Rocket Norton Lost In Space. Rocket Norton
day I would learn to embrace my unrestrained lust and succumb to raw, savage, pounding, thrashing, screaming sex. That day was not today.
Trisha had not actually moved in with me. She kept some things in my closet and stayed over many nights but she didn't like the house or my house-mates.
Right from the get-go Trisha disliked Donna. The boys in the house worshiped the ground Donna walked on; everyone was spellbound by her. Trisha was only tolerated by these same guys. It was natural for Trisha to be resentful. Most girls hated Donna. Only strong confident women could stand her. She was too much of a threat.
One of the most popular sports at our house was a competitive bout of repartee. Although Lindsay possessed the greatest intellect and Geoff and Steve had the acid tongue, nobody could beat Donna at this game. Her two favourite retorts were, “Eat my shorts” and “Sit on my face” - there’s no come-back for that. Geoff loved these expressions and slipped them into his own vernacular, but nobody could say it like Donna.
Back when we had lived in Montreal, Lindsay had met a lovely girl named Sandi. She was from Toronto but had been going to school in Montreal when we were there. Lindsay had stayed in touch with her and invited her out to Vancouver. She came west and moved in with him (and with us). Sandi was an olive skinned beauty with dark eyes and an easy laugh. She was intelligent and big-city sophisticated. She brought a touch of elegance into our otherwise unrefined world.
We were still festering over John’s reluctance to embrace the family that we had become. We sat around our kitchen table one night and concluded that John’s thinly veiled façade of living with us was upsetting our household. We decided that we could not tolerate a padlock in our house any longer so Geoff smashed it off with a hammer and put John’s few sticks of furniture out in the parking lot. When John arrived the next day, he saw his stuff out there and became incensed. He quit, and we fired him, and he drove off with his few possessions. John’s coming and going like this would continue for the rest of our lives.
The Seeds of Time had become something of an enterprise by this time. However, almost all of our earnings went back into the band, to buy equipment and to pay for promotional materials. We were also developing a taste for nice hotels and would sometimes spend the entire amount of our gig’s fee on a suite of rooms at a first-class hotel. On rare occasions, after a particularly good run of gigs we would actually pay ourselves a small 'bonus'.
This was one of those occasions. We each received one hundred and eighty dollars. Geoff had been holding John’s cheque and, in the heat of the quarrel, had inadvertently forgotten to hand it over.
Later, sitting around our kitchen table staring at the cheque, we couldn’t decide what to do.
Donna came waltzing past and suggested, “Why don’t we have a party on John?”
Steve and Geoff lit up. Steve hugged Donna and spun her around. “Baby, that’s a half a great idea!”
Geoff telephoned the swankiest restaurant in Vancouver, Hy’s Encore Steak House. This was long before Vancouver became internationally renowned for fabulous restaurants and gourmet cuisine. In those days, if you wanted to mingle with diamonds and mink, Hy’s Encore was your only option.
When our party of ten, comprised of the four remaining band guys plus Donna, Trisha and Sandi, Bill, Terry and Geoff's former brother-in-law Jeff, arrived at the door the maitre’d was aghast. He was quite visibly shaken and recoiled to the safety of his little desk. The manager was called to repel the barbarians before any of the real patrons spotted us. It was, in fact, the owner, Hy Aisenstat himself who, in his wisdom, procured a loaner sports jacket for Bill and personally ushered us to a private room. With a wink, he gave instructions to the staff to take special care of us. Although that probably meant, 'Do not allow any of this rabble to co-mingle with the real patrons', his thoughtful action made life-long fans of each of us.
The banquet room looked like King Henry VIII’s bedroom with heavy dark wood and blood red velvet curtains. We feasted like kings (and queens) on gigantic bloody steaks grilled to perfection washed down with gallons of excellent French wine. We began with Caesar Salads prepared right at our table and finished with incredibly sweet flaming desserts complemented by more fiery drinks; all in copious quantities. Bill, feeling quite the gentleman indeed in his borrowed lime green sport coat, gave the party a real boost by passing around a hash pipe throughout. The most amazing thing of all is that John’s one hundred and eighty dollar 'bonus' paid for the whole dinner although Bill contributed a generous tip. That wouldn’t even buy a bottle of good wine at Hy's today.
Jeff was looking for a place to live after his shack on Welch Street had been demolished so he moved into John’s room. Jeff was an intelligent guy and a man‘s man; the type that could do anything. He took over the management duties from Jim. In doing so he would elevate The Seeds of Time to the next level in the budding music industry in Vancouver. One of the first things he did was up-grade our equipment. The Acoustic amps were great but they were driven by transistors and were clean sounding. Jeff believed that we would sound better with tube driven Marshall Amplifiers. We went into Kelly Deyong’s and traded the Acoustics in on Marshall 'stacks'. Jeff was right; it gave us a grungier dirty rock sound that suited us better.
The other major upgrade was more traumatic. Sub-A-Lub was very sick; suffering from old age before his time. We had used him well and he had served us faithfully. The fact that we were still alive was in part due to the dependability of that loyal friend. After a solemn ceremony Sub-A-Lub was retired to stud. He was replaced by a spanking new Ford Econoline stretched van. It was white, to match the Datsun, and Jeff had had it fitted with amber running lights, white fog lights and additional red lights in the rear. It looked like a mini-semi-truck.
We played a gig at the Garden Auditorium in benefit of Dan McLeod, the owner and editor of the local 'underground' newspaper called The Georgia Straight, who had been arrested again. In the sixties The Straight was a radical rag publishing anti-establishment editorials and far-out cartoons by artists like Robert Crumb. This tended to dunk Dan in perpetual hot-water with the police and provided him with a home-away-from-home at the city jail. Consequently, these benefits happened regularly and The Seeds of Time were always there to bail Dan out.
Since John’s departure, we had continued as a four piece with Geoff sometimes playing guitar. He bought a black Fender Stratocaster. This was a 'pre-CBS' Stat built in the Leo Fender days. It was a beauty. The wholly creative environment that we had hoped to establish at the Burnaby house had indeed occurred although sadly, without John. We played two new compositions at The Gardens.
These songs were written late at night, usually high on heroin. We sat around the card-table that was the centre-piece of our kitchen while Geoff, Lindsay and Steve wrote a piece called, Make Me Immortal. Steve and I were still nineteen and Geoff and Lindsay barely twenty. We lived for the day, for the hour for the minute. I know I wasn’t consciously living the adage, 'Live hard - die young', but I was doing it anyway. Personally, I didn`t have a death wish - I had a life wish. Make Me Immortal was written as a prayer:
I-M-M-O-R-T-A-L
Immortal.
Make me immortal
I’d like to live forever
I don’t want to die
Today - or tomorrow.
Make me immortal
I don’t want to die
I can live forever, if I try.
Make me immortal
I don’t want to be forgotten
‘Cos that would be so rotten
If I were to be forgotten.
Make me immortal
I’d like to be remembered
As the one who made you sigh
As the one who made you cry
As the one who spread your little thighs
Make