The Damn Thing's Still Alive by Timmy

1975 Marin County California Timmy joins forces with Cream of Chicken, replacing guitarist Angie Makurak with Peter Penhallow, (aka Mr. Cheez), and drummer Dave Obiedo with Paul Southard, (aka Paul Zahl...his girlfriends tall!). Peter eventually moves to mini moog, the 'saxophone', as he would refer to it), Donny moves from bass to guitar, and John takes over the bass with his left hand. One of their songs at that time was called "Big Long One", which says it all. Most of their tunes, mostly written by John, and collaborated with by Donny and Peter, were anywhere from ten minutes to an hour long, and were these fantastic and beautiful epics with time changes every measure. (What's a measure?).

From 1975 to 1988, various drummers came in and out,

while John, Donny and Peter remained as the core of the group. Zahl stayed maybe a year, and maybe came back once or twice, but was eventually replaced with Mitch Hinard, (aka Panda). The music was a stretch for Panda, but he rose to the occasion and hit hard. After Panda came Bob, (Uncle Woofy), easily the best progressive drummer on the planet.

The Uncle Woofy period was a height.

The tunes were longer, crazier, more beautiful than ever, and played with precision. The band opened for many progressive bands of that era to standing ovations.

Bob left. In comes Charlie Tapp.

The band was also recruited by famed rock manager Tony Secunda. A shift in the music occurs. shorter tunes, straighter beats. This was a typical shift for progressive bands at this time, the early eighties, I guess, and Timmy handled the shift with more grace than a lot of the other progressive bands at that time. 1983 Bob came back, with bassist Andy West, who was rebounding from his break-up with the Dixie Dregs.

So now the band was John, Donny, Peter, Charlie, Bob, and Andy. Charlie was Alan White to Bob's Bill Bruford. It was a killer combination. Mark O'Conner, who was John's roomate at the time, lent some fiddle to a couple of recordings.

1984

The band made a demo, (The Atlanta Project), produced by Eddy Offord, (oops, Bob's gone again).

All the King's men loved it, just the King's A and R guys went, ehh!

Progressive was dead.

Bye Charlie. Bye Andy. Bye Tony.

Hello Brain! Paul Chatterton III on the drums.

Vince Welnick came in to co-write and produce a few tunes for the "Eye" CD.

1988

"Has anyone seen Peter?"

"Hey Peter, when ya comin' to rehearsal?"

"Guys, I ran away from home to play piano for babies".

Brain left the band soon after Mr. Cheez,

and eventually flew into the arms of God

from the seat of his Harley. God bless ya, brother.

1990

Andy Bishop joins the band on drums, they been a bad ass rockin' trio ever since.

Timmy is John (Langford) Harrison, Donny MacLeod, Andy Bishop

30 years of Rock and Roll!

So I seriously doubt that this is...

The End

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