Balls on Toast - A Eulogy

When someone dies, whether it's completely unexpected like the recent death of my (closest, dearest, bestest, thooper dooperest...) friend and longtime musical partner Ted O' Connell, or it's Mom or Dad's long awaited final breath after a long illness, I fall into a state of suspended animation. My tongue becomes thick, my voice barely audible even to myself, and my brow knitted as if the question "what just happened?" or simply "No, forget it, I ain't buyin' it" were scrawled across my forehead.

This is how it's been so far with Ted, despite all the beautiful paeans, memoirs and expressions of heartfelt gratitude from the wide circle of people he considered good friends. This childlike wish for Ted's return, like awaiting the clatter of reindeer hooves on the roof every Christmas eve, might last weeks, months, years. The fact that I won't be able to sing, play or drink tequila with Ted until we meet again on the other shore may never sink in. Which I suppose it isn't that unusual considering a large swath of the world's population are waiting for Jesus's encore. Why not Ted's, too?

Over the past 25 years, I imagine that over 75% of the gigs I've played have been with Ted.  Unless the client wants polka, hard bop, big band swing or opera, it's just been assumed that we would be on the date together. There are others that have played more gigs with Ted than I, but I haven't played very many without Ted.

When we met around 1988 I had never played with a guitarist who had such care for tone, nor had I played with anyone with such smooth, pitch-perfect rock chops. Ted had come from a very popular New York area poprock cover band, The Vibe Bros, while I was recording and performing originals with Call Me Bwana. We met in the middle and started playing winery gigs with Bwana's bassist, Pete Anderson (a wine industry dude) and drummer Dave Casini. I bought a Japanese '52 reissue Telly at the Magic Flute, accompanied by Ted and Kathy Terlicher, and a 60s Fender Deluxe Reverb. Aside from the built-in tremelo and a Cry Baby I plugged straight in. Ted had an array of pedals that added meat to my bones. Pete, Ted and I sang like little birds while Dave (aka Sleepy Hacienda aka Slee) whacked away. We played the annual Santa Barbara wine festival at Zaca Mesa near Solvang several years running (thanks Jim Fiolek), Chalone Vineyards near the Pinnacles National Monument, and wineries all across SonomaNapa, weddings and parties, the occasional club gig with the Bwana band. Ted and I always traveled in my rig du jour together with our ancient Peavey PA and always returned home with several bottles of wine, miraculously avoiding DUIs and other worse fates.

One Friday night Ted asked if I would like to play guitar with him at the Coffee Roasters in San Anselmo, as his regular partner, Frank Bohan, was unavailable. The coffee shop was in the old cheese shop past the Royal Sweet Bakery on San Anselmo Ave. It was early for a new dad, but the coffee was plentiful and the folks dug it. When the Roasters moved to the old Nine Iron Grill across from the old Rexall Pharmacy, Kevin Hayes joined us on snare and kick and I moved to bass. The lineup hasn't changed much in the decade or so since, and I can't count the times that Ted and I remarked that we would be playing Saturday mornings into our 80s, watching little kids dance while endlessly ogling the female talent parading through the place. Ted, Frank, Kevin, BurnZ, Bowen, Michael and all our special guests knew that this was a gig from the Gods. We called ourselves The Treble Makers. We improvised freely, drinking coffee, and appreciating the finer things in life. It just didn't get any better. For two and a half hours we were "winning", as Ted often put it.

Ted wasn't only a uniquely distinct one-of-a-kind guitarist - he was an iconoclast from head to toe. A swarthy Adonis that lived according to his own code of don't-fence-me-in ethics, Ted was a faithful, steadfast friend, ever-ready to go bar-hopping on fat-tire bikes or fix whatever needed fixing in a friend's home, or a friend's bicycle, or, more often than not, a friend's amplifier. Over the last decade his low watt amps - Tube Steaks, Bass Boys, Freeways etc. became high demand items for the likes of Bob Weir, Jimmy Dillon, Erik Schramm, Bonnie Hayes and Tommy Castro. And a problem, in a way, for our wandering star. Like the girlfriend that wanted to give up everything and move in, the more Ted was wanted the more he shied away. 

Ted (aka Theowhore O' Cuntal the Turd among many other names) defined his world with his playing, his friends, his girlfriends, his gear, the grain of the wood, his bikes, dogs, tequila, the biking trails and hiking trails in the watershed and with what he was willing to do and what he wasn't, and perhaps most of all with his ever-evolving musical and spoken language. His sense of twang, both on strings and in his spoken presence, was a constant reminder that we should really stop being so fucking serious about everything. From "oh, balls on toast" (an expression of frustration easily combined with "fuckballs" or "shitballs") to "thooper dooper" to "spank u berry mulch", or his mysterious and as yet untranslated last words "ifor no streaky," and other expressions that many of his friends have at the tips of their tongues but presently escape me were his way of saying "I want to establish a friendship with you that is unique to you and me." Like the way he referred to me as "Uncle Jeb's Cabin" or "Jeb of the North."  Or how he referred to our wine band El Kabong cohorts as "Pick n' Slee." It was his way of creating a world of characters that he loved and trusted and that he could call upon when things got shitty. Which, unfortunately, he rarely if ever did.

As Frank Bohan, our Treble Makers bandmate and Ted's BFF often said Ted had a twisted sense of musical humor that pervaded his improvising, and, to a lesser degree, his instrumental songwriting. The "whammy bar bravura," as local columnist Paul Liberatore put it, was truly, unabashedly, uncompromisingly funny, as if his notes had been dropped into a house of whacky mirrors: fat here, thin there, wambly with tremelo, swelling and shrinking, ploinking, plinking, scratching, dropping de-tuned strings below audible, tinkling above the nut and below the bridge - playgrounds of sound on Saturday mornings. Of course Ted played all manner of important, high-profile gigs under the hot lights where the audience is out there in the dark, but his rote parts on the big stages paled in comparison to Saturday mornings at the Roasters when he could to stretch out, as it was for all of us. It was our opportunity to invent, live. If just one eighth of Ted and Frank's playing (along with drummers Mike Israel, Kevin Hayes, Dave Burns and Bowen Brown, and bassist Michael White) at the Roasters had been recorded, the world would be a better place. 

Not to cast aspersions on the relationships of ordinary human beings, but relationships between musicians are different. Communion of heart and soul may happen randomly in the space of a few bars (ahem...Peri's, Mattucci's, The Log Cabin and Iron Bed Springs notwithstanding) and it's those brief, fleeting moments of truly harmonic convergence and communion that we - Ted, Frank, myself Kevin, Bowen, Burns, Bon, Schrammy to name a few - sought and continue to seek. Once that connection between two players is made, when spontaneous invention coalesces and lightning strikes, the unspoken bond that forms is stronger than NASA's strongest polymers. Like a musical orgasm, it's that moment when you look across the bandstand, your eyes meet, and your smile says "this is it, right here. Bingo. We're SO winning." 

But now we're not. The bond is broken, and there's a palpable sense of the heart getting torn out and tossed in the chipper. And while I have faith that Ted is now in the best of all possible hands in God's Celestial Twangfest, the tears of all the people he touched with his generous heart are flowing through the streets of San Anselmo and on the trails of the Watershed, on the beaches and the Mountain from Marin to Greenwich, out to the tip of Long Island, in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

But for me, as naive and blind as I am, these tears of pain are also tears of joy. Because I have faith that we'll be winning again, together, soon enough on the other shore.  I can wait. So I say "bye for now, Ted of the North. Save a place for me on the bandstand." 

My Old Friend Bob

After graduating from CU in 1978 I went up to Glacier Park and Many Glacier Hotel where I had a summer job on the bar crew along with 6 other kids, all of whom had some kind of musical or theatrical talent. My dorm neighbor and 2nd-year bar crew buddy, Bob Pazera, played the baritone horn. This morning, after having recently been contacted by one of our crew members, I discovered that Bob has been blowin’ that bad boy with the celestial philharmonic since 2003. The news that Bob had departed the planet at age 48, while profoundly saddening - we lived together the winter of 1979 at the Missoula Snow Bowl after our summer of bears, babes and booze - came as no shock. Bob was one wild motherfucker, especially for a tuba player.

He was a casebook Jekyll and Hyde alcoholic: shy, soft-spoken, quiet, bookish and unassuming

Bob Pazera

when sober; destructive, violent, grabass horny, and fearless when drinking. And he was a big guy: 6’3” 220 - an imposing bruiser with a Bigfoot gait and long meaty arms that hung apelike down his thigh, invincible in one-on-one with deceptive quickness and agility. The oaf of the Bolshoi, I used to say. His face, framed by the shag style of the day, was so clear complected and whisker-free that he could have passed for a six-year old, and the way his mouth naturally turned up at the corners made him look to be in a constant state of mild amusement at the goings on around him. A friend likened him to The Big Lebowski, which would have been a perfect fit if Bob wasn’t so schizo.

Author, whacked

The stories from that summer and the following fall and winter are the stuff of legend, especially now that the principal protagonist is reportedly dead and has been for the past 11 years. As the inventor of the FUBAR Malt (FUBAR = Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition, common in the military) Mister Bob, as he was called by the British hotel manager, Ian Tippet, would often pour drinks so strong that the guests sent them back. So he would down the reject and pour another - it didn’t matter if one reject was a Vodka Collins followed by a Manhattan followed by a Grasshopper: when he was drinking he was on a mission to see just how fucked up he could get. If pot or blow was available there was no stopping him, but we didn’t have much of a stash up there.

The employee dorm at Glacier

He also liked to get other folks drunk, so one night he challenged me and another bartender to sample every variety of booze in the bar after work. We didn’t get very far. Another night we served up free drinks to any employee who wanted them - I don’t know how we managed it, but some of the employees got so drunk that they accused us of trying to poison them and wouldn’t speak to us after that.

He also loved to throw customers off when they came up to the bar or the window to order a drink, or even waiting on tables, he would say “what can ya get me?” (instead of “what can I get you?”). A stupid little thing but it stuck with me.

There was a couple, Larry and Sylvia, that spent the summer in their RV in the Swiftcurrent campground on the other side of the lake and fly fished evenings until 10PM when it finally got dark. After fishing Larry and Sylvia, who knew Bob from the previous summer, would show up around closing and hang around drinking free beer that Bob would supply, and cognac or tequila or whatever else they fancied, playing cards and smoking cigars with us in the Swiftcurrent Lounge until 2-3AM, when we would stumble back to the dorm under the swirling, pulsating psychedelic light show known as the Aurora Borealis. It was important not to let Bob pass out in the bushes because that area was crawling with grizzly bears.

At the end of the summer season at Many Glacier Bob decided we needed some decor for our

apartment in Missoula. So after we shut down the bar at 11 or 12 - whenever it was - we stealthily removed all of the various deer and elk antler trophies from the Interlaken Lounge and spirited them to a hiding place off the shoulder of the road down to Babb, where we later collected them. The following summer Bob went to work at Many Glacier again and, in his oddly loyal and responsible way, returned the antlers to their rightful displays on the walls of the Interlaken lounge.

Once we got free of the booze-addled summer camp at Many Glacier (which will become a novel some day, in which an evil hotel manager sexually “takes advantage” of young men until one disappears, along with other adventures) and moved into our spot at the Snow Bowl, we would often go for several nights at a stretch dry, then go at it with a vengeance. Bob bartended at a disco joint in south Missoula and I played solo guitar at the bar of the Red Lion Inn.

Larry and Sylvia were living in Missoula that winter, vs. wintering in the desert, and they came over with my girlfriend for Thanksgiving. The night before when Bob and I got the turkey Bob also bought a case of Heilemann’s Special Export, my favorite beer from that period, and instructed that we were to drink the whole thing: 12 beers each. In the process of drinking and decorating the apartment for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I heard Bob shout “catch!” and there over my shoulder was a 16 lb. frozen turkey coming right for my head. The turkey crashed into the wall, where I retrieved it, dropped back into the pocket and fired a perfect spiral to Bob cutting across the kitchen. But it was one slippery turkey and Bob couldn’t hold onto it, letting it smash a hole in the hollow core bedroom door. We played turkey toss for another half hour or so, completely trashing the apartment and tenderizing that bird to perfection. The next day I cooked it in a paper bag and it was unbelievable!

One Monday morning in the wee wee hours I got a call from a neighbor about halfway down the 10-mile snow packed ski area access road: Bob had slid his sedan over the edge of the road, crashed through the cedars, larches and pines and somehow survived. Drunk as he was he did not want to involve the authorities, but the neighbor insisted I come get him and take him to the emergency room. When I got there I found out why: a stick about an ⅛” in diameter had pierced his neck, entering on the left side and protruding about 2 inches on the right. It was like the old bone through the nose trick except this was a stick through the neck, and Bob couldn’t feel a thing. It seemed a miracle that there was no blood, and an even greater miracle that the stick didn’t poke a hole in his esophagus or damage his spinal cord.  

I took Bob to the emergency room and waited while they removed the stick and set him up with a pus drainage apparatus affixed to the exit hole on the right side of his neck. I took him home and we both slept most of the day (the ski area was closed Mondays and Tuesdays). When he got up he couldn’t move, his body had been so traumatized. After several days he could move again; by n’ by he went back to work, but for weeks he always had a gross little napkin in his pocket he would use to dab at the pus leaking down his neck. He stayed for another three weeks without a single drink, then,  since his car was totalled and he couldn’t work a second job he went back home to Mom and Dad in Albuquerque.  

Bob was a nicknamer. The owner of the ski area was named Melasky, which Bob thought sounded

like Polanski so he called him him Roman. Roman was also a fierce drunk and would sometimes announce closing time by hurling a couple of full pitchers of beer across the room, but never far enough to where I sat on a little stage leading the skiers in song (who were the same hardcore ski racer gang day in day out.) Roman’s daughter was named Bodagget, which is the larger, harder form of a dingleberry. Roman’s wife was Mrs. Roman, and aside from Melasky I can’t remember anyone’s real name. They were red-headed New York Polack Jews and what they were doing running a ski area in Montana is anybody’s guess. We often had contests to see who could throw Bodagget’s cat, Bodagget Junior, furthest into into the snowy woods.

I saw Bob twice after he left Missoula, both times when Holly and I lived in Scottsdale where she designed interiors for model homes with the infamous Charles Keating (another novel in diapers) and I worked at an ad agency. Bob and his wife lived in Chandler where Bob had landed a gig as a city planner. The first time Bob came to our house in Scottsdale, solo. Bob and I proceeded to get drunk and then wrestle our way through the house, smashing furniture and awakening the next day to nasty bruises, rug burns and other injuries.

Holly and I visited Bob one more time at his place in Chandler. We saw his wife Sarah briefly, then went for a hike in the Superstitions. Bob was on the wagon and it was a very pleasant afternoon.

I spoke to Bob once more around 1990, when we were amazingly both on the wagon. I had been investigating “the program”, and Bob said that he found it too depressing; the folks there were such hard cases, serious alcoholics, and he couldn’t relate. He told me that it was under control, he had learned how to have a drink now and then without having a schizoid meltdown, but he figured it out too late. His wife had already bailed.

And then this morning I learn that this incredibly funny soft-hearted guy had exited, and as much as I would like to believe that it was cancer or a cerebral hemorrhage or something not related to drinking, the odds that he stacked his car or even took his own life in a drunken state of hopelessness are far greater. I’ve reached out to his ex and will continue to sleuth until I find out what took him down. It really does break my heart, poor bastard. He was a fun, smart, sensitive guy up until about the 5th beer. Who knows maybe he was a great city planner for the city of Chandler too?

Rest in Peace, my friend.