By Clay Evans
For the Coloradan

It was 1964.The sun was rising from the dawn of the Space Age, and The Astronauts were launching.

The band, a casual crew of CU-Boulder students, had been inching toward success, playing its party-friendly mix of Buddy Holly, “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and full-tilt boogie at frat houses in Boulder. Soon enough, they graduated to the Olympic bowling lanes, Jax Snax and the legendary Tulagi bar on The Hill. Then they scored gigs in Denver and traveled to play on campuses of other Big Eight Conference schools.

It was, decided drummer Jim Gallagher (A&S ex’68) and guitarist Bob Demmon (Mus’62, MA’68), time to take a swing at the big time. So they flew to Hollywood. Having earned an introduction to RCA Records producer Steve Shoals, they waited awkwardly in the big man’s Hollywood office as he ranted and raved on the phone.

“Suddenly he says, ‘Jesus Christ, the Beach Boys are killing us!’ ” remembers Gallagher, now 69 and owner of a Boulder mail order card business. “Then he covers the phone and says, ‘You guys play surf music?’ We said, ‘Oh, sure, we play it all the time.’ ”

The two band members high-tailed it back to Boulder, and the band drilled on surf tunes for the next month until the RCA scout showed up. They feted him with steaks and beer and a month later recorded their first album, “Surfin’ with The Astronauts,” which included their signature single and greatest hit, “Baja.”

This summer, The Astronauts will be one of three famous CU-based 1960s-era bands inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, alongside the down-and-dirty greasers of Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids, aka Flash Cadillac, and the hippy popsters of Sugarloaf.

The Astronauts grazed the bottom of American Top 100 with “Baja” but in 1964 — imagine shades of Rob Reiner’s 1984 Spinal Tap mockumentary of a fictional rock band — found itself all the rage, curiously, in Japan where they drew Beatles-sized crowds of screaming young girls. Across the Pacific, the land-locked surfer band beat the Beach Boys hands down, toured with The Ventures, recorded five albums and eventually scored three Top 10 singles, including “Movin” at No. 1.

After a notorious run in Boulder, Flash Cadillac found modest fame in Hollywood. The band members were seen briefly playing for troops in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic 1979 movie Apocalypse Now set during the Vietnam War.

After a notorious run in Boulder, Flash Cadillac also found modest fame in Hollywood. The band members were seen briefly playing for troops in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic 1979 movie Apocalypse Now set during the Vietnam War and played a key role in George Lucas’ 1973 coming-of-age film American Graffiti as Herbie and the Heartbeats. In the latter film, Flash played three songs, including the original composition “She’s So Fine.”

Like so many acts of the era, the psychedelic rock band Sugarloaf flamed out early. But not before leaving a truly indelible mark on pop music with “Green Eyed Lady,” which reached No. 3 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 and remains a staple of classic rock radio today.

“That song came out in May or June and started banging up the charts,” says Rob MacVittie (A&S ex’68), 66, drummer for Sugarloaf, named after the mountain west of Boulder where guitarist Bob Webber (Aero’69) lived. “We didn’t even know what we had.”

This year’s inductees are heavy on CU influence, but then, so is the Colorado Music Hall of Fame itself. CU graduate G. Brown (Jour’79) — yes, that’s the first name he goes by — long wanted to create the Colorado equivalent of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but he felt there was never any place to put it.

A couple years ago, Chuck Morris, CEO of the concert promotion company AEG Live- Rocky Mountains — who worked with Brown at Tulagi in the old days — offered to house the hall at the 1stBank Center in Broomfield, Colo., and Brown’s dream came true.

“I was always frustrated that other states had halls of fame like Kansas and Iowa,” says Brown, who started at CU in 1971 and took a break from school to work at Tulagi. “I don’t want to disparage them, but relative to what we have coming out of Colorado, they just didn’t compare.”

In 2011 Brown’s brainchild inducted John Denver and Red Rocks Amphitheater as its first class. In February, the hall added legendary concert promoter Barry Fey and Harry Tuft, founder of the Denver Folklore Center.

This year’s Flash Cadillac — or “Flash,” as band members and fans affectionately call it — was a rocking, raunchy return to ’50s greaser music with a party-down mentality to match.

In 1969 CU dorm rats Harold Fielden (Jour’75), Warren Knight (Bus, Engr ex’70) and Linn Phillips (A&S ex’69) wanted to start a band and play “greasy stuff.” They cut their hair, slicked it back and only played stuff from the ’50s.

They approached future Firefall member Jock Bartley and the late Tommy Bolin, who would go on to play with the James Gang and Deep Purple, in their search for a vocalist.

“They were up for the music, but I don’t think they were into the hair-cutting part,” Fielden says.

Scouring Kittredge dorm for the perfect Flash, someone remembered they’d seen a guitar in Mick Manresa’s (A&S ex’72) closet.

“ ‘Can you play? Can you sing?’ we asked. ‘We’re gonna have a greaser band, get our hair cut. You want to be Flash?’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ ” Fielden says.

The band started getting gigs in 1969 at such dives as the Buff Room, one of a seemingly endless parade of joints that has occupied a dungeon-like space below street level on College Avenue in Boulder. They became regulars at Tulagi where they played every Tuesday night for years.

That’s when the raunch really kicked in.

One night — the precise dates are subject to debate — they noticed someone had taken off his shirt on the dance floor. That simple act gave birth to the 3.2 beer-fueled traditions of the legendary “Naked Twist” and “Skin to Win” contests.

“It just got to be more and more,” Fielden says. “There would be nude couples on the dance floor. You couldn’t even make the semifinals if you weren’t naked.”

As contest prizes, the band offered such treasures as a jar full of spit or hair of uncertain but distinctly curly origin, the back seat from a ’56 Chevy or a couple of battered hubcaps. Flash was flagrantly foul-mouthed up there under the hot Tulagi lights.

Crude, rude and rocking, Flash raged at Tulagi until one night it got too rowdy and people started heaving pitchers of beer. The band was unceremoniously exiled from Boulder but set up shop out at Art’s Bar and Grill north of city limits.

Flash has long drawn comparisons to the band Sha Na Na, which caught the public’s fancy at Woodstock.

Nope, Fielden says.

“We were really greasy, hanging from the ceiling, flipping people the bird, really inappropriate stuff,” he says. “They were a review, gold lamé stuff. We weren’t rivals; we were two completely different things.”

Gallagher’s career ended when he was drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1965. Sugarloaf quickly melted away after they “did the usual thing, changing producers and managers, thinking we knew what we were doing when we didn’t,” MacVittie says. Flash headed to L.A. seeking fortune, eventually playing with the likes of the Beach Boys and Alice Cooper.

And CU-Boulder was the incubator of all that fame.

“We were really just kids when we started,” Fielden says. “It was a great ride.”

By Clay Evans
For the Coloradan

After spending five and a half years on embassy duty for the United States Marine Corps in such far-flung places as Russia and Rwanda, Joe Cafferty was ready for a major change.

As soon as he got out, he grew a beard, bought an old VW van and began driving around the country. But after a few itinerant months he decided to take advantage of the post-9/11 GI Bill, a federal program that pays all tuition and a substantial living stipend to veterans seeking a college degree.

“I decided on Boulder for the sole reason that it was where I imagined I could get as far away from the military as possible,” says Cafferty, 27, a fast-track senior studying international relations and Russian.

But he found he missed the camaraderie he had experienced in the Marines and, despite efforts to blend in with students who were 10 years old when he entered military service, he caught the attention of another vet who invited him to a meeting of CU’s Student Veterans Association. Cafferty relished the reconnection and today serves as the group’s president.

“You can hate the military, but you can’t overlook that brotherhood,” he says.

As the United States winds down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is looking to shed as many as 100,000 active duty personnel from its rolls in the next five years. CU-Boulder, like other schools, expects to see a significant upsurge in veteran enrollment.

CU-Boulder doctoral student John Lurquin, a former Marine helicopter crew chief, is among the 21 percent of returning post 9/11 troops diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Today there are 700 to 800 veterans on campus — exact numbers are not available because not all veterans make contact with the Office of Veteran Services.

“In three or four years we’re going to peak, and we’ll be at 2,500 to 3,000,” says Mike Roberts, veteran services program manager for the Boulder campus.

The student veteran office efforts include everything from assisting vets with their GI Bill or VA benefits to career services to hosting hikes and other activities. There are special orientations for vets, counseling services and groups for women.

“We want to make sure the program is strong and robust so we can serve this generation and they can move on with their lives,” Roberts says.

As a U.S. Army cavalry scout in Afghanistan, Thomas Walton became acquainted with fear in a way most Americans never will. It was his job to be out front where danger and death all too often lurked.

“Thinking you are going to die all the time kind of sucks,” the 25-year-old says. “And having to deal with people around you actually dying . . . it’s not the most fun in the world.”

But making the transition to college has included its own share of unnerving experiences.

“Speaking in front of a class of 30 somehow seems more frightening to me than going down a road that might have an IED [improvised explosive device] on it,” Walton says.

Like Walton, Diana Olsen, 26, has found challenges integrating into civilian life. The former nuclear technician on the USS Enterprise, who joined the Navy out of high school in 2006 for the college benefits, appreciates the maturity and experience she gained. But even that asset can make it hard to fit in, she says.

“I remember being 18 or 19, being wild and crazy,” says Olsen, who grew up in Aurora, Colo. “Years later, after the Navy, it’s hard to connect. It’s almost like we [young veterans] are a different generation.”

Student veterans tend to be “more mature” than your average undergraduate student, says George W. “Barney” Ballinger, Colonel, USAF (retired) and director of the Office of Veteran Services at CU-Boulder.

“Even if they weren’t in combat, they had responsibilities,” Ballinger says. “They understand responsibility. They understand loyalty, discipline, attention to detail, mission, accountability and integrity.”

Living and breathing discipline every day has helped many student vets excel at CU. Able to maintain focus and avoid distractions, many drive through a degree program in less than four years while earning top grades.

“Being in an environment where you are not able to quit gives you a whole new perspective on what you are capable of,” Walton says. “Nothing is impossible in the Army; it’s just a question of how hard it’s going to be.”

Most veterans return from service changed. And whether physically or psychologically, some come home wounded, particularly those who have seen combat duty. Even as battle deaths drop, thanks to improved military and medical technology, the ranks of those who have lost limbs or been otherwise injured have ballooned in the post-9/11 era. Meanwhile, more returning vets than ever before are coming home with devastating, yet invisible, injuries.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, of the nearly 500,000 returning post-9/11 troops seen by the Department of Veterans Affairs for health care, 21 percent have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, 2 percent with traumatic brain injury and 5 percent with both.

Not all returning vets are happy with how the VA has dealt with them. Military bureaucracy, like any other, can be frustrating, even at the campus level.

“The VA makes mistakes all the time” with regard to benefits, “but when you try to talk to someone about that, it’s near impossible,” says John Lurquin, 29, a former Marine helicopter crew chief diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder who is working toward his doctorate in cognitive psychology.

For many, getting involved in what the university offers has been key to bridging the gap between combat and civilian life.

Michael Whitley, 25, a paratrooper in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division who served for 14 months in Iraq, joined the CU Triathlon Club and volunteers for the CU Art Museum and community garden. And the studio art and art history major says he has found a few unexpected allies along the way.

“Vietnam vets are some of the people I’ve talked to the most about my transition period,” Whitley says. “I pretty much cut off all ties to the military, except for the benefits.”

Some students embrace both the new experiences offered by the college community and a continuing connection with the military.

Cafferty, for example, is an intern for U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and recently received a fellowship with Green Jobs for Veterans in Denver. Jon Wezner, 29, who was a military intelligence analyst in the Army, serves as chief of staff for CU-Boulder’s student government. He also coached a Little League team last summer and organized a team for the American Cancer Society’s Boulder Relay for Life.

“I personally felt my military experience was really great,” says Wezner, a junior economics major. “But reinvesting in the community is what’s going to help me accomplish a larger range of goals.”

By the Numbers at CU-Boulder

About 50 percent of vets are married and 25 percent have children. About 50 percent have part-time jobs. The average student vet GPA is 3.0. The average graduating vet GPA is 3.4 versus an overall graduation average of 3.1. There are  25 students on active duty. There are 700-800 veterans on campus. About 50 percent of them served in combat.

By Clay Evans
For the Coloradan

After Steve Kaczeus (MechEngr ’82) took a buyout from a corporate engineering job, he and his wife Leslie faced a fork in the road.

“We had decided either to start a brewery or move to the Caribbean,” says Kaczeus, who had been an enthusiastic homebrewer since 1993.

After he completed a seven-month online course through the American Brewers Guild and an internship at Hoppy Brewing in Sacramento, Calif., the allure of kicking back on a sugar-white beach lost out to the draw of making great beer.

“Leslie came out to California, looked at me and said, ‘Oh my goodness, we’re starting a brewery, aren’t we?’ ” he says.

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By Clay Evans
For the University of Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine

The remote Republic of Palau in the Pacific Ocean can thank the late Kurt Vonnegut for the newest member of its supreme court. But give the lion’s share of credit along the way to a couple of professors at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Ashby Pate, 35, left his home in Birmingham, Ala., in mid-April to take up his post as the sole American justice on the bench, alongside three justices from Palau. And what a long, strange and immensely enjoyable trip it’s been for the 2000 English honors graduate.

Vonnegut, the late author and humanist, influenced Pate via retired CU-Boulder anthropology professor Dennis Van Gerven, who sat on Pate’s honors thesis committee. At the end of each course he taught, Van Gerven liked to give his students a little pep talk about living life to the fullest, what Vonnegut called “skylarking” in a famous graduation address at Bennington College in Vermont. Van Gerven hit the same note in his honors commencement address when Pate graduated.

Van Gerven “advised us to be willing when we graduate not to adhere to any specific career path. He said ‘skylark for a while,’” says Pate, who also holds a law degree from Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law and a master’s degree in international law from the University of East Anglia in England.

Here’s how Vonnegut put it: “Do not take the entire world on your shoulders. Do a certain amount of skylarking, as befits people your age. ‘Skylarking,’ incidentally, used to be a minor offense under Naval Regulations. What a charming crime. It means intolerable lack of seriousness. I would love to have had a dishonorable discharge from the United States Navy — for skylarking not just once, but again and again and again.”

“He meant, ‘Don’t squander your life on work, on being something,” Van Gerven says. “Just play like a child. Never forget to do that.”

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