My name is Bob Cara, and somewhere along the way I picked up the nickname "Bird".

Someone may want to know who is responsible for this site, so I am providing a little bit of biographical data about myself.

I was born September 30, 1954 in Winter Park at the old Navy hospital. My favorite color is blue and I like old cars and Stuckey's Pecan Log Rolls. Since I was a Navy brat, we moved often and when we landed in Memphis, Tennessee for two years in 1961, I became obsessed with the Elvis Presley mystique as I was at the impressionable age of seven. In 1964, I succumbed to Beatlemania and soon received my first guitar, a 1957 Les Paul which my parents bought for $100. (Yeah-right.) I kicked around on 6 string for three or four years, but in 1969 fate pushed me forever to the bass. Our bass player quit the group and since I was the crappiest guitar player, I got stuck on bass.

I soon learned, however, that being a bass player has its advantages. For example, bass strings are much thicker than guitar strings and hardly ever break. Bass carries a lot farther than guitar, so if the sound man is screwing you in the mix, just get a bass reflex cabinet and boom your way to the back. And since you only pluck one string at a time (unlike guitarists, who typically strum all six at once), tuning is not as big a deal.

Along the way, I've picked up my present collection of basses which I cherish more than my '85 Mercury Marquis. I've got a '65 Gibson EB-3 (a short scale bass made famous by Jack Bruce in his Cream days), a '66 Fender Precision (has the reversed worm gears for the tuning pegs), and a '71 Fender Precision modified by installing a Jazz Bass pickup near the bridge (real original idea - myself and about 20 million others did it). I've used the same vintage Acoustic 370 amp for about 20 years. I like its warm sound and vintage punch, but mainly I'm too cheap to buy something new. Also in my collection is a 1960's Mellotron, a bizarre keyboard instrument with tape banks in it that was once used by every art rock band in the world.

  • No. of bands for whom I played: 14 or 15
  • No. of bands that fired me: 1
  • No. of released records with me on them: 6
  • No. of records that went gold: 0
  • No. of bar fights I witnessed: too numerous to count
  • Worst bar fight I ever saw: Dub's in Gainesville in 1982; about 300 brawlers on "Fraternity Night"
  • Biggest BS artist I ever met (1): Some guy who showed up in a limosine to a party I was at in 1978 and said he was the touring drummer for Genesis. When I innocently asked him what happened to Chester Thompson, he hemmed and hawed and said that he was OK.
  • Biggest BS artist I ever met (2): One night at the Pitcher House, a half drunk nitwit told Rex and I he was the manager of the Police and he was going to put us on tour with them.
  • Gig with the worst turnout: Orlando Sports Stadium with the Shades in 1985. There were exactly zero people in the crowd. We discovered the promoter was working some kind of scam and so played to 15000 empty seats. We didn't care; I remember we were all in awe that we were playing the same venue that Led Zeppelin had played in 1971.

    I originally started this site to showcase (brag about) the bands I used to be in, of which SOMF CITY is the only one to still do gigs. Then I decided to add in some of the other bands of the time that we knew. That led to the directory of players, which then expanded to include anyone who was playing during that era. Now it's creeping slowly backwards to encompass the "youth center" era bands that were big before 1973 (when the rock clubs starting popping up). Basically, the whole thing is taking on a life of its own, but it keeps me off the streets at night.

    whip 'em into shape!
    STAR TREK, THE NEXT GENERATION
    Stage Father grooming his children
    to achieve the fame and fortune he didn't

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