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 s...
Cat Club, New York, NY..... In part, I went to this show to see King Missile as the billed opener, but something happened and they didn't perform. It was a bummer, but the night ended up getting weirder and weirder. One member of the group I went to the show with was a very attractive woman, and at the show she met Jay Blumenfield, the guitarist for the band Too Much Joy. He bought her a number of Jagermeister shots during School of Fish's performance and she became more than a little bit drunk. She also knew School of Fish frontman Josh Clayton-Felt, and Josh invited us to come to an afterparty at the Limelight, the church-turned-music-venue on Sixth Avenue at West 20th Street. So my group, with Jay from Too Much Joy in tow, walked over to the Limelight for the afterparty. I was already starting to have misgivings about staying out too late, as it was a weeknight and I was on the air at WHTG at 6 AM the following morning. When we got to the Limelight, though, the bouncer woul...
The Saint, Asbury Park, NJ.... Jason Ringenberg is the formerly (and still occasionally) frontman for Jason & The Scorchers, and he put on an amazing show. He was playing solo, but with enough energy for a whole band. He not only did all the major Scorchers tunes, but he played some of his great solo numbers and even a cover of "Trail of Tears" from Guadalcanal Diary. I met him before the show, and a genial follow as well. We discussed Ed "Hamell on Trial" Hamell, who had made a guest appearance on Ringenberg's latest solo release. I told him that I had a record from Hamell's early band, The Works, and promised to send him a scan of him with '80s hair. Ringenberg gave me his business card, which listed a series of descriptions of what he does and "ruthless music industry mogul" was among them. Great guy.
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