Who are the ethnogs?

Dougal Macrorie was undoubtedly the most versatile of the band, playing guitar, bass, keyboards, bagpipes, and other instruments. He was a third generation Scottsman from Gary, Indiana, a dirty factory town about thirty miles southeast of Chicago. Dougal is a version of the Scottish first name "Dughall" (pronounced Doo ghul): literally translated it means "black stranger." Most people mistakenly thought his name was Douglas, so early in his career people called him Doug, Douglas Mac or sometimes just Mac. People who know him well call him Dougie or Dougie Mac.

Dougal hated Gary and on most weekends he hitchhiked to Chicago to visit his aunt, the widow of his marine uncle who disappeared in 1961. He often would sneak over to Maxwell Street to listen to the blues and early rock n' roll played by the negro men on the street. He picked up a stolen Fender bass guitar on Maxwell Street when he was 12, back in 1958, but also played bagpipes and the fife at the Scottish Rite Armory back in Gary. (He was the one who suggested to Eric Burden that he use bagpipes on “Sky Pilot.”) In Gary he played bass in a rock n' roll band called the Coalition that re-formed with some member changes as The Forge. He graduated from high school in 1964 and immediately moved to Chicago with his bass guitar. He played in two more bands in the Chicago area before he left for Seattle in late March of 1965 thinking it would be the jumping off point to get overseas.

His aunt's mother, Pearl, was the secretary for ethnographer W.I Thomas at the University of Chicago around 1915. Thomas made quite the impression on Pearl (there were rumors of an affair) because her mom would tell her story after story about William's (her mother never called him W.I.) work. Over the years when Dougal would visit his aunt she would retell to me the stories her mother told her about his work.

Gregory (“Gory”) Bateson was the most talented musician in The Ethnogs, and also the most troubled. He

was born in 1947 in Brooklyn to Stanley Bateson and Gertrude Huggenbauk Bateson. Stanley, a tax lawyer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, named his only son after his only brother, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson. Stanley loved the big jazz bands of the 1940s and 1950s, while Gertrude loved classical music. Gory took music lessons at an early age, including piano, clarinet, oboe, and French horn, but he took a liking to guitar. His parents hated rock n roll music, so he played classical and jazz guitar in the house but rocked out with the other kids on the block.

Gory collected and learned to play exotic musical instruments that his Uncle Gregory and Aunt Maggie sent to him from around the world, like bull-roarers from New Guinea, didgeridoos from Australia, kudu horns from Swaziland. He formed a band called "The Basements" when he was nine years old and brought his exotic instruments to performances so kids would have various things to shake, rattle, and blow.

Gory and his parents moved to L.A. in 1957 when the Dodgers moved to California. Gory did not adjust well to the move, and there were rumors of sexual abuse from Gory’s Uncle Nevin. In L.A. Gregory started to use the nickname “Gory” and to get in trouble, hang around with punks, engage in vandalism and graffitti. He also started doing outrageous things for attention, like eating the heads off live ants, crickets, and other creatures, until he got very sick after eating the head off his pet parikeet, Beauregard.

Gory’s life changed dramatically in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. His dad received the Purple Heart in WWII, and he demanded that Gory enter the military. Gory refused and ran away from home before his senior year of high school and hitchhiked to Seattle. He planned to go to Vancouver to avoid the draft, but stayed in Seattle.

Dick Diver, the versatile drummer turned rhythm guitar player of the The Ethnogs, was the glue that kept

the band together throughout their tumultuous history until their dissolution in 1986. Dick was an orphan, left in swaddling clothes on the stoop of the orphan’s foundling house on 53rd Street in New York City in the early 1950s. His name was given to him by the recording secretary of the orphanage. She had been a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald so Dick was named after a main character in the book, Richard Diver. His band mates called him Rickey Dick or Rickey Rich when Diver found out that there was a porno star who shared his name.

Dick never knew who his real parents were, although the secretary of the orphanage once suggested, under the influence of Scotch and pain pills, that he was the illegitimate child of two famous anthropologists.

Dick was influenced early by the secretary’s favorite jazz musician, Thelonious Monk, but Monk was soon replaced with Elvis, and Little Richard, and the Ventures. The song “Wipeout” turned Dick into a rock n roller, which led him to play the drums. He went from banging on skins in the music room of PS 133 to sitting in on sets with local bands trying to make good. When the British invasion occurred he was still in his early teens but could pass for legal if the light was just right. He played bars, clubs, and Bar-Mitzvahs. When he graduated high school he said goodbye to the city and took a train ride across country and ended up in Seattle.