A note from "The Bopper"
This site is intended to chronicle my journey through the evolution of “Cactus Jack and the Cadillacs” over more than three decades. Before I lead you onto this adventure, I wish to put out a big thank you to Mike “Colonel” Parker, and Jim “Cactus Jack” Stanley for their contributions to the information and visuals contained within this site. I like to thank Jim Carter, who in 1993, introduced me to the world wide web; then helped me to set up “bopper.com”. And, special credit to the late Don Johnson for his legacy of compilation and tribute videos.
Here we go: by the early 1990s, live entertainment was widely included for conventions and other forms of corporate celebrations. “Cactus Jack and the Cadillacs” were performing regularly at a downtown Orlando entertainment multiplex named “Church Street Station”; beginning as the first Rock-N-Roll house band in the Orchid Garden Cafe. The band performed weekly Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights; providing their own sound reinforcement and engineer. The Orchid Garden had become so popular that the management desired for the band to transition to six nights. While this was great fun, and the money was pretty good, all of the band members had full-time, “day jobs”. The band wasn’t able to accommodate Church Street Station’s request. However, they were able to go onto the big outdoor stage setup for the tremendous street parties; including the multi-day events surrounding the 1994 World Cup held in Orlando. In the 1990s, including live entertainment for conventions and corporate celebrations was very popular. There was and still are a large number of very big venues for conventions and other events in and around Orlando Florida. So, how to reach the corporate planners or event committees? I was working as a Software Engineer with a major defense company at the time. A co-worker of mine, Jim Carter, suggested I utilize the world wide web, which at the time, was still pretty much in it’s infancy. Given the popularity of “oldies” themed parties, and my nickname as “the bopper”, Jim helped me register the bopper.com internet domain. I then authored the original site using HTML; later adding Javascript and CSS. Bopper.com featured the logo (pictured below) and content specifically for marketing the band. At one time, I also had registered: cactusjackandthecadillacs.com. Both domains were pointed to the same site code. However, in 2021, the registration must have lapsed, and been instantly taken over (probably for extortion purposes), and linked to a Chinese porn site. So don’t go there. My daughter-in-law is a professional web designer. She suggested that I should transition to WordPress, register a new domain for the band (https://cactusjackcadillacs.band); then design separate sites. She also showed me how using this would save money on the hosting. So, here it is, the new bopper.com
