Shortly after our song “Tiffany” landed on the movie soundtrack for Step Father 2, Robert Lowden left Parousia to pursue other artistic endeavors.  Robert had been with the band since 1978.  A good friend and an incredible artist and musician.  We didn’t have an easy time replacing him and in some ways we never could.

As luck would have it, in September of 1989 we picked up an up and coming shredder named Dudley Taft.  Dudley’s playing was more ‘metal’, but he was very versatile.  He looked like he could be Patt Connolly’s brother from a different Mother… it was kind of spooky.

 

Dudley liked playing different kinds of music and took on the challenge of our songs and made them sound fresh with his ‘shredder’ style of playing.  Then, on November, Parousia took on a fifth member, bassist Gary Lee.  Parousia hadn’t had a dedicated bass player since we moved to L.A. in 1987 when Robert gave up playing the bass entirely and took over lead Guitar duties for Garth Huels.

 

Up until the now, the keyboards had to do all the bass work, but with Gary and Dudley in the band, it freed up Marty Leggett to play a bit more on the keys and fattened up our sound substantially.  It was a good change and the band set out to practice our music at a professional rehearsal hall in the valley called Uncle Rehearsal.

We started practicing ‘guitar-prominent’ Parousia songs like “The Weekend Starts Tonight” and “People’s Court”.  Plus all of the songs from the E.P, “Graduation”, “Tiffany”, “Place Your Bets” and of course, “Turnaround”.  We gave Dudley lots of room to solo and would love to riff-away.

This was our first rehearsal with the new band and the dancers Untamed.  The dancers were choreographed and managed by Claudine Regian who did an excellent job coming up with interesting moves for the girls to do on the dance floor in front of the stage.  We had a group of three dancers at first, Claudine, Susan and Kristine.

 

Uncle Rehearsal was a great place for us to have a dress rehearsal; they had practice rooms of all sizes and plenty of electricity and amenities.  Weird Al did an excellent interview and walk through of Uncle Studios in his YouTube video, “Weird Al Road Report #1”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VidsU7V3GW8

A word about Uncle Studios… over the years, Uncle had many top national recording acts rehearse in its studios.  Here are just a few of them: The Dream Syndicate,  Devo, The Stray Cats, Circa, Conspiracy,  Yes, Weather Report, Corey Feldman, Billy Sherwood, Unruly Child, Lou Diamond Phillips, Scott Grimes, Mr. Mister,  Quiet Riot, Nirvana, Limp Bizkit, Weird Al Yankovic, Dave Davies, Player, Redbone,  Rat,  Angel, Nancy Sinatra, Jerry Sallas, Tori Amos, Ronnie Montrose, Robin Trower, The Dickies, NoFX, Skinny Puppy, Boney James and so on!

When Dudley Taft left Parousia in 1990, he moved to Seattle, WA and played in several “Seattle-sound” bands before eventually becoming a prominent guitarist in the realm of Southern blues rock (played “Seattle style”).  Check out more about Dudley Taft and what he is doing today right here: http://www.dudleytaft.com/