The first big project of 1989 was "The Undersea World." This was a monstrously entertaining and huge production. In addition to giving us a shipload of stuff to build for it, Caputo had his purchasing department buy thousands of dollars worth of stuff. Who knew you could buy fake kelp that could be hung from the ceiling twenty feet up, terminating eight feet from the floor, out of reach of drunken partygoers (notorious for trying to destroy or steal our sets and props.) We built the Nautilus to hang from the ceiling, two diving bell bars, four reef screen surrounds for reef scenes to be shone on the rear projection screening, and a "decompression chamber" entranceway with a deep sea diving suit hanging inside the door, big valves and dials and pipes everywhere, and a couple of windows for looking out at the undersea world as you transitioned from the lobby to the ballroom. This show was really cool once the fluorescent lights were turned off and the theatrical lighting - complete with sparkling and wave motion - was turned on. There were strings of bubbles hanging with the kelp. There were dozens of sharks hanging here and there. In my spare time I carved and painted four moray eel heads (When an eel bites your heel and it's making you squeal...That's a moray) to poke into crannies of the reefs.
A bunch of the purchased sharks were unpainted. I called my dad in Vero Beach and asked him if he'd be interested in painting sharks, and also whether I should also propose that he carve some sea life for the show. The next time I saw Caputo, I asked him if my dad could make some stuff. "What is he, a fish carver?" he asked. "Sure," I said. But purchasing had already ordered a couple crateloads of fish, lobsters, crabs, starfish and desert tortoises (evidently sea turtles were unavailable.) But my dad did come over to Orlando for a few days to paint the blue sharks...blue.
There was also a tabletop killer whale with a flat area on its curved-up belly. When we all went out to the Stouffer Hotel to join Jeff Bates, the production manager, and his advance crew, we found that he, in his immense wisdom, had drilled holes in the tabletop whale and hung her from the ceiling with the sharks. This, of course, meant taking her down, Bondoing the holes and touching her up as best we could. Anything to make it more difficult. This did nothing to increase anybody's respect for Master Bates.
Very soon after this horrendously expensive party, one of the recessions hit, and the term "downsizing" gained household word status.It would be a year before there would be another great show to compare with this one.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Honeymoon
The first year at Image International was truly amazing. Looking back on it, I can see what went on. Al Caputo and Ray Ramsay, the owners, saw me in action and realized that they suddenly had the talent in the shop to build some really cool stuff. Al Ohlson, I soon learned, was completely lost when the project went off square - He gave me all projects that required a mind for three dimensional geometry that didn't have standard thirty, sixty or forty five degrees coming back around to zero in a hurry. The Pirate entranceway was my first solo project, without a square corner anywhere, but five pieces came together square. He showed me the picture, and I built it. He tried to assure me that I didn't really need to figure all of those angles, that I could cut everything square and it would be okay. I scowled at him and built it right. Caputo liked it.
High Tech Aztec was all about angles. Al Ohlson gave me the project of the two square stepped pyramids that needed to come apart into four pieces along the corners, requiring the figuring of the forty five degree ends that would attach together into the square. I knew how to work it out, but Al argued with me every time I tried to lay it out. He didn't have a clue how to make it work, and didn't trust that I could figure it out. He tried to make the corners by modifying the square-on stringers, and I couldn't make him see that the step widths were going to stretch to nearly one and a half times when measured across the 45 degree angle. Finally one day Al Ohlson took a day off and I laid out and built one whole unit while he was gone, with angle stringers and square-on stringers traced for the second one. The bar units were wacky angles as well. Bob had that project, and after about three days of struggling with it, came to me and asked how to work it out. I pretty much built the first one for him, and he copied it for the second one.
Marriott Masters was a week-long event in May with Marriott people from all over the world coming together at one location - Orlando World Center in 1988 - to learn from each other and get to know each other. Image was the preferred vendor for meetings, parties and other MOWC functions, and there were breakfasts, lunches, dinners and evening parties every day for the whole week. We pulled out every set in the huge warehouse and spiffed up the ones we were using. We built six new cedar gazebo bars, two amoebic shaped 16' wide, 6" deep fiberglass ponds for swamp water, a big fifties diner, two Star Wars styled X-Wing fighters, and dozens of new pieces I can't even remember. My favorites, though, were the Cosmic Casino games. There was a crash landing game with rockets (darts) that crashed into planets (balloons) on a star-studded backdrop; a Solar Rings game with spacey-looking ring things to toss onto spacey-looking pegs; a Black Hole game with sections of 12" tubing and 11" balls to toss into them. I found that I really liked inventing and fabricating themed games.
One memorable occasion was the afternoon when we were busy in the shop, but not slammed, and the call came from the Marriott: the crew was falling behind! They were setting up a dinner, and they were short some table cloths and chair condoms. They needed somebody to drive a truck out with the stuff and help with the installation. Well, I had a driver's license. All fingers pointed at me. Damn! So, mumbling and grumbling a blue streak, I loaded the step van with table cloths and chair condoms and drove to the Marriott. I parked and carried the stuff in, pissed to the max. Damn it, Jim! I'm a carpenter not a decorator! But I slung tablecloths and stretched condoms for a half hour or so before the band came out to do a sound check. It was the fifth dimension! Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Junior and the others! One of my top 100 favorite sixties groups. They sang five songs for us, and we were digging it the most! Next thing I knew, I had forgotten to be pissed. I went home singing, and the next day bought their Greatest Hits cd.
In early august, we did a show at the Marriott that required a Disney-style castle. Caputo gave the artist at the time, Misty, the job of creating a multi-layered two-dimensional one out of Gatorfoam board. She did, and it was embarassing. It was very difficult to stand up, took a lot of time and materials to keep it standing up, it was small and dumpy. A few days later, Caputo came to the shop with a Corman And Associates catalog. He called Al Ohlson and me to the drawing table and showed us a picture of one of their Santa castles. "I want one of these," he said, "but I want it bigger, like twenty five feet tall, forty feet wide, and, I don't know, twelve feet deep - whatevah. Bigger, you get me? Jimmy, you can run with it, I know you'll do it right. Al, you give him whatever he needs. Got it? Good." he left us a copier copy of the page, and I was off and running with the coolest project ever. All of the towers were octagonal and stacked like Legos. The walls hooked together with French cleats. The two towers on the corners of the walls just hooked over the top and locked the whole business together. No screws were required for the installation. While I engineered and built all of this stuff, Al and Bob were creating the fancy trim pieces. As I finished sections and stood them up, they fitted trim pieces to the sections. Caputo came back frequently to make sure he liked it. I made two tower "hats" shorter than the rest just for variety. "That looks dumpy!" he said. "Make those two just like the others." That was his only criticism of everything I built. And when I was done building the castle, while Al and Bob were making flags, fitting trim pieces, fiberglassing the hats, painting and glittering, Caputo told me to build crates for the pieces. I learned the fine art of crate building when I made forty nine crates for my castle. All of this went on, of course, when there were no more pressing matters to attend to. I remember building an Italian restaurant set with castle parts and crates crowding me all around. Little by little, however, crates were finished, castle parts were laid to rest in them and they were stacked off to the side. December 10th (my mother's birthday) was the maiden voyage. The crates were loaded onto the flatbed trailer and it was hauled to (you guessed it) the Marriott World Center. This was when we learned that the ceiling at the location of the tallest tower was not quite twenty four feet tall. We had to remove a ceiling tile to stack it up. After the party, we took it apart, crated it up and loaded it back onto the trailer. It was hauled back to the shop and sat on the trailer uncovered for two weeks. It rained nearly every day those two weeks. I was physically ill when I looked out at my baby neglected out in the rain.
The honeymoon was officially over.
High Tech Aztec was all about angles. Al Ohlson gave me the project of the two square stepped pyramids that needed to come apart into four pieces along the corners, requiring the figuring of the forty five degree ends that would attach together into the square. I knew how to work it out, but Al argued with me every time I tried to lay it out. He didn't have a clue how to make it work, and didn't trust that I could figure it out. He tried to make the corners by modifying the square-on stringers, and I couldn't make him see that the step widths were going to stretch to nearly one and a half times when measured across the 45 degree angle. Finally one day Al Ohlson took a day off and I laid out and built one whole unit while he was gone, with angle stringers and square-on stringers traced for the second one. The bar units were wacky angles as well. Bob had that project, and after about three days of struggling with it, came to me and asked how to work it out. I pretty much built the first one for him, and he copied it for the second one.
Marriott Masters was a week-long event in May with Marriott people from all over the world coming together at one location - Orlando World Center in 1988 - to learn from each other and get to know each other. Image was the preferred vendor for meetings, parties and other MOWC functions, and there were breakfasts, lunches, dinners and evening parties every day for the whole week. We pulled out every set in the huge warehouse and spiffed up the ones we were using. We built six new cedar gazebo bars, two amoebic shaped 16' wide, 6" deep fiberglass ponds for swamp water, a big fifties diner, two Star Wars styled X-Wing fighters, and dozens of new pieces I can't even remember. My favorites, though, were the Cosmic Casino games. There was a crash landing game with rockets (darts) that crashed into planets (balloons) on a star-studded backdrop; a Solar Rings game with spacey-looking ring things to toss onto spacey-looking pegs; a Black Hole game with sections of 12" tubing and 11" balls to toss into them. I found that I really liked inventing and fabricating themed games.
One memorable occasion was the afternoon when we were busy in the shop, but not slammed, and the call came from the Marriott: the crew was falling behind! They were setting up a dinner, and they were short some table cloths and chair condoms. They needed somebody to drive a truck out with the stuff and help with the installation. Well, I had a driver's license. All fingers pointed at me. Damn! So, mumbling and grumbling a blue streak, I loaded the step van with table cloths and chair condoms and drove to the Marriott. I parked and carried the stuff in, pissed to the max. Damn it, Jim! I'm a carpenter not a decorator! But I slung tablecloths and stretched condoms for a half hour or so before the band came out to do a sound check. It was the fifth dimension! Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Junior and the others! One of my top 100 favorite sixties groups. They sang five songs for us, and we were digging it the most! Next thing I knew, I had forgotten to be pissed. I went home singing, and the next day bought their Greatest Hits cd.
In early august, we did a show at the Marriott that required a Disney-style castle. Caputo gave the artist at the time, Misty, the job of creating a multi-layered two-dimensional one out of Gatorfoam board. She did, and it was embarassing. It was very difficult to stand up, took a lot of time and materials to keep it standing up, it was small and dumpy. A few days later, Caputo came to the shop with a Corman And Associates catalog. He called Al Ohlson and me to the drawing table and showed us a picture of one of their Santa castles. "I want one of these," he said, "but I want it bigger, like twenty five feet tall, forty feet wide, and, I don't know, twelve feet deep - whatevah. Bigger, you get me? Jimmy, you can run with it, I know you'll do it right. Al, you give him whatever he needs. Got it? Good." he left us a copier copy of the page, and I was off and running with the coolest project ever. All of the towers were octagonal and stacked like Legos. The walls hooked together with French cleats. The two towers on the corners of the walls just hooked over the top and locked the whole business together. No screws were required for the installation. While I engineered and built all of this stuff, Al and Bob were creating the fancy trim pieces. As I finished sections and stood them up, they fitted trim pieces to the sections. Caputo came back frequently to make sure he liked it. I made two tower "hats" shorter than the rest just for variety. "That looks dumpy!" he said. "Make those two just like the others." That was his only criticism of everything I built. And when I was done building the castle, while Al and Bob were making flags, fitting trim pieces, fiberglassing the hats, painting and glittering, Caputo told me to build crates for the pieces. I learned the fine art of crate building when I made forty nine crates for my castle. All of this went on, of course, when there were no more pressing matters to attend to. I remember building an Italian restaurant set with castle parts and crates crowding me all around. Little by little, however, crates were finished, castle parts were laid to rest in them and they were stacked off to the side. December 10th (my mother's birthday) was the maiden voyage. The crates were loaded onto the flatbed trailer and it was hauled to (you guessed it) the Marriott World Center. This was when we learned that the ceiling at the location of the tallest tower was not quite twenty four feet tall. We had to remove a ceiling tile to stack it up. After the party, we took it apart, crated it up and loaded it back onto the trailer. It was hauled back to the shop and sat on the trailer uncovered for two weeks. It rained nearly every day those two weeks. I was physically ill when I looked out at my baby neglected out in the rain.
The honeymoon was officially over.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
"I Can Do That"
Nine months in a plant nursery was plenty. In January of 1988 I went to work one morning, was given a task to perform, and said, "No." I went home and started preparing for my new career. The big news at the time was that movies were coming to Orlando. I had said for many years that if the movie industry weren't so far away, I'd be in it. I got a head shot taken by a professional photographer, and put together a montage from the pool of pictures of my Vero Beach experience. I answered ads for actors and extras, I had screen tests and interviews, I attacked it from every angle. What I finally figured out was, if getting into the movies is your whole focus and you're willing to sacrifice everything for it - work for nothing, schmooze everybody, hang around and try to worm your way in - you'll likely get some paying gigs eventually. Plus - the movies were coming, they had not yet arrived. Meanwhile, I had to earn a living. I scoured the newspapers for possibilities. Finally I saw one that asked for Scenic Carpenter/ Stage Hands. "I can do that!" I said. I went into the south end of Orlando and filled out an application. Lo and behold, Image International called me and asked me to start the following Monday morning. Wow! After my Long Wharf and other stage hand experience, I went out and bought myself an adjustable wrench. I still have it.
Monday morning, all starry-eyed, I rode to South Orlando, my wrench in my pocket, ready to begin my new career in show biz. It was a much more typical day than I thought at first. The guy that actually hired me was out of town doing a show, and nobody else in the Production Department had any clue that he had hired anybody. After some digging around, they found evidence to support my claim. I filled out my W-4 and was introduced to Al Ohlson, shop foreman. He pointed me at a "steaming heap" of busted up crap and said,"That's what we're doing. All of this is going out tomorrow morning." What? Going out where? To the landfill? So, bit by bit we pulled out flats, sculptures, platforms, step units and other scenic elements, installed glue, screws, staples, Bondo and fresh paint, and by the end of the day most of it looked pretty darn good. The rest we fixed up Tuesday morning while "the goofies" loaded the truck. The last few pieces were still wet when they were loaded.
We all went to the Marriott Orlando World Center, arriving at about 11:30 am. I overheard that we were supposed to get the room at noon. Room? We're going to need a bunch of rooms to fit all of this! I parked my motorcycle in the motorcycle parking lot and joined the crowd at the big-ass loading dock. Somebody went inside to find out the scoop, leaving us to begin unloading the truck. We unloaded the whole thing, some of it on carts, some on dollies and most just piled on the dock. We learned that we couldn't have the room yet, so chairs were scrounged from the periphery of the loading dock. Lesson one: hurry up and wait.
I didn't know who anybody was, other than Al Ohlson and Bob, the other shop guy. I was sitting on a step unit by a guy I'd seen loading the truck - a goofy. "If you need to go to the bathroom or anything, be sure to tell a supervisor," he said. "Okay," I said, "who is a supervisor?" He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. Al is a supervisor, and Bob, and Lonnie, and Otto, and Bernie, and Larry, and George..." "Maybe it would be easier to tell me who is NOT a supervisor." He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. There's you....and me."
Hours passed. The supervisors were in constant radio communication with headquarters, and with the Marriotters. Nobody seemed to know when we were going to get the room, but it could be just any minute. Eventually we were allowed to take our stuff inside, but we still didn't have the room. This was the beginning of my education in the fine art of hotel ballroom events. The humongous ballrooms could be humongous, or they could be divided into numerous much smaller spaces. The section we were waiting for was part of a larger space, with "airwalls" dividing it from other sections. In between this one and another occupied space was a "dead space" about twelve feet wide. We were given the go-ahead to (quietly) roll our carts and dollies along the back halls and into the dead space. Then we were supposed to sit there quietly until the function was over. After about ten minutes we were asked to wait outside, because Otto just couldn't shut the f*** up.
The supervisory board was really getting antsy now. The show was scheduled to be installed by 7:30, and it was after 4:00. I had already figured out that the 7:30 to 4:00 workday was going to be a wee bit longer than that. It was past 4:30 when the hotel events crew started opening the airwall and clearing the room. We all pitched in, stacking chairs into stacks of ten, folding the legs of the "rounds" and rolling them over to the table carts, and cleaning the areas where set parts were going. Then Al handed me a cordless drill with a screw tip, and we began assembling sets. I found out that this was essentially a corporate theme party, and the theme was "Welcome To Florida." We had a swamp area loaded with plants, a beach scene with a bath house and a lifeguard stand, a space shuttle standing on end, a southern mansion, a shack across the back of the stage, and a gazebo bar. Lesson two: always have a bar. Theme parties are a dish best served with a liberal portion of booze. We finished assembling everything and wrapping the plant pots while the lighting guys ran cords, plugged in and gelled the lights. The party was scheduled to begin at 8:00. At 7:45 we were backing out of the room, plugging in twinkle lights in the ficus trees and arranging plants to disguise our exit point. The overhead fluorescent lights were switched off, and the sets were bathed in theatrical lighting. I had to admit, it was breathtaking. Just add booze and it was magical.
Carmen was a little worried about me when I didn't get home until almost 9:00. I described my day, and she was incredulous. She was sure that a strong organizer could straighten out this craziness. It wasn't too many months later that she stopped asking me how late I was working on any particular day. "Until they say I can go" was all I could tell her. After about two years, I was able to take all of the information available and make a pretty good guess at how long a day would last. No matter how much information was available, however, days like the one just finished were entirely derailed by uncontrollable factors. Best laid plans meant nothing. As I continued to deal with this lifestyle, however, I came to understand that I had the perfect temperament for it. Flexibility has long been my strong suit. It's the only suit that fits show biz.
Monday morning, all starry-eyed, I rode to South Orlando, my wrench in my pocket, ready to begin my new career in show biz. It was a much more typical day than I thought at first. The guy that actually hired me was out of town doing a show, and nobody else in the Production Department had any clue that he had hired anybody. After some digging around, they found evidence to support my claim. I filled out my W-4 and was introduced to Al Ohlson, shop foreman. He pointed me at a "steaming heap" of busted up crap and said,"That's what we're doing. All of this is going out tomorrow morning." What? Going out where? To the landfill? So, bit by bit we pulled out flats, sculptures, platforms, step units and other scenic elements, installed glue, screws, staples, Bondo and fresh paint, and by the end of the day most of it looked pretty darn good. The rest we fixed up Tuesday morning while "the goofies" loaded the truck. The last few pieces were still wet when they were loaded.
We all went to the Marriott Orlando World Center, arriving at about 11:30 am. I overheard that we were supposed to get the room at noon. Room? We're going to need a bunch of rooms to fit all of this! I parked my motorcycle in the motorcycle parking lot and joined the crowd at the big-ass loading dock. Somebody went inside to find out the scoop, leaving us to begin unloading the truck. We unloaded the whole thing, some of it on carts, some on dollies and most just piled on the dock. We learned that we couldn't have the room yet, so chairs were scrounged from the periphery of the loading dock. Lesson one: hurry up and wait.
I didn't know who anybody was, other than Al Ohlson and Bob, the other shop guy. I was sitting on a step unit by a guy I'd seen loading the truck - a goofy. "If you need to go to the bathroom or anything, be sure to tell a supervisor," he said. "Okay," I said, "who is a supervisor?" He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. Al is a supervisor, and Bob, and Lonnie, and Otto, and Bernie, and Larry, and George..." "Maybe it would be easier to tell me who is NOT a supervisor." He scanned the crowd. "Well, let's see. There's you....and me."
Hours passed. The supervisors were in constant radio communication with headquarters, and with the Marriotters. Nobody seemed to know when we were going to get the room, but it could be just any minute. Eventually we were allowed to take our stuff inside, but we still didn't have the room. This was the beginning of my education in the fine art of hotel ballroom events. The humongous ballrooms could be humongous, or they could be divided into numerous much smaller spaces. The section we were waiting for was part of a larger space, with "airwalls" dividing it from other sections. In between this one and another occupied space was a "dead space" about twelve feet wide. We were given the go-ahead to (quietly) roll our carts and dollies along the back halls and into the dead space. Then we were supposed to sit there quietly until the function was over. After about ten minutes we were asked to wait outside, because Otto just couldn't shut the f*** up.
The supervisory board was really getting antsy now. The show was scheduled to be installed by 7:30, and it was after 4:00. I had already figured out that the 7:30 to 4:00 workday was going to be a wee bit longer than that. It was past 4:30 when the hotel events crew started opening the airwall and clearing the room. We all pitched in, stacking chairs into stacks of ten, folding the legs of the "rounds" and rolling them over to the table carts, and cleaning the areas where set parts were going. Then Al handed me a cordless drill with a screw tip, and we began assembling sets. I found out that this was essentially a corporate theme party, and the theme was "Welcome To Florida." We had a swamp area loaded with plants, a beach scene with a bath house and a lifeguard stand, a space shuttle standing on end, a southern mansion, a shack across the back of the stage, and a gazebo bar. Lesson two: always have a bar. Theme parties are a dish best served with a liberal portion of booze. We finished assembling everything and wrapping the plant pots while the lighting guys ran cords, plugged in and gelled the lights. The party was scheduled to begin at 8:00. At 7:45 we were backing out of the room, plugging in twinkle lights in the ficus trees and arranging plants to disguise our exit point. The overhead fluorescent lights were switched off, and the sets were bathed in theatrical lighting. I had to admit, it was breathtaking. Just add booze and it was magical.
Carmen was a little worried about me when I didn't get home until almost 9:00. I described my day, and she was incredulous. She was sure that a strong organizer could straighten out this craziness. It wasn't too many months later that she stopped asking me how late I was working on any particular day. "Until they say I can go" was all I could tell her. After about two years, I was able to take all of the information available and make a pretty good guess at how long a day would last. No matter how much information was available, however, days like the one just finished were entirely derailed by uncontrollable factors. Best laid plans meant nothing. As I continued to deal with this lifestyle, however, I came to understand that I had the perfect temperament for it. Flexibility has long been my strong suit. It's the only suit that fits show biz.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Parting Shots in Vero Beach
The last post ended in such a good place, I couldn't bring myself to finish out the first season in the new place. There's not much to tell, really. The fifth and last show was Charley's Aunt. Way back during early rehearsals for Damn Yankees, the director of Charley's Aunt asked me if I'd be willing to do the set. I said, you guessed it, "Sure." So by the time Damn Yankees had ended, I had plans to go out of town on vacation. I went, and somehow the set got designed and built without me. I felt just like Betty Abbott, but I didn't win any awards.
The summer of '86 was a whirlwind of romance. We camped on an island in the Indian River, she got a horrendous sunburn. We got married in September in the Vero Beach Theatre Guild green room with a throng of our theatrical friends. Carmen's mom came from New Orleans. My mom and dad and their next door neighbor were there. It was officiated by Patti, my first stage manager and our Notary friend. Our honeymoon was at the Disney campgrounds and EPCOT Center.
The next theatrical thing I did was a "cattle call" audition for the upcoming professional shows at Riverside. I did the first soliloquy of Edmond from Firesign Theater's Not Insane album, and sang Oh What A Beautiful Morning. I wasn't nervous, because I wasn't expecting anything. I must have done okay, because many months later, I was called to appear in Hello Dolly. I was paid two hundred bucks for the show - six weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of performances - about twenty cents an hour. I was an ensemble member, a waiter and the judge, all old guys. It was great fun. Carmen did props.
My dad had a deja vu moment in the fall of '86. I'm sure it reminded him of when his father tried to pass the farm to him back in the nineteen thirties, and he didn't want it. My dad tried to pass the art business on to me. I thought about it - my mom and dad added together were making minimum wage, so I would surely be taking a pay cut for a more nerve-racking lifestyle. The bottom line was that I didn't want to run a business. Carmen and I decided to move to the Orlando area for more and better opportunities as soon as the 1987 Dodger programs were finished. And we still had one more show to do for the Theatre Guild.
Mike the sound guy had some reason not to do sound for Once More With Feeling. I was asked, and I said, you guessed it, "Sure." Carmen was asked to be stage manager. I don't know what she said, but she was stage manager. I didn't enjoy this show very much. The director was unpleasant, the tape deck was cantankerous, the music was monotonous, the play was just okay, and we were in "short timer" mode.
In January and February we scouted out rentals in St. Cloud, thirty miles south of Orlando, and Carmen got a job lined up at a title company in St. Cloud. We moved in March, right after the Vero Beach Dodgers minor league program went to press. On April first, I got a job at a plant nursery, and our new life was in motion.
The summer of '86 was a whirlwind of romance. We camped on an island in the Indian River, she got a horrendous sunburn. We got married in September in the Vero Beach Theatre Guild green room with a throng of our theatrical friends. Carmen's mom came from New Orleans. My mom and dad and their next door neighbor were there. It was officiated by Patti, my first stage manager and our Notary friend. Our honeymoon was at the Disney campgrounds and EPCOT Center.
The next theatrical thing I did was a "cattle call" audition for the upcoming professional shows at Riverside. I did the first soliloquy of Edmond from Firesign Theater's Not Insane album, and sang Oh What A Beautiful Morning. I wasn't nervous, because I wasn't expecting anything. I must have done okay, because many months later, I was called to appear in Hello Dolly. I was paid two hundred bucks for the show - six weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of performances - about twenty cents an hour. I was an ensemble member, a waiter and the judge, all old guys. It was great fun. Carmen did props.
My dad had a deja vu moment in the fall of '86. I'm sure it reminded him of when his father tried to pass the farm to him back in the nineteen thirties, and he didn't want it. My dad tried to pass the art business on to me. I thought about it - my mom and dad added together were making minimum wage, so I would surely be taking a pay cut for a more nerve-racking lifestyle. The bottom line was that I didn't want to run a business. Carmen and I decided to move to the Orlando area for more and better opportunities as soon as the 1987 Dodger programs were finished. And we still had one more show to do for the Theatre Guild.
Mike the sound guy had some reason not to do sound for Once More With Feeling. I was asked, and I said, you guessed it, "Sure." Carmen was asked to be stage manager. I don't know what she said, but she was stage manager. I didn't enjoy this show very much. The director was unpleasant, the tape deck was cantankerous, the music was monotonous, the play was just okay, and we were in "short timer" mode.
In January and February we scouted out rentals in St. Cloud, thirty miles south of Orlando, and Carmen got a job lined up at a title company in St. Cloud. We moved in March, right after the Vero Beach Dodgers minor league program went to press. On April first, I got a job at a plant nursery, and our new life was in motion.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
New Digs
I was sitting there at my desk at Emerson Art Service minding my own business (and the client's) when "The Amazin'" Pat Hazen called. The Guild, she told me, was prepared to buy the building outgrown by the Central Assembly of God church, which had moved to an enormous piece of property west of town. But the Guild needed a zoning variance approved by the City Council to open it back up as a theatre, which (for some ridiculous reason) has different rules from a church. We needed a presence at the Council meeting to help convince them to go ahead and approve it. I went. There were at least thirty of us there. They passed it. The Guild now had its own home again, for the first time since they helped build and outfit Riverside so many years ago. The best part: it was about ten blocks from my apartment. I could walk!
There were many things to do to turn this building into a viable theatre, many of which would wait years for the capital to proceed. Short term, the house needed some acoustical help as well as a light booth and sound booth, the stage needed some modifications, the whole interior needed a paint job, and in the meantime there were shows going on in remote locations that needed sets built and rehearsals rehearsed. The whole Guild family sprang into action.
I was there one night, working on the doorway to the Green Room, when local cartoonist Dick Turner came over to me. He had a drawing in his hand, and he looked unhappy. "You're Gil Emerson's boy, aren't you?" he asked. I admitted I was. Still am. He explained that the Guild had asked him to do a backdrop painting for the Guild On The Go production of The Music Man. He'd drawn this 8 1/2" x 11" rendering of it, but his macular degeneration was so bad now that he couldn't even see the whole piece of paper at once, much less an 8' x 12' wall. Would it be possible for me to take the project off his hands? You all remember several postings ago, when I often said "Sure." Well, I said it again. Dick went away happy, and I called my dad. Gilbert H. Emerson had often said he would like to do some artsy stuff at the theatre, but he didn't want to step on any toes or make waves or whatever his excuses were. Also, he had been hinky about driving that four miles to the other side of the river. W - e - l - l - none of his excuses would excuse him this time!
The Music Man has long been my dad's favorite musical. So when he was spending his evenings laying out, drawing and painting a backdrop while performers rehearsed songs from The Music Man in the same room, he was hooked. After we finished that, he worked on the building rehab, and then the production people asked him to design and build the set for John Loves Mary, the first show of the season. He couldn't say no - he was hooked. I'm sure he said "Sure!"
I auditioned for John Loves Mary, and landed a small but pivotal role, Lieutenant Victor O'Leary, former Army officer now ushering at a movie theater. I entered as a straight arrow in Army uniform, drank a wee bit of Mary's dad's scotch, and left the scene plastered. Having such a short time on stage, I knew the scene really well, so when (nearly every night) the rest of the cast got off track, I was able to bring them back to the script seamlessly. It was fun!
I had very little to do with the next two shows - Ten Little Indians and Last Of The Red Hot Lovers. I wrote the cast and crew biographies, and I came to see them on opening night. LORHL was interesting. During the big seduction scene, the main character and his lady friend suddenly stopped talking and stared at each other for way too many seconds. Shirley finally said,"May I use your bathroom?" Al gratefully acquiesced. She left the stage, and Al squirmed a little. Finally she returned with a fresh idea of things to talk about.
Cast and crew bios were kind of fun to write. I handed out information forms to my subjects and told them, "If I don't get this back by Friday, I'll just make something up." There was one that intrigued me from stage manager Carmen Braden. It said she enjoyed reading and riding her bicycle. I added that she didn't do both at the same time. I hadn't ever actually met her yet, but It was in the cards. After opening night of Red Hot Lovers I walked to Denny's for a Grand Slam Breakfast. After I'd been there awhile reading my Vero Beach Press-Journal, a slightly tipsy Ms. Braden came up to me and asked if I was willing to part with the classified ads. "Sure," I said.
Then came the Big One. Damn Yankees was the musical for the season. There were seventeen scenes to be performed on that little stage with no backstage, no wing space, no fly capability, not even any way for the thirty actors to come and go without filing out through the audience.
Set designer Betty Abbott solved one problem. "Make trilons," she said. What she meant were things called Periaktoi, three-sided columns on wheels that can be arranged into multiple configurations for multiple set possibilities. She then went on vacation, leaving my dad to work out exactly what scenes needed to be represented, how many "trilon" sides were needed for each scene and what to paint on them, and how many of what size trilons needed to be built. He built them, laid out the scenes and got them painted. Needless to say, he was a tiny bit cheesed off when the Best Set award went to...Betty Abbott!
I, of course, auditioned, and of course was chosen - as I indicated before, if a show needs a lot of men, pretty much any man that shows up gets drafted. In fact, I had two parts: Joe Boyd at the beginning and end, and Brian, one of the baseball team, in between. This meant that I was there just about every night of rehearsals. And of course I helped with the painting of the Trilons. Also helping was the woman soon to be known as "The Imperious Leader Of The Trilon Forces," the one, the only Carmen Braden. She was my dad's buddy before I actually met her! Soon I became the only actor in the show empowered by The Imperious Leader to move Trilons.
The next solution was pretty drastic. They busted a hole and installed a door through the concrete block wall on the stage left side, built a stairway down to the ground and set up a big tent to be used as a green room and dressing room. Wow.
Another bit of drama in the comedy was that, on opening night, Kevin, who played Applegate, hurt his back after the show. He was bedridden on the second night. Mike, who played Benny Van Buren, had really wanted to play Applegate, so he did for one night. I had wanted to play Van Buren, so I did for one night. Kevin came back in a back brace for the rest of the run.
None of us won real Genie awards for this landmark show, but I won The Imperious Leader of the Trilon Forces award.
There were many things to do to turn this building into a viable theatre, many of which would wait years for the capital to proceed. Short term, the house needed some acoustical help as well as a light booth and sound booth, the stage needed some modifications, the whole interior needed a paint job, and in the meantime there were shows going on in remote locations that needed sets built and rehearsals rehearsed. The whole Guild family sprang into action.
I was there one night, working on the doorway to the Green Room, when local cartoonist Dick Turner came over to me. He had a drawing in his hand, and he looked unhappy. "You're Gil Emerson's boy, aren't you?" he asked. I admitted I was. Still am. He explained that the Guild had asked him to do a backdrop painting for the Guild On The Go production of The Music Man. He'd drawn this 8 1/2" x 11" rendering of it, but his macular degeneration was so bad now that he couldn't even see the whole piece of paper at once, much less an 8' x 12' wall. Would it be possible for me to take the project off his hands? You all remember several postings ago, when I often said "Sure." Well, I said it again. Dick went away happy, and I called my dad. Gilbert H. Emerson had often said he would like to do some artsy stuff at the theatre, but he didn't want to step on any toes or make waves or whatever his excuses were. Also, he had been hinky about driving that four miles to the other side of the river. W - e - l - l - none of his excuses would excuse him this time!
The Music Man has long been my dad's favorite musical. So when he was spending his evenings laying out, drawing and painting a backdrop while performers rehearsed songs from The Music Man in the same room, he was hooked. After we finished that, he worked on the building rehab, and then the production people asked him to design and build the set for John Loves Mary, the first show of the season. He couldn't say no - he was hooked. I'm sure he said "Sure!"
I auditioned for John Loves Mary, and landed a small but pivotal role, Lieutenant Victor O'Leary, former Army officer now ushering at a movie theater. I entered as a straight arrow in Army uniform, drank a wee bit of Mary's dad's scotch, and left the scene plastered. Having such a short time on stage, I knew the scene really well, so when (nearly every night) the rest of the cast got off track, I was able to bring them back to the script seamlessly. It was fun!
I had very little to do with the next two shows - Ten Little Indians and Last Of The Red Hot Lovers. I wrote the cast and crew biographies, and I came to see them on opening night. LORHL was interesting. During the big seduction scene, the main character and his lady friend suddenly stopped talking and stared at each other for way too many seconds. Shirley finally said,"May I use your bathroom?" Al gratefully acquiesced. She left the stage, and Al squirmed a little. Finally she returned with a fresh idea of things to talk about.
Cast and crew bios were kind of fun to write. I handed out information forms to my subjects and told them, "If I don't get this back by Friday, I'll just make something up." There was one that intrigued me from stage manager Carmen Braden. It said she enjoyed reading and riding her bicycle. I added that she didn't do both at the same time. I hadn't ever actually met her yet, but It was in the cards. After opening night of Red Hot Lovers I walked to Denny's for a Grand Slam Breakfast. After I'd been there awhile reading my Vero Beach Press-Journal, a slightly tipsy Ms. Braden came up to me and asked if I was willing to part with the classified ads. "Sure," I said.
Then came the Big One. Damn Yankees was the musical for the season. There were seventeen scenes to be performed on that little stage with no backstage, no wing space, no fly capability, not even any way for the thirty actors to come and go without filing out through the audience.
Set designer Betty Abbott solved one problem. "Make trilons," she said. What she meant were things called Periaktoi, three-sided columns on wheels that can be arranged into multiple configurations for multiple set possibilities. She then went on vacation, leaving my dad to work out exactly what scenes needed to be represented, how many "trilon" sides were needed for each scene and what to paint on them, and how many of what size trilons needed to be built. He built them, laid out the scenes and got them painted. Needless to say, he was a tiny bit cheesed off when the Best Set award went to...Betty Abbott!
I, of course, auditioned, and of course was chosen - as I indicated before, if a show needs a lot of men, pretty much any man that shows up gets drafted. In fact, I had two parts: Joe Boyd at the beginning and end, and Brian, one of the baseball team, in between. This meant that I was there just about every night of rehearsals. And of course I helped with the painting of the Trilons. Also helping was the woman soon to be known as "The Imperious Leader Of The Trilon Forces," the one, the only Carmen Braden. She was my dad's buddy before I actually met her! Soon I became the only actor in the show empowered by The Imperious Leader to move Trilons.
The next solution was pretty drastic. They busted a hole and installed a door through the concrete block wall on the stage left side, built a stairway down to the ground and set up a big tent to be used as a green room and dressing room. Wow.
Another bit of drama in the comedy was that, on opening night, Kevin, who played Applegate, hurt his back after the show. He was bedridden on the second night. Mike, who played Benny Van Buren, had really wanted to play Applegate, so he did for one night. I had wanted to play Van Buren, so I did for one night. Kevin came back in a back brace for the rest of the run.
None of us won real Genie awards for this landmark show, but I won The Imperious Leader of the Trilon Forces award.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
In And Out And In And Out
From spring 1983 we leap to August of 1984. I'm guessing (because I don't remember) that there was a notice in the paper about auditions for A Midsummer Night's Dream to be performed as part of a Renaissance Theatrefest at Riverside - not a Vero Beach Theatre Guild production. I was intrigued. I'd never done any Shakespeare. I pulled out my Complete Works of Shakespeare and read the play. I was flabberghasted to find that The Bard had written me into a play three hundred years before I was born. Bottom The Weaver is an ass - like me. I HAD to audition. There was a lot of competition, but I could feel the role take me with it. I was called back for the next round, and it turned out the director saw Bottom in me as clearly as I did. I was in.
The Mechanicals, the rough tradesmen planning and rehearsing a play to perform for the king and his court, were all excellent, and Bottom was their shining star. We did Stooge moves, I did San Diego Chicken moves (I saw him three times at Vero Beach Dodger games. I have his autographed pictures!) and we rocked the audience.
Once again, I wasn't willing to JUST be in the show. When the director mentioned that we needed three heavy duty rustic stools for the mechanicals scenes, I brought them in from home. He mentioned that he was having trouble finding a donkey head for me. I asked if I could make one. "Do you think you can?" he asked. Fay assured him that I could. I did.
As a promotion for the upcoming Festival, much of the cast of the show was in the Labor Day parade on Ocean Drive in Vero. The carpenter had built a big cart that carried props and costume parts, as well as some cast members, in the parade. It was fun. I was an ass.
The show was performed on an outdoor stage. It was planned for Saturday, but it rained Saturday. We did it Sunday, and it was wondergful. Our only regret was that, after all that work, we only got to do it once. But at least we did it once.
Another act at the faire was "The Lords And Ladies," a local troupe of madrigal singers. Months later, they would be throwing a holiday Madrigal Dinner, and their jester had retired from the troupe. After seeing me in action as Bottom, they asked me to jest for them in December. I did, and it was fun. They also had a gig at the Teacher Of The Year Banquet, and I jested there as well but that was over a year later.
Having spent all that time around theatre again, I sort of got swept into auditions for the Vero Beach Theatre Guild production of The Dining Room in January of '85. It was an interesting show. The main character was the dining room. The six actors came and went through the room through the years as different characters in different situations. I was awarded a "Best Character Actor Genie Award for the '84-'85 season for that show.
Next thing I knew, I was being asked to be in a Showcase Operetta Company production of HMS Pinnafore. Many SOC people were Madrigal Singers as well, and two of them had been in The Dining Room with me. They thought I'd make a good Dick Deadeye. In addition, they needed a lot of help with the set. I was happy to oblige on both counts. The cool thing was that several Operetta people were on the faculty at the Junior High School, so the set was built and rehearsals were held there, about six blocks from my apartment. I walked.
As a smoker and infrequent singer, I was definitely at a disadvantage among these long-time operetta people, but I baffled them with my flair for the dramatic. Dick Deadeye has a verse included in the Finale To Act One, with dozens of people singing complementary chorus parts all over me. I needed a spectacular opening to my little section to focus attention on me among these dozens of performers. "Hmmm," I said, "I could swing in on a rope and land downstage center to begin. That would do it." I got permission from Bill the director and from the Riversiders to climb to the grid, sixty feet above the stage, and attach a sixty-foot rope. It was great. I had a chair off stage left, and a couple bars before my part, swung in and landed with a bang. The only time it didn't work well was the night Pete was meandering downstage just as I took off. The collision was pretty spectacular in its own right, but it didn't really work well as a theatrical element.
Widespread dissatisfaction with Riverside Theatre's new "professional attitude" was surfacing regularly now. Showcase needed the orchestra pit for the show, and it was covered by a stage-extension. Riverside added on a fee of hundreds of dollars to uncover the pit. In addition, they were mandating artistic controls over the Guild. There was much grumbling going on. The summer of '85 was the moment of transition - next post!
The Mechanicals, the rough tradesmen planning and rehearsing a play to perform for the king and his court, were all excellent, and Bottom was their shining star. We did Stooge moves, I did San Diego Chicken moves (I saw him three times at Vero Beach Dodger games. I have his autographed pictures!) and we rocked the audience.
Once again, I wasn't willing to JUST be in the show. When the director mentioned that we needed three heavy duty rustic stools for the mechanicals scenes, I brought them in from home. He mentioned that he was having trouble finding a donkey head for me. I asked if I could make one. "Do you think you can?" he asked. Fay assured him that I could. I did.
As a promotion for the upcoming Festival, much of the cast of the show was in the Labor Day parade on Ocean Drive in Vero. The carpenter had built a big cart that carried props and costume parts, as well as some cast members, in the parade. It was fun. I was an ass.
The show was performed on an outdoor stage. It was planned for Saturday, but it rained Saturday. We did it Sunday, and it was wondergful. Our only regret was that, after all that work, we only got to do it once. But at least we did it once.
Another act at the faire was "The Lords And Ladies," a local troupe of madrigal singers. Months later, they would be throwing a holiday Madrigal Dinner, and their jester had retired from the troupe. After seeing me in action as Bottom, they asked me to jest for them in December. I did, and it was fun. They also had a gig at the Teacher Of The Year Banquet, and I jested there as well but that was over a year later.
Having spent all that time around theatre again, I sort of got swept into auditions for the Vero Beach Theatre Guild production of The Dining Room in January of '85. It was an interesting show. The main character was the dining room. The six actors came and went through the room through the years as different characters in different situations. I was awarded a "Best Character Actor Genie Award for the '84-'85 season for that show.
Next thing I knew, I was being asked to be in a Showcase Operetta Company production of HMS Pinnafore. Many SOC people were Madrigal Singers as well, and two of them had been in The Dining Room with me. They thought I'd make a good Dick Deadeye. In addition, they needed a lot of help with the set. I was happy to oblige on both counts. The cool thing was that several Operetta people were on the faculty at the Junior High School, so the set was built and rehearsals were held there, about six blocks from my apartment. I walked.
As a smoker and infrequent singer, I was definitely at a disadvantage among these long-time operetta people, but I baffled them with my flair for the dramatic. Dick Deadeye has a verse included in the Finale To Act One, with dozens of people singing complementary chorus parts all over me. I needed a spectacular opening to my little section to focus attention on me among these dozens of performers. "Hmmm," I said, "I could swing in on a rope and land downstage center to begin. That would do it." I got permission from Bill the director and from the Riversiders to climb to the grid, sixty feet above the stage, and attach a sixty-foot rope. It was great. I had a chair off stage left, and a couple bars before my part, swung in and landed with a bang. The only time it didn't work well was the night Pete was meandering downstage just as I took off. The collision was pretty spectacular in its own right, but it didn't really work well as a theatrical element.
Widespread dissatisfaction with Riverside Theatre's new "professional attitude" was surfacing regularly now. Showcase needed the orchestra pit for the show, and it was covered by a stage-extension. Riverside added on a fee of hundreds of dollars to uncover the pit. In addition, they were mandating artistic controls over the Guild. There was much grumbling going on. The summer of '85 was the moment of transition - next post!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Painting Pictures On A Wall Of Noise
I was met with skepticism and some annoyance when Craig took me to his first practice with the new band. He and Randy were recruited by an existing band when their lead guitarist/ primary vocalist quit the business because... wait for it... he was losing his hearing. These guys didn't understand why Craig insisted on a sound man out front. They'd never had one before. Well, according to Craig, they sounded like crap before, and he wasn't willing to sound like crap along with them. They agreed because Craig wouldn't do it otherwise - or so he said. Suddenly I was in charge of bringing out the vocals and instrumental solos so that they could be heard over a thick wall of noise that started with Dave's booming drums (not a finesse player) Holt's 80s Van Halen style guitar licks, Jimmy's bass, cranked up to be heard over the aforementioned, and Randy's organ, cranked up even more. I had a twelve-channel mixing board with which I could minimize subordinate noise and maximize what was important to hear. I insisted on coming to rehearsals to learn the songs from my perspective while they were learning to perform them. After hearing Craig talk about them before, I was expecting something really awful. Truth is, they were okay - not at all excellent, but okay.
We practiced in an acoustically augmented garage at Jimmy's house. The former High Tide guys taught Craig and Randy a bunch of stuff High Tide had been playing for years. At one point, Craig stopped the music. "That isn't right," he said. He played the section of the song the way is was supposed to be. Jimmy lept to the defense. "We learned it right off the record," he said. Evidently, there was a skip in the record, and they learned the skip. Hmmmm. Then, Craig and Randy taught Dave, Jimmy and Holt some Doobie Brothers, some Springsteen, some Christopher Cross... and this was much more time-consuming. Craig would be ready to move on, and the High Tide boys were still in the weeds. Holt said,"Can we go through that one more time before we forget it?" Craig retorted, "Why don't we forget it now and save time."
In a few weeks the new band, named "Streettalk" was ready to test its wings. High Tide had had an intermittent gig at The Causeway Lounge in Vero Beach. Streettalk was ready to pick up where High Tide had left off. So, one Sunday afternoon in September we hauled all of the instruments and PA equipment into the Causeway and began setting up. My mixer was in the back corner, with a sixteen-cable "snake" running to the stage. Each musician set up his own vocal mic and whatever else - Dave's drums, Holt's fancy amp, Craig's regular amp and Jimmy's bass amp all had microphones on them to carry the sound to the mains - huge speakers run through a fancy main amplifier and equalizer - all owned by rich kid Holt. I was looking forward to a sound check so I could equalize the sound, but rich kid Holt had a fancier technology than crappy old human ears. He had a thing that shot pink noise, a full-frequency hiss, through the mains, and an electronic doohickey that received the noise and told him how to set the equalizer. The noise had to be REALLY LOUD, like a jet engine, and it had to go on for like fifteen or twenty minutes. Very annoying. Then they could turn on all of the microphones and do a sound check. It would sound okay. The first time out I tried to bump up the upper mid range, but Holt stopped me. The doohickey said it was right, he believed the doohickey, he owned the equalizer. I learned to live with it.
Most of our gigs were at the Causeway. We had a devoted following, some of whom showed up wherever we played - well, not usually at weddings - but we were considered the House Band at the Causeway. Jimmy was the star of the show, with his dick nose and glasses, his double entendre jokes and other classy stuff. His bass playing was pretty good, and he sang well enough. The most memorable song he sang was one he wrote called Arkansas Woman, which became even more memorable four years later when I married an Arkansas Woman.
Dave considered himself leader of the band. He was a mediocre drummer at best, loud and a bit erratic. There were five or six songs where you could just expect him to drop a beat or add one in. Craig described him as "one beat off." Craig does not have a reputation for being nice.
Randy was lazy. He was lead singer on maybe fifteen songs when we started out. By the time I left the band, ten months later, he was down to about two a night. He played his keyboard sporadically, and most of the time he just stood there looking bored.
Craig hated being in this band, being identified with them - but he loves to play guitar and he loves to sing. I got bored listening to most of their stuff, but when Craig played and sang Layla, it all seemed worth it somehow. He liked having me there because I got his humor. Sometimes it was a word change in a song; sometimes it was a comment between songs; sometimes it was a guitar lick. He would look out at me, I'd be laughing, and he'd know that at least one person in the room paid attention and got the joke.
The wall of noise became apparent to me one night at the Causeway when their first song of the night was some raucus number, but all I could hear was loud, just incredibly, paralyzingly loud. I had no control of vocals or instruments. I ran to the front and tried to listen to the mains, but I couldn't really hear anything distinctly above the loud. Then Holt had a light bulb light up over his head. He turned to his left and hit the switch to the main amplifier. Suddenly, the sound was much better. Even louder, but much better. What I had been hearing had been unamplified drums, and the individual amps of the bass and two guitars on stage. Vocals and organ were only audible from the onstage monitors for them to hear themselves and each other - which is why they didn't realize the mains weren't on. I realized just how freakin' loud they were: durn loud.
We played one gig at a health club. We were supposed to play outside, but it started raining as we were setting up. We moved inside to a smallish room with mirrors all around the walls. I believe that if there hadn't been fifty people in there to absorb some of the sound, we would have blown the mirrors off the walls. That sound was ridiculously horrendously loud and completely uncontrollable.
One of my favorite weeks at the Causeway was the week Craig had laryngitis. He felt well enough to stand up there and play the guitar, but he had absolutely no voice. He sang lead on a lot of the songs, sure, but he sang harmony parts on ALL of the songs. He sings in my range, so I plugged his vocal mic into the board back in my corner and sang all of his harmony parts all week. That was great fun. The guys were almost willing to risk trying me out to sing lead on a few songs, but chickened out. It was weird to think about a song being sung from the back of the room. But then, weeks later I wrote a song called "Dem Sound Man Blues" one night when they were just jamming around some blues licks for fun. After that, "Dem Sound Man Blues" was usually included sometime during the week.
It was always assumed back in '82 that the band members were druggies. Once, on a break out back of the Causeway, a scruffy-looking kid sidled up to Craig and said, "Hey, Man, you wanna buy a bag of buds?" Craig, with a sly smile, said, "No, thanks, I don't drink."
At about the same time that we joined Streettalk, Craig and I went to my dad and inquired as to whether Craig could join the staff of Emerson Art Service. So for about ten months, Craig and I worked together from 9:00 am until 1:00 am. Craig stayed with EAS until the business was sold in '88, and stayed on with the new owner for a while after that. I haven't seen him since the early double-naught years. Sometimes I miss that boy. He's a very funny guy.
After I left, Mike from the theatre handled sound for a while. Then I think they just flew without a sound person. They played the Elks Club on New Year's Eve 1983. The geezers in there hated it. They said it was too loud! They were just sitting there looking miserable for four hours. The guys in the band hated playing to an unresponsive and even hostile audience. After it was over the guy that hired them paid them. "Wow, that was great!" he said. "I'd like to go ahead and book you for next year." This came as quite a shock. "Gee, I don't think so," they said. "I'll pay you a thousand dollars more than this!" he said. What could they say? "Okay." The next year the Elks hated them just as much, and the guys were sure it was their last Elks New Year's Eve. But the same guy did the same thing - begged them to come back for even more money. Finally, they had to dissolve the band to get out of playing for the Elks.
We practiced in an acoustically augmented garage at Jimmy's house. The former High Tide guys taught Craig and Randy a bunch of stuff High Tide had been playing for years. At one point, Craig stopped the music. "That isn't right," he said. He played the section of the song the way is was supposed to be. Jimmy lept to the defense. "We learned it right off the record," he said. Evidently, there was a skip in the record, and they learned the skip. Hmmmm. Then, Craig and Randy taught Dave, Jimmy and Holt some Doobie Brothers, some Springsteen, some Christopher Cross... and this was much more time-consuming. Craig would be ready to move on, and the High Tide boys were still in the weeds. Holt said,"Can we go through that one more time before we forget it?" Craig retorted, "Why don't we forget it now and save time."
In a few weeks the new band, named "Streettalk" was ready to test its wings. High Tide had had an intermittent gig at The Causeway Lounge in Vero Beach. Streettalk was ready to pick up where High Tide had left off. So, one Sunday afternoon in September we hauled all of the instruments and PA equipment into the Causeway and began setting up. My mixer was in the back corner, with a sixteen-cable "snake" running to the stage. Each musician set up his own vocal mic and whatever else - Dave's drums, Holt's fancy amp, Craig's regular amp and Jimmy's bass amp all had microphones on them to carry the sound to the mains - huge speakers run through a fancy main amplifier and equalizer - all owned by rich kid Holt. I was looking forward to a sound check so I could equalize the sound, but rich kid Holt had a fancier technology than crappy old human ears. He had a thing that shot pink noise, a full-frequency hiss, through the mains, and an electronic doohickey that received the noise and told him how to set the equalizer. The noise had to be REALLY LOUD, like a jet engine, and it had to go on for like fifteen or twenty minutes. Very annoying. Then they could turn on all of the microphones and do a sound check. It would sound okay. The first time out I tried to bump up the upper mid range, but Holt stopped me. The doohickey said it was right, he believed the doohickey, he owned the equalizer. I learned to live with it.
Most of our gigs were at the Causeway. We had a devoted following, some of whom showed up wherever we played - well, not usually at weddings - but we were considered the House Band at the Causeway. Jimmy was the star of the show, with his dick nose and glasses, his double entendre jokes and other classy stuff. His bass playing was pretty good, and he sang well enough. The most memorable song he sang was one he wrote called Arkansas Woman, which became even more memorable four years later when I married an Arkansas Woman.
Dave considered himself leader of the band. He was a mediocre drummer at best, loud and a bit erratic. There were five or six songs where you could just expect him to drop a beat or add one in. Craig described him as "one beat off." Craig does not have a reputation for being nice.
Randy was lazy. He was lead singer on maybe fifteen songs when we started out. By the time I left the band, ten months later, he was down to about two a night. He played his keyboard sporadically, and most of the time he just stood there looking bored.
Craig hated being in this band, being identified with them - but he loves to play guitar and he loves to sing. I got bored listening to most of their stuff, but when Craig played and sang Layla, it all seemed worth it somehow. He liked having me there because I got his humor. Sometimes it was a word change in a song; sometimes it was a comment between songs; sometimes it was a guitar lick. He would look out at me, I'd be laughing, and he'd know that at least one person in the room paid attention and got the joke.
The wall of noise became apparent to me one night at the Causeway when their first song of the night was some raucus number, but all I could hear was loud, just incredibly, paralyzingly loud. I had no control of vocals or instruments. I ran to the front and tried to listen to the mains, but I couldn't really hear anything distinctly above the loud. Then Holt had a light bulb light up over his head. He turned to his left and hit the switch to the main amplifier. Suddenly, the sound was much better. Even louder, but much better. What I had been hearing had been unamplified drums, and the individual amps of the bass and two guitars on stage. Vocals and organ were only audible from the onstage monitors for them to hear themselves and each other - which is why they didn't realize the mains weren't on. I realized just how freakin' loud they were: durn loud.
We played one gig at a health club. We were supposed to play outside, but it started raining as we were setting up. We moved inside to a smallish room with mirrors all around the walls. I believe that if there hadn't been fifty people in there to absorb some of the sound, we would have blown the mirrors off the walls. That sound was ridiculously horrendously loud and completely uncontrollable.
One of my favorite weeks at the Causeway was the week Craig had laryngitis. He felt well enough to stand up there and play the guitar, but he had absolutely no voice. He sang lead on a lot of the songs, sure, but he sang harmony parts on ALL of the songs. He sings in my range, so I plugged his vocal mic into the board back in my corner and sang all of his harmony parts all week. That was great fun. The guys were almost willing to risk trying me out to sing lead on a few songs, but chickened out. It was weird to think about a song being sung from the back of the room. But then, weeks later I wrote a song called "Dem Sound Man Blues" one night when they were just jamming around some blues licks for fun. After that, "Dem Sound Man Blues" was usually included sometime during the week.
It was always assumed back in '82 that the band members were druggies. Once, on a break out back of the Causeway, a scruffy-looking kid sidled up to Craig and said, "Hey, Man, you wanna buy a bag of buds?" Craig, with a sly smile, said, "No, thanks, I don't drink."
At about the same time that we joined Streettalk, Craig and I went to my dad and inquired as to whether Craig could join the staff of Emerson Art Service. So for about ten months, Craig and I worked together from 9:00 am until 1:00 am. Craig stayed with EAS until the business was sold in '88, and stayed on with the new owner for a while after that. I haven't seen him since the early double-naught years. Sometimes I miss that boy. He's a very funny guy.
After I left, Mike from the theatre handled sound for a while. Then I think they just flew without a sound person. They played the Elks Club on New Year's Eve 1983. The geezers in there hated it. They said it was too loud! They were just sitting there looking miserable for four hours. The guys in the band hated playing to an unresponsive and even hostile audience. After it was over the guy that hired them paid them. "Wow, that was great!" he said. "I'd like to go ahead and book you for next year." This came as quite a shock. "Gee, I don't think so," they said. "I'll pay you a thousand dollars more than this!" he said. What could they say? "Okay." The next year the Elks hated them just as much, and the guys were sure it was their last Elks New Year's Eve. But the same guy did the same thing - begged them to come back for even more money. Finally, they had to dissolve the band to get out of playing for the Elks.
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