Carl's Scrapbook: The 1990s


The nineties rode in on the coat tail of the eighties electronics age and exploded. Probably the biggest advances were in the communications field. In 1992, the world wide web (the internet) was born and the world would quickly become much much smaller. The information superhighway (as it would be called) was exactly that. Anything you might want to know or research was available right there on your personal computer. It would quickly change the way most businesses were conducted and personal communications were revolutionized by email, instant messengers, chat rooms and cell phones.

As a whole, the nineties decade (both personally and socially) was one disaster after another. The decade started off with Saddam Husein's invasion of Kuwait and the resultant Gulf War. In 1992, South-Central Los Angeles rioted after four white policemen were acquitted of assault charges for beating black motorist, Rodney King. 1993 brought terrorism to the American shores when a bomb was detonated in the garage beneath the World Trade Center and then saw four agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms killed during an unsuccessful raid on the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas. In 1995, football hero, O. J. Simpson, was acquitted for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ron Goldman, although all of the evidence seemed to point to his guilt.  On April 19,1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City , was obliterated by a truck bomb that tore away half of the building, killing 168 men, women, and children. Between 1996 and 1999 there were at least fourteen incidents of school shootings with the most lethal being on April 20, 1999 when 14 students and 1 teacher were killed and  23 wounded at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

On the personal front, I started the "Nineties" in my early 40's and ended in my early 50's. Enough said about that! The first low note was, the job we had enjoyed at Boardwalk and Baseball for over three years, just up and ended out of the blue. On the afternoon of Wednesday, January 17, 1990 (Wednesdays were our days off), we got a call from the park informing us that there was a padlock on the gate, and the park was permanently closed. We had lost our first and only regular paycheck as musicians. We were devastated. Problem was, after being out of the local music loop for almost 5 years (we had spent a couple of years at Circus World prior to B&B) we had lost our contacts. If ya don't use 'em - ya lose 'em. We were quickly losing the financial advantage we had enjoyed since Alabama had released "Close Enough to Perfect" in 1982. It didn't help when "American General Finance Co." stole the house my daddy had built from us. We had gotten behind 3 months (which was the amount of grace period) but had borrowed the money from family to catch up the payments. On the last day before going into default, we acquired the cash and took the payment in at about 4:30 in the afternoon. This wonderful bunch of caring souls waited around until after 6 p.m. to post the payment, therefore making the account go into default. Like I would have given them nearly $3000.00, if I had known they were gonna cheat me out of it and foreclose anyway. If I sound bitter, you're hearin' me right. I still can't pass where that office that used to be in Winter Haven - without having unclean thoughts. But we moved out (ended up living in Winter Have for a while) and I have felt dislocated ever since. Depression would slowly grow over the next several years until it finally all but crippled me.

In the OutHouse Studio (my home studio) I started to take in as many projects as I could handle - but I'm only one person and we could never seem to turn out projects fast enough to keep up with living expenses. I hated a lot of the stuff I was having to do (I always said I was making "sow's ear purses out of a sow's ears"). However, Nancy seemed to somehow keep us afloat, and my philosophy became "Don't ask, don't tell". I became "willingly ignorant" of what was going on financially as I slowly slipped deeper into depression.

In the early 90's, Ron & The Starfires (our old rock & roll garage band from the 60's) reunited the original members for a pair of very successful Class Reunions. These would pave the way for several other reunion shows during the new millennium.

Our electric country band had taken to using the name "CornBred" and our acoustic (sort of bluegrass) act went under "The Dizzy Rambler Band". We also played a gig or two under the name "The Goat Farm Road Band". These "live" performances, though fairly few in number, seemed to be about our only sources of joy.

We became involved in several musical projects throughout the decade but they always seemed destined for disaster. We heavily rehearsed a super group that we had anticipated touring in Thailand with. Unfortunately, that deal fell through at the eleventh hour and the project went sour. We also rehearsed another version of that band dubbed "American Flyer" with singer Kim Zimmerman, but that too went south at the last minute. After those two big disappointments (as Y2K approached) our credibility was shot and no one really wanted to play with us anymore.

In about 1994, my cousin Jesse had started to play with an old friend of ours from Lakeland by the name of Willie Metts. Willie, Dane Streets and Ron Harrell had reformed their old rock band from the sixties, the "Canadian Rogues", and were playing semi-regularly around Central Florida. Willie asked me if I would like to join the group and since the prospect of playing some of those old rock and roll classics that we used to play sounded like fun, I came onboard. The Canadian Rogues were a huge band consisting of 8 players and a heavy duty sound system. Although they made pretty good money - by the time it was all divided up - it didn't go that far. But, it was fun and Willie could still get a crowd on it's feet and singin' along and most of all, it was great to be playing with Jesse again. But another disaster was lurking in the shadows. On July 1, 1996 while driving alone from Bradenton (where he had been fishing) back to the condo where he and his family were vacationing in Longboat Key, Willie died of a heart attack. Needless to say we were all in shock. It took the rest of the nineties for the remaining Rogues members to come to grips with the fact that Willie was gone.

Jesse didn't feel it was worth the effort without Willie and soon quit the band. I hung in for a while because I needed the money. But, I was somewhat discontent and quit on a couple of occasions and once was even fired (I guess I wasn't a real happy camper by that time). By the new millennium, I was back in the group and the band was slowly starting to regain it's confidence. The Rogues would become my major source of musical outlet for the next several years.

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