The Reverend Mosley's Evangelical Connection-Chapter One

In the spring of 1982 I started to take bass lessons from a guy out of a church basement somewhere on Carling Avenue. I got a drive from Stittsville, where I lived, to Kanata and caught a bus, dragging my brand new $150 Newtron Bass, silmultaneously embarrassed and elated, the first because the case was bigger than I was and I couldn't help banging into people and having it fall over every time the driver cornered the bus, and the second because I was now, indisputably, a real musician.
It was an exciting time for music. Sprinsteen had just released 'The River' and Blondie was quickly rising up the charts. Dan Fogelberg was singing his swan song but the Police and Siouxsie and the Banshees were fresh and young. Yeah, Lionel Ritchie was crooning 'Endless Love' but The Stray Cats were doing 'This Ole House'.
I had never gone into the city this far by myself and I was pretty determined that I wasn't going to need any help getting there, so I was twenty minutes late for my first lesson. I got off the bus two stops early, afraid I was going to miss it and my teacher introduced himself, gave me some sheet music to learn and sent me home.
As the months wore on, my fingers toughening up and my shoulders filling out from lugging my bass around, I started to get pretty comfortable with the scales and simple songs my teacher gave me. One day as we were finishing up he asked me if I played in a band and I told him no. He offered me a spot in a band he was putting together from his students and I said yes before I even asked what kind of music they played. For two weeks before our first meeting I drew up list after list of what songs I wanted to do and one of them might have looked like this.

1.Pale Shelter-Tears for Fears
2.Don't Stand so Close to Me-The Police
3.Stand and Deliver-Adam Ant
4.Tempted-Squeeze
etc. etc.

I was pretty disappointed when the list of songs for the band actually looked like this.

1. Queen of Hearts-Juice Newton
2. Blue Bayou-Linda Ronstadt
3. I Love a Rainy Night-Eddie Rabbit
and unbelievably....
4. Endless Love-Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross

I was in a band! I just couldn't tell anyone I knew about it. The name of the band was Reverend Mosley's Evangelical Connection and that was when I figured out that my teacher was also known as Reverend Mosley and he was an ordained minister. Since he pretty much decided what kind of events were held in his church's basement we were booked solid for the next six months, playing wedding receptions, bake sales, and the neighborhood Rummage Rally. Every gig I did counted as a successful lesson completed and so while I tried to fade into the background as much as I could, I was still getting credit for every time we played anywhere.

Our first gig outside of the church basement was, unbelievably, at the Chateau Laurier, at a reception held by one of Reverend Mosley's parishioners. We piled into Mosley's van and headed downtown. The gig went off without a hitch but when we came out to the van, which was parked in the Byward Market in front of a Deli, all the tires had been slashed and Mosley just about cried. The guitar player, Gary, entertained us with stories about a party he had gone to the night before and smoked cigarette after cigarette while we waited for a tow truck. I was hooked by life on the road, even though we were only on the road for about twenty minutes.

After the 'incident' with the van, which probably cost the church a penny or two, we stayed close to home, for a while anyway. I was getting to know the boys in the band pretty well, even though we were from all over different parts of the city, and even though I was known as the 'country boy', which rankled because I was the most urbane 17 year old in Stittsville. Gary used to bring a twelve of Blue to every gig and hide them in his duffel bag and we'd keep a bottle ready for a quick swig between songs while Mosley was talking to the audience. It was then that I found out that the geek who played piano, Mark something, smoked dope and he would disappear between sets to have a doob. I grew up in Stittsville, so it wasn't like I'd never smoked pot before, but we were playing in a church basement and at the time I worried about propriety and stuff like that.
That was also about the time that Mosley decided he need a little help in the singing department and introduced the band to Carrie. She was the daughter of one of his parishioners and could sing, apparently. We made all the appropriate noises about chicks in the band and all that but I could tell by looking around at the other guys that this was gonna be trouble. Gary had a look in his eyes that would have made a goat look like a priest. Even the horn section, Matt and Rube, the two biggest losers in dating history, were counting down the days until Hell froze over and they could actually get a chance with a real live girl. Me? I was in love.

Stay tuned as Reverend Mosley's Evangelical Connection change their sound and hit the road!