The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 567
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 249: JLHS Part Two 22
Sun., Oct. 7, 2007
… We were looking around when Geoff just asked if CJ was “in the house” and she said, yes. She hopped right up onto the stage and immediately went into band introductions, having learned, I guess, all of our names. I mean, she knew Edward’s name but I don’t think she knew the other three but she called me a “major honey in his own time” or something like that and then called Geoff “junior honey.” She had told him when we were filming in her apartment that he ought to try to do some modeling because he is photogenic and Geoff is now pursuing getting a portfolio. He has been connected with a guy that Luz knows through Orenda named Mike Donnelly, I think.
CJ speaks fast. She went through these introductions in less than half a minute, calling Greg “the rascally character that he is” and then referring to Edward last as the “statesman” and “Papa Skunk Horner.” Geoff says that “Skunk” was his nickname but it sounds like Stump to me when she says it. Then she mentioned her movie debut and said, “Testing, testing testes,” to which you can hear Michael replying, “What? What?” as Greg hits the intro to Nothing That You Do. This we had rehearsed with CJ. I came in and she joined for most of it when she knew the words and knew what was coming and she knew the song fairly well. I had no problem with letting CJ come up on stage with us even though we knew she wasn’t a singer as we think of singers. I don’t now if she can sing or not. She did hit the harmony note on the chorus that we had practiced but she is closer to Ethel Merman than to me. Nevertheless, I thought we sounded okay together but I couldn’t hear myself as well when she was singing. I didn’t know how that was but Edward mentioned yesterday at our meeting, which I’ll get back to soon, I hope, that when CJ was singing he couldn’t hear Greg at all. He was under the impression that the sound guy turned everyone else down when she got up there but you don’t hear that in the mix on the CD so I don’t know what happened. At the time I just assumed that with her voice there it was harder to hear my own. I heard myself fairly well otherwise but I don’t know if it was through the monitor or the P.A. I was standing out front at the edge of the stage. There were P.A. speakers hanging on both sides and I was almost in front of them. Edward was to my right and behind that P.A. speaker; Geoff was almost directly behind me; Greg was behind and to my left. I would have heard the P.A. and they probably could not have heard it, being right in front of their own amps.
So we played Nothing That You Do. Greg was making a lot of noise even into the first stop time. Geoff did a nice double hit on the second stop time and we came out into the stop time verse at the end all right, I thought. We had planned for CJ and me to sing the first line of the last verse a cappella and we stuck to that plan but I can hear only my own voice on the first line. CJ comes in on the second line when Greg is supposed to come in subtly and he does so, more or less. Then we hit the ending well. We’d also planned to slow down for the very end and so that was a little sloppy but not too bad. Greg and Geoff were mostly ending songs together. I wasn’t watching them much from where I was but they were evidently paying attention to each other.
CJ immediately suggests that we take a ride down the Love Canal and that was when Geoff counted it off with eight ticks on the hi-hat rather than with four hits of the sticks and ten four silent hits so that we strike out of nowhere. So we didn’t know when to come in and he launched off on his own but stopped fast so that it sounds on the CD sort of like he was just testing the drums. I reminded him of what we’d rehearsed and he did it with the sticks and we burst into the song pretty good then. CJ didn’t know the words but was supposed to sing along on the “Thought you were my lover” part. We went into the early solo as planned nicely and came out pretty well, too, with me motioning to CJ when the time for her line was coming up.
We had changed the song in two other ways. Geoff had suggested at the last minute to take the end guitar solo down for a bit before a final building up to the climax so this we did and I thought it was good. Greg did a little noodling that actually sounds like a guitar. I thought Geoff could have softened it up a bit more than he did but we were all into what was going on. Then it came back and we did the other thing that Geoff had come up with, which was go to a C instead of the final E, and then to a D, D# and finally E, over which I’d shout out a thank you to the crowd. As far as I can tell we all did this. It’s a bit hokey, I think, but it sounds like a show. I’d forgotten that I was supposed to say something but Geoff reminded me there - luckily I was looking at him for this part. I turned back to the mike, said a quick good bye and thought to mention CJ and that was that. The big show had come to an end after exactly 31 minutes according to the CD of the show, which includes a couple of minutes in front and one minute of Otis Redding tacked on at the end.
I had drunk nothing. Neither Greg nor Edward had drunk and it seems to me that we had done some drinking at least before each of those original four performances. Only Geoff had drunk some and he has mostly been the only one who abstains at our rehearsals. I took one sip of a beer that he got early just to taste it. I don’t remember what it was but I was feeling very good and satisfied at the end of the show. I was happy with the way things had gone, happy with all of us. But we had about ten minutes to get our stuff off the stage and out the door.
We made a hasty withdrawal with help from Michael and one or two of the bar people, who carried a couple of things out to the street for us. We gathered the gear in the street to figure out what to do with it. Our problem was that I had three kids there, one of them (Deysha) with a boyfriend, plus Michael, and I was concerned about getting them all home to the Bronx. They might have squeezed into the car if not for the equipment and so my first thought, when I saw Edward and Greg loading up a cab headed for Edward’s place, was that we could do the same, i.e., put Geoff into a cab with the equipment, send him over to Edward’s while I drove the kids all home. That still meant that Luz was going to have to take the train but that was my original plan.
Edward was agreeable to that. The traffic going by there was thick. I was surprised at how much traffic there was at that time of day during the week. There were a lot of cabs that seemed to be heading to somewhere south of Houston so I guess that area really is buzzing nowadays. Kristy had heard of Arlene’s Grocery - had, in fact, been there. She told me about a friend she’s got who is in some sort of band that plays there once in a while. I told her to let me know when they were next going to be there and now that I think of it, that is probably coming up this week. I’ll try to remember to ask Kristy about that or maybe I’ll ask Geoff to go on line and look at the schedule for Arlene’s. Kristy also said that she’s got a sister or some other relative who lives down there in what sounds like a very good area. I was as surprised by her awareness of downtown as I had been by her knowledge of 60’s music but then she is not ordinary kid.
Edward, Lisa and Greg got a cab very quickly. Did I mention that Elizabeth was not there? I must have talked already about the phone call that came into the house from Elizabeth about a week before the gig. She was looking for Greg, who had evidently told her that we were going to be rehearsing that night. I guess he is now using that excuse quite a bit but it’s clear that Elizabeth is no longer buying it. How far he’s gone exactly, however, as far as she knows is something that I don’t know. I don’t have any idea of how much she knows or suspects and don’t know how much Edward now knows either. Originally Greg had told me that he didn’t want Edward to find out anything because he thought that Edward would have strong objections but it’s hard to believe at this point that Edward isn’t aware that something is going on. But then again I don’t know what Greg said to Elizabeth to keep her away from the Bowery Poetry Club this night. I knew that he would desperately want Sally to be there but I still don’t know how he managed that. Elizabeth asked about the gig when she called here again last week looking for him and I told her that there was going to be a video of it. I didn’t know what to say or how far to go in either direction with her. I don’t like lying to her but can’t say much either. I wanted to sound relatively normal but just cannot do that realistically.
Anyway Greg went with Edward and Lisa in a cab with their equipment. I was left with our stuff and Michael hailing a cab when it just didn’t feel possible to get all of those kids into the car at once - me, Geoff, Michael, Kristy, Marisol, Deysha and her boyfriend. That’s at least one and probably two people too many so I was still mulling over what to do. Geoff was hanging out with the kids and Luz was going back and forth between them and me. I was standing over the equipment near the curb and they were standing near the entrance to the place. Marisol had asked for a juice so we bought something for all of them to drink. Compounding the problem for me was the video equipment that we were also carrying - two cameras in cases, a tripod, which was fairly heavy, and another bag with mikes and other things. I didn’t like the idea of kids riding the subway back to the Bronx at nine o’clock at night, especially carrying all of this stuff. I didn’t even know where they lived exactly, any of them.
Michael hailed a cab and I turned it away because it didn’t seem right. Various scenarios were reviewed and it occurred to me that the most we were going to get into the car was three besides me. Only one of our two amps was going to fit into the trunk. One was going to have to go into the back seat and that was only going to leave room for two people back there. Finally it occurred to me that since Marisol, Deysha and her boyfriend had showed up on their own, maybe they could return on their own and I could drive Michael and Kristy back in the car. It turned out that those three did live close to each other and had no problem with taking the subway home. So that is what became the plan. They took one video camera with them and we had the rest of the video stuff with us ….
Note: We played six of our own songs that night at the Bowery Poetry Club: From Now On, It’s Okay, Lily, We Can Never Know, Nothing That You Do, and Love Canal. The first of these I included in these pages two days ago. Since I spent so much time talking about C.J. and her participation in the last two songs here, I’ll include those from the audio of that night taken from the sound board at the club. C.J., whose last name I don’t remember off hand, was a friend of bass player Edward’s. She was getting evicted from her New York apartment, was making a documentary of that event and wanted to include some original music in it. So she invited us four Threads over to that apartment one day in order to videotape us lip synching Nothing That You Do, a song from our first album. This movie got made with us in it and it’s the only video of the Threads that I know of since Kristy never came through with the video she got from the Bowery show itself that night. C.J.’s movie was called Anatomy of an Eviction and I’ve seen it but I’m unable to locate it right now googling that title. I don't know if it still exists out there or not but likely it’s out there somewhere in this age of everything. C.J. premiered this movie at a small showcase just down the street from the Bowery that same night and as recounted yesterday or the day before, we missed it because we were late setting up our equipment. So here’s how it happened that night with C.J. jumping on stage to introduce us and the song in her movie and then hang in there was we finish our set with Nothing That You Do, the studio versions of which can be found in chapter 98, and Love Canal. Though we attributed our own songs to all four of us, Love Canal was Greg’s song and meant to showcase the lead guitar and drums. We recorded a studio version of Love Canal at Doug Maxwell’s B-Sharp Studio in lower Manhattan in 2004, which was then located on the top floor where the Off Wall Street Jam was on Murray St. At some point along the way I edited that down to a mono single, which can be found in chapter 384. Here I’ll include the original stereo track from the Threads first LP, T.V. Is Watching, 2004.
AUDIO INSERTED: Threads, Nothing That You Do / Love Canal
Live at the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC, Sep. 19, 2007
Greg - lead guitar / Edward - bass / Geoff - drums / Dave - rhythm guitar, vocal
C.J. (Anatomy of an Eviction) announcer / vocal
IMAGES INSERTED: Bowery Poetry Club, ca. early 2000’s
AUDIO INSERTED: Threads, Love Canal (LP version)
Greg - lead guitar / Edward - bass / Geoff - drums / Dave - rhythm guitar, vocal
B-Sharp Studio, Murray St., NYC; March 20 / 21, 2004