(part 280) Social Media And The Blast From The Past

As I became more active on the internet in 2007 into 2008 I began receiving messages from women I'd known in the past, primarily the 60's. I did not know how to deal with their interest, because I hadn't given it any thought until it happened. I was busy doing what I was doing. Writing this blog and gathering up old music of mine and making videos so I could post them. When I left L.A. in 1985 I concluded that no one particularly cared, or remembered me, and if they did it was not with any fondness, so when I got these messages I was surprised by them.

I remember well my initial reactions. I was skeptical and less interested than one might think. My past was my past, and these ladies were part of it. Since my belief was that I had failed as a musician, singer/song writer, and everything else, I was cautious at best when confronted with what appeared to be positive interest in me by woman who I'd not seen or spoken with since the 60's and 80's. Each of them wanted to get reacquainted online, which I agreed to do. At first it was on myspace, where I'd created a profile to post music, photos, and excerpts from this blog. I also wrote poetry there and posted it. This was where I began to mix with people again after a 22 year absence from that process. These were people who knew of my past, to some degree, and had also been part of it, unlike the people in San Luis Obispo, who had no clue as to what it was I used to do.

I made one request when I began the process of reuniting with these old friends, and it was simply this. "Please don't bring any bullshit into my life, because I already have enough. In other words, I am busy as hell with what I'm doing and won't stop for you or anybody else. I had to do that for me, as a way of protecting the decision I'd made to work and accomplish specific goals. I was not here to meet old girlfriends, I was here to work. It was already hard as hell, and I didn't want anything or anybody screwing with my emotions, so I laid down the rule. All of them gave me their word that they did not want to cause any trouble, but just wanted to get reacquainted and stay in touch as friends.

One would have thought this a reasonable enough request for me to make at the time, and to accomplish, but it was not. When dealing with human beings you have to deal with their opinions, desires, history, etc., and this was surely the case with each of these women in the beginning. One of them, Georgiana, would argue with me a lot on myspace messages. She was opinionated, as was I, and not very willing to use a softer touch. After one too many encounters with her I just flat out said, "Well fuck it Georgiana! I'll just quit talking to you altogether, and then I won't have this problem anymore!"
"No no, don't do that Bobby," she said, "I don't want to lose track of you for another twenty years!" "Ok, but gimme a break with this shit, because I got enough to do without this kind of aggravation!"

My fear was that I would get into rehashing old crap with someone whose opinion I didn't necessarily agree with, and get off track with what I was doing. I was writing about the early 60's at that time, and Georgiana was interested in talking, or arguing, about things I had not gotten to yet in the history I was writing about on this blog. I had not known her in 1963, 64, or 65, so she had no sense of what it was I was doing. She was also writing a book, and had her own opinions of how to do that as well. All in all it had to be quelled, so I could concentrate on what I was doing, not what she, or anybody else, thought I was doing. It was a tough go back then to keep focused on my goal and learn how to do everything by doing it, like use a computer, make videos, upload music, etc. I was stressed out by all the on the job learning, so arguing with some chick I used to know wasn't helping.

Paula was a girl I'd known in 1966-67 when I was living with Carol in West Hollywood. She and I had had a flash romance, but it ended abruptly when I didn't give her my full attention at times. Carol provided a lot in the way of creature comforts back then, and Paula was, from what she told me more recently, more interested in love, which I admittedly was not. I was a selfish son of a bitch trying to become a star in 1966-67 and was concentrated on the making and releasing of the album "Color Him In." At the time, Carol had more to offer on the money side than did Paula, so I was not about to cut myself off from what Carol provided. Like I said, I was a selfish son of a bitch trying to become a star.

On myspace Paula became my close friend. We talked a lot about Hollywood, old times, and what I was doing with the blog, trying to tell a story and make people aware of music they knew nothing about. She was supportive and easy to talk to. I didn't have any trouble with her until she got me involved in an argument, on myspace, with her ex husband, Chuck Negrone, and daughter. It was a preview of things to come, but at the time I didn't know that, so I weathered through it. Looking back on the incident now, it looms as a precise signal as to what I was in for with her, and the public persona bullshit of social media sites.

At the same approximate time, Sharon, also showed up from my past in a comment on the blog I think. She had been a Playboy Bunny and center fold, and I had had a flash relationship with her after Paula disappeared in 1967. I directed her to the myspace profile and she too became a friend. It would be fair to say I had no loyalty to any of these women back in the day, because as I said, and say again, my interest was in myself and what I was doing, not in falling in love. I cared, but only to the degree that it suited my own goals.

On myspace I introduced each of these women to each other, which at the time seemed to make sense. I had nothing to hide, I wasn't going steady with any of them, they were all people I'd once known and who now had reappeared in my life. It didn't occur to me that it would cause any problems, I mean, "Why would it?" It proved to be one of the dumbest things I ever did...

1967

2007

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Women I knew In The 60's

gail sloatman

carol paulus

paula servetti

nancy harwood

sharon rogers


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Then And Now

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Well it is 2014 and the end of June. When I began this blog it was in November of 2007 and a lot has gone on since I was here last. Currently my 95 year old mother is in the hospital having had a stroke as well as pneumonia, and my 70 year old schizophrenic brother Bill, had some sort of blackout/seizure and fell at his apartment, and could not get up. I had to call the police to get into his place and they found him sprawled out on his kitchen floor. I myself have been trying my damnedest to carry on and keep things afloat, but the load has been, to say the least, a heavy one to bare. The headaches I had when I started writing some seven years ago are still with me, and make all of this seem impossible to cope with, but a day at a time I muddle through.

I spent and hour or so today looking through some of what I wrote in the past and thought I might come here to convey a few new thoughts and feelings. There was never any doubt, when I started this blog, that what I might write here would change anything in my life much, which it hasn't. I got older, I'm still clean and sober, and I still feel as separated from the human race as I did when I began. I think if I hadn't had these headaches all the time I may well have done much better, but the limitations of 24-hr a day pain, for nearly sixteen years, allows little peace I have found.

As years have come and gone, so have the people. A few stay on but many more do not. It is excruciatingly painful to watch some, that I have truly cared for, begin to lose interest and move away, and then disappear altogether. But in part, it seems to be because of the physical limitations I am forced to exist with, to try and function with. If I could live my life as I chose to, instead of being chained to this rock, then I believe much would have been different. I spend each day trying, with all the power I can find, to get well. I never truly give up my belief that I can, and will, even though at times I have felt like throwing in the towel. Because I was able to get clean and sober, and stay that way for thirty-eight years, I have the model for eventual success with these goddamned headaches.

Then too, there is the fact that I am a pain in the ass, and hard to get along with at times. I do not shy away from this fact and freely admit to it. But again, for the most part, it is a direct result of always having to fight through headaches while trying to communicate with people. If I sound like nothing more than a whining weakling I apologize. But it has, and is, next to impossible to explain my actions without putting this fact squarely at the front of the line. I only hope that someday soon I can show up without this malady and people can judge for themselves the difference it makes, not in words, but in completely concrete terms and actions, as in transformation.

No one can ever know what is in my heart or my mind other than by my trying to convey that in words and/or some form of artistic endeavor. My experiences are what they are and my dreams still flash on the horizon. I only hope I get the chance, to be on the outside, the human being I am on the inside...and make some of those dreams come true. For those who have cared I thank you. For those who have left, or are leaving, I salute you, and for those who have found fault with me I understand completely.

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(part 278) IT WAS THE COVER NOT THE MUSIC

The album, Songs Of Protest And Anti-Protest, was the lynch-pin for the entire deal with Mira/Surrey's expansion into Europe in 1965, and here's why. This is something no one understands, and a subject I tried to explain to Steve Stanley on more than one occasion with little success. The Europeans wanted the album cover with Brian Jones picture on it for their market. They knew it would sell on sight. Surrey was created as a budget label that would sell records without promoting them in the usual way. It was a rack job operation. That means that the records would literally be sold on visual interest of shoppers from metal racks at grocery, drug, and variety stores, for discount prices. The Europeans were convinced that the Songs Of Protest cover was perfect for this kind of business, so they wanted it. They weren't as interested in what was in it musically, Ducey's version or mine, they were in love with the album jacket's art work and the picture of Brian Jones.

The necessity for Mira/Surrey, because the Ducey version could not be used, was to find someone to write and record ten new songs to the titles already printed on the album jacket. Surrey wasn't trying to make a great album at that point, they were trying save that cover because of it's importance to their overall deal with Europe. Like it or not, the music was a secondary point back then, and merely a vehicle to preserve the use of the album jacket. Mira/Surrey's hope was that it would be halfway decent musically and good enough to serve it's greater purpose. No one knew initially that the album was going to turn out as good as it did, that was a bonus.

The Ducey version was kept from being released because of contract problems with Chris Ducey. When my version, the Chris Lucey version, was completed, the problem with contracts came up again. I refused to sign the contract that was presented to me because I didn't know what it actually said. I asked for legal representation before I would sign it, which was denied me. Randy Wood got so pissed off, because of this, that he threw me against a wall and demanded that I sign the contract, which I again refused to do until I got a third party to tell me what it said. In a decision, which can only be deemed as illegal, Mira/Surrey released the album anyway to protect their own business interests in Europe. This was, and still is, the legal status of the Chris Lucey version of Songs Of Protest. Like the Ducey version before it, the Lucey version should not have been released until the contractual problems were sorted out. The difference being that Ducey had people who made sure of this, while I a twenty-year-old kid did not.

None of the legal problems with the album were ever dealt with, and they have always existed. They were just unknown, outside of a few people. Chiapetta assumed, along with everybody else, that I was dead, so she sold the master to Ace thinking no one would ever know the truth, or care that I had been harmed. The problem was that I wasn't dead, I was just missing. It was because Steve Stanley called me in 2003 that I found out about the album being released on Rev-Ola, a company I'd never even heard of. Had Steve not called me I very well may never have known about this at all. I wasn't keeping up with the music business, so it was his call that alerted me to it and brought me out of seclusion. And over time it was Steve Stanley who gave me all the information I didn't have. I knew nothing about Ace, Rev-Ola, or Cherry Red, and I had forgotten about Betty Chiapetta altogether. I learned all these things from Steve Stanley, a stranger, who'd gotten hold of my Social Security number and used it to find me by hiring a private investigator. It's an odd kind of karma I guess, because the guy who found me when I didn't want to be found, is the same guy who unwittingly gave me all the information I now have, and use, in fighting this battle over the rights to the album Songs Of Protest And Anti-Protest. The album I created.

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(part 277) REOPENING AN OLD WOUND

Over a period of years, and I do mean years, I was totally frustrated and limited to conversing with Steve Stanley, and always by telephone. I had no one else to speak to, because no one else would give me the time of day. It was Steve and me talking for years about the music business with no other input whatsoever. I spent endless hours explaining details to him about what really happened, what the conditions and circumstances were back in the 60's and 70's when the work was actually being done. I told him things that few knew, in hopes that it would have a positive effect, but it didn't. Nothing changed. It was as if I'd spent the time in a vacuum with my words being gobbled up, bottled, and shelved, like so many jars of jam. The stories and details just passed from me to him and stopped there. Little of what I shared with him made much of a difference at all.

During the period between 2003 to 2007, one single fact became totally apparent to me. Steve, and all  those involved in the acquisition and release of Songs Of Protest, did not know the story of how or why the album had been made. They all lacked the concept that Surrey Records was a budget line label for Europe. They'd mistakenly concluded that Surrey was a regular label and had released Songs Of Protest in a wave of publicity, which had not been the case at all. It was useless to try and get Steve to understand the real story, a story that flew in the face of what he and the others believed. Most of what was written in the liner notes by Steve, or what was said about the album was just plain wrong, and from what I could tell, people had simply made up their own set of facts and then passed them around as gospel. There was no one anywhere, except me, telling them they had it wrong, and I only had Steve's ear, so by default, what was believed was accepted as truth. This fact led to a gnawing distress within me over time because I continued to have no voice in the dissemination of the information about my own history. I recall arguing with Steve about the title of Metro Man on the Rev-Ola cd. I told him that the song was actually Vietnam, the original acoustic demo, and that Metropolitan Man, or Metro Man, was a completely different song. His response to that was, "Are you sure?"

"Am I sure? Goddamn Steve, I wrote the fucking song, of course I'm sure."

This was what I was up against. A person who believed things that weren't true to the point of arguing with me about their validity. "If this was the case with Steve," I thought, "How much worse would it be with others?"

It was a long time before I found that out. It wasn't until I actually began seeing what was written by others that I understood just how far-fetched and inaccurate it really was. My mother got a computer before I did, so little by little I learned to venture onto the internet and saw for myself what was out there. Biographies written by so called music historians that said things that made me wince. Ads that Rev-Ola/Cherry Red had run as promotion for the cd were almost pure nonsense. They had come up with a version linking the Billboard ads in 1964 to the release of the Chris Lucey album in 1965 which was just plain false. I'd heard variations on this theme from Steve Stanley in earlier conversations, but it wasn't until I read it for myself that I got a sense of how screwed up they really had it.

By 2006-07, my frustration over these things reached the boiling point. I still hadn't heard a word from Joe Foster and still hadn't received a single copy of the cd. The only copy I possessed had been sent to me early on by Steve. In my mind it was like returning to the old days where anger was the single most prominent feature I possessed. An anger born out of a sense of futility, an anger fueled by blatant disregard and lack of fair play. I understood, finally, that there weren't going to be any royalties, no pleasant hellos or respectful conversations. It was just the same old shit, the same old "We got the power and you don't!" After nearly four years of waiting to hear from someone, anyone, and talking endlessly to Steve, I just pretty much had had it. I was convinced that if I didn't do something, nothing was going to change. Those who had been responsible for the album's release had collectively ignored me as if I didn't exist or have a voice in the matter. They presumed, I suppose, that if they didn't speak to me I would somehow disappear back into the woodwork where I'd come from. But in my way of thinking that was the last thing I was going to do. They just hadn't understood at all that fucking me again after 40 years on a record I already got fucked on, might well pose a significant problem for them. They had made the mistake of underestimating my emotional reaction to the reopening of an old wound, a wound that had healed over until they came along and ripped it open.