Kenne Highland

I met drummer Gary Torok in June ’74. We got together and jammed on Uriah Heep and Santana. Me, him, and his younger brother Peter on bass played my high school in January ’75. “Ready Eddie” is truly about Stenson Eddie Flowers coz he “loves that Southern bop.” The chords are “Brown Sugar” (’71) and Ten Years After’s “Choo Choo Mama” (’72). Let’s say “Ready Eddie” is Nixon-era rock. I met fanzine writer Scott Duhamel August ’74, so I musta said, “Have your poems set to my music.” Wrote “Juvenile Delinquent” fall ’74 maybe. This version is the exact arrangement as on the Afrika Korps’ Music To Kill By, only substituting the Gruberger brothers for the Torok brothers. 

“Jammin’ At The Harvester” is about a buncha stoners in ’73 partying at Harvester Park in Brockport. Bloody Night was a one-off jam thing I forgot about. I was a senior at Brockport High, and in my radio class was fanzine drifter Bill Rowe and a guy named Chuck Barney. I guess Bloody Night was just a bedroom jam. I got Mark Shipper’s Flash fanzine in maybe June ’72 and then bought his Explosives comp LP by the Sonics. Wrote “Kiss Of The Rat” August ’73 since I’d already mastered “He’s Waitin’” with the wrong chords. And ’66 or so, having just moved from Virginia, I heard “the kids are alright” as “with the kiss of a rat.”  —Krazee Ken (as told to Ready Eddie)