Are All Five of You Together?

 Are All Five of You Together?





     This one still burns a little even it was said over fifty plus years ago. It speaks of the difficulties we all had finding a mate or sometimes even a date. I am thinking it was about 1972 when Zeke, Ed and I lived on Midvale in the hippy crash pad. We had gone to the Troubador one night to see a favorite in Dave Mason. It was memorable since as a prep to the show we sat down before the legendary water pipe BOJO and got so ridiculously stoned Zeke passed out on Santa Monica boulevard while standing in line. We did make it in and were totally blown away by the opening act which was a duo "Batdorf and Rodney." They were young, fresh and very talented guitar players and singers of harmony.  They had several songs we latched onto and dug over and over “Me and My Guitar”, “Don’t You Hear Me Callin” and “Let Me Go” Batdorf and Rodney had one small problem which was their songs included spirited jams that made the songs a little too long for FM radio play. No matter, our circle immediately became great fans of a band we thought was heading for the top. So when we heard B&R were coming to Long Beach State for a concert we were hyped for this great opportunity. I believe it was me, Zeke, Ed, Greg and Bob who were in the inner circle of fans who expected the show to be essentiall. All of the fellas were girlfriend-less and pretty bummed about our unwanted celibacy. However, nothing was going to tarnish this major musical event and we gathered at Midvale and smoked and joked our way out to State. One problem about getting loaded was always the self-consciousness that went along with the high. The fact that we were in our unsure of ourselves twenties the common thought was we were not cool enough to have dates. When we arrived and stood, waiting to be seated, a former South Gate neighbor named Jeff Kirkpatrick approached as a server and uttered the deeply damning words "Are all five of you together?" The sentence burned in our ears and we slunk over to our table among many couples waiting to hear some band they had never heard of. The constant struggle to pair up continued into the 80's and the sentence was used many times to describe our sorry predicament. We were all five of us together and we would love to be together again today.



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