"Hey, shut up and play the intro!"
BonTempe was, is, and always will be the quintet-essential unknown Ross Valley
cult band, and many believe there's a good reason it should stay that way. More accurately, Bon Tempe was the Redwood
High School seventies
cult band. You could say Bon Tempe is a testimony to the old credo “don’t
spread yourself too thin”. Bon Tempe generally didn’t do any spreading at all,
save for perhaps one gig at a military base in the valley (no, not the San
Geronimo Valley). BT never made it over the GG Bridge save for one Halloween
quartet event, and never made it north of Novato.
Nonetheless if you asked some hippies in Mendocino if they ever heard of Bon
Tempe chances are they have. I don’t know how that works.
If
you asked 8 or so musicians that have been in Bon Tempe in some shape or form
you would get 8 different stories. There was also a period from 1973-78 when I
was in college and I missed all those gigs each of which has a story of its
own. So this is far from any kind of authorized biography of the band rather
it’s just me and my porous memory telling portions of the story bit by bit from
my perspective, thinking that it could give some of the March 3, 19 Broadway
gig-goers a little hysterical perspective (which I apologize to this point has
been remarkably unhysterical!).
I
guess another attribute that plops the band and it’s music into the heart of
the Ross Valley and the surrounding watershed is
that we named ourselves after one of the 5 reservoirs in the MMWD. One
interesting fact about the name: the reservoir was named after the brothers that
ran cattle in the valley and around the creek that was eventually dammed up to
form Lagunitas, Bon Tempe, Alpine and Kent Lake.
The brothers Buontemps (I know this isn’t the correct spelling but I can’t find
my source materials right now) sold the land to the water district who named
the reservoir after them. So while the name may mean “good time” or “good
weather” or “good tempo” (my definition!) it’s really just a bastardization of
this Swiss-Italian immigrant’s name.
I’ll
save some of the window dressing around the whole Bon Tempe reservoir
experience during our high school days. Suffice to say it was prime real estate
for recreational activities of all kinds, and when I think back I’m amazed at
how many of those recreational activities took place at night! You gotta love
the woods at night. Still there was no special meaning behind the band name,
other than it was a great place for high schoolers to hang and do the things
that high schoolers in the early seventies did. If I got into any kind of
detailed description of those activities I’m positive some band members would take
issue, since it’s pretty easy for our kids (and yours too!) to stumble upon
this little story and, though I would argue that what a bunch of southern and
central Marin teenagers generally did in the early seventies is common
knowledge, that doesn’t mean we have to broadcast it. Or so some of our extended
Bon Tempe family might say.
I’m
pretty sure Bill Nelson and I started the band, though Albritton and perhaps
the Corn Nibbler (Ken Corsiglia) might disagree. Nelson might remember exactly how
it was that we got together with Nibs (not the crunchy roasted kind, I’m
afraid) and Albritton. I’m not 100% sure since events around that time are, for
me, extremely clouded for some reason (WTF?). But I’ll hazard
a guess anyway and say it was the result of
jam sessions we were having at Peter Horton’s house on West Shore Rd. I was
already playing in a band with Nelson, Harry Likas and Graham Shieks that was
called Goodywuffo, and then Hot Goodies. I don’t know that we ever played any
gigs though we did audition for a dance at Kent School.
Unfortunately Graham had the flu that day,
and when we went to pick him up for the audition he was puking his
brains out and could barely walk. We loaded him and his drums in the car, set
them up at Kent School, walked him in there, and tried
to play Hendrix’s “Fire” and Graham was on another planet. I do have VERY vivid
memories of that experience, and Graham’s basement where we rehearsed, plus a song
that we played over and over and over: “Lookin’ In” by Savoy Brown. Nelson will
remember all the other songs.
Anyway
Horton was dating my sister. I don’t remember how I knew that Kenny played
drums, but we gathered in Horton’s family room and played “The Ghetto” with
Horton on piano and Nelson on guitar. Horton’s sister Annie was a
singer/songwriter and we put together a little band to play Annie’s songs and
shit like “Popsicle Toes”. I think we were introduced to Albritton via Mike
Jackson (or Pete, perhaps), an older guy with an old Ferrari that we would race
around Belvedere Island. I don’t know if the first time
Ken, Nelson and I first played with Albritton was at Horton’s house. Somehow
Anne Dransfield, a flutist, got added to the mix – we might have played a lunch
time gig at the CEA - but she wasn’t around for long before Albritton brought
in Bob Akers and the first iteration of Bon Tempe was formed. Imagine how Bon
Tempe might have been if we had stuck with the chick flute player! No
references to female genitalia in songs about vegetables, that’s for sure!
That’s
my take on the pre-Bon Tempe
gyrations that eventually led to version 1. I’m gonna leave it up to Nelson to
fill in the blanks with comments. If you follow the blog you’ll be alerted when
Nelson’s comments and you’ll get the facts straight vs. my fuzzy recollections.
Hopefully we will get some guest bloggers to help round out the picture. Should
be en-chinalya!
Next
up: The first set lists, the first parties, the first original songs, the “album”…and
“What’s The Sons Got To Do With It?”
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