1975 - 1978: My first real band, Sapphire.

Here's Steve Reusch on guitar. He had this old epiphone hollow body. Shortly after this gig we used band money to buy him an Epiphone SG. It was a pretty rare model. If he still has it and I see him sometime I am gonna try and buy it off of him! Steve, if you ever find these pages, do you remember the early version of Sapphire with Pete Duchman singing? And yer speaker cabinet with something like 20 6"x9" car speakers in it? OIY! This guy could make the most realistic siren you ever heard. He was hilarious as hell, too! When Sapphire broke up, I think he took it harder than anyone else.	Then there's Guy Kirshoff on drums. No BS here, this guy was great. He had won several competitions and such in high school. He was the only member of the band that wasn't from Hamburg. Guy has this great, warped sense of humor. We all got along great with guy, but you could REALLY piss him off by only playing the first seven notes of a scale and leaving off the 8th note or octave. He just HAD to hear that last note or it drove him nuts! He used to jamm all of his drums in his parents Pinto station wagon, still a feat unequalled to this day.	Another one of me on guitar. Hey, it's my website, dammit!
Here is a shot of the whole group at a Valentine's day gig at Hamburg Junior High School. I distinctly remember having to play "We will rock you" about 5 times. The kids went nuts for it, and I think we were the only local band at the time that played it. We also used to have homemade flashpots that I used to put about 6 cups of red dot gun power in, and ignited them with an Estes rocket ignitor. The suckers used to throw out about a 25 foot flame! (Hey, those were the early KISS days...). I remember this one kid at this show that wanted to stand over them when they went off to watch the flame come up. We decided it would be best to not let him do that.