Remembering Summer Heat, Part 5

Like I said before, I never ever thought that as a band Summer Heat would ever top the performance we gave that night after the sectional tournament, but I would be proven wrong later on.
Summer Heat did become known locally for something different to happen each and everytime we played "The Pusher." One night I smashed an old dilapidated tape recorder, and another night, just for the sheer pleasure of making the masses wonder, we pushed an old stuffed rocking chair out onto the stage and I sat down in it with an axe in my hands. That brought the crowd around the stage again, I'm not sure if it was the audience believing I was going to trash the chair with the axe(which quite honestly, was what I originally had planned to do, but we collectively as a band decided that might be going a bit too far, especially if the axe flew out of my hands and out into the crowd) or if they just weren't really quite sure what the crazy skinny dude was going to do with the axe, but all I ended up doing was just sitting their passively in the chair and stared straight ahead and did absolutely nothing. Yes, no doubt the masses were disappointed, but this little stunt proved once again that no one could ever predict just exactly what Summer Heat might do during a three hour dance, and that was exactly what we wanted to do. And believe me, we sold the tickets to the dances, too. An older gentleman who was the overseer for the Community Building told us that no other band ever sold as many tickets as we did to our dances, regardless of the time of year we performed, and one night he told us we set an all time record for ticket sales. Now the years have taken a toll on my memory, but if I'm right, and I'm sure one of the remaining members might recall if I'm right or not, but I believe we sold a whopping 511 tickets one night, which meant we outsold our own record by nearly two hundred in attendance.
The best part of it was, our show just got better and better each time we played, and word got around about the hard rock band from Rushville with the fabulous light show and the fact that we played some damned good rock and roll. We received a request from the entertainment committee at Greensburg High School for an audition tape of a few songs so they could review us as the possible band to play their annual Valentine's Day dance.
The band got together at the Mike's dad's law office, and a friend of mine, Bill Atwood, brought along a small cassette recorder. I don't remember all the songs we recorded, but I do remember that we did record "Parchment Farm" by Blue Cheer and one of our band's original tunes, "Sounds From 46,000 BC." There was either one or two others we recorded, but these are the two I remember.
The tape was mailed, and within a week we were notified that we would indeed be the band to play the Greensburg High School Valentine's Day dance, which was either in 1969 or 1970. I'm thinking it was '69, but again, my memory isn't what it used to be.
What I do remember was that it was probably the best evening that we as a band ever performed to near perfection. It was a strange evening, an evening where everyone of us seemed to be sharing the same karma, feeling the same excitement, and the band that night was just so tight!
One thing that I did different that night was that I chose to wear this hat that I had, an old green formal dress wear hat. On that hat I had taken the last name off a buddy's army uniform, the word Hunter, and added to it in block letters written with a black magic marker, THE. So, there, on the front of this green hat were the words "THE HUNTER." Needless to say, this hat didn't come close to fitting anything in my wardrobe that I was wearing, but I had added an extra attraction.
Back in the late 60's, girls came into a fad called a "fall." A "fall" was a partial hairpiece that was added to a girls shorter hair and made her short hair appear to be much longer. I had borrowed one of these from a friend of mine, who had helped me pin it to my own existing hair. Now consider for a moment, folks, it's the late 60's and we live in a conservative county in a conservative state and we're all in high school. At that time in our history, there was a strict school policy that governed hair length, which was not allowed to be below the collar of your shirt, in your eyes, or sideburns past the bottom of your ears. Facial hair of any kind was banned as well.
Well, with this fall added to my own hair and cleverly hidden under "THE HUNTER" formal hat, I appeared to have hair half way down my back, which added a touch of wildness to at least one member of the band. The guys in the band thought it was great, a few of the parents weren't too wild about it, but after some consistent begging on not only my part but a couple of the guys in the band as well, the parents relented, the fall stayed, and Summer Heat started the drive to Greensburg in the van we borrowed from Denny's dad, who owned a water softener business, and we headed towards the city of Greensburg.
For some unknown reason that evening, Mike had brought along a beautiful acoustic guitar, all six strings in tact, and my eyes became mesmerized looking at it and imagining the damage my hands could do to that guitar given the proper chance. Mike caught me eyeing the guitar and immediately went on the defensive before I had even uttered a word about it. "Don't even think about it, Charlie. This is one of the best acoustic guitars I've ever owned."
Jay looked at Mike and laughed and said, "Come on, Mike, I'll pay you for it, or we can take it out of the band's bank account. Let Charlie have some fun tonight." Mike shook his head, but he never gave a definite no, either.
On this particular evening, in another vehicle that followed us down to Greensburg High were Denny and Jim, and Bill Atwood who had made our audition tape and our friend, who for the sake of not wanting to mention his real name for reasons I don't wish to get into here, was our mutual friend, Flip. Later on that evening, Flip would do exactly what his name said; he would actually flip out and add to the excitement of the evening.
Flip had a brought a sack along with him, which we found out after we began unloading the vehicles to set up, contained a set of plates and saucers. Pure white plates and saucers, obviously some form of cheap white china, and why the hell he had brought them along, none of us knew until later on before we started playing. One thing with Flip, he was generally a quiet and reserved individual, but when he had something to say, you definitely had no trouble hearing him. Tonight would be no exception.
As our crew pulled into the parking lot at the high school and we began to unload the equipment, Mike's dad came up to me and asked,"Charlie, don't you think the hair is a bit much tonight? You guys have a chance to come back here and play again if they really like you."
I looked at Jack, a bit taken aback, and I said,"Jack, how can one guy out of five with long hair make anyone not want to have us back if we give them a good show. Besides, I'll make you a deal. If we get asked to come back, I'll leave the wig at home, ok?"
Jack laughed and agreed with me. After all, I only represented 20 percent of who was on the stage, and all I was really going to do was run the lights, play percussion, and do my dead level best to get my hands on that acoustic guitar of Mike's. I mean, that beautiful shiny and highly polished wooden guitar with its full set of strings was begging for me to grab hold of it...
Obviously, Greensburg had had many teen dances before, but I don't think they ever had one at that time where one of the band's members had hair half way down his back because I was being rushed by lots of people wanting to talk, mostly girls wanting to talk about my hair and if it was real or not. My standard answer to them each time was asked was, "If it wasn't real you wouldn't be able to see it now, would you?"
That seemed to satisfy most of them. One brave young gal, a nice looking girl if memory serves me correctly, came up and asked me to take off my hat. I smiled at her and said, "My dear, if I reached up and took off my hat it would only prove that my arm would allow my hand to reach my head, and besides, we're busy moving this equipment inside so we can play a nice evening of music for you, so, I need to stay busy, ok?" She turned to her friend who was standing with her and told her "It has to be fake, but it sure looks real."
And as much as we all believed Flip to be the ultimate nerd who just happened to be with us that night, we were wrong. There was a young man who apparently had been assigned to helping us out. He was an Explorer Scout, decked out in full uniform, possessed a Curly Howard of the Three Stooges haircut, and was obviously not a popular student amongst the many that were that night, but he was nice, polite, and very helpful, and as big a nerd as he truly was, each one of us in the band took an instant liking to him, I think mainly because he was being given such a rough time by the locals. His name was Val. Before this night was over, Val would receive his fifteen minutes of fame as well. And the remarkable thing about Val, he made wearing nerdish black frame glasses almost look cool.
The stage setup was quite a bit different than what we had been accustomed to. The stage itself was portable, very nicely varnished wood, but it only set about 18 inches at the most off the floor, so we were just almost at eye level with the audience. The stage sat at the end of an open auditorium, and there was an area behind the stage that probably went back another twenty-feet or so and then made a right turn down a hallway filled with student lockers. But when we did our sound check, the acoustics in this room were fantastic, and the volume we would be playing at would be condensed into a smaller area than we usually played in. All in all we were all pretty satisfied with the set-up.
Flip set his sack of china over to stage left, down on the floor, along with various other empty boxes, so it was almost a forgotten thing that he had brought them in with us. Jay had convinced Mike to bring the acoustic guitar in, although Mike warned repeatedly for me NOT to smash this guitar, because it was a C.F. Martin his folks had gotten for him, and he didn't think they'd appreciate the shape I'd have it in if I got my hands on it during "The Pusher."
As we sat waiting out the end of a basketball game(seems we ran into that a lot during the school year) we got to talking to Val and realized that really, other than being so totally naive and sheltered, he really was a hell of a nice guy who just happened to be the guy that everyone picks on unmercifully. On this night, Val had at least 6 guys who were treating him with dignity and respect and actually enjoying his company, and you could tell it wasn't something he was used to.
Finally, a few more people who hadn 't attended the ballgame started milling in, and around 8PM the principal of the school told us we could start anytime, that the crowd would start milling in shortly, and we could get started and entertain the 40 or so students who were already there.
I took control of my lighting and grabbed my trusty tambourine and Summer Heat took to the stage playing their version of "Midnight Hour."
Amazingly, right away couples started out dancing and they seemed to get into the music right from the start. We played another few songs, the crowd by this time was really starting to grow, and the music was just sounding so damned good that night. Jay's voice never sounded better to me than it did that night.
Val stood down by the stage on the left, talking with Flip and with Bill while the band played and I worked the lighting and played my tambourine occasionally. By nine o' clock, it was time for our first break, and just as that break began, it seemed like a seafull of people began coming into the auditorium. It was going to be a huge crowd, and there was going to be a full dance floor of people as well as a few who would sit off to the side in chairs, but mostly everyone decided to either dance or stand.
Right before we had begun our first set at 8 PM, I had gone into the men's room and taken four hits of some really potent diet pills. Their actual medical name was methedrine, not to be confused with the poison that is circulating the streets today in its bathtub chemist form, but this was some really professionally made, high quality methedrine, and it had an unbelievable euphoric effect on me whenever I took it, and it really got me into the groove of the music and what we were doing onstage. By the time that first break was over, I was speeding like a backwoods Kentucky moonshiner outrunning revenuers. Folks, I was truly lit up! And, might I add, I was having a ball and enjoying talking to people in the crowd. Funny how a guy with hair half way down his back and only weighing about 115 pounds can draw attention like that, but like I said, this was late 60's and in the midwest you just didn't see too many longhairs at my age...
Summer Heat took back to the stage at around 9:15 or so, and the songs started cranking out. Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge, Otis Redding, Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Cream...The band just kept belting out these fabulous songs one right after the other.
During the second set, Jay had given Flip the job of kicking on the vocal echo chamber, and he was doing a great job whenver Jay told him to hit it. Val had taken to sitting on the edge of the stage near Flip, and occasionally Flip would lie down on the stage and put his head inside the bass drum Jim Smiley was playing. For acoustical purposes, Jim rarely played with the front cover on the bass drum and Flip just seemed to really be into putting his head in there when he wasn't operating the echo chamber for Jay.
The band finished up a song and Jay walked over and was talking with Mike, who didn't seem very pleased about something, but finally they must have come to an agreement and Mike smiled, shook his head, and went behind the large Fender amp and brought out the C.F. Martin guitar and motioned for me to come over and take it. With a huge smile on my face, I rushed over, grabbed the guitar and took my position back over on the right side of the stage, but instead of sitting down at my light control box, I stood, holding the guitar and waiting for Jay to introduce the next song.
Jay walked over and picked up a guitar, something he didn't do very often, Denny sat down behind the keyboard after laying his bass on its stand and Mike took the lead guitar from Denny. Jay walked up to the microphone and announced our next song something like this: "We'd like to play for you now a song that has gained us quite a reputation when we perform in our hometown of Rushville, and we hope when we leave here tonight it will be the one song you won't forget that your heard Summer Heat play tonight. This is our version of "The Pusher" by Steppenwolf, written by Hoyt Axton."
I glanced out at the crowd, and amazingly the floor was full as far back as I could see. Denny began the opening chords on the organ and Mike followed with the guitar as well as Jay, and Jim started his drumming. I stood, turning halfway towards the wall on my right so no one could actually see that I had not a clue how to play a guitar. We went thru verse one and the chorus, and each time Jay screamed, "Goddamn, The Pusher" I could feel the tension in the room rising. I couldn't tell if it was the crowd, the band or just me, I just knew that I could feel the tension building and I knew that very soon this crowd of highschoolers in Greensburg as well as their principal and some of the faculty were going to see an instrumental break like no one had ever seen before at a high school Valentine's Dance.
I could feel my heart racing faster and faster as Jay sang verse two, and as he began the chorus for the second time and was practically screaming his "Goddamns," I looked over at Mike, who simply gave me a nod as if it to say, "It's cool, man, do your thing when you think it's right."
We went into the instrumental break of the song, and probably had played it for close to a minute when I knew in my heart that the time was right.
Mike's guitar solo was deafening, and as I looked over, I could see that he had placed himself facing his Fender amp, and feedback was pouring out back at him and out into the crowd. Jim was beating his drums like a red-headed stepchild and even Jay had started closing in on his amp, the feedback beginning to build from his guitar as well.
I turned and faced the crowd, some of whom had quit dancing because they couldn't believe what they were hearing, and I took the guitar from in front of me like I had on one occasion before, and I held it high above my head and stared skyward at it. The strobe light was doing its thing as I began to spin the guitar round and round, floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor, in a counterclockwise motion. After a half a dozen or so spins, which looked like slow motion in the strobe, I stopped its spinning, placed it against my right leg, and grabbed the thinnest of the strings and pulled, and immediately I knew I was already cutting my fingers. I did the same thing with each string, slowly, methodically, and with speed driven purpose.
When the last of the strings was ripped from the guitar, I glanced peripherally at the crowd, because I didn't want them to know I was looking at them, and everyone had crowded the stage, so much that you could actually see in the back of the auditorium and could actually see places where there were no longer people because they had closed in on the stage so much.
I grabbed the guitar by the neck with my right hand, added my left hand right below it and rammed it as hard as I could into the stage. The base cracked, but that was all, and there was plenty left of it for me to do. Again and again, I pummelled that guitar into the stage, and with each hit, more and more of it broke apart and turned into splinters on the stage, which quite honestly, was being gouged quite badly too. On the floor in front me, the guitar lay smashed, literally, into hundreds of pieces. The largest piece was part of the neck, which had been reduced to about two thirds of its original length. I looked out at the crowd, held my smashed and bleeding hands up in front of me, and was amazed at how the blood was freely flowing down my arms. The audience was simply standing in front of the stage, in total awe, and some of their mouths were actually dropped open. Mike was literally ramming his guitar into his amp, Jay was sliding the neck of his guitar and its strings down the side of his amp, and I hit an ultimate rush and turned and jumped off the back of the stage and went behind the wall where the lockers started.
I stared down at my hands, and it was worse than the first time. The little finger on my left hand was cut so severely, probably from that first thin string, and I could actually see the bone thru the cut. My hands and arms were covered in blood and I felt such a burning and a stinging in every finger and my hands felt as if they had been crushed. And as bad as I hurt, I still could hear the music playing off in the distance, and I knew I had to get back out there because we still had the last verse and chorus to do.
I walked slowly back to the stage, and just as I got back on stage and back to my position where I had been standing and this now splintered guitar lay, Jay was preparing to sing the last verse and he looked over at Flip and yelled, "Now!" What he meant was for Flip to hit the echo chamber button, but Flip was so caught up in what had just taken place he misinterpreted Jay's call of "Now!" and grabbed his bag of china, which he immediately began smashing against the wooden stage floor. Piece after piece of broken glass flew thru the air, and in just a short matter of moments, Flip had run out of whole dishes and began picking up the smashed pieces and began smashing them again. This was NOT what we had expected.
Finally, Jay walked over and hit the button for the echo chamber himself and finished out the last verse of the song and the chorus, and I swear, when the last chord of that song played, the crowd went into a frenzy of applause and cheering. People stood and stared, some too dumbfounded to say anything at all, but you could read the looks on the faces of the crowd. They were in total shock and had just seen the wildest damned thing a band had ever done in their little school.
Jay announced that we would be taking a short break, and we all went behind the stage and tried to regroup. Indeed, my little finger was cut clear to the bone, I had numerous deep cuts and scratches, and already my hands, palms and backside both were bruising.
Flip's hands were bascially cut to shreds, the glass had taken a lot worse toll on him than me as far as the number of cuts, and while he had a few deep ones, none made it quite as deep as the one that had gone to the bone on my little finger. Jay was laughing almost uncontrollably and asked Flip what the hell he had done that for? Flip said, "Well, you shouted now at me, so I thought after Charlie destroyed the guitar you decided I should smash my plates."
And as bad as we both felt with the pain, we laughed and we smiled and we realized just what a spectacle we had just presented. We had to get back out front and see how the crowd was reacting, and besides, we still had one set left to go.
The stage was a wreck, covered with broken cheap china and the splintered remains of the guitar. Some of the locals decided it was time to buddy up with the band, and when we came back out, Val came out walking towards us and a couple of the local "jerk" jocks pushed him aside. It was Mike and Denny who walked up to Val and asked him to come up on stage with us while we cleaned up our mess. The jocks stared at Val like they couldn't believe we had welcomed him onto stage with us and not them, and Val actually asked one of them to bring him a broom and a trash barrel. The guy actually did it, too.
Bill and Jim took Flip back to the men's room and began cleaning out his cuts with soap and water. I knew I could wait a few minutes, because Flip's hands were really bleeding quite badly still. While we were standing there talking amongst ourselves and with people in the crowd, I folded my arms across my chest as the bleeding slowed down and the pain really began to set in.
One guy, and there seems to be one in every crowd said, "I've got something here you can play with and I bet it don't break." I smiled and answered him smartly and without hesitation, "What's that, your girlfriend, or is she just a front so people don't really know what your real interest in lovemaking is?" He never smiled or said another word, but his friends laughed at my put down and I immediately felt like I had been rewarded.
I put my arm around Val and asked him if there was first aid kit nearby, and bless his heart, he almost ran off the stage to get one. He brought it back to me and as he started cleaning up the glass and the guitar again, Jay and Mike and myself went back to the men's room to where Jim and Bill and Flip were.
As they began applying first peroxide and then alcohol to Flip's injuries, Jay and Mike began helping me set forth the task of getting my hands washed and doctored as well. Amazing how alcohol burns, especially when a finger is cut to the bone, and even though I knew I really needed to go have stitches, I just couldn't leave that night. I to this day still carry the scar on my left pinkie from that night of chaotic entertainment.
After tending to our injuries in record time, we were back onstage in less than fifteen minutes to finish out the rest of the Valentine's Dance. Collectively, as a band, when we started our third and final set, we brought Val up on stage with us and introduced him as a friend of the band and let him play the tambourine on the first couple of songs we played that set. We also presented him with what remained of the neck of the smashed C.F. Martin guitar. When he was done playing on those songs, he went over to stage left and sat with Flip, and a couple of times I looked over from working my lights and saw Val lying on the stage with his head inside the bass drum. I couldn't help but smile, because for just that one evening Val had become a part of something that was so special and unique. And he would be carrying home with him a medal of honor for his becoming a part of our the Summer Heat show that night, the broken neck of that guitar. I've often wondered if Val still has that trophy.
To me, out of all the shows and dances we ever played, and there were many more after this one, this one still stands out in my mind as our best and was when Summer Heat had really hit their peak!
Jay is no longer with us, God rest his soul, Denny and Jim I've lost contact with over the years, but I do see Mike occassionally, and when we talk memories of Summer Heat, we always talk about this one special night and we both agree it was the best show we ever put on.
And yes, there would be many more shows to come, and yes, Greensburg High School shockingly enough after this wild ass show of ours, actually had us come back the following school year for another dance, although this time we would not be the hit we were at our first performance there.
As a matter of fact, the second time we played Greensburg we barely made it out of town without getting our tails kicked by a large group of the locals. But that's another story for another time.
One thing has disappointed me all these years, though. On that night, during our wild performance of "The Pusher" and all the mayhem that happened, the yearbook staff took pictures of that night and to this day I don't know if any of those pictures still exist or made it into the yearbook that year.
I hope that if anyone who reads this knows of any of those pictures or possesses a yearbook from Greensburg High School that has any of those pictures from that wild night, I would truly love to see them, because it would be a dream come true to finally see what that night must have looked like from out on the floor.
to be continued.....