Dizzy O'Brian

The Beatles Through the Window Pane So I’ve told my story up to when I went off to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore after graduating from Arcadia High in California. How I was still basically a classical music snob but now pretending to be ‘cool,’ by getting high and acting like I dug rock music. Basically, I chose the Peabody because it was about as far away from Arcadia and my parents as I could get, but it didn’t occur to me then that Baltimore was as far away from Arcadia as you could get but in a way that involved much more than physical distance. Think about it for a second. Arcadia, at that time, was as middle class, white breadish as you could get. It was only a generation prior to mine that a law against black people being out after dark was enforced there. Contrast with Baltimore; predominantly black, traditional home of the Underground Railroad, home of John Waters, H.L. Mencken and Edgar Allen Poe. None of this did I know until I arrived there. Upon my arrival...

What I Learned in Music School In my earliest youth, I was heavy on the classics; a Mozart and Beethoven man mainly. I definitely was fascinated and curious about the pop music and its culture, especially going into high school and starting to get high with my buddies. It was mostly out of a desire to be ‘cool,’ as violinists and others who played in the school orchestra were classified along with the nerds of the scene. That was tough. Of course, I ended up going to a music conservatory called the Peabody (named after the famous philanthropist who started it, not the dog.) My first acquaintance at the school was my new roommate, Dave (alias ‘Big Nose’,) who became one of my best friends ever. Dave and I shared the desire to learn about and experience all the strange new changes that had gone on in our society. We lost no time in establishing a counter culture to The Peabody. A conservatory is an institution that is conserving the tradition of so-called Classical music as ...

The Night we opened for Hunter S. Thompson So I was playing in this minimalist group out of Cal State Fullerton. I wrote about this particular group in a previous post . Anyway, we got chosen to open for Hunter S. Thompson at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.  This is a famous club and literally everyone has played there. I have no idea if we were randomly picked or if Hunter himself picked us out of a bunch of demo tapes that bands submit to these places. There was a delay in the initial performance date as Hunter had a minor accident falling off of his riding mower. (Driving drunk, I suspect.) Well the show finally materialized and we got up and played our set. Between our set and Hunter’s appearance, a friend of mine and I decided to go out to the parking lot and get high, as befitting such an auspicious occasion. I had a bowl loaded up and, no sooner did I light it, than The Man pulls up and asks what we are doing. I had the pipe in my pocket, still smoking. ...