Name Droppings

About the Book

Now living, writing, and producing music in the San Francisco Bay area, Chris Michie has been a fixture on the American music scene since 1965 as the lead guitarist for such legends as Van Morrison, Boz Scaggs, The Pointer Sisters, and Link Wray. His memoirs of those years -and of the years since- are now a book called “Name Droppings”. With e-mail contributions from former bandmates Willie Collins, Greg Loeb, Keith Knudsen, and others, Michie offers a unique perspective on those turbulent years. There are anecdotes about playing the Madison, Wisconsin area´s VFW halls, University of Wisconsin fraternities, the Memorial Union´s Great Hall, the Factory and the Dane County Fairgrounds, where the Grapes opened for the Beau Brummels. Michie´s first group, The Grapes of Wrath, disintegrated in 1968 amid the frustrations of trying to be original at a time when their audience wanted covers of what was playing on the radio. Michie found salvation in the Mendelbaum Blues Band. "Within a few months we were the hottest group in the area, if not all of Wisconsin and the surrounding states." Michie writes. "Wisconsin was an 18-year-old drinking state, so all the college kids from Minnesota, Iowa, Upper Michigan and Illinois swarmed into Wisconsin nightly to hear music and get drunk. We worked every night of the week, sometimes doing two or three shows a day, and we made good money." Mendelbaum produced its own shows at the Broom Street Theater and the UW Music Hall, but after a series of outdoor gigs-cum-anti-war rallies turned increasingly violent and confrontational, Michie and company headed for northern California. They quickly broke into the Bay area music scene, jamming with Buddy Miles, Carlos Santana, and members of the Velvet Underground, opening for Albert King and B.B. King before disbanding in 1971. Michie has gone on to the kind of music career you don´t often read about. He has opened for the Eagles and Procol Harum, played with Boz Scaggs and other Bay area heavies, toured the world, and recorded with Van Morrison and the Pointers. He now has his own production company and record label. He says he´s found a happy balance between recording his own albums and composing music for radio and TV. The title is apt. Michie drops dozens of names, and has an anecdote to associate with each, including Mama Cass Eliot, Muhammad Ali (whom Michie met while in Zaire with the Pointers as part of the "Rumble In The Jungle"), and Stevie Wonder (whom Michie observed sucking on Anita Pointer´s fingers during a studio session). “Name Droppings” is an entertaining read, and its chapters evoke a music scene nearly two generations gone, and right up to the current day.

About the Author

Chris Michie was born in Ithaca, New York in 1948. He lived in London as a young child, spending his later youth and college years in Madison, Wisconsin. He became a professional musician at the age of seventeen. After travelling in Kenya, Europe, and the U.K. in 1967 he returned to continue his music career in the American Midwest. Michie and his future wife, Deborah, moved to Northern California in the summer of 1969. They, and their daughter Claire, continue to live and work in Marin County, California. Michie, always drawn to writing, began his memoir “Name Droppings” in the fall of 1999.