In part one of ” Buried Treasures” I wrote about getting a call from a Shawn Nagey a concert promoter who had tracked me down at WFTL in South Flotida.
Shawn had called to see if I would be interested in putting my old band The Jury back together for a 60’s and 70’s band reunion he was doing back in Winnipeg.
I told him thanks, but no thanks, I had already being there, done that back in 1987 when I had reluctantly gone back for the first big band reunion at The Winnipeg Convention Center.
This one had featured famous Winnipegers, Neil Young,The Guess Who, Bachman Turner Over Drive, The Jury, and a bunch of other local 60’s bands. I surprisingly had a ball at that one and even ended up unexpectedly playing.

But the band phase of my life was a way over back then and was even more over now. As I said I had already done a reunion so I couldn’t see any sense in returning to do it again, not to mention the fact that all the bands he had regrouping were from the later sixties and early seventies. The Jury was popular in the mid too late 60’s, so this was a little after my band time, and more in my brother Reg’s era when he had his band Saffron.
Reg who was in attendance at this reunion said it was kinda sad because the Rock & Roll wars that had started some forty years ago between these bands continued right up to show time.
One of the new disputes was which band is still big enough now to close the show. Reg told me the funny part was the show was running so long that by the time they figured out who was closing the show most of the crowd had already left.

Earlier when Shawn had told me all about his plans for this new reunion he had mentioned that a couple of the old Dee Jays were coming back to MC the whole affair. After I hung up the phone with him I started thinking back about all the great Dee Jays of that era.
I wonder what they are all doing now are they still alive, what ever became of them. I had spent endless hours listening to them teach me about Rock & Roll when I was just a kid growing up in Transcona. I dreamed of being just like them, hanging out with all the stars and all.
I had no idea that I would get to live the life they lived only I got to do it in double time. Hey wouldn’t it be fun to reunite them at the same time as all the bands were reuniting.
These were the radio Guys I spent most of my waking hours listening to as I was trying to learn how to become a musician. I even was lucky enough to get to know a few of them when they MC,d some of the dances we played around Winnipeg.

What fun it would be to to see and talk with some of these legendary Dee Jays again. I for one would like to have an opportunity to just thank them for being a great inspiration to me when I was but a young Turk, trying to be somebody. Trying to be somebody was what fueled me through a lot of hard times later on.
The guys I can hardly wait to see again are the giants like PJ The DJ, Deno Corrie, Mark Parr, Jimmy Darin, Gary Todd, Daryl B and Chuck Dann from CKY, Frank Todd, Boyd Kozak, Don Slade, Harry Taylor, Dave Palmer, Doc Stein, Ron Legge, Bob Bradburn, Bob Washington Jim Christie and Jim Paulson from CKRC

These were the legends in Winnipeg and all of them were so much bigger than the records they played.
They were the guys that influenced so many of us kids back then who like them got sucked into the not so glamorous world of show business. Four of those special guys later changed my life forever..I have a way too many of my own stories, but for an opportunity to spend a night with these guys, even I think I could shut up for once and just listen to what they had to say.

I am still in contact with a few other Winnipeg pups from back then people like J Robert Wood, Chuck McCoy and Gary Russell who all went on to much bigger things after serving as board ops and gophers, when the legends were on the air rockin.’ We all watched and listened and I know I often wondered what it must be like being them. I think we all hoped someday we would find out.

I know where a couple of them are but it’s going to take some time finding the others. Warren Cosford another Winnipeg radio guy who made the big time we thought would be the perfect person to spearhead this project.
But it was not to be, there just wasn’t enough time to round everybody up in time for the scheduled band reunion. But I think with the way things are going we’ve got this done before it’s too late.

Hey this just in … Warren says that BTO is reuniting in Winnipeg for Manitoba’s 2010 homecoming … I’m thinkin’ that’s when we are going to do it!

All this talk about reunions and stuff though has got me thinking once again again about my own musical beginnings. I’m talking about a way back when my obsession with music first started. Back when I was not such a stellar student at TCI in Transcona.
I wasn’t very popular with all my teachers back then mostly because I used to just sit around in class all day writing songs and uttering the occasional smart assed remark instead of paying attention to my studies like I was supposed to. Well at least I finally gave up one of them.
Luckily for me one day I got invited to join the local vocal group called Shayne and The Devines and just like that my whole world caught on fire.

After only very few rehearsals we started playing at a bunch of community club dances, and school functions. I to this day still remember how terrified I was going up on the stage in those very early days
Butterflies use to just fill up my stomach all the time, but thankfully they soon just became part of the “high” of playing. Many years later when they went away, I knew it was about time to hang ‘em up.

Shayne and the Devines as I mentioned were a vocal group but I always wanted to be in a band so I talked the rest of the group into adding some great musicians to our act. Talented people like Peter Proskurnik on sax, Gordy Duke on drums, Lawrence (fade) Balaquiere on Piano, Lawrence’s younger brother Rolly on bass and me on guitar and just like that we became The Rebel Raiders and started playing a lot of instrumentals that were very popular on the radio at the time.

Even though I now was a so called professional musician I still hadn’t given up my dreams yet about becoming a running back for The Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Hey I had to have something in my back pocket if this band thing didn’t work out.

When I was going to High School I played halfback with Transcona Nationals along with my rather large best friend Jim Quail who was a line man. I think I kinda suspected if me being called a “Devine” went on much longer, Jimmy was sure to put the boots to me. ( a Transcona tradition)

As time went on even the name Rebel Raiders started sounding jive to me so we became The Phantoms, which to this day I believe was my best band.
When we went from Rebel Raiders to Phantoms we started adding a few new band members like Jimmy Harrison on another sax, I moved over to rhythm guitar when I found this kid by the name of Perry Waksvic. Perry was a huge pain in the ass, but as Chuck Berry said, he could play guitar just like ringing a bell and man could he ever wail.
Next we added Jerry Zenchuk on drums. Jerry was the first guy I had ever seen wear Hollywood shades on stage, he just looked too cool.
You would think that would do it but we also decided to add a great vocal group along with two feature singers, Gerry Anderson and Donny Burns. Gerry looked like Fabian and Donny sounded like Elvis.

The Phantoms were by far easily the best band in Winnipeg. Man what a sound. There was only one huge problem with the Phantoms, when it came time to divvy up the spending cash each night there was never enough to go around. I knew then it couldn’t last, but I still remember it as being so fine.
Sometimes it’s just good to be King and if nothing else for a little while we were the Kings of all the bands in Winnipeg.

But now It was time to get back to reality and reality meant we had to get back to the basics of Rock&Roll and stop fooling around. We needed to make some serious money if we were ever going to upgrade and get all the stuff we needed like bigger amps and stuff so we would have a shot at the big time.

Hey come on Rock and Roll all started with three guitars and drums. So three guitars and drums it was and The Jury was born. It didn’t take too long for The Jury to become the most popular band I ever played in. We even got open for people like Ral Donner,Gene Piney, The Bill Black Combo, The Crickets Peter and Gordon, Manfred Mann, The Zombies and even legends like Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. Not to mention eventually having our own #1 record.

The Jury consisted of Terry Kenny on lead, me on rhythm Roland Blaquiere (termite) on bass who had been with me since The Rebel Raiders, Ray Stockwell on drums and Donny Burns who had been a Phantom as well, was our vocalist.

When I think back on this band stuff I cant ever remember when anybody elected me Captain of all of this, but for some reason I turned out to be the leader of the band.
Maybe I was Just the most intense about it all and could persuade the guys into doing a lot of different stuff. I know for sure I wasn’t qualified to do it but I ended up deciding the fate of all the bands I was involved in plus consequently of course each band member.
Being the band leader though wasn’t much fun as it sounds. It meant mostly just calming down all the disagreements the guys had with each other. I now think was just in training for what I was about to become a little further on down the road.
Maybe it was just like Randy Bachman said to me after I left The Jury and he was trying to recruit me for The Guess Who, a very nice honor but I turned him down saying that I was not even close to being a good enough musician to play with them. Randy said to me … George I can teach you all the music stuff, it’s all that other stuff you do, that The Guess Who really needs.”

Oh Oh they are calling for me to board the plane,time to head for yet another meeting in yet another city.
I wanted to get into how a new CD hitting my desk took me all the way back at the speed of sound to one very special night and how four Jocks and no phone call from Dick Clark changes my life again. But all that will will have to wait for yet another time. MORE@www.georgejohns.com