Nova Pilbeam

Chameleon Bar, New York, NY.....

I had what was really my only booked performance in a music venue as a musician. It was at the Chameleon Bar in New York City, and I was part of Nova Pilbeam, the acoustic duo I had formed with my college friend Marnie Dubow. We had named our musical combo after a British actress who, as a teenager, had appeared in two Alfred Hitchcock films.

Nova Pilbeam was a cute and spunky young woman who had a memorable supporting role in Hitchcock's 1934 classic They Man Who Knew Too Much and then starred in his Young and Innocent in 1937. Two years afterwards, Pilbeam married the great-grandson of Alfred, Lord Tennyson until he was killed in a plane crash during World War II. She retired from acting at age 29

During most of 1990, I had lived in Chelsea -- long before the neighborhood's gentrification, back when New York was a very dangerous place. In fact, that year that I lived in a windowless basement apartment about 75 feet away from the 8th Avenue subway line turned out to be the most deadly year in murders that the city has seen to date. Although I, fortunately, never had a problems while I lived there, incidents like this were all too shockingly common: 

Around 1989 or so, Danny Vermont, a friend from college, was working to get himself established in stand-up comedy, and he performed any room he could around the city. One of the places on his rounds was the Chameleon on E. 6th between Avenues A & B, one in a series of anti-hoot locations run by the musician known as Lach. So I was familiar with the place and their weekly Thursday open mic night.
When Marnie and I began performing out, the Chameleon was the first place we went to play. After a few open mic slots, Lach offered us a slot on an "invited mic" night--a step below an actual paid gig, but a step up from the anyone-can-play open mic. Plus, after the set, Lach would always pass a hat after the set amongst whatever audience was there, so the prospect of making a little money by playing was a welcome notion.

Our booking was for January 16, 1991 at 9 PM. By this time, I was living back at my parents house in New Jersey. I had been laid off from my job in the mailroom at A&M Records in NYC, so I had retreated from my subterranean quarters on W. 18th Street in favor of rent-free living. 

But when the appointed day arose, I would have to take a series of trains to get to the gig at the Chameleon. It was a Wednesday evening. I grabbed my trusty Palmer guitar (a cheap brand made in China and bought, I think, in a mall record store) and walked to the train station. It was unseasonably mild that day with a high temperature of 45, but it was going to be much chillier in NYC. I never had a case or bag for that guitar, and I remember nervously gripping the neck on the train as if someone planned to grab it from me and run.

At Hoboken, I changed from the NJ Transit commuter rail line to the PATH train that would sweep me under the Hudson and into Manhattan. I immediately felt a little strange in the PATH train car. There was only one other person in that car, a rather agitated-looking woman. I was used to full PATH trains, so it felt odd having a train car nearly to myself.

"Did you hear?" the agitated woman blurted out at me from across the car.

Startled to be spoken to by a stranger, and completely clueless as to what she could be referring to, I could only manage a confused, "What?"

"We're bombing Iraq!" she proclaimed with all the urgent intensity of a person trapped in a free-falling elevator. 

The PATH train from Hoboken to my 9th Street stop takes all of ten minutes or so, and we continued the rest of our trip in a very awkward silence punctuated only by the occasional screeching of the train's wheels on track curves.

Now, of course I knew that Iraq had invaded Kuwait the previous August, and that U.S. and coalition forces had been building up forces in Saudi Arabia ever since under the code name Operation Desert Shield, and that the previous day had been the final deadline for Iraq forces to withdraw under U.N. Security Council Resolution 678. But this strange woman on the PATH train seemed a uniquely unreliable source. I could easily imagine her blurting out "Did you hear? We're bombing Iraq!" every evening around the same time.

After emerging to the streets of Greenwich Village, I wanted desperately to either confirm or contradict this information. As I walked, I peered through windows of bars and restaurants to see if I could gather any evidence one way or another. One had CNN running on a wall-mounted TV set -- gasp! -- CONFIRM! The next had on a Knicks game -- CONTRADICTED! The clues were frustratingly vague.
Finally, as I began heading over to the East Village, I encountered more people outside, and while passing a group gathered around a radio, I overheard news coverage that corroborated my nervous PATH train town-crier.

The New York Times was busily rewriting their front page for the late edition. "In one long moment yesterday, word that the United States had attacked Baghdad swept the country," the newspaper declared. "In split-level suburban homes on the East Coast where dinner was in the oven, in big-city restaurants in the Midwest where bars were jammed with the happy-hour crowd and in skyscraper offices on the West Coast where people were still at work, there was an odd mixture of apprehension, sadness and relief."

I hurried the rest of the way to the Chameleon, wondering how this development would affect Nova Pilbeam's set. When I got there, the Chameleon had CNN showing on a large projection behind the small stage. I found out that President Bush was going to address the nation at 9 -- the exact start time of our set. The bar was going to show the speech, and then we would be able to start performing afterwards. I nervously chatted with the college friends who had shown up to support Marnie and me in our first real, sort-of, gig. As the distinctive green night vision shots of bombing over Baghdad were shown on CNN, there was a gallows humor thread weaving through the conversation as friends tried to reassure me that the commencement of a televised war was not necessarily a disaster for the gig.

Before long, the thin, tired face of President Bush appeared on the TV, live from the Oval Office. Bush began this important and grave speech curiously, by placing some papers held in his hands down on his desk as if the nation had dropped by his office unannounced, interrupting important President business.
"Just two hours ago, allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. These attacks continue as I speak. Ground forces are not engaged," Bush intoned. 

The New York Times' front page story in their late edition stated that "Suddenly, in public places where cacophony is the norm, there was an unusual silence, eerie rather than giddy. Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan -- where even whispers can take on an echoing, high-decibel intensity -- was quiet. On trains to Connecticut, passengers gathered around people who had radios with headsets…. The word that waves of air attacks were striking Iraq silenced black-tie galas in Manhattan. And in a Houston hotel, the chatter around the bar stopped when the President began his speech from the Oval Office. Only the machine making frozen margaritas kept whirring."

In the Chameleon, I listened and wondered whether my guitar was in tune, and I mentally ran through the words of one my compositions on Nova Pilbeam's setlist for that evening, "Stardust in My Head": "I've seen too many places where people died watching TV," the lyrics went. "I've seen too many people who lived while on their knees."

"This conflict started August 2nd when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor," Bush went on. "Kuwait, a member of the Arab League and a member of the United Nations, was crushed; its people, brutalized. Five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait. Tonight, the battle has been joined."

I nodded with empathy. I was feeling like world events were a brutal dictator invading my small and helpless career as a musician.

"Some may ask: Why act now? Why not wait?" said Bush. "The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer."

Bush's speech was brief, only about 10 minutes. After that, Marnie and I took the stage and began our first Nova Pilbeam gig. The sound had been muted on CNN, but the green-tinted live video of night vision bombs and tracer fire continued to project behind us as we ran through our set.. 

"Sometimes I feel that I should go and get myself away/From all of the ailments the world suffers from today," I sang with conviction. "I don't need another thing to fill me up with dread/And all I ever wanted was stardust in my head."

The performance went well. I felt a mixture of excitement and relief when it was over. Despite the weirdness, it was a triumphant night.

Unbeknownst to me as I was heading home to Jersey that night, crowds of war protesters were massing in Times Square. They began marching to the United Nations, the group swelling to about 2,500 people. Later in the night, a smaller group of protesters were marching across the Brooklyn Bridge. A car hit them, sending two people over the side of the bridge. One landed in a parking lot, another in the East River. 

As it turned out, Nova Pilbeam only had one other gig -- a week or two later, at a get-together of people planning an anti-war rally in New Brunswick. 

By mid-February, I started working as Production Director at WHTG near Asbury Park, and I quickly was also given the morning show hosting duties. So I very quickly had no time to rehearse my own music. Marnie eventually regrouped with a new band named after another woman of the classic cinema, Bankhead. The actual Nova Pilbeam passed away in 2015 at age 95.