TOM MASON
Tom "Tommie" Mason was offered a free lifetime membership to Mensa
at age 9, but he turned it down, saying he didn't want to be associated
with that "bunch of morons." Up until he was age four, the doctors
and his parents were afraid that he might be the moron, still talking
baby talk gibberish. It wasn't until the top linguists from Mayo Clinic
were flown in that they discovered he had always been speaking in complete
sentences, just in anagrams. Once his toddler ploy was discovered, he quickly
tried of his little joke and began speaking Latin. But to this day, he
can still do the Sunday Jumble in the time it takes to say "DURBAS"
At Pinole Valley high school, he would sit perched atop one of
the knife-scarred green picnic tables in the center mall, and play his
guitar hour after hour, cutting class after class. The hated administrators
wanted to kick his long-haired ass out, but much to their forehead-vein-bulging
chagrin, he maintained a perfect 4.0. The most beautiful and lusted after
hippie girls gathered at his oblivious feet, not understanding the Charlie
Parker solos he burned through note for note, but mesmerized none the less.
Frustrated wannabe rocker boys lingered in the shadows, acting bored while
slyly craning their necks hoping to steal his licks, but barely able to
strumble through "Louie, Louie" in private.
After high school he was offered the revered Fender "Rhodes" Scholarship,
at Oxnard. But Tom thought he could do better in the real world and headed
straight for, where else, Reno Nevada. Within weeks he became musical director
of...the WHOLE TOWN! Whenever a Frank, a Tony, or a Sammy Jr., rolled into
town, it was Tom they called. Tommie himself became a drawing card, married
women from all over flocked to the front row tables just to see him. At
one point Harrah's had his hair insured for half a million dollars. Doing
band leader gigs on weekends, and rock-n-roll on the week nights and be-bop
into the wee hours every night, Tom played with everybody who was anybody,
and yet, even with nonstop casual sex, he was not satisfied.
He returned to the San Francisco bay area looking for something and
found it in punk. He co-formed the infamous punk band "The Runz" with his
brother Micheal and they were ready to take their rightful place next to
the Sex Pistols as the greatest punk band of all time. Naturally, the band
self destructed on-stage one night and that was that. It was then that
he heard his old chums The Pencilnecks were looking for a guitar player.
Not just any guitarist though, they wanted a virtuoso, a guitar god. Tom
sat in one night and never left.
Tom has always been his own man, a born again bachelor, he has been
diagnosed as certifiable genius. He has finished a solo album of what he
calls "Destiny of Jazz...Cubed," not to be released until July 4th
2010, "if they're even ready for it by then." He does the NY Times cross
word puzzle quicker than a Green Day guitar solo. He's been banned for
life from all Nevada Casinos (don't ask) yet he has one of only four "Gold
Keys" ever issued by the Mustang Ranch (lifetime freebies). He's been in
only two fistfights in his life, one highly publicized on-stage battle
with Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane and the other with Alex Trebec over
a Albert Camus question.
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