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Part II of the Upside of R&R Home

Jack Maxsim

SHOWCO

   This is really out of sequence, but I'm going to tell it anyway. Besides being owner of a state-of-the-art sound and lights company in Dallas, Jack was also a good friend. So many years have passed, I may have his last name misspelled.

   It was standard procedure after our gigs, when we were all back at the hotel, for a number of us to gather in a room and party a little (a lot). Jack's staple was drinking SCOTCH and WATER. Without fail, every night after the concert, SCOTCH and WATER. I never saw Jack do any drugs at all. At one of these "room parties" I began recanting a story about one of the times we played the Los Angeles Forum. The story involved me playing a trick on Floyd Sneed. I started with "It was in the afternoon and we were there for a sound check. The sound company had spent the better part of three hours "flying" the mains (meaning that they had to hoist the speakers up and suspend them from the top of the Forum ceiling). A lengthy, time consuming task, to say the least. Floyd was up on this huge stage (it must have been 8 feet off the ground. He was doodling and tuning his set when the prankster in me came out. Somewhere, I had acquired an M-80. This is something like a cherry bomb, but more powerful. It was a little silver barrel, about 2" inches long, with a fuse coming out of the middle forming a "T" shape. The armed forces use them for grenade simulation. As Floyd was sitting high on the stage, I snuck around behind him and lit the M-80 and dropped it on the concrete floor of the Forum. I took cover and KAAAAAABOOOOOOOM! Off it went. It was nerve shattering. As the saying goes: Floyd turned completely white." I continued telling the story by saying "Little did I know that they had already mic'd his drums AND the P.A. system was powered up and running. This added to the volume of the explosion, all right, but more than that ... it blew out a couple of the big speakers that they had just spent hours hoisting up to the ceiling. The head of the sound company came running over to me and just went off on me big time. He was a real ass-hole. I'll never forget it. I had to pay for them, but they let me off cheap. It cost me $700.00 for that little stunt."

   We were all rolling and laughing about this "asshole" and the trouble I had caused. Then, after just a few seconds, Jack was laughing hardest of all. He said to me "Michael, I WAS that asshole!!" and then roared with laughter over my folly of putting my foot in my mouth. I had somehow not put it together that it was him, because when it happened, we weren't friends yet. Talk about embarrassing, I couldn't believe it. Jack just laughed and enjoyed my embarrassment. (Here's a picture of him. Jack Maxsim)

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Back in The Islands: Dec, 1973

      We had so much fun in Japan; it was hard to leave. Having purchased every Nikon camera in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo that customs would allow, we boarded a plane for beautiful Honolulu, HI. While there, I had a chance to go out and do some golfing with new "guitar roadie-Hapkido instructor-friend," Freeman Batchelor. Below are a couple of pictures taken at the Makaha Country Club, followed by a picture of Freeman, today.

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1972makahacart2.jpg

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