Entrevista a Mike Therieau

A dos miembros de The Event entrevisté por correo electrónico en agosto de 2003: Mike Therieau, su bajista, y Ben Wayne, el batería de la banda. Podéis leer a continuación las respuestas de Therieau a mis preguntas.

Nota: Gracias a Bart Mendoza por la fotografía de Mike en sus tiempos de The Event que me mandó el año 2005.

1) Where were you born in? What year were you born in?

I was born in San Diego, California, USA on October 19, 1970.

2) What was your childhood like? Did you grow up in a family that loved music? Do you remember what got you interested in music when you were a kid?

Growing up, my parents were not interested in music much at all. I think there was only a handful of records around the house, Chuck Mangione, various classical, and movie soundtracks (Star Wars and Grease, I think). As a young kid I always had a guitar to fool around with, but I never really learned much until me and my friends (who would eventually end up being The Event) got exited about music somewhere around age thirteen.

3) How did you get started playing the bass? Were your parents supportive of your musical ambitions?

After sitting around doing nothing, listening to records in each other's bedrooms after school for too many days in a row, we all decided to start a band. The standard roles were divvied up, both me and Tim Soete could, kinda, play guitar, but since Tim was better than me he got to play guitar and I got stuck with playing bass. I'm not really sure why Ken got to be the singer but it just turned out that way.

4) What was the Mod/sixties scene like in San Diego in the late '80s? What other sixties-styled bands did you like from around that time?

Growing up at that time in San Diego we were just old enough to catch the tail end of the peak of the sixties scene in Southern California. The Morlocks had moved to San Francisco, The Tell-Tale Hearts were almost through, but there was still plenty of great music in town like, The Nashville Ramblers and The Trebels. Jeff Conolly of The Lyres even moved to town for a while. Bart Mendoza was still putting on these huge annual events, called, New Sounds Of The Sixties, that would bring to town acts from all over. As time went on we became close with The Birminghams from Berkeley, they were our age and were playing a similar style of music.

5) Tell me about the first groups that you played with. What kind of music did you play?

The Event was the first band I ever played in.

6) How and when did you meet up with the other members of The Event? What do you recall about how the group was formed?

We all meet in elementary school, we were all friends first the band came later.

7) Did The Event have any leaders? Who were the group's main songwriters?

I don't think there were any leaders, but Ken managed to book a lot of the shows for a while and Tim had a bigger hand in writing the songs although we all tried to on the music together. There was a time when we rehearsed every day.

8) Please tell me about the members of The Event. Were they nice people? How did you get along with them? As a band, were you all friendly?

These are guys that I've known now for most of my life, we know each other real well. We don't see each other that often any more, but when we do these guys feel like brothers to me.

9) What did The Event sound like? What were the biggest musical influences of the group?

We were very interested in sounding like English bands from the sixties, The Who, The Creation, The Move. At the time, Bam Caruso was releasing compilations of obscure psychedelic 45's that were we also really excited about.

10) Where did you rehearse? Were you good musicians?

We always ended up practicing in our parents' garage over the years we moved from one house to the other. But I think we spent the most time rehearsing in Tim's bedroom. As a result I think he ended up being the best musician of the bunch because he always had access to all the instruments.

11) Where and when did you play your first live show? Where did you use to play? What bands did you play live dates with? Tell me about your live shows. What did your set list look like? What cover versions of '60s tracks did you do?

I don't really remember where our first gig was but we played at a lot of our friends backyards for quite a while. As we got to know more people we were able to play slightly larger shows. At the time a lot of these shows took place in rented halls downtown, we were all still underage. A.J. Croce (Jim Croce's son) more or less ran an unlicenced niteclub in the basement of his mother's restaurant. Another great place that we played a lot was a place called 2581 (it was also the address). It was ran by some older woman an we played there almost every other week, this also was an underage club, which meant no booze, but the greatest thing about this place was that she always made some alcoholic punch that she'd sell to you if you knew the right codeword.

12) What kind of following did you have? Were most of your fans Mods?

We always had our friends that turned up to see us, but at the time I think most of the people in the sixties/Mod scene first thought we were too young, then they thought we were maybe a little too weird. If I remember right the best audience for us was in the Berkeley/San Francisco area, most of the kids in that scene were a little more our age and were listening to the same type records.

13) Tell me about the Event's demo. Where and when did you record it?

We recorded a little demo with Ben's older brother in their garage. I know some friends of mine think that they like that better than the record that eventually came out.

14) Please tell me about the Event's LP. What do you remember about the recording sessions? How do you feel about it now?

Though a guy named Domenic Priore we ended up doing a record for Voxx records out of Los Angeles, Ca. It was recorded thirty miles east of San Diego in a town called El Cajon, where Mark Neill and Dave Doyle have a studio that at the time was called, the Three Track Shack. Mark And Dave are fanatics about vintage audio gears so I think it was a good place for us to go, and I think they were able to get the best out of these young kids. But I know Tim for one has his complaints.

15) When and why did The Event break up?

The main reason the band broke up was that we were all going away to college, Ben and Tim went to Santa Cruz, I moved to San Francisco, and Ken stayed in town for a while.

16) Where did you go after The Event?

I went to San Francisco and went to school for a while then started playing with a new band, some of the guys I had known from a band called The Birminghams, that were doing a sixties British blues thing in Berkeley. The band was called, The Loved Ones, the band lasted for about five years we put out an EP on Get Hip Records and two CDs on Hightone Records. We also were able to tour the Netherlands, France, and Spain, as well as the US. After The Loved Ones broke up I played with a band called Mover, who played more of a classic FM radio rock. We put out two records, Original Recipe (Man's Ruin Records) and The Only One (Mod Lang Records). Since then me and my partner have started our own record company called Well Worn Records, our first release is a band I play in called Dave Gleason's Wasted Days, who have a California country rock sound, think Flying Burrito Brothers.

17) Finally, how do you see The Event from 15 years down the pike?

The funny thing is that we're still friends, Tim and Ben live in San Francisco while I live across the bay in Oakland. Both me and Tim are still actively playing music, Tim with an instrumental power rock trio called The Fuckin' Champs and I'm playing with Dave Gleason's Wasted Days. Ben is now a schoolteacher and married living just south of San Francisco. Ken is still living in the San Diego area with a lovely wife and lots of kids. I think that I really loved the experience of playing music, it seems that for better or worse I'm hooked.