40th Anniversary of Charlie Peacock Group

The Glory and Shame of Being in a Band

Since Thanksgiving weekend, Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary, Get Back, has been the subject of much conversation and opinion. Sure, Peter hopes everyone will watch and have some sort of takeaway. But any musician who has ever been in a band? Viewing the film is like having all the tiny details of being in a band magnified and intensified to the extreme. Except, of course, your band, my band, isn't The Beatles, is it? And that's okay. The band thing is simultaneously wholly unique to one's experience and precisely like every other band that's ever died in the garage or transcended it to the star-scraping height of The Beatles. Bottom-line, John, Paul, Ringo, and George got to be in a great band. And fame and cash aside, that is no small thing.

I’ve been fortunate to have more than my fair share of good to great bands, but none so unique as the Charlie Peacock Group of 1981-82.

In 1981, inspired by King Crimson, Carla Bley, and Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic concept, I wrote my way into a new band. Once the musical vision was intact, my songwriting partner, Steve Holsapple, joined me to write lyrics for the new music. Next, bassist Erik Kleven came to the house, and we played through the songs, just bass, and piano. Erik Kleven was likely the only bassist in Sacramento that could sight-read the ridiculously complicated bass parts I'd written. This thing was going to work.

Jimmy Caselli quickly joined on drums, with guitarist Mark Herzig and tenor saxophonist Darius Babazadeh filling out the band. In addition to songwriting, Steve took on the producer and engineer roles. Lindy Haber agreed to manage us. Then we practiced and practiced and then again, practiced. More than any band I’d ever been in. Not just as a means to memorization and precision. Our commitment led to freedom. And freedom allowed us to make complex music sound less so. We were able to be inside the thing we'd made together – all the way in – each of us a nimble and equal piece of musicianship. We had a lot of fun being who we were as a band. And, we argued.

In the history of contemporary relationships, there might not be any person so insufferable as one newly converted to recovery. Actually, there is one even more challenging. A person newly converted to recovery and religion. Add a new sense of responsibility to that mix, and you get something of me back then.

At one point, I felt compelled to issue a manifesto to the band, writing such endearing words as: "Practices will begin at the hour they are called. Therefore, if you have equipment to set up, need to tune, change strings, reeds, tines, etc., either do it at home or come to rehearsal early."

Newly clean and sober, I added: “If a band member is drunk or under the influence of drugs at a rehearsal or performance, he will be fired.” And so it went on like this for three single-spaced typewritten pages. Guitarist Mark Herzig, not one to wax religious, quoted the Jewish prophet, Daniel, declaring me a man with feet of clay. Mark was correct. I was.

We played original material and a few covers we enjoyed, such as Talking Heads' "Cities" and an English Beat-inspired version of Smokey Robinson's "Mickey's Monkey." The calendar was full of our own bookings in San Francisco, Berkeley, Davis, Tahoe, and Sacramento. As well as opening slots with Danny Elfman’s quirky ensemble Oingo Boingo, Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers, Pablo Cruise, English organist Brian Auger, and bassist Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane fame, fronting his new band, SVT. Bass players will recognize the letters SVT as the hallowed Ampeg SVT bass amplifier.

Recording live at Moon Studios in south Sacramento with Steve engineering led to seven finished songs and the 12” 45rpm single, “No Magazines” b/w “What They Like.” Our friend Jeff Viducich arranged for Tower Records to carry the single in the California stores and Japan. Seeing the single in the Japanese version of Tower literature was a thrill. Not exactly big in Japan, yet in Japan nonetheless.

Despite the likable covers, our music was decidedly the least commercial of any I’d ever attempted (apart from my jazz compositions). As I referenced earlier, imagine Ornette Coleman’s Harmolodic period, mashed with 80s King Crimson, along with my New Wave-ish vocals, and you’ll have some sense of what we were up to. We also mixed time signatures. Drums playing 4/4, the rest of the band in 7/4 – that sort of thing. Many of the lyrics concerned my newly acquired sobriety and reinvigorated spiritual curiosity.

Though the door to record labels and producers David Rubinson and David Kahne was still cracked open, this wasn't the music to seal a deal. Kahne gave it a try, remixing a few of the songs. Even his sizeable skills couldn’t change their idiosyncratic DNA.

Now, forty years later, all I can think to add to this story is thank you. Thank you, Steve, Mark, Darius, Jimmy, and our gone-too-early genius bassist, Erik Kleven. I’m so grateful I got to be in this band with you. Thank you, Lindy, for your help. A posthumous thanks to Steve's mother, as I'm pretty confident she might have paid for the mastering on the single (indirectly, I suppose). Thank you, David, for the remixes. You tried! Thank you, Maurice Read and your iconoclastic Maurices' American Bar – you were always home base. Harry’s a close second.

Thank you to all the musicians we opened for, and they, in turn, opened for us - Brent Bourgeois, Larry Tagg, Mike Urbano, Peter Bilt (Dunne), and Aaron Smith are a few. A posthumous thanks to Randy Paragary, who not once but twice helped me buy new instruments. As did Peter Torza. Thank you to Bob Cheevers for the PA, Boss Chorus pedal, and more. The thanks could go on.

Steve Holsapple, a true polymath, has put together a short film commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the band. On Friday, December 10th, our seven recorded songs will be rereleased and available everywhere as Charlie Peacock, Last Vestiges of Honor.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/last-vestiges-of-honor-40th-anniversary-remastered/1598811682