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...
Amphitheatre at Station Square/Chevrolet Amphitheatre, Pittsburgh, PA I was extremely late for the show. I was on the guest list, but they almost weren't going to let me in since they had already broken down the will call table. I had just recently moved to Pittsburgh and I was still getting used to the early concert start times which are the rule here (unlike the NY-NJ area, where the headliner rarely goes on before 11pm, even on weeknights). post continues.... My previous experiences seeing The Clarks were in small clubs in NJ, so I was shocked and amazed to see a sellout crowd in this amphitheater (which is actually just a parking lot with a permanent teflon tent-structure over it). Regional stars are a phenomenon we don't have enough of anymore--bands usually attain some level of national success or else they're stuck in local-band hell. The Clarks sold out this place, something that the Foo Fighters didn't even do a little more than a week later. Cool!
Danceteria, New York, NY [UPDATE: I finally tracked down the date and venue of this show!] I don't recall the exact date nor the venue, but it was a late show with King Missile as part of the New Music Seminar. My friend Kathy and I drove into the city and, naturally, there was a guest list problem. Earlier that evening, we had gone to an unusual performance space called The Gas Station (at Avenue B and 2nd Street), a barely-renovated abandoned gas station with an ample outdoor space surrounded by chain-link fence. The place was being used as a showcase for Baltimore-based record label Merkin Records. They had their bands Monkeyspank, Buttsteak, and Antic Hay performing but I didn't include an entry on this blog for them because I honestly don't recall which, if any, of the bands we saw play. I primarily remember someone going around with a basket of loose cigarettes labeled "have a cigarette, leave a cigarette, need a cigarette, take a cigarette" and a chair f...
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