Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

UFO in 76??!
Wow, the "No Heavy Petting" tour. I'd have killed to see that show....

Chris: I honestly don't recall anything about UFO. They were the opener, followed by Foreigner (their first tour) and then headliner Ted Nugent.

Ok, I've been looking but so far all I've found is a couple promo pics we took - nothing with us on stage yet. No apologies - it was fall of 1971!



Oh, I'm in the Western tee.

I forgot you were a Kalamazoo guy John! My wife went to Western (she's from the Detroit area).

Looks like you giving he subtle finger there

Great eyes Greg. And so I was, though I don't know why I would have. I didn't even catch that!! Maybe because of my feelings toward the guy (our singer) I'm resting it on. He was out about a month or so after that pic.

Ok, now you have me looking, the guy in the middle is holding a Rick! You can just see the headstock at his chin. I don't remember that either! He always played his Gibson 12-string or later the Gretch Country Gentleman. Huh, maybe he borrowed it for the shoot.

You see the back of the guitar in this typical period pose:

What kinda bass were you using, John?

A hollowbody Conrad with a body shape like a Gretch CG - a $49 special in 1967/8. The only other person I know of who ever heard of or played one was Chris Clayton, a fact I discovered on the bus to the Museum at the 75th celebration. I can't even find a pic of one on the web. Fed back like a howling banshe, which was not desired. Double bound and deep burgandy.

I couldn't find any playing, but here's me on an old album cover from 1972. I'd just turned 20 a couple months earlier (guess they never figured out that a minor was signing all those contract forms).


and here is a more contemporary version (or what's left over...)

Todd ... I think I still have a copy of that album and I saw you perform in Woodstock Illinois at the opera house in the early 70s ... weren't you playing a Gibson eb bass with 2 neck pickups then?

what a small world ...

Wow! Deja-vuski! Cyber-space meets ancient history. I seem to remember a red brick auditorium with big concrete steps out front in Woodstock. I would have been playing my EB0 in one form or another. In early 1972 I had the fingerboard replaced with a fretless one and not too long after that I had the body replaced with a walnut Les Paul-style body. After finding that the Humbucker's lack of definition drove the recording engineers crazy, within a year or so I had a P-bass pickup installed under the hand rest and separately wired so that I was running two cords to both channels of an Acoustic 140 head. That's probably the configuration you saw. It's sitting here as we speak, though at that time the head would have been sitting on top of a Sunn 118VH folded horn cabinet, which was just too big and heavy to drag around with me after I quit gigging.

We played the folk-opera thing on the album for a couple years and then moved on to regular, original songs, which was a very refreshing change. Here's a cut off the album. It's a bit nieve, but we were pretty young back then. At least as long as I'm not too specific, I can tell people "Yeah dude, I played at Woodstock".
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/Ship%201972%20Lost.mp3
Now arriving at selected bargain bins and used record stores....

yep ... its a small world ... when I saw you I think the bass still had the ebo body but also the second pickup ... you guys did pretty good folk rock music ... I had a Gibson EBO for a while too ... it had a pretty undefined muddy sound even with round wounds ... the eb3 was a little better ...

you played at Woodstock ... well I lived in Woodstock and I played there too ... for those of you who don't know what we are talking about remember the movie "Groundhog Day" ... a lot of it was filmed in the Woodstock Ill downtown square ... and they represent the Woodstock opera house as a hotel ...

Ok, for those who give a rat's a$$, the Rick belonged to the guy in the striped top, Bob, flexing his bicep. I sure didn't remember him owning one, he and I were in groups since 10th grade, but our keyboardist who lent me the pics remembered. Bob traded it in on a early 60's Gretch Country Gentleman, burgandy. Ralf, the guy holding Bob's Rick, also got a burgandy Country Gentleman at the same time. Never should have gotten rid of the Rick though!

It would have been a used 60's guitar because he wouldn't have been able to afford a new one. Never should have gotten rid of it!

Hey John, if I'm not mistaken, your guitarist was using a 450 MG