MY ZZEBRA STORY
An excerpt from a much longer story in progress.
“We’re looking for a singer for our band.” Don looked across the room at me. “We’re looking for a singer who can sing high and join our African music band. This is Loughty Amao and I’m Mina, his wife. Loughty was a member of the African-rock band Osibisa and he’s looking for musicians for his new band.”
She was pretty, hauntingly sexy and brunette; all dressed in black, with a hint of fear or anxiety in her eyes. She did all the talking while he stood back looking very shy and reserved. He was obviously African: nearly black skin color (unlike my African-American chocolate brown); broad nose; almond-shaped eyes; he was dressed like an African — head scarf and exotic-colored neck scarf, stylish, black wool winter coat, a little foreboding, a little out of his element in the State of Vermont.
A new record store opened on the northwest corner of Main Street and South Winooski Avenue in Burlington, Vermont. I was checking it out with Don Sidney, a local guitarist. Don and I had been rehearsing with a bass-player friend of his and a drummer named Roger, trying to put a gigging band together. We worked on covers ranging from Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” to Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time” to Little Feat’s “On Your Way Down”.
It’s high time that you find/ the same people you walk on/ on your way up/you might meet up/on your way down
Great songs, but it didn’t work out. Roger decided, after several rehearsals, to split Vermont for the West Coast leaving us all stranded. There we were both knocking around greater Burlington living off our working girlfriends until something happened.
What do you call a musician without a girlfriend? Homeless!
Don was a very amiable type: friendly, easy going and always fun to meet with and talk to. I had just gotten accepted into a joint doctoral program at UVM (University of Vermont) and Brown University that very same day.
We were just talking about the new album by a band named Boston and its leader, guitarist, Tom Scholz, when I saw the two of them walk through the door.
“Loughty moved and relocated to here in Vermont. I play the keyboards. We’ve started rehearsing already,” the woman continued.” She seemed familiar to me. I wondered if I had previously met her but could not recall the time or place. Perhaps it was just my attraction to her. She was a beauty.
I thought, “Osibisa. Wow! This African guy played with Osibisa?” I liked Osibisa; I knew who they were, when probably less than 1 percent of the music listening population knew who they were. They had made it; recorded albums, toured. If this guy played with Osibisa he was worth paying attention to. His wife went on to explain that they lived in Hinesburg, Vt. and were auditioning musicians.
Don blurts out, “He’s a singer.”
“Really?” Mina smiled. Loughty…no expression.
“Hi, I’m Milton, Milton Randle.” I said to her and extended a handshake to him.
“Hello, I’m Loughty,” he said shyly in a gruff, English-inflected accent of a baritone voice. I heard “Luftee.” He did not look you in the eyes. Part of me rationalized his response as cultural. “He’s African,” I thought. It might be a sign of respect to be not so Americanly forward, as I was. Part of me was puzzled.
“Well, if you are interested, we’d love to have you come over and audition. Here’s our phone, address and directions.”
The two of them were clearly bonded, Their black winter clothing reflecting the same exotic, cultural haberdashery. And yet, their differences were at the same time manifest, at least to me. “What is she doing with him?” I asked myself, then, and even now, after all these years.
Without a doubt, the character who has loomed largest in my life was Loughty Amao — Loughty Lassisi Amao, as I learned when I joined the band. Loughty was the most intense personality I have ever known. He was a triple Scorpio, significant to those with astrological knowledge. He possessed a palpably driven temperament, which demanded 100% attention of your time in his presence and occupied much of your time reacting to your interaction with him in his absence. Charismatic to most, emotionally captivating to all, he took up all the oxygen in the room. I would half-jokingly describe Loughty to people as “a paranoid schizophrenic, manic-depressive — the most egocentric person I had ever met.” Loughty had zero ability to engage with you on your terms. His engagement with you was only to further his agenda, solely.
Flecks of spittle bubbled up around the corners of his mouth when he got angry — he would literally foam at the mouth! His eyes bulged like saucers while he lapsed into his native dialect of Yoruba. In such a moment, you had to tensely pay rapt attention to focus on not doing anything to further raise the temperature of the moment and maybe, maybe reduce the tension if there was an opening to do so, and simultaneously, wanting to bolt for the door. After such a display you had to think twice about what you did to contribute to the preceding histrionics, how had you gotten there and to make sure not provoke him to that level of outrage again.
At the conclusion of one of our very early Zzebra rehearsals, when the music and the players clicked in sync, and the potentiality of what we had wrought was evident to us all, Loughty passionately expounded to the drummer, Russell and the trumpet player, Richard, and me, “My brothers, I feel my prayers to John the Baptist have been answered today!” He looked up to the ceiling, the whites of his eyes in ecstatic reverence.
“John the Baptist?” “Who prays to John the Baptist?” I thought.
I looked over at Russell and Richard. They, like me, felt a bit uncomfortable in the presence of that kind of religious proclamation. Suddenly, “Yeah, man,” Russell blurted out excitedly, nodding in assent. “All right!” followed Richard, with the same supportive nod. Their eyes said it all, “This man is motivated differently and more deeply than we were and could ever be.” As aspiring musicians, the three of us were essentially rational individuals lacking the irrational drive to propel us to the next level. Here was a guy who had it and manifested it, even if he was a little crazy. Here was our ticket, our connection to someone who had what we lacked and needed.” I nodded back. “Yeah!” I said, getting it quickly. “Yeah! All right!”
Man, did he have it. He knew he had it. He had been there, already. He had tasted it. On stage he would take on a larger than life persona, “that crazy African,” as Mina would refer to him when he was in the midst of a loud, African chant, rattling gongs and bells and an assortment of percussion instruments. “Shango! Shango!” He chanted and followed up with other African phrases, garnering the attention and curiosity it always would bring with English and American audiences. Always dressed exotically, colorfully, he cultivated his African image. His brand, his product was his African-ness. It troubled him he had to start all over, in Vermont, of all places. It stressed him greatly throughout the period of the group’s duration, from Burlington, Vt. to Los Angeles until it got the better of him.
My first fraught confrontation with Loughty took place inside Paja’s Recording Studio in Westport, New York. When I joined the band, I freely helped out by contacting the drummer and guitar player, whom I had known previously. When all seven members were assembled and rehearing regularly, I insisted we, the band, needed a demo. I contacted Jim Starbuck, whom I knew from my sojourn as lead singer with the Burlington horn band, Trolley. Jim was a good friend of Dewey Martin, Trolley’s drummer. Jim owned and operated a recording studio, which he had just built when Trolley broke up. I recorded a demo of my songs with him at his fledging studio when I returned from my Boston sojourn. I found him likable, and easy to work with.
To begin the recording of our first demo, five of us arrived at the scheduled date and time and waited an hour and a half for Loughty and Mina to arrive. When they did show up, Loughty still took his time getting inside the studio facility. I lit into him, loudly criticizing him for costing me money because I was paying for the studio time. “What are you doing?” I said sternly. “We’ve been waiting here for almost two hours! And even when you show up late, you take your time! We’re on the clock here! That means we’re being charged for our time here! And I’m the one paying for it! What’s the deal with you?”
Loughty’s response was to immediately take offense at my calling him out. “What do you mean talking to me this way?” I was immediately on the defensive. And so, it went from there. After a lengthy tirade, he stormed out of the studio and delayed the recording another hour and a half.
I remember looking over at Jim whose nonplussed expression said, “You’re paying for it!”
Loughty looked at you with laser intensity as if he could discern your very thoughts and feelings. There was a part of you that knew those penetrating eyes were driven solely by his feelings and perceptions. Yet, as the target of those penetrations, a part of you questioned your own veracity. “There is no way that I, Loughty, could be the source of your distress,” those eyes would say. “Therefore, your anguish must be the result of your own self-conflict.” That granule of truth communicated in those eyes kept you off balanced and manipulated.
“Run!” My gut screamed. I didn’t. I had sold my soul to the devil.
“Why do you roll your own cigarettes?” I asked him one day prior to rehearsal. He was sitting at the kitchen table in focused attention. Tobacco and rolling papers were laid out across the round, oak table. He had moved the laced doily aside. To save money, I expected him to tell me. “No, no, no, my brother. I’m making an English joint.” With a slightly bemused expression, he looked at me while he reached into his leather bag and pulled out a brown leather pouch. Turning his gaze away from me he poured a small amount of marijuana upon the oaken surface of the table and proceeded to mix the tobacco and marijuana together. “This, my brother, is what makes an English joint!” With his neatly trimmed beard and mustache framing his mouth, he broke into a grin revealing his gold teeth. Mina later told me that was how he began each day.
My most vivid memories of Loughty are being on stage with him.
During one of our percussion breaks, when the piano, guitar and bass would stop in unison and “give the drummer some:” Scipio, our bass player, would pick up a drumstick and the small chrome-plated cowbell to tap out a simple but effective two note rhythm pattern; Mina would grab the large, multi-beaded gourd and from the assortment of Loughty’s percussion instruments and shake it in time to the beat; Kevin would play a percussive rhythmic pattern on his guitar; I would sometimes play the large cowbell or the maracas (Loughty taught me a rhythm pattern which I use to this day, ‘Shaka-shaka-too, Shaka, shaka-shaka-too’); Russell would continue to play his increasingly skillful drum beats and improvisations, Loughty would stand majestically behind the elevated conga with two drumsticks and instead of playing on the skins of the drums he would play loudly a a sixteen beat repetitive pattern on the side of the conga. “Taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka” would reverberate from the stage throughout the entire building wherever we played. That simple beat would take control of the entire percussion ensemble being played. We, the band members, the audience, would be under his complete command.
“Play on Mr. Amao!” I intoned as we transitioned from the second chorus of the song, ‘Notions,’ to its instrumental break. I would catch sight of Loughty facing and scanning the audience, blowing away on the saxophone, with his head neatly scarfed; often wearing just a vest, his dark, muscular, skin glistening as he played. The almond-scented fragrance of his expensive cologne would gently permeate the stage. When he began the second section of the instrumental break, I would join him in a duet. As the reedy tones and notes would emanate from the golden saxophone, his eyes would enlarge and dart over at me with grace and affection. All would be right in the universe.
-Milton Randle
