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Shaver let out a laugh of recognition. “Yeah,� he said, “definitely.� Shaver told me to find David Petri. As the producer, engineer and overseer of the record, Petri apparently lived and breathed Heavy Mental Music nonstop for a year, because, Shaver explained, “it was fraught with problems. It took a lot of time.� In 1981, the whole idea was groundbreaking, he added, “because it was back in the days when people didn’t think of people with disabilities contributing to things artistically.� Considering the bizarre nature of the record, I asked, did anyone at the center think Petri was a little too peculiar? “I don’t remember that being the case,� Shaver said. “David looked very straight, he always dressed well, had short hair. I think that people accepted it as something Jim did.� “Jim� would be Jim Weber, the developmentally disabled client who wrote the song, loved to golf and who once ushered at a staff member’s wedding; he left Becoming Independent in 2001 and moved away. But the name David Petri rang a bell. He was, it turns out, the singer for a Santa Rosa band called $27 Snap On Face, whose very weird album Heterodyne State Hospital I’d researched previously. Last I’d heard, he lived in Middletown.

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wo miles up on a remote hill in Lake County, I park in the driveway to Petri’s mobile home next to a collection of broken TVs. He emerges, a tall, commanding man wearing cutoffs, flip-flops and a Paul McCartney 1991 tour T-shirt, and he apologizes for the stark dĂŠcor of the house. He’s only moved in the most important things, he says, like guitars, a drum set—he’s currently looking for a female drummer— and, in fact, right inside the front door, the actual TEAC reel-to-reel player used to record Heavy Mental Music. Petri saves things. He has a two-foot pile of reel-to-reel tapes from the ’70s on his kitchen table. He has an old 1950s acetate from Stanroy’s Music Center. He has an autographed Johnny Cash record from when he played Santa Rosa in 1984. Among his archive, he also has two folders dedicated to Heavy Mental Music, full of news clippings, photos, letters, videotapes and telegrams. One of them, I note, is from the White House. “Of all the things I’ve done,â€? he says, “I’m most proud of this project. I didn’t like the idea of disabled art, or handicapped art. I thought art—it doesn’t have a disability.â€? So when Jim Weber approached Petri with a song he’d written, the idea to record and release it seemed only natural. Petri sent many of the 3,000 copies to politicians and local media, making sure Weber was listed as the published songwriter—the first developmentally disabled songwriter on BMI’s roster.

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“It won the Santa Rosa City Merit Award for Cultural Enrichment, and at that event, we got to read a telegram we received from Ronald Reagan,� he says, “who referred to it as a ‘musical message of hope.’� Weber traveled south and won an award at Disneyland presented by Walt Disney’s daughter, with “Heavy Mental Music� playing over the theme park loudspeakers. Evening Magazine and other news outlets spotlighted the record. It was submitted to the Grammy Awards. Publicity was heating up, and Petri started negotiating with Johnny Carson’s producers for a slot on The Tonight Show. Then the center’s director, Rae Pivonka, called Petri into her office. “I’ve never told anybody this, ever,� he says, shifting in his chair. “She accused me of using these people for my own personal gain. It broke my heart.� She told Petri he’d pushed the program on company time, had used the company facility and that she wanted him to stop promoting Heavy Mental Music and give over the master tapes. “I never surrender my masters!� Petri booms. “Rather than bring negativity to the clients and the integrity of the project,� he adds, “I pulled the plug that day and rounded up every single copy in the school.� In a few months, he left the Manual Skills Training Center, but sitting in his living room in Middletown 27 years later, it’s obvious he’s still saddened by the accusation. Pivonka passed away in 2006, but she was no doubt aware that any time art and the developmentally disabled converge, there’s a tricky line walked between advocacy and mockery. I could see how Heavy Mental Music could be seen by a cautious director as the latter, especially the B-side. I pull out a tape recorder and we listen to “Tour�—Petri says he hasn’t heard it in years—and he can still point out the Skilsaw, the metronome, the typewriter, the air conditioning unit and he remembers the name of every client involved, even the ones whose voices are sped-up like chipmunks or slowed down like monsters. But was it drug-induced? Petri takes a breath. “I never record and create my music on drugs,� he declares. Petri still has about 25 copies of Heavy Mental Music, and he’s glad to hear that there was some genuine amazement and interest around BI’s offices when I’d stopped by with a copy, providing a sort of closure for something that had always bothered him. “I’ve always wondered what Becoming Independent thought, honestly, about this in hindsight,� Petri says. “How they felt. Were they proud of it? Do they wish they had a copy? I’d be honored to take it to them, but I’ve always been hesitant to go back.�

Hear ‘Heavy Mental Music’ for yourself at www.bohemian.com/citysound.

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