Bands stories like many things in life become better with a little age, especially if there is a person to vouch for the fact/fiction. Nothing actually HAS to have happened, it just has to have been SAID it happened. Now, that said, most of the following is true.

Back in a different time, two of my dearest friends met in undergraduate school. Some people call this "college". Other people with really dumb dreams founded in not keeping normal schedules in life, living in poverty, and being completely unafraid to smell like a cadaver around others, call this 'undergraduate school'. The really afflicted actually GO to medical school. Those who find making fake teeth fun, go to dental school. Yes, it's that simple. These friends were one of each. So to summarize, each had really dumb dreams, smelled poorly at times, and were completely unfazed at studying any and all parts of the human body with great interest. Endlessly. I, on the other hand, could find an end quite easily.

Now the med student is a gifted guitar player. Really. I don't say that because he's my friend,or that he stores my junk, or that I owe him fifty bucks. He's good. He can play anything, although he has a tendency to play really annoying 80's rock. Which at the time was 'current rock'. Or 'Less pre-historic rock', as it may go for now.

I'd been invited to meet the med student/guitar player because I'd opened my mouth one day to the bass player and said I had a drum kit and might want to get together to play. You know, kind of like you want to go to Grandma's and check out her dinner patterns. It sounds good, but 'Please oh, please,...don't call me out on this one.' I got called out.

The order of things were that the Bass player was just getting into playing the bass, and he was friends with the guitar player, so there would be some friendly tutoring going on, and I was friends with the bass player and I had drums. That's it. Everything else like ME being friends with the guitar player and ME actually playing with something other than Genesis records would need to evolve. We reportedly liked the same kind of tunes, so it would be easy to find common ground there. It just needed to be 'painfully easy to play for 2/3rds of this gathering' in order for it to fly.

I recall walking into the guitar player's residence on a Sunday afternoon, and he is shirtless, wearing an unenviable pair of Jamz and his ultra-cool Technics stereo is blasting. I mean really....blasting. He has his guitar on and his amp is...blasting. We walk in, and he doesn't...even...slow...down. For we are coming to THAT part...That part of the song he has been waiting 434 hours of studying to play. The song was REO Speedwagon's "Roll with the Changes". He isn't playing the jangly rhythm part, no. He's playing the lead. And like I said, he's playing along very well. SO well that when he finally quits, the stereo sounds awful. And the stereo is playing....REO Speedwagon.

At this point, I knew I was going to be a huge disappointment to him on drums, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to play "Misunderstanding" twenty-five times. But at least the bass player sucks, so I have that going for me. Majority suckage: It Works. Later we would find acceptable singing was a simple luxury we couldn't afford. So we sang anyway. Or I should say, THEY sang, because THEY unplugged my mic without telling me. Front of the stage uproarious laughter ensued. I had a sore throat for 3 days. Jerks.

Somehow, some way we negotiate around a 10x10 water bed in a 12x12 bedroom with me literally in the closet. . Then the epic happens. The guitar player plays a little spot from a song he knows well, just to set his amp volume. We look at each other...think, 'I may know that'...and fire off into what I still refer to as my audition song, Led Zeppelin's 'Rock and Roll'. I get goosebumps just typing that. Realistically it was probably a 6 out of 10, but it was cool. We became a band. And I was in a closet...in a mobile home...in Oklahoma. Which is sorta like Abbey Road studio.

We scramble around and call every apartment complex in the metro to see if we can use their rec rooms for some 'soft folky music' rehearsals. we subsequently were kicked out of each one. We play in the storm shelter at the mobile home park, in all of it's cinder block acoustic glory. Once. It's still echoing down there to this day.

Then somewhere in here we get notice that there is a guitar show going on in Norman on a spring weekend. Fine, it'll give us something to do. We are broke, and bored. But mostly broke. The $6 entry fee cuts into our dinner funds, but 'we are a band, and this what bands do'. Guitar shows are good for finding guitars. They are dead lousy for finding drums, drumheads, and drumsticks whether they be the wooden, chicken or ice cream variety. So I'm back to bored and broker. I lurk with the bass player, who at least has financial resources: a Texaco credit card and an ATM card.

Suddenly, the guitar player comes over to us with this 'way too enthusiastic' look in his eyes. "They-have-one-they-have-one-they-have-one". "They" is a guy with about 6 guitars. "One" is a tobacco-burst Gibson Les Paul Custom. Very similar in style to the one played by Ace Frehley of KISS. Also known as the biggest influence on the guitar player, ever.

We tell him to go see what he'll take for it, and the guitar player said, "He wants $600, but I really think I can get him to come off of it. I mean, look around. He can either sell it to me for my price or drag it back to BFE. Whattayathink?". "Sure", "Sure"

"ok...one problem. Seriously, how much dough can you get ahold of RIGHT NOW?" The bass player and I hem and haw about having a grand total of $14 on our combined persons. We remind him we are: BROKE.

"You guys know I've got the dough...I'll cut you a check as soon as we get home. I need the $600." Laughing trails off as we see how serious he is. I have an ATM card that is to be used only if I'm ever kidnapped by naked women... in a foreign country...on a Tuesday. I have access to $300. The bass player can come up with $250, without a permission slip from the defense department. The guitar player has $50. We are good.

"No way I spend all of it, because he's going to come off that guitar a ton." We walk back to the bored-looking dealer.

"Ok, what's your best price?"

"$600.", he said flatly.

"How about $550?", guitar player asks, winking at us proud of his amazing bargaining skills.

"How about $600?", the still-bored dealer replied.

Clearly confounded, yet undeterred, the guitar player counters with, "What about $595...?"

Smiling, the dealer trumps with, "Sure man,... I'll buy anyone lunch."

The freshly amalgamated (pun intended) rhythm section laughs. "Marilyn" came home with us.

The Ketone Bodies were officially formed. We played a couple school gigs. We were hugely famous among the three of us. Girls called us by our names, mostly because we had classes with them, but that was beside the point. Then graduation came.

Life took over and sent us to different parts of the State. Incomes rose, and somewhere along the line "Marilyn" was revisited and had a major modification. Changing her original pick-ups from the stock 2 pick-ups, to the three pick-ups like that of one Ace Frehley. She glittered with tips of the hat to Elvis and included a name plate over the truss rod cover. She was the first 'real' piece of gear we had, and we cherished her even as new gear (including drums) came into the fold. With an expanding set list and the addition of new members and even better friends, other guitars were employed for practice and gigging. But "Marilyn" would always make a showing for a song or two at our gigs.

One eventful evening we were playing our outdoor show for our 'social riding' friends, when right after a break the guitar player reached to grab "Marilyn" and she simply was gone. A crowd of nearly 1000, out in the middle of a hay field, in the middle of the night. Gone. The crowd was mad, as it looked very poorly on them, what with it being a private-type party, and we were doing it for charity. We simply mourned. We played the rest of the show, and quietly tore down. A police report was filed.

Here's the thing. Bikers can be some of the scariest dudes on the planet. But bikers, especially bikers with a charity cause, can also have influence. Within a matter of hours, the report of the loss of "Marilyn" had hit the radio stations. TV stations in Texas and Oklahoma had picked up the story. The underground of the bikers friends had made it known that there was a bounty out for the guitar.

A phone call was made. Mysteriously, a good Samaritan bought the guitar for $300 but he was willing to eat that to give it back. That was his story. We didn't care. And he's likely glad to have full function of his teeth today. "Marilyn" minus a couple pieces of bling, was home. We were all very grateful.

Tonight, out of the blue, I got a text from the guitar player. He's goofing off in California. Three days of sun and fun, and some jamming with friends. For giggles, he took his old flame on the trip west. He's just going to get up on stage, pull out his $595 guitar, play his licks all these years later, while sweating under the lights on the stage.



Because that's what you do.




When you play with Ace Frehley.