HAVE A MONKEY MORNING
A Subsidiary of GAAG Industries®
HAVE A MONKEY MORNING
OUR STORY
It all started when I was just a young pupp (short for puppet). Me and my best friend, Benny, were living in Paso Robles. We would listen to the radio station, KFIG, from Bakersfield California, if I remember correctly.
We listened to The Beatles, Elvis and Sly and the Family Stone. Sometimes we would go to Paynes Music Store on Spring Street to browse the albums (good ol' vinyl), or buy the latest ELO or Monkees LP. Of course we always went to the Battle of the Bands at the Fairgrounds in Paso. Statesboro Blues would always put on a good show.
In the sixties, San Francisco was where to be for music. All the groovy people were there at Golden Gate Park and Haight-Ashbury. So when Benny and I found out about all the good music, we immediately looked at each other and said "ROAD TRIP!". When we finally arrived, we parked our VW bus at a house in Millbrae about 20 minutes south of the foggy city.
Wouldn't you know it just down the block was a young couple that we got to know. Yeah, Darwyn and Harriet really loved to dance. She was very artistic and collected antiques, pottery of some sort. I think she called it Shawnee. Darwyn was a janitor that liked to play golf. I don't know which of those activities he liked more. Anyway Benny knew of some other cats in the neighborhood, Don, Peggy, and their 4 year old, Sean. Harriet and his mom would call him Seany. That's kinda weird.
One thing I do remember about Don and Peggy is they would collect coffee mugs from anyplace they would go. In fact they had a couple of brothers, one collected spoons and the other collected shot glasses. What's up with people collecting things?
Benny's been playing drums since he was knee high to a frog. My daddy bought me a bass guitar when I was just a lil' pupp. On weekends we would show up, uninvited, at Don and Peggy's and jam til the wee hours of the morning. Don would join in but Peggy would just kick back and watch. We were getting pretty good and knew we needed a lead guitarist.
One day we made a trip to Tower Records in the City looking for inspiration. On the way there, passing through Golden Gate Park, we picked up this little blue furry dude hitch hiking with a guitar. He said his name was James Tobias and that his friends call him Toby.
So we asked if he would like to jam with us and play lead guitar. He instantly said yes! Flash forward a couple years, and Toby became good friends with Benny and me. We played a few small gigs around California; Dodger Stadium in LA, Fillmore West and Candlestick Park in San Fran, even Las Vegas. We didn't get our big break til we got a call from the 30 Minutes crew.
And the rest, as they say, is history!​​​​​​​