The life of young stars

So, when our story ended last week, I was wiping sweat from my brow after my parents found I’d turned their living room into a rehearsal hall for a rock band.
But when you tell one story, you’re reminded of another.
Last week, Portland attorney John Coldren stopped me as I picked up the newspaper’s mail. Do you remember, he said, that band — the same garage band I’d written about in last week’s column — played at a dance at Manchester?
Of course, I remembered.
After I’d mollified my parents about the mid-winter impromptu practice session that shook the family china nearly to the breaking point, an opportunity arose.
I’d signed on to be the “manager” of a rock band, circa 1964-65, which really meant I carried amplifiers and handled the checkbook.
The group — originally my good buddy Jim Klopfenstein on drums, Jim Steffy on electric piano, Leroy Rigby on bass, Phil Fleming on guitar, and Phil Simons as lead singer — had evolved as such groups do. Phil Simons was replaced as lead singer by Mark Hearn. And the name of the band was changed from The Outcast to The Idleminds.
(Neither name was very good, but that wasn’t really the point.)
A gig or two was played, amplifiers duly toted, then the big time came calling.
Coldren was some sort of undergraduate student leader at Manchester College. The Beatles had recently been on the Ed Sullivan Show. And there was a movement afoot to have a live band at a dance at Manchester instead of just another sock hop with a DJ.
In those days, Manchester did not allow student dances on campus. Instead, any campus organization that wanted to sponsor a dance had to rent off-campus space.
That’s what John’s organization did, booking the North Manchester High School gym for a Manchester College student dance. The powers-that-be at Manchester were probably none too thrilled about the proposition.
It helped that John and Jim Klopfenstein were cousins a couple of times removed. We got the gig.
Fool that I was, I then went to my father and proposed taking the family’s Ford station wagon, loaded up with band members and gear, and driving off the Manchester to play the dance.
I’ve forgotten how many reasons he cited that that was a bad idea. Insurance questions, the fact that I’d just gotten my license, the idea of an overnight with a bunch of other teenage guys without any adult supervision, you name it.
We made the gig, but that was only thanks to Jim Steffy’s mom and, as I recall, Wendell Klopfenstein, Jim’s dad.
And then the next complication hit.
Coldren had been tirelessly promoting the dance on campus, but he’d been using the band’s old name, not the new one. When the band arrived, saw the posters, and protested, John put his foot down: For tonight, you are The Outcast. You can change your name when you get back to Portland.
And so, they took the stage. But the repertoire was limited.
At best, the band — under any name — knew 15 songs, maybe as few as a dozen. A little Beatles, a little Kinks, a little Louie Louie, and soon it was time for a break. Then it would be a matter of recycling the same songs in a different order for another set.
The Manchester kids didn’t seem to care. They loved it.
The guys in the band loved it too.
Keep in mind, these were kids about 15 years old. I was the senior member of the entourage at 16.
That night, we stayed in one of the Manchester dorms. It was the first night most of us had been away from home without supervision.
Now, imagine you are a teenage boy. At home, whenever you take a shower, you are reprimanded for using too much hot water.
Now, imagine you are the same kid away from home for the night, a night when the prodigious boilers of Manchester College had an infinite supply of hot water.
I lost count of the showers, but I can assure you we came home to Jay County clean.[[In-content Ad]]