I’ve been missing Tammy a lot this week.. I guess that will never go away..Proves I was a true good friend. With that though I have also been missing Gene.. Neither one of them has been around lately and I think they think I am ok on my own now and their jobs are done.
So today Flashback Friday will include one of each of them.. Two for the price of one..But you’ll see how it will span to each of them without including them in the same part..
It’s magic!
I was a huge fan of this band in the late eighties called Lions and Ghosts.
I stayed up late to watch MTV hoping that in the middle of the night I’d get to hear them play.
WOW People still have myspaces! Here is Lions and Ghosts!
SO they were playing 2 dates in Northern Cal.. so we headed out to see them at the Catalyst first.. It was a small club on the Pacific Blvd in Santa Cruz.. I saw many a cool band there including the Call Havana 3 am and Lions and Ghosts.
The Famous Catalyst.. Seriously.. it’s one of my fave clubs ever to have been too.
It was a club I didn’t work at or know anyone that worked there so I got to be a real person and see real bands outside of my comfort zone. Which to me was a wanted experience when I really just wanted to see the band and NOT HANG OUT!
I am pretty sure Tammy and I brought Alice with us..But it’s so long ago and I really can’t remember. And I honestly think I was the only that was 21.or maybe not even yet.
We dressed in our usual seeing a band with hair ware. Crimping irons involved.. Tall boots.. OK now I look back and think wow we must have looked like strippers in a Motley Crue video..I had no interest in playing the groupie game..But that didn’t stop me from making friends with the cute sound guy they called Skipper.. He was funny as hell and from long beach Ca.. So we discussed shopping at the Electric Chair in Huntington beach for cool boots and surfing.It’s still there!
I think he was married.. so I never even hit on him.. or vice versa.. Ya all gotta remember I maybe have been a bitch but I was kinda a good girl.
Tammy on the other hand wanted the singer in a bad bad way.. I thought he was pretentious and a dick.. but no they made out on top of my car while I talked with Skipper and the coolass super sweet guitar played Mike.
Mike was freaking awesome.. We talked about bands and LA and all kinds of cool sixties things..
Then they had to go.. She didn’t get invited back to the hotel or anything.. Just a half hour makeout on my fricken car…
And oh yeah guest list for the next night.. Well that was from Mike and Skipper. Neither of which hit on me or Alice at all.. We just watched Rock and Tammy makeout..
So the next night we went to Berkeley to see them again.. A friends band opened.. OK a friend’s band where I had a mad but unobserved crush on the bass player. So it was back to people knowing who I was in a club. Getting my way etc… Maybe I wasn’t really a bitch.. Or they were too afraid to say NO to me. I sat outside with Skipper and showed him the lovely sights of upper Berserkly.. The vet next door to the Vietnamese restaurant and the used car dealership.. I instructed that the main part of Berkeley was nowhere near where the Square was located and it was actually kinda a shitty neighborhood as my car got broken into a few times there.
The real fun in Berkeley was had up the road..
I am pretty sure they went there after that night before they went home.. Told him about Rasputin’s records etc… This was my teenage hangout.. I spent a lot of time there. I told him of famous people that had played there and maybe illegal substances with ex singers of famous bands..Mike listened in to a lot of these stories..
I think I was slightly animated and entertaining to say the least..
All in all though I wished I could be making out myself…. With that bass player of my friends band.. ahhhh.. Young crushes..
Rick completely ignored Tammy.
Met a girl and took her back with them when they left..
We drove back across the San Mateo Bridge with Tammy Bitching and complaining about what a dick he was etc….He wore his hat while making out.. He was probably bald.. Idiot…
We got back to the Rhinert apt as we called it…and Tammy wrote a song about Rick..
I don’t remember all of it.. But she repeated the main part for years..
“Rock god, rock schmod
You think you’re hot.
But you’re not”
I didn’t say it was a good song.. it was just funny.It wasn’t good at all actually… but it made her feel better.
A month before she died we even talked about the damn song..
A year later I took a trip with Gene down to LA. Might have been even more than a year. Tammy and him had already been dating and already had broken up for a bit. It was kinda a Tammy fucked me over let’s drive to LA and chill kinda trip.. I taught him to drive on this trip..We stayed at this scary ass motel on Franklin off Hollyweird Blvd and saw a couple cool bands while there. I ruined a few towels touching up my pink roots in their bathroom and we kinda had to hide them so we didn’t get charged for them.
I am pretty sure this is the trip where Rodney Bingenheimer sold Gene the TShirt Billy Idol was wearing on the first Gen X record.200 dollars.. I have no idea what happened to that shirt but it was framed for a bit.
I had a old boyfriend who lived in LA at the time and he came by to visit (just visit and say hi) when Gene was off visiting with his friend Mike..Then we took off to hang out on Melrose..
As we cruised the shops I saw a familiar person across from us.. I smiled and waved.. It was Mike from Lions and Ghosts.. Gene had no choice but to laugh as he had known the stories about his estranged girlfriend..Mike was super cool and gave us a flyer to his nightclub he was running.
I explained we needed to go home the next day and would miss it.
Was kinda bummed about that. He was a straight up cool dude.

Years later in the days of Myspace I was chatting with an old friend and looking at his pictures. Michael was known as Roxy back in the day and Tams and I and her twin sister saw his band Sybil play a lot. He had pics of people he had played with since I last had seen him . I had thought he was dead all this time so it was really good to catch up.
Last time I had seen him he literally burst out of a closet with his friend Rozz. Who was the singer of the band Christian Death.. They were literally in a closet.. Rozz rented it as his living space in my friend Danielle’s apartment.
There in his pics was that Mike guy!.I asked Michael about it and he told me what Michael had been up too. He still played music. But mostly he was now famous for his famous wife.
I wrote him and he didn’t really remember me.. It had been 18 years. But He did remember what a douche Rick was..
And that was that. I thought of him the other day.. His stepdaughter is getting married. It was in the news. He seems to have a good life now. Though I think now instead of being Michael Lockwood.. Super cool guitarist..He is

http://michaellockwood.com/

Yes that is his wife he is working with….
he is Mr Lisa Marie Presley