The CODES: Old and New
The CODES have been playing together for over 10 years. First gig was for a Neurocritical Care Society banquet, November 2006 in Baltimore. We had no equipment other than personal instruments, so we hired another local band “Rockgut” to set up their stuff and let us play as their opener. We created and gave away “Codes t shirts” to anyone wanting one at the gig. I still have mine. We weren’t very good but we had limited time to practice. We got better.
Since then we’ve put out a CD in 2009 and I wrote a coffee table picture book of the photographs taken of us through the years.
Over the years we’ve played for various medical meeting banquets all over the country, several House of Blues venues, an SCCM symposium, a sleazy back street bar in New Orleans, a Texas Juke Joint and private invites. We opened for a great metal band in Germany and played for a meeting in Manchester, UK.
We were never a band that traded on four doctors playing novelty stuff. Our set list consisted of what used to be called “soft rock”, even “classic rock”. Very listenable covers of numerous famous hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s mostly, I think. We became fairly serious musicians and knew our way around technical arrangements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYo6QbKKgBQ
But we started getting older through the years and the lives of each member inevitably changed. There were job changes, marital changes, sick kids and limited time to practice as we all lived in different cities. I’m 73 years of age. I haven’t looked at their drivers licenses lately but I’m pretty sure the rest of the group are at or near their 50s now. We’re changing with the times, but in a rather unusual way for our idiom.
We’ve embraced and absorbed a much younger member into the CODES. That would be Dr. Mohan Kottapally, currently assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami heath center in Miami, Fla.
http://uhealthsportsmedicine.com/sports-medicine-team/mohan-kottapally-md
This addition has fomented a fairly radical change for us. It’s pushed toward a much harder edged musical direction.
Mohan is one of those charismatic guys with a stage presence that has changed the way audiences view us. I see his style as a bit of of Prince, I think. He interacts in that manner with the audience, very aggressively. He is in constant motion, flaunting and vaunting. He’s an excellent guitarist; I think a world-class rock lead singer and the woods ain’t full of ‘em. I think we’re lucky to find him and he has changed our world.
He has made my role in the band easier as my age advances and generalized arthritis and deteriorating physicality takes its toll. I can do lead guitar and I have done it in the past but it’s harder for me now, just like you can be sure it is for Eddie Van Halen. The most important base of a rock band pyramid is the drummer, followed by the bass line, then the rhythm. The fingers don’t fly like they used to, but I’m still an OK guitarist and I can definitely hold down a needed and necessary serviceable rhythm floor.
So we decided to re-invent ourselves as a much more modern band, discarding a lot of the material we’d played for years in favor of new material. That material became much more what I would call “hard edged rock”. Not metal or especially death metal, as most of that is simply a cacophony of high volume din that renders the listener eventually hearing impaired.
“Hard-edged rock” is loud but much more technical in its arrangement, a little unusual for guys of our generation to be playing. A lot of it is lead guitar driven which brings me to the subject of one of our songs now. That would be, of course, a hard-edged classic if there ever was one: Sweet Child O’ Mine” (Guns & Roses, 1987). An insane initial lead guitar solo that is said by many critics to have changed the face of Rock drives this song. Check out the lead intro in this amazing music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w7OgIMMRc4
CODES lead guitarist Gary Bernardini must have played with effects pedals for weeks before he got the tone nailed down, and it definitely works. Mohan can definitely do Axl. This is an amazing song for us as a band. I was surprised to see how many in our crowd instantly recognized this song and responded vividly to it. Many were kicking the slats of their playpens in 1987. Of course, Guns & Roses, being the volatile mixture they were, imploded after a fairly short period of time.
We played as the headliners for the International Stroke Conference in Houston, Texas on February 22, for a very large group of I believe as many as 300 people. Standing room only in a very big auditorium. We had a huge stage with professional sound technicians doing the auditory honors. We played three full sets over four hours, starting at about 8:30 pm and ending at 12:30 am. Between sets there was a DJ playing songs off his computer, and an “ice sculpture artist” that really entertained the crowd by forming a detailed cowboy boot from two big chunks of ice.
I put together a bit of a slide show to tell some things about The CODES, old and new.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxAIbVyPBBc
Make sure you tick off the High Def option and it’s best watchable on full screen.
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