Sunday, March 24, 2013

The Boarding House, Part 3






I think one must have to be pretty well-addicted to music to travel 100 miles, try to find a place to park in downtown San Francisco, and have to get up and go teach school the next morning. But I did it, a lot! The top two photographs are of the Tubes. While I did have a couple of albums, I rarely listened to them. They were much more a visual band, as should be rather apparent from the pictures. In the middle is Maria Muldaur, famous for her FM hit, "Midnight At The Oasis," but the version of that song that haunts me in my sleep is from the movie, "Waiting for Guffman" where Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard manage to make it  cringe-inducing. Maria also seems to be having trouble keeping herself together, as it were, something of a wardrobe malfunction. Two relatively obscure acts follow. Obscure didn't bother me back then. In fact, the obscurer the better for my music snobbery knew no bounds.The record store owners in "High Fidelity" didn't have anything on me as far as snobbery was concerned. So, second from last is the British singer Terry Reid, rumored to be the first choice for Led Zeppelin's lead singer. At bottom is Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, who also ran for governor of Texas if I'm not mistaken. Not the whole band, just Kinky. The Tubes and Kinky were very funny, but I also saw some great comedy at the Boarding House. Steve Martin recorded his first three albums there, and he was hilarious! As was Martin Mull, who had an extensive television and movie career to go along with his stand-up. Mull could play an instrument and sing pretty well too. 

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