🏖1️⃣I Was a Teenage Lead Singer! The Early '70s Brimstone Saga (with Approximate Setlist)

The first in the "Summer Hot-Some Are Chill" PAID-ONLY SERIES! Influenced by many, I hit the boards armed with a mic and a flute.

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“Can you sing?”

Drummer Mike Wishnow had been appointed to approach me to see if I’d be willing to audition. Brimstone, the 5-piece band he founded, was wanting, if not needing, a lead singer. They had been switching off singing duties among themselves, but they wanted a front man.

We had “open lunch,” so seeing long-haired hippies playing acoustic guitars on the lawn just outside the building wasn’t unusual. With my long, thin, blond hair, I was playing my newly-learned flute with one of those guitar players that particular noon, in what I’m guessing was 1970 or so, in my sophomore year at Houston’s Bellaire High School.

I turned 15 in March 1970.

What follows is a retrospective video, perusing the 1973 Carillion, the yearbook in my senior year. You needn’t ask: Of course, none of my pictures made the video. Too bad, too: Besides my senior pic, I made it into one posed group shot: I was Music and Entertainment Editor of The Three Penny Press daily newspaper (really a mimeographed two-sided, long sheet with school news). We sold each one for 3 cents. The TPP actually made it, however briefly, into another article here…this one:

50 Years Later: Meeting Bonnie Raitt at the Beginning of Her Career, Backstage in Houston, 1972

Curtis Haynes was the Editor, and Sally Carpenter and Rick Shafer were “stringers.” One of the things that made our time together so much fun in putting together the TPP, was our love of The Dick Van Dyke Show (which aired on CBS-TV from 1960-’65)!

Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke), Sally Rogers (Rose Marie), and Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) clown around the office. The staff of the TPP tended to follow suit…frequently!

We’d constantly quote from it, and try to recreate, even, some of our favorite scenes during our writing and editing. Hey, we were writers, too, just like the fictitious staff of Rob, Sally, and Buddy as they wrote for The Alan Brady Show! Rick was usually the “Buddy” of the staff, and Sally, of course, was “Sally,” and I didn’t mind “settling” for the “Rob” part, as Curtis put up with our shenanigans as the crusty, but kindly Mel Cooley/producer part!

For our staff photo for the yearbook, we went to a local A&W drive-in (similar to Sonic these days) to pose as ‘50s greaser-types, replete with leather jackets, jeans, and slicked-back hair! I specifically wanted to ape this pose of Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry, circa ‘72. So, while everyone else on the TPP staff was smiling pretty for the camera, I turned my greased head to the left, and with a borrowed leather jacket, did my best to look like this:

But, a video-produced, and informative of-the-era overview is here, and I recognize several friends (and remember their names); plus, it’s all done to the Room 222 theme song, an unexpected bonus!:

“Yeah, I guess so.” Mike wasn’t deterred by my less-than-confident reply, so he invited me to audition within the next day or so. Brimstone already had a bit of a following, having existed for several months before I came aboard.

I remember we jammed on some old blues standards for my audition. This upper-middle-class suburban white boy didn’t much know his way around the blues standards quite yet, but I performed admirably, earnestly professing to “take the train on down the line,” ‘cause “oh, she done me wrong”!

Not sure if there was anyone else in the running, but I “got the part”!

Brimstone

• David Harris: lead guitar (long, thick, dirty-blond hair, musically experimental, became my best friend, was studying geology in Wyoming, last I heard, in mid-‘70s)

• Mike Tyler: rhythm guitar (the quiet one)

• David Robbins: bass (long, black hair; the handsome one)

• Kevin Chesser: Hammond B-3 organ (with Leslie speaker; good sense of humor)

• Mike Wishnow: drums (tremendous build with broad shoulders, large arms from weight lifting and drumming; dad was Houston optometrist, Dr. I.C. Wishnow…yep, you heard me right…those initials for an eye doctor!)

The Setlist

I had over a dozen songs to learn right off the bat, which wasn’t a problem. I had a good ear, and a gift for song and melody memory. Most of our repertoire were radio hits, anyway (if not AM, then certainly FM). This list is as complete as my memory can make it, and I’ve attempted an approximate possible setlist order (at least in the Playlist itself):

Emerson, Lake & Palmer “Lucky Man” (I played Emerson’s synth solo on flute) Chicago “Colour My World,” Led Zeppelin “Stairway to Heaven,” Rolling Stones “Angie,” Brownsville Station “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room,” Chuck Berry “Johnny B. Goode,” Jethro Tull “Cross-Eyed Mary,” James Gang, “Walk Away,” and Eagles “Witchy Woman.”

It was a match that was beneficial for both parties: Brimstone already had gigs lined up around Houston, being an already up’n’running band, and I was just what they needed…a musically adept quick-learner!

Overall, each member was a serviceable musician at the very worst, and a couple were well above average. I don’t believe any became a professional musician, ultimately, but I literally heard nothing from any of them after 1973 graduation!

The PR Machine Begins to Crank

As Dad (being an ad sales exec for CBS Radio’s local affiliates, KTRH-AM and KLOL-FM) was bringing home new, weekly releases from Warner Bros. Records, and their attendant, bi-monthly in-house PR promo piece, Circular (about which more can be read by clicking here), I came across an ad I thought we could “lift”!

Warners was using a tag line for something or other in ‘71, “Grow Bigger Ears!” with a stock photo of an older doctor, replete with clipboard and stethoscope (this isn’t it, but a close enough approximation):

So, shamelessly lifting that line (and particular doctor), I had flyers run off that we could hand out and hang up, so we did! At the top of the flyer (and above the doctor), it said, “Dr. Brimstone says, ‘Grow Bigger Ears!” with Mike’s phone number at the bottom (he was acting as our booking agent as well as drummer)!

Meanwhile, Half-a-Century Later….