After roughly 20 years, I am finally coming clean about a secret that was only known by me, my roommate at the time (Hi Kim!), my wife (Hi Julia!), the members of whatever band I was in, my close friends, and any acquaintances who were curious and bothered to ask. Maybe “secret” isn’t the right word, though I didn’t start telling people who asked until a few years after I had stopped publishing Garage and Beat Magazine in 2003 or 2004. Anyway, (drum roll intro) TA DA!!! I wrote all the pieces in GAB that were attributed to Tabitha, the teenage daughter of a (fictitious) famous ‘60s guitar slinger, whom she never named in order to remain anonymous. I can imagine folks’ jaws dropping worldwide while they stammer something along the lines of, “What!!??? Edwin was Tabitha!!!????? but… but… but…” I can imagine it, but I doubt there are more than a handful of people who even read GAB “in the day,” let alone remember the silly Tabitha blather.

The first Tabitha article was a lark. It was fun inventing a character and writing as her while simultaneously babbling on about one of my all time faves, the Easybeats! Kim Cooper was renting out the extra bedroom in my house and was publishing Scram Magazine at the time. She was an invaluable help to me. She liked the Tabitha concept and saved me from making a lot of gaffes. She’d proofread a draft and let me know how utterly clueless I was about makeup, slang, clothes, boys, etc. that a teenage girl from Beverly Hills would likely be interested in. I learned a lot! It was an exercise in writing longer fiction as well. As I wrote subsequent Tabitha pieces, I “followed” her evolving relationship with her make believe boyfriend, Bryce, while expanding some elements of her family backstory. The backstory was interesting enough that I averaged three or four contacts each issue from various readers who thought they had figured out who Tabitha’s father was or wanted to meet her to pick her brain about music. The most selfish reason for the ruse, however, was that it offered me an excuse to pick up all the Easybeats material I didn’t already have. Tabitha tackled the music like it was fodder for a high school term paper assignment that would help her in her future career in statistical analysis.  Ultimately, though, writing as Tabitha was FUN!! It was a hoot to concoct a simple story line, get in character, listen to music I love and imagine what it might have been like if I had discovered the world of British musical hall tunes of the early 20th Century (say) and immersed myself in it back in the ‘60s, when all my friends were listening to pop.

I actually got a fairly strong response to Tabitha after “her” first piece, so I decided to continue the deception a little longer. In the Easybeats article, Tabitha introduced herself, her friends and her family, while creating a bell curve of her favorite Easybeats songs. In her piece about Them, she had begun seeing Bryce on a steady basis and tackled the music of the band, with and without Van Morrison, as a creative writing assignment for her high school English class. Tabitha had warmed up enough to Bryce that she was willing to take his advice and devote her next article to Billy Childish and Los Straitjackets, a couple of newer acts milking the ‘60s vibe long after the fact. Finally, she tackled the Rolling Stones, writing about how dreadful they looked as much as about her spin on their first twelve albums. Her relationship with Bryce had plenty of drama and Tabitha met Julia at this juncture. Like me, she thought Julia was a total sweetheart and that the two of us made a cute couple. Julia and I are married now and our bond is stronger than ever after all these years! The Stones piece is the only one that appeared solely on the online version of Garage and Beat. There was an article Tabitha did for Misty Lane Magazine (Hi Mass!) about Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, between the one she did about Them and the twofer, but I don’t know where I stashed a bunch of my magazines from that era. One of these days….

Edwin Letcher

April 10, 2021