Our founder Adam Sleek, who has since departed to the Enchanted Land of Albuquerque, was living in Denver the Summer of ’88. Adam started grooming me to spread the God Sound when I would stay at his house that summer. The two albums he used were The Partridge Family Shopping Bag and the Partridge Family Notebook. He had other Partridge records there but these were the ones he specifically chose. I was a clumsy, confused disciple walking through the forest like a baby faun, on trembling legs.
Adam, who was named after the first Adam, loved eating his old lady’s apple pie and knew a thing or two. So like all good gurus he shared. Day in and day out Shopping Bag and Notebook would play on his turntable. He would stroke his goatee and smile as the music started to awaken my morning rider on the road.
One day Brother Dan came over and I said, “You have to listen to this music.”
And so Adam Sleek put Shopping Bag or Notebook on for Brother Dan and his two ears became one. Around this time, Adam Sleek had me draw a gigantic version of the Shopping Bag album on his wall. His roommate Tom didn’t particularly like us listening to The Partridge Family but Tom didn’t particularly like Adam Sleek waking him up in the middle of the night cleaning, blasting music, turning all the lights on and telling Tom he was lazy.
Then when Tom finally fell back to sleep, Adam would sleep on his mattress on the floor until two or three in the afternoon. What Tom didn’t understand was that Adam Sleek was using a very intense teaching method, trying to knock Tom out of his comfort zone to achieve a form of awareness because The Partridge Family was not working for him.
Soon Brother Tom couldn’t take it anymore because Adam would turn his bass amp all the way up and put it upside down so the neighbors below could hear the bass throbbing. Adam was trying to teach the downstairs neighbors about lead and how one has to deal with the base nature of life. The cops were called a few times. Adam Sleek being a divine avatar would always get out of it. I think once he explained that he had a sugar addiction which was true; sugar would affect him like methamphetamine. He would also plug the turntable through his bass amp and turn the music up even higher. Dan and I loved this but the neighbors did not.
Brother Tom eventually trucked his way down to Salt Lake City but Dan and I continued our spiritual instruction. Soon he and I were driving his black 70’s car up and down the streets of Denver to Boulder after Dan made copies of Shopping Bag and Notebook. Soon the other albums would find their proper place in the tape deck.
But Adam Sleek knew as he came down the mountain holding Shopping Bag in his right hand and Notebook in his left that he was laying down the law. He truly was a Bell Records Moses and he parted the Red Sea of our confusion.
We had heard that before he died, the one thing he was very happy about was not so much about the religion but as he would tell people, “I’m so happy that people finally understand how great The Partridge Family are.”
The Partridge Family Temple is eternally thankful and will always remember our founder, Adam Sleek. Friend and lover. 1965-2004
Pft! recollections by The Partridge in the Pear Tree
Pft! Reuben Kincaid Law Giver by Whale Song Partridge
