A while back I met Larry McClurg, front man for the 60s psychedelic group, MIND GARAGE. It was a chance meeting – one of those oddball synchronicity moments you see in movies, or read about, but that so seldom happen in real life. Here’s how it happened, and I’ll get to why it all matters shortly.

We sell a lot of old records on eBay. They are something I have enough passion for to research, like old books, and they’ve been pretty good to us. We buy old albums by the box load at auctions, yard sales, and estate sales, and sometimes we hit the jackpot. Along the way, last summer, we found a record titled “Mind Garage.” I didn’t think much of it – it came in a box of King Crimson, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix albums, which were all known quantities for me. I photographed it, did what checking I could on line, found out that the record sold for good money, and I put it up for auction. It sold, and that’s when the funny stuff started.

As I was packing the record for shipment, I happened to notice that the name of the guy I was shipping it to was prominently displayed on the front of the record. Larry McClurg. Being the curious, music loving man that I am, I went straight to my computer got the e-mail address, and sent Larry an e-mail about the record, the band, asked questions, and pretty much imposed myself upon him. Fortunately for me, Larry was more than willing to talk, to e-mail, to explain about his band – which has a web site chronicling their history MIND GARAGE and about the upcoming reunion I was just in time to hear about – at a festival that was to be called Goodstock.

Larry and I became correspondents, and over a short period of time I realized that this guy had a story that needed telling. Seriously. There are any number of old bands, pysch bands, rock bands, rhythm and blues, and all of them walked unique roads, but there is a magic in the way Larry talks about his – and this magic led to the formation (in my mind) of the pseudo-historical account of the band I’m currently writing, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To Woodstock.” The band was invited. In fact, Larry received three separate invites/opportunities to make the journey to Woodstock, and three times he denied it – like Peter after the crucifixion. More on that later – or maybe just in the book.

These guys did everything except step into the limelight and steal the world. They recorded with RCA (Chet Atkins was there for their second session). They were in SF during the summer of love. They played with The Iron Butterfly and other luminaries of the time. They played big and small – and they created something that came to be known as “The Electric Liturgy,” which was a phenomenon of its time – made national TV coverage – and was interesting enough to make the Huntley Brinkley Report. In fact, I have a DVD copy of that report, and it shows them performing in a huge NYC Cathedral. They did every bit of it – the hippie stuff, the love stuff, the communes and the chemicals (though not to the extent that some of our now dead and lamented musical icons did) and they have walked into the year 2006 intact. They are alive, they all still play music, and they intend to reunite for another run at it. I find this remarkable on so many levels it’s hard to explain – and probably IMPOSSIBLE to explain without writing the book, which is why I have to finish it.

This morning on my way to work I heard from the second band member that I now feel I know – Jack Bond – Trained Accordion player from West Virginia, self-taught rock pianist, guitarist, vocalist, and one of the only members of the band to continue his career in music through all those years. He sent me a 60 minute audio tape, and the trip was magic. It was the first time I heard about Larry from someone else, for one thing – and Jack’s assessment is that if the cameras had shifted a half-beat south of Jim Morrison and found Larry McClurg, then the face of music might have changed…but that he’s glad it didn’t, because then Larry might be dead, and Jim all but forgotten – it’s better this way.

Jack told me about how they were doing wonderfully on their own, then, when they signed with a manager, and with RCA – though they had a hit on their own label, Morning Glori, (Asphalt Mother) – everything fell away. RCA put no money or effort behind them – they had Elvis and Jefferson Airplane and a ton of others, and frankly they didn’t know exactly what to do with Mind Garage, so they made the records, put them on the shelves with no money behind them, and let them die of entropy. It’s sad, really, because I have CD copies of these LPS, and there is some phenomenal work on them. It’s rough – but a lot of recordings from that time were rough. These guys had (and I believe still have) that magic spark that super groups carry around with them. Most of them burned it so brightly it eventually became a cinder, leaving them to replay old songs in tired new versions and play oldies shows – Mind Garage didn’t do that, and never will. I think they have nurtured the flame, and I believe when they get back together (soon) and get some new music recorded, you’ll all agree.

For now, I’m honored to know them, and amused at life for the way it all happened. Now, I have to go work on the second chapter of the book, and to write a letter to Jack Bond. He doesn’t do e-mail, and that’s just fine…the tape was wonderful. If possible I’ll suggest they turn parts of it into a podcast and make it available to the world.

You can get a CD of some of their very early work (a rediscovered lost demo tape turned into a CD) at their web site…and if you are really lucky, you can snag a copy of the albums MIND GARAGE, or MIND GARAGE, AGAIN on eBay – as well as a few 45rpm releases. By the time I get the book finished, I hope they are ready to release a CD along with it…time will tell. If they never release another thing, I’ll be proud to have known them, but even now I have the feeling I’m meeting them in the middle of something, not after the fact, or near the end. I think the story has a ways to go…

Onward,

DNW