THE MYSTERIOUS SEEKER AND EL BAR

I recently got a couple of comments I haven't published seeking contact with a legendary musician friend from Houston. I decided I would screen that person and refer their info to the mysterious drummer and guitarist and vocalist from too many Houston bands of note to mention for five decades.

SO Mac, send a comment with your real name and an email address and I'll get it to L Bar for you. Read on to see just how arduous that will be.

His name is El Bar, or also spelled as L Bar. I've also been known to call him El Barrio if I've had a few Jack Daniels. There's a long and complex and frankly, a quite boring story attached to how a man we'll call John Doe became known to his friends as L Bar. Of course, as the seasoned reader might imagine, it might possibly have some slight connection to a bar, as in a bar where Coors Light and liquor flows, or as in bars, meaning multiple such establishments. Mostly bars where live music is played but generally any bar will do.

He's a slippery one in recent years. His fans from his music days will not give him peace. In the what seem like long ago now, in those pre-cartel days on Mexico's west coast in a small fishing village north of Acapulco, he found much solace from those who sought his counsel and advice. But after the cartel violence started, he had to relocate.

Sadly, his absence from Houston and the music scene for the past 10 years has not waned the desires of his fans. If anything, they became and are still more obsessed with locating him.

Lots of folks don't know that before Ron Wood was asked to replace Mick Taylor in the Stones 40 years ago, L Bar was asked and refused. Yep. Little known fact. The past few years, in between the adventures he's been having as outlined below, he's been filling in for Ronnie Wood on the perpetual world tour that the Stones have been on now for the past 15 years or so when Wood was illing. L Bar slaps on a bad wig and nobody notices the difference. Sometimes, Keith Richards doesn't even notice that it's not Ronnie Wood playing. L Bar even did one gig on the drums when Watts had a prior conflict.

For awhile in the not too distant past, he was in Belieze with wildman and virus software pioneer John McAfee, before things went south for McAfee down there. Look closely in some of the photos from those carefree first days when McAfee could do no wrong with the government there, and there's some shadowy fellow always in the background that to me looks a lot like L Bar.

After that, a few months before McAfee and the authorities there got crossways, L Bar could see some kind of trouble coming and he bid that crew goodbye. 

L Bar next surfaced in Australia, winning a cross continent motor cycle race on his fancy-dancy Aprilla dual sport. It's a nice one. After taking up with some kind of Aborigine go-go dancer while there, he decided to take up surfing and headed up to Asia. Apparently, he also achieved some notoriety as a kangaroo wrangler in his down time down under, and was referred to as that "Roo-Rangler wanker" by his friends.

After that, it was on to Goa, where the Indian beaches have lured hippies worldwide since the sixties. He won some kind of contest there for having the most back hair, even around a bunch of hippies who have not shaved in decades. I hear that he gave an impromptu "unplugged" gig there after a few too many Coors Lights and blew his identity and had to move on.

Next, L Bar was in Ibiza, and it seemed he had found his place in modern music. He was doing DJ'ing at some of the biggest spots on the island, and almost all the private parties there. For awhile, I heard he had an identity crisis and began calling himself Herr Von Elle Baer and fancied himself to be Dutch. He really got into Dutch clogging as a hobby then merged it with his DJ act and then accidently whacked himself in the head with an errant clog and gave that up. But for a few months, he was heralded as the "great white hope of Ibizian DJ clogging" for the future.

After that, he next surfaced in one South American country after another. You know the story. One broken heart after another. For awhile, some friends and I went looking for him on our vacations. Peru. Columbia. Argentina. Chile. Brazil. 

We were always one step behind him at every port of call, an trail of crushed Coors Light cans, the silver bullet, empty, like the trail leading to the next locale of L Bar.

He ended up somehow on the Faulkland Islands, trying to broker an agreement between the UK and Argentina. The President of Argentina, Christine whatshername, is a big fan of L Bar. Likewise, half of Parliament and their parents were raised on bootleg tapes of L Bar playing with Euro favorites like I.P. Sweatt.
So L Bar was a natural and after some negotiation it appears secret agreements have been reached.

I'm sure there are spots I've missed. Lots of his work can't be talked about.

I know that if this commenter forwards their information, It'll take a few weeks for me to make arrangements to fly to large city in Asia. From there, it will be small planes, trains and automobiles to get me near to the remote beachside jungle where L Bar now resides. Three more days by animal, several more upriver by boat and another two on foot and there he resides, the great L Bar. Far from internet, cell phones and for the most part, civilization.

The final part of the journey to see L Bar involves one of those scary trips up a cliffside in a rope pulled basket, after being screened down below by the former Mexican Navy Special Forces female bodyguards who now guard L Bar. 

You've seen those towering islands of rock off the coast of Thailand? Well, you go past those by plane early in the journey. His place is many days past there.

Like some kind of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Sitting on a throne of Coors Light cans.