Singing and doing that while playing a musical instrument at the same time after just holding the instrument for the first time only days before, was quite the challenge. 

I still remember my first attempt. I started by taking in a big enough breath to blow up a jumbo-size balloon all in one puff and I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained so “I thought “Here goes nothin’” and belted out “Well it’s a one for the money, two for the show…” in my first attempt at an Elvis song which was later covered by my musical idol at the time, John Lennon.

I’m sure I was awful, but when I finished Paul remarked, “I love that rasp you put in your voice!” Huh? A compliment on my voice from a real musician? That just didn't add up! I was dumbfounded, and started to believe that I might just have a shot at this music thing after all. Well that was all I had to hear, to make up my mind, this was not going to be just a hobby, but my passion in life, to be a real musician! Aside from lots of practicing, we didn't do too many performances in our brief tenure, but what follows are a few highlights that I recall best. 

 

1, 2, 3, GROOVIN’!

 

Next, Paul began playing us a song that none of us knew. It began with a very simple A to D progression that was really quite catchy. Now that I think about it, it ended the same way. In fact the middle of the song was that way too. Aside from a couple short identical bridges this went on like this for ten minutes! We didn't recognize the song but we were all tapping our feet to it, which is a pretty promising sign. We were all in amazement that such a great tune could have somehow passed us by as we were all very much up-to-date on our music.  When we asked Paul what this mystery song was he said it was something he had written himself that he called “Fresh Garbage” Rick’s reaction will be permanently engraved in my mind. His eyes immediately lit-up and his mouth hung open. All that came out was “Are you shittin’ me?” 

​

Paul and Rick seemed to hit it off pretty well. They both loved the flamenco guitar intro to The Monkee’s Valerie, so I’d say that was a bond of sorts. Paul suggested we begin every performance with this song as though we were making it up on the spot while we were setting up our instruments. One-by-one, we would join each other in what would be the jam we would be known for. We were really beginning to feel the “in sync groove” now, so we all started our new band chant, 1, 2, 3 groovin’! We thought that was so hokey, we would use that to count down each of our songs for a while. But something was missing, so we asked my then girlfriend Sylvia who, being from El Salvador, to translate our little countdown into spanish for us. Well from then on it was, “Uno, dos, tres, chevere”. As long as we were planning Friday Knight setlist traditions, we then agreed to wrap up every show with Paul McCartney’s “Smile Away” in which we would show off our multifaceted talents by trading our instruments with another. Since we were such a dynamically multifaceted/talented seasoned band we would switch off as Paul would play rhythm guitar instead of lead, Rick would move to drums, while Cory would play bass (which would I teach him, talk about the blind leading the blind!) And that left me to try to play whatever I could fake on Rick’s guitar. Big fake, bigger mistake! This was a trainwreck in the making, but you couldn’t tell us that! 

 

With these first and last song trademarks, how could we miss in our Knightly effort to shoot for the stars on our way past Mars? That’s when we knew we were on our way to fame and fortune, eat your heart out John Lennon! Between Rick and Paul there were several songs they already knew to get us well on our way to rock stardom. In addition to that Rick and I showed our future hit, “Can’t Get You Off of My Mind” to Paul who picked up on it really quickly. Since we were rusty and didn’t know how long we would be that way, we listened when Paul advised us all, “Whatever we do on stage, no matter what might go wrong, never apologize to the audience”. He said to always look confident. We didn’t know where he came up with his clever words of wisdom, but since we didn’t have any of our own, we followed right along. That’s when I knew we finally had a band! 

 

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!

 

Cory suggested that we get a pretty girl lead singer, to round off the act and increase our appeal to a wider audience, and he knew just the girl, Laura Diaz. Laura was a sophomore so we were a little older. I didn't actually know her, but I used to admire her when we passed in the hallway at school.Cory said he asked her, and the next thing we knew she showed up at my door to audition. We were all thrilled to have a pretty senorita who could actually sing (something we weren’t used to) in the band! 

 

Each weekday morning Cory would pick me up to take me to school. and then back home afterwards to our rehearsal daily  in my large double bedroom. Paul was always the first one there, and Rick was late every single day for some reason none of us could understand. After all Rick was the only one who didn’t have school as he had already graduated from Mills High School two years earlier.. This used to infuriate the rest of us until we finally had to tell him we weren't going to tolerate his tardiness anymore. With that, he promised he’d not only begin showing up on time, but he'd be at my house even before the rest of us got back from school.

 

Well the following day, Cory, Paul and I each arrived at the usual time, but once again, Rick was nowhere to be found. So once again here, we were starting band practice as a three piece disgruntled band without our rhythm guitar and lead vocalist. I think it was a good half hour before Cory peeked out the window, and spotted Rick’s Mustang parked up the street with Rick seated inside but not moving a muscle to get out and come to practice, so the rest of us went back to rehearsing. Finally after another ten minutes, Rick came into the room (we always left the front door unlocked for him) as if everything was just fine and dandy. When we asked him what the hell took him so long, he told us that it wasn’t his fault, when he was parking his car the song “I Fought The Law (And The Law Won)” by Bobby Fuller Four came on the radio, so of course he had to listen to that first! That was Rick, gotta love him! 

 

US AND THEM

 

Rick was a neatness, cleanliness, organizational freak like no one we had ever met before. He made The Odd Couple’s Felix Unger look like Pigpen from The Grateful Dead! He drove us crazy with all his quirks (which we learned years later were a combination of O.C.D, and A.D.D which were not, yet medical terms. Theory is, Rich was the first one to have these disorders, but everybody loved Quanah and we wouldn’t have our dear lead singer/rhythm guitarist any other way! With my bedroom windows wide-open so everyone on the block could hear us loud and clear, kids would gather around my front yard who we could see from upstairs in my room and It wasn’t long before the girls started arriving, My new next door neighbor, Sylvia Jovel and her friend from across the street, Laura Ravella were first and they were pretty, so we let them come upstairs and watch us from the “front row seats” which were at the end of my bed. They became such loyal fans that they became the steady girlfriends of Cory and I respectively. The other Knight’s already had their girlfriends, Rick’s was Laurie Dianda and Paul’s was Carol Gardner. They were all so cute they became honorary members and fit right into the rockstar lifestyle we were trying to create. We also invited a few of our closest friends to come watch us practice, and different ones would begin to drop in each day. One guy from school, who I can’t remember the name of, showed up and while we were practicing drew our band’s logo using the San Francisco Chronicle's Old English font as his model. He did such a great job that we used it for the duration we were together. Once we had our logo, it was time to display it on the kick drum just like real bands did back in the day. 

 

Back in those days, stereophonic sound was the big thing in music especially on LP (long-playing) records. The cool kids were switching their radio frequency from (what was once boring big band swing music) to FM it’s new format harder rock, like Led Zeppelin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, etc. This made way for psychedelic music. To some of us music alone wasn't enough to fully enjoy this new age. I loved to tinker with electronics and one of my passions of the day was converting old large speaker boxes into “light organs”. I would fill the boxes with Christmas lights suspended by wire attached to a music-light sound converter, allowing the lights to flash to the beat of the music. I liked to coordinate the pulsations with the pitch of the music by connecting the bass notes to the blue lights, the high treble to the red ones, leaving the yellow lights to the beat of the mid-range. After I had them working I’d cover the front of the boxes with plexiglass containing little diamond shaped moldings which served to refract the lights behind them. This gave that hippie effect which was all the rage.  

 

Cory would stick around after band practice and we would blast Beatle records while singing along as we stared at the pulsating lights. He loved this concept so much that he suggested we install the same contraption into his bass drum, so that the audience could enjoy the flashing lights along with our music. At first I told him it would be impossible for the effect to carry brightly enough for the audience to see, but he talked me into building this into a round version which had always been rectangular before. After getting the glass cut the same diameter as the drum, drilling knob holes in the top off it so Cory could adjust the brightness and sound response, it actually worked very well! The next step was to put our black logo on the inside of the glass using contact paper with a reverse image to complete the project, and that’s exactly what we did! It was another first for The Friday Knights, and for that matter for any band we had ever known of! 

 

Well now we had it all, songs, girls, instruments and five participating Knights so we were a full-fledged rock band, so now it was time to be to be seen by more than just a few friends while we rehearsed every day so we started to plan our Friday (K)night party! My parents agreed to go out for the evening as long as there would be no hard liquor, so out went the “BYOBeer'' invitations for the following Friday night! We played to a packed house (upstairs and downstairs) to tons of our equally drunken friends. We were a hit, and on our way to bigger and better things.  

 

MISMANAGED MANAGEMENT!

 

I won’t say Cavan really wanted to get us gigs and went on a scouting spree in both Millbrae and Burlingame trying to get leads for places for us to perform. One of his stops was a lunch break at Ken’s House of Pancakes in Millbrae, the very city I lived in. There at the lunch counter he struck up a conversation with a man sitting a few seats away. Cavan asked if he happened to know of any nearby venues looking for a new upcoming, promising band. He must have had quite a spiel because this led to at least two or three more meetings (all of which were at the same place they had originally met. Over the next couple weeks. This older gentleman, Tom, or Charlie (we can’t recall now) took a keen interest in managing The Friday Knights himself which was never Cavan’s intention, as Cavan had planned on doing that himself. Seems odd as he had never even heard of us, much less knew if we were good enough to promote. All the time  this was going on, I never knew anything about this.