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)
|