This site is a hodgepodge of history, music, pictures, and videos. You can explore the various pages using the menu tabs at the top of the page. This particular page has a second section that can be accessed with the arrow at the bottom of the screen.
Below is a brief timeline written by me (Mick) from my point of view of the early days and how the bands came to be. Many of the people we played with over the years are gone now but they will never be forgotten.
My name is John Barber but no one ever called me that until I started working for a living. It was always Mickey until Ricky Nelson changed his name to Rick, then it became Mick. I was born and raised in Haines City, Florida and went to Haines City Jr. High School where two great things happened to me.
I met my future wife, Janel Fountain, and I played in my first band.
Janel and I were married in 1971 and, in case you're counting, have stayed married for forty-seven years as of May 1, 2018.
My first time on stage was at a Junior High talent show. Larry Helms, Jocko "Spider" Webb, Denny Hill, and I played 'Love Potion #9' and we won! I've been hooked ever since. An interesting addendum; at our 50th year class reunion in 2018, Jocko and I played ‘Love Potion #9’ again as a remembrance of that first very performance. It was bittersweet because neither Denny nor Larry were alive to do it with us.
The first band was the Cyntars and included Larry Helms, Gene Wiley, Denny Hill, and myself. We had to work to buy equipment and Denny had to borrow drums from the school until he could afford to buy some. I initially thought that Bill Webb was with us from the very beginning but the dated pictures I have don't bear that out. We rehearsed at Gene Wiley's parents' house in Davenport and Gene's father, Ozzie, helped with getting bookings for us. Gene's mother was a sweet lady and made us some truly awful jackets that were some kind of turquoise color and glittered. They were ugly, stiff, and itchy but we wore them to keep from hurting her feelings. I was glad to see them finally go. Gene switched off between organ and guitar and pulled our rented U-haul all over the place with his little red Corvair. Yeah, the same 'Unsafe at any speed' Corvair that Ralph Nader wrote about. One of the first times we got to play for our friends outside of school was at a pool party at Lewis Collins' parents house. We were doing it just for fun but Mr. Collins came out, listened for a bit and then pulled out his wallet and gave us something like ten or fifteen dollars each. Wow! You could make money with this music stuff!
Shortly before or after Gene left the group (I can't remember which), Bill 'Jocko' Webb joined as lead guitarist. During most of the remaining time the Cyntars were together, we received an amazing amount of support from Jocko's father, who acted as our 'agent' and set up bookings for us all over the state. He even built a trailer for us so we didn't have to rent U-Hauls anymore. Mr. and Mrs. Webb even took us with them on vacation. I'm not sure we appreciated back then just how much he did for us. We rehearsed in Spider's bedroom, which was a large room behind his parents' house in Dundee, separate, but attached to the main house. I'm sure it was pretty loud and was destined to not last long. Of course, teen dances were all the rage back then and we played our share of them all over central Florida, including Haines City, Winter Haven, Wauchula, Ft. Meade, and the old swimming pool clubhouse in Zolfo Springs. Almost all of them were Friday or Saturday night gigs and there were too many for me to remember them all.
Some of the things that stick in my mind had nothing to do with the band but were still music-related. I remember taking my old acoustic guitar to school one day for some reason and the teacher asking me to sing for the class. I sang "Last Date" and found out it was more nerve-wracking to play in front of 30 classmates than to play to an audience of 300. I also remember standing on the old high school stage in a single spotlight with Larry Helms, playing my guitar and the two of us singing "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying" for the whole school. It was so quiet and the moment was magical. Larry had a wonderful ability to harmonize perfectly when we sang together.
After Denny was in a tragic accident (from which he eventually died), Mike Przybylski (shu-bil-skee) took over as drummer. Mike, Larry, and Jocko all lived in Dundee and we rehearsed at Mike's Grandmother's old house for a short time. Larry's mother agreed to let us fix up the old garage behind their house to use as a place to practice and store our equipment. We cleaned it out, painted the walls in paint that glowed under black lights and practically moved in. For a short time, Tommy Alec moved his old Hammond B3 organ in and introduced us to his love of Soul music. When the atmospheric conditions were right, we always listened to the 50,000-watt station, WLS, in Chicago, which was an all soul station at the time. Every so often the police would come by and tell us to turn it down but, for the most part, we had a great time there.
When Mike left, Gary Rhoades joined us as the drummer and the final membership was set for the remainder of the time we were together I remember that we had some reservations about Gary because he was just a 'kid' - not even old enough to drive - but he was an amazing drummer and worked out extremely well.
At the time, Haines City was a wonderful place to grow up. I remember the high school had an 'open lunch' policy and most of us would walk down to the Freezette every day for lunch. Mr. and Mrs. Beasley ran the place, knew what everyone ordered, and had it ready when we got there. The Freezette was the social hub for teenagers and, if you were looking for a friend, all you had to do was park there and they would most likely show up sooner or later. I remember many times playing the pinball machine when they closed and Mr. Beasley would ask us to reach inside the back door and flip it off before we left. He would remind us to make sure the door was closed. That did not seem remarkable at the time but it does now.
The only downside to high school was the persecution we endured for having long hair. That was a big no-no back then and people were always wanting to beat us up, make fun of us, or cut our hair. I remember ducking in the bathroom between classes to wet my hair and comb it back over my ears and under my collar. It's a wonder I didn't die from pneumonia. Several times I was sent home just because my hair was deemed too long. No amount of reasoning or explanations helped and when I told the principal that one day everyone would have long hair and nobody would care, he replied, "Not in the Polk County school system!" I thought it ironic that many years later I would begin my first teaching job in the Polk County school system - with long hair. I do recall that the principal, Mr. Shaw, called all four of us to the office one day and told us that somebody from city hall kept calling about a license we were supposed to get before playing a dance at the the armory that Friday night. He seemed a little irritated that they kept calling and wanting to talk to us. We told him we didn't know what it was about since we had never had to get any kind of license before. He asked if we had a car and Larry told him that he did. Mr. Shaw said, "Come on. Let's go straighten this out." When Mr. Shaw got in the passenger seat of Larry's car, we were awestruck. I'll never forget how strange that looked and felt - like having the Hulk get in your compact car. I've never seen Larry drive as carefully and we were never so quiet. Mr. Shaw did get it straightened out and we got to put on our dance so it all worked out.
I remember also, that many of us 'tipped the bottle' a little (or a lot) back then. Once, I recall driving Larry, Spider, and Denny around Haines City late at night and being stopped by the police (aka Barney Fife). I was driving because I was the only one not drinking - the others were - to put it delicately - 'wasted'. As we were standing there answering Barney's questions, Denny threw up right at his feet. He blamed it on 'bad spaghetti' and actually got away with it. I had spent the night at Larry's house the night before and forgot my wallet (and driver license) when I changed clothes. Since I didn't have a license with me, I was hauled off to jail and the other three were turned loose on the highway. They were supposed to go back to Larry's house and retrieve my license but they were so drunk they 'forgot' and I wound up spending the night in jail. Great friends.
Eventually, Bill Webb left the band to go to college and David Howell asked me to join the Mischief Makers. I spent a couple of weeks rehearsing with David, Jerry, and Joe before our first gig in Orlando. We got fired after our first night. Nobody said it would be easy.
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Click on the ’Songs With Family/Friends' tab at the top of the page to hear some songs that I have recorded with family and friends. I hope you enjoy all the music and pictures. If you have pictures that you have saved and would like to see them added, let me know.
