We slowly wormed our way through the downtown streets of New York and made it to our destination; it was quite the sight. The club that we were scheduled to play was the largest church I had ever seen in my entire life. The club was called “The Limelight”, also known as the “Rock-N-Roll Church.” Here we were, standing out like a bunch of surf punks, in the middle of downtown on a Saturday night, ready to party our asses off! We were so damn excited; we parked the trucks and ran inside to see the interior of the monster sized church club. We entered from the south entrance and to our amazement, it looked even bigger on the inside. We were the first band to arrive and there was nobody else around except for a few of the club’s employees that were preparing for the evenings festivities. As we were inside, one of the janitors asked if we had a tan Chevy van outside. We all stated yes and inquired why he was asking. I was thinking that we probably got a parking ticket. It was worse. Someone had broke into the van and stole the cheap $30 dollar stereo out of the van. We looked around to see if anything else was missing. Everything was there, except for the stereo and speakers. How stupid were these thieves? We had music gear, guitar amps, leather jackets, suitcases, etc. None of that was even touched. They just wanted the stereo. Good thing they were stupid. It would have been really bad if any music equipment or stage gear was missing. We were lucky. We unloaded all of our gear into the club to avoid any further possible thefts.
We were greeted by a young lady in her twenties that was dressed in a “goth” outfit. She was really pretty, but a little strange. She was ghostly white with bright red lipstick, dark blue eyeshadow and jet black hair. She was wearing a “witch” type of dress that looked like something out of a Harry Potter book. She was very kind and invited us in for the “nickel” tour of the club. I remember thinking, the smallest tour of this huge place would more likely be a “dollar” tour. She waltzed us over to the club’s main bar and had the busy bartender that was frantically prepping his area for the evening, make us each a custom drink. She told us not to simply order a beer, but instead insisted that we each have a cocktail on the house. Who were we to argue? We got our drinks and continued on with the tour. The place was a full maze of tunnels and different rooms to party in. They were decorated in a medieval style and each had a little something different about them. Our guide took us to the second floor that was loaded with dozens of small balconies and one large loft. When we made it to the edge of the main balcony, I realized where the stage was. I did not see the stage when we first entered the club, because the stage was at least 10 feet in the air. Just imagine where the priest and alter boys would stand if this were still a church... right where we would be setting up our stage gear to rock out. Not only was the stage ten feet high, it was fifty feet wide and twenty feet deep. This was a professional size stage, like none I had ever set eyes on. The backdrop of the stage was a extra large stained glass image of Jesus, that stood thirty feet in the air. It was breathtaking.
We wandered around the rest of the club and casually asked how many people this club could hold. The woman calmly answered, “Oh, somewhere around 1800 hundred, maybe more. I would have to ask. We are sold out tonight, so it should be a good show.” None of us said a word, but I knew what we were all thinking... HOLY CRAP! She escorted us to the stage where I stood frozen in place. I must have looked like a big dork, standing in place, staring into space, jaw dropped, and paralyzed from excitement. I remember looking at all the stage lighting, sound gear and mixing boards. The last time I had seen anything to this scale was at a Van Halen concert. The woman walked us to our dressing room in the rear of the club. I thought there must be some mistake. Our dressing room had already been
decorated like a movie star wedding reception. The table clothes were white lace, the couches looked brand new, and were bright purple with black satin pillows. The walls were painted a deep merlot and the drapes that adorned the 150 year old stained glass windows were also deep purple with black and red stripes. The walls were all a heavy, very thick stone and the floors were made of small hand chipped cobble stone. There was a deep red carpet that ran down the center of all the walkways in the dressing room. There was a large buffet table with ten different types of foods for us to eat. I immediately noticed a full size refrigerator, so of course I opened it. The fridge was stocked with every type of beer and liquor you could possibly imagine. We were told that private security would be on guard the entire concert and they would keep the number of our guests in the backstage area to a maximum of thirty five people at any given time, due to New York City Fire Code. We all sat in silence and she explained the rules to us. We were bursting inside, but we were trying to act like this lifestyle was normal to us and this was no big deal. We played it cool for the time. The woman was leaving and she gave us some laminated backstage passes. We read the passes and realized that we were the headlining band for the evening. Lizzie looked stunned. I know I was stunned along with the rest of the guys. We were the headline band, in New York City, at the coolest club I had ever seen, catering and liquor to our hearts content. Could the night get any better?
It was really early, approximately 2:00 p.m. and we would not be playing until at least midnight. We took advantage of the wonderful food and liquor for approximately one hour. After that, Ernie and I decided to go see the sights. For some reason, I had money on me. I don’t remember how or when I came into such luck as to have money, but I didn’t really care. We wandered out of the club and it seemed dark outside. Strange, it was 2:00 in the afternoon on a summer day. Why would the sun be blocked out? Well, when you are downtown in New York, the buildings are so tall, they block out the sun. That was a first for me. The middle of the day, no clouds in the sky, but no sun. Just the buildings! As I had mentioned earlier, New York had an energy like no other place. I don’t recall being happier on any part of the tour for this long. I was not hungry, but we ran into a place that was selling sidewalk pizza. Sidewalk pizza is a little stainless steel cart with one of those fancy, bright yellow umbrellas, and some monkey looking, older, fat, hairy Italian guy in his late forties, plain dingy white shirt stained with every type of food grease, manning the booth as he sold pizza. From what I gathered, he cooked the pizza right on site. It smelled so good, I had to have a piece.
“One dollar”, said the fat gorilla smacking his red sauce stained lips as if he just finished off a piece himself. The gorilla man leaned over to a smoldering cigarette, picked it up, shoved it into his mouth as he grunted and gasped for breath. Now the cigarette in his mouth dangling with a long ash hanging at the very tip just dying to drop off into the condiments on his pizza cart. Gorilla man squinted his eyes close to being shut, took a few puffs without touching the cigarette with his hands and stated, “One dollar Guys... One dollar.” Ernie and I decided why not, shit! The ash finally fell off of gorilla man’s cigarette right onto the street. There was another long cigarette ash in the works as he puffed away and rubbed his fat beer belly against the back side of the cart. Everything this guy did was slow and seemed to be very laboring to the poor slob.
There was a liquor store on the corner right behind the pizza guys cart. I elected to retrieve a couple tall beers from the store so we could wash the pizza down. I came back with the beer and the pizza guy said, “Yeah, this pizza needs a good ice cold beer.” We asked him where we could slam the beer, out of sight so the cops would not give us any problems. The gorilla pizza man laughed at told us that it was legal to drink on the streets here in New York. That was great news. No reason to hide a drink here! Needless to say, that was one of the best pieces of pizza I had ever had in my life.
We wandered off down the street, taking in all the sights. It was a lot to soak in at one time. The streets were buzzing with all types of life. There were musicians playing various instruments and others were performing tricks and barking words to get your attention. Most of them were scam artists offering street games to gamble your money away. I was really caught up with all the action. We waited at a street cor
ner for one of the lights to turn green so we could legally cross the street. Everyone else bolted across when there was a clear spot, but we new better. Somehow I would end up in trouble if I Jay-walked across the street. The light turned green and the traffic signal “walk” sign lit up allowing us to cross the street. I stepped off the curb and was immediately struck in the right arm by a passing moped. The collision caused me to jump back abruptly and of course, I tripped, spilled my beer all over my chest, then fell on my ass. The driver of the moped stopped, turned to his left and yelled, “You stupid fuck! What the hell are you doing asshole? Pay attention!” As the person on the moped was yelling at me, it took me a second to register in my head that this was a police officer. I was confused as he yelled at me because I had the “walk” signal to cross the street. Right at about the time he told me to “pay attention” I noticed his moped had flashing blue lights rotating 360 degrees. I got up to dust myself off and check myself for injuries. The police officer saw that I could get up on my own, so he shook his head annoyingly and drove off and was not seen again. What police agency uses mopeds? What police agency would clip a pedestrian with a vehicle, stop, yell at the possibly injured person, and then speed off into the sunset? I thought, shit... I guess I’m alright. I Got up and finished crossing the street. This entire incident lasted approximately 30 seconds, but felt like 5 minutes. Ernie stood on the other side of the street, eyes bulging out of his head, mouth wide open and said nothing but, “Dude, Duuuude! That was weird!” Ernie and I discussed the strange incident for another minute or so, then continued on with our journey as if nothing ever happened.
I quickly replaced the spilled beer with a new one and continued wandering through the streets for the next hour or so. We met several other musicians along the way that actually knew who we were and had tickets in their pockets to the show that evening. Everyone that we met, approached us and asked if we were in a band and if so which one. I don’t think they knew of Ernie and I personally, they had just hear of us on the radio and local banners and posters of the up and coming show at the Limelight. Everything in New York seemed very surreal. It did not seem right that we could meet
strangers wandering around the streets of New York that knew who our band was. That was incredible to us.
We got back to the Limelight at around 8:00 pm to a welcoming crowd of around one hundred people that were all outside the building waiting to get into the club. I walked up to the front entrance where the people were slowly filtering into the club. I was glad that I had my backstage band pass, because that would have been a pain trying to get into the club without it. Once inside, I was impressed at the number of people already inside the club since it was only 8:10. I made it up to our private dressing room to find Lizzie in a sea of woman drinking Jack Daniels and Coke. Lizzie had invited every halfway good looking girl backstage to party with us for the next few hours. Lizzie’s gauge of what a good looking girl was often distorted by alcohol. At least half of the girls looked like they were straight out of a cheap “B” horror film. They were all dressed in the same style. Black lace dress, black stockings, black pump boots, dyed jet black hair, white makeup, cherry red lipstick, with dark blue eyeshadow. Several of them seemed as if they were clones. That made the evening very eerie.
Most of these woman were already trashed on some type of drug and the large amounts of alcohol backstage did not help matters at all. The couches were lined with drunk ladies lying on top of each other, and some had already passed out. Lizzie seemed like he was in heaven, where as Vince, Ernie and I were not interested in any of these girls. We decided to leave Lizzie to have his fun with the girls, while we went out into the sea of people to play “rock star” for the evening. We filled our glasses with various types of alcohol and went out to see what kind of trouble we could stir up. We made it to the main portion of the club, and not more than a minute passed before we were swarmed with dozens of people wanting autographs on every Ultra Pop item you could imagine. I don’t think any of us realized how popular we were in New York, until that night. I must have signed a few hundred autographs and taken countless photographs as I stood next to stranger after stranger smiling for the camera. If any one of us had died that evening, we would have been alright with it. We had achieved our goal... We had arrived!
My buzz began to fade away, due to too much talking and not enough drinking. We fought our way back to our dressing room to find tons of woman passed out in various positions on the couch. What was going on back here while we were out? Only Lizzie and God knew! We could not find Lizzie among the 35 ladies that were drinking all of our booze and eating our food. I casually approached the security guard and asked him to kick out all of these girls so we could re-group and relax before the show. I quickly walked away from the security guard so none of the woman would know it was me that asked to have them thrown out of our dressing room. I had never seen such a smile on a security guards face before. I think I made his night. He seemed to take great pride and pleasure telling each and every one of the ladies that their time was up and they would have to leave. The backstage area was emptied in minutes. Not a soul was here except for the band. I never thought in my life that I would want a minute to myself. I had finally understood how some of the movie and rock stars must feel having people vying for your attention. It is exhausting! We all agreed and wanted at least an hour to ourselves. Well, that hour lasted about 30 minutes, because Lizzie arrived and let another ten gothic looking girls backstage again. I was not sure if these were the same girls or not, I really couldn’t tell.
The security guards were really strict about the 35 person limit backstage. I decided if we were going to have woman back here with us, they could at least look good. I went back out to the circus of people and began to approach ever decent looking lady out in the audience. I asked approximately 20 girls if they would like to come backstage and hang out with the band for a while before the show. By the tenth girl, I was telling them to come with me backstage for drinks, food and fun. I did not get one “no” the entire evening. The backstage area was soon filled with a better looking group of females and the vibe backstage was much better then when Lizzie was in charge of the chick corral. Thirty five girls/woman/ladies trying to get four guys attention was quite fun, but it was now time to go on stage and play the show. Entering that stage of the Limelight was every musicians dream come true. I could see screaming people packed in like little sweaty sardines, hands in the air rockin’ out to our music. One thing I do remember very well was seeing people mouth the words to the bands songs while we played. Ultra Pop had a one hour set that felt like it lasted five minutes. I don’t remember actually playing the songs in the set, I just knew that I was in a time and place that I could get use to for the rest of my life.
WELCOME TO THE DARK SIDE - Cupkake
Day 2 in New York City would prove to be quite a different experience. We had made quite a bit of money playing at the Limelight and we decided that we should be treated to a nice hotel stay. We were hung over from the spectacular evening, but we were not worried. We knew we could shake it off and get back into the saddle and play another bitchin’ show. After all ,we were scheduled to play the infamous CBGB nightclub on the other side of town. This club was said to be one of the most awesome places for any band to play. We were stoked and so excited to get down to CBGB’s, that we checked out of our hotel and went straight over to the clubs location. We had directions to the club, but as we drove the city started to become very gloomy and run down. I remember thinking that we must be lost because such a prestigious club could not possibly be located in this horrible part of town. I was wrong. Very wrong.We pulled up to what looked like an absolute shit-hole of a club, that could not be located in any worse part of town. The club was in a residential/ business part of town and I sure was not used to seeing a neighborhood such as this. There were businesses on the bottom floor and there were crappy apartments above the businesses. All the buildings in the area were 3 to 4 stories tall, n
ot like Manhattan. The outside of CBGB’s was extremely run down and coated with graffiti and old band fliers that over the years had coated the outside of the building making a montage of unreadable words and photos. It was now approximately 1:00 P.M., so we exited our vehicles and pulled on the doors of the club to see if anyone was around. No luck. Here we were at the club way too early, nowhere else to go, sitting in the middle of what looked like the border of hell. The temperature was hot and humid and the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. There was a stale stench in the air, not quite a sewer smell and not quite a rotting dumpster smell... just a thick heavy, musty reek. Not a word was said to each other while we were standing outside what everyone in the music business had boasted to be the most fantastic clubs on the planet. I think we all thought the same thing, I’m sure of it. You could see the looks on everyone’s face. This was quite a let down from what we had experience the night before. The mood declined by the minute and none of us appeared very happy to be there.
What does a band do when they have nowhere to go and they are borderline depressed before they even start playing a show? Well, they start drinking. We decided someone needed to walk across the street and purchase some alcohol from the corner liquor store. Now this may seem like a very simple task. After all, the liquor store is two hundred yards away from our location. Lizzie and Vince elected to take the trip, while the rest of us stayed with the vans and the equipment. Vince did not make this trip out of the kindness of his heart, he must have been low on smokes. Vince would always volunteer to go to the store when he need to restock his smoke stash. Lizzie and Vince started to cross the street and not more then one second passed when they were yelled at by a passing police car. We heard the cop on the electronic public address system say, “Use the crosswalk or you will be talking to me and getting a citation!” Lizzie and Vince seemed to take the warning seriously, after all, none of us wanted any trouble in this town. It might prove to be very costly. We continued to watch Lizzie and Vince as they were trying to locate a cross walk. Lizzie and Vince disappeared over the horizon of the sidewalk as they disappeared into Hell. We did not see Lizzie and Vince reappear for approximately ten minutes, and then they were finally on the other side of the street walking toward the liquor store. They went into the store for another five minutes and walked out with four twelve packs of beer. Lizzie obeyed the police officer the first time, but did not appear to want to obey the order after he had all of this beer to carry back. Lizzie took one step onto the street hoping to cross over to our side of the street. I guess the police must have been extremely bored on this particular Sunday afternoon, because the moment Lizzie and Vince touched the street, the electronic public address system sounded off and said, “I warned you, you will receive a citation if you Jay-walk in this area! Where did that cop appear from? Man, I swear he was hanging in the area to screw with the visitors form California. We could hear Vince yell at us to bring the van over so they did not have to walk another ten minutes away to the cross-walk a quarter mile down the street. We pretended that we could not understand what Vince wanted us to do. Vince was visibly upset as he motioned to come to their rescue. Vince appeared very pissed as they walked off over the horizon to the cross-walk that was apparently quite a distance down the street. The entire beer run took Lizzie and Vince a little over a half hour. When they both returned, they immediately angrily asked, “Why didn’t you guys bring the van over like we asked?” Pops spoke up and told Lizzie and Vince that we could not understand what they were yelling, otherwise we would have helped out.” (Yea, right!) Pops loved to screw with Vince.
Hollywood: Rock Of Ages Page 20