The origins of this Model Americans 1985 demo recording are obscure. It was at Dragon Studio. Kurt Ribak got us in there. I think the drummer is Paul Chatterton, Autumn Eyle sings on it, Jeff Hobbs sings Big Game. Autumn had a large collection of plastic horses at her house, and when we played at the Berkeley Square she wore a belt that had handcuffs on it. I can’t remember much about playing at Dragon studio. One time we played a New Years party for some of Paul’s friends and we had one cover of Bang A Gong that was the only song anybody danced to so we played it twice. Then Paul wanted to play it again, and I said no, I was tired of it. When he yelled “Bang A Gong, Motherfucker!!” we played it again, extended version. It reminded me of the part in Shel Silverstein’s book where Lafcadio The Great roars because he wants more marshmallows.

In those days I lived in Berkeley and we rehearsed at Ashkenaz on San Pablo Avenue at Gilman Street. One night I came back from a gig to put some gear back in the locker and David Nadel came downstairs brandishing a hammer to see what the noise was. I remember recording at Tom Mallon’s studio doing a different version of Scaly Reptile. Where is that tape? The musicians were Bill Zelinsky, Colum Keelaghan, Kurt, Jeff Hobbs, and me. Bill put on black boots with silver spurs in the elevator. He had to change into his rock and roll costume to record. He came straight from his day job as an insurance appraiser or something. His main band in those days was Necropolis of Love. He and Linda Reynolds lived on Steiner Street by a park. I was in Linda’s band Misled around that time and we were writing songs together. We rehearsed at Turk Street Studios across from The Sound of Music in San Francisco with Barry Gorin drums, Jonathan Sills electric cello, and then Joyce Jackson lead guitar. One night someone hit a transvestite in the head with a bottle and they collapsed in the doorway as we were going in. We practiced in a sewing machine repair shop in the Mission and Barry’s drums were stolen but not my amps, we practiced in a garage a stone’s throw from the Starry Plough. We recorded a few songs at CD Studios with Deanne Franklin in San Francisco. Charlie Walter played sax on Romance.

The Model Americans that recorded the record practiced at 1833 Solano in Oakland. I put out the record album with an RV sticker salmon on the cover in 1987. The songs are some of the ones the band was playing at the time. It was recorded at Hyde Street Studios in Studio B on 16 track in the Tenderloin sporadically between June and September 1986. Sheldon White played drums. Alex Carlin from Psycotic Pineapple plays lead guitar at the end of “Girl of the Week,” his wah pedal was broken and I moved it up and down for him by hand. Linda and I wrote Public Gardens and Lake of Fire, she played a bass foundation and I’d build a song on top. Linda wanted Rozz from Theater of Sheep in Misled and we got together with him a few times on Steiner. Rozz wrote his own lyrics to Public Gardens. It might have started out “Blue avenues, angles in the sky,” instead of “Love affairs strung like silver charms on a bracelet.” The guitars went through a Tom Scholtz Rockman thanks to the engineer Ricky Lee Lynd.

Caption ???

Around the 2005 holidays I found the tapes up in a cupboard at my mom’s house and brought them to Fantasy Studios to be dehydrated and digitally mastered by George Horn. This is the first time Perfect World has been released. Records have a lot less room for music than CD’s. Dave Ray came up with the opening riff, he was playing lead guitar in the first Model Americans group with Jeff Blaney and a drummer named Gus from the Cal Jazz Ensemble when we used to rehearse in the practice rooms under Lower Sproul Plaza. I had 1,000 vanity pressings of the CD made and am thinking about putting together another CD of material in… the future.

Band members came and went. We did a couple demo recordings at home studios, one on Ashby Avenue with Peter Elizalde, and another on Skyline Drive in Oakland. Then I decided to put together the best band I could with Robi Bean drums and Julia Altstadt playing bass and singing. Chris Boggs who had recorded some Journey demos and a post-Journey project was the producer. We did basic tracks with Chris at Stargaze Studios in Journey’s warehouse at 2734 E. 7^th Street in Oakland. Chris flaked and I hired Alex Marlowe to produce. On February 18^th, 1995 we started on Perfume, Memory Lane, The Atmosphere, and Can’t Find A Frog in Mark Schleunes’ Crow Magnon Music studio in Tom Dean’s warehouse at 832 11^th Street in Oakland.

Alex mixed all the songs except Memory Lane (deemed incomplete) with lots of processing. I remixed everything with Mark at Crow Magnon. The band is Julia, Robi, Jeff Hobbs, electric violin and vocals, me, guitars, vocals and harmonica. Dan Eisenberg played Hammond B3 organ on Memory Lane. The belt on his revolving Leslie speaker broke before he could play on Perfume. I did "Starfish, Starfish" one night on a cassette 4-track in an empty basement. Tom Hunting from Exodus overdubbed drums at Crow Magnon. Robi refused to record that way. Heidi Vogeli came to visit and while waiting to get in the building she got mugged by a crack head that held a knife to her throat. Julia moved back east to get a computer science degree and Heidi joined the band.

Tom began playing with us when I told him I couldn’t find a drummer. Playing with Tom was totally exciting. Our first show was a bill Wes Robinson put together at the 181 Club on Eddy Street in Frisco on February 15, 1996. That night somebody shot up the corner liquor store. When we came out of the club there was yellow crime scene tape all around across the street. I was eager to record but couldn’t do it with Mark. He moved his studio to a warehouse a few blocks away. An extortion gang set fire to the grocery store on the corner and the flames spread to the garment sweatshop next door where the fabric dust exploded. Then the fire burned the warehouse around the studio causing smoke damage and the firemen smashed up a piano Tom Dean was renting.

Heidi and Colin

At The Pervert’s House, The Ballad of Terry Barnes and California Thing were recorded on 16-track at Dancing Dog Studio with Rick Stone engineering around July 28, 1996. The songs were thrown down in one or two takes and quickly mixed. We were going on public access T.V. Channel 8 on Sputnik’s Rocket to Stardom and I heard you couldn’t get a good sound in the studio so we recorded the songs the way we played them live with some irresistible little overdubs. Rick was in Dart. He didn’t like the guitar sound on The Ballad because it was too ugly for his demo. The band insisted on keeping it that way and he complained and stomped out to the hall for a cigarette. The rough mix sounded better than the mix Rick worked on, but he lost it or something and wouldn’t call me back. The Emeryville warehouse off Hollis is gone. Developers kicked the artists out and turned the building into condos. The band on the recording includes Tom and Heidi and a keyboard player who prefers to remain anonymous.

Linda died January 31, 1998. In 2003 I tried to record a couple of songs at Expressions Center for New Media in Emeryville with Jeff Blaney, Pete on guitar, John Catalona on drums, Heidi and me, with Joel producing. I ended up taping over the reel. Jeff and Pete left the band after this instead of showing up to do overdubs at the next session. We should have just played live in the studio and let it bleed instead of multi tracking. It’s a ridiculous place for a band to record. They only give you two sessions and spend an inordinate amount of time getting drum sounds. Then you still have to take your tape somewhere and mix it. Heidi and I started playing with her husband Colin Raesler who plays drums and went on his first date with her at one of our Stork Club gigs when it was at 380 12th Street. We continued as a trio until late 2005 when Colin and Heidi moved to Los Angeles with their baby.

Some places Model Americans played are Sonoma State, U.C. Davis’ commons and student union, U.C. Berkeley’s Bear’s Lair and Sproul Plaza, Rochdale Village, C.C.A.C., The Mabuhay Gardens, Villa Hermosa Restaurant, On Broadway, The Ozone, The Graffiti, The Stork Club, Morty’s, The Berkeley Square, Marin Juvenile Hall, Covered Wagon Saloon, Peter Gabel’s house, VIS Club, 924 Gilman/Gilman Project, Barrington Hall, The Tomato Sauce Room, 181 Club, Starry Plough, New School Bazaar, Menlo-Atherton High, KALX Live, The Driftwood, The Hotel Utah, The Bison Brewing Company, Pacific Coast Brewing Co., San Francisco Music Works, Berkeley Community Media, Making Waves, The Shamrock, Rather Ripped Records, Provo Park, The Heinz Club, Receiving Studios. Places that wouldn’t let them play, The Bottom of the Hill, Paradise Lounge, People’s Park, Ashkenaz.

The Trio

Model Americans: Heidi Vogeli – bass, Colin Raesler – drums, Tom Hunting – drums, Kurt Ribak – bass www.ribak.com, Colum Keelaghan – keyboards, Jeff Blaney – keyboards, Jeff Hobbs - sax and electric violin, Rocky Trujillo – drums, Peter Roscoe – bass, Tom S. Dean – bass www.oaklandopera.org, Barry Gorin – drums, Robi Bean – drums, Julia Alstadt – bass, Scott Fleming- keyboards, Paul Chatterton – drums, Jerry Walker – drums, Bill Zelinsky – drums, Sheldon White – drums, Tom Saxby – bass, Margo Bourgét – vocals, Autumn Eyle – vocals, Bobbie Monet - percussion.

Credits

Web design by Dylan Carlone.
Photos: Johnny Del Mar on Home Page by Willa Madden www.willamadden.com.
Surfin’ photos of Johnny Del Mar by Scott Allen, www.jellyfishproductions.net.
Hiking photo of Model Americans by Diane Hirshberg; Model Americans at Berkeley Square by Robert Korchan. Del Mars at 2005 AIDS Walk and Ocean Beach by Derrick Joyner and Rie Naraoka.
Video produced and edited by Joel Hutner, sound by Robin Spalding.
Miserlou by Dick Dale and the Del Tones, Wipe Out by The Surfaris, Penetration by The Pyramids, Walk, Don’t Run by The Ventures, Pipeline by the Chantays.
Music copyright 1987, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2004, John F. Lee. All rights reserved.

The Model Americans Hiking