I remember being in an apartment near Miami Beach on a Saturday night. Some of the members of Mystix were there: Lawrence “Lead Guitar”, Leo “Drummer” and Deniz “Lead Singer”. The evening started at 6pm and ended early morning in some night club. There were people going in and out of the apartment that night; guys and girls between the ages of 18 & 24. Deniz knew most of the people; I knew some of them; and quickly made friends with some of the one's I just met for the first time. A few partaken in consuming alcohol or smoking a little weed. Meaning that some time during the evening you would see someone light up a joint. We attended a lot of parties during those years; however they were very much under control. There were no drinking binges or people excessively high on drugs. It was more of a social gathering, talking, laughing, listening to music and in many cases trying to hook up. Not in today's definition of sexual exploits; but in the dating sense, whereby a new physical encounter was rare and the highlight story of the next day. If anyone was too inebriated who was in our inner-family-circle, then I was the designated driver literally and figuratively the voice of reason.
Lawrence had a new girlfriend, “Tammy”. The one question of how Laurence and Tammy met I cannot recall. Before that evening I had briefly met Tammy once; however Lawrence never stopped talking about her. Obviously he was big time in love. Lawrence is not in the photo on this blog. I am still looking in my archives to find a picture of Lawrence to post. Laurence was thin, about 5' 7”, tanned, long curly black hair, approximately 20 years, had a very young looking face, Spanish descent and soft spoken. As you can hear on the songs available on this blog, Lawrence was a very talented guitar player and creative in writing original music. I barely recall Tammy because it has been 20 years; what I do remember was that Tammy was shorter than Laurence, thin, pretty and a brunette with medium length curly hair.
Lawrence usually wrote the music and not the lyrics. As a result of being crazy about Tammy, he wrote a love song for her. Early that evening, Laurence sang the first verse of the song and two lines of the second verse A-Cappella. I captured it on a cassette recorder. Deniz quickly thought of a chorus. Laurence picked up his guitar; and Deniz picked up the microphone as I proceeded to record the two performing the first part of the song. I believe Leo sang backup on the chorus. Unfortunately the relationship between Lawrence and Tammy was short-lived; so the song was never completed. Lawrence of course was heartbroken, but eventually moved on. In addition to the back story of the song, it's interesting to hear the process of creating the lyrics and the music by listening to these two very short recordings of “Oh Tammy”.
Incomplete Lyrics of “Oh Tammy”
You know I care
It's up to you now Tammy
There is room in the sky for one more star
I worked so hard to come to this Oh Tammy
And I 'm glad that you've come with me this far
Because I know I love you Tammy
Cause I know without you I'm alone
Because I know I love you Tammy
So take some time to think about us Baby
Take my hand and we'll make it to the top
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