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It could have been
any city, any decade, any band. For my parents it was 1940s Los Angeles, Harry
James, Les Brown, and bands of lesser renown that frequented the Palladium
during those years. For my wife and me it was Sacramento in the 70s, and the
Rutabaga Boogie Band.
The Rutabaga Boogie Band was
just a bar band, really, but they owned the rock scene in Sacramento in the
mid-to-late 70s. They cut a record or two and opened for a few name acts that
came through town, but never quite broke free from the local clubs. Still, the
Rutabagas guaranteed a packed house and a full till wherever they played.
We were of pretty
meager means in those years but it was that temporary, student-variety poverty
that somehow doesn’t seem so troublesome. As long as we could pay the bills and
get out to dance every week, life was good.
We’d go on a
Tuesday or Wednesday when most places didn’t charge admission. The best of all
worlds was Rutabaga on a Tuesday night at Slick Willy’s, which had the label
well before its Arkansas namesake. There was no cover, the popcorn was free,
and beer was 40 cents a glass. Not being big drinkers, we had ourselves an
80-cent date.
Yeah, I really
knew how to show a girl a good time, but we’d have done little different with
Bill Gates’ budget. We were young, the music was good, and all of life was
ahead. The world was as simple as its diversions.
Both got more complicated as the
70s faded into the 80s. First came graduation, then careers, a house, and kids
to fill it. By the time the Rutabagas broke up we hadn’t seen them for a couple
of years. I remember hearing of their goodbye show, but was too busy to go.
I always regretted that. It
would have been a nice gesture to mark the end of an era that for us, I suppose,
had already passed. So when we heard the Rutabagas were doing two reunion shows
all these years later, we packed the car and headed off to indulge our shared
mid-life crisis.
Hey, we do everything together.
Besides, it’s cheaper than a Corvette.
I wondered how the years had
treated the boys. Were they still in music? Had they gone on to their own
educations, mortgages, and families? Or could they be the same hard-drinking
rock ‘n’ roll rebels with bigger bellies and grayer hair? I finally settled on
an image of scruffy but mellowed old rockers, sort of like David Crosby but with
their own livers.
The answer turned out to be “all
of the above.” I couldn’t guess as to the renal function of a couple of them,
but one of the guys now works for the California Franchise Tax Board while
another is vice president of a major brokerage firm. All have some involvement
with music, at least one professionally.
As for the crowd,
it looked like a PTA meeting with spiked punch and better music. There were
just a few twenty-somethings wandering about, mostly seeming to wonder why all
these middle-aged bald guys and their wives were out after dark.
The band’s trademark stage
banter and “flexible” lyrics were about the same, but the coarseness of it
seemed out of place at the Amway party the gathering resembled. It wasn’t Tupak
Shakur, but would these people want their children to hear this? If not, why
did they stay themselves? And while I was at it, why were we still there? I
have no qualms about double standards for children and adults when there is a
reason, but couldn’t think of what it might be for this.
I don’t know that
I’ve grown into a prude, nor much care. But I have come to understand that it’s
awfully easy to become what you fill your head with. So while I wish the
Rutabagas well, for us it is time to admit that we have grown up. And that
that’s not such a bad thing.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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