Remember Dirk
I was born in San Francisco...... When I was 6 years old my Parents took me to a “Dinner and Dancing†place in Paradise California. There was an old lady playing a giant Hammond organ and a skinny old man with grey hair playing a Champagne Sparkle Slingerland Drum Kit. I had never seen a drum in real life. I was THUNDERSTRUCK. I mean I could SMELL the drums…. My parents must have loved it. I was a hyper little tornado of a kid, and for me to stand there in front of the drums like a statue with my mouth hanging open for two and a half hours must have been a wonderful break for them. I don’t think I touched my cheeseburger… After they finished playing the old drummer guy opened up his “drum throne†(the old kind that matches the drum set and you can keep stuff inside) and he said “HEY KID†and handed me a pair of ancient oak drumsticks (about 5A’s I would guess) and that was IT…I was a GONER…
I spent the next 3 or 4 years pounding along to Dave Clark Five and Stones records on my Mother’s Revere Ware pots & pans (I still have them. They still sound great). I didn’t like the Beatles then. They were too clean, and didn’t POUND enough. Besides, my SISTER liked them…After a while the powers that be (Dad) decided that if I was gonna do Music I had to do it right, which meant doing it in SCHOOL. The first day I was forced to go to “drum class†I asked where the drum kits were. The bald fifty-something music teacher didn’t even look up over his old fashioned half-lens reading glasses when he said “We Don’t HAVE THOSE.†It didn’t take me long to figure out that I didn’t want to learn how to march around at football games with a bass drum strapped to my chest… It also turned out that for some strange reason all those little dots and squiggles on the page didn’t mean shit to me (it took another 40 years to finally figure out that I’m dyslexic). So drum school was pretty much a flop. Instead of school I just PLAYED with every great drummer on the planet (via headphones) for YEARS…
Throughout high school I played with my band "Cream Of Chicken" (and we weren't talking about soup" with my best friends Mick & Peter and the insuraffable ROGER...We played a sort of trainwreck between "Killer" and "Trout Mask" with lots of weird times and screaming...We loved the Bonzo's too...Nobody liked out band much...but we still had the hottest girlfriends in school....Then I did a stint with ultra "progressive rock" group TIMMY before “turning pro†in 1975.Turning pro meant driving over the Golden Gate Bridge and playing with a band that could get a gig at the Fab Mab. Suddenly I found myself plunged into the erupting SF Punk/New Wave Scene. There were GREAT bands all over the place. Some shitty ones to. But everybody was having a good time so who cares??? Bands like Crime, The Avengers, The Mutants,The Nuns, the Dead Kennedy’s and Madgester Ludi were all over the place and you could go out on a Tuesday night and see a great show.. Devo, Blondie the Dead Boys or the Ramones.Whatever... It was a pretty hot and juicy time to be in San Francisco. The first real (as in not in a garage) band I played with was KILLERWATT. A sort of hard rock band with a wonderful crazy Scottish singer who was often too drunk to sing. After Killerwatt it didn’t take me long to get involved with some other damm good bands: THE READYMADES, TUXEDOMOON, SVT, THE YANKS, THE COWBOYS & THE FLAMIN’ GROOVIES.
I moved to Europe in 1986 RE-joined Tuxedomoon for their reunion tour. During this time I played and toured with Bruce Geduldig's group THE WEATHERMEN, Mickey Mike's INVADERS FROM MARS, SHAKE APPEAL. /b for a while with former Damned/Lords guitarest dickhead Brian James in "The Dripping Lips" before I started working with FLESH & FELL whose lead singer, Cathérine I ended up married to after a shockingly short period of time (I have always been lucky). We are still married& have a recording studio not far from the beach, ...
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