Get ready for it:
Welcome to the Scott Thunes Music-oriented MySpace page. I hope you find what you're looking for here. That could be, oh, some information about what I've been doing for the past few years, what happened after my tenure with Frank came to an untimely end, or some nasty rock stories. Either way, I hope you'll come away pleased and satisfied.
My full name is Scott Carter Thunes.
I was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1960, and I don't even slightly mind.
My father, Harold (Hal), and my mother, Michele (Mike), had to move alot because my dad was a salesman of a myriad of products. I lived in over 20 houses by the time I was 15.
We - the Thunes Family, and by that, I mean myself and my parents, along with my brother, Derek, and my sister, Stacy (Hi, Stace! You can find here here: http://myspace.com/stacymanu) - left LA and moved to Marin County around 1968. I remember seeing the Time Magazine cover concerning Hippies. Or was it Hippys? Now I know why I always hated that spelling.
Within a year, we met our first hippies and befrended them when they made camp across the street at Pixley Park in Corte Madera at a picnic table. The Gardner Family changed our lives. We became hippies, too.
My brother and I played music with the Gardner Family. We ate dinner with the Gardner Family. We lived for days at the Gardner Family house and some days never wanted to go home.
Then we met Reid Whatley, a drummer from New Jersey, recently relocated to our area and a font of information about a new music on the scene: Fusion. We soaked it up and spat it back out.
Then all of us - Derek, Joe and Mike Gardner, Reid, Garm Beall, Tom "The Bear" Barrett, Paul DeBenedictis, Maureen Logan, Kyle Thayer, Ken Genetti, Rene Aceves, Eric Schurig, Ed Berman, and my then girlfriend, Lisa Lozoya - went to College of Marin to learn more about music. It was fun. I'd do it again. Dan Hendrix and Andy Jacobsen decided, for whatever reason, not to go there. They were missed.
My mother was the Secretary of the Music Department, which made her kind of like a Queen Bee. We all had to deal with her at some point, and she was deeply fair, supportive, creatively intelligent, and had a deep desire to see the 'kids' do well against the system.
She was one of the first heads of the Affirmitave Action groups up in San Anselmo, and she let us smoke pot at an early age. She of course almost immediately hated us doing it after she got the paranoias, but she was very much ultimately right. I'm postive she hated seeing me lose all that I'd gained in my schooling by the advent of pot, LSD, Psilocybin, Morning Glory seeds. I hate not having had anything further than an 8th grade education, but College of Marin music department kind of - in a small way - made up for that.
I was a bass prodigy. I played in all the ensembles. Choral and instrumental. Didn't matter. We had an 'Ensemble Requirement' that Jazz Band didn't fill, so everybody had to take something. The older students hated that they couldn't just jump into CoM's music department and take over the Jazz Band without having to deal with the dreaded Ex-Head of the Department, John Myers, the demoted yet still-powerful conductor of the Day, Night, and Community Bands.
I was enthralled with Band Music, and played in all those goddamned groups. Of course, I loved singing too, so I was in Day Choir, and the Community Choir. I was given to rocking out on the back bench of the bleachers, much to the choir director's chagrin.
I guess I played in these groups: Day Band, Community (night) Band, Community (night) Orchestra, Community (night) Chorus, Chamber Enesemble, Jazz Band, and Chamber Chorus. I also took my required piano classes kind of seriously, along with being asked to play bass drum and cymbal for their production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Or was it The Marriage of Figaro? No matter. I was the go-to guy for kick-ass musical accompaniment for the low frequencies.
My brother was a composer, and he wrote several pieces for the Jazz Band. The last one, Fantasy for Electric Violin and Jazz Band, needed a conductor, and instead of choosing to play the bass in the rhythm section and allow the normal conductor, Doug Delaney, the glory of this fine pieces genesis, I asked Derek if I could take a stab at it. He enthusiastically agreed, and I dove in with all my being.
Unfortunately, I was only 16 at the time, and quite stupid in my deep intelligence. I made a princely mistake, and allowed the trumpets to enter a bar late during the quiet duo solo section, the Love Theme of the Violin and Guitar. My brother, you see, stole Heidi Witt, CoM's premier hot-shot teen violinist, from her lover, Ron Fine Jr., and wrote this piece for her. The loud, brash, fusion-y virtuoso sections gave way to a contemplative mood, where my brother, now sitting, accompanied his now-girlfriend in a giant nose-thumbing to poor Ron Fine over the course of several agonizingly beautiful minutes.
A quiet pad of lucious harmony supported this wonderful series of moments, trombones and saxophones building up note by note into a pyramid of 9th and 11th chords. The trumpets were orignially designed to be the peak of the pyramid, the supporting harmonies giving the trumpets the bedrock it needed to lay down its magic.
It was not to be.
I chose to force the trumpets - using one of those patented conductor's motions going like, all - DON'T! DON'T! and they obediently stopped. But they shouldn't have, and I shouldn't have, but I did, and it was different than the composer's wishes - and everybody knows it's the conductor's job to fully express only the composer's wishes - so I failed. Failed, I tell you! Failed!
The next morning, my brother was overheard to complain that the guy he got to put together the PA for the gig, one Den Simms, screwed up and he shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a gig for the rest of his life. I took up support of him, and by doing so unleashed the nearly unbearable anger of my brother, Derek, whose confoundenment at my having so horrifically ravaged his love-song to his soul mate nearly drove him mad with revenge.
In the back of the music library, in the 'score' section, surrounded by the hundreds of music scores, large and small, owned by the school, my brother and I began one of our last battles.
Within minutes, the door which separated us from the rest of the world was slammed, by a friend who was at the front desk that day, to protect the rest of the music library from our yelling. This gave us permission to actually engage in fisticuffs, the damage from which was minor but in fact quite bloody. We also almost knocked over the goddamned racks of scores, but we were very lucky.
A little finger biting, a little hair pulling, and we called a truce. My shirt was stained with his blood.
From then on, we were nothing but supportive of each other's music and lives.
Aftermy two years in the CoM music department, I became a lounge bassist. That means I started a band so we could play lounges. We rehearsed for months, and became Fat Cat.
My mother died after a long battle with breast cancer, and I moved to San Francisco. I moved in with Joe Gardner, Tom Rainey, and somtimes, Tom Barrett stayed with us. It didn't work out all that well, as we were young, dumb, and full of cum, but I had tons of fuck-you money from my lounge gig and my mother's insurance. I spent it all on who knows what and tried to stay at CoM by taking General Education classes so I could pretend to get my AA. The only class I even tried to finish was my History of Modern Art class, which was my favorite thing in the world, even to this day.
Then I got fired from the lounge gig for finally, after a year or more, getting caught drinking on the job. What was I to do? I was 18 and given the chance to have a nice strawberry margarita with some 151 on top, lit on fire, wouldn't you take it?
I gave the gig to Joe, and moved to Mill Valley to be with my pal, Ed Berman. I worked at Old Uncle Gaylord's Ice Cream in Fairfax and planned to move to LA to become a studio musician.
But First: Europe!
Then I came back.
Over the next few months, I planned, and planned and planned, and finally got it together to go. Then I met a wonderful girl named Melissa Rosenberg and she broke my heart. Then I met a wonderfuller girl named Sue Marie Bier, and we were desperately in love.
I was 19, she was 16, and I was the happiest man on Earth. I cut my hair, shaved my teen-age beard, and was allowed to move in to her family's home, super-straight father's permission and all. Ah, the '70s!
I moved in with my dad in SF, played in the Readymades (the name of which I was eminently prepared to deal with, having had access to this technology by my History of Mondern Art class. Told you it was important!), then toured the East Coast for three weeks with them. Nice.
Did a bunch of other crap for a while, then fell in with a bad crowd. The Young Republicans were a group put together by my brother and his best friend, Stan Stock. Ed Berman was our original drummer in the group immediately preceding that, Derek and the Hippies. He was fired and young Davey Boy Green (David Kamm) was volunteered by his youthful enthusiasm and penchant for...other things.
We played many gigs, and then I got fired and ran with my tail between my legs to LA where I pleaded with Frank Zappa to hire me and save me from the stigma of losing the Young Republican's gig.
He accepted me into his culture.
Then he died.
You can find out more about this particular period in my life by reading this book: In Cold Sweat: Interviews with Really Scary Musicians, by Thomas Wictor. The link to it on Amazon is http:///t i n y u r l.com/2rwqe5.
The original excerpt from the Bass Player Magazine article can be found by going here: http://www.cidanka.nl/keneally/stbp0397.htm.
I quit music, professionally, after playing with FEAR for a year but then recording an album with Lee Ving without getting paid. We had a handshake deal that I would get a fourth of the profit after paying off the debt incurred. I did this rather than take the measly $1200 (that's about $100 per song, for those of you interested in that kind of thing) because I believed in the project. Hint for people emotionally invested in their music projects: Don't. Get. Involved.
I own many basses.
One, as in Numero Uno, the Big Cheese, Enchilada Verde con Pollo, is my 1963 Fender Precision Bass. I got this bass from Sue Marie Bier after she quit Pop Smear.
Numero Due is a 1965 Fender Jazz Bass I got from Kyle Thayer when he ill-advisedly quit playing bass for piano. Then he ill-advisedly quit the piano, and does mostly Celtic stuff now. And rock. http://kylealden.com/
After my brother died of Pneumonia (brought on my complications from AIDS), I got his 1963 SG Les Paul. It's had a tuning problem since before he died, and it's pretty unplayable, professionally. I noodle on it with a shitty Carvin amp. I hope to play it with others I trust in an amateur manner. Someday soon. But no jamming!
