SUNNY DAYS: THE SKIP PROKOP STORY (PART 7 by Jaimie Vernon

Skip Prokop and his band The Paupers were on their way to the ‘big game’ when they had two back-to-back blows. Their appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967 was an unmitigated disaster and the band’s long-time Canadian manager, Bernie Finkelstein, left the group in the hands of U.S. Uber-manager Albert Grossman. Grossman wasn’t going to let these setbacks slow the band down. In fact, he had the guys become surrogate backing musicians for several artists in his illustrious music stable. This would prove to be the undoing of The Paupers as Skip found himself attracted to working with big name acts:

Frank Gutch Jr: Classic Rock— Not As Classic As You Might Think; Plus, In Keeping With the Theme, Notes of a Classic Nature

 

I would love to gather all of the music directors of so-called Classic Rock radio stations in the Roman Coliseum and turn the lions loose.  I was around long before the term Classic Rock was even phrased and as big a fan of rock radio as there was and I learned to hate everything radio tried to do after big money came in with all of their ideas to make radio “better.”  I suffered through a number of formats from the time of “Boss” radio to the present, the only one being worth a shit (to my mind) being Underground.  Ah, the days of underground.  I remember returning from the Army to Eugene and radio station KZEL and being floored with evening sets by The Wasted Potato (I think his name was Gary Parmentier) like War/Four Cornered Room, The Temptations/Masterpiece, and Funkadelic/Maggot Brain, back-to-back-to-back.

Doug Thompson: DON’T MESS WITH THE WRECKING CREW!

So, what project in your life has taken you the longest to complete?  Has anything you’ve really wanted to do ever taken you 18 years?  Most likely not, but that’s how long it took director Denny Tedesco to complete his documentary on a small group of musicians in Los Angeles who, from the late 1950’s through to the 1970’s, supplied the rhythm section (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion, saxophone) for hundreds, if not thousands of hit records.

Frank Gutch Jr: Kickin’ Thru the Ashes (Old Albums Rediscovered)….

It all started when Laurie Biagini posted a link to a video (Lydia Purple) by The Collectors, a legendary Pac NW band out of British Columbia back in the sixties (and, yes, B.C. is in the Pac NW).  My buddy Howie Wahlen followed that up by taking pictures and posting both sides of The Collectors‘ first album jacket and the die was cast.