king Horse # MeeiuiCf, Qa/uf, JlecoLi A Dream Come True Breakfast Lunch Phone 233-9534 6 AM-3 PM c r rr n Monday-Saturday 1925 S.E. Hawthorne Ord lfrs To Go fltf. tyned. cJlapJiuiA. Fred Hopkins knows his stuff, and Fred’s stuff is primarily the youth culture mementos of the ‘50s and '60s; the records, posters, publications and films that chronicled and accompanied young America’s long-term flirtation, romance and eventual wedlock/death-grip with the powerful forces of surf music, hot rods and motorcycles, underground on-the-road adventures, the British rock invasion and OD glamour. Fred, an attorney by profession, spends his afternoons presiding over the inventory of Backtrack Records and Comics in Seattle's University Village. The store abounds with records by everyone from Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders to Dick Dale and the Deltones. Not satisfied with the preservation of just the sounds of an epoch, Fred also ramrods the Backtrack Film Society, which periodically brings classic cinematic trivia to Seattle screens. If it weren’t for Fred and his cohorts, local audiences would never have gotten a chance to view The Wrestliing Women vs. The Aztec Mummy, a 1964 Hispanic shocker, or Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, another 1964 film starring a 7-year-old Pia Zadora. These and many other films, records and magazines, are part of what Fred loves: the artifacts of a cultural explosion that molded the psyche of a gullible generation that is struggling to regain its own. C a ry Lewis and loved one pose for a wedding photo. Dennis P. Eichhorn ly, it was probably the least psychedelic night of the year. Business was film was overdue from my Hollywood distributor and, worst of all, the rain was persistently pouring down. Most of my mental safety levels had been exceeded, and when an anxious and perplexed Jeff Simmons burst through my door yelling something about a mentalist in Tacoma, it nearly pushed me over the brink. Beach Cannon Jeff isn’t the type to be interested in mentalists. /nstru-mentalists certainly. He’s one of the most talented musicians that I’ve ever met, a multi-instrumentalist who grew up in Seattle, played bass and guitar with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention for a few years, toured with the likes of Dion and Maria Muldaur, then returned to his home town to study keyboards and play in several local bands. And he shares my passion for the great sounds that issued forth during the postTT/tti UMA Ute teal QcVuf JleuMAl /Ind depute ItiA 4/eoAA in Ute and a ll cd Ute. nnfpM tncde nuzMuacjeAf Udi looked e^aUL^ LUze Qa/uf J^etuiAl Eisenhower years and kept coming throughout the tumultuout '60s. I’d known him to get excited about a hitherto- unheard beach party movie soundtrack or a subterranean b-side, but I’d never heard him express any interest in mentalists. “I’m not into mentalists, man,” I told him, turning over the copy of Bobby Vee Meets the Crickets that was playing on the turntable. “Kreskin, Geller, whoever — I’ve got no use for them." “But this one’s opening Lewis!” Jeff explained. “And see Gary!" Gary Lewis! The fruit of for Gary I've gotta comedian Jerry Lewis’s loins: the guy who hung out at the top of the charts for years in the '60s with hit after hit. My Gary Lewis bin was brimming with copies of "This Diamond Ring," “She’s Just My Style," “Everybody Loves A Clown” and “Sure Gonna Miss Her,” and I had at least one copy of “Green Grass," "Girls In Love," “My Heart’s Symphony," “Save Your Heart For Me," and “Count Me In,” all released before Lewis joined the U.S. Army and served a hitch in Vietnam. I had even hung onto a copy of “Rhythm Of The Rain,” his only post-Army hit, released in 1969. Since then, Gary Lewis has faded into almost total obscurity. “What if he’s not the real Gary Lewis?” I asked Jeff. “Maybe he's just like those guys who call themselves 'The Archies' and just keep doing gigs until somebody busts them?” “He's real,” Jeff shot back, “and he’s got his Playboys with him!” I still had my doubts. “If he’s the real Gary Lewis, why isn't he appearing in Seattle?" Jeff was adamant. “All I know is he’s supposed to be at a high school in Tacoma with a mentalist,” he said. “Do you want to go or not?” Visions of an aging rock star playing seminal ’60s hits on an acoustic guitar overwhelmed my imagination. I was plunged into a nostalgic whirlpool which offered no escape. I grabbed the phone and started dialing. First the Tacoma newspapers — no luck there. Then I called the high schools one by one, and that’s when we hit paydirt. Wilson High School reported that the Optomists Club had indeed booked their auditorium for a mentalist and Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and that the show was scheduled to start in half an hour. '60s nostalgia is a powerful force. It’s warped better minds than mine, so why fight it? I grabbed a handful of records from the Gary Lewis bin, locked the front door, hopped into Jeff’s scruffy white VW bug and headed for Tacoma. It was a fast drive south on the Interstate. I was haunted by apprehensive premonitions of a tall, ghostly Walt Whit- manesque figure gently strumming “Sure Clinton St. Quarterly 39
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