Rochester was a lovely
surprise. There’s a lot of music
packed into that town. Four vinyl stores including a really huge one called the Record
Archive, (which we did not get to) the Eastman School of Music, and after the
rather voluble denouement of several days of interpersonal friction, our tourist
destination for the day: the House of Guitars. The store was organized like an
Appalachian homestead, rooms seemingly tacked onto others, no real idea what of
would lie around each corner. I’m not really in the mood to go into some
reverie on all the obscure and rare models of guitars, amps, and ephemera there,
but it was fun to see them in a Tantalus-like way. It’s not a store for people
who can’t stand clutter though, especially the cavernous room with records and
t-shirts. Shit was just everywhere; underfoot and stacked horder style. The
truly cool thing was the owner, who became familiar from the hundreds of
pictures on the wall featuring him posing with every artist you’ve ever heard
of: Ringo Starr, Run D.M.C., John Entwistle, every metal band ever, and just on
and on. As I made my way back to the front room I saw one of the rare instances
where Chuck got to be all fanboy talking to him. His name is Armand Schaubroeck
and he played drums in a band called the Churchmice,
who put out a single in the late ‘60’s I believe, that Chuck still owns and loves. Super lo-fi, noisy garage rock. After
that the dude was in a proto-punk band called Armand Schaubroeck Steals that was working a similar patch of
ground as the Ramones around the same time. He told us a story of how they were
sleeping in Grand Central Station and Andy Warhol got them a meeting with John
Hammond II at Columbia Records. They looked and smelled so bad he was horrified
and ask how they got into his office. After a bit Armand asked if we wanted to
see the recording studio – because H.O.G. had had it’s own label for awhile, a
la Shake It Records, and they had been recording bands there for 30 years. Neat
to meet a guy, who seemed to be sincerely nice, who had experienced that much
rock history.
Still,
we had to get our asses to Albany. We checked in to a hotel that served dinner buffet style to all its guests. God, I swear it smelled like beef stew laced with sterno and
regret. (recent research claims humans can distinguish 1 trillion different
odors – don’t tell me regret isn’t one of them) The main course appeared to be
micro-waved grilled cheese but I chose the vegetarian’s delight of iceberg
lettuce and potato chips made famous at wedding receptions the world over.
The
club was called the Low Beat and was in what we were told was a bad
neighborhood. Seemed all right to me excepting the deeply disappointing
eggplant parmesan sub I got across the street. The Low Beat was another cool
little club (Rene’ did her homework well) of the dive variety. They were
excited to see us, having somehow received the mistaken impression we were a big deal.
They went so far as to tell the opening band they had to play on the floor in
front of the stage so as to not disturb our gear. It took about an hour for us
to convince them that we could easily push our equipment back so they could
play on the stage. The opening band were really young and adorable, and when I told them they
could use my bass amp the one kid said to the other, “I keep forgetting that
non-New York bands are nice.” Lisa told him that’s the way it feels in everyone’s
hometown scene.
So keep in mind this was a Monday
in a town we’d never played, but it was our best night of the tour so far. A
good-sized crowd of people were there who seemed really happy to see us. And
finally, we played like ourselves again. Hell, we even got called back for our
first encore of the tour. After the show I talked to a couple of guys who loved
Ohio bands and used to go see the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu. I don’t know, I like
our fans.
Tomorrow is Burlington:
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