Ahh, the doghouse. I met
Bob after returning from college at UCSB to Redwood City and starting
Doghouse Studio with my band,
streetdogs. He
used to buy me drinks at The Answer, one of Redwood City's two, and the
peninsula's only, gay bars - now long
gone. One day Bob Keislar tagged along and after the bar closed the three of
us wound up at Bob's apartment where I quite nervously speculated that
something would happen between those two. Thankfully it did not (I don't
think anyway, but I might well have
passed out or left to find my dog) but after that Bob became another regular
participant in the doghouse goings on.
Bob may well have taken this picture that night in his Redwood City Apartment
It was
ample space in a warehouse set
up to record and with a stage for rehearsing bands and parties. We found a
coke machine, stocked it with beer and packed the place every
Saturday night for several years 1980
- 1985.
Even though I left the
state at that point (I'd graduated from Bob buying me drinks to Bob buying
me a truck when I got accepted to med school) Bob and the rest of the
streetdogs and even the rest of my
family were still hanging out together when I returned 17 years later.
Bundy Brown
Sean Kennedy
Bob Keislar
How did Bob get on a
streetdogs album cover you ask?
Well, this is a song by John Robinson
written the night John Lennon was killed.
When I went to publish the song on i-tunes and the
like, the copyright bots spotted the
likeness of Lennon immediately and nixed the listing (original cover below).
Adamich just seemed right for the part.
What Rock and Roll endeavor
is complete without a limo and I took
many a journey in this chariot since Bob freely lent both
vehicle and driving services to myself, the supreme commander and
other members of the canine elite with similarly grandiose titles.
Me and
Elliot Smith who had a studio across the street*
*Since it was a clandestine facility, requiring top secret clearance, no
pictures of the interior of doghouse studio, save this one taken in the
front office, exist.
When I got a letter saying
"wanna be a doctor? Be in Philly in 4 days Bob took me down to the local
Ford dealer and bought me this Ford Ranger,
and it was the end of an ERA
For his birthday one
year, we bought Bob an answering
machine and then started to leave him increasingly inane messages which he
was quite amused by. So much so in
fact that he saved that machine from the mid 80's until just before his
death when he gave it to me hoping I could transfer the messages to another
audio format, which I finally did but
couldn't play them for him because he had become too distracted.
BOB's PHONE MESSAGES FROM 1986
streetdogs 1977
