Tom couldn’t play a note to save his pitiful life. Tom heralded himself as an important and
not yet well known member of Genesis. ....Roy.... considered himself to be the most talented and influential songwriter of his time, but he was all alone in that respect. All that changed when Steve got off the road from the Teddy Boys and took the reigns. What he had to work with were people like Gordon and me and of course Sherrie Baccarise. We were all fairly young and had the needed enthusiasm to start a new game at a pristine moment in time. Others joined the ranks. Others had come and gone. And it could only get better. And it did.
I had been telling Steve and Boone that I wanted to go to Memorial. I was about to be separated from Kelly and I wanted more than anything to get out of the windowless building that was the north store. Steve didn’t much care for Memorial for some reason. He had allot of stories about the store. But all in all I think he didn’t like it because there were too many conservative parent types. Aside from seeing his perspective, I liked it there. I spent more time at Memorial than I did at home. I met most of my friends at Memorial and Memorial City Mall changed my life. When I finally started there, I wasn’t greeted with open arms (and drugs).
....
Max was one of Tom’s leftovers. Max generally hated anything to do with Parker’s yet he stuck around until he finally had to quit or get fired. He certainly didn’t appreciate me moving into his turf (or whatever). Max really wasn’t a bad guy. He saw things changing around him and in spite of him which he didn’t understand or like. The 80s were about to leave Max behind with extreme prejudice. Sherrie and I started cleaning up and restringing guitars that had hung on the wall for years. Max saw this as a threat to his survival at Parker’s even though he didn’t want to be there. But now that I think about it, maybe Max wanted to be part of it but couldn’t bring himself to ignore his pride and jump in. Either way, Max joined the other dinosaurs and relinquished the wand.
Sherrie and I fit together well. I wasn’t interested in her other than for a working relationship and she felt the same way. We got under each others’ skin from time to time but overall
we worked together famously.
1983 was a grand year in spite of dealing with Max and some of the remaining bullshit at Memorial. There was plenty of new music all over the place. There was The Police, Motley Crue,
more Van Halen, Michael Jackson, Big Country, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, oldies, new stuff by older bands, old stuff by newer bands and a complete variety to suit everyone’s tastes whatever they might be. All of it was on MTV. We didn’t have MTV piped in like it was at the north store. Rudy paid for a ..VCR.. and we played recorded tapes of MTV all day provided by our mutual friend Mike Edmundis Tomato (Mike Edmonds). I’ll explain the name another time.
I met a lot of really cool people and made some fairly serious friendships. Customers of all types asked for me to find whatever it was they needed. I talked to Baker, Boone and Rudy
on a daily basis. Steve was constantly sending us truckloads of new gear. Sherrie and I ordered mounds of gadgets and accessories. In fact, we wanted to beef up our drum stuff. Baker ordered just about every gauge of drumsticks from Promark while Sherrie and I ordered every possible replacement part, cymbal washer, stick caddy, drum head size, drum head tuners and so on to fill any possible void that there might be. It was awesome and we got into it. Virtually every brand and type of guitar strings and bass strings were hanging on the peg board display wall behind the counter and there were millions of guitar picks in whatever container we could put them in on the main counters and elsewhere.
North store got the majority of the newer stuff that came in, but Steve played fair and did what he could to make sure the ratios of newer more popular guitars were somewhat balanced and
reached our sales floor. For the most part, we had at least one of everything
and for items we couldn’t afford to carry one each of, we had a fair
representation of the product line.....
The real fun began whenever we unboxed huge PA systems and set them up or plugged in large guitar and bass amps and demoed them loudly towards the direction of patrons walking by in the mall. Complaints were well established and in abundance, but the noise carried outside the corridors of the mall and received the attention of the right pocket books. Everyone from all ages made a deliberate stop in Parker Music either out of need or out of just pure and refined curiosity.....
We also had our share of local folk that lived in the immediate area. People like Clarius, Jimi James, Gevan, Clint Black and his brother Kevin. I can’t forget Mike and Buddy, two of
Jimi James friends that I became friends with over the years. There was Cole who we took with us to Peavey school posing as Steve Baker because Steve couldn’t make it. There was Mike Edmonds and Marcus (who used to poke me in the chest to annoy me). There was Marcus from Boston. There was Scott and Kent. There was Judy Gard. There was Larry Weinstein, brother of Leslie West that worked for us. There was Gigi (pronounced Gee Gee). There was Lance Nix of Wurx who had a speech impediment when ever he used the expression “depth in my snare”. There was Betty who I later dated. There was Johnny Rockabilly and Jim who now plays
upright bass for Reverend Horton Heat. There were lawyers, doctors, mothers, fathers, preachers, sisters, your aunt and you name it. We were friends with them all. Their names numbered in the hundreds and I can’t begin to remember all of them except for once in a while when a memory of one of them appears in my brain. All of them were totally significant and made a contribution to the time and era.
There were parties, invitations, free lunches, offers to smoke pot in the alley behind the mall and
mall romances. There was plenty of drama, pain, suffering, joy, delusion, misunderstandings, hope, carefree bliss and plenty of young girls that either worked in the mall or hung around the mall or both.
Towards the end of 1983, I had the good fortune to meet Sally Fenoglio. Sally came into the store searching for a microphone she could actually wear while she performed aerobics
as an instructor. We found a headset microphone in the Shure catalog which we expeditiously ordered for her. When it arrived, I could see it wasn’t built for wear and tear so I made some minor modifications with some electrical tape and attached a longer cord to it. There wasn’t a wireless alternative back then. One such thing became available a few years later.
I took the microphone to Sally directly at her studio on West Gray. Her studio had windows all around where you could see her students inside dancing and aerobisizing. I went upstairs to the second floor where the studio was and upon entering I could feel the strong beat of the music and the thud of moving feet on the wood floor of Sally Fenoglio’s Exercise to Music. It was sight to be had. Women were lined in rows sweating and moving in skimpy leotards with sneakers on their feet with legs warmers. Sally was in her early thirties and in totally fit shape. She had
a beautiful figure with a perfect ass. I had a crush on her. She was married. Nothing romantic ever materialized, but we became very good friends over the years until I lost touch of her. Sally asked me how her stereo could become louder with more bass. I brought my wares to our next meeting. Her other instructors that worked for her followed suit and ordered microphones and had me alter them for endurance and functionality to follow their physical movements and suit
their purpose as well.
I also joined Sally’s herd and became an aerobics addict. I originally wanted to meet women but wound up getting in shape which for several years changed my outlook on everything and
life in general. I overcame my shyness to women and made many women friends as well as lovers. Whenever Kelly and I split up, I took it hard at first only later to concede and realize my potential as a 27 year old single dude. It became somewhat painless after all.
Christmas 1983 had a few unusual moments. We managed to pass through band season without many scars. Towards Christmas, Steve ordered dozens of low priced drum sets from major
manufacturers like Tama and Pearl. People in the Memorial area soaked them up really fast and we couldn’t get anymore at a certain point. We loaded customers up with drum stuff, sticks and
whatever we could get on the sales ticket. We even delivered drum sets and put them together. Soon after the first of the year, things really started picking up and we were on the map for keeps. We were so busy none of us could see straight.
Walgreen’s across the way started selling beer and wine in the fall of that year. Close to Christmas Day we started buying dollar bottles of cheap Champaign and pouring it into cups for friends and customers. This may have seemed like a bad idea, but we didn’t care and no one else did either. There was fun to be had by all and it was a festive holiday season. Plus, the movie “Scarface” was out at the theatres and there just happened to be a theatre in the mall. After a long day of drinking cheap champagne and working the sales floor, Sherrie, Jimi James, Gigi and a few others went to the movies to see Scarface in the mall. The film had a malfunction and the flick didn’t start until almost ..midnight... Gigi’s sister worked at the mall’s theatre and let us in for free. Trouble was we were all so drunk and tired except for maybe Sherrie who was just tired, we all fell asleep and had to be waked by whoever was left closing the theatre. The next
day was Sunday and the mall was closed. Good thing for that!
Jimi James Beauford Hoffa ..III.. was a young 22 year old guy with long hair similar to David Lee Roth. Jimi spent all of his spare time at the mall and especially Parker Music whenever he wasn’t making deliveries with his brother in the Bison Lumber truck. Jimi lived with his mom, brother and sister in law in an apartment in Spring Branch fairly near the mall. Somehow Jimi’s brother talked him into giving him his paycheck every week to help the family buy a plot of land
somewhere. Jimi followed instructions and was given something like 20 dollars every week walking around money. Although his brother never followed through with the family plans, his brother did buy Jimi a barely running used car that needed a screw driver to start.
Jimi attracted a lot of cute girls. Two of which were Judy Gard who worked at the import store and later Walgreen’s and Gigi who worked for Parkers. Judy broke it off, but Gigi become complete enamored with Jimi. For the most part Jimi and Gigi were an item, or at least for a little while. Jimi didn’t hang out with one girl too long. But at least Gigi and Jimi stayed friends for years to come until Gigi fell off the radar. It may sound pretty boring and it was. I had a car and a decent job. Jimi got the girls in spite of having or not having either. It was a curious notion whenever some beautiful well dressed girl would stop in at Parker’s to look for Jimi in the most logical place only to be outpaced by him a few moments earlier.
Jimi and I became real close friends and were roommates for many years. In fact we were roommates up until just a few years ago. Jimi is still around though. He is working at Evan’s
Music on Westheimer and has been for over ten years. I have more Jimi stories than I have about anyone else.
1984 was the best year yet. Baker, Linda, Vince Endracio and I went to ....Chicago.... for the NAMM show. If you’ve ever been to ....Chicago...., you know it’s a town for partying and continuous celebrating. Linda brought some cash Rudy had given her to divide amongst us.
She gave me fifty dollars which back then was enough money to blow for a 26 year old punk. I didn’t have to ever pay for one meal much less drinks or cab rides. So the small sum stayed with me until I got home.
At the Gibson guitar exhibit, I had the good fortune of meeting B. B. King who was on stage jamming with Jeff Pacaro (ToTo) and a menagerie of top flight musicians. I also met Steve Morse of the Dixie Dregs who was demonstrating Lexicon gear. I met Rick Derringer at the DiMarzio booth. I met Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge, Jeff Beck Group and Cactus fame. I met Neal Schon of Journey, but at the time he had a solo album he was trying to get off the ground. I saw and heard scores of greats that included Adrian Belew, Dale Bozio and Steve Lukather. There were also a handful of ex Parker employees that became field reps for
some of the manufacturers like Little Joe from Drum Company and Huey Wyrick who was working for Roland. I also met a lot of new people I became good friends with over the years. The NAMM show was spectacular and it was a blast!
Steve and I were in a cab looking for some cool night spot where there was a lot of lively entertainment. We took a cab to a few clubs and heard some live music. At one point we took another cab and asked the driver to take us somewhere where there was a lot of action.
The cab driver took that to mean something entirely different and took us to a gay bar at the far end of ....Rush Street..... “Skull…..why is there just a men’s room here?” Steve didn’t trust cabs anymore that night so we walked homeward. At least it wasn’t cold and snowing. Along the way we made several stops at local bars and pretty much kept ourselves entertained without incident. The following day after the remainder of the NAMM show, we flew home and reported to Rudy with all the receipts and invoices of merchandise Steve ordered. I had some input on the
buying decisions, but that was only because I knew how most of it worked. Steve got all the glory when it came to buying cool guitars. In contrast, I am solely responsible for Parker’s carrying an amp line that eventually had to be sold at half price and some cool guitar strings with a cool name that never arrived.
can’t. This was part one.....
