My mother was pretty amazing. She kept very good scrapbooks and three of them are little treasure chests of memories and chestnuts. She is making my job so much easier for "The 66 Kid" project. For example, this is a photo taken by a MCUHS school photographer and developed in the school dark room:
As noted, this was taken, December 23, 1964 as we played for the Christmas Program in the gym. On the back of this photo I noted that there were 750 kids in attendance and I also wrote out our song list: we opened with "Surfbeat", then "Oldies But Goodies", "Do You Want to Know A Secret?" "Do You Love Me?" "Johnnie B. Goode" "Mr. Motto" "Pretty Woman" "X.K.E." (an Exit original?) "Beetle Bailey" "White Christmas" "Merry Christmas Baby" "Silent Night" (seriously!) and then another Exits original "We're Gonna Win." Our encore was "Let's Go Trippin'" featuring the shredder himself Terry Mitchell!
Here's a closer shot of us rocking out to some ten days later in the Girl's Gym for the New Year's Eve party. On the back of this photo it says:
We played for $60 or half the door, and we made $280 with 250 people attending. Sweet.
And finally, 1964 was the year we topped the Stones:
The Exits Top The Stones In 1964
According to Keith Richards, the Stones never made a dime in 1964 because of crooked promoters and all the band's travel expenses. If true, the Exits out-performed the Stones in the same time period, monetarily at least, because we made several hundred dollars that year and we lived at home so all that money was pure gravy! And, by the way, although the Exits prefer and perform the Stones' version of Route 66, we are all quite miffed that Mick Jagger sings "Don't forget Winona, Bixlow, Bartstow, San Bernadino . . ." Bixlow? Come on Mick! Get a clue, Man.
"No, really, we got plenty of satisfaction, 'cause we tried and we tried and we tried and we also lived at home. . ."
—Wendell Havatone, lead singer of The Exits