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Commander Cody Band
Oldies
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In the fall of 1963 John Tichy was studying engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, running the kitchen crew at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and playing guitar in the only student band on campus, the AMBLERS. I was washing pots in the kitchen and doing a pretty poor job at it, when we became friends, and John found that I had played some piano and had taken some lessons. He invited me to jam along, and soon I was playing on their version of "You are my Sunshine" (in Aminor), Frank Winchester was the lead singer, and a guy who was twenty years ahead of his time. He was 6'4" and had bleached blonde hair. He wore a black leather glove on his left hand when he played the Tambourine and blew a mediocre harp with his right. Michigan heavy weight wrestling champ Guy Curtiss played bass and Steve Conley was the drummer. When Frank died in a flaming (Chevy 409) crash on the Penn. Turnpike the following year, our hopes of recording went up in smoke. John had started another band, the SSB (Schwaben Stage Band), named after the sleazy bar he was playing that summer ('64). When I returned to school that fall we started a new band, The Fantastic Surfing BEEVERS. The new band featured Max Goldman (who owned the sound system) as "lead singer". Actually his mic was always turned off and it was Tichy who actually sang lead. At that time I had traded my Wurlitzer electric piano in for a classic Farfisa Combo Compact (96 tears). We mounted a surfboard on top of our old hearse, (EQ van) and did our first road gig, (at a Mich. State fraternity in 1965). The highlight of that group was that we discovered a U. of Mich. gymnast named Steve Davis, (a U. of Mich. cheerleader, and the trampoline champ of W.Va.), who played bass. |
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