An official band - with "Skunk" Baxter

[neveronfriday]

Have to catch up on my Dobbies info:

An official band

NEW YORK (AP) -- At a downtown club, Tommy Ramone listened carefully to a band unlike any other. On drums: The U.S. ambassador to Russia. On lead guitar: The Hungarian ambassador to the United States.

"They're great!" declared Ramone, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The C.J.T.F. Band -- an insiders' reference to NATO Combined Joint Task Force -- also includes Assistant Secretary of State Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on bass guitar and guitarist Dan Poneman, an old Washington hand and an authority on North Korea. At stage center was a defense and intelligence technology consultant, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, for years the guitarist of the Doobie Brothers.

The proceeds of the show at the Knitting Factory on Saturday are going to the victims of Asia's tsunami.

The core band started about a dozen years ago in Brussels, when the 52-year-old American ambassador to Moscow, Alexander "Sandy" Vershbow, was the U.S. representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the ambassador to Washington, Andras Simonyi, was Hungary's emissary to NATO.

They now play at least one public concert a year. Last year's was in Washington, and they're planning to take the band on an East European gig soon.

Simonyi said he remembers listening to his favorite song, Steve Winwood's "Dear Mr. Fantasy," coming from the radio late at night when he was a young man. "Winwood fit my dream about living in a free world," said Simonyi, with sweat dripping from his brow as he launched into the song.

Cheers!

[JSngry]

Those old Steely Dan sides just got a lot more sinister.

[Guest ariceffron]

yes i was very amazed at this and even looked up some other stuff and he indeed is an expert on missle defense systems to the pentagon and bush admn/h-land sec. but what i dont understand, is how do u go from Doobie Bros. guitarist, a very respectable position in and of itself, to Pentagon advisee??? there is some middle step there that is obviously not apparent in the articles i read....anyone have info???? consult this chart to make the picture more clear:

STEELY DAN -----> THE DOOBIE BROTHERS ----> ??????? -----> Job @ Pentagon

[Ed S]

yes i was very amazed at this and even looked up some other stuff and he indeed is an expert on missle defense systems to the pentagon and bush admn/h-land sec. but what i dont understand, is how do u go from Doobie Bros. guitarist, a very respectable position in and of itself, to Pentagon advisee??? there is some middle step there that is obviously not apparent in the articles i read....anyone have info???? consult this chart to make the picture more clear:

STEELY DAN -----> THE DOOBIE BROTHERS ----> ??????? -----> Job @ Pentagon

?????? = drugs?

I think they helped Bush "succeed"

[Joe G]

Talk about a hard left!

[DrJ]

Interesting as hell. Hmph!

A Baxter remembrance - job/political history aside, he's one funny dude in print at least. I remember reading an article (may have been in Guitar Player or somewhere like that) back in the later 70s/early 80s where he described one of his Dan solos as (paraphrasing here but pretty close I think) "an all expenses paid weekend at Rancho Bebop."

Edited January 12, 2005 by DrJ

[Tom in RI]

Uh Joe, wouldn't that be a hard turn to the right?

[Joe G]

I guess it was such a hard left that he eventually came around facing right. Or something like that.

[neveronfriday]

I guess it was such a hard left that he eventually came around facing right. Or something like that.