Ultimately it's the business savvy that separates the men from the boys - or in this case the slightly disabled from the severely disabled - in the music industry. By age 10 I had a pretty good handle on this, having created the persona of a streetwise jive-talkin' womanizing black man in the body of a pre-pubescent white kid from what was soon to be one the nation's most lily white, exclusive bedroom communities (keep in mind that Marin was still more or less a backwater in the sixties - the big money was still nestled safely on the Peninsula, and Cyra Mcfadden had yet to write "The Serial"). By seventh grade I was officially nicknamed "Soul Brother" by my fellow classmates, to the dismay of the Kent School janitor - I would have to look him up in The Falcon to get his name - who wasn't quite sure how to react when he heard kids shouting "hey soul brother!" or "how you feelin' today soul brother?" (the proper response was "I feel good"...). Although the janitor never did invite me over to meet his real soul brothers and sisters, we did have sort of a special bond in that he probably want to wring my white nappity ass neck.
Which leads me to the hair. Great hair is critical to the success of dynamic entertainers like myself. When I was picking the lineup for Bon Tempe back in the mid-sixties, I was extra careful not to have anybody else in the band with a blonde afro. In other words if there was going to be a soul brother in the band it was going to be me! And as the great marketing minds know, differentiation is the key, and I knew that besides Art Garfunkle, Harry Chapin and Link from The Mod Squad there were not a whole lot of blonde afros that I would have to contend with. (Phoebe Snow gave me a bit of a start later on, but by then Bon Tempe was well established with at least 50 fans if not more, and most of the time it was relatively obvious that Phoebe was a woman, may she rest in peace!) There was a short period of time in Marin where I was worried I might be mistaken for Angela Davis, who had one world-class fro when she shot up the Civic Center. This was another of the few times I was thankful not to be a woman.
So what about all these great songs I wrote? Of course this has always been a delicate topic with my employees (aka my bandmates) because as any good manager knows it's important to give the individuals on the team a sense of ownership of the product. In this case, it's been a matter of letting the other guys think that they actually had a hand in writing the songs by gently guiding their brainwaves such that they become a medium through which the true genius can channel his ideas. Take Lothlorien, the Tolkein-inspired jazz homage to those crazy, sex-addled elves astral traveling through woods shooting their psychedelic-laced arrows at anything the moved sending everybody on a week-long acid trip. What about that swingin' number, with it's dynamic movements and jaunty bounces? Well Albondigas had been on a particularly self-destructive opiate binge involving gooey brown heroin suppositories and an oxycontin catheter and I felt he needed a little move to the positive so I substituted a little peyote in the suppositories and hid the catheter, and the next thing we know Albondigas is putting music to The Lord of The Rings. Of course pretty much all he could do was say what a great idea it was, so I gave Nellie a little melody and he ran with it, all the while Alby thinking that he was writing a song when in reality he was scratching his balls! This the way it works when dealing with the disabled musician.
Well loyal fans, the hour of the show draws near. These days you never know which show will be the last, at least with this configuration. And time tends to have the effect of making an exercise that had become painfully tedious appear appealing from a distance. But that's one of the great things about naming your band after a lake. For generations to come, people will gaze upon the lake and get an inexplicable creeping feeling of discomfort in the large intestine as a large bubble of fetid gas forms - and they'll think: Albondigas! (That would certainly be a logical conclusion). The intestinal discomfort is followed by a nagging itching sensation in the armpits and perspiration on the upper lip. You hear a faint mantra "hey hey gotta cook tonight no Chicken Delight" and you wonder WTF is Chicken Delight anyway? Clearly you are now experiencing a Nellie visitation and suffering from the curse of the Nood, which is short for Noodle. You realize that Bill Nelson once wrote a song about his wiener: "Niles Nood" and now you're feeling really sick, despite the beautiful lake shimmering before you. The aches, well that goes without saying now doesn't it? It starts with a dreadful ringing in the ears as if an alto saxophone has taken up residence in your head and is blowing a relentless trilling vibrato on high C . You ache all over, thanks to none other than Aches, Bob Akers who has been content these many years to leave the songwriting to me and my channelers. But, as you sit there by beautiful Bon Tempe reservoir you do have reason to be thankful, even though you might be feeling like you're gonna die, and that's because Scott, The Corn Nibbler, and Sleepy Hacienda aren't there to beat you senseless with their drumsticks.
Just when you think you've had all the pain you can take, your heart starts to thump loudly in your chest to the irregular rhythm of Hot Cellums and a thin, reedy voice comes bleating like a tortured sheep through the smooth and graceful Madrones, imploring you to "get yourself down with your bad self", which is not only redundant but is clearly the ranting of some white kid who at one time wanted to believe he was a "soul brother". And as the pain begins to subside you realize you've had another Bon Tempe moment, have not suffered any permanent disability and have, once again, lived to tell about it.
If you're lucky you'll get the chance to pass the test of another Bon Tempe moment tonight! And if you're even luckier it will be the last! (But don't count on it :)
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