Is Your Soup On Fire?
(Posted 8/24/08)
A couple of days later, some, or all, of us approached Daamen with the opportunity of a lifetime – the rare chance to join the finest rock group bearing the name “The Roamin’ Five” in the entire school… He was indeed pleased at the prospect (as a member of such an exclusive club) of being accorded severe respect and admiration by the rest of the student body.
Well, maybe not. The truth is, I really don’t remember a few things about the situation…
- How we approached him
- What we said
- What he said
- How hard he laughed at the thought of joining us
In fact, I may not have been directly involved in the invitation/begging/negotiation at all… All I know is that, somehow, Daamen ended up as a member of the band.
And, somehow, Tim ended up as not a member of the band…
That’s right – Tim left the group. I honestly don’t remember exactly why he left the group, but he did. I DO recall there was some sadness involved, though. But I also remember that he still remained close to us all, and hung out with us and helped us out with gigs, etc.
This was kinda like credit card debt – You make a purchase. Then you make a payment, and somehow still you owe more than you did when you made the purchase in the first place… Gain one – lose one – gain one back – lose another one…
This, of course, required some realignment of who was to do what…
- Mike continued to play the drums
- Daamen played the organ and became our lead singer
- I continued to play lead (only) guitar, singing backup
- Scott became the bass player singing backup
So far, of the original members of the “Roamin’ Five”, two had roamed completely away. We had to change our name before we all found ourselves explaining to our dads why we spent all this money on instruments we weren’t using…
The search for a new name began.
The search for a new name continued.
The search for a new name went on for sometime, actually.
And then, one day, it stopped because of something that three people we never met did…
Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton became a band… Cream… And they recorded a song that we made our own… I’m So Glad…
From that day forward, we were known as “The I’m Sos”. Haha – That’s a joke, son…
We could finally stop calling ourselves the “Roamin’ Four”. We were now “Glad”.
Along the way, we also got fancy… We brought on a new guy as part of the act – Al Gandi. With Al, we created our own light show.. Oh yeah – Strobe Lights, Black Lights, Colored Lights, colored oil Blob projections and all. Then someone got hold of my guitar and painted designs around the periphery in multi-colored fluorescent paint. We came up with a great logo, and that was painted onto Mike’s bass drum in equally fluorescent paint. We were very psychedelic, and from that point on, we were really fun to watch, if not listen to.
I think we were the only band in town with it’s own light show, and everybody heard about us.
This led to a new challenge – what to name the light show? One day we were all sitting around the lunch table discussing possible names…
- Big Al’s Magic Lights (Al was actually pretty short)
- Gladolightor
- Glad’s Light show
- Glad Lights
- Things That Go “Flash” In The Night
Finally, Bob Moraga came up with what I considered to be the winner:
Burnt Tripe
That name said it all (To this day I’m not quite sure what “IT” was, but whatever it was, it was what it was and it was completely said in the name “Burnt Tripe”).
To me, it was perfect. To everybody else, no name was better. So that’s what we named it – nothing. We didn’t give it a name, officially. But to me it was, and will always be, “Burnt Tripe”.
Can you say “Moo”?
Things With Six Strings 