1966 :: As high school friends, Bob and I started playing music together.  Bob was the musician/song writer; I was the willing and eager student.  I was interested in playing the guitar.  Bob nursed me through high school with as much knowledge as he had and as much knowledge as my fingers could comprehend.

1968 :: By the time high school ended, we had progressed to better guitars and a little better sound -- almost always in tune.  We graduated and parted ways to venture into the realm of college.  Luckily, we kept in contact.

1971-1972 :: TIME moved on and, as two separate individuals, we continued our love of music and playing.  In 1972 we had our first formal gig.  For this momentous occasion we had to work out a few problems: no group name, no practice time, no play list STAGE fright and probably a few more I have forgotten.  The setting was the folk oriented coffee house.  It was located in the basement of the student union building at North Texas State University in Denton, Texas.  I was attending the college @ the time and the coffee house was new.  The place was so new that they were hurting for acts.  The school had a world renowned music school, but obviously those people thought it was beneath their talents to appear in a "folkie coffee house."** 

I remember timidly going up to the girl and asking her for a shot on the bill.  She was very nice and asked what kind of music we played.  I lied through my teeth:  "Oh, we're a cover band.  We play some James Taylor, Seals and Croft, Neil Young, and some original stuff."  The girl agreed and we set the time and date for our execution.  I immediately called Bob and gave him the information. 

**In regards to a footnote, let me regress a moment: Bob was the ultimate carnival barker.  He was a natural born salesman.  When I expressed my doubts about getting this gig, he rose to the occasion, filling my head with grandeur.  "We can do this; it's good exposure.  No money, but a great start.  We'll be great.  We're good.  We don't need to practice..."  Somewhere in this time frame, "VIRGIN INSANITY" was born. 

You can see where the insanity part came from.

When the night of the big gig arrived, Bob and his wife Eve arrived @ my duplex in Denton.  They arrived about two hours early -- surely enough time to come up with a play list and practice all the songs!  My stomach muscles continued to knot up and my head was spinning as the time grew near.  Bob, the mentor and leader, exuded confidence on the outside. 

The trio arrived on time at the coffee house and headed for the stage.  One member (who will remain nameless) was so nervous that he opened up his guitar case the wrong way and it fell a short distance to the floor.  The trio seated themselves on stage and did a short sound check.  This was good because we had never performed with live mikes before.  Bur our fate was sealed and we performed a thirty minute set.  We ran -- and I do mean ran -- through some cover tunes and then performed some original songs.  Through all the nervous, crackingly, out of tune singing there might have been a few good chords.  The first audition came to a close.  The overflowing school night crowd of under five people were kind enough to clap, but there would be no repeat performance @ that venue. 

The deflated ego folkies slithered into the night.  They took with them only their trusted and loyal friends enclosed safely in their guitar cases.  The guitars had been embarrassed that night, but they would live to see another day.  We weren't so sure about the guitar players.

Lady Luck took pity on us.  A friend of mine who was a photographer for the school newspaper stopped in the coffee house that night.  I was such a total wreck that I never realized that he took our picture.**  A week later, to my surprise, our picture was plastered across the school newspaper.  Luckily, no reporter attended the gig.  The picture simply had the caption "Coffee house hopefuls 'VIRGIN INSANITY' audition."

Thank you Larry Provart for our 5 minutes of fame.

**As a footnote, the picture also wound up in the North Texas State University Annual for that year.

1972-1973 :: Sometime in this time frame, VIRGIN INSANITY -- alias Bob -- decided to "record an album."  Bob had written and composed enough material for an album.  The idea was to make a master tape, get a master disc cut, and have vinyls pressed.  (Those plastic things in cardboard cases your parents own.  You know, the ones with pictures of funny looking people wearing cool clothes from the Urban Outfitters catalogue.)

Bob and his wife Eve were living in an apartment in a suburb of Dallas.  Bob was the maintenance man at the complex.  Bob took on the bulk of the work since it was his project.  I was tapped to do the back up guitar work and a little back up vocals if needed.  Everything had to be done in our spare time because we were either working or going to school.  This time we spent a lot of time going over the material, working things out, and practicing.  We had learned our lesson to a certain degree.

We were so poor that we didn't have a garage for a studio, and the bathroom was too small.  To quote a famous line, "necessity is the mother of invention."  Armed with a reel-to-reel Radio Shack tape recorder, we were ready to seize the day.  The studio consisted of chairs and other odds and ends covered with blankets.  This construction formed a tent-like structure in the middle of Bob's living room.  The blankets absorbed the unwanted sounds.  The acoustic guitars were miked directly into the recorder since we had no mixing board.  Each track of the song was recorded separately, ie: bass, guitar, guitar lead vocals, drums.  I forget how many tracks we had, I think, but obviously something got put together on one track.  Many hours were spent in that tent, which, by the way, was not ventilated very well.  Bob engineered, played guitar, put the bass lines in and everything else that came along.  The drummer was brought in for the recording.  Actually, he was the only friend Bob knew who had a set of drums. 

Once the tape was finished, Bob had to raise enough money to have a master disc cut and to have the vinyls pressed from that.  The master disc was cut in Dallas and I believed Bob sent the master disc somewhere else to have the records pressed.  It was a package deal.  You got so many records and their cardboard covers for one price.  I remember that any pictures etc. on the album jackets cost too much.  We had a plan.  The liner notes were written up and then we made copies to go in each album.  The album jackets were another story.  How do you get the name or anything else on those blank covers?  The solution was to have a rubber stamp made with the name of the group.  Hours later with two different colors of ink, the jackets were adorned with simply the name of the group.  "That's all folks."  No pictures etc. or even plastic shrink-wrap.

I will let Bob give his version and fill in any gaps.  No matter what you think of this album, you've got to give us credit for trying and coming up with some halfway decent sound from under a BLANKET TENT! 

From the makers of an album that sold way under a million copies, thanks.

:: POST SCRIPT ::

1973-1974 :: "ONWARD THROUGH THE FOG"

This period of time saw all of us move to Austin, Texas.  Bob performed alone and with me in several venues.  I seem to temember that VIRGIN INSANITY performed their last gig sometime in late 1973 or early '74.  That ended my career, just not my guitar playing.  Bob kept on trucking.  We even got some real studio time in a real studio on several occasions.  I don't know much about what happened to those tapes, but Bob can fill in the blanks.