The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 556
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 241 : JLHS Part One 29
Sun., Oct. 31, 2004
… But I said up there ‘four bands in two nights’ and I meant it, friend. You didn’t think I was messing with you, did you? When I say four bands, I mean four bands. It’s almost like it must have been back in the day, back in your day that is when they would load up the bill with band after band after band just to keep everyone up and dancing at the Savoy or at the Regal or at the Rhumboogie. Remember that one? I know you do. Well, it so happened that one of the teachers was passing out an invitation to go and hear her band, which was playing at a big Halloween bash on Friday night but playing in Williamsburg. That’s in Brooklyn for all of you Evanston types that don’t know anything else. Brooklyn is somewhere I never go. I can almost count the times I’ve been out there on two hands but here was a chance to see a teacher friend and at the same time, of course, to get someone in a position to come to our next gig and, oh yeah, I forgot to mention it. While we were at Arlene’s Grocery the previous night, Greg had found out that they do plug in business. You give them your CD and if they think you’re up to it, they invite you to come and perform there - bringing all of your friends with you, of course. So Greg left our CD there with them and it will be interesting to see if they consider us worthy. Are we WORTHY!?! I guess we’ll be finding out.
Geiti Pride is the name of Alicia Curtis’ band. She is just about the last person I would ever have thought would be playing in a rock and roll band but that’s how things turn out sometimes. She’s a withdrawing young redhead with very short hair who teaches special ed. and maybe that should have tipped me off. She teaches special ed. She spends all of her time with those lunatics and I don’t think I could take that. She does and the kids seem to respond to her. Turmaine told me that Miss Curtis is his favorite teacher so she’s doing something right and if she’s got the nerve to do that, you’ve got the nerve to do anything. So when I saw the flier, I asked her about her band and she said there were two brothers who were the main focal point and that they played harmony rock and that she played the flute. So I told her I’d be there and so did Hodgkins.
I was hoping to meet up with Andy on Friday and drag him out there with me but when I went to Sounds, the place where we’d met a couple of Fridays ago, he wasn’t there. He never showed. It was early and Luz still had a couple of patients so I just strolled on down from there when it became clear by about 4:30 that Andy wasn’t going to show. I had not talked to him since last weekend but the last thing that he had said was that we ought to get together again this week. I don’t know what happened but I walked down through Columbia University and ended up walking all the way down to the Cottage. When I got close to there, I called Luz and found that she was finished but she had stepped out. So I told Jessica to let her know that I was at the Cottage, figuring she’d meet me there. I picked up my usual three Becks and went in there.
I spent about an hour and a half drinking those and waiting for her but she never showed. All I ate were the seafood dumplings and sesame noodles that we usually start with ($10). When I got out on the street, I called the office again and she said she was just about to leave. She figured I was with Andy so I told her I’d meet her at the Dinastia. When I got there, she was with Ian so I invited him in and we had dinner there. Luz had been having some sort of stomach problem for a few days (I picked up some aloe yesterday morning and that helped) and ate almost nothing but I had the usual and one more beer. We hung around there talking until about 8:15. When I mentioned Heart, Ian said that they had opened for Foreigner quite a few times and that he was never impressed with them - either with their songs or with Ann Wilson’s voice, which he always considered ‘over the top’. I had really liked them at the time and had bought their first four albums. I never did buy a Foreigner LP.
Ian walked from the 72nd St. station. Luz and I got on the 2 train. She got out at Penn Station and I went on down to 14th to catch the L train, which I don’t think I’d ever ridden before. That cuts across Manhattan and goes into Brooklyn. The first stop out there was Belmont and that’s where I was going but it was about a 15 block walk from the stop out there to the corner of S. 5th and Kent, which was the location of something called the Rock Star Bar. It must have been about 9 when I got there and the place was fairly empty. It is almost down on the water and there are some fairly deserted streets leading to it, streets that I didn’t particularly like walking, although the area along Belmont between Metropolitan and N. 7th, which is where the subway comes up, seemed very nice. It was almost 100% white. How far from Carol and Henry I was, I couldn’t say but it might not have been too far.
Tom showed up around ten o’clock and I was still nursing a Heiniken. He had glass of wine and Alicia showed up just after this. Tom and I, as it turned out were the only two to schlep out there for the gig but she was happy to see us and the place got fairly busy between ten and eleven, when the first band played. They were a trio whose name slips my mind just now but they weren’t bad. I thought they sounded more or less like Grand Funk Railroad or maybe that was just because I had run into Amanda Bickerstaff on the A train and she had mentioned that band when I told her that I was going out to see more music. I had seen her the night before at the 145th St. station on my way down to Arlene’s. She is the teacher who came to me one day early on when she was at her wit’s end and needed someone to talk to. Now she seems to be getting on fine - better than I am, in fact, but I am not getting along so well up there these days.
But on the way down Thursday I had ridden the train with Sarah Heins, who was on her way to an OSI meeting at City College. She got out at 145th and so did I to catch the A train, which, as it turned out, I didn’t have to do because the D would have taken me to the same place at W. 4th. But there was Amanda Bickerstaff standing in the uptown side because she leaves in upper Manhattan. She said she was beat and going home so she was impressed when I told her that I was going out to a rock club. This we yelled to each other across the tracks before the trains rolled in. So she was even more impressed when I ran into her again on the A train going down on Friday and told her that I was going out for more rock and roll that night. She became only the second person that I’ve told about the Threads up there and she said she wanted the CD. I told her I’d get her one and when I told her I was the singer, she said that that was what I looked like - and she’s only about 24 years old. So I was happy with that comment.
Anyway the first band were a power trio with long songs that sounded more involved than they actually were. But the bass player, who was in drag, was pretty good. The guitarist did most of the singing and had a fairly generic voice and played a lot of sound effects. He did virtually no lead guitar although I thought he seemed as though he could. Each of them had a dozen pedals and they were using them. The songs tended to go on too long for my taste. One of them must have been 20 minutes long and so they only played about 6 songs altogether in their 45 minutes.
Then came Alecia Curtis’s band, Geidi Pride. When I asked, I found that this name came from the book Dune, a book that made a sensation when it came out. I remember that and it seems to me that I was even reading some science fiction at the time but I never read that and never saw the movie. It seemed to be pronounced something like ‘Giddy Pride’ and I don’t know what it means other than that it comes from the book. Curtis had said that this was a Halloween party and that people would be in costume but there wasn’t too much of that. The bass player in the fist band stood out because he was chubby and in drag and with a red wig. Curtis had a little beard and mustache painted on but although the place was fairly crowded, most were not in costume. There was a good crowd by the time the music started. I guess they knew when that was. I got there a little early.
Everyone there had to lug their own stuff and set it up but they got this done pretty fast. The rhythm section was from the band that was going to be coming on last but I could see that time would not permit me to hang around for that. Out front were the two brothers that Curtis had mentioned. They went back and forth between guitar and a keyboard and took turns singing. Curtis was on the floor but one of the three mikes would not work and so they ended up bringing her up between them so that she could play into one of the vocal mikes. That was too bad because the first two or three songs or so were soured by the missing mic. But when they finally got it together for the last couple of songs, they sounded pretty good. Those were probably the best songs and they were the most melodic and had arrangements that brought out the vocal parts. The two did sing some harmony and it sounded nice. On the second to last song Curtis finished it up with a flute solo and that was just about the only time she could be heard. That was the best song in my mind. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any song titles.
The set was short and that was good since it had started late. They must have played from about 11:30 to 12:15 or so. I said goodbye almost as soon as it ended because I didn’t want to miss the last train out of New York. By that time I had only drunk three beers there and so I was probably more sober when I left than I’d been when I got there. Hodgkins hung around a little longer. I walked back the way I came. I figured there must be a closer subway since the Williamsburg Bridge was right overhead and I could see a train on it but I didn’t want to risk getting lost and then not making my train. So I walked fast. I had strolled over but I walked back fast, caught the L quick so that when I saw that there was a chance I could make the 12:42, I got out of the subway at 6th Ave. instead of going on over to 8th to catch an uptown train, and went up to get a cab. It wasn’t easy getting out of there but I caught a cab quick and he got me to Penn Station in time for the 12:47.