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PHIL DALMOLIN REMEMBERS .......
Where to start...
"Back in San Antonio Robert Gomez had a band called Turning
Point and had pretty much dictatorshipped himself right out of
the band through pay docking, being the all knowing manager type,
and just an all around dick. Or so goes the story...I really
never knew Robert. Once they mutinized him, we formed the band
Gone City. This band consisted of Ronnie warner; vocals, Kort
Ogden; bass Michael (flea)Feliciano; guitar / vocals, Fred Carillo;
Sax / keys / vocals, Steve Camp; keys / vocals. Later we picked
up Alfred Balderama on keys and vocals along with the other guys
because he was a cool guy and we liked him. Also because this
freed up Steve Camp to be the horn part keyboard player to do
parts with Fred, and Al play the Fender Rhodes. Camp was the
leader of the day at getting synth horn sounds and along with
the real sax we were screaming with Earth Wind and Fire stuff
and the like.
Then there was Ronnie Warner. He was a dynamo to say the least.
He could do any of the Lou Rawls type stuff then turn around
and do Streisands "evergreen". We did Michael Jackson's
"Shake your body down to the ground" which was a huge
production for the day. We were doing Paul Simon's "Late
in the Evening," which required about a week of drum practice
on my part before the band even took it out in rehearsal. I was
practicing a lot now because I loved this music. Also Fred played
congas and Flea played timbales which was really cool because
we had a lot of dance breakdowns in radio songs. Ronnie was an
incredible dancer and he would pick some girls and jump in the
big middle of them and get after the James Brown/Michael Jackson
thing, while we percussioned out. It was a blast. Ronnie decided
to move on, with what we really didn't know since he was pretty
drugged out and very vague. Something about a house gig in Lubbock.
Actually, we welcomed it because we had been on the road for
awhile and his extra curicular activities (sex, booze and drugs)
were hurting the band. Imagine that ..... the front man for a
very popular funk band getting mixed up in that sort of stuff
..... .hmmmm.
We picked up a fellow named Marc Rodriguez who was a fine
singer and conga player. This lasted a while until his wife at
the time said no more and he persued building his sound and lighting
company. Which incidently became pretty big in the Tejano market.
River City Sound and Lights. Enter the young Bobby Flores. A
serious young guitar player/singer who in the past had been know
throughout his teen years as the Big Red kid. There were a string
of commercials for Big Red soda in the seventies that Bobby starred
in and later grew to hate. He no longer wanted to be that darling
little boy in a Roy Rogers cowboy hat that walked balancing on
the cedar fence singing "Big Red you've been around so long
and you still belong to me." By this time the 19 yr. old
Bobby wanted to be taken seriously, and brother we did. He was
a playing, singing mofo. Right about this time the Funk / Disco
thing was starting to fade and the punk / techno thing was beginning
to evolve. Sex pistols, Patti Smyth, Devo, Talking Heads. We
weren't in that genre at all so gigs fell off and of course the
band didn't last."
- Phil Dalmolin Dec., 2002 |