The year was 1978 and my best friend and I were plunking around on guitars. Stayton could actually play and I mostly plunked. My mom bought me a red Kalamazoo electric for Christmas in 1977 I believe. That was the year that we started hanging around with Todd in our last year of junior high.
Todd and Stayton could sing and Todd played piano. We all fell in love with the rock and roll band Kansas after “Carry On Wayward Son” came out. That was the spark that got us to thinking about forming our own rock band.
In the fall of 1978 we made our way to high school. In Enid, Oklahoma, there were three junior high’s which all fed into Enid High School. Stayton, Todd and I came from Waller Junior High. At the beginning of the year we started to meet guys from the other junior high schools.
Enid High had a swimming pool in the basement at that time and we had to go swimming as part of gym class. That’s were I met Alan. Alan was from Longfellow Junior High and he played bass guitar. We started hanging out around school and talked about rock bands.
As we got to know each other better I found out that his buddy from Longfellow played drums. His name was Kyle. It didn’t take long before we were all hanging out after school and started to talk about forming a band.
That year we started hanging out in garages and living rooms testing our ability to play rock and roll. I believe Mr. PettyJohn let us use his garage for our first practice. Of course the first song we wanted to tackle was “Carry On Wayward Son.” We weren’t going to sign any record deals but we weren’t horrible either.
Since we started taking things a little more serious I found a brand new, black, Ventura Les Paul copy and put it on layaway. I also bought a huge Custom amp from one of my old buddies. Todd bought a Rhodes electronic organ and we bought mics and a sound system. We even got fancy enough to build a lighting system.
At the time we were taking those odd classes you have to take in high school. One of the classes was literature and Alan was reading Don Quixote. Rocinante was Don Quixote’s horse in the novel. Alan thought it sounded cool and proposed that we use that for the name of the band. I don’t remember there being much argument at the time so that is what we went with.
We played some Kansas, Thin Lizzie, Fleetwood Mac, Ted Nugent, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Eagles, Bad Company, Rolling Stones and others. Thin Lizzie songs seemed to be the ones we performed the best, especially Jail Break.
I wrote a couple of original songs and we collaborated on a few others. I believe I wrote the music to “Midnight Dreamin” and “Train To Reality” while Stayton and Todd helped with lyrics. Although we were very garage famous we did venture out one year to enter the high school talent show.
We performed our original “Midnight Dreamin” in the high school auditorium. Back in that day there was a group of teachers that auditioned us and scored the acts that would make the talent show. When the results came out we did not make the show.
Looking at our scores and comments it came down to Mrs. Hoad, the teacher of Greek Mythology. Her score for us was so low it bumped us out of the contest. Although we were upset it was her comment that made us feel a little better. She said in her comments that we were too loud!! That’s something any 70’s rock band wanted to hear.
Somewhere during the next year we discovered that nobody knew how to pronounce our band name and having to explain that it was the name of a horse fell a little flat. We decided to change our name to Reality based on our song “Train To Reality.” The change also had to do with the phrase, “reality is for people who can’t handle drugs” because we weren’t high school druggies.
We played plenty of garages and even played a keg party one time. It was outdoors and of course it started to mist. We were getting shocked so that gig didn’t last long. We spent many hours in Todd’s parents living room practicing and recording ourselves on cassette tapes.
Even though we weren’t playing anywhere we decided we wanted some promotional band photos. Go figure. So we hired a photographer that was in our class. Joe met us in a field near Kyle’s house and he took some great photographs. We ended up with some smaller color pics and larger back and whites. The field we were in looked a bit like “weed” in the black and whites so we thought that added to our cred.
Looking back at the photos makes me smile. Not only for the memories of hanging out with those guys but because of our “look”. We all had the 70’s long hair going on and I even had bangs! It was a fun experience being in the band and kept us out of lots of trouble.
During our junior year we were still just goofing around with the band and Alan wanted to take it more serious. He decided to quit the band to play with another band that actually had paying gigs. Rob joined our band as the bass player at that point. He was the younger brother of one of our classmates.
At the end of our junior year we decided to rent a facility and have our own dance. We pooled our money, rented the Enid Activity Center and had flyers printed. I designed the flyers and we went around town sticking them everywhere we could.
We charged $2.50 per person and $4.00 per couple. The biggest part of the crowd was our parents and close friends. I think a few strangers wandered in but it was not a stadium sized crowd. We did make enough to pay for the venue I think.
We ended up having a falling out with Alan about our PA equipment when we were seniors that eventually led to a fight between Kyle and Alan. That was the biggest regret of the band. We did make amends but were never together as a group after that.
And after high school that was it! We pretty much let the band fade away as Kyle and I went off to college in Tonkawa. Todd went to work for his dad, Stayton went to a local university, Alan went to work for the city and Rob went on to play with several other bands in high school.
Listen to our podcast below as we get back together to talk about the band. Alan was not in on the call.
Listen to “Our 1970’s Garage Band Experience” on Spreaker.
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