{"id":608,"date":"2016-04-18T04:05:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T04:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=608"},"modified":"2016-04-18T21:20:35","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T21:20:35","slug":"from-the-vaults-greek-week-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=608","title":{"rendered":"From The Vaults: Greek Week Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Greek Week Part 1 ended with my observations of Rick Derringer\u2019s band, The McCoys. \u00a0They were the headliners in the Greek Week Festival dance\/concert held at NMU\u2019s Hedgecock Fieldhouse in the spring of 1969 that also included the local band The French Church as the openers. \u00a0Two years later, I got to witness a concert that featured a couple of bands that were on the lower rungs of a ladder that would eventually take them to the top of their profession.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first name I spied on the posters was Bob Seger whose claim to fame up to then was the hit song <\/span>Ramblin\u2019, Gamblin\u2019 Man<\/span><\/i> that had been released by the Bob Seger System. \u00a0Imagine my surprise when a long haired, equally long bearded Seger opened the show solo. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t expecting an acoustic Bob Seger and certainly not as the opener. \u00a0The highlight of his set was his rendition of John Lennon\u2019s <\/span>Imagine. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>Seger pulled out a folded sheet of paper and said, \u201cWe heard this on the radio coming up here on the interstate so I wrote down the words so I could play it for you. \u00a0It is a new song by John Lennon.\u201d \u00a0Having just been released, I hadn\u2019t even heard Lennon\u2019s version of <\/span>Imagine <\/span><\/i>yet, but to this day, I hear Seger in my head when I hear the song. \u00a0Seger knew a good song when he heard it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Act number two on the bill was a drum\/organ duo called Teegarden & Van Winkle. \u00a0Drummer Dave Teegarden and organist Skip Knape had formed in Tulsa, Oklahoma but eventually made a musical home in Detroit. \u00a0I knew nothing about them at the time but certainly enjoyed their music. \u00a0Both sang and with Knape\/Van Winkle on keys and bass pedals, they produced a big sound. \u00a0They had a #22 single on the American Hot 100 chart (<\/span>God, Love and Rock & Roll) <\/span><\/i>in 1970, so they had some name recognition with the crowd, but I was not familiar with them at all. \u00a0After the second intermission, I got another surprise when Seger and Teegarden & Van Winkle joined forces as a trio for the third set.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With Seger now playing a Les Paul, the S,T & VW trio tore through some originals and a bunch of rock standards. \u00a0Seger proved to be a good guitar player and I remember thinking, \u201cThis is a band I would like to hear record an LP.\u201d \u00a0The collaboration eventually did put out a CD (<\/span>Smokin\u2019 OP\u2019s <\/span><\/i>which is short for <\/span>Smoking Other People\u2019s Songs<\/span><\/i>) which was not released until 2005. \u00a0As the name implies, it features them playing cover tunes and it is a pretty good record (pun intended) of what they were doing live in 1971. \u00a0Teegarden eventually played drums for Seger\u2019s Silver Bullet Band (and recorded four albums with that group) while Knape toured with his own band that included two female vocalists and horns. \u00a0Teegarden & Van Winkle have gotten back together on a few occasions over the years. \u00a0\u00a0Seger? \u00a0He ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t remember much about the originals they played in 1971, but Seger\u2019s <\/span>Turn the Page<\/span><\/i> recounts getting hassled on the road for having long hair. \u00a0He said the song was taken from an incident that happened on the road in Wisconsin while touring with T&VW. \u00a0\u00a0He eventually recorded it for his <\/span>Back in 1972 <\/span><\/i>album but it did not become wildly popular until it appeared on 1976\u2019s <\/span>Live Bullet<\/span><\/i> double album. \u00a0Indeed, Seger wrote a lot of the music that would get him noticed while on the road with T&VW.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The headliner on that night was none other than Brownsville Station. \u00a0I am having a little bit of a problem remembering the specifics of this gig because I saw them twice over a span of a couple of years. \u00a0I can place this show in 1971 because bassist Tony Driggins and drummer C.J. Cronly were in the band with both Cub Koda and Mike Lutz on guitars and vocals. \u00a0Driggins departed in 1972 and Cronly was replaced by Henry \u2018H-Bomb\u2019 Weck about the same time. \u00a0I must have seen them the second time before 1975 because Bruce Nazarian had not yet joined the band on second guitar. \u00a0By the second time I saw them, Mike Lutz had switched to bass and they played as a three piece with Weck already on drums. \u00a0A little detective work tells me that the Greek Week gig in 1971 was ahead of their 1973 release of <\/span>Smoking in the Boy\u2019s Room<\/span><\/i> and the second concert was after the release of <\/span>Smoking, <\/span><\/i>but before Nazarian started touring with them. \u00a0If that seems a little convoluted to you, I will admit to looking at a lot of web pages and performing some memory reconstruction to figure out the timeline here. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The official Brownsville Station site has a wonderful chronology of all their 1969 to 1979 concerts (and they played just about everywhere on bills with just about anyone who was big in that time period), but sadly there are gaps. \u00a0No doubt the list covers the big places they played during that time period. \u00a0Back in those days, many \u00a0bands filled off days with one-off gigs that were arranged as their tours moved along. \u00a0Marquette was a great place to play, but it falls into that list of \u201cone-off, added to the tour later\u201d places that don\u2019t always show up on the ledger.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I had gone to the first gig to see Seger with a side project: \u00a0could this really be the same Michael Koda who had played in bands in the Marquette area when he was a student at NMU around 1968? \u00a0Before he became \u2018Cub Koda\u2019, he was plain old Michael Koda and he instantly lit the Marquette music scene on fire. \u00a0He went through a lot of musical combinations in a short period of time. \u00a0Some said he was hard to work with, \u00a0while others said he knew what he wanted his band to sound like and if you couldn\u2019t play up to that level, out you went. \u00a0He played the best equipment: \u00a0when we were scratching to by one decent amp, he used a \u2018y\u2019 jack to plug his guitar into TWO Fender Twin Reverb amps at the same time. \u00a0He wrote his own songs, he played harp, and he also played slide guitar with abandon. \u00a0We really didn\u2019t quite know what to make of this dynamo of a guitar player from Manchester (Michigan, not England). \u00a0The longest lasting backing group stayed together after Koda left for his rock \u2018n\u2019 roll PhD program in Las Vegas and they became the fabled Marquette area band Walrus. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sure enough, Mike Koda was now Cub Koda. \u00a0His tenure in Las Vegas certainly earned Cub his stripes (another intended pun as he frequently performed in a striped jumpsuit) and Brownsville Station put on quite a show. \u00a0Their stage attire was a little less flamboyant that Elvis in Vegas, but they weren\u2019t in the tee-shirt and jeans category either. \u00a0They bounced around the stage, mugged for the crowd, and basically gave me the impression that they were having a great time. \u00a0Behind his now signature black framed round lens spectacles, there was no doubt that this was the same Mike Koda who several years before this was leaning on the fender of an Olds 88 parked outside of my house. \u00a0His bass player at that time, Kim French, had an annoying habit of blowing up speakers and then going on a last minute hunt to borrow a speaker bottom before their next gig. \u00a0Even before my high school band The Twig started playing paying gigs, we were fair game in the \u201chey, can I borrow your bass speaker cab for a gig tonight?\u201d sweepstakes. \u00a0In the fraternity of musicians, it was hard to say \u2018no\u2019 to such a request.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was impressed with Koda and his bands so I thought it was neat that his band was now parked in front of my house to borrow equipment. \u00a0Had I known he was going to be on the way up in the business soon after leaving Marquette, maybe I would have taken a picture of him watching Kim and the band\u2019s rhythm guitar player lugging out our bass player\u2019s speaker cab. \u00a0The mental image of that moment will be one of the first ones I will have to download when they start \u00a0implanting on board computer chips hard wired to our brain memory files. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video – It is difficult to find clips of the first version of Brownsville Station that I saw at Greek Week – this is the classic Smokin in the Boy’s Room<\/em> version after Tony Driggens departed and Mike Lutz took over the bass duties.