Elio joined the Fins band at the same time as Chris. Elio played bass, and Chris was the drummer. Together they brought a lot of rock and roll energy and experience. Both had worked together in various bands, so we got a lot better instantly.

Elio was a great singer; he also had a ton of stage presence. We joked around with the crowd constantly. His repertoire was enormous; he would play and sing hundreds of rock classics; of course, he had trouble remembering lyrics like most great singers. Both of us fronted the band and fed off each other’s energy. The band became very popular; if we made a mistake, I stopped the song and made Elio do pushups: of course, I had to do them too. As a bandleader, I was responsible for any screw-ups on stage. Wresting was another thing we did; the crowd loved it.

I worked with Elio for seven or eight years, mostly six nights a week. He never took a night off. He always gave 100 percent on stage: that is what made the band infamous, and it formed the basis for our unique friendship. There is no equivalent to the fun and fellowship in any other occupation. Our lives were music, laughs, girls, drinking, drugs and travelling to new places every week.

Here are some Elio fun facts: He ….

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Needed three pillows (no one knows why)
Brought garlic to restaurants, especially Italian places

Has no middle name
He is a terrible speller (I took great pleasure correcting the lousy spelling on his set lists). Conversely, he had a great sense of pacing. He would arrange the songs in a specific order to maximize variety and build excitement. Once, at The Yale, an audience member came up and told us how good the pacing was. We had a good laugh.
He was a wide receiver on the SFU football team; he had a shot at playing professional football but was injured and turned to music for his livelihood, much to our benefit.

Elio’s dog was named Rocky, and he wrote a song called ‘Big Rocky
Boy’. Rocky was a big black dog ,he would come out and wag his tail while the band sang his theme song after a road trip.
He had an annoying habit of ordering a pancake late at night when we stopped for a meal on the road.
Would get in trouble for cooking in the hotel room on his hot plate: once in Nelson, he got caught cooking a steak with garlic. He said that he was making coffee.

He did a thing called “lobe” where he would slap Your shoulder and then grasp the earlobe between the index and second finger, simultaneously stimulating the earlobe with his thumb. It became our standard greeting, the band’s secret handshake. He would invariably say “Big fella, Big Shooter” as he “Lobed” people. It freaked some people out.

Elio loved to do physical comedy, like pretending to smash his face on a door, ending up on the floor. When the dice rolled off the table during a Monopoly game, we would bang on the table as he jerked his head back, grimacing in pain. We always sat next to each other during those games. I can still remember all the Super Bowls we watched on the road.

He was a great singer; Elvis, The Beatles, AC/DC and everything in between. He never missed a note, never lost his voice. Elio also had a fantastic falsetto and could sing super high notes or parts sung by women.

We liked to party and get high. One night in Golden, we took LSD before the last set. A couple of pretty waitresses at the club invited us to a big party, so we went. Logging is a major industry in that area of the province, and there are many sawmills as well. We noticed that many of the loggers had missing fingers, or had them partially cut off. Elio and I were way too stoned to look away. “What are You looking at?” said one of the locals angrily. He did not like having a couple of musicians staring at his deformed hands. Eventually, everyone appeared to be missing body parts ,even the women. Our drummer Chris dragged us out of there just in time. We went to a park and stared at the stars. The stars did not mind that we were staring , they had died thousands of years before. That was one of the hundreds of adventures we shared over the years.

After ‘The Fins’ we formed a band called ‘The Cheezogz”. We played at the Eldorado Hotel when a guy walked up to us. “This band is the same as ‘The Fins,'” He said, “same guys.” “Different guys,” we retorted. “Same songs,” he insisted. “New fresh and exciting songs” was our answer. “Same stupid jokes,” he insisted, “wrong again, all-new material,” was our reply. “You’re wearing the same shirts,” he said, referring to our colourful Hawaiian classics. “Busted,” was all we could say.

Elo went on to play in many other bands like Doug and the Slugs. He was and will always be a world-class entertainer.

I will always treasure the good times we had together.