TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL: I WAS A TEENAGE BOOKING AGENT, SNARING LEGENDARY 1960s BAND KALEIDOSCOPE for my High School Prom!

(now out of order, but what was second in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with their own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.) 

I was a teenage booking agent! Or at least I flexed the right connections and pulled it off. My reluctant date for my high school (prep school) prom (see above yearbook photo of body language miserableness, the fellow second from right next to yours truly teenaged edition, faces disguised to protect the innocent. The curious may follow this LINK* ) was the nephew of Classic Hollywood actress Loretta Young, in a large Catholic family of good looking cousins, one of whom was David Lindley. 

Lindley remains well known for his versatility on assorted instruments which has bolstered his career as solo artist and side person/session person for assorted A List musicians like Jackson Browne. In the 1960s, he graced the now legendary band Kaleidoscope, known for pleasantly foisting its extremely eclectic tastes in myriad styles at unsuspecting audiences, as well as earned reputation for fabulous musicianship in also pleasantly foisted exotica instruments like ouds for their mideastern selections, or fiddles and mandolins for country songs, then as rare as hen's teeth in '60s psychedelic rock bands.  They released four albums of eclectica for Epic Records, a reasonable legacy.

I was dancing and trying to recalibrate my miserable prom date so no photos by me. But the one above does document my classmates trying to boogaloo and frug to Kaleidoscope tunes like "O Death," (Ralph Stanley's bluegrass classic) or to the tabla rhythms of "Egyptian Gardens." Our equally unlikely locale for this great band? How this happened escapes my Swiss Cheese memory, but, dear readers, it was indeed The Daisy Club in Beverly Hills, only the the most exclusive private club for exclusive entertainment biz types in the exclusive 1960s. Courtesy of  Michael Snider, for directing one and all to showbiz archivist extraordinaire Allison Martino's "Vintage Los Angeles," well illustrated  Daisy history piece, see LINK**

 

 

*  http://fastfilm1.blogspot.com/2010/06/charisma-asserts-early-in-hollywood.html

** https://martinostimemachine.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-daisy-in-beverly-hills-daisy-which.html