Gifts Aren't Always What You Want, Though Sometimes They Can Be What You Need. Up Close & Personal With a Few Questions to Londa Rae Marks, Florence, Italy, September 2016 Photo: Londa R. Marks, January 2015
Proud to be Irish With Roots In Cork & Antrim
My name is Italian, my blood is Irish but my soul is music & art. Maybe it's the Irish rebel in me, maybe it's just that a problem seems like a creative project that by solving it could bring happiness for others, but for some reason since high school people have come to me with questions not only about art and music but about life in general. Yep, since Catholic high school and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, "Devil With The Blue Dress On" was blaring from my transistor radio at recess, in the 60s, others have asked me about my views on music. Being reprimanded by a nun for rocking out to Mitch Ryder made 'The Forbidden' of course even more desirous. The Beatles, song, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," came on a juke box after Catholic Church at a soda shop one Sunday, just simply hooking me. It was the first time I heard it, grabbed my sister Sherry, pulled her up and exclamed, "Listen to this!" Then passionately explained why it was so exciting. Eventually I talked everyone I could into getting Beatle haircuts, beginning a journey of marketing I suppose. But first, I made my brothers and sisters form a copy band to play Beatles, Jan & Dean and Motown songs eventually getting into 'hard stuff' like The Doors. Rehearsals were enforced by me in the living room during school lunch breaks and after school. My instrument was drums because I had to learn Day Tripper, badly. I sang too, on the front porch, until the stereo got ripped out of the socket and thrown off my stage/front porch... Still, I sang, while walking to school pretending the grass was my audience, the sidewalk my stage, until Jimi Hendrix became my god. At that point I stopped playing and
started selling acid, white crosses and soda bottles to buy albums and go to clubs. In 1971, I met Doug Marks around the time I did my first painting, a Phoenix on my black refrigerator. I hit the road with him after we married and began working with his bands. Always the professional, I was elected to be band critic at rehearsals and shows taking notes, preparing for band meetings, making flyers, designing logos, t-shirts and working with the roadies even when they were going to blood banks in Florida. Love those guys, they work so hard. Gosh, they never get paid enough, if paid, and never get enough credit. When we weren't at shows or rehearsals I was designing band clothes, sometimes cooking, sometimes waiting tables. We traveled and played the club circuit throughout the east coast and south, hung out with Greg Allman in Daytona in the afternoons at the bar/club/hotel/apartment, where we lived and played shows at night. In Atlanta I waited tables with Dave Hope's (bassist for Kansas) girlfriend and hung out with them at his house. He had a standing bass that I loved. Musicians stayed at the Holiday Inn where I also worked in Atlanta and I made sure Waylon Jennings, David Allan Coe, Elf and so on, got as much food as they could eat. The favor was returned with passes to see them at the Electric Ballroom, other venues in Atlanta. I gave Dio's band, Elf, food in the 70s and ended up living in Woodland Hills, CA, near him in the 80s.