on September 5, 2013
By 1966 I was starting to see cracks in the theory of rightness with which we were fighting the war in ‘Nam. The music that I listened to had taken a decidedly serious detour from the usual ‘I gotta have you, babe’ and was speaking out on issues of the day, namely the environment, the war, civil rights, and stirring feelings of equality in women. Being single, I was running with members of a local band aptly named the Midnighters who played weekends over at the lounge in the bowling alley. Austin, the shortest member of the band played a baritone sax that was almost as tall as he was. His partner Leroy played the bass and both had been party hounds I hung out with during high school. When I had returned to my hometown from one year of college I hooked back up with them and went to their gigs to see and hear them play jamming R&B covers.
After the last set was done and the band packed up, many of us would head back to a place to party the rest of the night away with the band. Usually there were some girls in tow and so back at the ‘crib’ (the apartment of Austin, Leroy, and frontman Mickey) the party would commence. I’d be drinking and Austin and Leroy would be smoking grass some fan had donated to the group for their rocking groove. In those days pot was cheap.
After several times of waking up on the couch the morning after with a hangover from the previous night’s partying and seeing Austin and Leroy looking not too much the worse for wear, it was time for my second heart-to-heart about pot. As Austin rolled up a fat marijuana cigarette which he told me was called a ‘joint’, Leroy told me of his first times smoking grass and why he preferred it to alcohol. I should point out that in those days I didn’t drink beer so my alcohol references are toward hard liquor.
Leroy explained that drinking booze would ‘knock your dick in the dirt’ if you had too much and you couldn’t do that and play music very well. This was not the case with smoking grass. You could get ‘stoned’ and still function. In fact 'getting high' made you enjoy the music even more.
“Really?” I said as Austin finished rolling the joint, lit it and passed it to me.
“Take a draw and hold the smoke in for as long as you can,” he said, “for the maximum effect. Don’t worry, we won’t let anything happen to you, and you won’t start shooting heroin behind it. That is all government bullshit.”
As the line goes in the song Sweet Memories (by the band Space Man Jack), “when I first got high, I opened my eyes, to a world, I’d never seen”. End part 4
After the last set was done and the band packed up, many of us would head back to a place to party the rest of the night away with the band. Usually there were some girls in tow and so back at the ‘crib’ (the apartment of Austin, Leroy, and frontman Mickey) the party would commence. I’d be drinking and Austin and Leroy would be smoking grass some fan had donated to the group for their rocking groove. In those days pot was cheap.
After several times of waking up on the couch the morning after with a hangover from the previous night’s partying and seeing Austin and Leroy looking not too much the worse for wear, it was time for my second heart-to-heart about pot. As Austin rolled up a fat marijuana cigarette which he told me was called a ‘joint’, Leroy told me of his first times smoking grass and why he preferred it to alcohol. I should point out that in those days I didn’t drink beer so my alcohol references are toward hard liquor.
Leroy explained that drinking booze would ‘knock your dick in the dirt’ if you had too much and you couldn’t do that and play music very well. This was not the case with smoking grass. You could get ‘stoned’ and still function. In fact 'getting high' made you enjoy the music even more.
“Really?” I said as Austin finished rolling the joint, lit it and passed it to me.
“Take a draw and hold the smoke in for as long as you can,” he said, “for the maximum effect. Don’t worry, we won’t let anything happen to you, and you won’t start shooting heroin behind it. That is all government bullshit.”
As the line goes in the song Sweet Memories (by the band Space Man Jack), “when I first got high, I opened my eyes, to a world, I’d never seen”. End part 4
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