Page 2 – A little history of Silver Laughter.
Corrections are [bold and in brackets]. I realized when I posted the other article on this advertising brochure, it may have been hard to follow. So I decided to redo and publish only one page at a time so I could make my comments on each page separately.
As you can see our band history is abbreviated here about how Jon and I met in high school and formed a band. Actually we met in junior high school as I said in another article on this site. But we didn’t start playing music together until our junior year of high school (10th grade in Davenport).
It’s funny. I thought I had already related a story about our Assassination of Sound debut for a Pep Rally at West High, but I can’t find any mention of it in other history articles I’ve written. So here goes. Somehow Jon got us “booked” to play in the huge gymnasium which doubled as an assembly hall. Here we were on stage in front of the entire school… With the three classes together (10th, 11th and 12th grades) it was about 1,000 students, maybe more! We were nervous as hell and the adrenaline was running high. Our drummer, Paul Hardesty (now deceased), was always speeding things up anyway, so in this situation, we were doomed to play everything REALLY FAST! Our ten minute debut probably only lasted about 3 minutes.
The song we chose (don’t remember if we did more than one) was “Omaha” by Moby Grape. If you’ve never heard their version from the first album, it is a frenetic, high energy song written by Skip Spence (also now deceased), formerly of the Jefferson Airplane. It has a few simple chords and relies on scant vocals which keep repeating, “Listen, my friends…” Anyway, we did our song (or songs), finished, and then the Pep Rally continued as we tore down.
Afterward, people were coming up to us and asking why we had a fuzz tone on our PA system. Guess from whom we got the horns which sat on tall stands and the amplifier? None other than Ken Wiles and his band, [the Avengers]. They were upgrading their sound system and convinced us this would be a great investment!
As for the reference in Art’s write-up about Tabernash and Paul Staack, it was actually The Contents Are where he and I recorded at Columbia Records in Chicago which I have also mentioned elsewhere on these pages. The only thing I regret is growing that terrible little mustache. I have never looked good with facial hair, and now variations of this picture have probably been used more than any other we had taken!
Mick Orton
Ken writes, “Sorry about the horns PA system, but I believe it was the band I was in, The Avengers; Larry Smith [later played bass for The Contents Are and replaced by Mick in 1969], Craig Waldron, Jeff (somebody) and me, who sold you that PA. The reason I remember is because we were playing at a battle of the bands and we had the horns. Mike Van Echaute from The Corruptors, who later became Morninglight when I joined, came up to our horns while we were playing and gave us a wrinkled up face looking like “What the hell are these pieces of…?” The Corruptors were the best sounding and most talented band there and might have even won. That I don’t remember. So, on behalf of The Avengers I deeply apologize for selling you those…
Categories: History, Memorabilia
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