FROSTY's PACK HITS THE BOSTON SNOWS:
1) Frosty Furman- Frosty was a natural-born leader. He liked telling people what to do, when to solo, or if they needed to adjust their tuning. And also, the good stuff: praising players for strong solos, harmonic inventiveness, or taking a familiar pattern into an unexpected direction. And it was done in a no-take-back tone of voice, like Jack Nicholson correcting a confused Marine. When he wanted to persuade, his voice would become relaxed, easy, and friendly; this was the voice he used to persuade me to finally chose his band and school over Chambray and the Bay area life.
And he was a good team leader. Making sure everybody practiced relentlessly, calling long group rehearsals, scouting out agents and bookings so we were almost always employed (a step up from Chambray's perennial poverty).
He had the perfect body for his personality. He was a big hairy WASP, all muscle and tendon. His naturally athletic body was brought up a further step by Frosty's love of sports: skiing, surfing, and mountain hiking or long walks with his dogs. He always had one or two huskies that lived with him, even in our cramped Boston apartment.
He topped it off with an enchanting but very masculine face, with deep blue eyes and very well-cared for lips ((he must have owned stock in Chapstick!). His face was classically handsome except for one little detail: sometimes his upper lip would curl out over his top incisor, just enough to turn an average large-boned guy into a Byronic Romantic hero. When Frosty saw or heard something he disliked, that laser beam would flash a warning. And when women - or gay men into butch - saw him, there was almost always that quick intake of breath and sparkling eyes.
Frosty made a great package, topped off with charm and politeness he learned in the wealthy society he sprang from (his father was an airline executive). This helped our friendship, since I was not into the butch star look, my idols being more smooth brown-skinned femme young men with wonderful dance skills. If Frosty was Cary Grant, at that time I was looking for Michael Jackson or Donnie Osmond. Frosty's coolness about working with an out-front gay man just augmented his macho appeal.
What made us close friends was his intellectualism - he read voraciously, and had some acquaintance with the Greek classics; for a while he was a worshipper of Apollo. I remember hiking the Berkeley hills with him back when he was still in Berkeley, and having long talks about the Memphis sound, Greek drama, the pros and cons of the Berkeley radical movement, and some favorite novels of his. "Lee," he once said to me, "you and me are much more than just musicians. Music is just a part of what we are and what we can do."
Our musical tastes had gone in opposite directions: he was more and more into country; I was more and more into jazz and Latin music. So, I was never totally happy with his group: it was fun playing old Chuck Berry, Beatles, Stones, and the Band, but I always missed playing hardcore jazz or Latin (Santana's “Evil Ways” was the one Latin song in our repertoire). So, when the Purple Jump Suit curse ended the career of his band, I was ready to move on. But I was now a much more precise and solid player, and with the work ability to practice hours a day drilled into me by "Sgt. Furman."
2) Pavlov's Dogs –
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| Forrest "Frosty" Furman -guitar, lead vocal Brent Moyer - guitar, backing vocals, trumpet Lee Cribnbach - Hammond organ Jerry Lynn - bass, back up vocals Mark, drums |
In the comic picture above everyone is holding an instrument they didn't play. Frosty is on the far left holding a drumstick; I am next holding a bass guitar, Brent is holding Frosty's guitar, Mark is holding the singer's microphone, can't figure out what Jerry is holding.
One afternoon I was walking from the school to catch the trolley back to our apartment in Brighton, when a young guy around my age came swiftly up to me on his bicycle. "You're a student at the school, right?" he asked. "Yes," I replied. "You're in that band with Frosty, right?" "Yeah." "I'm in a band too. And we DON'T NEED A FROSTY TO TELL US WHAT To DO!" He gleered at me (gleer = glare + sneer) and sped off into the traffic, never to be seen by me again.
I was flabbergasted! Wow, a jealousy ninja attack? Then I laughed: looks like Frosty's band must top of the local heap to get that sort of attack. Indeed, when it came to the blue-collar or drunken college student bars, we were Number One in the few months we had started playing in Boston. Brent and Jerry met Frosty during his stay at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they were both natives. Both country boys to the max, but fascinated by the tales of the hippy scenes in San Francisco that Frosty could tell them. They were both already players - a lot of country and western, emphasis on the western, being that they were in Wyoming. Brent remembers how he and Frost first got together and started performing:
“ I was laying awake last night remembering how I met Frosty! I was a senior in high school in Jackson. I walked out our door at my house one afternoon and I heard a guitar playing next door, so I went next door and knocked. Frosty answered in his bathrobe with his Fender Telecaster hung around his neck. I said hello, do you want to join a band? You see, I had a gig coming up at the Mangy Moose Saloon out at the ski area in Teton Village, but I really didn't have a band together at that moment. So, he said yes and we got together down in my basement and went over a bunch of songs. For that gig I think I played my old Gibson organ, you remember her, you named her Carol. I think played a bunch of gigs that summer before heading to Boston that fall...the ski shelter, some gigs up in Yellowstone Park(Brent Moyer email,12/22)..
Brent and Jerry were dazzled by Frosty's guitar playing and charisma, and both decided to follow him to Boston when Frosty went to a famous music school there.
“Madness” - www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WuMHd1XvvU (“Madness”, link above, is example of Frosty’s composing style, composed when Frosty was living in Jackson Hole but had not yet formed a band]
Musically, this was a string band. Usually, Frosty played the lead and Brent played arpeggiated chords ("finger-picking) as a second guitar. Jerry's bass was melodic, usually working more with the guitars than with the drums (the opposite of Philip's bass style in Chambray). Once again, I was playing mostly background organ, the smooth legato chords pasting the strings and drums together. However, Frosty gave me lots of solos, never drowned me out, but gave me all the acoustic room I wanted, as can be heard on “Nadine”. He made my background organ sound pretty sweet also (cf. "Western Charlotte" and "Madness" links).
“Western Charlotte” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5MhpFw1P7M
Frosty moved fast. By the time I arrived on my night flight from the Hansen gang, he had already found a cheap apartment where four of us could live, just around 15 to 20 minutes from central Boston where the school was. He had also found a cheap keyboard for me to use until I bought another Hammond. He hired a local drummer, Mark. And most important, he had found an agent who got us gigs. A steady enough stream of gigs to keep us alive on brown rice, hamburger helper and hopefully, cover the rent.
I think a lot of our appeal was the working-class macho look of the band, like we were anticipating the Bruce Springsteen look and style that was coming up. Most of our gigs were either blue-collar bars or college fraternity hangouts, where Frosty's chosen repertoire of country-influenced classic rock went right to the taste of the customers, just as much as the beer they were drinking. We got several gigs at the biggest fraternity-style bar in Boston. It was a huge place in Kenmore Square, built around a bar that divided the club into different sections.
“Nadine” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to3Q-QAiCA4
And Frosty did nothing to stop my aggressive gayness. Not so much in how I dressed, but in how I openly made out with young acid rock cuties. Once, in Lynn, a long-haired Black Sabbath fan was cuddling me on my organ bench while I played, this in in a bar which was as blue-collar hetero as they came. And this in a city which, I discovered in the months ahead, where openly gay men or lesbian women were often beaten and sometimes killed (around one or two a year). But then too this was in Lynn, a suburb famous for unconventional behavior:
"Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin, You won't come out the way you came in"
my sweet date told me later was the town motto.
One of our most interesting gigs was at an Army base in Limestone, Maine. You want to know how cold was Limestone, Maine? Well, it’s quite a few miles North of Caribou, Maine. We all drove up in one van, packed with people and instruments, so I slept - or tried to sleep - shiveringly on the floor with the instruments. I almost fell asleep when I felt what seemed like a lit cigarette into my leg. "Ouch!" I yelled and jumped up to see what it was. Well, it was only a sunbeam, ONE SUNBEAM peeping through the instruments blocking the van side window. It was the very first sunbeam to hit our van that early morning. Later the radio let us know it was well below zero.
Then once again my gay connection came through with gigs. In the first days at the school, I encountered Frank Racette, who had just come off working as a roadie with Duke Ellington for a few years (or a 'band boy' as roadies were called back in the swing era). Frank's gaydar was top quality, and he immediately said hello: not looking for sex (neither of us was the other's type) but for a friend and companion. And not only did we have gayness in common, but we both worshipped the Duke. Frank gave me his souvenir album (an LP in those days) of Duke Ellington with Ella Fitzgerald Live at Montreux. This is the album which has the classic jam-out on "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got that Swing'". Not at all well-known at the time, but forty years later it has over 4 million views on YouTube:
Duke and Ella “It Don’t Mean a Thing” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxfMRhyzu3g
Frank also introduced Pavlov's Dogs to the Other Side, a classic Boston gay bar, which later became famous as the favorite hangout of glitter rock stars such as David Bowie when they were in town. The Other Side crowd was social outsiders - not only working-class queens, but also tables occupied by deaf and dumb kids, hugely fat people, etc. Any disability was welcome and less noticeable in a crowd of flaming drag queens that they would be in a normal bar, straight OR gay! And of course, some old beats and younger hippies also hung out there. It was a bar for the unconventional, so naturally we thought that this meant they would be open to long, rambling San Francisco style versions of the Top 40 hits we played, where a 3-minute song would go to 20 minutes or more with lots of solos. Well, after our first night we were informed that the 'covers' we played should be as close as possible to the originals: if the radio version was 3 minutes 42 seconds, our version better be pretty close to that - certainly no longer than 4 minutes - if we wanted to keep the job.
And to be sure, we certainly did! The Other Side paid a little more than the other clubs on our circuit, so, thanks to Frank Racette's intro, we became the house band of the Other Side.
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