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In the fall of 1977, I moved to New York from Detroit.
More specifically I moved from Berkley MI to Pelham New
York. My brother Marshall was in Beatlemania. He and
Ione had an apartment on Wolfs Lane in Pelham about a
block from the train station.
Originally I was working
at A1 Sound. It was in the same building as the Beacon
Theater. I had worked there about the year prior while I
was going to school. Herb Abrahmson was the owner. He
was also one of the founders of Atlantic Records.
I had worked
there for a couple of weeks when his wife Barbara fired
me. I was screwed, though I had a couple of interesting
jobs after that. One was working a scam selling
magazines door to door posing as students, the better
one was working for an escape artist named Mario
Manzeeni.
The day Barbara fired me, I was finishing out the day
when the phone rang. Someone asked for Bob and I took
the call. "Hi this is Mario from Nightmare Productions,
remember we had talked about you working on my
production staff. Meet me at the pier on Saturday and
you can see the show and we'll talk."
I had no idea who he was, and I know
I had never talked to him before but I went to the pier.
There was Mario being handcuffed, put into a mail bag,
nailed into a coffin and lowered into the Hudson river
on the back of a tug boat. A few minutes later he swam
to the top and we talked.
I met up with him again the next week and I went on the
road working on his show. We worked weekends at county
fairs in upstate New York. I mostly helped set up and
tear down but it was still great. Unfortunately, it only
lasted a couple weeks but it was a great show biz
experience.
We have a
friend named Willy Schillinger. I met him while I was
going to school. He worked at 12 East 12th St. at a
studio called RPM. They made records there.
I had been desperately applying for jobs at recording
studios when Willy called me and asked me if I was
interested in working at a rehearsal studio in the same
building he worked in. I was interested.
Quack Productions was in the "under construction" phase
when I started, but they were definitely booking
rehearsal time.
We had two rooms. One was about
12x16, the other perhaps 30x30. The smaller room was
more like a rehearsal cell than a studio. Get five or
six guys playing in there, and after an hour or so you
could really smell the rock.
The other room was more upscale. The idea was to have a
room in which bands could play on a real stage and do
"showcases". It had a pretty good PA and monitors.
Some of the more notables we had in were Dr. John, Ricky
Lee Jones, Rupert Holmes, Stiv Bators, Cameo, and The
Roches.
Some of my
favorites, though, were bands who'd come in, get high,
make screaming loud feedback with their guitars and yell
into the PA for a couple of hours. They were like
anti-music bands. In retrospect, we did a lot of
baby-sitting.
My all time fav was a band called the Hittites. They
could make the whole place smell like rock. One time I
went in the room and one of those guys had his guitar
plugged into the Marshall 50 watt but it was just
leaning against the amp feeding back and the guy was
sitting on one the couches contentedly listening to it
scream.
My brother Marshall and I used to go
there and play when we were first putting a band
together. MC later, for better or worse, got a
management deal with Richard Sarbin, one of the owners
of Quack Productions.
Richard had a Revox reel to reel and they also had a
Nakamichi cassette deck. Most people would record their
rehearsals, listen back, and discuss their greatness. We
may have also done that but we'd also record bass and
drums and then take the tape back to Pelham and transfer
what we recorded to a Teac 3340s. Some of that stuff
came out on Marshall's 9 volt years CD.
MC started
making sound on sound recording when he was about 12
years old. He could always do the most with the least. I
remember when we first talked about having a band he
talked about having guitar, bass, drums and two
background vocalists then he talked about having a slide
guitar player. Finally economy ruled, and he went with
the three piece format.
He and I had played around, just the two of us but when
we did get that third guy it seemed like Marshall had a
real good grasp of the three piece arrangement of the
songs. Mostly he just told guys what to play.
Before we got Chris Donato, we had
another guy we played one gig with. I think his name was
Scott Miner but I'm not sure. The gig was at Irving
Plaza. I think the line up was Joe King Carrasco , The
dB's and us. It's little foggy, but that's what I
recall. For some reason I have a memory of Andy Shernoff
from the Dictators being there, but they weren't on the
bill. Like I said, it's foggy.
What I do remember is a really pretty girl standing up
front singing along with the songs, and it was fun. We
play Glad
All Over, My Little Red Book, Tonight, and a bunch of
other cool covers and of course MC's songs which were
all great.
I later met the singing girl and she was a friend of
Allan Betrock's so there was an explanation for her
knowing the words to the songs, but for sure it was the
first time I had seen anyone sing along, and it was just
all too exciting.
91st St.
I put in a piece about living in Pelham NY and the very
early days of the band. I got some good feedback about
it so I thought I might
continue the journey.
John Crenshaw and I had an apartment on the Northwest
corner of Broadway and 91st St. above a donut shop. My
bedroom window
overlooked Broadway.
Here in 2003 at 45 thinking back on 1981 I won't pretend
that this reflection is not drenched in the pathos of
nostalgia because it does
seem now like we had the perfect Rock apartment.
When we first moved in we had a
dinning room set we got from Marshall and a big black
and white TV set we got from Richard Sarbin. I slept in
the bedroom on a one inch foam pad and John slept on a
sleeping bag on the floor. Later I got a mattress and
John slept in the living room in a loft bed built by one
time Quack Production employee and friend Liam McGrath
(son of Bob McGrath from Sesame Street).
To help pay rent, we stored the band equipment in the
apartment, which meant floor-to-ceiling flight cases in
my bedroom. The neighbors must have loved us, as we
moved the equipment through the lobby at 4
a.m. after gigs. Also, for some reason, I had a big
Fairchild recording console and an Ampex half inch 4
track in my bedroom, They belonged to our then soundman
Willy. Neither worked. I remember when we moved them
in, the console got stuck in the elevator and people had
to walk up as many as 6 flights while we cut it into
small enough pieces to fit in the elevator. As I said,
they must have loved us.
John got a
mannequin from somewhere. It wore a cutter "Never Mind
The Bullocks" T-shirt, jeans, black leather jacket,
studded choke
collar, studded wrist band, and a Ronald Reagan Mask. A
thing of Beauty.
We moved in January, and were glad that our apartment
was toasty warm. Little did we know that being over a
donut shop it was toasty
warm all year round.
Our Landlord Ramsey, was also a pimp and frequently from
his basement apartment, you could here the sounds of
much joy and laughing.
One day, the police came and told us he had come up
missing. He was never seen a again. Poor Ramsey.
John and I both worked construction jobs after the
demise of Quack Productions. One of the last jobs we
worked was at the corner of Nassau and Liberty. It was a
turn-of-the century 33 story building clad in white
terra-cotta over limestone, decorated with birds and
alligators (this according to the NYC historical
landmark
registry).One night we played at the Ritz,
maybe even the first time we played there, we tore the
place apart and naturally stayed up and drank
many beers to celebrate. Next day, we had to be on the
32nd floor at Liberty at 8 a.m.. That's as high as the
elevator went, and that day we had to carry bags of
concrete to the top floor. Our boss, Joe Dick, let us
take hits of pure oxygen from his welding kit to keep
our balance. I'm happy to say it wasn't long after that
we were in the Record Plant recording the first record.
Meanwhile, back on 91st St., we were usually broke and
spent many nights bored watching TV. Like at many homes,
the TV had become an important part of our family. I
remember one time there had been a lot of good stuff on,
and we discussed the possibility of buying the TV a
dozen roses. Another time, after the movie Swamp Thing
had been on one too many times I took a black magic
marker and wrote F*** YOU across the screen of the
television set in big bold letters. It did tie the whole
decor together. |
