Hello,
We were rock and roll royalty in Vallejo, CA. Hogan Sr. High was our oyster. The rep was so high that during the riots of my senior year, when fellow students were jumped in the halls for various reasons, we were untouchable. I know that sounds weird but we lived it. I saw the start of the riots when a Sophomore "rocker" kicked in the car door of a senior because it was parked on the "rocker corner" , in the wrong spot. This had nothing to do with me and my crew but we were there when it started. My buddy Sean and I just went home and played music.
The Christmas of '94 was the pinnacle and with all great success stories comes the hard times and failure. That year the parents of the members of BlueHippo decided to buy studio time for us in a professional rock legends studio. One of the members of Telsa had a studio in the area and we we so excited to finally record our songs. Then came the day after....
Back then we were bored and stupid, usually late at night. We were involved in many nefarious activities. We had developed a new game called "Car Tag". The game was simple, just hide and go seek, but with cars. Ok so here's the scenero; Two or more teams(cars) would decide over an area of town that was considered the playfield. We would start at the given "entrance" to the are. We would set a timer where one team hid. Once time was over it was time to hunt the it car. This culminated in high speed chases, bending corners, burnouts and one bent rim with a popped tire that we rolled down a hill after borrowing it from a parked car.
One particular night, we decided that we needed a new twist to our car tag event by adding a scavenger hunt portion to the game. This was a christmas decoration hunt with item numbered and ranked for best possible scores.
A list was drawn up;
xmas lights worth-xxx points, Plastic Santa worth-xxx points, etc. with the biggest prize reward going to Pink Flamingos (I don't know why). We loaded up and set out to find as much as we could. We were pretty brazen, being so bold as to rip lights from front porches and kicking Santas off lawns. My team won with what I remember as FOUR pink Flamingos lol.
Now, life is not without it's sense of irony. After celebrating our win by donating to the local goodwill, we drove around looking for more to do. Insert Karma here__________! A huge sign fell on me as we were attempting to have fun. It broke my feamure in 3 places and sent me screaming into the night!
This set about a chain of events that saw me in a wheelchair for 8 weeks, missing most of the second half of my senior year and would be the end of BlueHippo for me. The band offered me a chance to record the studio time we received for Christmas however the event had shaken me so much that I felt I needed to revaluate my life and refocus. They tapped a diehard fan of the band, Tim to record with them, writing all new vocals and lyrics. I was cut out. I am not mad now. I was in a place that was not compatible with where they wanted to go and ultimately i'm back working with Sean again now so it all worked out.
Next time....
Reconnecting, replacing, and one hell of a house party!