Formed a Band: Art Brut

Suddenly things were happening fast. Now, I was no longer in the slow-motion world of waiting five weeks for an MRI. I was in the express lane. My doctors wanted to put me into the oncology ward at the Milstein Hospital immediately but there was no room. They devised a work-around where I saw another neurologist who then had me admitted to the emergency room. The back door. Once I was inside the ER, I was in the front of the line to get admitted into oncology.

I got a bed in a very loud and active part of the ER area, filled with patients who were either accompanied by police officers or appeared to have mental health issues. I was there for a few hours and then, happily, moved to a quieter area, sharing the room with an elderly Puerto Rican man. Around two a.m., some orderlies wheeled me up and over to the oncology ward on the Sixth Floor, crossing an interior bridge that spanned Ft. Washington Avenue and through the maze of the vast, connected hospital complex. I remarked on the hospital’s sprawl and told the orderly that I heard they were filming “Die Hard 8” here. He laughed. It was a suitable place to battle terrorists. And now my lymphoma.

There was no actual room for me in oncology, however, so they shoved my gurney into a little nook off a hallway that they dubbed “the alcove.” Rather than the nook. Another way station on my journey. This was sort of an official unofficial place where they stowed excess patients while waiting for a room to open, as had been my previous stops since my ER admittance. It was very noisy and there was no bathroom; those were all in the rooms. I was hooked up to an IV drip and so had trouble moving anyway.

I saw my doctor, Dr. Salas, the next morning as he made his rounds with his staff of other doctors and nurses. It was a bit of a sycophantic relationship. He said something, they laughed. He told me my odds. “We are aiming to cure.” Ten percent of people do not respond to treatment. Seventy percent do fine and in twenty percent the cancer returns. I was alone. For so much of this difficult process I had Margie by my side but now circumstances dictated that I was solo. I mean at the end of the day, you are sick with cancer alone, even with an amazing and understanding person who loves you by your side.

Later that day they found a room for me, one with a magnificent view of the Hudson River, George Washington Bridge, Fort Lee, the Palisades and the Henry Hudson Parkway. A Pisgah site of Paradise -- or Palestine -- or the Palisades.

I was almost always hooked up to an IV and although I had signed a release allowing the doctors to insert a “port” in me where they could then easily insert IVs, that never materialized. Instead, I was poked several times a day for various blood checks and other treatments, and while some of the nurses were good at it, a few inserted the IVs awkwardly resulting in my arms bloating, and bruising, and leaving strongly discolored souvenirs that lasted for months.

Margie came to see me, bringing some food. She came every single day, spending most of the day with me, as I mostly lay in bed and looked out the window. I did a few tours of the ward, IV pole in tow. Oncology, not surprisingly, is a very sad place. Peeking into some of the rooms revealed some people that were horribly bad off. Those nurses were doing God’s work. And my nurses were great despite some of the IV misfires.

The hospital food, on the other hand, was terrible. I had been losing weight since May, but I lost more weight during my hospital stay because the food was so unappetizing, even the smell of it was sickening. I am an omnivore, save a dislike for grapefruit, my Achilles Heel, but the hospital food was tough to eat.

Hospital Food: Eels

I had gone into the hospital on Wednesday, December 16 and had my first chemo treatment that Thursday. My therapy was called R-CHOP -- with the “R” standing for the drug Rituximab and the CHOP consisting of three or four other drugs that they administered intravenously in stages. I liked the name; it sounded bad ass. Gonna R-CHOP this tumor’s ass. They gave me the Rituximab first, but I had a severe reaction to it, shaking violently and uncontrollably and my pulse rate and blood pressure both rocketed upwards. This was scary and discouraging. What if I could not withstand the treatment?

The nurse remained calm. She texted the doctor but otherwise seemed not too concerned even as I grew cold and was shaking like a fish out of water, a condition called rigors. Probably not related to rigor mortis? Margie was there and she was very concerned. Me too. I was even concerned by the lack of apparent concern by the doctor and nurse. They turned off the Rituximab drip and instead gave me some steroids and hydration through the IV lines to see if my vitals would calm down. My vitals did return to normal levels and the nurse tried again, this time setting the Rituximab IV drip to a slower level. I was going to walk before running. Fortunately, this time I tolerated it, and we completed that part of the treatment. But by then it was already near midnight. Margie needed to get back to Brooklyn, a long subway ride away.

While in the hospital, I heard from friends who suggested I shop around for a good oncologist. But that wasn’t the way it worked. There was no time for interviews or shopping around. I was in the Columbia system, and I went into the Columbia hospital. No one asked my input, and it was all done with the utmost urgency. I suppose following my release I could have searched for another oncologist and gone with their treatment program. But I was happy just to be treated.

For months I had been begging to see a doctor and to have someone take my mysterious condition seriously and then once the cancer was discovered everything moved very fast and I was not the one making the decisions. I was glad that there was at last a sense of urgency and they were getting right into treating me. The doctors were also aware that Christmas was just one week away, so the idea was to get this done before the Christmas and New Year’s holidays disrupted and paused everything.

No Sleep Till Brooklyn: The Beastie Boys

On Friday I had the second half of my CHOP treatment, but no one really explained anything. I thought I was going to get multiple chemos and that is why they wanted to keep me through the weekend. And two of the weekend fill-in doctors, young guys who looked like interns or whoever gets the weekend shift, told me as they made the rounds that I was going to have more chemo treatments that weekend. But that was incorrect. They were talking out of their hats and apparently did not know anything about my case or treatment plan but that did not stop them from giving wrong info. I suppose they wanted to be helpful. It’s like when the tourist asks you if you know where so and so is at and you say yes and give directions, even wrong ones, because you want to help. In fact, I was being held to have a spinal tap/lumbar puncture on Monday when Dr. Khandji would be working again. To me, it was odd that a large, famous hospital was keeping what seemed like banker’s hours.

So, I endured an uneventful, unpleasant weekend. The IV units that me and my various roommates were always hooked up to often triggered alarms on the pump. Extremely loud alarms. They clearly had not figured out the technology as these alarms went off throughout the night. I was also repeatedly awakened during the night so they could check my vitals, my pulse, blood pressure, temperature, take my blood, weight, etc. I thought sleep was vital but that was apparently not the plan in the hospital. It would be no sleep ‘til Brooklyn. So, I got very little restorative rest despite being in bed almost all of the time.

My room was also right by the nursing station and front desk, where the staff hung out. They were there all night and had no sense of observing “quiet hours.” They were the night staff so nighttime was their daytime. I was tethered to the IV pole so my nighttime peeing was mostly done by standing up and peeing into a pee container, a plastic wide-mouth bottle. Somewhat reminiscent of the Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor bottles I had drank in my youth but now the process was reversed. I was drinking lots of liquids and being hydrated via IV fluids so peeing frequently and had to call for my plastic pee bucket to be emptied frequently. I did not want to be in a situation where I did not have a pot to piss in.

I was visited by Dr. Harms, who lived in the neighborhood. He brought over some of my imaging discs and was basically saying good-bye to me as a patient. He said, “I hope by next year at this time, all of this is a distant memory.” That was a nice thing to think. Hey, maybe by this summer, it could be a distant memory. I didn’t know. I was in yet another completely uncharted world to me and one where those who might know did not or could not tell me much. And I sure was not going to start doing any reading on the internet because that was just entering into a world of frightening things. Dr. Harms even had advised me when the tumor was discovered and prior to my diagnosis: don’t go on the internet; it will without doubt freak you out. I was already sufficiently freaked out.

Between the lack of sleep, the terrible food, being tethered to the IV pole, and simply wanting to go home, it was a tough stay. I was beat up and tired out by the chemo, although I avoided any very bad reaction. I also was never able to have any real bowel movement during my entire six -day sojourn. This was truly an irregular situation, and no amount of prune juice or laxatives was putting me back on my normal track. It was my body’s way of telling me that things were not ok. But, in the scheme of things constipation wasn’t my biggest concern.

Please Mr. Postman: The Marvelettes

I had two roommates during my stay in the oncology ward. One was an ex-postman in his early 40’s named Tim. He had a form of prostate cancer and gone through many different therapies. He was in for some experimental trial therapy. He was the one who told me that with chemo you lose not just the hair on top of your head, but all of your hair -- your body hair too. I had not considered that. He was from Rockland County, near Nyack. His girlfriend came by on the day he was going to be discharged. They were one of those couples whose way of relating was by saying how stupid the other person was. Foreplay by insult. No, you’re stupid. No, you are. There was a curtain between our beds, but I kept hearing them trade insults for about six hours. His girlfriend kept wanting to climb on top of him and he kept telling her they needed to wait. Hot blooded. It was a bit sit-com-like but also touching. I guess, literally.

She unexpectedly passed through the curtain and came into my area to take a look out the window, having heard the view was quite spectacular. Fortunately, her eyes were focused on the view outside, the Hudson and the George Washington Bridge, because at that moment I was peeing into the plastic jar. She might have seen a different spectacular view.

Tim was discharged and my other roommate was brought in during the middle of the night. He was an older Hispanic man who I heard moaning in agony all night long. He kept begging for morphine, which they gave him eventually. He had incurable metastasized stomach cancer. Then I heard him getting interviewed about his decision to stop all further treatment and choose his end-of-life hospice. He had been involved in theater and had been a teacher but now he was just a thin relic of a man. It was hard to say how old he was. 60? 65? It was sad to hear him suffer and to hear him discuss his end-of-life options. Also, demoralizing.

Homeward Bound: Simon and Garfunkel

That Monday, I was brought into the room in “interventional radiation” with the imaging device so Doctor K. could do the lumbar puncture while avoiding the tumor. The initial shot is a shot of local anesthetic into the spine. Then, they insert a long needle into the spine and draw the fluid. My August 30th LP had involved two attempts by Dr. Scelsa. I expected better from Dr. K., but he failed in his first attempt and a second. The mighty Khandji was at bat with two strikes. And no tap. No fluid. Two strikes as I lay uncomfortably on the imaging device. And even with the anesthetic, each puncture with the long needle nosing around for a tap was unpleasant. To say the least.

The doctors needed to check my spinal fluid to see if it showed any cancer in my spine, in the central nervous system, past the blood-brain barrier. It sounded like something for Jacques Cousteau to explore. Or the vaunted Dr. Khandji and perhaps his brother, Phillipe. This was no voyage aboard the Calypso, however. They also wanted to put a little chemo directly into my spine to treat anything that might be in there. But the great, well-respected Dr. K. told me that he was having trouble and ready to give up. He was going to send me back for an MRI to help locate the fluid. That meant that I would have to wait to be scheduled for one of those and re-scheduled for another LP-spinal tap with Dr. K.! And I had been so excited about going home. I told the doctor that my previous doctor had to try twice. He should give it another go.

And he did. I convinced him. He gave me another shot of local anesthetic and a puncture higher on the spine and had me repeatedly cough and move my insides as if I was moving my bowels. Hey, I had been doing that already during my BM attempts these past six days. It was a team effort, but I was never so happy as when he started to get a slow dribbling tap. Yes! This is spinal tap! We are going to do this, and I am going home.

The tap was done by 1:30 p.m. I went back to my room and packed immediately. Margie arrived with a delicious egg, cheese and bacon sandwich. But I kept waiting to be released. The doctors had failed to secure medicine I would need, various one-day injections of the drug that helped to restore white blood cells after the chemo went in there and wiped everything out. I got an intern to work on it, but he was on the phone with various pharmacies and involved in some bureaucratic hell. He told me that if he could not get this together, I would have to spend the night in the hospital. If I left the hospital on my own, before being properly released, which I was entirely prepared to do, I would be marked down as “against medical orders” in my discharge. I was finally released, not against orders, around 7:00 p.m., although it was still up to me to try and secure further doses of my medicine. “Call this number,” I was told.

They had managed to get me three doses, out of a needed ten. Another seven would be sent to me I was told but now there were complications with the insurance, etc. The upshot is they sent me three doses, but I never got the other seven. They said it did not matter. And then it was left to me to schedule an appointment with my new oncologist, Dr. Francesca Montanari. I sat around the hospital for six days and when everything was all done my release was delayed for six hours because they had not bothered to get the drugs they knew I would need or set up my follow up appointment. They left it to me to do over the Christmas holidays. Excellent.

Back in Brooklyn, Home of the Grand Army:

Free Fallin’: Tom Petty

Margie and I rode the subway home that Monday, and I tore off my hospital ID bracelet on the train. That was a feeling of joy. I did have a misstep on the way to the bathroom that first night and fell face forward but luckily got my arms in front of me and braced my fall. A reminder to watch my step. I was out of the hospital but not out of the woods. A lot could go wrong.

The next day was Christmas Eve. Simple pleasures. It was the greatest gift just to be home for Christmas. Margie made pasta with garlic and vegetables, one of our staple meals, and I ate a large portion. In fact, I had a very healthy appetite, despite the chemo. It was just the hospital that had put me off from eating. I spoke with my family on the phone. They were gathered on X-Mas Eve. My brother was on the phone. Even he was nice to me! The magic of cancer. Some people are really kind to you. It was eye opening and quite beautiful and made up, in part, for those who just checked out on you during your illness.

Christmas 2019:

We also did a Facetime call with Margie’s family, her two sisters, niece, and nephews in Pittsburgh. In fact, Margie’s sister Janet, who had never visited us the entire almost 30 years I had known Margie, came to visit with her daughter, Mikaila. They were moved by the sight of my illness. So they stopped by while Mikaila was returning to Boston where she was in grad school at M.I.T. I spoke with my family. There was no possibility they were going to come visit me. My mom was elderly, too old for such a long drive on her own, and my brother and I just had never been close.

Once I was home, our handsome boy cat, Albert, aka Mr. Cat Gable, took a sudden turn for the worse. Margie said he had been showing signs of some distress and sadness in my absence (they are very tuned in to their human companions, unlike humans). Now that I was back, he had blood in his urine, something that can be fatal in male cats. It was as if noble Albert had been holding out so as not to make Margie deal with two full-on crises at once. Margie took Albert into the Vet ER. He had a number of tests, and the doctor gave him something to calm him and his urethra. And they basically worked. We could have used the calming something too.

Ain’t Nothing But a House Party: The Showstoppers

However, that first week out of the hospital I played a lot of shows. So much for calm. I insisted on doing them, figuring they were good for my spirit. I was a performer and liked to perform. Some friends assumed the shows were cancelled and when they learned I was doing them tried to advise me against it, saying it was flu season and I was weakened from the chemo. But I went ahead.

Jug Addicts at Sunny’s, Boxing Day 2019:

The first show was the Jug Addicts on December 26 at Sunny’s Bar. It was Boxing Day or St. Stephen’s Day, so not many people came but my friends Margot and Mark made it. Seth Kessel played guitar. I was now using a rotating cast of fill-in guitar players with the Jug Addicts because the “permanent” members either moved away, like Sean, or kept cancelling at the last minute, like Marcus. The rotating cast of all stars worked well and ended up being less chaotic than having the regular members drop out just before the shows.

The gig was 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and I had to sit down on a stool on the stage sometimes even though I had always performed standing. Afterwards, Margot apologized for suggesting that I not do the show. She said it was great. It did feel uplifting. I felt some unusual sense of accomplishment, though I also battled an extremely painful headache that developed. The headache started on Christmas and lasted for the next five or so days, likely the result of the triple spinal puncture.

The next night, Friday, December 27, Bill Carney’s Jug Addicts were at Barbès. That show lasted from 8-9:30 p.m. and we had the mighty Thor Jensen on guitar. Thor looked like a nicely groomed Viking and was a guitar virtuoso. He regularly played Manouche-Gypsy jazz guitar with Stephane Wrembel, one of Django Reinhardt’s greatest disciples. I explained to both Seth and Thor about my cancer prior to each show. And then, following that awkward little talk, it was show time!

That show was packed full in Barbès’ small back room. I felt that I was really coming into my own fronting the band. It had only taken 23 years. Again, I felt very connected to the performance and what I was doing, most likely because I had just been through this harrowing wake-up call in the hospital. In the past, I would sometimes let Karl handle the talking, the fronting of the band. I sort of hung back, drinking beer, being a little removed, which is a default state of mine. Not these shows. I was fully engaged with no hiding. And it felt great, even with another paint-splitting headache and difficulty standing.

Jug Addicts at Barbes, December 27, 2019, with Thor Jensen (right):

The final gig came on New Year’s Eve, my 8th day out of the hospital and my third gig. This one was an LSC gig at Rubulad, the underground art and performance space where we had long played even as they had moved all around the city hounded by the police and fire department. They had a place in Bushwick now and had avoided being shut down.

Margie and I got a ride there with our guitar player John. At Rubulad, I found a seat along the side of the main performance room and sat there observing the action, waiting for our show, as the various New Year’s revelers filed in. That was a first. I was usually in the courtyard seated at the bar having a cigarette waiting for showtime. This time it was nice just to observe the place fill up and see the opening bands. I was in a wholly other mental state.

LSC at Rubulad, NYE 2019:

More Rubulad NYE 2019:

The band right before us really got the crowd going. They had a heavy multiple drum percussion groove that got most of the audience dancing. LSC is not really a dance band, though people often seem to think of us that way. They expect non-stop go go and instead get some sort of weird, art performance, albeit with some catchy, high-energy tunes. But for this show I made sure to load the set with our most dance-friendly numbers. I knew people wanted to dance the year away. I did. If I could.

Audrey and some of the other band members started to get a little nervous about how well the band before us was doing, like we would be a big letdown and not connect with the young crowd that was there. Or they would be all tired out from dancing to the first band. They seemed like a tough act to follow but I was not worried. I might have been in the past but now, after dealing with my cancer diagnosis and just out of the oncology ward, I did not worry about how we were going to do. There was a serenity in having been through my hospital stay and treatment.

I did, however, worry about whether I could stand continuously for our 50-minute set or how I might get on and off the stage with its high steps. I suppose local, specific worries like that helped because when we got on stage I was ready to do it. The crowd danced and roared and our crowd response was bigger than the band before us. Our show had more of a dramatic arc and went to different places than the previous band, which had a cool sound, but just one cool sound. We could shift some gears.

The show was over. We ended just before midnight and then there was the big countdown and Margie and I were together and kissed one another. Good-bye 2019. 2020 just had to be better, right? It was past midnight but I could not get a cab. Wachter wanted to stay but happily changed his mind and agreed to drive Margie, me and singer Audrey home. But when we got to John’s car, we discovered that he had locked the keys inside. We waited on the streets of Bushwick among the young revelers for another 40 minutes until an Uber arrived and went home in that. Happy 2020!

Looking At You: MC5

I also did my first two solo appearances – at the age of 58 and after having been in bands since 1981. Better late than never. I had been playing guitar at home for many years but never reached a very high level of proficiency and learned during the few times I played in public, even at low-risk places like open mics, my modest guitar skills dropped even more

Mike Morgan:

My friend Mike was the editor of a little left-wing magazine called “Hard Crackers.” The main guy was Noel, an unreconstructed Leninist (or Trotskyist?), who had written a book called “How the Irish Became White” and edited a magazine called “Race Traitor.” That magazine was about racism and white people’s mistreatment of Blacks. This magazine was supposedly called “Hard Crackers” because of the hard tack biscuits Union troops ate during the Civil War -- but the people involved in the magazine were almost entirely old white guys. I thought maybe it was Noel’s little joke to dub themselves hard “crackers.” The magazine had issued its manifesto about four issues in. It was lengthy, about eleven pages long, and professed a belief in revolution. No liberalism. So, it was a revolutionary magazine, but its guiding light was the stories of New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, and interviews with and essays on the common man, a revolution through ordinary circumstances.

Twin Jugs, Ready for Action:

The Revolution, of 1836:

I had no faith that a revolution would lead to anything better. In fact, I was quite sure that any revolution, the kind we were already seeing in right wing, fascist, anti-democratic actions, was not going to be pretty. It was going to be soft and incremental, non-violent, take away democratic freedom for an authoritarian and corporatist state. And in the US, the fascists had the guns. We had the numbers, but they had the guns. Jim Morrison sang confidently about this numerical advantage that the 60’s hippies supposedly had in a song called “Five to One” implying the hippies were going to emerge victorious in the ensuing struggle.

That did not happen of course nor was it ever likely to happen. I mean, these guys were getting high, enjoying the sexual revolution, so yes sure, revolution for everybody. Some hippies went to the Democratic Convention in Chicago and got their asses kicked by the Chicago police. The police had guns and clubs, the hippies not much. And when some did turn violent the full power of the state came down upon them hard. It was a death wish. So, I was not optimistic about any current revolution. It was nice to think about I guess suddenly everything would be changed and a just society created. But there had just been not much luck with that one whereas liberalism had created social security, unions and weekends. And it was liberal thought that had put an end to slavery though that war was still being fought.

The Hard Crackers group had a small gathering in the back room of the new Freddy’s bar (the old one had been seized by eminent domain for an arena for the local pro basketball team, concerts etc., hockey games, and the main attraction, a gigantic apartment development) as each new issue came out. Mike acted as MC, a role he was very comfortable in from both our events surrounding “Lurch,” our old literary magazine we published from 1993-2013, and Mike’s days speaking at events as part of his U.S.-based anti-apartheid group. Mike was South African and had deserted from the South African army, making his way to London, where he got hooked up with resistance groups, and ultimately NYC, where he drove a cab and engaged in activities against the apartheid regime in the South African War Resisters group.

After Mike did his intro and outline of the afternoon’s event, usually John Pinamonti and I played a couple of songs. John was an accomplished song writer and guitar player. He played guitar and sang, and I played washboard and or kazoo along with him, usually choosing songs that related to that issue’s content. Our rehearsal was a brief run through in the basement just before showtime, a couple of old pros.

Violet and Albert, October 2019:

Albert, December 2019:

But for this event in late October, John was not available. He and his wife had bought a small apartment in Doylestown, Pennsylvania and had plans to be away. So Mike entrusted me with solo entertainment duties. He suggested I read a bit from my memoir in progress and do a couple of songs. I read a passage from the “The Mud, the Blood and the Beer,” about living in a skid row-bohemian area in Detroit’s Cass Corridor in the 1980’s and I played a couple of the songs I had written, my first solo public performance at age 104. At last.

John Pinamonti:

After, several people told me that they liked my songs. Even Noel, who was a bit aloof towards me and had not so much as uttered a word to me at the prior meetings where I had performed with John, gave me a nice smile and nod. I was in. As it turned out, that was the last time I saw him. He died just a week or so after. I regretted being so aloof myself that I never got to know Noel a bit better. He was the head guy, probably expected me to come to him more than I did. I learned after his death of some of the remarkable things that he had done in his life as a factory worker, organizer, activist and associate professor.

Sticks, a cool, tall, bearded hippie guy who worked with my good friend Rob Yagley at the Park Slope Food Co-op, and who I liked a lot, said how he dug the songs. He asked if I would play at a benefit concert in a few weeks. The bar Sticks worked part time at as the morning porter, The Sackett, was raising money for the soup kitchen across the street. My solo career was on its way! With the Sticks seal of approval. And for a righteous cause.

The soup kitchen benefit show was also at Freddy’s and featured some longstanding singer songwriters, including a guy I knew a bit, Bucky, and they were quite good. But I felt that I held my own with them. They were complimentary about my songs too and it was encouraging.

Chapter Four: Club Med

Stalin Wasn’t Stalling: Robert Wyatt

I finally got my MRI on Monday, December 2, 2019. Margie and I took the subway to the Kings Highway station and then walked about eight blocks through a light snow in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood. It was an area populated with Russian-Jewish immigrants. Other than me, the clinic was full of mostly elderly Russians, all in various states of distress. It was like the aftermath of Stalingrad. And I was a witness to their historic “victory.” Dr. Harms had done a lot to make sure that the visit was foolproof, even speaking to someone on staff beforehand and giving the approval codes for my MRIs with and without contrast for both pelvic and lumbar. Still, despite his precautions, my insurer Oxford/United Health, called the imaging center and I had to go to the desk and explain over the phone to someone from Oxford still balking at the procedure. Nothing was easy.

After a long wait, I was called into the MRI scanning room run by two young Russian-American women technicians. But I had so much pain that it was basically impossible for me to lie still for more than a few seconds. The technicians kept yelling at me, telling me I could not move for the next 50 minutes. I was ruining the imaging and they were going to cancel the procedure.

Ultimately, they got the scans, but it took two hours and the only thing that saved the day was my suggesting that they put a cushion under my knee. That cushion made all the difference because with my knee slightly raised, I could lie relatively still and got through the procedure. But it was rough. And the technicians remained resentful towards me, acting like I had deliberately wasted their time. I tried to be diplomatic, saying, “It’s a good thing we thought to use that cushion,” when the “we” had been me. They looked back coldly.

Margie and I walked back through the snow to the elevated Q train. Back in our neighborhood, we went to Sharlene’s where we had some late afternoon beers and pizza from Antonio’s, the pizzeria across Flatbush from the bar. Antonio’s had a nice neon sign and just the right amount of cheesy grease in their pizza. Like many of the old school NYC pizzerias it was run by Albanians.

The next day I had an appointment with my pain doctor, Dr. Selassie. “Spelled like the dictator?” Dr. Harms had asked when he learned I was seeing her. No, like the Spiritual Leader, the Lion of Judah. Margie went with me. She came to all my medical appointments and had even taken to accompanying me to and from work because she was concerned about me riding the subway with my weak leg. I was too. It had buckled too many times. Eventually, I got a note from my doctors allowing me to work at home as much as I needed to and so I was going into the office just once or twice a week

View from my hospital room at Columbia Presbyterian in Washington Hgts:

Refrigerator Display:

The Happening: The Supremes

Just as we arrived outside Dr. S’s office, I got a call from the Mayo Clinic. They had received my application from Dr. Scelsa and that call was an interview by the Mayo Clinic neurology triage nurse. The triage interview took about 20 minutes, all on the telephone just outside Dr. Selassie’s office. When we did go in, we discovered that NYU Imaging had mistakenly sent the MRI results to her, rather than Dr. Harms. And Dr. S. was highly concerned. The radiologists’ report indicated code red -- a large “mass,” a tumor, had been detected. The new MRI showed a mass measuring 10.5 x 11.0 x 16.1 centimeters in my right hip or iliopsoas muscle area originating from the L2 and L3 nerve areas. She immediately called Dr. Harms and said I needed to get a PET scan stat.

I spoke with Dr. Harms briefly as we rode toward the subway on the 2nd Avenue bus. At home, Dr. Harms and I spoke in more detail after he had managed to speak with the radiologist who reviewed the MRI. Harms was setting up my PET scan for that Friday, December 6th at Columbia’s 168th Street Medical Center. That also was the day that a Saudi pilot shot up the Pensacola Naval Pilot training center. Also, St. Nick’s and Pearl Harbor eve. Suddenly, things were moving rapidly.

Sloop John B. – The Beach Boys

My friend Lynn Grano was in town. He was a good friend from law school, who had gone on to far more financial success in life than me and had been retired for the last 20 years. He had just been crewing on a friend’s sailboat, an old America’s cup vessel, taking it down to the Caribbean from NYC, but unfortunately the boat was old and patched together and ultimately deemed not seaworthy – by the crew. At Norfolk, they all agreed it unsafe for further sea travel and mutinied. So with his boat delivery trip abruptly cut short, Lynn stayed with me for a few days before heading back to Minnesota where he lived when he was not in San Francisco looking after the apartment building he owned and the smaller building that he and his ex shared ownership of.

Reading from The Mud at Freddy’s Hard Crackers Event:

It was nice to have an old friend around when everything suddenly was blowing up and my medical situation was becoming less mysterious but no less ominous. My next doctor’s appointment was with a Columbia neurosurgeon. Unfortunately, after making me wait hours, he spent all of ten minutes with me, briefly showing me the PET scan image of “the mass” but without really explaining how large it was. In fact, it was very large. He “explained” that if it was a lymphoma it would be just a matter of “zap zap” and the problem would presumably be taken care of. However, if it was a sarcoma it would be more of a problem. A surgeon’s view of cancer. I said, can’t it be benign?

The biopsy was at the Milstein Hospital at Columbia Presbyterian on 167th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. It was part of a huge hospital complex up in Washington Heights and the hospital was filled with signs showing they had won an award for being one of the nation’s best hospitals some years earlier (Number 4!). Alright then, I was given my gown and slippers and went to Interventional Radiology. The doctor was well-regarded, Dr. Khandji. Again, I laid on the examining/surgery platform while they used a sophisticated imaging device so the doctor could get a good sample of the tumor, located along my spine and making its way down along the nerve complex or plexus in my right hip and leg. Nice spine you have here, the tumor seemed to be saying. Wouldn’t want anything terrible to happen to it, would you?

They told me to lie still on my stomach but when my weak leg touched the platform it immediately flared up to a beyond top tier pain level. The doctors were carefully going through their preparations, slowly, insisting I lie still on the imaging machine bed or platform while I begged to be put out. They chatted while I experienced nearly unbearable pain. Eventually after what seemed like hours but was probably about ten minutes I was sedated and put out. When I awoke, it was done. The sleep of the dead is a fine sleep. The doctor and his staff were all congratulating themselves on a job well done, high fives all around. I was wheeled into the recovery area. The doctor saw Margie in the waiting area and proudly displayed the tumor sample he had extracted. It was a little bit like when our cat proudly displays the dead mouse he has caught, but she understood. Hooray for the biopsy.

Dr. Khandji had access to all my previous MRI’s and told me that the tumor had been visible on my July 30th MRI back when I was with Dr. Scelsa, the same guy who repeatedly told me based on my scans and lumbar puncture, it was not cancer. The NYU radiologists had missed it, as had my first two neurologists. It was too bad they did not discover the tumor four months earlier before it had grown so much. In the famous words of former President Reagan, “mistakes were made.”

I was waiting for the call from the biopsy results. Anxiously. I finally heard from Dr. Harms. His take, or at least the way he presented it to me, was that of all the possible things it could be my result was one of the better ones. Of all the gin joints, cancer walked into mine. The biopsy indicated non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the most common type of lymphoma and mine was a diffuse large B-cell type. It was odd to get the news of cancer and have it presented as good news. A cancer diagnosis is not good news. Not traditionally. But at least for the first time in seven months the doctors seemed to finally know what the problem was. The doctors were used to treating cancer. So maybe there was a light at the end of the tunnel at last. This was merely the previously-described zap-zap cancer.

At the same time, I was admitted into the Mayo Clinic and given an appointment for the end of January, the soonest they could see me. Rochester, Minnesota in January, yes. But now with the cancer diagnosis I did not need to go to the far frozen north for them to try and figure out my mystery ailment. The results were in. Oddly, my old friend Seth had gotten in touch after I had not heard from him for months, and now updated, he became keenly interested in using his San Francisco Fire Department connections to get me into the clinic. Fire Departments have secret handshakes that reach far and wide. I told Seth that I was not going to the Mayo Clinic now since I no longer had a mysterious neuropathy. I had a common cancer instead. He seemed disappointed since now that he could not help me. I had a different sort of fire emergency. He stopped calling or writing for the next three or four months. He was used to rushing to the rescue and now it was not necessary. I appreciated the offer of help but then was sad that I did not hear from him when I was battling cancer. But when you are sick even good friends, act in puzzling and disappointing ways sometimes.

Electric Albert:

This, along with my serious illness, was a new discovery for me. I was on a voyage of discovery and that included all the people I knew or had known. With Seth, he failed to recognize I felt there was still an ongoing emergency even if it was no longer mysterious, and I could use a phone call from my old friend, who had expressed so much concern earlier, during his months of silence after I decided not to go to Minnesota after he reached out to his firefighter contact. He fell into petulant silence, as if punishing me, because I failed to go somewhere completely unnecessary. In any event, Dr. Scelsa’s recommendation likely had more to do with my being admitted to the Mayo Clinic than Seth’s friend of a friend.

Formed a Band: Art Brut

While at the shore, I was able to record my thirteen songs. The working title was “Zoso,” because Steve Cooney opined that, like the Led Zeppelin album known by that name (also called Led Zep IV, or the 4th Led Zeppelin album), all the songs were great. Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who was very interested in the occult, had designed his own symbol, “Zoso.” According to the internet, “though it resembles the alchemical symbol for Saturn, its meaning remains a mystery.” The most recent fandom theory is that it symbolizes “a near-death of Tantric sex experience to unify the worlds of the living and the dead, and thus to reveal the secrets of the universe.” In 1994, when asked what the symbol meant, Page replied “I eat bananas.” Is it so? Is it just Zoso? The other three Zeppelin members were not into the occult as much as the great guitar wizard. Still, they consulted books of signs and the occult to dutifully choose their symbols. However, their symbols were never even considered as candidates for the unofficial name of the album. It was Zoso all the way.

For our recording, Steve had me sing while simultaneously playing guitar on each song. And then I did additional vocal tracks. I thought I was doubling my vocals, that he would use multi-tracks of my vocals to give it a fuller sound as is commonly done in professional recording. Subsequently, I learned however that Steve chose from the different vocal performances line by line, selecting what he felt was the best version to compile what he dubbed the “hero vocal,” a rather laborious and complicated process despite its awesome name.

At a later point, I played guitar to the combined hero vocal track, but it was very hard for me to synch my guitar part to the vocal combo track. Pro studio musicians can do that, but my playing is rather rudimentary. The process eventually became overly difficult and bogged down. Steve lived in Connecticut, so it was hard for him to drive to Brooklyn for further recording. And my condition was worsening making it difficult for me even to sit up and play guitar or focus during a slow-moving, hours-long recording project. My leg was so thin and weak that it hurt even to have the guitar resting on it when I played.

Steve also needed to devote time to his business, making videos for auto dealerships to sell used cars. He did not have time to work on the recording, not the complicated process that he wanted to do. Around Halloween I told him that it was all moving too slowly for me and asked if it would be ok if I recorded with someone else? Steve really wanted to do it though. So, we agreed that he could have until the end of the year to complete the mixing.

My three IVIG treatments had not made me feel any better but in talking to a woman at the IVIG company that administered the treatments she said that was not unusual. Sometimes it takes months to be effective, she claimed. Scelsa, on the other hand, said that the treatments should have already led to significant improvement. I told him that my condition was worsening. I was having more leg pain and weakness. I had treatments scheduled for Columbus Day and then Veteran’s Day. Scelsa did not suggest any other treatment, or even try to move up my next appointment to see him, which was not until the end of November. If there was a cancellation, he would try to get me in. But that never happened. I just felt worse and worse.

A man, a plan, a dashiki, outside Sharlene’s on Flatbush, 2019:

Bill Carney’s Jug Addicts at Sunny’s, 2019:

I Live Inside a Hole: The Go

I was still going to work though I had stopped bicycling, after doing that for decades. Now, once a week before going into work I saw Frank, a second-generation acupuncturist, who came to my apartment. Frank the house call acupuncture guy. He came for about seven weeks, wearing medical scrubs and taking the subway between appointments. He was a nice, shy, rather nerdy guy from Queens who liked Margie (everyone adores Margie) and the cats. We connected a little over Lord of the Rings, but I let him down by not knowing much about Harry Potter. Frank applied the needles into my leg, back or butt and those needles were connected to electrical lines that led to a nerve stimulus machine where he could control the amount of electricity going into me. I took a high dose, impressing both Margie and Frank, even as my leg was shaking violently from the electricity. Frank also put small flat stones on my leg and burnt mugwort on the stones. I thought it was a Harry Potter thing but the books use wormwood, another name for mugwort in a number of spells. Muggles is the jazz era name for weed and Muggles are non-magical people. A mugging, that’s what used to be commonly used for being robbed on the street in NYC.

The burning of aromatic flowering plants placed on stones over a patient’s flesh is not something he could do if had an office, Frank explained. It was not allowed. Yes, I could see that as I laid on my back in my bed while he burned and electros shocked me. It all took about one hour. This electrical stimulation process, or a similar one, successfully animated Frankenstein’s monster, a nice but severely misunderstood guy. It was less successful with me, a nice but misunderstood guy too. In addition, I have never been chased around a village by angry pitchfork-wielding peasants. Not yet.

When you are having back or nerve problems a lot of people will recommend acupuncture. That’s what happened to me. As Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin in “The Graduate” was urged to go into “plastics,” the universal magical cure that others advised me to pursue was acupuncture. And both Frank and the old Chinese lady on Canal Street, a feminist pioneer of acupuncturists, seemed to know what they were doing. But neither could really help me with my problem, even by maxing the electrical stimulation.

Les Sans Culottes at Lucky 13, October 2019:

Margie at Duchess Co. Sheep and Wool Fest, fall 2019:

Me and Brian at Barbes, pre-show:

Oily Way: Gong

My friend Karl, the Jug Addicts’ fiddler, decided I needed cannabis oil. In fact, nearly everyone I know suggested cannabis CBD oil. Even more than acupuncture. There was a near universal consensus in my social circle that CBD oil would take care of the problem. I tried it but it had no magic for me. Still, I considered investing in it. Karl also believed my problems might stem from excess bike riding. That seemed unlikely to me.

Magic: Pilot

Steve, the jug band slide guitar player, suggested I see one of his girlfriends who was a Santeria priestess. His girlfriend practiced the good Santeria, Steve explained, whereas her mother was the person to see if you wanted to put a curse on someone. Good to know. The family business had it covered. I figured I could use both. Margie was skeptical about me dabbling in this form of Catholic Caribbean voodoo stuff. I was too. Years ago when we lived in the Fort Greene part of Brooklyn, Margie and I decided to go running in the park in the morning. We lost enthusiasm when we encountered slaughtered chickens and roosters that had likely been used in a Santeria ritual. Also, the treatment by Steve’s friend required going up to the Bronx, and at that point, already November, I was not in good shape for travelling. I could not walk very far. Not without having to stop and wait for the severe pain to subside. She kindly offered to treat me for free, but I never made it up there.

Bill Carney’s Jug Addicts outside Last Exit Bar for Atlantic Antic 2010, Steve Cooney on right, Karl Meyer center.

Steve’s girlfriend then recommended another Santeria priestess who specialized in leg issues. He picked her up in Bridgeport where she lived and brought her to my place. And Steve said he would pay for this session. It was a very kind and generous offer and despite some unease, I said yes. Science and western medicine had not worked. Neither had all my family and friends’ prayers. Nor had psychic healing, Reiki, or Chinese medicine. Etc. Now I was going with good voodoo.

The priestess was an older Dominican lady, maybe 70. After she arrived, she changed into a completely white outfit and had me lie on the floor while she touched my leg and other parts of my body. She prayed over me and anointed me with something, sometimes speaking with Steve and with Steve’s girlfriend who was on the phone and translating. She kept talking to me, but I kept saying “no comprendo.” The ceremony or treatment lasted for about 45 minutes. Towards the end Steve was commanded to go to the store for some pears and an egg that she cracked open as some sort of divination method. The pears and egg were taken to a cemetery along with a few coins of mine and buried. Steve went to the cemetery in the Bronx where Billie Holiday is buried. The burial happened not far from her grave, which I was happy to hear. When you’re smiling. Sun Showers. God Bless the Child. They Can’t Take that Away from Me. Strange Fruit. Indeed.

LSC at Lucky 13, October 2019:

Doctor My Eyes: Jackson Browne

Up until Thanksgiving I was still going into work every day in lower Manhattan at the Legal Aid main office on Water Street. Sometimes though I would be completely crippled with pain just trying to walk to the printer or go to the men’s room. One colleague, Jeff, saw me and put me in touch with his pain doctor, Dr. Selassie. A pain doctor was something I truly needed. I do not believe that she was related to the Ethiopian Emperor and Rastafarian messiah. She was a young, Black woman, who seemed smart.

Dr. Selassie had an office near the Midtown Tunnel and I went up there a few times from my job on the 1st Avenue bus. She reviewed my medical records and decided the other doctors had incorrectly diagnosed me with the rare neuropathy. No, my problem was from a bike fall I had several months earlier when I had wiped out on the Brooklyn Bridge one very icy day! I did not think that I was injured from the fall (though my ribs did hurt for weeks after) but she insisted the trauma had a delayed effect and was causing my nerve problems. Well, there was a lot of trauma to choose from in my opinion, so sure, maybe. She gave me an epidural shot in the spine. That helped. For the first time in five or six months I did feel slightly better. I was thinking, shots all around. Make the whole world feel better.

My condition got very painful. I often could only walk a few steps before being racked with pain and having to stop. I went to a daylong legal seminar on the New York state legal reforms (they were short lived; soon rolled back by the allies of the police and DA’s in the legislature) at Cardozo Law School on 5^th Avenue in Manhattan and had to stop while trying to walk to and from the bathroom each time because of intense crippling pain. And afterwards, the walk to the 7^th Avenue subway, a couple long blocks away, took a half hour.

At Mercury Lounge, July 2019:

After a while, I resorted to taking a taxi from our apartment to our subway on 7^th Avenue in Brooklyn, just blocks away. Walking was too hard. Once, when Margie was away for the weekend, I decided to walk to the corner deli, just at the end of my block. I wanted a damned six pack of beer! But I kept having to stop because of the pain. I thought of the story of George Jones riding his lawn mower to the liquor store after his wife had taken his car keys away to curb his drinking. I wished I had a riding mower.

Convinced that Scelsa was not taking my illness seriously enough or making any real effort to see me, I decided to see a new neurologist, Dr. Harms from the Columbia-Presbyterian hospital system. Before you could get an appointment in the Columbia system you had to submit all your medical records. Then they would call you to set up an appointment. I got an appointment on October 22^nd, a couple weeks after sending in my records with a pleading cry for help cover letter. The ironically named Dr. Harms was the first doctor who seemed to show some empathy, and, while he agreed with the radiculoplexus diagnosis, he also thought we should get another MRI to see what was going on.

Unfortunately, circumstances delayed that MRI, the first since the end of July. The staff at the Neurological Institute took a long time to submit the MRI request and Dr. Harms was not himself available to shepherd it through the insurance process because one of his children was having a health emergency. My insurer, naturally, rejected the MRI, necessitating another peer-to-peer call from Harms to convince them of the medical necessity of the imaging So, we finally got the MRI approved at the end of November and I set it up at the first available time at an NYU imaging clinic in Midwood Brooklyn, on December 3rd.

While I was at work on the Monday before Thanksgiving, I got a call from Scelsa’s office asking if I could see him that afternoon. The doctor could finally see me -- but it seemed only because he wanted to clear up his schedule for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving! I was delaying his jump start on the holiday apparently. I kept my appointment. When Scelsa finally examined me, he saw that I had seriously gone downhill. As I had previously tried to explain. He now pronounced that there was nothing he could do. Like Schick, I was beyond his medical expertise. I could have told him that. Scelsa decided to recommend me for treatment at the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Maybe they could figure it out.

And while Scelsa now admitted that he did not know what was going on with my leg and renounced his former “radiculoplexus neuropathy” diagnosis that did not stop him from saying aloud to me various frightening speculative diagnoses that almost all involved my condition spreading to other parts of my body and might involve a slow painful death. Or not. Just spit balling, thinking out loud, a kind of doom-filled, neurotic logorrhea. Happy Thanksgiving.

Holiday: The Bee Gees

On Thanksgiving Day we had a few friends over for a feast. Steve came over a few hours early so we could work on the recording, but it was difficult because of my pain. We made some progress but that turned out to be the last recording we did. Steve became overwhelmed with work commitments and did not even mention the recordings after that.

I had continued to play shows with my bands. In October, LSC had played at a heavy metal and horror-themed bar in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn called Lucky 13. That place featured

LSC at Lucky 13 in Gowanus:

We were late on the schedule, round midnight, and it was difficult climbing up and down the relatively high stage area. After we rocked, I had to come down on my butt, sidling down one step at a time. A bit embarrassing for a French rock star.

In November, Les Sans Culottes played at Rose Gold, a small basement bar in Bushwick with an all-girl Stooges tribute band, the Lookout Honeys (an excellent name, taken from one of Iggy’s lyrics), and a band our ex-guitarist David had joined, the Ritualists. I liked the Lookout Honeys. The Ritualists, like a lot of bands, were channeling 80’s bands like the Cure or Echo and the Bunnymen. Their source bands had not been my thing (I mostly listened to old folk music, Harry Smith-type recordings in the 80’s, rather than the popular music then) and I did not care for the Ritualists. Plus, they had some technical difficulties, started very late, and took up most of our set time without any concern for how they were cutting our show since the place had a strict curfew for an 11 pm dance party event. Then to top it off, their lead singer, a guy named Christian said some snidely unchristian things about our band.

Despite our sharply abbreviated set, I felt good about our performance. It was difficult for me though, as just standing on the stage for several minutes was uncomfortable. And Rose Gold had a gigantic stairway leading to the basement. As the Iggy and had sung, “no fun.” At least not for my weakened leg.

The Jug Addicts also continued to play at Barbès, a truly special small bar and music venue focusing on World Music in Park Slope Brooklyn (we were the U.S.A. in their world of music!), where we had played for many years. We also played Sunny’s, a legendary, cool old dockside bar in Red Hook full of bar character, even if gentrification and the discovery of the bar by greater NY meant less characters. These were satisfying gigs. We also played Bar Chord, the bar in Ditmas Park where Audrey from Les Sans Culottes had worked.

I played music largely for the satisfaction of doing it, the performance itself. But Bar Chord rarely provided that. The sound system was not good and although it had a polyglot mix of Brooklynites, many patrons just wanted to watch sports on TV and get hammered or go in the backyard and get stoned. In Brooklyn since most people did not drive to the bars, they had no worries about getting too drunk and driving. It was a recipe for much uninhibited inebriation.

I encountered groups of rowdy pre-drunk Middle Eastern guys-- who simply refused to pay for their drinks, and tough Black dudes who just wanted to smoke weed and not have to order any drinks, Orthodox Jews sneaking away to an unorthodox joint but who did not know how to drink in a bar and the little rules that accompanied being a bar patron like tipping. And, of course, there were the Brooklyn hipsters of all varieties. The bands were squeezed into a small stage by the door, not ideal for those who wanted to see and hear us and for people to get too close and behave boorishly. I liked the multicultural mini-UN aspect of the bar but had decided the cons outweighed the pros of this gig where the band was literally sidelined.

I also booked a number of jug band gigs at An Beal Bocht, an Irish bar in Riverdale, the North Bronx, thanks to the help of my old musical pal John Pinamonti. John was a beloved fixture both on their “stage” (a spot near their rustic word-burning stove) and a semi-frequent patron after he married a local gal. Riverdale was NYC – The Bronx. The crowd there had some older Irish immigrants with their brogues as well as others from the neighborhood, city workers and young people. There weren’t other places with live entertainment and near as much ambiance in the area.

It was a longstanding Irish and Jewish area, but it was funny seeing how when one travelled deeper into the “outer boroughs” the people and the vibe in general became more like the rest of the U.S. “An Beal Bocht” (Gaelic for “from the poor mouth”, a story by Irish writer Flann O’Brien) could have been in New Jersey or even West Virginia, practically. Still, the crowd was always very appreciative, and they booked a lot of good bands and treated them well, unlike a lot of places in NYC that hosted bands. The Irish bars paid musicians more respect, paying decently and providing free food and drink.

Children of the Revolution: T-Rex

Gimme Some Money: Spinal Tap

As my problems persisted, Scelsa asked if I had a spinal tap yet. I had not. Why not? I had seen the movie maybe 100 times. So, on August 30, just as the Labor Day weekend was starting and my friend Olivier had arrived from Paris (and Detroit) I had my first spinal tap. You never forget your first. It is true.

That procedure, also known as a lumbar puncture, was done at Scelsa’s office in the Mt. Sinai clinic at 10 Union Square East. For the spinal tap, Margie was present and an assistant, a large Black guy, squeezed me like a lemon from both ends while I laid on my side in a fetal position. I received one shot to numb the area, and the doctor inserted a second needle to do the tap. But he could not find any spinal fluid. Awkward. A second insertion was required with the assistant squeezing me more and more and my body shaking quite violently as the procedure went on for 10, 20, 30 minutes until he got the tap. This spinal tap goes up to eleven. Scelsa had said the spinal tap would be less painful than the EEG procedures I had already had. That was not true. Scelsa got the tap results over the next few days and kept telling me different things it ruled out, such as cancer. That, unfortunately, was also not true.

Olivier’s arrival for Labor Day weekend from Paris was great. Our original plan had been to rendezvous in Detroit to attend the Jazz Festival that weekend. That was a large, free jazz festival, always with world-renowned talent. I was going to drive out with some Brooklyn friends and had booked a large Airbnb house in Detroit for us all to stay at. But my condition worsened, and my friends also were older guys with health issues. So we scratched the trip, but Olivier had already booked his flight to Detroit. He added a NYC portion but still had to fly to and from Paris via Detroit, since the airline would not let him cancel the Detroit portion. But it was great to have Olivier around. We smoked my weed and listened to music, and he cooked for me. He is a good cook. Something they do in France.

Rocket #9: Sun Ra Arkestra

While we were not at the Detroit Jazz Festival, the Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of their then 95-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen, was playing a free show at Union Pool, a music venue in Williamsburg. The concert was held in an outdoor patio area with a bar, taco truck and some roofing overhanging part of the area. We ran into my friend Charlie there, whom I had told about the concert. I had made sure we rolled up some weed for the show. It was life affirming to see the band again. There is no other band like the Arkestra. They were the band I had seen the most during my lifetime and the band was still great, pure joy, even without their namesake leader, Sun Ra

The Arkestra in Effect:

I knew the DJ playing between Arkestra shows, Matt, the bass player from a band called the Piggies that we had played some shows with. Matt had also bartended at the Great Jones café, a little Cajun-style restaurant and bar with an excellent juke box that had closed but where Les Sans Culottes had once played a staff Christmas party back in the early 2000’s, crammed into the corner of the small restaurant. Somewhat miraculously, Matt remembered that too.

Matt saw my cane and allowed me to sit near him in his DJ area on a raised bench where I could see the band but not have to stand on my weak leg. Olivier joined me and we stayed for both sets. The show was a delight. I had been to the Sun Ra memorial concert shortly after his death in 1993 under the direction of alto sax man Marshall Allen. Now Allen was in his late 90’s and still leading the band and they were as great as ever. Ra is dead, long live Ra. Also Marshall Allen approaching 100 look to be in far better shape than me.

Olivier loved it too. That was something we shared, a true love of music and he was certainly familiar with Ra going back to his days living in Detroit, where I first met him and he played with the Don’t Look Now Jug Band. And Margie and I had visited Olivier and his wife Rosa many times in Paris and in Rosa’s village where her family lived, Guejar de Sierra in the Sierra Nevada mountains, outside Granada

With Olivier and Rosa in Seville:

Margie and Olivier in Granada:

With Stephane at a boat cafe near Montreuil:

With Rosa’s family and friends in Guejar:

These were grand adventures spent with them and Rosa’s family and their friends and from our base in Guejar. They had a small cottage up the mountain from the village, a beautiful spot called La Solana with a wonderful view of the mountains and down to the reservoir below aside the village, we visited most of the cities of Andalusia. We also visited them in their home outside Paris where we also visited Nathalie in the Belleville district and Stephane and Elise who moved from Paris to Montreuil, the “Brooklyn of Paris.” And we all went to Brittany, where we stayed with Stephane’s parents outside the old medieval port town of Concarneau and visited their beaches. Then we went to the three day long free music festival in Binic, a lovely port town on the opposite side of Brittany. Their festival is called the “Binic Folks [sic] and Blues Festival.” La Nef de Fous. The Cradle of Crazies. It is nice small-scale festival in a lovely port side town and we saw some great bands there including Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds

Margie holding hat en route to beach in Bretagne:

At the beach in Binic with Nathalie, Elise, Stephane and me:

In Brooklyn, after the Sun Ra show, as we walked into my apartment, Olivier was singing the refrains from various Ra tunes, still in an emotionally exalted state. “We travel the space ways, from planet to planet.” It was like Olivier had been suddenly transported back in time to the guy I met in 1986 in Detroit, a more carefree time for both of us. Then he wanted to listen to the recording of the show that he had made on his phone!

Dr. Scelsa now decided that I should get intravenous immunoglobulin therapy (IVIG). When nothing else worked, this did, supposedly. The plan was that I would have three consecutive days of treatment at my home by a visiting nurse with the precious medicine. This was sure to work, I was assured. If the multiple days of high dose steroids were the atom bomb (which had been a dud), IVIG was the H Bomb. An end to all my nerve pain and leg weakness! The treatments lasted for six or seven hours each day. I lay on the couch plugged into the IV pole watching the slow drip of immunoglobulin into my arm.

This was all just prior to our big vacation trip to the Jersey Shore. Margie loved the Shore and had gone there with her family as a child and then after her parents died (when she was still in her 20’s) and then her Aunt Marge had taken over spearheading the trips for Margie and her sisters to Seaside Park, where we would go nearly every year. I loved going to France and Spain, etc., of course, but we also tried to get to the more humble Jersey Shore too.

My third and presumably final IVIG treatment was scheduled for the day we picked up the rental car, packed up the car and drove to the show. I was hoping that my leg strength would be restored and I could swim, body surf and boogie board as I always did. Alas, that was not to be. The 18 hours of immunoglobulin had little or no effect on my leg strength. My right let was still very weak and I required a cane to get around mostly.

Surf at Seaside Park, NJ:

Margie and I at the Shore in 2007 on my birthday:

Margie at the Shore:

Sunset on the Bay:

Steve Cooney from the Jug Addicts, would be staying with us, splitting the rent for the large house that we had been going to the last several years, that was like a magnificent palace compared to prior places we had rented. It was more affordable because on the bay side, rather than ocean, and often we rented past the peak season. That was fine because the empty town was in many ways better than the town during the season. The beach and ocean were still there, the people were largely gone.

With Steve, we planned to record my new songs. I had started writing songs in English (as opposed to French!) at Margie’s suggestion, over the past year or so. Now I had a group of thirteen I wanted to record and Steve had agreed to do it because he had the equipment. I had never really written songs in English aside from a few with the Tombstoners, my honkytonk country music band, many years earlier. Who can forget the immortal “Go Cup” or “Wakin’ Up Sober (at 1 a.m.), “I guess I’ll Have to Get Drunk Again”)? It is never too late to start writing songs in your native language, rather than a foreign language you studied in high school and college.

There had been a delay of several months while Steve got the recording equipment he wanted, but now we could do it while we were together for a week at the shore. It was like when Led Zeppelin lived together and recorded at Headley Grange or Bron-Yr-Aur. Exactly like that. It had been a tough time but the prospect of recording these songs was something that gave me hope, something to look forward to.

Ivy: The Left Banke

Usually, I drove. But this time Margie had to drive as I feared my right leg was not functioning well enough to operate the gas and brake pedals. Margie was a good driver but drove so infrequently that when she did drive, she was very nervous. Now she drove and we were both nervous. Her nervousness made me nervous. Meta-nervous driving. But we did it and it was great to be Down the Shore.

I tried to go into the ocean a couple of times but my leg was too weak to stand in the surf. Near disaster ensued. I fell and it was extremely difficult getting back up with the pounding waves, steep rise to the beach and shifting sand under me. I felt like I would drown. I surrendered.

It was soul crushing not to be able to go into the water, even if I had learned to also enjoy sitting on the beach and staring at the water. For Margie it really brought home how sick and debilitated her “big strong guy” had become. She might have been sadder than me when she saw I could not go in the water. Still, as happens with tough and terrible stuff, you don’t talk about it too much and simply power through dealing with it as much as possible.

At night, sometimes we watched the Ken Burns series on country music. I had been eagerly anticipating it. But now with my strange sleep schedule I usually fell asleep before the end of each episode. I ended up watching the first hour of most of the series’ seven parts but missing the rest. Still, there was some great old footage of so many of the giants of country music that were fascinating, and Burns’ interviews were generally good too. Sitting on the outdoor porch facing the bay had long been my great pleasure in that house, usually with a cigarette and a beer or cocktail. Now, I was not really smoking anymore. I had simply lost the urge, even when I drank a lot. That had almost always been my smoking trigger, wanting a cigarette after four drinks or so. Not now. It was a hell of a way to quit smoking, at once very easy and very hard and not a method I would recommend to others.

Audrey, the sole surviving other original member still in the band from its inception in 1998, came to visit. We were good friends and like Margie, Audrey was a Jersey Girl and loved the shore and she almost always came down to stay for a few days. This year, Audrey arrived on Sunday from Long Beach Island, the barrier island just south of the little peninsula where our place in Seaside Park was located. She had come from the wedding of Steve and Kathleen, former LSC singer “Edith Pissoff.” Kathleen and Steve had lived together for many years but were finally jumping the broom and doing it at the Shore where Steve’s family had a house. A small group of friends had been invited for the weekend, including Audrey.

Following the wedding, Audrey stayed up late at the hotel drinking with some of the others. When she arrived at our place, she was pretty wrecked from the late night of partying and promptly had a nap. She also told me that one of the people she was partying with was a Russian-American guy named Alex, who had been the officiant at Kathleen’s wedding. He was a real cool guy and Audrey was taken with him. Some future romance seemed possible, even if Audrey was not the type to fall easily for a guy. In the 21 years I had known her there had been one guy, her ex, John. That did not work out in the end, but she had really loved him.

After her nap, Audrey got a phone call while out on our deck. The news was horrible. Alex, the guy at the wedding she had liked, the one she was hanging out with that night and morning, had gone for a swim, got caught in a rip current and drowned. Other guests from the wedding were swimming with him and some of them barely made it out of the ocean -- but they did. Not Alex. Audrey was devastated. She left the next day. Rip currents, sudden strong currents that pull you out into the ocean, are a real hazard at the Shore and almost every summer a couple of people drown.

Prior to the Detroit and Omaha trip, my first symptoms had been the pain and weakness I was feeling in my right leg in May 2019. I was aware of them when Margie and I went to see the Frida Kahlo show at the Brooklyn Museum with my old Detroit jug band pal Maryann and her two kids. I read of Frida’s tremendous lifelong pain caused when a bus she was in slammed into a trolley car. She was just 18 years old, and the accident broke her spinal column, and an iron handrail impaled her abdomen and uterus. The museum display included not just her paintings and her beautiful clothes, but the many back braces that she wore throughout her life which she hand- decorated and turned into works of art. With a real purpose.

Margie at the Frida Kahlo show:

LSC also played a freaky party in Gowanus in a fabricator’s workshop called the “Safety Dance” which featured many seemingly unsafe performers. We were safe but I was feeling my leg pain.

At the Safety Dance in May 2019:

Big Bird: Eddie Floyd

On the day of my flight back to NY from Detroit, I went for a swim at the outdoor pool at my mom’s apartment complex. On the way to the pool, however, I slipped on some gravel on the street. I suddenly slammed down on my right knee. That was the first instance of my leg buckling. It was like I hit a banana peel and the next thing I knew was hitting the ground hard. Yes, like a banana peel but not funny. There was blood and later bruising, but I washed it and swam.

I saw Dr. Scelsa back in NYC. He did another EMG test of my muscles and nerves -- confirming that they were weak. And he ordered more MRIs, with and without “contrast” dye (a chemical called gadolinium injected during the MRI to provide for clearer images) of both my back lumbar region, and the pelvis, where the inflamed nerve complex was located. These MRIs confirmed that my illness had spread and Schick, after consulting Scelsa, decided to be “more aggressive.” That was welcome news for me. I was shocked by the seeming nonchalance by both doctors before this and wanted a more aggressive approach. The doctors decided that I would get two days of high doses of steroids at a clinic in Chelsea. I was all in.

King of the Road: Roger Miller

Prior to these treatments, in late July, LSC did two out of town shows: Friday night in an Irish Bar in Greenwich, Connecticut and Saturday in Boston in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood at a bar called the Midway. Friday, we played with a cool band of young guys called Jacques Le Coque. They were not as French as us, despite their misleadingly French name, but they were young guys who played garage rock. That was a plus these days since most young people did not play rock music anymore and garage rock was a genre mostly populated by middle-aged or older white guys. That was one thing that the NYC band the Strokes had going for them. Older people were glad to see young people play rock and particularly rock that paid homage to the bands from their youth, like Television, Tom Petty or the Velvet Underground. The bar LSC played in Greenwich was just another Irish bar, but there was a crowd there and it was fun for us to play out of town. We slept in a hotel in Greenwich.

Then Saturday, after a brief stop at the Pez factory store in Connecticut (I got a Tigger Pez dispenser, my spirit animal), we played in Boston with local Boston garage rock stalwarts, Muck and the Mires. They all wore matching outfits and were very good; they had strong songs and a strong choreographed show, like some 60’s bands. Our LSC show these days was emphasizing a lot of stage theatrics and comedy, like doing a dance where I was chased by cannibals during our song “Les Sauvages” or doing our popular mash-up version of “La Marseillaise” and “Ca Plane Pour Moi.” I had resisted doing these sorts of comic parts of our show for several years, but now I was embracing them again.

LSC in our original more theatrical days:

And I was talking a lot between songs, doing a lot of comic stage banter in my thick faux French accent and people were enjoying it. I had resisted that for many years too, but now I was all in. Now that I was sick, I did not care about relatively minor things like that. I could make people laugh. Why not use that? I wanted to be fully present during the shows, and now I was. Being sick had resulted in a change of attitude with my music (as well as life in general). I wasn’t taking anything for granted. Every show seemed to take on more importance. Being sick was earth shattering but also resulted in some unexpected blessings.

We stayed at an Air B and B in Jamaica Plains that night. It was a satisfying band trip but a long drive, especially on the way back, which took six hours due to a lot of traffic. It was painful for me with my bad leg sitting in the car in traffic. I brought my cane on the trip, but I did not bring it to the gigs. I was keeping my illness undercover. When LSC singer Devery (band name, Brigitte Bourdeaux) posted a photo of me with my cane pointing at a dispenser after we stopped at the Pez factory in Connecticut, I deleted it. I was not ready to go public with my bad leg and mysterious illness. It worried me and made me feel weak and I did not want the world to know about it.

Right About Now: The Mooney Suzuki

I had tickets for the Mooney Suzuki at Mercury Lounge in NYC and decided to go. They were a band from the late 90’s- early aughts, influenced by the MC5 and other high energy 60’s rock bands, that I had liked a lot. This was a reunion show and sold-out. They still rocked and their stage theatrics were similar to what I’d seen on the video of the MC5’s amazing Tartar Field performance in Detroit in 1969. I ran into Travis, the guy who had recorded our last three LSC records. He also worked with Guided by Voices, a cult-famous (my term) band that he worshipped.

When it was over, I should have just grabbed a taxi, but I walked with my cane down to the subway at Grand Street, some distance away. While going down the stairs, my knee gave out and I tumbled a few steps hitting my knee hard on the ground. A young Black guy checked to see if I was “ok.” I said that I was, as one reflectively does before fully taking stock but while feeling stunned and embarrassed. I continued to the train but rode home with a bloody knee exposed by the shorts I was wearing on that hot summer night. But in NYC seeing someone else bloodied and bleeding does not draw too much attention.

I did two days of high dose steroids at the Mt. Sinai facility on west 15^th Street in Chelsea. That was across the street from where I had lived on the top floor of a converted four-story townhouse in ‘89-90. While living there I had smelled and then discovered my elderly neighbor who lived on the floor below me, dead. That was the famous “smell of death”, a rotting corpse. Who knows how long he had been there? That discovery was after I went to see “Goodfellas” which coincidentally had a scene of the mob guys exhuming a dead corpse for further disposal while overcome with the rotting stench.

The building where the clinic was located now was formerly a giant bus depot. But Chelsea had changed dramatically and now it was a hospital-clinic and very large office building for Google employees. The sick and the anointed. The doctor assured me that this large-dose steroid treatment was the nuclear option. Once I had the steroids it would take care of my neuropathy. Of course, I had been getting steroid treatments, but this was going to be some amazing dose. Taking the gloves off and no more fooling around. I went there for two consecutive days, sitting in the chair connected to an IV and getting the steroids over a couple hours. But nothing happened. I did not even feel super energized by the drugs, that bullet-proof feeling some get with steroids. For me, it was nothing. No neuropathy relief. I called the doctor and asked when it was supposed to happen and he said, well, it should be happening. But it wasn’t.

The Dance of the Cannibals:

Mannish Boy: Muddy Waters

My friend Matt Lee came into town to see the Rolling Stones in early August (Ed. Note: the Rolling Stones were an English band that had been popular in the 1960’s and 70’s). Their glory days were behind them, but they were still legendary. They were playing in NJ at the football stadium in the Meadowlands, the MetLife Stadium. Matt and I had planned to see them months earlier before I was sick and had such difficulty moving about and even standing. But he was flying in from Detroit and staying at my place, so the plan was going forward bum leg or not. Matt was a big Stones fan. I was not as much of a fan and would not have gone had Matt not offered to subsidize part of my ticket cost and promised great seats through his ticket scalper friend. I certainly would not have agreed to go if I knew that I was going to be in poor health.

Ladies and Gentleman, the Rolling Stones:

Matt had been a scalper himself long ago when we were roommates in Stuyvesant Town in lower Manhattan so I figured he could still get the hookup. I was committed to going but just travelling uptown towards the Port Authority and walking along 9^th Avenue to meet him at a ribs place was an effort. So was standing in line for almost two hours to get the bus to the stadium. So was walking from the back of the parking lot, through the packed and frenetic stadium interior, where baby boomers were scrambling to buy $100 Stones t-shirts and expensive food and drinks. Most inconveniently, our seats were at the opposite end of the stadium from where we entered. It was tough negotiating the traffic. No one was overly concerned or aware of the slow-moving cane guy. It was like the Frogger video game, but I was the frog and the other highly excited concert goers were the oncoming traffic.

Our seats were good but not amazing. Is this what $400 gets you in a football stadium? Yes. But all the seats were very expensive. The price of concerts had gone way up, particularly for these types of Boomer nostalgia “legacy” acts. I guess I was a legacy act myself. And this was supposedly the Stones’ “last tour.” Often the “last tour” is just the last one before the next. The band members were all in their mid to late 70’s. Singer Mick Jagger had to delay and reschedule the tour to have a heart valve replaced. He was back now and moving around the stage like a teenager at 76 years old, while I was barely able to stand, at 57, almost 58. Guitar icon Keith Richards looked a little wobbly though. He did not seem to be spending hours with a personal trainer like Mick, though supposedly he had stopped smoking. During the concert Keith seemed to pose more with his guitar on stage, the world’s coolest air guitarist, and let the other guitar player, Ron Wood, do most of the playing. At this stage of the game, most of his performance was just pantomime it seemed. Keith would play his iconic “Satisfaction” riff and then take the rest of the song off. Nice. People were happy just to see him. I was. He even did his song “Happy” and another, “Before They Make Me Run” that I liked a lot.

It was perilous for me edging in front of others in the narrow and steeply pitched stadium seating trying to reach our seats. Like being on a narrow cliff edge. Of course, no one sat at all for the entire 90-minute concert. Except me. I periodically needed to sit. When the concert was over, we walked back towards the bus stop around the outside of the stadium and waited just 45 minutes for our return bus, then to the 34^th Street IRT subway by 1 a.m. Naturally, the train announced it was “going express” just before my subway stop, causing us to have to double back to our stop. The MTA is a continual challenge especially on weekends. I don’t know if it was truly the Stones last tour, but I was pretty sure it was my last stadium concert. Unless my band was playing the show.

Judy and the Dream of Horses: Belle and Sebastian

Not long after, as I was at work one day, Margie’s friend Kim Edge suggested that I go to the emergency room immediately because it sounded like I had a condition known as a caudal equina. Margie and I talked about it. It did seem like we needed to do something to get help ASAP. We decided not to go to the ER, but I telephoned Scelsa and specifically asked him about it. He looked at my MRIs and said, no it was not caudal equina. Scelsa also opined that my condition was not cancer because it was just affecting one nerve root. When I informed him that I was having night sweats, a cancer symptom, he sent me to get a chest scan and that came up “negative.” He diagnosed my condition as a “radiculoplexus neuropathy,” an extremely rare condition.

Spirit in the Sky: Norman Greenbaum

My friend from my college years in NYC, Andrea, wished me a happy birthday on August 18. She is good that way, a kind soul. I am hopeless, barely able to remember the names of people, let alone their birthdays. I wrote back to thank her for remembering but I also informed her of my mysterious illness. Andrea put me in touch with Carol, a “psychic healer” that she had been using. “Do you know anything about psychic healers?” Andrea asked. I did not. I just had not previously had a need for one. I googled “psychic healer.”

Carol was also a “reflexologist.” I knew a little about that, the idea that the soles of your feet had nerve connections to various organs and other body parts of your body, that could be treated through contact with the correct pressure point in the foot. That was the theory. Carol was based in L.A. but travelled to NYC and London to visit with clients. Andrea told me that Carol had some clients who were celebrities. I don’t know if that was something that impressed Andrea or if she thought it would impress me. The way I was feeling, I felt like I was in one of the long-running insurance commercials featuring the character Mayhem. Those never worked out well, except for Mayhem.

Andrea explained that she had been seeing Carol for a few years as a general “wellness practice.” But I was told that Carol did things like cure people with incurable cancer or allow people to get pregnant who could not conceive. As well as ensure one’s general wellness as more of a preventative measure. It all seemed a little loopy to me. Despite my religious upbringing with its belief that saints, and Jesus and Mary could intervene on our behalf, and my hippie and new age-adjacent youth, I was skeptical of such things. Andrea, however, believed in Carol and even generously offered to pay for the first visit. And I had reached the “any port in a storm” stage of suffering and mysterious illness. I did not believe in astrology, ghosts, spirits, life after death, any of that. But I didn’t not believe in anything either.

Psychic Healing:

I met Carol at a fancy hotel on Central Park South where she was staying with her three kids. Carol was a short, round Asian woman who appeared a bit Yoda like. She complained about her bad knees, her mom, the father of her kids (they were separated) and her kids. One child was transitioning from a girl to a boy and Carol was having trouble remembering his new name and kept calling him by her former name. I reasoned that just because she was having human problems, some mundane, others more challenging, that did not mean that she did not possess psychic healing powers. Still, it undercut my expectations.

She tended to talk a lot about herself and her own problems during our sessions. In that way it was markedly different than the therapy sessions I had done following my panic attacks in the early 2000’s. That therapist just wanted me to talk. It was one of the rules of Freudian analysis. Carol had no such rule. She was earthy. She was thinking of moving to NYC. It would be good for her transitioning tweenager. Also, she wanted to get her children into acting. Etc. I was feeling a bit like her therapist.

Carol spoke to me as she worked on my feet. She was supposed to be getting her psychic healing connection and insight into what was going on with me though my feet, it seemed. She assumed first that I was Jewish since Andrea was Jewish (and quite religious) and I was her friend. No. I was pretty darn Catholic in all the worst ways but not religious. Carol asked me questions about my past, my parents, my siblings. She learned my father and half-sister were both dead and I did not get along with my half-brother. Also, my relationship with my mother was complicated. I mean even Margie had taken to calling my mother the Annihilator at times. It seemed harsh but also at times accurate, particularly as directed at her. You don’t always hurt the one you love but you might annihilate them. With the best of intentions.

My reflexologist/psychic healer kept getting the vibe of a message, “you got some nerve.” Maybe your family thought you had “some nerve” for doing what you did, Carol told me. Well, that was true. She also said that my illness was from not doing enough art, that I was thwarting my artistic side when I chose the safety of being a lawyer. Well, perhaps, but I told her in fact I was gigging all the time. I did not feel artistically frustrated. I was probably more frustrated by my legal work since it was so difficult to prevail in criminal appeals. There was a lot of pressure to uphold a conviction, even if there were errors during the trial that undermined its fairness.

Carol then shifted her theory and decided that my leg problem was the result of my dead father and sister (their spirits) holding on to me, tugging on my leg from their graves. Not exactly encouraging further visits to their grave sites. They had cursed me, Carol opined. In truth, I felt more like my living relatives had cursed me than the dead ones. Cindy and my dad had both loved me and I loved them. I could have been a better son and brother (and everything else), but I did not imagine that they were in some spiritual limbo holding on to my leg and trying to drag me down to my grave. It was an arresting image, as if from a horror movie. But no, people I knew up here were more likely to be dragging me into my grave than my dead sister and dad. They were more likely rooting for me.

She had me write letters to my dad and Cindy (address unknown) and to my brother and mother. These were exercises in compassion. And, I had forgiveness exercises with those who had offended me. I had an extensive list! I had found my new life’s work: writing letters of forgiveness to those who I felt had wronged me. Scheherazade, hold my beer. But I worked on it all dutifully. I also had to utter various healing phrases over and over, a healing mantra during specific meditation times (and others). I did. She had me recite, daily, “May I be filled with love and kindness; may I be peaceful and at ease; may I be well; may I be truly happy.” Not bad, really. If nothing else I could see it was good for me, the meditating, the forgiving, the thinking about others, as well as saying positive things about myself. I could use it all. I ended up paying her for a package of treatments, with most of those taking place at my apartment since she was staying nearby in Park Slope with a friend. That was good because going to a hotel room on Central Park South was a schlep for me. But I still did not see any improvement in my condition.

My psychic healer, Carol, also put me in touch with Heather, a Reiki practitioner friend of hers, also from LA. She was an American woman who had lived in England at some point in her life and so had an English accent. I did not hold it against her. I am sure that if I lived in England for just two weeks, I would have a permanent English accent. Posh or East End? Mockney? Any and all. I had managed to lose my Michigan accent within days of arriving in NYC. The summer when I returned to Detroit, I was accused of trying to sound like I had an English accent by some girl in a bar. The fool! I was trying to sound like a NYer and also trying to shift back to a Detroit sound for the summer.

I met Heather at a hotel on 28th Street in the Flower District where I had worked many years before. That area, like almost all of NYC, had transformed considerably, and now featured chic restaurants and hotels and not so many wholesale florists. My old place where I had worked in college, Harry Vlachos Florists, was now an Italian restaurant. NYC continued to change, as I suppose it always had. Still, I did not approve. I wanted things, the places I had known and had some significance to me, to stay the same forever. But NYC had changed, and I had also. Lately, not in such a good way. Both me and NYC. Still, I loved the city and continued to have high hopes for myself, a work in progress, now under the care of a Reiki practitioner.

Reiki required a lot of my mental concentration with Heather also touching me while I also wore various necklaces and amulets. She gave me a list of things to buy, crystals and ointments. I had once purchased a crystal, even then purported to have healing powers, while in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was a lark for me, but I thought why not? Maybe it will help. A couple of years later I gave it to a friend who was tripping at a Grateful Dead show, and she gave it to a stranger a row further up and that was the end of my relationship with that crystal. I suppose it found a better home with that GD fan, perhaps entering a land of eternal dancing bears and skeletons, roses and R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural and the Keep on Truckin’ guy.

Heather told me my chakras were blocked -- all of them. More bad news. And even worse, my apartment was cursed. I felt the monthly apartment maintenance fee to the Co-Op was high but “cursed” was a bit harsh. I told this news to Margie, who was not happy to hear it. She told some of her friends in her women’s knit circle. Happily, one of them revealed that she was a witch. Margie had not previously known that about her. I suppose it is the sort of thing one might keep under their hat – even if society had grown more tolerant and there were many fewer witch burnings. Still, there was no “W” yet added to LGBQT, so they were on their own. She gave Margie and me instructions for removing the curse and purifying the apartment, a ritual involving some Norse runes, tarot cards, and various aromatic plants and herbs that were burnt along with readings and affirmations. It was all a bit frightening — on top of the “normal” being frightened by my mysterious illness. But we did the ceremony to remove the curse.

I did the one session with Heather. She returned to L.A. and I never heard from her again. I had no interest in following up either though, aside from the curse, I liked the Reiki session. There was and is something to trying to connect the mind and body in healing. I believed in science but clearly in my case it did not have all the answers. My Catholic mom, and her Catholic friends, my friend who had become a Bulgarian Orthodox priest, Buddhists, Jews, etc., were all praying for me. I welcomed that.

Gimme Some Money: Spinal Tap

Nebraska- Bruce Springsteen

The trip out to Omaha was not so bad. My mom and I left early on Wednesday, July 3^rd expecting to take two days to drive the Chevy Malibu about 800 miles. But after we drove 12 hours and made it to Central Iowa, we decided to push on through. Detroiters. No sleep ‘til Omaha. My mom and I shared similar sensibilities at least about stuff like this. I updated Margie who was happy we would arrive sooner. She said we could sleep in her place, a college dorm studio apartment at Creighton University, a Jesuit school where some of the actors were being housed. We would all sleep on the couch or the floor. Maybe we could even catch that night’s show, a special late-night staging of Hamlet. That was ambitious for me because the drive turned out to be 15 hours and I was used to going to sleep at 9 p.m. In truth, I was not likely to stay awake until midnight after such a drive. And my mom was 84 and had mostly split the driving with me.

Mom and I had got along well on the drive out. It seemed that she wanted to use this occasion to tell me her life story, during our long voyage together. We had done some similar things in the preceding years, which I saw as her teaching me about her life before she died. She had given me old family photos, and we visited the part of central Michigan where she grew up, a rural farming area, where they had rented land to farm. She showed me our relatives’ tombstones in the local graveyard. This is where the bodies are buried, I thought.

On our car trip, my mom talked about her youth in Detroit and on the farm in Alma, or actually a smaller community, Elwell. She talked some about her alcoholic mother, something she never spoke of much, and being removed from her mother’s custody and placed in child protective services. She talked about her first marriage to Gordie and Cindy’s dad, Jack Machleit, a strapping, tall ex-Navy guy with curly red hair who lived in the neighborhood, worked as a car mechanic and rode an Indian motorcycle. There was so much heavy sadness in her youth, and I felt it had resulted in a lifetime of trauma for her that she had not really coped with except by not mentioning it and soldiering on, shoulder to the wheel, another road trip ahead.

She talked about my dad, also named William Bernard Carney. They knew each other from the same Detroit lower east side neighborhood and high school, St. Rose. My mom was a sort of goody two shoes, attending church every day as a teenager. She was already at that point living with her older sister Anne, a high school dropout and waitress. Anne was soon married and with a young daughter, my cousin JoAnne.

At one point, after mom and Jack were engaged, mom wanted to trick some friends of hers and my dad’s. Despite being engaged to Jack, she had been dancing with my dad at a neighborhood wedding reception. She said that in those days everyone just showed up at the wedding party, no invitation necessary. My Mom and dad went up to their friends at the dance hall and my mom showed off her new engagement ring from Jack. She said, “Bill and I are engaged.” But their friends simply responded, “Yeah, we heard you and Jack got engaged.” They had already heard the news so her attempted practical joke fell flat. My mom walked away. My dad stayed with his friends. It was an odd story. Kind of humiliating or emasculating for my dad, making him the subject of their pretend engagement, rather than announcing the actual engagement with Jack. But I think it showed my mom was attracted to my dad even then. And after Jack died, they did get married. I was born one year later almost to the day.

Mom, Dad, sister Cindy and brother Gordie:

Yours truly:

Couleur Café: Serge Gainsbourg

My mom also showed me a letter my dad had written to her when he was stationed in the army in Germany, but she still was married to Jack. My dad’s stint there just preceded Elvis’s in 1958. In the letter my dad discussed his life in the Army. He was a chaplain’s assistant, like an Army altar boy of sorts. That was a cushy gig and got him out of a lot of regular army duties and gave him a lot of autonomy. He could even live off base. A new chaplain was assigned, and he asked my dad and the other assistant what their job duties were? That essentially allowed them to leave out all the undesirable duties while purporting to explain what they were supposed to do.

My dad regularly dined out in local restaurants in the little German town where he was stationed, rather than in the mess on base. He also took a trip to Paris when he had some leave time. Paris made a huge impression on him with its beauty and style, and big city sophistication, he noted in his letter. Also, it was expensive. But my dad’s letter also described how liberal the French culture was, how “niggers” just walked around like ordinary people, some even with French women. My dad’s own USA racist views were shocked by the lack of racism in France. My mom had shown me the letter without remarking upon my father’s racism. It was as if it was not even worth remarking on. When I pointed out how shocking it was to me, my mom acknowledged that my dad used the word “nigger” but stated that my grandfather was even worse. Yes, that was true.

My dad’s casual racism was sad and disturbing but so was my mom’s failure to even remark on it, until I did. But I also knew my parents to be kind towards our Black neighbors and their co-workers. And my dad’s letter was written long ago when racism among a lot of whites was the norm, unfortunately. The truth was my dad was less racist than his dad, and, while I had my faults and shameful things I had said or done, I was less bigoted than my dad. There was an arc of progress. Also, my dad had been profoundly taken with Paris, even if he was shocked by their “liberal” attitudes towards race. I also found Paris strange, but wonderfully so, and it had caused me to dive deep into an entire rabbit hole of French culture and start my band, Les Sans Culottes. Unlike my dad, I longed for its otherness, from what I had known in Detroit. Whatever their liberalism was, it was something that I wanted, not something that disturbed or threatened me.

Dad in the Army:

Marriage: The Bug Club

It was also strange, I thought, that my dad was writing to my mom when she was married to someone else and that she had saved the letter. My mom insisted there was nothing odd or improper about it. Jack was fully aware of my dad’s letters to her. Still, I found it odd. She probably thought she was being nice trading letters to a lonely guy in the army that she knew from the neighborhood. But it also seemed to me that they already had some attraction to one another even if it had to be on a “just friends” level because my mom was already married. The letter and the joking about them being engaged indicated that to me. Even if my mom did not seem to be aware of it even after all these years.

She talked while I drove, and we listened to some CDs I had brought, ones that I hoped she would like also. For the most part, they made the cut. We made it into Omaha just as the sun was going down. I kept thinking of the CW McCall song, “Convoy” from the 1970’s. That song helped to popularize CB radio use for a while, and in it, the narrator who goes by the handle the Rubber Duck asks his radio friend, Pig Pen, for his location, his “20” in CB radio parlance. Pig Pen replies and the Rubber Duck exclaims, “OMAHA? Well, they oughta know what to do with them hogs out there fer sure.” Omaha was a town that could accommodate its share of hogs. 10-4 good buddy.

Margie was so happy to see me, and I was thrilled to see her. It had been the longest we were ever apart. Margie also could see clearly for the first time, however, that I was not well, that I was limping badly, had dropped some weight and was in general not looking so healthy.

That night the play was cancelled because of strong thunderstorms. In that part of the country the storms can be sudden and very serious. And the show was outdoors. It was just as well; I was beat. All is well, that ends well.

Mom and Dad on their Honeymoon:

Emergency: 999

Margie told me a harrowing story that had occurred in her little apartment just a few days before our arrival. She was preparing her meal on the electric stove top and placed a plate over one of the burners, not realizing the burner was on. The plate quickly became so hot that it exploded, shattering into a hundred little shards. Luckily, very luckily, Margie had left the little kitchenette area and was in a different part of the small studio and not hit by any of the projectiles from this improvised explosive device. She could have been seriously injured, possibly killed. Margie had avoided catastrophe but still in disbelief that she had come that close. And then she was further shaken by my arrival, shaken and stirred. We had long been in this life together and now we had a new chapter before us.

Cherokee Nation: Paul Revere and the Raiders

My mom moved into a hotel about eight blocks away in the downtown section of Omaha. I slept at Margie’s place, sharing a spot on a mattress on the floor since the beds were bunk beds. And I went to my mom’s hotel to swim to continue my physical therapy for my mysterious bum leg. I had taken up swimming at the health club near me in Brooklyn because it was supposed to be good for one’s back. I continued swimming in Omaha, though it was not helping my leg get back to normal.

We all walked to the warehouse district, now repurposed as a tourist area with bars, restaurants, and shops including a great record store. But downtown Omaha was not a lively place. It was hot and had too much concrete. They seemed to have been quite liberal with their “urban renewal” at some point and demolished most of the older buildings. And they were renting out e-scooters nearby, so a bunch of young people were recklessly riding their rental scooters on the sidewalks all around us while I limped about with my cane.

Later I went with my mom to a restaurant recommended by some of Margie’s fellow actors. Margie had been making her meals at home but some of her acting colleagues were getting out and exploring the town. Omaha had some interesting areas, but you had to know where to look for them; it was a bit like Detroit in that way. But it was not really like Detroit.

On July 4th we were invited to my friend Kat’s place. I had met her at the new Freddy’s back in Brooklyn. She and her husband Alain, a Frenchman, had moved from Brooklyn to Omaha a couple years earlier so Kat could look after her elderly dad. Since then, her dad had passed away and Alain, who had formerly worked as a chef, was renovating the grand old house they had bought. The kitchen and a lot of the downstairs were redone and looked great. And they were both excellent chefs.

Cruel To Be Kind: Nick Lowe

Mom spoke rather bluntly, including her views on race which were far from progressive, but Alain and Kat found her quite charming, understanding that was her view, even if they did not agree with it, and it was a pleasant visit. Kat had grown up as an “army brat” moving from town to town and getting to know a lot of different types. I supposed that had something to do with her not being put off by my mom’s bluntly spoken views on race, which tended to put the blame for Black people’s problems on Black people, not any sort of unfairness in society.

Mom and I saw the plays over the next two nights, first “All’s Well That Ends Well” and then “Hamlet.” Margie was fantastic in both. She played Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, as more vulnerable than others I had seen in the filmed versions, notably Julie Christie’s interpretation in Kenneth Branagh’s maximalist four-hour version from 1996. It worked, because I think Margie was exploring a part of Gertrude not often put forward, even while the character was a victim in the whole scheme of things in my view.

True, Hamlet accuses her of being incestuous, but my understanding is that it was entirely common for widows and widowers to marry the siblings of their deceased spouse. In fact, for royals that made even more sense since the marriages were political and had nothing to do with romantic love. So, I always have found Hamlet’s righteousness toward her to be a bit overdone. On the other hand, having learned that Claudius killed his father, Hamlet was right to exact revenge on him. And there is no indication that Queen Gertrude is in on Claudius’ scheming and murder plot. She is one of the few people not so involved in conniving and trickery in a play that features a lot of both, including the famous play-within-a-play, “The Mousetrap.” Morever, being vulnerable played to one of Margie’s strengths as an actress, and human, as she naturally is quite vulnerable and emotional. That was not my thing, not the way I was raised, but that was one of the good things about our marriage. Margie was teaching me to be more “sensitive” and more in touch with the emotional/heart side of living. Whereas, I had an excellent record collection.

And Margie was also very good as the King of France in “All’s Well.” Her King outfit was great, a royal uniform of jodhpurs and a frock coat with epaulets. No crown, but that worked well. It was great to see her play a strong authoritarian figure, not something that she generally got do in plays. Of course, because of my own strong connection to and interest in France and French culture, it was also interesting see her play the French king. I had been playing a French revolutionary, sans-culotte, anti-royalist for some years now. Like Mick Jagger, my form of revolutionary activity was to “sing for a rock n roll band,” finding no place for a street fighting man currently. In truth, Margie and I both had strong anti-royalist views. When we went to England and saw Buckingham Palace, she was disgusted by it. But this was show biz.

The play was also particularly poignant for me because in it the king is suffering from a mysterious disease that nothing can cure. I also was suffering from a mysterious disease that was resisting various treatments. I could identify. The play’s young woman protagonist, Helena, offers to cure the king if she may choose whom she is to marry. Helena is the daughter of a physician who has recently died and knows his cures. Helena cures the king and is promised marriage to Bertram, the man she chooses, but Bertram does not think Helena is worthy of him. Complications ensue.

Shakespeare dubbed it a comedy, but it is known now as a “problem play,” perhaps because it is more problematic than funny. A problem play is one that poses complex ethical dilemmas that require more than a simple solution. One solution in this play is the “bed trick” where Helena is substituted for another character, Diana, after Bertram refuses to consummate his marriage to Helena. I can think of a lot of problems with such a trick. But Shakespeare is not the only writer who has incorporated it into one of his plays. It is also used in both “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Revenge of the Nerds” so it is a gift that keeps on giving!

For me, though, I could not get over thinking of the cure for the king. I envied the cure and the king. There was no cure in sight for me. I needed a Helena to cure me. That was my problem play. Similarly, as “The Mousetrap” in Hamlet was designed by the Hamlet character to confront his stepfather with his murderous behavior and provoke a guilty response, “All’s Well’s” plot line had provoked a personal response in me regarding my illness. It was hitting close to home, even in Nebraska. The Bard strikes again.

In the end, it was great seeing Margie in these two roles, both quality productions. It was a nice addition to her resume, and she was fantastic in both. She was truly both a king and a queen. I was proud and could tell that even my mom was impressed.

Margie had her own travel booked by plane back to NY. I drove back with my mom and again we decided to do it all in one long slog. Unfortunately, this time things did not go well. She had been driving but without her glasses on. So, she could not see the signs directing which lane one should be in. I could and was telling her “go right” but she did not follow my direction. Parents. They never listen, even at this stage of the game. Instead, she slowed down to about 25 miles per hour on the expressway when she was nearly underneath the sign trying to read it herself. That was frightening. I suggested we pull off the road and get gas, and I took over the wheel then. She told me that she had not been wearing her glasses and put them on. But they weren’t for distance, so I don’t know what they had to do with her inability to see properly. The incident did seem to shake her. She had driven all over the country on so many road trips throughout her life but now was getting an inkling that it might be too much.

Downtown Detroit from Belle Isle, middle of Detroit River:

A few hours later while I was driving, she became very concerned about the point where we had to go from I-80 to I-94. But they are the same road. It’s a simple merge where 80 simply becomes 94 between Chicago and Indiana. But my mom obsessed about it; she did not want to miss “the turn.” We got into a big traffic jam around Chicago (Chicagoland!) and she kept directing how I should drive, all the while greatly concerned that I would miss the “turn off.” She confused the sign along the side of the road stating that we were at 2.3 mile marker of I-94 -- and had already successfully merged -- with the notion that we needed to turn on to I-94 in 2.3 miles. She excitedly insisted I needed to get over to the right lane right away, right now! I tried to explain that she was mistaken, that the sign indicated we were already on 94, but she simply remained upset with my driving and had difficulty accepting that she was confused about the road sign

Margie (red trousers) as King of France:

Les Sans Culottes at Mercury Lounge, June 2019:

She took over driving in Michigan and then refused to relinquish the wheel, claiming I should not drive due to my weak leg. I think she wanted to prove to herself everything was ok. Outside of Detroit, she had to do a big circular exit from one highway to another. Unfortunately, as we circled, she became blinded by the setting sun, and this time came to a complete halt on the exit road. I told her she should let me drive but she refused. When we finally made it into her suburban apartment condo, I felt the numbness move from my upper leg to my lower. When I did have my next MRI, it revealed that the nerve inflammation had indeed spread. It was assuredly a coincidence, but it happened.

Big Bird: Eddie Floyd

Lovebug: George Strait

That summer, our apartment, or specifically our bedroom, had become plagued by an unseen menace causing us to get what we called “bug bites” while we slept in our bed. These “bites” would result in large red welters that were insanely itchy and sometimes remained so for almost a week. By the time one bite was no longer itchy a new bite or two emerged, ensuring that Margie and I were always in discomfort.

We had some experience with a similar mysterious menacing assault a few years earlier. Then, we feared they were dreaded bedbugs. Bedbugs had returned to NYC a few years before and we knew friends who had infestations. These were the twin plagues of the new NYC: the clueless wealthy and bedbugs. It was a difficult and expensive process getting rid of them (the bedbugs), nightmarish. All New Yorkers had begun to live in fear of bedbugs again, even though they had assumed that was something in the past, like polio or smallpox. You might think of yourself as middle class, but bedbugs did not respect your bourgeois bullshit. They were gonna upend your life, like John Belushi in an oversized comical bedbug costume completely out of his mind on coke. Our lives seemed already plenty disrupted so we were strongly not in favor of further complications.

During the prior “bug bite” episode we had brought into our apartment a service with a bedbug sniffing dog. Happily, that dog had pronounced us bedbug-free, having detected no bugs. Then, a year or two later, our apartment building, all apartments, had a real bedbug situation where some apartments had them. That caused a real panic as they spread easily to neighboring apartments. It is hard to put up a bedbug firewall. Our building management (reluctantly) decided to allow everyone to have their places inspected free of cost and ultimately the problem was solved.

So, when we had the “bug bite” problem again I was pretty sure it was not bedbugs. My previous research had indicated we were the victims of dust mites, the source of the itchy infections that resembled bites. We had won our battle against them last time after trying various measures: vacuuming, washing the sheets, pillows, and getting large plastic hypoallergenic mattress covers. It seemed that the pillows were the mighty and invisible mites last stronghold and redoubt but washing them had sealed the victory. But now, despite deploying these proven methods, nothing worked. The bites continued. And then Margie left town for Omaha for seven weeks.

Convoy: C.W. McCall

I was happy she did. Not that I wanted us to be apart, but Margie left to do two plays with the Nebraska Shakespeare Company in Omaha. It was a great gig for her, a chance to do two plays by the Bard, “Hamlet” and “All’s Well That Ends Well.” Plus, Margie was cast as Queen Gertrude in Hamlet. For an older woman actress, not named Vanessa Jackson or Redgrave or Dame something or other, there were not many good roles in Shakespeare - or most plays for that matter. Additionally, Nebraska Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well” featured an all women cast. Margie was playing the King of France in “All’s Well That Ends Well.” She was a King and a Queen in Omaha. Break out the steaks of Omaha! Alert Boys Town and Mutual of Omaha too

Margie as Queen Gertrude with Nebraska Shakespeare:

But Omaha is a long way from New York and Margie had not previously been away for that long, seven weeks. She had done previous out-of-town shows for several weeks in past summers. I was determined to deal with the bites and hoping the doctors would figure out what was going on with my leg and I had a plan to fly to Detroit and visit my mom and friends there and then drive with my mom to Omaha.

If nothing else, I had been assured that these types of mysterious nerve inflammations usually appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared on their own after a couple of months. That happened almost all the time. “One day it will just disappear,” as I later heard about another horrible menace. Still, I was freaked out and skeptical. I had gone from seemingly good health to constant pain and sleeplessness. My doctor did not know what to do. The first time in my life I had real need for a doctor, and he had no idea what to do

Performing with LSC at Mercury Lounge, July 2019:

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I contacted all three of the neurologists Dr. Schick had pulled out of his contact book when giving up on me. But the earliest appointment I could get was with a doctor in the Mt. Sinai medical system on July 12^th, Dr. Scelsa. Unlike my regular doctor and Schick, most doctors now it seemed were part of a medical group: Mt. Sinai, NYU, Cornell-Weill, Columbia-Presbyterian or whatever. Scelsa at least shared the surname of a legendary NYC DJ, Vin Scelsa. And he was a teaching doctor and the head of his department. It seemed like he might know what to do.

My Detroit-Omaha visit was scheduled for late June and early July, so the Scelsa appointment would be not long after I returned. I had wanted to see the plays, of course, but my mom decided that she wanted to go also. She was too elderly to feel comfortable driving herself and insisted that flying or even taking a train were not possible for various reasons that made not much sense to me (things will be stolen on the train; her circulation would not work on the short plane ride but would be ok during the marathon car trip, etc.). We never discussed the bus. I had long ago given up arguing with her. When my mom explained why she did not want to do something she prefaced it by saying “keep in mind.” “Keep in mind” our driving together, a 16-hour drive, was the way we were going to Omaha. I figured we would do the drive in two days, 8 hours each day, and although it might be tough, it was something I could do for my aged mom. A long, bonding experience. A last road trip. What could go wrong? Me and my elderly mom in a car together for 16 hours?

Night Moves: Bob Seger

Sleep had become a horror. I would usually fall asleep for an hour or so and when I awakened it would feel like I had slept for eight or ten hours and been through some intense ordeal. I could not remember anything that happened but was left with a feeling of wildly distorted sleep time and without any feeling of restoration. After that, I would spend the rest of the night moving from one uncomfortable position after another, every 30 seconds or so. Maybe I would log a total of three hours of sleep per night in little segments but without ever having the feeling of having rested. My eyes, long a disaster area on my face, became even more worn and haggard looking. I had long ago developed dark, racoon-like bags under my eyes, in line with my mother’s Slavic heritage. I resembled a sleep-deprived Steve Buscemi or Ren from Ren and Stimpy. Not only had it become eminently clear to me how sleep deprivation could work as a form of torture, I also was waking up with my shirt soaked through from a night sweat. I had some night sweats in the past, usually in conjunction with a flu or cold, and that was normally a good sign. I thought that my body was fighting off my illness. In this instance, unbeknownst to me, the sweating was not a good sign. I told my doctor about the night sweats, but he did not seem concerned about it.

It was not a good sign that my initial sleep was only lasting an hour. I began to think of pacing myself through a night’s sleep the way a baseball manager might think of utilizing his pitching staff. There was my starter, many middle relievers, pre-closer and closer. But if your starter is just going for one inning, you know you are in trouble. The truth is I had burned through all my pitching stuff and was having to resort to having the second-string catcher pitch. He has a good arm and had done some pitching in high school. I got some Oxycodone and Tramadols, opioid drugs, and was taking those to go to sleep and when I woke in the middle of the night. Later, in October my neurologist prescribed some Ambien sleeping pills. For me, they were good for about two hours of sleep usually. I heard that others had trouble waking up in the morning after taking one. They were like sleep atomic bombs – for them, not me.

I was still performing regularly with Les Sans Culottes and Bill Carney’s Jug Addicts. Both bands played at least once a month, but it was a challenge for me with my lack of sleep and gimpy leg. I had gone from being Marshall Dillon on Gunsmoke to Chester, the limping sidekick played by Dennis Hopper. They told Weaver that he had to do something to make himself appear more of a definite sidekick since he was good looking enough that the audience might take him for a rival leading man to James Arness as Dillon. So, Weaver had his character limp. That was a decision he would later regret as he had to do it for the next five years. My limping was not my choice. Hopefully, it was not going to last five years.

The bottom had strangely dropped out for me. I thought of the amusement park ride called the Rotor. You stood against the wall at the bottom of this circular area and the whole thing started spinning rapidly. Suddenly the floor dropped down several feet, and you spun wildly while stuck to the wall. The Rotor! Of course, when I took that ride, I knew the bottom was going to drop out.

Chapter Three: Detroit I Do Mind Dying

Le Sabre Radar: The Hentchmen

I flew out to Detroit in the last week in June. This plan had all been formulated prior to my pain and leg weakness, but I decided to go ahead anyway. In retrospect, that was a mistake. But at the time, I reasoned that I would be able to visit my mom in her new home where she had moved after my father’s death and spend a good amount of time with her. It might be the last opportunity to do so. She would never say it was important, but I knew it was. We were both getting older and first Cindy and now my dad had died. What do Detroiters do? Road trip. In addition, I would have a few days on either end of the trip to see some Detroit friends and drive around the old town, the Krazy Masonite as we used to call it, with music blasting from car speakers. That was something I deeply enjoyed. Most importantly I would see Margie acting in these plays.

At the airport, they gave me a hard time. Something had come up in the security scan. They put their hands down my pants and my underwear stating that my crotch area had come up red. Oh yeah baby. They showed me the screen indicating some sort of item, even if it meant nothing to me. I had nothing illegal on me, so I could not imagine what set off their scanner. Despite finding nothing in my underpants in their very intrusive poke around search, they went thoroughly through everything in my carry on, a black messenger bag. They dumped everything out found, nothing, and indicated I should put it all back. They were done with me. It was rude and rather brutish, but happily they missed the middle compartment that was velcroed shut in my bag. That is here I kept the many medications I was now taking. This is where you put your drugs. Although they were all prescribed, I am sure that would have been a further hassle and more unwanted, aggressive behavior. I made it to the lounge area and got a beer.

My mom picked me up in her Chevy Malibu and we drove out to her place in far northern Macomb County, near 20 Mile Road, twelve miles north of Detroit’s border at Eight Mile Road. Mom had sold her house where she had lived with my dad during the time of his dementia and death and now had a condo with an attached garage closer to where my brother lived. The condo was high-ceilinged but dark. It was the sort of place where people drove into their garage and walked into their home, never having to show their faces on the street

My mom in 2025 age 90:

Johnny Chan at the Tap Room 2025:

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It was perfectly soulless, but she had moved quickly after my father’s death. My sister’s ex-husband Norm said he wanted to buy my mom’s house, so she moved out and into this condo. With Norm moving in, she did not have to fix up the old house. He was taking it “as is.” And while my mom never said it explicitly, I can see her wanting to leave the place where she had cared for her husband as he declined. And she got out quick.

I visited some of my friends in Detroit. Matthew, my old pal from Detroit and my first NYC jug band, the Metropolecats, and his wife Nancy had a house on the East Side. The neighborhood was a bit sketch, abandoned houses or houses you wished were abandoned rather than occupied by squatters who were either drug selling or stripping the house of anything that could be sold. Matt and Nancy had nevertheless stayed put in their place for a couple decades and made nice improvements to the interior of their house. They were both great gardeners, so it made sense that their place sat on a double lot, giving them more space for gardening and a garage. The Cadieux Café, an old Belgian-style restaurant and bar, was nearby, and it was close to the Grosse Pointe border, Mack Avenue where there were a lot of businesses.

Matt worked at a grocery on Mack and one of his sisters owned and ran a food catering place there where Matt had also worked. Plus, Matt’s quite elderly parents lived nearby in Grosse Pointe along with a few other relatives. His family had something like nine siblings. I suppose it was Matt’s way of living in Grosse Pointe, albeit while still in Detroit. But Detroit was not Grosse Pointe.

Matt and Nancy had recently bought the lot behind their house for merely a couple hundred dollars. That house, on Detroit’s Detroit Street, was boarded up and falling apart. So, the city offered the backyard lot to the nearest tax-paying residents. They got it and now had even more space for gardening. They were getting by mostly from Nancy’s relatively good paying-gig at Trader Joe’s (in Grosse Pointe). Matt had retired. He was 62. Now he could literally spend his time cultivating his own garden.

Echo Tourism: Bill Carney

We played some songs around their kitchen table with Matt and me on guitar and Nancy on mandolin. Some other jug band folks joined in: James on washtub bass and Matt’s brother, Maurice, the poet and painter, on kazoo. His girlfriend Jennifer, another artist, sang along. That was what we always did. We got together and we sang songs. That was one of the good things about Detroit or at least my Detroit. We kept singing the songs. Maybe they were the same old ones, and we probably needed to break free from some of these older identities but at the same time we kept singing.

Actually, this time I sang some of the original songs I had been writing, “Echo Tourism” and “Italian Girl from Staten Island.” Matt had written some originals over the years and broke those out in response. They were not used to me doing original songs, and neither was I. Suddenly we were breaking free a bit from the preserved-in-amber-but-zonked-on-weed aesthetic we had been employing, sort of reflexively, for many years.

I also visited with Johnny “Chan” Michaels. He was a painter and rock-n-roll guy I knew in NYC where he had been a special-ed teacher in the NYC public schools. His dad was a famous artist from the Detroit area and so Johnny had grown up in a house in the suburbs knowing many of Detroit’s artistic elite, like Minuro Yamasaki, the architect who designed the World Trade Center in NYC and many buildings around Detroit’s Wayne State campus, and the novelist Elmore Leonard. Johnny’s dad did large-scale sculptures for big public works projects like airports or corporate headquarters lobbies. He was part of an arts circle with connections to the prestigious Cranbrook Academy in the suburbs. And Johnny was a talented painter himself, as well as a rocker.

In NYC, Johnny got hit by a cable tv company truck while riding his bike. He flew 20 feet in the air and damaged discs on his back when he landed. A perfect case for a lawsuit, particularly since everyone hates the cable company. He eventually did get a settlement though he undermined his case playing some shows in Europe after the accident. He was legitimately injured and able to move mostly because he was gobbling large doses of pain killers, but it did undercut his legal claim and eventual settlement. The opposition had seen his posts on social media. Johnny had to sell his place in NYC and then moved to Detroit (or actually Grosse Pointe) to live off that dough while he waited on his case and eventual settlement.

When he finally got his cut of the settlement pay out, Johnny wisely bought some houses in Detroit and Grosse Pointe. He was handy and fixed them up and rented them out. Certain parts of Detroit, mostly southwest in Mexicantown, the old Irish neighborhood, Corktown, or the area where I had lived long ago, the Cass Corridor (now redubbed Midtown), were experiencing a real estate boom. Detroit was gentrifying. Wow. 2019. Johnny was savvy enough to put his money into it.

Johnny bought a duplex house in Grosse Pointe Park, just on the Detroit border. He lived on the top floor and rented out the lower. Plus, he had converted the garage into his own studio. He had tried to do various band projects, notably The Britemores (named after a sort of non-descript, run-down West Side Detroit neighborhood) with another Detroit rock guy, Jeff Meier, but the band broke up. Some of the band members wanted to play more, some less, some travel, some don’t, and ultimately Johnny and Jeff argued over song-writing credits, as often happens.

Detroit Rock City: Kiss

Johnny took me to see a local band playing at a bar on Mack Avenue around the corner from where he lived. The band featured his former band mate, now 21-years-old. He had played in the Britemores when he was 19 and all the other guys were over 50. They dubbed him “The Kid.” Then, he was quite heavy and hid behind a mane of thick blond hair draped over his face Cousin Itt-style while he played bass. Johnny and the Kid got along and for a while the Kid was Johnny’s roommate in the duplex’s upper flat.

But then the Kid moved out, cut his hair, lost 70 pounds and started his own post-punk band. He was the lead vocalist, shouting wildly distorted vocals into his microphone. The audience at the show was all his old Grosse Pointe high school pals and their parents. Johnny talked briefly with the Kid’s dad, a guy probably my age or a bit younger. They discussed a recent sailing regatta race the dad had competed in. It seemed very Grosse Pointe.

The Kid’s band had recorded a few songs live and sent the demo to Jack White’s Third Man Records. Third Man Records had a record store and record pressing plant in Detroit’s “midtown” area. The label decided to put out the demo, and the band was offered a gig opening for Jack White at the Masonic Temple in Detroit in a few weeks. Irony. Johnny and me and everyone we knew had been making music for thousands of years with not much to show for it other than a free drink ticket. The Kid went on a diet, started screaming into a microphone and was on his way to stardom. Well, it was good to be a young guy if you were in the rock n roll game.

Hey Hey We’re the Gories: The Gories

Johnny had explained to me long ago that his stage name Johnny “Chan” had been foisted on him when he was part of the little garage scene in Detroit in the early 90’s. That scene yielded semi-famous band, the Gories. Johnny was playing with a guy who called himself Freddy Fortune. Freddy informed him that “John Michaels” sounded like a hairdresser’s name. It did. So, he became Johnny Chan. He kept it even after he moved to NYC. We played some shows together, my band Les Sans Culottes and Johnny’s band, “Johnny Chan and the New Dynasty Six.” He had done the smart thing of putting his name as part of the band name as I had done with “Bill Carney’s Jug Addicts.” But not “Les Sans Culottes” alas. A decision that made things more difficult when ex-members decided to start using the name “Les Sans Culottes,” trying to steal our identity, my band’s name, even while I had my original band called Les Sans Culottes. It was audacious, vicious and weird. They were creating their own alternate reality. I had to haul their asses into Federal court to get an order to shut them down. And I did. Sometimes rock n roll can get a bit ugly.

Over the years, with our various connections, Detroit and music and NYC, Johnny and I became friends. Plus, Johnny worked with special ed. kids, teaching art, and really liked his job. And I had my gig working for poor people, trying to ensure there was some amount of fairness in the criminal justice system. I was proud of that gig, even if it was a tough one. Chan was on the right side of the fight – until he was on the wrong end of the cable company truck.

We left the Grosse Pointe punk rock kids with their yachting parents and walked over to the Tap Room. It was down a long block in Grosse Pointe Park lined with old, mostly well-cared-for houses, many duplexes with big upstairs porches. It looked like old Detroit before so many houses were burned down. A kind of place I could live in. I remembered coming to all the bars in the neighborhood when I was in my 20’s. There were quite a few and the Brook was the one my friends hung out in. But I also loved the Tap Room because they sometimes had small jazz combos play there and some of my friends, like Gerald, had bartended there.

At the Tap Room we ran into local music maven Willie Wilson. He was a big, heavy, bearded bear of a man. He had been the booker at the legendary Gold Dollar Show Bar when the White Stripes etc. burst out of that scene, though I knew it when it was the home of cross-dressing entertainers, sexy transvestites though mostly long in the tooth.

I knew Willie a bit, but Johnny knew him well. We sat in the backyard, among the other customers, obviously Grosse Pointe kids. This was their “dive bar.” They were playing some sort of horse-shoes type game. I disapproved.

A friend of Johnny’s had come with us from the previous bar. He was about our age, short and chubby. But he was engaged in a non-stop, sort of self-loathing stand-up routine. The big “punch line” was how long he had gone without sex, years, decades. Thinking back, it is hard to remember what was funny about that, or whether his celibacy had been intentional or the result of no one being willing to sleep with him for a very long time.

Johnny’s duplex contained his carefully curated art, mid-century modern furniture, cute little dog and his own art studio full of his paintings in a converted garage out back. But since we had left there, things had just been weird, culminating in the guy going on about his years of long sexual abstinence. “This will be the last one for me; I have a long drive out to my mom’s place,” I announced.

I also visited with my friend Roger. Roger had left NYC and had settled in Mexicantown where he knew everyone. He was a charismatic and soulful guy, a sort of poet and flaneur, though his free and easy attitude often meant that he was changing jobs, always waiting or bartending. He was focused on bigger things -- at least in his mind. He was going on about the arrangement of electrical wire poles in Detroit. I had been right to refer to it as the “Masonite City,” he told me. I had called it that since 1986 or so when I saw some graffiti on the freeway reading “Detroit Krazy Masonite City.” Now Roger was explaining to me in 2019 that I was right. What could I do? I agreed with Roger/Me. And added, “yes, clearly, ziggurats.” The discussion then got very intense and odd. Probably he was stoned and a bit drunk.

At the Miami Bar, we were joined by Mr. Fine Wine, aka Matt Weingarden, another ex-Detroiter who lived in Brooklyn. Matt had gone to the prestigious Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills and then Yale. He was a great DJ of vintage soul and R & B 45’s that he collected and had a regular show on local NYC area, cool radio station, WFMU. He also had a decades-long DJ gig at a restaurant bar on Houston Street, Botanica.

The Miami had been a regular haunt of mine when I lived a few blocks away on Peterboro Street back in the 1980’s. It was owned by a Vietnam vet and was a vet hangout with loads of military gear adorning its walls. And it had a pool table. The Don’t Look Now Jug Band had played some great shows there and my French rock n roll band, Les Sans Culottes, had played there with the Electric 6 in 2002 when LSC got a gig at the Detroit Institute of Arts. We had to balance our art museum gig with a dive bar show. Roger, Matt and me all hung out in the backyard area of the Miami Bar, talking and drinking. It was all great, except for my mysteriously fucked up leg. “I got to sit down,” I told them. “I have a weak leg.”

Nebraska- Bruce Springsteen

Doctor Boogie: Flamin’ Groovies

Despite my active life, my bike riding and exercise, in late April 2019, I started having trouble with my right leg. First, I felt a numbness in my thigh, just above the knee. I thought it had something to do with my old ACL tear from the late 90’s. Maybe I would have to have ACL surgery (which I did not have back then) or even have the knee replaced. And my leg pain was making it very difficult to sleep. I was experiencing great discomfort in the lower right part of my back and hip. Not being able to sleep is really a form of hell. I thought of how our military and CIA people had used sleep deprivation as a form of “enhanced interrogation” -- or torture -- in our country’s never-ending wars on terrorism. I spent entire nights cycling sleeplessly through sleep positions: back, left side, right side, three quarters, etc. A new kind of cycling for me. None of these positions were comfortable enough for me to fall asleep; instead, I was compelled to change sleeping positions every 45 seconds or so.

I had experienced insomnia in the past. That was the old Sunday dead-of-night-feeling that “I am going to die” someday. Normal enough, I suppose. That was the kind of discomfort one usually could ignore during the day but not so much at night. That was bad, but this pain was completely different. I could not sleep at night and by day I was an exhausted mess.

I went to a massage therapist on Canal Street in Chinatown to work on the numbness. The masseuse noted the big knotted, problem area in my thigh. Here. He massaged and used different heat treatments but my problem persisted.

I also went to a new age-type doctor on the Upper West Side that my wife, Margie, had seen. The new age doc did a lot of chiropractic adjustments, pronounced my body “out of line,” and used various massage treatments. She sold me a pain lotion I could rub on my leg. I went to her a couple of times in her office in the back of a fancy apartment building on 79^th Street. She had a high-end practice with an appointment desk and staff. It was good but it did not help.

I sought other, cheaper alternatives. I did a number of chiropractic visits at a local Park Slope “Wellness Center” that just required my insurance co-pay. They cracked my bones and pronounced me out of kilter. I agreed whole heartedly. That was worth a $20 co-pay.

I went back to Canal Street and did acupuncture in Chinatown, not covered by any insurance. The acupuncturist was a very elderly Chinese lady who was supposed to have been the first woman acupuncturist in NYC. I don’t know. She could have been the first ever anywhere. She did not really speak English so a middle-aged guy who ran the business (her son?) translated. She stuck the needles in my thigh or lower back and attached electrodes to them to deliver a shock into the neural network. I did that 4-5 times with her but there was no improvement.

Dear Doctor: The Rolling Stones

I went to my longtime, regular doctor, an affable but garrulous, semi-retired oncologist. Mostly now he liked to tell me stories about medical malpractice trials where he testified as a witness. I was a lawyer but rarely found talk about the law that interesting. Not his malpractice cases anyway. My field was criminal law. And he liked to talk about politics. He was an old school liberal but also a wealthy guy, so his political heart was divided. And he spoke of how much he liked my wife. Hmmm. I had seen him for the last 25 years and never had an issue, aside from my cholesterol level. Even if he was not the best doctor, it did not matter since I was never sick.

Doctor Garrulous said that I had some sort of pinched nerve. That triggered him to relate many stories of his own back and nerve problems. At length. If you ever have a back problem, you will soon learn that most of the world, particularly men past a certain age, have had such a problem. They need to tell you what happened, even if they also premise their stories with “I know your situation is much different.”

My doctor said that I needed an MRI, but he could not prescribe it. There was a neurologist in the building, the son of his doctor friend who had also been a neurologist, who would see me and prescribe the MRI. That was how most things worked with him. Everybody was either an old friend or the son of an old friend who had taken over his practice. I was able to see that neurologist, Dr. Schick, the same day. I later learned that an appointment with most NYC neurologists usually meant a wait of several months. NYC is apparently full of people with nerve problems. I guess I should have known. All these years of staring at ads in the subway for people with pain. There were eight million of us.

Dr. Schick noted that I had a leg problem from his physical examination of me and my weak responses. Indeed. He scheduled me for an EMG a few weeks later. I was hoping that was a fancy English sports car, but it was a test to measure nerve activity and muscle strength. In the meantime, I was given steroids and a prescription for physical therapy. That was the standard treatment for this type of problem I learned: steroids and physical therapy; it usually worked.

My EMG confirmed that I had nerve problems and muscle weakness. Yep. Progress. But I could have told them that. I was then scheduled for an MRI, the next step. The steroids and PT were not leading to any improvement for me. To the contrary, my condition was worsening with the numbness and weakness spreading. I was really panicking and did not understand why the doctor was not more concerned. He simply seemed to proceed with his checklist of treatments, slowly.

I had my first MRI at an “imaging place” affiliated with NYU Langone Hospital near me in Park Slope. The tech was a white guy about my age and asked if I wanted to listen to music since it was going to be extremely loud in the tunnel-shaped MRI machine. He proudly announced that they had Spotify and so could provide “any music” I wanted. I said, “sure, let’s hear the Rolling Stones ‘Let It Bleed.’” The tech approved of my choice. One of his favorite records. But inside the high-tech donut with its fantastic whirling sound, punctuated by hard grinding and gnashing jackhammer clangs it was impossible to hear the music. It was some sort of odd joke.

That MRI focused on my spine, or lumbosacral region, and showed a mostly normal spine for a guy my age. There was no indication that one of the discs was pinched, herniated or otherwise abnormal and impacting the nerve roots coming out of the spine. While that was good in a way, it did not point to a solution for my leg and back problem.

Dr. Schick then ordered another MRI to focus on the nerve root, not right at the base of my spine but more in the pelvis and upper right thigh. My insurance company rejected this idea. One MRI was ok with them, not two. The insurance company denied the appeal also, so Schick had to engage in a “peer to peer” conference with the insurance company’s doctor and convince that doctor that a second MRI was medically necessary. I soon found this was standard insurance industry practice. Important diagnostic tests were routinely denied and appeals and subsequent doctor to doctor parlays were required to finally get the necessary approval.

I continued my twice-weekly physical therapy sessions at “PT, Professional Physical Therapy,” on Broad Street just below Wall Street, not so far from where I worked downtown. Schick had no specific recommendation for therapy and suggested I just go to a place like PT, a large chain therapy provider. I did twice-weekly sessions there and more exercises at home, mostly stretching to help with a presumed pinched nerve, but none of that helped. The insurance company eventually stopped paying for PT. They gave a short window for you to either get better or to conclude you were hopeless and never getting better.

My leg condition worsened. The nerves were shutting down and the muscles atrophying and weakening. And I had great pain and an inability to sleep. It was June 2019 and I did not think I could take it for another week. My second MRI showed that my nerves were inflamed but did not show what was causing the inflammation. Dr. Schick admitted he was flummoxed. The problem was beyond his skill set. I had an “idiopathic” neuropathy in the plexus area of my right hip where a large nerve network was situated. He was punting, suggesting I see a more experienced doctor who could figure out what was going on. Schick recommended three other doctors that might have more experience and knowledge in this area and left it to me to contact them, get an appointment and go forward. Good luck!

Outside Sharlene’s with Mike:

Total Destruction to Your Mind: Swamp Dogg

I had alerted my friend Mike Morgan to an upcoming concert appearance of Swamp Dogg on June 14, Flag Day and Mike’s birthday. Also, Trump’s. Well, we can’t choose whom we share our birthday with. Swamp Dogg was a cult soul singer, perhaps best known for his song and album “Total Destruction to Your Mind.” Mike and I had both separately seen Dogg at Tramp’s, a former concert venue in Manhattan, back in the early 90’s before we became friends. Then, we went together to see him at Southpaw, a concert spot in Park Slope near us. Swamp Dogg did not tour often so this was a rare opportunity. He had put out a recent record, “Autotune,” where he sang through that popular, but largely loathed (at least in my musical world) pitch-correction program. Was it a joke? Everything seemed to be a bit of a joke in Swamp Dogg’s universe, but it was also all serious. I liked his aesthetic. So, on that day a big group of Mike’s friends all attended the concert at Le Poisson Rouge, the former Village Gate nightclub on Bleecker Street.

I walked up to the Village from my office near the South Street Seaport. I had just begun to limp but was still strong enough to walk up Water Street to Confucius Plaza, and along Mott Street into Little Italy. Walking was simply the absolute best thing to do in NYC. It was like sex, one of those things that they could not deny you that was great, even if you were poor. I enjoyed walking while listening to my favorite songs through ear buds on my phone. In the old days I would have a 16 oz. beer in a paper bag while I took my promenade, enjoying the street theater, the smells, sights and sounds of the greatest city in the world. These days I had eased off the beer-in-a-bag approach to walking.

I made my way up to Tom and Jerry’s bar on Elizabeth Street just above Houston. I seemed to wander in there every four or five years. It was happy hour and a good mix of regular people, the slightly chi-chi beautiful people crowd in this ever- gentrifying and rich people-friendly city, and some dog owners with dogs. It was always a good sign when you were in a dog-friendly bar. It was a two-for-one happy hour, so I had my two beers, tipped, and was off to the show. We all met outside and entered en masse since Mike had fronted for the tix.

As for Swamp Dogg, he was fantastic. The Dogg always delivers. We eagerly arrived practically as the doors opened, because in our distorted universe Swamp Dogg was a star and we needed to get there early to get good seats. As if. The show was not even half filled. Our early arrival did allow us to have our own little seating area – a VIP section -- and to venture from there up to the stage area, still having a view. That little seating alcove also proved useful for my leg which was tiring more easily now in its already shrunken state. That was the new me. Where I had once been the type to stand in front of the stage all night insisting on the maximum experience for the concert, front row on the damned concert roller coaster, now it was ok to chill and savor the show from the back.

Dogg’s son was the new band leader. Dogg Jr., or fils, seemed to be a flamboyantly gay young man. Dogg noted that he himself was a religious man but now he and his son were on stage together, both proud of one another, even while they both inhabited slightly different eccentric universes. Swamp Dogg was almost 77 but he still had the pipes, and the kid was a good musician who seemed happy carrying on the legacy. Probably it was the kid pushing Swamp in the autotune direction. People my age or my musician friends largely hated autotune for the strangely removed and overly perfect effect it added to music. But it was incredibly popular in all current hit music, the type of music I never really listened to. The live show was great, and a nice little reunion of our old crowd of friends and in honor of Mike’s birthday.

A Six Pack to Go: Hank Thompson

I shared a cab ride home with Mike and his roommate, Charlie. Mike wanted to stop into Sharlene’s to have more birthday drinks. Naturally. Prior to this occasion, Mike had not been drinking for months due to health reasons. This was an exception and since it was an exception Mike was determined to make the most of it. I obliged even though I had been drinking and took an oxycodone at the club. I was curious to see how it would work with alcohol. Nothing. What was the big deal? Had I taken so many drugs and drank so much alcohol over the course of my years that I was now impervious to the intoxicating effects, even adding a notorious “opioid”? What did people do to get high off these things and how was it so good they became addicted? I guess it was better for me not to know. “Bartender, I would like a fentanyl please?”

We ventured forth into Sharlene’s crowded late Friday night scene. Sharlene’s was a rather ordinary bar, but it had a good location right on Flatbush Avenue and they had no TVs inside. As such, it attracted couples and women since the lack of any TVs made it more sophisticated somehow? Not sure, but the place was a gold mine. It was usually too loud and crowded for me, but it was also my local bar, so I ended up there often enough. I knew the bartenders and top drinkers there. By this time, midnight or so, the top drinkers were already done, although some took a break and came back late at night. Round two!

Swamp Dogg, pictured right, with his son, left, at LPR

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Mike bought the first round and I realized that it would be several drinks before I could go home since now we were all going to buy a round. Mike was settling in. Charlie saw the writing on the wall and went home and now I was left in charge of Mike who was getting to the point where he needed someone to look after him. I made it to the end, eventually calling “no mas” after several last “one more for the roads.” Then I walked Mike home.

Lovebug: George Strait

Then, in November 2015, my brother’s wife, Maria, passed away, just 55-years old. Her funeral home wake coincided with the date of the Paris attacks at the Bataclan concert venue and other sites around Paris on November 13. Again, people were dying. Of course, people always are dying, but that day made it more evident. While the Sandy Hook school shooting might have been slightly embarrassing to my gun-loving family members, the Bataclan was conducted by Muslim extremist “terrorists.” That was one they reported proudly around the funeral home since it confirmed their Fox News-derived world view that only allowed for Muslims to be terrorists.

Maria had been sick for many years, suffering from rheumatoid arthritis that eventually led to general health deterioration including using a respirator for chronic breathing problems and a wheelchair. Maria’s worsening health had been apparent, as opposed to whatever was happening with Cindy. But because no one in my family much commented on Maria’s problems until her final hospitalization, it was as if her problems weren’t so severe. As the adage goes, “If you see something, say nothing.” Don’t believe your lying eyes. Margie and I would only see snapshots of her declining health on our occasional visits to the Detroit area to visit my friends and family. But it was strange that no one said anything about her illness and declining health. That is just another rule of illness that often people do not want to talk about it.

I last saw Maria when I visited the house she shared with my brother and her daughter, Summer, in suburban Macomb County. Maria, despite the respirator, oxygen tanks and wheelchair, had been hoping to go to Disney World. One final time. My brother and Maria and her family all considered Disney World the ultimate vacation destination. They had a strong love for the Magic Kingdom and its assorted surrounding domains. I liked to visit France. I had not been to Disney World since Motel 6 had raised its price from six dollars per night to $8.

When Maria realized that going to Disney was too difficult with her fragile health, she planned to drive to western Michigan and visit some casinos there. But that too was complicated, travelling with her oxygen tanks and keeping a steady supply of refills. Most of our visit to her home that last time was spent with her trying to work around the logistical nightmare of oxygen tank refills. She never went on that trip either. Her final trip was to the hospital in Ann Arbor where her case had come to the attention of some specialists who were trying to help her, but she was too far gone.

Then, finally, my father died but after suffering from a form of dementia, Lewy-Body syndrome, for about ten years. As a result of the long slow inevitable decline, his death was a bit blunted. He died on the date of the Summer Solstice, June 21, 2018, one more cosmic death added to my world. I got the news of his death as I prepared to perform outside of Freddy’s Bar as part of Make Music New York with my French-language rock band, Les Sans Culottes. That was normally a day dedicated to performing music outside on the streets of the city. Well, I dedicated that show to the old man.

My mom had cared for him alone, except for the occasional social worker visit or home health aide to clean him, until the very end. It was really a labor of love, but she had promised not to put him into a nursing home, and she felt obligated to uphold that promise.

Photos of my dad:

Here as a child (left) with his father, Frances, and younger brother Bob (also Frances):

Comme La Lune: Joe Dassin

Some of my friends from my old East Side neighborhood came to the funeral home. Paul Max, a nice guy who worked for the city of Detroit and still lived on the East Side, came. We had been good friends as children, playing sports and other games together. He was a Roxy Music and Led Zeppelin guy, and we had seen the band UK, a sort of prog rock supergroup, together years ago.

Jimmy Furicchia also showed up. That was an uncanny coincidence, since we had been discussing Jimmy just a couple hours earlier in my mom’s kitchen with my cousin Lynn who had flown up from Georgia for the funeral. It was sort of an extravagance on Lynn’s part, and he was flying back the same day, but my dad had been his godfather.

That morning, my mom was remembering the family who had lived next door to us in Detroit before my grandparents moved into that house. The father, Louis, had worked with my mom at Chrysler Missile, a defense plant in the suburbs. Louis married an Italian woman and brought her to the states. They had a couple of kids and one of them was Jimmy. They moved away when Jimmy was still young, back to Italy where they ended up divorcing. Divorce Italian Style. But the point of my mom’s telling their story was that the mother, the Italian, was a bad housekeeper. After they moved, there were still spaghetti stains on the wall, according to my mom!

I thought maybe the stains were from fighting, like Mrs. Furicchia had thrown the spaghetti at her husband when upset, but no, she was just a bad housekeeper, my mom insisted, as if she knew for sure. Funny the things we remember. And there was Jimmy at the funeral home! After the divorce, the dad came back to Detroit with Jimmy and his brother where they settled in a different part of our neighborhood. Jimmy then went to our grade school, Our Lady of Good Counsel, but then was the “new kid.”

At the funeral home, Jimmy told me that he wanted to pay his respects, because he was in town from Vegas where he now lived and did day trading, with fleeting success. He had gotten his ophthalmology degree and had a successful practice, owning several different eye doctor offices around Toledo. But somehow it all went south, and he got divorced, got a DWI and declared bankruptcy. The only job he could get was in Saudi Arabia where he was making great money doing Lasik surgery. He met a nurse at the hospital, a young Filipina, and they married.

Jimmy helped her family back in the Philippines who were poor and so won over the whole family. Jimmy and his wife had a baby. But, according to Jimmy, some of the Saudis became jealous of him. They found out about his past DWI and spread the word. That apparently was enough for him to be fired from his gig in Saudi Arabia. That was his story. So, Jim was now living in Vegas and for some reason had come to Michigan at the time of my dad’s wake. He wanted to come to the funeral home because I had been so kind to him when his dad died and when we were both teenagers, he said.

I knew he was mistaken. I was pretty much incapable of empathy and kindness as a teenager. I mean, I wasn’t a terrible kid, but I was just not a kid to go to a funeral home for someone I did not really know that well from school. I knew Jimmy then and I might even have heard that his dad died but I can’t imagine that I went to the funeral home. Still, he was convinced that I had gone and here I was getting credit for it now 40 years later with this reciprocal visit. I reminded him that he had lived next door to us in Detroit and that we knew his dad and mom (omitting the spaghetti on the wall part). Jimmy had not known that and was happy to hear we had once been neighbors. We were both learning new things. Some true.

Jimmy told me that when he had returned to our grade school, because he was the new kid other kids had bullied him. That happened until one day in music class Jimmy had enough. He turned around and just went nuts against his tormentors. A mêlée ensued and Jimmy inadvertently punched a nun.

A sort of class therapy session resulted and some of the popular students including the most popular girl, Jackie Leahy, got up and said we were a Catholic school. How could we have such behavior? People cried. It was the most emotional moment of Jimmy’s time at school and a huge moment in his life. He said, you remember that right? But I didn’t. Not in the least. I thought maybe because Jimmy was in the other class, the one with the “slower kids,” but he wasn’t, and neither was Jackie (I later learned). I felt bad not remembering this incident that was obviously so important to him. And I felt bad that I had not attended his dad’s funeral. And I felt bad that here we both were at my dad’s wake in the funeral home. Truths were dropping all around, oddly.

Bicycle, Bicycle, You Are My Bicyle: Be Your Own Pet

People were dying all over. But I did not really consider my own mortality. My dad’s death was the sort that people referred to as a “blessing,” because he had been so ill and out of it for so long. I was in seemingly good health. I had high cholesterol but that resulted in my taking a cholesterol lowering pill every day. That was in effect my daily reminder of mortality. There were a couple of colonoscopies. Those were also reminders, odd memento mori, but I passed those with flying colors and believed my date with Thanatos was still relatively far in the future.

I had been riding my bike to work, year-round since 1991. That made 28 years in 2019. I was proud of this accomplishment, though no one else seemed to think much of it or about it, apart from thinking it was crazy to do that in NYC. My colleagues at work even disparaged it. They liked to point out things like studies that showed the air was so dirty in NYC that the strain from bicycling caused cyclists to take in lots of particle-laden air effectively negating any health benefit. Others focused on how one got sweaty cycling. But I sweated in hot weather if I was riding the subway too. And I liked to sweat and simply changed my clothes when I got to work. Even in the most bitter cold of winter and in the greatest heat of summer I rode; that is what I did. I felt it kept me in touch with my body. It kept me sharp. It was meditative. It was part of my identity.

I rode to work, I rode to rehearsals, I rode to the grocery store, I rode to gigs, I rode to bars. A little late in the game I gave up riding to bars after some close calls. Happily, before

I ever got seriously injured, I wised up a bit and became less obsessive about bike riding. It was ok to take a taxi home. It was ok to walk somewhere.

I had joined a gym in 1993 and went regularly, at least 3 times a week, often 4 or 5. I ran in the park on weekends. I had been obsessive about basketball but mostly gave that up after tearing my ACL. I played football in a highly competitive, injury-causing league, every Saturday for 15 years. I gave that up too when I realized I cared more about not getting injured than I did about winning.

High Hopes: Frank Sinatra

One of the guys who played football with us was a short, very pumped-up guy named Shawn, who liked to be called “Hulk.” He started keeping stats and posting stuff about our group, the Prospect Park Football League, on-line. He was really into it but that did not translate into him being one of the better players despite his muscular upper body. He was the guy who would streak down the sideline and the pass would catch him in stride and right on target and it would go right through his hands, like his arms were a basket hoop with a big hole in the bottom. I heard he made lots of money as a real estate developer but that should not have affected his ability to catch a football.

So, it was weird to have Little Shawn (as he did not like to be called) announce that he was having a surgery done to increase his height so he could play college football at Rutgers, the college in New Jersey! That was crazy. I mean, why not the Green Bay Packers? Neither football team was going to be interested in Shawn, a guy in his early 30’s who could not catch a football in Prospect Park. There were a lot of highly talented and supremely athletic 18-year-olds that were already willing to play for Rutgers.

Shawn was about 5’ 5” tall. But when I saw him many months later he was about 6 inches taller. He had travelled to Europe and had a surgery where the doctors broke his upper and lower leg bones, the femur and tibia, and then they attached a metal scaffolding with screws that went into the bones. As the broken bones healed, he cranked the screws and stretched the bones. It was a bit like the rack, the medieval torture device, but rather than having an inquisitor impose the torture, Shawn had paid handsomely to do it himself or to have some doctor do it. And he had to travel out of the country to find doctors who would perform this controversial surgery. Shawn had the surgery not once, but twice, enduring the broken bones and bone stretching. So he managed to grow about nine inches, but all in the legs.

Now, the rationale I heard was not that he was going to play football at Rutgers, but he wanted to date taller women. And I guess he did. Of course, having a bunch of money from real estate developing was also a plus for dating. I would not have believed it had I not seen him myself at a local bar, Sharlene’s, where some of us went following the last game of the season. The process was not perfect. Shawn now looked like T-Rex because even though his legs were indeed stretched and stilted, he had the same arms.

Chapter Two: What the Actual Fuck

Edifice Wrecks

Illness and Its Discontents

Chapter 1: Death: A History

People Who Died: Jim Carroll Band

I guess I should have known something was happening when everyone started dying. Not the first wave of friends dying. That gave me no inkling, perhaps because I was still relatively young myself and still operating under the delusion of youthful immortality. That first wave had been around 2001 and 2002 when Gerald and Tim died.

First, there was Tim, my old Detroit jug band friend, who was living in Athens, GA with Gazine and their child, Corrina. Tim worked the night shift at a supermarket. He therefore kept odd hours and tended to drink a lot. It was his “jug man” job description, at least the tending to drink. Tim was driving their car when it was smashed into by a speeding pick-up truck coming on the other side of the hill as Tim turned left on to the road. Their car was “t-boned” and Tim killed instantly while Gazine was injured, but not fatally, and little Corrina was ok — aside from having witnessed the death of her dad. I don’t know if Tim was drinking that day or if he was drunk, but the end result is that he died. The rest hardly seems significant.

When Gazine’s brother Matt called with the news I was stunned. T-boned, practically. Matt played in my NYC jug band, the Metropolecats. I put a recording of Piaf doing “La Vie en Rose” on the turntable and wept. EP seemed right for that moment even if she and that song were not closely connected with Tim. Tim was like a brother to me and somehow that song connected with the sadness of suddenly learning he was gone.

That was on the summer solstice in 2001. I flew back to Detroit for the funeral. Tim had been a Detroiter. I wore a black, gangster-style suit that was part of my French-rock-n-roll performance attire. It was almost like a zoot suit, lengthy and with gold pin stripes. I thought Tim would approve. He was a hippie-style guy. Go big. Go bright. Let your freak flag fly. Even at a mournful event. I wore a wide, colorful tie, one of those “fashion ties” from the mid-seventies when they tried to make them hippie-adjacent — as if hippies were going to wear ties. Tim had given me three or four of them years ago. I figured he might have worn one or at least thought about it before passing them on to me, figuring perhaps I was “hippie adjacent.”

I was invited to speak, along with others, at a suburban West Side church that must have been where his folks went. I was not sure I was going to make it through the speech without breaking down. My mom came. She was older along in life and so already keenly attuned to the death and seemed to try and get to every possible funeral. She was casting a wide net and Tim, whom she knew as my good friend, was in it. I think she expected me to cry, consistent with her view that I was “overly sensitive.” That is her view, but the world at large has never actually seen me as overly sensitive. Only my not-overly-sensitive family saw me that way

Tim with Louie Bluie, Detroit Festival of the Arts:

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At the service, I talked about Tim being a traveler. He had backpacked around Europe in the 70’s and then followed the hippie trail toward Katmandu and Goa. That meant he had travelled through Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan back when one could. He made some money smuggling zippers and also drugs stuffed inside the frame of a fancy touring bicycle. He brought the bike back to the states and rode it all over Detroit and between Detroit and Ann Arbor, a smaller hippie trail. By the time I knew him he had switched biking for barely drivable old heaps. There was no state auto inspection in Michigan so one could drive quite marginal vehicles. Fortunately, or not.

He had tons of old bike frames in the basement of the giant old Unitarian Church house in Detroit where we both lived and worked as caretakers, and he had a plan to open a bike shop. That, of course, never happened. But after he left the church house, he dutifully hauled all the bike stuff around from one smaller living space to another until who knows where he finally let go of the bike parts and the bike shop dream. Who is taking care of the caretakers?

When I knew Tim, he was working at the Cass Corridor Food Co-Op in the skid row area of Detroit as a supervisor (or “coordinator” as they were dubbed). He had the no-rent situation at the Church but before that his hustle had been seasonal tax-prep work for H and R Block and then he would travel to Mexico or to Negril, Jamaica, weed-friendly travel destinations.

Cry: Johnnie Ray

I didn’t cry at Tim’s funeral mass, though it was a challenge, and I ended my remembrance with a quote from our Detroit Don’t Look Now Jug Band’s live cassette tape recording from the Attic Bar, appropriately titled “Live in the Attic.” At the end of the song “Pack Up Your Sorrows,” Tim loudly and spiritedly exclaims, “Pack ‘em up, ship ‘em out, there will be no more sorrow in this room. We’re taking care of it!” He went large with that one, perhaps with the recording in mind. The guy who was recording us kept asking me to play my washboard more quietly. It’s true the washboard can be loud. I tried, but my philosophy was more cowbell and more washboard.

After the funeral ceremony, we went to a gathering in the back yard of Tim’s sister’s house, also on the West Side. Tim’s brother James had become a long, ginger-haired hippie too, but his sister had become a lawyer for Chrysler replete with a nice, large suburban home. It felt weird to be on the West Side, but Tim’s family had done it. They had left Detroit’s East Side, my part of town for which I had undying loyalty, for the West Side. Sacrilege. They might as well start driving a Japanese car. Of course, they wouldn’t because they were a Chrysler family.

At one point, the jug band members present poured glasses of beer onto the large, backyard lawn. This was one of those suburbs where they did not even have fences between the back lots. All of suburbia was seemingly one vast, undifferentiated backyard. It was reminiscent of “The Swimmer,” the John Updike story and Burt Lancaster film where he made his way home through various backyard suburban swimming pools.

Here, I did not see as many pools. The pouring out of beer – the wasting of beer in my view-- was at the suggestion of Larry Gabriel, our banjo player. Larry knew about proper funeral ceremonies with his New Orleans jazz family pedigree. He traced six generations of New Orleans jazz players in his family. His Cousin Charlie had toured the world playing old time New Orleans jazz and he would go on to be the leader of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in the French Quarter. Preservation Hall was the Mecca of traditional New Orleans-style jazz. And Larry’s dad, Percy, was also a Crescent City musician who had toured all over the U.S. before settling in Detroit. In New Orleans they knew how to throw a funeral with brass bands and 2^nd line parading. And Larry knew sorrow and deep grief himself. He had lost a beautiful young daughter named Maya years earlier. She was born very premature. She lived for a few years before dying at just 3 or 4 years old, and it was heartbreaking.

When Larry directed us all to “pour the beer out,” I had no idea why. I was a dedicated beer drinker with a strict “no beer leftover or wasted” code of conduct. I was not the type to leave a beer half-drank and rarely inclined to leave a bar half-drunk, not when full drunk was available. Who knew there was such a bizarre custom, the pouring out of beer in honor of the departed? Well, it was fitting. Spilled beer for a comrade-in-jug gone too soon. And there was happily still a keg of beer. I poured out the beer in memory of my fallen friend and then poured myself a fresh cup. I knew Tim would have approved.

Tim Outside the Unitarian Church House Where We Were Caretakers:

Tim With Jug in Riverside Park, NYC:

Cosmic Dancer: T-Rex

Gerald died the next year, on the day of the spring equinox, oddly. Cosmic death was afoot. Gerald had co-founded the Detroit jug band, The Don’t Look Jug Band, with my friend Mike and me. But he moved to Seattle, and I moved to New York City. Though Gerald lived on the other side of the country, whenever we met it was like we had seen each other yesterday, one of those easy, mutually admiring and affirming friendships. He liked me, no jealousy, no put downs. He was an East Sider too.

Gerald had been planning to visit me in NYC from his home in Seattle, but then 9/11 happened and he cancelled his trip, freaked out by the attack. He drove a Seattle city bus, part time, at his insistence, so he could do other things. Why work full time if you can get by working part time, he reasoned? One of those “other things” he did with his spare time was smoke weed. But his job did random drug tests. They did not think their drivers should be smoking weed even in their off hours. They called Gerald in for a random drug test, and he already had two strikes from prior failed tests. There were techniques to beat the test, supposedly, like drinking a lot of coffee, etc. but Gerald just said, “fuck it.” He marched into the drug test center and flunked. Strike three. We all eventually fall victim to randomness but for Gerald it happened too early.

I suppose it is like that common anxiety dream where there is a big test at school, and you are totally unprepared. Except this was no dream. So, Gerald lost his bus driver job. At the same time, he was just completing a big home improvement job on his fixer-upper house in the Ballard neighborhood. Some maniac prior owner had stuccoed the ceiling. It took Gerald about 20 years to patiently remove all the tiny stucco stalactites so he could repaint the ceiling.

Gerald (right) in Detroit on Roof Deck of Unitarian Church House:

Gerald had just completed that longstanding task when he lost his job. He also had been fighting with his girlfriend Ginger. She had moved from New Orleans to be part of the thriving glass-blowing, artisan community in Seattle. She was raising her kids and selling her blown glass and dating Gerald. Then he went into the kitchen and hung himself, just like his sister had years earlier. I had heard about that prior incident, but not from Gerald. He never talked to me about his dead sister or her suicide. That was one thing I learned about death; people were not likely to talk about death by suicide. When Ginger had not heard from Gerald for about three days, she went to his house and discovered him hanging in the kitchen. Not long after, she moved her family back to New Orleans.

Glass Onion: The Beatles

When Ginger and Gerald had visited a few years earlier, Ginger gave us some lovely polka dot glasses she had made. She even got Gerald into glass blowing. During that visit he gave me a glass ball with stacked and swirling kaleidoscopic colors and smaller glass bubbles inside that he had made. A whole universe in a glass ball. He was proud of it, I could tell.

I could see Gerald in his blown glass ball as my old friend, bartender, part-time bus driver, fellow jug band musician, thrift store shopper and experimental novel reader. Stoner. Boulevardier. Detroiter in exile. Like me. And Harmony House record store manager. That was where I first met him. And then he got fired and became a bartender at the Tap Room. I think eventually he settled his wrongful termination lawsuit against Harmony House for some money, not much. A disappointing outcome. But it was good news for me and the rest of his friends that he now was bartending. We all liked to hang out at the Tap Room on the far East Side with our friend the bartender who could occasionally slip us a free drink.

Gerald’s World:

In 1988, I had interviewed for a job at a fancy, “white shoe” Seattle law firm, Perkins Coie. I thought I could live in Seattle. Gerald was there, after all, and it was supposed to be a cool city with a great music scene, even if “grunge” was not really my thing. The law firm booked and paid for a room at a luxe downtown hotel, the Hyatt or the Hilton, but I stayed over at Gerald’s. We drove around in his minivan smoking weed and checked out his favorite bars. Gerald was impressed that I chose to stay with him rather than the nice hotel, but to me the choice was not even close. I wanted to hang as much as possible with Gerald. Hang in a good way.

Death Letter: The White Stripes

After that, there was a pause in dying, or at least in my world, mercifully. Death was kicking back, taking it easy, smoking a bone, until December 2012, when my sister Cindy passed away in her sleep at just 57-years old. Death was definitely getting closer. Technically, Cindy was my half-sister since my mom had been married previously and had her and my half-brother Gordie with her first husband. Their dad died of a massive heart attack at just 26-years old. My mom was brutally acquainted with death early in her life and I am certain that steered her behavior from then on. How could it not? Still, I thought of Gordie and Cindy always as just my brother and sister, no halves about it.

My sister-in-law Maria, Gordie’s wife, called with the terrible news about Cindy. I saw Cindy that previous September when I was visiting in Detroit. We sat in the small backyard of her modest house on Detroit’s East Side near the St. John’s Hospital complex. We smoked a cigarette and drank cans of Coke and, unknowingly, that was our last good-bye. Her death was unexpected, at least to me. No cause of death was ever determined though my brother speculated, “it was the ticker.”

She had suffered from strong depression and had trouble going to her job, sometimes for entire weeks at a time. She suffered from debilitating, inexplicable migraines and that was the main reason she did not work. Cindy and her city job had reached an arrangement. If she did not work, they would not pay her, but they would not fire her either. She took a lot of medication. She had a good heart in the sense of being a kind, decent person. Her husband Norm, an affable prison guard whom she had met through the Detroit Police Auxiliary Shooting Team, (she was a good shot, won trophies) explained that there was a big backlog at the morgue, and it would take too much time to do an autopsy. It only made sense that anything involving City of Detroit officials would be no model of efficiency. And in the end, there was no delay to the funeral.

Cindy in her Part Time Cop Uniform, Detroit St. Patrick’s Day Parade:

Cindy, Me and My Dad at Law School Graduation, Ann Arbor:

As it happened, Cindy’s wake at the funeral home was held on the same day as the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 20 children, six adults, and the shooter’s mother, in Newtown, Connecticut. A day of death, shocking death. As usual, there was some talk of trying to pass sensible gun control legislation, but the radical gun people cried that “they are coming to take our guns away” and there was a run on buying more guns and lots of ammo. And no meaningful legislation. These types of “shocking” incidents continued to occur with nothing being done except for people buying more guns and carrying them openly in every sort of public place. People paraded around with all sorts of tactical gear and an assault rifle while shopping or getting a cup of coffee. It demonstrated their “freedom.” Suddenly, it seemed we were all living in a weird, wild west fantasy world, one that had never been allowed in the actual “wild” west (that mostly had strict gun control laws in its towns) and now with far more dangerous weapons.

The City of Detroit declared bankruptcy the next summer, the largest civic bankruptcy ever. Detroit, the Arsenal of Democracy, the cradle of the union movement, the Motor City, once America’s fourth-largest city, was still making its mark. It came as a shock to my brother, sister and father, all longtime City employees who suddenly faced reduced pensions and shrunken health benefits. Which they received. The shrunken benefits. After a lifetime of work. Except for Cindy, who died just before her retirement. I suppose if you barely go to your job, it is hard to retire. But death is the most hardcore form of retiring.

Somehow, Detroit’s financial death made sense in this time of dying. Detroit had dubbed itself the Renaissance City in the mid-70’s. It was ironic because at that time crime was exploding and the city was hemorrhaging jobs and citizens, losing much of its tax base in dramatic fire sale fashion. There was no renaissance in site, more like a quick death. People “joked,” “will the last one to leave Detroit turn out the lights?” Eventually, the city itself turned off a lot of the city’s street lights to save money.

Still, cities can have re-births. Rome, the “Eternal City,” was repeatedly sacked and had some lean times. It is doing ok today. The Detroit motto, placed on our city flag after the big fire of 1805 burned most of it down stated, “Speramus Meliora” and “Resurget Cineribus,” meaning “We hope for better things” and “It will rise from the ashes.” So, Detroit had once rose from the ashes and perhaps it could again. With humans, the record of rebirths and resurrections is not as clear.

Cindy and Margie at Detroit’s Dally in the Alley, 1991:

Neat Neat Neat: The Damned

My cousin JoAnne’s husband, Rich, died from a heart attack just a couple days after Cindy. The family death spiral was digging in. My mother had been feuding with JoAnne for the last several years. Now, it was as if the rivalry between JoAnne and my mom continued even to the point where there was a competition about dying. Why not? Death has no border. Or just a sort of border. Their feud, their refusal to speak to one another, had to do with JoAnne taking the side of a Catholic high school, De La Salle, that her son had attended a decade or more earlier. In fact, De La Salle was the “rival” of my high school Notre Dame, not that sports were much of a thing at my school, probably because none of the teams were very good.

JoAnne got very involved with the De La Salle parents’ Booster Club. Even after her son Tom (my cousin) had graduated she continued being a big part of the Booster Club and felt a keen loyalty to the school. I felt this was odd. It was in sharp contrast to my own high school experience where my final official act was writing a large article in the school newspaper about what a terrible place it was. I believe that article cost me the chance to speak at the graduation because my grades should have put me in the Salutatorian spot, the student with the second highest grades. Not that I cared at the time, but in retrospect I believed I was silenced. That was definitely for the better, because I would have likely said some crazy shit that perhaps I would have regretted later in life. I was the guy with the joy buzzer in his hand as I stood waiting for my diploma to be handed to me by the principal. Until my plot was discovered, and the joy buzzer seized by the principal who claimed he would have flung my diploma across the stage and “embarrassed” me. I responded, “good.” My parents were never in the Booster Club.

Clothesline Saga: Bob Dylan & the Band

Gordie’s son and my nephew, Ryan, decided to attend De La Salle, rather than Notre Dame where Gordie and I had gone for high school. By that time, De La Salle had moved from Detroit to Warren, a suburb in Macomb County just north of Detroit, and was the newer school, drawing white people from the surrounding area. Ryan, however, had a problem when he refused to join the football team. He was a big kid, and it seemed like he should play offensive or defensive line, but when he showed no interest in joining the team, the other students teased him. Ryan was not a sports guy. And he was more of the gentle giant type. The bullying became so bad that Ryan decided to leave the school and enrolled at Bishop Gallagher, a co-ed Catholic school.

JoAnne claimed to have the inside dope from her Booster Club connections about Ryan’s leaving and being bullied and, according to her, it was all Ryan’s fault. It seemed pointless to me, and I never got the details, but JoAnne’s showing more loyalty to De La Salle than to Ryan and our family was the basis of the feud and it lasted for years, right up until Cindy’s funeral.

I had no interest in feuding, that tired, old Hatfield and McCoy stuff. Years later, at our Thanksgiving dinner, Ryan revealed that he owned at least 35 guns. He must have been in his late 20’s at that point, but he had been stockpiling. He was ready for the feud now, even if he showed no interest in hunting down the De La Salle Booster Club or any of those students who had bullied him, thankfully.

Consistent with his gun slinger ways, Ryan now almost always dressed all in black and he adopted a macho tough-guy posture and laconic way of speaking, like out of an old Western. He had three big German shepherd dogs, and he bought a big WWII vintage deuce and a half army truck. He got a job at the steel plant in the “downriver” industrial area of Detroit and became a foreman. I am sure he drove his regular pickup to work but also that he let his workers know he was the guy with the vintage army truck. And, of course, he smoked cigarettes. Was the earlier bullying at De LaSalle why he later went to such lengths as an adult to be a hard guy? It seemed possible to me.

Rebellion Lies: Arcade Fire

But my sister’s dying brought JoAnne to the funeral home, along with her son, Tom, the one who had attended De La Salle years ago. I spoke with JoAnne and my brother did too. I had no grudge against her. JoAnne then approached my mom and they exchanged a few words. After, my mom remarked that JoAnne “was lucky I did not stick a knife in her.” Haha. My mom is pretty tough, but I never heard her fantasizing about knifing anyone before. Obviously, it would have been completely out of bounds to knife someone, even JoAnne, at a funeral home. There has to be some sort of neutral ground, a sanctuary rule in effect. You do the knifing later. On the other hand, killing someone at a funeral home has a certain elegant efficiency.

A couple days later we were all at a different funeral home for the wake of JoAnne’s husband, Rich. This time JoAnne was the host. They had hired or invited a bag piper who played “Amazing Grace.” I guess Rich was Irish. His surname was a “McKenize,” so that tracks. In fact, he was a nice guy. I could always talk sports or general “Detroit is going to hell” bullshit with him, as one usually did at family gatherings. There were priests at the funeral home too. Likely from De La Salle. This also seemed to be vaguely competitive since my mom and dad had gone all in on the Irish heritage thing and my mom was the first to start befriending priests. After my mom having her priest pals over to our dinners on holidays and such, JoAnne did it too. They became like trophy priests. But they were married already -- to God.

I did not approve of this socializing with priests, but it was particularly ridiculous for JoAnne and my aunt as they were not at all religious. My mom could at least say that she was a devout Catholic, almost crazily so. She still tried to track down masses said in Latin. After she and my dad both retired they went to mass every single day. My Aunt Anne, in contrast, had been married about as many times as Zsa Zsa Gabor (if you count the guy she married twice as two separate marriages, which I do). And JoAnne’s only connection to Catholicism was being kicked out of Catholic school as a “bad” teen (smoking, stolen credit cards, etc.).

My dad, well into his dementia, sat next to Aunt Anne, JoAnne’s mom, on furlough from her room in the dementia wing of an old folks’ home. They sat next to one another, dad and Anne, both suffering from dementia. They had a seemingly friendly and involved conversation back and forth for most of the wake. They were not feuding. They were enjoying one another’s company. Somehow, they remembered that they knew one another and were glad to chat. Or maybe they didn’t remember but were still glad to meet one another. Did they know it was a sad occasion? Even on sad occasions, it is good to see old friends. Or new.

Take a Letter Maria: R.B. Greaves

Bill Carney’s Jug Addicts celebrated its 27^th anniversary in 2024, making the band eligible to rent a car and long past their drinking, voting and gun ownership ages. That same year Les Sans Culottes marked 26 years, eligible for the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and yet inexplicably overlooked. I never liked those guys anyway. LSC played a show at Freddy’s on Saturday April 28, just a few days past our April 25, 1998, debut at the original Freddy’s. We shared the night with a couple of other bands, both of them listed as “recommended” in the bar’s on-line calendar, but not us. Times had changed. We were getting the chopped liver treatment on our 20th Anniversary. The jug band had no special event for our 21st or 20th Anniversary. We continued to perform regularly, often at the legendary (at least to me) Barbès or at Sunny’s, a great bar in Red Hook.

Unlike the drama in LSC, the federal court trademark infringement lawsuit, the suicide and late-night crazy emails, the Jug Addicts were relatively stable. There was occasional drama like my firing Ian or JP quitting after he found an on-line interview I had done as Clermont Ferrand joking about him being the Strokes guru. In the interview, I mentioned that JP had given guitar lessons to both me and Julian Casablancas and curiously neither of us played guitar in our respective bands. JP had been ready to quit, and despite his aggressively abrasive attitude towards others, he did not appreciate any ribbing directed at him, not even by a fake French person.

Not a lot of the bar marriages stuck. And, to those who always say a band is like a marriage or family, well, none of them are easy. Margie and I had no real problems sticking it out. I joked that when we hit our 10-year anniversary (which I spent in Maine playing a wedding gig with LSC), we had really accomplished everything by making it to double digits. The rest was gravy. The Jug Addicts hit their 27-year anniversary; LSC hit 26 years; my job at Legal Aid hit 33; Margie and I celebrated 30 years of marriage in October 2024; and we’ve been in our apartment in Prospect Heights Brooklyn since 1997. Officially now, I am a conservative traditionalist.

In my early years all I did was shed jobs and places where I lived. Now I was the picture of stability. Or, some sort of stability. I collected my poems that I had written, some from my youth, some that I had published in LURCH, and some I had been writing since, in a collection I called “HOPE v. Hope.” I had always found the expression “hoping against hope” interesting. And I was the type to cling to a mere possibility. That obscure object of desire, musical or otherwise. I discovered it was also the name of the memoir written by Nadezhda Mandelstam, the wife of the great Russian poet persecuted by Stalin, Osip Mandelstam. “Nadezhda” means hope in Russian, and that memoir is really story of her husband and the gulags. Osip had written a lighthearted satire of Stalin and it turned out to be a 16-line death sentence. Stalin was not noted for his sense of humor.

I started writing THE MUD THE BLOOD AND THE BEER, a symptom of the “réveil mortel,” as time was marching on, and after a while Margie suggested I write songs in English, so I did that. I had written a few songs in English for the Tombstoners, but now, after 20 years of writing songs in French, I was ready to take on my native language. Less hiding in English. I was calling the album either “Zoso, aka Led Zeppelin IV” or “Songs in English.”

In French, I was inhabiting a perfect world where English speakers could not understand me, and probably assumed I was writing nonsense or gibberish, and French people never heard me or if they did, likely had trouble understanding my accent and pronunciation. It was a safe and unexplored world in a way. I was Champlain in the New World. And in 2022, I recorded a second album of originals entitled, “Everyday Heuristics” Both with my friends and bandmates Steve Cooney, Karl Meyer, Seth Kessel and on the first, Marcus Milius. Good musicians, great men.

Oh Bondage! Up Yours!: X-Ray Spex

I did go to my 25-year law school reunion. I had not been to the previous 24, and had no interest in going, until the year before when some of my friends from law school, all from the year ahead of me and with whom I used to take ecstasy, arranged a mini-reunion of our crowd in NYC. Two of the nicer but nerdier ones had gone to their reunion that year and said how much they enjoyed it. Somehow that convinced me that it might not be horrible, and, since my parents lived in Michigan, not too far from Ann Arbor, I could combine a trip to see my mom and sick dad (then well into his dementia) and check out the reunion. As in so much of my life, my attitude was fuck it, what could go wrong. Famous last words.

I was unable to get a room in Ann Arbor, or at least not one at an affordable rate. They were offering the reunion attendees a chance to stay at a nice hotel there, but it was $250 a night, beyond my Irish-Polish-East Side guy budget. And no other cheaper accommodations were available in Ann Arbor, not even through Air B and B, because it was “Parents Weekend.” I don’t remember there being such a thing when I was in college, but that was the weekend parents were invited to visit their little darlings in college. There was also a home football game and the football team at Michigan is immensely popular, playing in and regularly filling a stadium with 115,000 seats. It is known as the “Big House.” Haha. I thought that was what people called prison. I ended up getting a room for $35 in some guy’s house in Ypsilanti, about 8 miles down the road from Ann Arbor. I figured I could take a taxi to and from Ann Arbor with the money I saved.

I got tickets for the dinner and then when I learned my friends, mostly the people from my summer starting group who I knew best, were going to the cocktail party the night before, I got a last second ticket for that. That was $35, a bargain for me since I knew I could easily drink that much booze. I left my parents’ house and drove to the Lager House in Detroit’s Corktown, one of the places I liked to hang out and where Les Sans Culottes had played a few times. I had a couple of happy hour beers there before the 40-minute drive to Ypsilanti. I checked into my room in a house run by a young gay guy, very nice.

Then I took the bus into Ann Arbor, walked around visiting some of the old sights and made it to the building where the cocktail party was. In fact, none of my friends were at this event, and it was not even for just my class. I recognized no one. So that was a mistake. I should have coordinated more. I made small talk with strangers, downed multiple stiff drinks and had some finger food. Afterwards, outside near the cinema, my friends materialized: Tim, Tammy, Sandip and Jim. We joined a larger group who all went to some sports bar where I had more drinks and a sandwich.

I suggested our smaller group go to one of the actual good bars in Ann Arbor (oddly there are not many) so we went to the Old Town. Someone ordered two pitchers of some strong IPA. As it happened, none of the others really drank except for Jim and me. I have longstanding rule against the third bar which I ignored.

I wanted to spend time with my friends, since I did not see them at the sports bar much. And with a pitcher, similarly to the experience I have had with beer kegs, it is more difficult to keep track of the number of glasses I was consuming. The glass is always magically refilled. It’s like that joke about the Irishman who finds a magic lantern and is granted three wishes by the genie. The Irishman’s first wish is for a glass of Guinness where every time you take a drink it magically refills itself. The genie conjures a glass full of Guinness, the man takes a drink, it fills back up magically. The Irishman says, “Great!”. The genie asks what he would like with his remaining two wishes and the man says, “I’ll have two more of these!”

Eventually, I went outside for a smoke, and it slammed me with a sudden tobacco-meets-alcohol head rush. I went from feeling about 75% drunk to 110%. Although quite rare, that sometimes happened with me and cigarettes and alcohol, particularly if I was just smoking sporadically. I stumbled back to my friends and informed them, woozily, I needed a taxi for Ypsilanti. I think they had always thought of me as strange, but the fact I was now drunk and demanding to go to Ypsilanti seemed to strike them as odd or a little funny. I supposed I might have felt the same way. It was out of the blue, just like my sudden strong inebriation, and they did not know I was staying in Ypsi. Nevertheless, we (they) called a taxi and fortunately I was together enough to tell the lady my address for the night and even approximately how to get there. I stumbled into my room and awoke the next morning hung over. I went to a local coffee shop to regroup and regret.

Fortunately, Jim from our group last night had kindly offered an extra ticket for the football game that afternoon. He was someone I rarely spoke with during my three years in law school, but he had ended up in our little group, and though I knew him the least of all those I was with, he was the one who was kindest to me. He lived in Ann Arbor and had season tickets. Jim had also got drunk the previous night, so that was some consolation, misery and hangover-shame loving company. I called him up and said I would take him up on the ticket offer. I went back to the room where I was staying, gathered my small bag, and threw it in the trunk of the car. I decided I was not staying there another night. All across town it was hard to park without paying a premium due to the big game. I drove to Jim’s and he graciously hooked me up with a parking spot in his driveway. A rare commodity on football Saturday.

Cosmic Cars: Carl Craig

The team was playing Utah, not a big game, or at least not one of their rivals. I thought surely, we should be able to beat the Utes. They were hardly the Golden Gophers. We walked over to the stadium and took our seats behind one of the end zones. Some jets flew over prior to kickoff. The military and football had made some sort of unholy alliance at this point. Jim knew the team and pointed out to me the blue-chip players, the ones likely to turn pro. The offense struggled and ultimately Utah, lowly Utah, took control of the game. Jim expressed an interest in leaving and it seemed like there might be a big thunderstorm at any minute, so I said sure. We split up while he prepared for the big dinner, the main reunion event. I went to my old fraternity house. Someone let me in and I said I used to live there, and they gave me a little tour. It looked mostly the same, rundown in a different way. I mentioned the bats that used to fly around, and he said they still had indoor bat problems, so that was good. The TV lounge had been moved to a different room, now almost like a movie theater.

I still had time to kill, so I went to Starbuck’s. Just as it was time to walk over to the dinner, it began to rain heavily. I had a little slicker with a hood and an umbrella. I decided to go for it, but the rain was so intense that my umbrella was useless. My long hair was soaked through and some of my “vintage” striped suit jacket (from Sears that I found abandoned at our first Legal Aid Office after we moved out in 1999). Not my White Panther party pin on the jacket, though. Waterproof. I mostly avoided the people I had seen the night before, which was easy because they mostly avoided me. One asked if I got home alright. I said I did. I looked kind of like a homeless guy with my stringy, wet hair.

I spoke with another guy who had quit being a lawyer and was a teacher. Then I spoke with Bob, who had been a tall, handsome, athletic guy in school. He was in California and had switched from law to some sort of tech company and now was fabulously wealthy and successful. He gave me a bemused look. There was the very nerdy guy, Creighton. He had a flashy suit on and designer glasses of the owlish variety you might see at an art opening or on David Hockney. Maybe he had used a stylist for the reunion? I plainly had not.

I sat with a few people I knew but not my one or two friends I had actually hoped to hang out with at the reunion. There was a musical chairs aspect to the seating, and I had unwisely failed to secure a seat. But this group was nice, people that I did not know so well in school but that I enjoyed sharing a meal with at an otherwise awkward reunion. I explained my White Panther Party pin to one or two of them who asked. “It stands for the entire Black Panther Party platform along with Rock and Roll and Dope and Fucking in the Streets. They were based here in Ann Arbor for a bit, after they were chased out of Detroit.” People nodded, likely a bit perplexed.

At the end of the meal, my Summer Section of the class was going bowling. A group of them used to do that in law school and even got some bowling shirts made, “Lex et Bowlendum.” I hit the road, despite the offer to bowl.

American Ruse (MC5)

Ralph Koziarski (Riff Kazooski), clarinetist from the jug band had gotten married and there was a party at his place. He played music with different bands, but his main gig was as a masseuse. Some of his clients were local celebrities, local news anchors and the like, and it had been lucrative. He had a home with a large deck in back in Bloomfield Hills, one of Detroit’s fanciest suburbs. Despite my anti-suburbs ethos, in Ralph’s case it was ok. Local hippie makes good. The sort of hippie who signs off his emails, “Blessings.” I was ok with that. I had already committed to the reunion before I heard of the party but after the reunion dinner was over, I charged towards Ralph’s place in my dad’s Impala. Ralph was older than me, in his mid-60’s, as was his bride, and he had been married a couple of times. But he was still giving it a go. Bless him.

I rolled in after midnight and naturally everyone was very drunk and high. And they were thrilled to see me. They recognized my White Panther party pin right away, every single one of them. I was the White Panther party at the party. I thought of the MC5’s first record, the live one, where the MC (get it), Brother JC Crawford told the crowd of young hippies, “I hear a lot of talk about high society, well let me tell you something, this is the high society.” It was right and righteous to be back with my crowd, my high society, despite my efforts to be reunited with some law school friends. This was the reunion. I was born a jug band musician and would always remain one. I left before getting too high and drunk and made my way back to my folks’ place.

So for my reunion, like so many things in life, I had planned one thing but somehow ended up with the right thing. I had ended up back in NYC, even in Brooklyn, without planning. In fact, I had vowed never to return to NYC and especially not Brooklyn. I had become a lawyer, with no real dream of ever being one, and it had stuck for almost three decades, even after my first law job had me seriously contemplating chucking it all in. But I quickly found my way to Legal Aid where I found satisfactory work that I could believe in and did it for 30 years and counting.

I had found my way to French rock, with no initial interest in French music. I started a jug band and then I started another and another, this last enduring for 29 years now. Both bands as good as, likely better than ever, though one cannot realistically choose between one’s loved children.

My life was balancing these seeming contradictions, playing both sides against the middle as my therapist had put it, not encouragingly. I disagreed, thinking they were essentially complements and I feel despite all the challenges of doing so I have successfully resolved them. Yes, the farmer and the cowman can be friends. I had my quiet, mostly cerebral day job of legal research and writing with court appearance before a usually hostile panel of judges. Welcome to appeals on behalf of convicted and not rich criminals! I had my weekend night times, playing with my bands. French and English, both type of music as was explained in the Blues Brothers movie with regard to country and western. I never felt like there was any point in choosing because I felt I had it all. And a loving wife at home. A good result for an East Sider now in Gotham City.

In Shel Silverstein’s justifiably famous song, “A Boy Named Sue,” the son hates his father who had given him the name Sue, a girl’s name. One day Sue finally meets his dad, and they duke it out, “Kicking and a’gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.” The father ultimately explains that he should be thanked, rather than cursed, for naming him Sue. The father knew that he could not be there to look after his son and so named him Sue, to make him tough (or die). Sue turned out tough. Thus, his dad thinks he understands why his son wants to kill him, but he should thank him before doing so. Sue puts down his gun, reconciles with his father, and vows that if he ever has a son he will name him “Bill or George, anything but Sue.” So, that was the plan and then that was the plan too. I was named Bill.

Looking for the plan:

But then I got cancer, meningitis, a deadly viral infection, Covid-Pneumonia, prostate cancer and a resulting severe loss of my leg strength, leaving me permanently disabled. Change of plans ensued.

Edifice Wrecks

Illness and Its Discontents

Chapter 1: Death: A History

People Who Died: Jim Carroll Band

By 2015, we did have a large repertoire of LSC songs that we considered great, undiscovered, not properly appreciated, Number One hits, even if our band’s destiny might be something like Vincent Van Gogh’s. If only we had a brother or someone to push our legacy after our death. We were a band of Billy Carters in search of a Jimmy Carter. Far more talented Billy Carters, of course. I suppose many artists operate like this, because in some ways you have to. You might not get the recognition and appreciation you crave, and feel is your proper due, but you do it anyway. Singing for the sake of the song, as Townes Van Zandt put it. Also, it’s a bit of an addiction. A jug addict of all varieties.

One Fine Day: The Chiffons

During this era, we did play a couple of big shows at Irving Plaza, an 1100-person capacity old ballroom and Polish cultural center. It was nice for me to be back with the Polacks. The first show was with a French “electro-swing” band Caravan Palace. I was not familiar with that genre and am still not sure it is an actual thing, but as practiced by Caravan Palace, it was basically taking Django Reinhardt gypsy swing (Manouche music) and adding a big thumping bass and drum machine beat. The musicians were all guys who seemed pretty skilled and the front person was a cute French girl, dressed in retro, swing era clothes. I was contacted by the venue’s booking agent about a week before the gig asking if we were available. We were. The gig was sold out and apparently, because their audience was young people and it had an electronic component (albeit the thinnest veneer IMHO), most of the audience was on ecstasy. Well, alright.

We had a total of two swing tunes we had written, the “Gods” title track, and an older one, a searing criticism of consumer culture called “Hypmarché.” So, we made sure to play both of those, including opening with one, just to let them know we spoke their language, so to speak. We were on stage at Irving Plaza behind a big curtain and as the curtain began to lift the giant audience burst into applause and cheers. This was not a bad way to go. We had not yet played a note. But our swing tunes, mixed with some of our garage rockers and our cover of “These Boots Are Made For Walking” connected with the mollyfied masses.

Then a couple years later, I saw that L7 was playing at Irving. Donita had decided to do a documentary about the band, relying on a lot of her old archives of videos and photos. It was a cool documentary. The band was forced to deal with one another enough during the process that they were able to put aside their old grievances. They reformed and were again playing shows across the country. I was very happy for her. I emailed Donita suggesting we open. Can’t blame a guy for trying, after all. And, happily, she wrote back, “maybe.” She was in Paris with her husband and just then and they had gone past the Les Sans Culottes restaurant and hotel located in the Bastille area on the famous Rue de Lappe. It was a Sign. Literally, there was a sign. Actually, I occasionally got emails from people asking for reservations at the Paris Les Sans Culottes hotel. I would write back and explain that we were the NYC-based French rock n roll band not affiliated with the Paris hotel and restaurant. Except sometimes.

Ultimately, Donita said yes and we had the gig. This one was also sold out, and we just did it as a straightforward rock au maximum show, none of our swing tunes, all rawk. L7 are very punk rocking and high energy, but there was no shame in our game that night and we were well received. I thanked Donita after up in her dressing room crowded with admirers like Debbie Harry, punk goddess. Then, a year or so later, L7 decided to make a new full record, and they were back in the game. The first single was entitled “Dispatch from Mar-a-Lago.” They rocked but had a good sense of humor too, kindred musical spirits to LSC.

Come Again: Au Pairs

We recorded our 9th LSC record, “She Is Tossed by the Waves but Doesn’t Sink,” in late 2017, again at Serious Business. Travis had moved his studio from SoHo to the basement of the 68 Jay Street Building. SoHo was a bit pricey. For us, it was coming around full circle, almost, since 68 Jay was where we had rehearsed 17 years earlier in Mike DeSeve’s loft, and where we recorded our 2006 “Le Weekender” record. This album title was an English language translation of Paris’ Latin motto, “Fluctuat nec Mergitur.” Again I had chosen a long and unwieldy title that almost no one understood! Strategy.

Not even many Parisians are aware of their city’s motto, I learned. I liked it though and thought it captured the band’s own storm-tossed but still afloat history, as well as the frightening political situation in the U.S, with Trump having been elected by pandering to the worst of Americans’ instincts. The U.S.A. seemed pretty storm-tossed or storm trooper tossed, but I was trying to strike a hopeful tone, if only for my own sanity.

One song I wrote was “L’Histoire des Sans Culottes,” the story of LSC. The song was almost six minutes long, lengthy for a pop song not called “Like a Rolling Stone,” but since the band was nearly 20-years old it still covered 3.33 years a minute. It was similar to when I wrote a song called “Balzac 7502” based on Jean-Luc Godard’s great film with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, “Pierrot Le Fou.” That song was longish too, a little over five minutes, but still much shorter than Godard’s 110-minute film, resulting in a savings of almost 105 minutes!

A few years before, I had seen the band X play a show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken and was impressed that their opening act was a documentary about their band (“The Unheard Music”). We did not have our own documentary as an opener, but we had our band’s history in a song during our show. That would have to do until the documentary.

Travis was now working with indie legend band, Guided By Voices, a band he had long idolized. They were incredibly prolific and had recorded millions of songs, but I really liked exactly one, “Glad Girls.” Plus, I saw the band live, as the “me too” stuff was taking off, and the lead singer, a middle-aged white guy from Ohio, mocked it and complained about “political correctness.” Travis was willing to work with us again, despite his new “cool” friends. We were happy to share in the glory, to put our beers in the same studio cooler used by GBV, a band also known to enjoy an adult beverage.

Mercy Mercy Me: Marvin Gaye

Margie and I drove to Detroit for Christmas with my good friend Rob Yagley (a fellow ex-Detroiter going home for the holidays) and we stayed with my mom for a few days. My dad was at a very advanced stage of dementia and mostly confined to a hospital bed that my mom had placed in the middle of the family room.

He was in a rigid fetal position, unable to stand or even straighten out his stiffened and fixed limbs. And he wore a diaper. My mom changed and cleaned him, very openly, almost confrontationally, constantly wiping out his asshole. My dad had been a dapper, well-coiffed and dignified man and now this was happening. He regularly screamed and moaned in seeming agony. My mom, 83-years old, was the sole caretaker. She would not put him in a home.

This was her last sacrifice for him. She had promised not to put him in a nursing home and she didn’t, even when I told her that promise was non-binding since my dad had lost all sense of who she and everyone else was. Occasionally a nurse came in to dispense drugs and diapers and monitor the scene, and a home health aide came once or twice a week to sponge bathe him. But otherwise my mom would haul him out of bed (fortunately he was now a stick of a man) and put him in a wheelchair. She would strap him in and wheel him to the table for his puréed food that she spoon fed him. It was fantastically sad and also very cold in that house. It was even colder outdoors, around 10 or 15 degrees Fahrenheit most days and lower at night. My dad died later that year, still in my mom’s care at her house.

My mom, whom I loved dearly and marveled at her self-sacrifice and determination, could be a difficult person to get along with. She was blunt to the extreme, sometimes rude, talked in her own version of English, often not saying words properly, like she did not really know how to speak proper English, though she did. She used various pet phrases like “as I was saying,” when she had not previously referred to anything, or “kind of thingy” at the end of a sentence as a sort of etc., etc. “Keep in mind” was her way of explaining that whatever you suggested was absolutely impossible. She loved me as her son, not an easy task, and I loved her. She seemed competitive with Margie as my wife, and she had been hard both on my brother’s wife and my sister.

This seemed likely the last Christmas together and we had not gone out there for several years prior so it was an important visit. It was a tough visit in some ways, though when I walked into the room where my father was seated and he saw me he let out a loud squawk of joy seemingly in recognition of me. That was amazing and deeply moving. The gathering of our entire family on Christmas eve had some rough spots because at one point my mom stormed out of the kitchen because she thought her grandson was mocking her, and everyone else laughing, when he made a disparaging though humorous remark about her driving. I guess my mom took real pride in her driving and in fact she had driven her grandson, me and others all over the country. Her technique however was to press hard on the gas and have the car rocket forward, then ease up, then repeat, so Ryan, her grandson, had called her Captain Whiplash. Mom stayed in her bedroom for about an hour before she came out again, still deeply upset. Margie flew back to New York a few days earlier than planned, emotionally exhausted, and I did the long drive back in bad weather with Rob a few days later.

Fluctuat Nec Mergitur, words to live by:

God Only Knows: The Beach Boys

After New Year’s, I was at the studio when David was doing his guitar overdubs. The atmosphere was tense. For some reason none of us knew, he had been sulking during the recording, sitting in a separate room, not talking. I was outside as David had finished his work on the record and as he passed by we made some brief small talk. He left but then returned a couple minutes later. “I’m not playing,” he said. I wasn’t sure what that meant. “On the record?” I asked. “No, in the band. I’m not playing in the band anymore.” Only then, eternally slow on the uptake, did I realize he was quitting. “I am sorry to hear that. Why are you leaving?” He stated at me for a bit and then said, I “had to know” he was quitting. Actually I didn’t. I believe only he did.

It is sometimes hard to leave a band, and he had been with us for seven years and two albums, lots of shows, our trips to California, etc., even his hometown of Buffalo where we played at the venerable Nietzsche’s Bar. But as we say in my country, “To say good-bye, it is to die a little.” I was sad to see him go. But, you know, one monkey don’t stop this show.

Freddy’s Dead: Curtis Mayfield

For me, the closing of the original Freddy’s marked my break with bar culture. The days, or rather nights, of hanging out in the bar until 6 or 7 a.m. were over, thankfully. So, while there was a sadness in the closing of Freddy’s, a place that was our hangout, where they treated me like a VIP for about 13 years, it was sort of a blessing that it closed. I would go to the new Freddy’s sometimes to meet the old gang, or for some special event, like when Mike Morgan got involved in a new magazine, Hard Crackers. They had their gatherings for new print issues, but whatever magic I had seen about bars, about an “art bar” as a gathering place, no longer existed. The Cedar Bar was closed permanently. Art was really made at home. And you could drink there too, of course, and cheaper, although every third one was not free. There are no “buybacks” from the bartender for being a loyal customer at home.

I was at Freddy’s the night that my father died, though. Donald, the talent booker and now one of the owners, had been having the band play on the night of the Summer Solstice, because all over New York City bands would play outdoors as part of a city-wide program called Make Music New York. I had a special fondness for this event as it reminded me of that glorious night in Paris decades earlier when I had stumbled upon the Fête de la Musique. It had taken New York many years to catch up but now we did a similar thing, bringing free music out into the streets. So, we were scheduled to play at 8 p.m. that night in front of the bar. I had been in close contact with my mom because at this point my dad was very sick. His dementia was at the point where he could no longer remember how to swallow; he had not eaten for several days and weighed only 80 pounds, his body now just a skeleton. I got a phone call from my brother-in-law Norm, Cindy’s husband before she passed. Norm had visited my mom the night before and knew my dad was close to dying and so he had driven out from Detroit where he lived with his new wife, April (another prison guard, like Norm), to keep an eye on my mom at her suburban Detroit home.

LSC circa 2017 (l-r): Bill F. Audrey, Tom, Unknown, Bill C., Josh, Devery, David:

Sad Song: Lou Reed

My dad spit up a last bit of bile. Then he expired. It’s grim but also somehow comforting thinking of him getting out that last bit of bile. He had a sarcastic view of the world and there it was: Bill’s last bile. That’s Beckett stuff. His disease had initially manifested where he had trouble speaking. He knew the words in his head, but he just could not say them. We all suffer from this a bit, I suppose. Words do fail me. I would visit my parents in the northern suburban town where they moved after my dad retired. My dad and I would take long walks around his new neighborhood or in nearby wooded areas. His hearing had long been bad and now he could not speak so easily, not understood anyway, but those were some satisfying walks we took together.

It was our way of saying good-bye before the disease got to the point where he could not recognize me or anyone. We were both aware that the clock was winding down and his Alzheimer’s (diagnosed as Lewy Body syndrome) would soon make these make these walks not possible. And I was only able to visit a couple times a year. His name was Bill Carney too, and he used to joke, “A lot of people will be glad to know Bill Carney can’t talk anymore.” Of course, we all have knowledge that someday we are going to die, and it’s mostly what makes life so precious and so sad, but this disease had that knowledge writ large: knowing that you were losing your mind and would be in a sort of living zombie state before you die. It is enough to make you lose your mind.

Sing Me Back Home: Merle Haggard

I took Norm’s call in the empty backroom of Freddy’s.

When I saw his name appear in the incoming call, I knew what he was calling about. I briefly spoke with my mom, telling her that I loved her, and that Margie and I would be driving out for the funeral. Then I went out on “stage,” the sidewalk outside of Freddy’s, and put on a show. That was difficult but it also felt good to perform. A chance for me to release something, a scream into the void through the instrument of French rock n roll. That one was for my old man. In the end, he had liked the band and especially liked it when I stood up for myself after the former band people tried to rip it off. Margie and I did the long walk home from the bar after the gig and it was not until the next day that the full weight of grief hit me. I felt desperately sad for several hours, even though I had long known that this day was coming. We drove out to Detroit the next day, stopping off at the Lager House for dinner in Detroit upon arriving, as had become our custom. We drove straight through, not even eating over the course of the 12-hour drive until we hit Detroit. My mom though became upset that we had stopped. I am not sure exactly why, but I suppose she had plenty to be mad about.

My mom had asked that I sing a song at my dad’s funeral mass, an event she had been planning for a while. I had brought my guitar with me. I was a not good but not terrible guitar player. The song she selected was an Irish one, of course, by Phil Coulter, one of their favorites. Coulter was an interesting guy who had written lots of great hit songs including “Looking at You” (recorded by Van Morrison’s Them and Detroit’s MC5) and “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night” by the Bay City Rollers. He had done a lot of Celtic new age music in the 1980’s and 90’s, and he had written “The Old Man,” a sentimental song of a son lamenting his father’s passing. That was the one my mom wanted me to sing.

The morning of the funeral, mom asked if I was ready to sing the song. I told her yes. In fact, I had been up a good part of the night figuring out the logistics of performing at the church. Where would I put my guitar during the mass? How would it sound without a mic or amp for the guitar? I decided that it would be simpler just to do the song a cappella, so I would not have to bother with the unamplified guitar. I told my mom I was ready to do the song and had decided not to use the guitar. She said, “Do you want to practice?” That seemed like an odd question. I told her no, I was fine. She then said, “Go ahead, practice,” which I then recognized meant that she wanted me to essentially audition the song for her. Apparently, she was having second thoughts. I sang part of it, and I guess I passed the audition. She said ok. Or as a wise man once said, “I’d like to say thanks on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.”

The funeral was attended by a couple dozen people, most of them old timers from the Gaelic League, where my parents had been active members. My brother and I did readings, and the priest gave the homily or sermon on the Gospel story of Lazarus, risen from the dead. My father, like Lazarus, had been released as when Jesus commanded those around him, “take off the grave clothes and let him go.” He was gone. When it came time for the “greeting of peace” among the congregation, the priest walked over to my mom, brother and me in the first row, and shook our hands. To me he said, half joking, “You ready for your song?” I smiled. I suppose if you are a priest, it’s good to have a sense of humor.

My mom had paid to have not just an organist but also a trio of male singers to sing the refrains and songs during the Mass. After Communion, I stepped up to the podium on the side of the stage and sang “The Old Man.” For no explainable reason, I was in particularly good voice that weekend. I even felt it on the drive out and back. I had been practicing since second grade I suppose. All those times singing aloud while running up and down the parking lot of the Water Club, fetching some rich person’s car. All the times playing in Central Park with the Metropolecats or playing on the streets of Detroit’s Cass Corridor with the Don’t Look Now Jug Band. All the times singing in French, in NYC, in California, in France. All the times singing karaoke at Freddy’s Bar because Tony wanted a distraction from his court case. All the times singing for Margie while wandering around the apartment or cooking in the kitchen. I had been auditioning and then auditioning, finally, for my mom. I sang the song really well. And it is not easy singing a cappella. You are really exposed. I don’t remember ever singing a cappella before. It means “from the head” and I sang “from the heart.”

After, I was one of the pallbearers wheeling out the casket and loading it into the hearse and the priest was there. He said, “Good job,” as did all of the Gaelic League folks and everyone there, including my Tea Party-supporting and Trump-loving-always-broke-and borrowing uncle and aunt. But not a word from my brother or his kids. Family. I believe my brother had complicated feelings about my dad along with his feelings about me. My mom expressed her satisfaction by congratulating herself on choosing me to sing. A backhanded compliment, yes, but I will take it. I was happy that she was happy.

My Old Man:

:

Good Bye Emmanuelle: Serge Gainsbourg

So Long It’s Been Good to Know You: Woody Guthrie

After Gavin left, another lawyer named Bill, who played keyboards, joined. We were now a band with two lawyers named Bill. We had that going for us. Bill Ferullo (aka Benoit Bals) was a skilled keyboard player, like Gavin, but more grounded. He liked punk rock, he liked jazz, he liked Prince, and he liked the Make Up. Of course, “more grounded than Gavin” described a large portion of the known universe at that stage.

Gavin resolutely continued to party and his behavior became even more erratic. He took in a homeless woman at his apartment that he met at his neighborhood bar, the Two Boots pizzeria. The homeless woman liked it at his place. She would not leave or find work. Gavin felt guilty about having a home and had trouble asking the homeless woman to leave. Then Gavin started getting 86’ed from neighborhood bars for his odd behavior. Not everyone had trouble kicking out unwanted guests! He rented a convertible and parked it outside the bar he was soon to be 86’ed from on 7th Avenue, blasting music, hanging with his peeps and using it as his smoking lounge. Some nice style points but not the way to keep being allowed in the bar. He got kicked out of that bar while he was outside.

He got arrested for attacking the new Barclay’s Arena with a slingshot and paintballs. It was a noble gesture since the arena had been pushed through by a sham eminent domain process to benefit a rich and politically connected developer. A rival developer submitted a lower bid at the last moment, shocking the original guy, Bruce Ratner, but that bid was simply deemed to be a higher bid and dismissed out of hand, since the whole process was pre-ordained and fixed. Gavin had been attacking the arena that was displacing our beloved Freddy’s bar for a good amount of time but eventually was nabbed. David defeated by Goliath.

Rather than simply accept a disposition where his case would be dismissed if he avoided re-arrest for 6 months (a so-called ACD or Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal), he hired an expensive lawyer to combat the case on supposed free speech grounds, only to plead guilty many months later to a higher charge and after spending thousands of dollars. I remarked to others, particularly his girlfriend Virpi, that Gavin was not well. She insisted that he was fine. I think she saw part of her job as being Gavin’s minder, but she had somehow sunk deep into his delusion, a folie à deux. What was love but a folie à deux?

Finally, Gavin took a trip to Laguna Beach, California without Virpi. He was born in California but raised in Indiana. Still, he thought of Laguna, rather than Fort Waynes, as his homeland. Now in Laguna, he befriended a group of homeless people and funded the round the clock party for his group of new “friends.” He let them stay at his pricey hotel and then, after the hotel threw him out, the apartment that he rented. He bought expensive jewelry for and from his new acquaintances and garnered a D.W.I. arrest. Eventually, he ended up in the hospital after having a mental breakdown. At the time, Gavin believed that he was just pretending to be crazy so he could go undercover in the hospital and see how they were abusing others there. Johnny Dieppe: Undercover Crazy at 9 pm on NBC stay tuned after Lancelot Link, Secret Chip. Later, he acknowledged that was not exactly true. Finally, none of the bars or hotels would accept his credit card. They must have seen how he was being taken advantage of by his new “friends.”

So, Gavin, luckily, made it back to NY. He attributed his manic episode and breakdown to medication that he was taking for his restless leg syndrome. He did stop behaving manically but was forced to sell his apartment, because now he had no more money to live on. According to the philosopher Alain de Bouton, a “breakdown is not merely a random piece of madness or malfunction; it is a very real — albeit very inarticulate — bid for health and self-knowledge. It is an attempt by one part of our mind to force the other into a process of growth, self-understanding and self-development that it has hitherto refused to undertake. If we can put it paradoxically, it is an attempt to jump-start a process of getting well — properly well — through a stage of falling very ill.

Les Sans Culottes at the Bowery Ballroom:

In the midst of a breakdown, we often wonder whether we have gone mad. We have not. We’re behaving oddly, no doubt, but beneath the agitation we are on a hidden yet logical search for health. We haven’t become ill; we were ill already. Our crisis, if we can get through it, is an attempt to dislodge us from a toxic status quo and constitutes an insistent call to rebuild our lives on a more authentic and sincere basis. It belongs, in the most acute and panicked way, to the search for self-knowledge.”

So Gavin needed a way to jump start a change in his life. It was true the old way was not working. Nobly, he still refused to get a job! And he was taking his sympathy for homeless thing pretty far, not just housing one person and unable to ask her to leave, but now seemingly fixing to join them.

He moved to a tiny houseboat in Sausalito with his apartment sale proceeds. There, he racked up another D.W.I., and that became the reason why he could not get a job in California either. Nice. Living in a houseboat in Sausalito was a soft landing. And he got a serious E-bike that he zipped around on (although one of them ended in the Bay). Later, he made a frog outfit for himself and performed on the BART platforms as Legs LeRoux, the singing- and-clarinet-playing frog. That actually made sense and I realized he was just waiting for the right gig to come along. He had to do it himself. From being in a Frog Rock Band to being his own French-named one-man Frog band. Yet another way that LSC was like the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers of French rock n roll performers, a future breeding ground for those who would front their own bands.

When I saw him recently he told me that he was playing with 5 ½ bands in Sausalito, and it seemed like they were full of really talented players, so in the end I believe his move out there was a good one for him, though I miss him here in the Grosse Pomme.

Cindy Incidentally: The Faces

LSC had been writing and practicing songs for a new record ever since our 2012 California trip. I wrote one song, “Gendarme Gendarme,” about the too early and unexpected death of my sister Cindy. She was a fan of the band and had followed local Detroit bands for many years. No cause of death was ever determined because there was no autopsy, but she was just 57. The last time I saw her we smoked a cigarette together and sat in her backyard in Detroit drinking Coca Colas, which she and some other members of my family had a special fondness for. She had suffered from inexplicable migraines and had been very depressed for a long time. For many years Cindy only showed up sporadically at her job, but for some reason they did not fire her. They just did not pay her. The plus side of a city job I guess. And then she died in her sleep. So, it was fantastically sad, and the song I wrote was about that feeling of grief and personal crisis. And it rocked.

Dancing the Dance of the Cannibals, Les Sauvages:

Cindy was the one person in my family who got along with everyone, and even when I tried to use the occasion of her death to reconcile with my brother Gordie it never really took. I told Gordie that I loved him, he was my brother, now it was just the two of us, and that we should not be fighting. He had stopped talking to me several years earlier following an argument about politics one Thanksgiving. “Some asshole here voted for John Kerry,” he said by way of getting the party started. But since he barely spoke to me prior to that, it was hardly noticeable or some sort of “punishment.” But he could not let it go. He was too invested in his grievances against me. Of course, I had some ex-band people who held grievances against me, so at that point if you wanted to not talk to me you had to take a number. I’ll be with you in a minute.

Wine Wine Wine: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

In June 2014 we returned to Serious Business studios in SoHo (where we had recorded most of “‘Pataphyical Graffiti”) to work with Travis Harrison again. We tracked 14 number one hit tunes for our recording, “The Gods Have Thirst” (from the Anatole France novel about the French revolution, “Les Dieux Ont Soif”). Oddly, not a lot of people caught this reference. The record cover was done by my friend, Antoine, a French guy from Strasbourg, who was in some ways my French twin. That is, he was a French guy who wanted very much to be American, to smoke Lucky Strikes and live in a film noir movie, hanging around dive bars shooting pool. He would smoke cigarettes and say, “Remember the glamour.” He had managed to leave his home country and had lived in NYC for many years, even marrying an American girl. But for all of his deep desire to be American, he could not shake his strong French accent. When he wished his co-worker congratulations on her wedding engagement and intended to say, “I am so glad you found happiness,” she heard, “I am so glad you found a penis.”

The Gods Have Thirst Cover:

His cover design played on the French revolutionary - “Gods Have Thirst” idea and featured a blood-red wine bottle with the label reading “Les Sans Culottes” and “The Gods Have Thirst” on it, “since 1998.” The cork from the wine bottle has been decapitated in a guillotine. Besides the title track name-checking various French wines which the people had created in an attempt to assuage blood-thirsty, wanton and cruel Gods (according to our song), the album contained songs about French libertine economist politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn (not in favor), “Up With People” (in favor of humans but anti robot overlords), a song about the night life, “Dans La Nuit” (too much of a good thing), a French cowboy in the American west, “O Minot” (sad) and a cover version in French-accented English (!) of the early NYC rap group Divine Sounds’ “What People Do For Money” (a lot of hustles). The band was not keen on doing a rap song, but ultimately they went along with my desire and eventually grew to appreciate it. Some.

That’s A Bringer: Slim and Slam

After that recording, we lost Marlene, who I understood to be having personal difficulties, though in true LSC fashion, she blamed the band for forcing her to quit, pronouncing it a “boy’s club.” I never even suspected that. We’d always had at least two women in the band, sometimes more. But I’ll admit that not everyone, man or woman, is cut out for the French Rock Band in New York lifestyle. Marlene never seemed comfortable being in the band. She broke up with her husband shortly after leaving the band and I don’t believe she ever joined another band or sang in public again, aside from Karaoke singing, which is how I first discovered she had a good singing voice.

After Marlene’s departure, Lady Luck again shined on us. We learned that a woman who had sung in another NYC French-language band called La Laque, was interested in joining. We had played with La Laque back in 2005 when you could not swing a dead cat in NYC without running into another French band. Well, there was us, our tribute band Non Plussed Nous, and La Laque. So, three. One journal dubbed LSC “the doyennes of the surprisingly fertile French rock scene.” Yes, surprisingly fertile. Devery (Brigitte Bourdeaux) was perfect. She was a good singer and an actual French speaker — without being French — a plus in our books. She had hair dyed a fiery red and looked like a 60’s yé-yé girl, like she could have been another sister to Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Deloreac in Jacques Demy’s amazing movie, “The Young Girls of Rochefort.” Devery was familiar with LSC from the show we did with La Laque at the Leonard Street Knitting Factory (its second location, after Houston Street and before Williamsburg and then back to the East Village).

Brigitte Bourdeaux and Clermont Ferrand:

She later told me that some of her ex-band mates did not really care for LSC because we were not sufficiently “serious” in their view. That was the opposite view of ex-singer Christina who had felt we were too serious. When were we going to do serious right? Fortunately, Devery saw the bigger picture of what LSC was about and liked what we were doing. She had no such antipathy towards our French language band. Devery told me that she had sung in French in La Laque, because she did not feel comfortable singing in English, that was revealing too much about herself. Obviously, that was before Twitter. But I could relate.

Americans did not understand my French songs and French people seemed to be turned off by our Ameriloque accents or their sense that we were making fun of French culture. One U.S. critic had even assumed that we were not singing in actual French but were merely making French sounding noises. That might have been an interesting idea. But I enjoyed the challenge of writing in a language I did not really know that well but still trying to make meaningful and well-crafted songs. I was an updated Mort Shuman, who had written lots of hit songs with Doc Pomus in the early days of rock (“Teenager in Love,” “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Little Sister,” “Viva Las Vegas”), and then became a Francophile and wrote and recorded hit songs in French. I was him, except without the hits. Despite the language obstacle, I feel that the lyrics I wrote were fairly dense, even when also comical. And, like Devery had indicated, it was easier to take chances when no one seemed to know exactly what one was talking about.

Les Dieux Ont Soif, with apologies to Anatole France

I had been singing in French all of these years and was still no closer to answering Christina’s question, “Bill, why do we sing in French?” I mean, I was attracted to Serge Gainsbourg’s music, his deep and beautiful poetic texts, and his modern-day Baudelaire “cher indolent” decadent genius persona. Perhaps he was just the latest stop in my search for a big brother to guide me along. Tim Knoll had been a de facto big brother and later, perhaps my friend Mike Morgan. And then there was Serge, my French alter-ego and frère from une autre mère. It was all pretty far removed from the East Side of Detroit but as much as I loved the East Side, I wanted to get out. I am not sure how singing in French would have gone over in former-French-city, now-brutally-occupied-by-the-Americains, Detroit. They are used to a lot of weird shit in Detroit, so maybe it would have worked. But France-by-way-of-Brooklyn was not a bad destination in the end.

Down and out in the Bowery Ballroom:

Aside from the writing, I realized that being a vocalist is weird. A guitar player hears the sound of his guitar and a piano player or drummer hear their own instruments. But a vocalist does not hear the same voice that everyone else does, because we all hear our voices differently than they are heard by others. That is true even of one’s speaking voice. This strange phenomenon caused me to fairly reel in horror the first time I heard my voice recorded. I must have been about 14-years old and my friend had a tape recorder. It was this high, girlish voice — nothing like what I heard in my own head. I later learned that when we hear ourselves we hear both the sound of our voice through outside sound waves hitting our ear drum, but also through vibrations inside our skull set off by our vocal chords. As the vibrations travel through the skull bones they set the ear drum vibrating and as they travel through the bone they spread out and lower in pitch, giving you a false sense of bass.

And that also applies to singing. So, when I am singing I am hearing a deeper, richer sound than what the audience hears. It gives one both a false sense of confidence, “I sound great” and a lack of confidence, “I sound great but this is not what others are actually hearing.” This disconnect can be exacerbated, because I am usually singing into a microphone, and the sound that is put out through the house P.A. speakers facing the audience is not necessarily represented by what I hear through the stage speaker monitors. Indeed, at the jug band and French Rock n Roll level of the music business, often there are no stage monitors. You’re just flying blind. But that is the story of my life.

For the Sake of the Song: Townes Van Zandt

I passed most of my youth speaking in a high voice without being self-conscious or overly concerned about it, although it became annoying talking to strangers on the phone, and to always be addressed as Ma’am — even after I told them my name was William. I began to self-consciously speak a little lower, particularly on the phone. When I first began singing with the Don’t Look Now Jug Band I was trying to sing as high as I could. I wanted the “high lonesome” sound of bluegrass and some country music and that just sounded right to my ear. The sound of Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders and the great Jimmy Martin. Listening back to those recordings, I am singing high alright. And my voice is too. Some of my rock vocalist heroes, Detroiters Rob Tyner of the MC5, and Jack White of the White Stripes, also sing at a higher pitch, and they both sound great.

These days with the Jug Addicts, I still sing mostly at a higher pitch, although not exclusively. I’ve developed a strong raspy voice too, like when an older pitcher develops a good curve or off-speed pitch. Recently, a guy said to me after a show, “I see you got the raspy voice thing going.” I was flattered? Sometimes people do approach me after the gig and state how they really like the way I sing, which is of course a great thing to hear. I do feel it is my “own” voice. It is usually strangers who seem more comfortable complimenting me than my friends, somewhat counterintuitively. A friend once actually said to me, “I know you don’t think you’re a good singer.” Not sure why he knew I thought that. To the contrary, perhaps I am no Pavarotti, but I can sing. With LSC, I sing usually in my deeper register, channeling Serge Gainsbourg or Nino Ferrer. I started that at age 37, after having already performed publicly for 16 years. I guess I was ready for a change. My voice had finally changed, but I was always a late bloomer.

At Sister’s in Brooklyn (L to R): Jacques Strappe, Brigitte Bourdauex, Benoit Bals, Clermont Ferrand, Kit Kat LeNoir, Geddy Liaison, M. Pommes Frite:

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I Love a Millionaire: The Mekons

In February 2011, Les Sans Culottes, was asked to perform at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Chelsea. The band would perform a couple of songs between various improv skits and the main event was the presentation of a check for one million dollars to one of the Brigade members, comedian Craig Rowin. A couple months earlier, Rowin had posted a YouTube video asking whether there were any very rich people who would be willing to give him one million dollars. He specifically mentioned a few people like Warren Buffet and Steven Spielberg. Rowin reasoned that the million would be a mere drop in the bucket of the rich person’s wealth, but it would be huge and life-altering for him. His video got picked up by the mainstream media and went viral.

Not long after, Rowin announced that he had been promised one-million dollars by a man named Benjamin and produced a notarized letter from his lawyer. When I heard about it, I thought, why didn’t I think of that? Some people are so rich they will just give you money if you simply ask! It’s true that they have a lot and I have little. It was like a polite Robin Hood scheme. Ask. Nicely. But that was the only way I was ever going to make one million dollars -- and this guy had beat me to it. My sole opportunity now squandered, scooped by an improv comic. I supposed it was good publicity for the superrich person, just as the ridiculously rich, the Carnegies, Mellons, Geffens and Kochs, et al. often gave a ton of money to a museum or hospital in return for having their name attached to the building. Hey, he might have been a robber baron, but he did pay for a library. How bad can he be? That was how my college dorm had been renamed. Initially named after a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a rich alum had it renamed in his honor after donating money to the school. These truths were indeed self-evident.

At our San Diego Hotel during our Gauche Coast Tour in 2012:

LSC on Stage at Bowery Ballroom:

Bowery Ballroom balcony greenroom:

LSC at Irving Plaza:

In fairness, I had never heard of either of them. But with Rowin and his generous benefactor the money was going directly to him -- not to an institution. Sweet. The rich guy, Benjamin, presumably enjoyed the novelty of it as well as the chance to publicize his generosity. I am not sure whether such a direct endowment had been done before. Frank Sinatra had sometimes generously given large amounts of money to strangers, but not one million dollars. (Frank counterbalanced those acts by being utterly horrible to people he met or knew personally.) Still, I found it weird that Craig did not offer to pay us anything. In the French rock n roll business, and music in general, I had encountered lots of people who did not want to pay anything for the band to play. Sometimes they’d claim that the “publicity” was a benefit. I always preferred money. I thought Craig should share some of his newly-gained, easily-attained fabulous wealth. Maybe he was going to do so. That would be a nice surprise. Or maybe the entire event was just a lot of bullshit, a sort of meta-comedy like that practiced by Andy Kaufman? Actually, that would be not too dissimilar to Les Sans Culottes.

We could have been challenging women to wrestling contests (wrestling itself the quintessential fake art), infuriating people with our militant sexism and leaving audiences wondering is this guy for real? That was akin to our goal. But we pretended to be French. We presented as actual French people playing French music since it seemed like no one else would. The Upright Citizens show was also a chance to debut our new singer, Marlene, and at a well-attended show where she would only have to sing on two songs rather than a full set of tunes.

Our nervous new singer would get a chance to do this show. I was excited to meet the generous millionaire. And we did. Benjamin was in the backstage green room the whole time with us as we lounged around drinking waiting for our turn on stage. The band surrounded him, practically laying siege, seemingly hoping some of his largesse could be directed their way. It was like we could smell the money. Benjamin told us that he had made his fortune in various inventions and was originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Our keyboard player was from Fort Wayne and immediately leveraged that geographical connection to put himself in first place for the next million-dollar handout.

That must be how it is when you are extremely rich. People immediately want you to like them and aggressively try to ingratiate themselves. It’s exciting just to be around someone with so much money and to think maybe some of that can be coming your way. And Benjamin was nice, no snob. He patiently answered our questions and showed high tolerance for a fawning French rock band. It was suddenly apparent to me why rich people only wanted to hang out with other rich people. They don’t have to put up with the unseemly spectacle of courtiers constantly seeking a sight of their fortune. Of course, some find that enjoyable and keep a regular entourage around for that purpose. But they make them work for it.

Finally, it was time for the main event. Craig was seated on stage in his tuxedo and Mr. Benjamin was also in a bow tie and formal attire. As promised, Benjamin gave Craig the check for a cool million. The crowd went wild. Yay humanity! Then Craig took out a lighter and set the check on fire. He and Benjamin rose from their seats and exited through the curtain at the rear the stage. Then they left the building. Oh, the humanity. I never saw either of them again. Good thing. The crowd was pitchfork-wielding angry. They did not see the humor in this comic stunt, being hoaxed. Both Craig and “Benjamin” might have been torn to pieces. On stage, a film played showing Craig auditioning Benjamin and rehearsing him for the part.

How naïve we all had been. What self-respecting millionaire would ever give away one million dollars to a stranger merely because he asked for it? Santa Claus was more real. The world did not work that way. We should have known that deep down. Like any con, if it sounded too good to be true, it was. And the crowd reacted like they were all marks and had been taken, even if it was only for the cost of admission. Their faith in humanity had been somehow undermined. Or perhaps it was their faith in their own judgment now seeing themselves as suckers.

I could convince myself that I wasn’t taken in. After all, I had been skeptical because we weren’t getting paid! And I had not acted obsequiously around Benjamin backstage. But I might have if there was not a favor-seeking crowd already in place. I was by no means sure it was a hoax. Like everyone, I wanted to believe it was true. The band collected our instruments, our lack of payment, our lessons learned and took the subway back to Brooklyn. That was enough exposure to upright citizens.

Hendricks Gin Costume Party:

You Got the Silver: The Rolling Stones

During his stint with LSC, Gavin got fired from his office job at a Catholic publishing organization for repeated late arrivals. It is hard to be a rock star and party at that level and still maintain a day job. Gavin chose rock star partying. Since it was the time of the Great Recession, Congress extended unemployment benefits beyond the usual six months (or whatever), and not working worked for Gavin. He loved not working. Getting fired was the best thing ever. Also, at that time his father died, and Gavin inherited a good amount of money. He spent it all on drinking and drugs and getting his hair bleached blond regularly. The rest he just wasted, to paraphrase English soccer star George Best.

Gavin had long been sensitive about his grey hair. He had enviably thick hair, but it had gone gray by the time he was 40, around the time I first met him. He was skilled at photoshop, however, and so in our band publicity photo, he used his skills to eliminate our drummer Benji from the picture (Gavin had never liked Benji) and also tried to change his hair color. The Soviet Union was not completely dead. It came out looking green. Eventually, he dyed it platinum blonde. His “job” became maintaining his hair, getting his dye job touched up. He looked like a shorter, stouter, Karl Lagerfeld, or sometimes Siegfried from Siegfried and Roy. Both great looks.

In 2012, now fully restocked with our new bass, guitar and new Sans Culette woman singer, we traveled to California playing ten shows from San Diego to Santa Rosa on our “Gauche Coast” Tour. Marlene was thrilled to be in California, particularly San Francisco where she had lived for a couple years before divorcing and moving to NYC. She also wanted to play in Santa Rosa where her sister lived and had her sister set up a show there. The sister and her husband were both sober and that was a sad show because no one showed up at the little Irish bar we played at except for two deaf people. Actually, it was our band, her non-drinking sister and husband, two deaf people, and an unhappy bar owner. I can add, proudly, that the deaf people loved us. I had long maintained that it was not necessary to understand French to enjoy the band and this gig proved you did not actually have to hear us. The bar owner, not so much. He quickly cut us off from any free drinks. We always looked for the “legendary” gigs but this one was sort of reverse legendary, apart from the deaf people endorsement.

Jacques Strappe on drums and Geddy Liaison on Guitar:

Clermont on Stage at Bowery Ballroom:

Sorrow, Tears and Blood: Fela Kuti

We did have some good shows at the Starry Plough in Berkeley, the Hemlock Tavern in San Fran, and the best was probably at a backyard party in Compton, a supposedly rough part of South Central L.A. with a bunch of young Chicano garage rock bands that were connected to our friend Arthur Alexander. Not the famous soul singer Arthur Alexander (“Every Day I Have to Cry,” “You Better Move On,” “Soldier of Love”) but a guy who had moved from Poland to NYC in the 70’s and played with a CBGB’s era band called Sorrows. Again, not The Sorrows, a different band from the 1960’s. But his Sorrows was a good power pop band. And Arthur Alexander was presumably not the name he was given in Poland.

At that show with Arthur’s band, and a cool band of young Chicanos, the Black Mambas, the grandma-abuela said we were her favorite band. This is why we do it. The fans. She had been listening from inside her house while watching Mexican wrestling. So that Compton show was just regular legendary. My law school friend Manuel Nunez showed up. I think he wanted to see if everything was ok for us in Compton, though the neighborhood seemed not particularly dangerous to me. What did I know? I wasn’t from there. Manuel was wearing the short-brimmed brown hat that had been my grandfather’s but that I had given him back in 1986. He said, “I got the hat.” I didn’t recognize it at first. But that’s the kind of guy he was. It was good to see him and the hat. And he brought some fancy beer.

I got drunk and high after the Santa Rosa show at Marlene’s sister’s house where we were staying. Gavin decided to cover my face with a pillow to block my breathing because I was snoring. Marlene’s sister, sober, was disturbed by this and told me about it the next morning. I confronted Gavin about it but he replied that he didn’t care. He had been running amok, constantly smoking, drinking and drugging, beyond the usual LSC-is-out-of-town partying and beyond “normal” Gavin the partying rock star with blond bleached hair. At first, I was upset (he also was not bothering to play his keyboard parts or solos, and not getting on stage on time), but then I began to worry, because he seemed to be in crisis.

When we got back to NYC, Gavin quit the band. I was sorry to lose him, but I also felt that was the right move for him. He played one last show with us at Union Hall in Park Slope Brooklyn, but he so enjoyed this last show that he had second thoughts about quitting. At the upstairs bar, David and Tom tried hard to convince Gavin not to quit. Eventually, in an intense bon gendarme-mal gendarme interview session, they convinced him not to quit. He was staying.

A couple days later, though, Gavin called me saying that he was quitting. Apparently, he had no recollection of the long after-the-gig conversation convincing him to stay in the band because he was blacked out. Gavin decided that he was now going to devote all of his time to trying to be a commercial jingle writer. Of course. To me, that was beyond a longshot. I suggested that he just get a regular job again and he looked at me like I was crazy.

LSC at Irving Plaza in 2013:

So Long It’s Been Good to Know You: Woody Guthrie

The Black Angel’s Death Song: The Velvet Underground

For many years we had played a big street fair on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue called the Atlantic Antic in front of the Last Exit Bar. Beginning in 1998, LSC played a couple of sets in the street almost every year, sometimes with the Jug Addicts. Unlike most street fairs in NYC which seemed to feature the same rotating vendors of socks, zeppoles and discount tools, this one featured many of the local businesses on one of Brooklyn’s main thoroughfares full of Middle Eastern bakeries and restaurants and antiques shops. It was always a blast for us playing two sets and in front of an audience comprised of mostly strangers who had no idea what our French rock n roll band was all about. Surprise, we are French.

Jug Addicts at Atlantic Antic, outside the Last Exit bar:

The Chairman of the Board:

One week before the big show, Kathleen and Heagle were hanging out at a Brooklyn bar with Jon’s girlfriend, Rain (a name that she had given herself). I had known Rain for many years from the crowd at Freddy’s. She had a sharp wit and seemed bright but also quite a bit nutty; she would say things that were obvious lies, for no apparent reason. I later learned that her mental illness included different, “split” personalities. I don’t think Heagle was really aware of it. He was a nice guy and a talented guitarist but radically un-attuned to other more day-to-day stuff. He once brought an empty bottle of wine to a party I hosted. His then girlfriend asked why he brought the empty bottle. He didn’t know.

Clermont at Atlantic Antic:

That night Jon and Rain and Kathleen got into an argument. Rain stalked off complaining that Jon was always talking about our band. It’s true that Jon really liked being in the band and always called me boss, or captain or colonel and thought of our band as a great achievement. Jon and Rain went to their separate apartments, but they continued to argue over the course of several late-night phone calls, with Rain ultimately breaking up with Jon, and Jon then not answering any further phone calls from her. After all, they had broken up after all. But Rain hung herself that night.

Jon was devastated, as was Kathleen and all of us. I talked to Jon a few days later, asking if we should cancel our Antic show, but he insisted on doing it, saying that Rain loved the band and she would want us to do the show. This show would be for Rain. The Antic was on a Sunday, always the last Sunday in September, but earlier that day some of Rain’s friends had organized a memorial gathering in Rain’s honor at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Court Street, not too far from our gig. We sang “When the Saints Go Marching In” and did a second-line parade down the Court Street sidewalk to the restaurant, because Rain had lived in and loved New Orleans.

I was there for a while, but it was getting to be time for our gig. Audrey and I left, but I could not ask Jon to leave. It didn’t seem right. At the Last Exit, the owner Julie was anxious for us to go on. I explained what was happening, but she still wanted us to start. Eventually, Jon showed up and we went on, late, but we did it. We dedicated the show to Rain and raised a toast in her honor with many people from the memorial now at our show. After, I saw Rain’s mother, who looked remarkably like Rain, just older.

Edith Pissoff at the Antic:

Kathleen greeted Rain’s mom after the show but she rebuffed Kathleen saying, “I don’t want to talk to the woman who was arguing with my daughter just before she killed herself.” I guess Rain came by her craziness honestly. Madness does not run in the family, it gallops. Kathleen replied, “Oh no, it wasn’t me; Jon here was the person she was arguing with.” The stage was set.

After the show, I went to O’Connor’s Bar. The rest of the band made it over there too. Jon and Kathleen were arguing about who was more responsible for Rain’s death, with each of them blaming the other. I have witnessed a lot of weird and ridiculous conversations in bars, but this one rated right at the top. Neither of them was responsible, in reality. Rain had issues that were far bigger than the arguments she had the night she killed herself. Everyone tried to get Jon and Kathleen to stop their inane and unresolvable argument, but they persisted. I left around 9 o’clock, fully exhausted from the emotional intensity of the day, as well as playing two sets of music at the Antic, as well as drinking there and with no food. Plus, this was my now established M.O., check out before the déluge.

The Day of Rain’s Memorial, LSC at Antic:

(There’s Gonna be A) Showdown: New York Dolls

But Jon and Kathleen stayed. And at 4 a.m., both as trashed as I had been at 9 p.m., but with an additional 7 hours of trashedness, Kathleen punched Jon several times. Kathleen was a woman, but tough, kind of like a woman linebacker. I definitely would not want to be punched by her, and as it turned out, neither did Heagle. He left O’Connor’s but followed up with an angry email to all of the band, sent at 5 a.m., explaining that he had been punched, was no longer having fun in the band, and was quitting. Kathleen had also stormed out of the bar after throwing her beer bottle through the drop ceiling of the bar. A nice touch. The ceiling at O’Connor’s always was sort of optional. She also sent the band an email quitting at about the same time as Heagle’s.

Suddenly, we were down two monkeys in circumstances beyond my control. It was hard. I went to the bar the next day to retrieve Kathleen’s coat and other items she had left behind in her sudden exit, her last exit, since she was now 86’ed. From the Last Exit to the last exit. It was another epic LSC performance. After that, Heagle did not speak to me for 7 years. It had become some sort of cosmic joke.

Finally, the Last Exit closed, priced out. A new fancy cocktail bar took over the spot. The owner, Julie, started running Hank’s, the bar formerly run by her former husband (they divorced after she discovered his affair, all documented on texts in his cell phone). Hank’s, formerly the Doray Tavern, was a real dive bar, immortalized somewhat by great New Yorker essayist Joseph Mitchell when he wrote about the Mohawk Indians who worked high rise construction in NYC and lived in the area. It had Christmas lights decorating its low ceiling all year long, bathrooms that gave CBGB’s infamous bathroom a run for its money and flames painted on the outside of the building. It was a top-notch dive and featured country bands initially, where my honky tonk country band, The Tombstoners played and also the Jug Addicts.

We played at Hank’s for the Antic and indoors on their small stage many times until it also closed. Everyone was headed for the exit. O’Connor’s eventually became a large, characterless sports bar named MacMahon’s. That was on trend with the way Brooklyn was “developing,” sadly.

As a The New Yorker magazine “Talk of the Town” piece put it in 2006, “There’s a growing sense that the city’s recovery has come at the cost of a part of its identity: that New York is safer and richer but less like itself, an old lover who has gone for a face-lift and come out looking like no one in particular. The wrinkles are gone, but so is the face. This transformation is one you see on every street corner in Manhattan, and now in Brooklyn, too, where another local toy store or smoked-fish emporium disappears and another bank branch or mall store opens. For the first time in Manhattan’s history, it has no bohemian frontier. Another bookstore closes, another theatre becomes a condo, another soulful place becomes a sealed residence. These are small things, but they are the small things that the city’s soul clings to.” We were losing our soulful places.

The great, L.A.-based artist, Ed Ruscha (who began taking pictures of every building on the Sunset Strip in the mid-60’s) said recently about that city, “I began to see the city decaying in negative ways. Anything that was worth looking at seemed to be erased and something came along to replace it that was repulsive. That continues to be true today. I see the city as pressurized, just from the pure function of too many people living here. And I notice it every time I go out on the street, that something’s a little bit different. You know: ‘Oh, that’s gone.’” Ruscha believed that had happened starting in the 60’s and blamed it on too many people. I think in NYC it started, or at least became very noticeable to me, in the late 1990’s. And I did not blame people; I blamed the politicians who abetted it and the landlords who perpetrated it. It was even happening in Detroit in a nascent stage and small scale. While I recognized Detroit needed more money and businesses invested in it, it surely was bound to go wrong as it had in NYC without somebody looking after the interests of those who lived in the city.

Back 2 the Base: (X)

We replenished the ranks with our old guitar player, John “L’Effete” Wachter, Marlene (Courtney Louvre), an ex-Freddy’s bartender who I knew well (naturally), and eventually, after Oweinama retired, Josh Machlin (M. Pomme Frite), who had been the bass player in the Choke, a then defunct band that we had played with a few years before. A few months later, since Wachter was still living far out on Long Island and had just agreed to fill in, David Andreana (Geddy Liaison or Jean Claude Van Halen) joined on guitar. David was an Ayn Rand devotee and Libertarian who was born in 1981. His parents were both younger than me. But he liked KISS and hockey. It was good to have another hockey fan in the band. And how could one hate on a band that had recorded “Detroit Rock City”? David also had played in a band that performed famous songs from video games. Such a world existed. Who knew? We were now well into our overhaul of LSC Mach III (mock?) and nearly at Mach IV or V. They were all the right people at the right time.

Revamped LSC line-up:

I Love a Millionaire: The Mekons

We caught the train back to Paris, having completed our three gigs in three days. It was our first, and as it turned out last, tour of France, now completed. We met Nathalie at Rosa Bonheur the bar and cafe with outdoor seating in the Parc Buttes-Chaumont, and then we all went over to the Jolie Môme for further drunkenness. We tried to follow that up by going over to Nathalie’s place for more partying, but Kathleen wasn’t having it. She yelled at Nathalie and made her cry. It was Nathalie’s place, but Kathleen was tired. Kathleen had gotten very upset at Rosa Bonheur when some French people we met there congratulated us all, as Americans, for having elected Obama. Kathleen was incensed; she did not like the implication that she had voted for Obama, or anyone! She proudly did not vote, she explained. How dare these French people assume both that she had voted and voted for Obama! Then she probably went back to NYC and complained about rude French people but I hope not.

In Chalons, day after the show:

Kit Kat in France:

City of the Dead: The Clash

It had been an intense, forced march schedule of playing and partying, but I felt fantastic. The band had success in NYC and touring around the U.S.A. We had our court case, but it made me realize more than ever how important the band was to me, and it also made me think being a lawyer who does music is not so square. It can be pretty useful. And despite the former band members’ efforts to run us down, trash our good name, we had made it to France and rocked the maison. The first gig in the U.S.A. at Freddy’s bar seemed like it had achieved everything I ever wanted for the band and the first gig in France had done the same. Our musical mission was accomplished, and we now had a couple of days in Paris to simply hang out. It was frightening to think, now we can party, because we had already done a good share during the business portion of the trip. But now we really could.

Champagne in the Champagne Region (with Olivier):

The next day I went with Heagle to the Père Lachaise cemetery which was not far from where we were staying. I had been there in high school and visited it again over the years during different Paris visits, including with Margie the year before. I had liked working in Detroit’s Mt. Olivet Cemetery and had hung out there as a child with my friends, even picnicking there. Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery was also a special place to me. When I first moved to Brooklyn it was right at the end of my block. And Père Lachaise was definitely one of my favorite places in Paris. The city of the dead, home to Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Mezz Mezzrow, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Yves Montand, Chopin, Molière and the last remnants of the Paris Commune. In fact, it was the memory of the communards that was the most stirring to me out of all the famous dead. It literally was hallowed ground.

La Jolie Mome in Paris!

At the Hotel Marie Curie with Edith Pissoff prior to show:

That night, our last, the band and Nathalie went to an outdoor concert in the northern part of Paris. The venue was outdoors and done up like a beach. It had a relaxed bohemian vibe and a NYC band, the World Inferno Friendship Society, a sort of noir cabaret rock band, was playing there. We had played gigs with them in their early days at Rubulad, but they had gone on to greater success. And Gina, I learned, had played bass with them for a while. While we watched the show, the singer, and genius frontman, spied Gina in the audience and asked incredulously, “Gina, what are you doing here in Paris?” Gina’s response was, “Rocking the fuck out, what else.” Priceless. A true Sans Culotte. Once she had also said, “Don’t say music is just a hobby for me. It’s not a fucking hobby.” Amen again, sister. As it turned out, Gina later rejoined that band, fell in love with the singer, they cohabitated, and he died young a few years later from a fall that I heard was related to excess drinking.

After our first couple of days in Paris, Nathalie had actually chastised me, saying something like “You usually get much drunker than you have been getting.” I thought I was getting sufficiently drunk, although not as much as some of the other band members, and it’s true that when Nathalie had visited in NYC we had a couple of late drunken nights at Freddy’s bar in my neighborhood. I managed to get quite drunk at that concert, though, stumbling some on my way back until we finally found some cabs, but I was finally letting it all out. The next day, we flew back to NYC.

Johnny Dieppe!

On stage in Chalon:

I was carrying a big wad of cash from the gigs in my pocket, and as I boarded the flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Boston’s O’Hare, I was pulled out of the line in the jetway just prior to boarding and told to empty my pockets. I don’t know why. Usually, I have no significant amount of money on me and I am never ordered to empty my empty pockets, so it was a strange coincidence that the one time my pockets were full someone wanted them emptied. I pulled out my giant wad of cash and other items in my pocket just at the end of the jetway and right outside the plane’s door. They looked at it, told me I was ok, and I boarded, or as they like to say, embarked. Of course, if I really had money, I would not have had any on me. That’s how it is with rich people.

Kit Kat Greets some Fans the Next Day:

Government Center: The Modern Lovers

At U.S. Customs in Boston, I was concerned about how to explain our trip. The agent asked me why I did not fly directly to NYC. Why was I stopping in Boston? I answered, honestly, because it was less expensive than flying directly, and he seemed satisfied. Audrey was next and the agent asked her what she did for a living. Although often unemployed, at that time she was working as a bartender, but for some reason she answered that she was unemployed. Clever. When the agent asked her how she could afford to travel to Europe, Audrey said a friend had bought her ticket. I would like to have a friend like that, the agent said. But despite the fact that we were grouped together, and some of us carrying instruments, they did not ask if we were a band or how much money we had made on our trip which I appreciated.

With the band safely back in the U.S.A., home of Chuck Berry, and just a couple hours until our flight to J.F.K., I felt that my official duties as band tour director and den mother were concluded. Our revels now are ended. It was Miller Time and I headed to the bar along with some other band members, while others decided to go to a different bar that served hard liquor, not just beer and wine. I reminded them of our flight to NYC and to meet at the gate. That group never made it on the plane. I tried calling them but their phones had no power and so Heagle, Gina and Audrey all stayed overnight at Logan Airport. My job was done. You have to let them grab for the gold ring on their own sometimes.

Not long after, Gina decided to move to Detroit and join the Detroit Cobras full time. She had become friends with Mary, their Good Cop and guitar player, and she now had a boyfriend in Detroit. As it turned out, neither venture was successful. The boyfriend was a Detroit Playa, unable to settle down with one woman. All the women Gina met in the very incestuous Detroit scene made sure to let know Gina know they had previously connected with Prince Charming and, also, they were not happy she had been installed as the girlfriend from NYC. Gina did not like Detroit and the Cobras’ singer Rachel was still hostile to her. And she had no car. It is tough navigating the Motor City without a car. That was no coincidence. It was right up there with planned obsolescence.

A year later, another incident with Don Crone occurred. He could not quit me. We were offered a good amount of money to license “Allô Allô” for an online ad for the new Google Nexus smartphone in 2010. The ad agency wanted a video of the band performing the song and our licensing agent Michelle asked if I had one. In fact, we had an excellent video of the band performing the song in Chalôns in France. We looked like rock stars on the large nighttime outdoor stage with dramatic lighting and smoke effects. I sent that one. Don and Nous Plus None also sent a video. It featured them playing in a small bar stage, a little sad, and I believe they had added text “Nous Plus None, formerly Les Sans Culottes,” in their never-ending effort to promote their band via my band.

Of course, the agency chose our awesome video. The Google Nexus ad started with a guy walking down the street speaking into his phone, “Play ‘Allô Allô’ by Les Sans Culottes.” Then it went, briefly, to the video of us performing in France. When the ad came out, I received an angry email from Don, expressing outrage that they had used a video of our band (Les Sans Culottes) for “his” song and calling me unkind names. Sad trombone. The agency and our agent asked for it and I provided it. It just so happened we had a really cool looking video of the real LSC performing that song, not a band that featured some ex-members, fake Audrey and other formerly non-Sans Culottes.

The Black Angel’s Death Song: The Velvet Underground

That first night we walked down to La Féline from Nathalie’s en masse, the band, Stéphane, her friend who would become my good friend, and Benedicte, a drug dealer that the band had wanted to meet. A band from Australia was also on the bill but we were scheduled to go on first. Despite getting an electronic adaptor for his keyboard (since the French outlet voltage is different than U.S. outlets), Gavin, without sleep but with alcohol, unthinkingly plugged in his keyboard at the bar without using the adaptor, instantly zapping all of his keyboard power. His keyboard was now non-functional, Hello, Cleveland. Luckily, Nathalie’s friend, Nico, was there, and he was a keyboard player. He offered to get his keyboard, but he lived in Southwest Paris and we were in Northeast. It was perhaps not that far as the crow flies but it was a long schlep through Paris traffic.

Outside La Feline in Paris:

Olivier came to the rescue and drove Nico to get his cool Farfisa organ while the Australian band went on first, and we continued drinking and posing like rock stars on the small side street sidewalk outside the bar. Not a terrible result. The Parisian rock scene is also tied into Harleys and hotrods and some guy drove up in a cool, customized old hotrod and offered the ladies, Gina, Kathleen, Audrey and Nathalie, a ride around the neighborhood.

Inside La Feline:

Finally, Olivier and Nico returned with the keyboard. Nathalie had done an amazing job contacting her French rock n roll network of friends, so there was a large, very friendly, audience waiting for us. When we finally hit the “stage” (the floor) we were supercharged and put on a high energy show and were greeted like the Beatles at the Cavern Club by Nathalie’s friends. It was a great and long-awaited debut in France. A woman I knew who had done a feature about us for Public Radio International, Adeline Sire, had learned about our Paris debut and sent someone out to interview us. “Les Sans Culottes are playing Paris,” she said. “That is news.” Some bloggers were there and Hugo did a great job selling our CD to the crowd. The bar gave us 100 euros and we posed afterwards with the Parisian rock crowd in the street for a big drunken photo.

Kathleen, Gina and Audrey standing outside the bar opposite La Féline:

Then we went back to Nathalie’s apartment, currently occupied by Audrey, Kathleen and Gina, for the afterparty, with her friends packing her one-bedroom apartment. We were happy. Everyone was happy. Nathalie’s friends enjoyed a good party and we were good partiers. The notion that French people are stand-offish or not friendly was thoroughly disproven. They treated us like Kings and Queens, that is Kings and Queens whose heads they did not want to chop off.

Pre-Show:

I stood in Nathalie’s little kitchen a cigarette in one hand, a joint in the other, a glass of champagne in my other hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Finally, at about 3 a.m., I was ready to hit the hay and then I was fortunate, because I could leave the party and walk around the block to my then-new friend, Stéphane’s place, that he had generously vacated so Heagle and I could stay there. The others continued their raging, some drug-fueled, back at Nathalie’s. No sleep ‘til Brooklyn.

I had laid-in coffee and juice for breakfast and went out for croissants. Later, while walking around the Buttes-Chaumont/Belleville hood I saw Nathalie and Gavin having drinks outside the Jolie Môme, the local bar. They had been up all night and were still drinking. Gavin did not seem concerned about getting his keyboard powered up again; in fact, he was not. Indeed, he used Nico’s keyboard for that night’s gig and the festival supplied a keyboard for him to use in Châlons. He never bothered to get his keyboard operational, even though all that was required was a new fuse. Priorities.

The guy who put together our second night’s show, Pascal, a shady-looking French rock n roll guy around my age, kept calling in the late afternoon asking when we were going to come to the club in the Bastille district to do a sound check. A band he was managing, called 1900, comprised of French people who sang in English, naturally, were playing too. The venue was a larger, more upscale place called L’OPA, its name a play on the French initials for an Initial Public Offering as well as opera house since it was near the newer, more modern Paris Opéra.

L’OPA Bastille

By 6 p.m. much of the band had finally crashed and were getting their first hours of sleep since we had left NYC. So we did not do any sound check. When we did make it down to the club, Pascal was quite agitated, but hey, that’s rock n roll. Pascal I would like you to meet Les Sans Culottes! We could just do a quick line check right before we played, making sure the mics were at proper volume and the instrument amps all working, since 1900 had played first and the sound already was dialed in. Soundchecks are a bit overrated. Gavin had Nico’s Farfisa and used 1900’s keyboard stand. We had a good crowd for this gig too, and as we played our song “S.O.S. Éléphants,” a song about elephants escaping from the Parc Buttes-Chaumont neighborhood where we

were staying and running wild in the city (modeled after Georges Brassens’ “Gare à Gorille” or “Look out for the Gorilla”), Gavin’s keyboard stand collapsed.

Gavin was suddenly greatly irritated and in complete disbelief that he had been provided with a faulty keyboard stand. What a buzz kill! Rather than, say, recognize that he had not tested the stand because he had slept through sound check, he was disgusted by the incompetence of his keyboard stand providers! But he quickly recovered and got down on his knees and played the keyboards as they lay on the ground showing admirable adaptability. We were still “The Only French Rock n Roll Band that Matters” (paraphrasing The Clash’s claim).

Chalons!

Funky But Chic: David Johansen

The next gig was our big festival gig, Saturday night in downtown Châlons. I made sure to herd my group of musical cats and get them to the Gare d’Est train station for our trip to Châlons-en-Champagne. I had bought the tickets months beforehand to get a good price but we absolutely could not miss this train. We made it, happily, and were met at the Châlons station by Sophie, a young woman who was the assistant to the festival’s artistic director, Patrick. She took us to our charming Hotel Marie Curie, and Olivier surprised me by driving from Paris and meeting us there, also taking a room. We did our soundcheck in the late afternoon on the large stage in the main square facing the town hall, the Hôtel de Ville. After, I went out and got some bottles of wine and champagne from the store and Olivier and I had a little time to enjoy some wine before we had to go to our communal dinner with the artistic director and staff in a little restaurant in town. Sophie asked whether or not I liked ostrich. Love it, I told her, though it was my first.

Then we proceeded to our green room in an old building on the side of the square. I had to fill out some paperwork, including listing all the songs we were going to play. Someone needed to keep records. Fortunately, there was beer, wine, champagne and snacks in our green room. I could get used to this style of performing, rather than the normal one or two free drink tickets we got at most NYC clubs. As darkness fell, it was time for us to take the stage. The audience was about 4,000 people, making it among our largest audiences ever. We played for 90 minutes, a long set of music for us, and it was an amazing feeling to be playing in France on a big stage here in the countryside, deep France, or as they call it, “La France Profonde.”

I tried to take the opportunity to take note of everything, savoring my surroundings, and realizing that this was the accomplishment of a long-time goal that might not happen again. It was 90 minutes of OM, the primordial sound of the universe, and French rock. That left no time to be nervous. Rather than doing my normal intros to the songs in French-accented English, I realized that for this French audience I had to speak as an Americain with my not-so-extensive French language knowledge. I did. I introduced the songs and told the audience what a thrill it was to be in France and how much we appreciated their kind reception. And we were very well-received, even as we played the songs about twice as fast as normal, because we were all so amped. It still sounded great. The next day we drank champagne in the champagne region, toasting to a job well done. Chin chin!

It reminded me of when, back in 2000, we had played the Alliance Française’s Bastille Day party in NYC. It seemed like a real coup playing on a big stage and giant street party thrown by one of the most French organizations in the city. We used to do a Jacques Brel song called “Le Moribond” about a man who is dying and saying his final good-bye to life and loved ones. It was translated into English by Rod McKuen and made a hit song by Terry Jacks, but the English version is an inferior imitation of the Brel version. During our live rendition, as I am “dying,” I would lie down on the stage and dramatically recite the lyrics, switching to French-accented English. Then as the chorus kicked in I would rise up and manically and emphatically spit out the final chorus, “We had joy we had fun, we had seasons in the sun, but the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time.” And they were. That summer day on 60th Street in Manhattan, as I lay on the stage, I looked up at the sky and the tall buildings surrounding us and tried to take stock of and truly appreciate the wonder of that moment. I was the guy from the Motor City singing in French for a large NYC audience, with many actual French people in attendance. That was my Robert Duvall as Lt. Colonel Kilgore moment, smelling the napalm in the morning, and it smelled like victory.

LSC in Châlons, it’s good to be back home:

I was savoring our victory in NYC when I saw the two young women who had been our liaisons for the gig -- both named Sabine. In fact, that strange coincidence later inspired me to write a song about a French girl named Sabine. As I was getting ready to leave I thanked Sabine and Sabine. But I sensed something was amiss. It seemed their superiors did not approve of our performance. Cretins. I could not imagine why. Was our song École de Merde NSFW? Hey, nice seeing you but I would not want to sa bine you. It was a strange ending to an otherwise perfect day. Well, they did invite us back 10 years later.

There was no such odd curveball following our festival show in France after lingering at the side of the stage to sell CDs and receive hosannahs. After, we returned to our green room to high-five one another and I collected the money from our booking agent Jean Luc. It was all cash. Some people in the band wanted to go the bar in town and the concert people said we could leave our gear in the green room but needed to pick it up by noon the next day. I wanted to take the money directly to the hotel room prior to doing any more drinking just to have it safely secured.

It began to rain and the town now had a suddenly quiet, small town, late night feeling. I joined the band and booker Jean Luc and his girlfriend in a local tavern. The place was mostly empty but I saw our article in the local newspaper along with the band photo from our Spaceland gig a couple years earlier. That was funny because when we posed for that photo, Don Crone and Castro were watching us assemble around the couch in the upstairs smoking room at Spaceland, and Don was asking “What magazine is this for? Who is taking this photo? What is this all about?” It was for some cool L.A. fashion and style magazine, in fact. Now that photo had traveled with us to France.

We returned to our hotel where we all gathered in a room on the ground floor, with me producing my bottles of wine and champagne. Eventually, as was almost always the case, I wandered back to my room while the others noticed some sort or party with reggae musicians down the street (who were playing the next day) and joined them for more partying and jamming. Of course, the next day most of the band were still sleeping or wandering into the breakfast room very late. We had failed to pick up our stuff from the green room building at noon and Sophie was pissed at me. I did my best to apologize. The band was in France. We were not thinking about tomorrow. Or our gear. She had packed all of our stuff into their little shuttle bus where it stayed while we wandered the medieval town waiting for our train later in the afternoon. It was Sunday and little was open, but we visited the old churches and had a group celebratory champagne toast at a cafe that eventually opened. As we walked around many of the people in town noticed us and waved or asked to have their pictures taken with us. Local celebrities, sans culottes mais plein d’humeur.

The next day:

The Promised Land: Chuck Berry

We did the long drive from Seattle across the northern U.S. I-90 to Missoula, Montana and then I-94 to Bismarck, North Dakota. The stretch up to Missoula was incredibly beautiful, and, at one point, a storm was coming up and the sky changed to a fantastic blue, black and orange hue glowing around strange Badlands-type lunar rock formations. We all got out of the van to take a picture of the group in the rugged countryside with the storm and night approaching. That moment captured the beauty and excitement of our trip and tour or tripping tour.

Rolling into Missoula:

On the third day of driving, we arrived in Minneapolis and stayed at the house in St. Paul of my old friend from the Don’t Look Now Jug Band, Sally Barclay. She and her husband Dan operated a boarding house and Dan was away with their son back in Michigan. Sally welcomed us all with snacks and rosé wine and their big grand old house could fit us all comfortably. At this point, our second guitarist, John Wachter, was able to join us. John had a demanding financial sector job so he could not make the West Coast part of the trip. He joined us just in time for more tripping.

Following the show, we made it back to Sally’s and went down to her basement to play some pool. I was done for the night, thanks to the generous greenroom whisky policy at the club, and decided to claim the living room couch. While I slept, however, Kathleen and Audrey continued to rage under the influence of LSD. No sleeping on LSD. The next morning when I awoke, John said, “Bill, I think some bad stuff happened last night.” It could have been worse but that was still an understatement. I learned that Kathleen and Audrey had gotten into an argument. That was not unusual. Although they were friends, with Kathleen always insisting how she looked up to and admired Audrey, once they both got fucked up, inevitably, one of them accused the other of trying to sabotage the other’s performance and that the show was “all about you.”

Audrey claimed that Kathleen had told her “I know you sell me out, because I sell you out all of the time.” Apparently, that meant Kathleen was deliberately undermining Audrey during the show. If so, that was indeed a crazy thing to say and do to a bandmate although I am not sure how that manifested. Audrey often maintained she “was not that person,” i.e., not a diva. In fact, I felt that she was acutely aware of how much star time she got vis-a-vis the other singers. She had got ill treatment from Verena and was the original singer and felt, not unjustifiably, that was her due.

Gavin, drummer Tom and Oweinama were also tripping and at some point, Kathleen angrily threw a pool ball through the basement window. She also broke a pool cue. There was then some running around the neighborhood in the early morning hours in various stages of undress and Audrey somehow hurt her ankle and there was a big discussion about whether or not to go to the ER while super high on acid though the consensus was it was not appropriate to go. Who wants to go to the ER on acid? Sally, not high, advised that they go. No one went.

I apologized to Sally and later sent her some wine and flowers. She was incredibly gracious about it. I saw her the next year when LSC returned to Minneapolis to play the Bastille Day block party again and then not long after that she was dead after her breast cancer re-emerged. She was a Detroiter and one of the sweetest people I had met through playing music and I still miss her dearly.

The Sound of Silence: The Del Lords

We drove to Chicago and Audrey and Kathleen were now not speaking to each other. That was ok with me, despite the tension. It was relatively quiet in our rented Ford van, and we were listening to my music player and playlists, which the band generally liked. In Chicago, we stayed at the beautiful townhouse of my law school friend, Bob Gerstein, in the Wicker Park area. I had gone to the New Orleans’ Jazz and Heritage Festival with Bob a few times in the early 90’s where we took ecstasy each day and generally had an amazing time. Music, ecstasy and New Orleans were a winning combo. Bob had become a successful lawyer at his dad’s law firm, but he wanted his kids to experience having a rock band at his place! Well, he got a real rock band, of sorts.

Audrey and Kathleen reconciled but Kathleen did manage to lose her signed-by-all-of-the Cobras 12” vinyl record at the bar we went to after the show. A ramblin’ gal has trouble hangin’ on to the thing she loves. We had a great final show with the Cobras at the Double Door in Chicago and my sister Cindy and Don’t Look Now Jug Band friend, James Knoll, both drove there from Detroit to see us. Also, we did not trash Bob’s house.

I had booked a final non-Cobras gig at the Belmont, a small bar/music venue in Hamtramck. Gina and some of the Cobras showed up along with my mom and dad, my brother Gordie, and sister Cindy. My mom brought fried chicken and Polish food, cabbage rolls (golobki) and pierogis, since we did not have enough time to go to her place for dinner beforehand. We played a wild and lengthy show there with Mary from the Cobras getting up on stage at one point, sticking her head between my legs and screaming, “They are all on acid.” I had to explain to my mom afterwards that she was kidding. Sort of.

Our van had a huge gash along the passenger side. On the second day of our cross-country voyage, Jon Heagle ran into a low concrete wall while making a right turn after we stopped for coffee after visiting Newport Beach, California. Jon was an awe-inspiring guitarist but easily the worst driver ever in our band. Naturally, some years later he became an Uber driver in NYC. I was in the back of the 15-passenger van and tried to warn Heagle but my yelling from three rows back could not overcome King Crimson blasting on eleven in front, and Oweinama, who was in the shotgun seat but rolling on acid, failed to notice the turn into the wall. Roque au Maximum in the 21st Century schizoid van.

Following the Belmont show, most of the band went to Cobra drummer Dave’s place in the Woodbridge neighborhood of Detroit to stay up all night doing drugs and have one last party. I took the van back to my mom’s house in suburban Rochester Hills, where my parents had moved following their retirement from their City of Detroit gigs, but my sister was worried that my mom would see the damage to the van. That was typical of Cindy. She was a great sister and kind-hearted person, but she was always worried about what my mom would think about things. She advised John Wachter that he should park the van in a way that our mom would not notice.

Of course, that was impossible as the damage was screamingly obvious and looked like the Titanic, post-iceberg collision. Luckily, it was still drivable, still afloat. “Fluctuat nec mergitur,” as they like to say in Paris (its motto). I did not care about the damage. I had purchased the maximum insurance for the trip when we got the van in Long Beach, anticipating just this sort of incident. I even purchased roadside assistance. In fact, the Cobras had noticed our damaged van in Portland and tried to tease us, in the kind way of Detroiters, saying we were really fucked now. We told them to fuck off, it was insured. “Don’t go mental, it’s a rental,” we replied to their taunts.

We drove back to NYC with Kathleen bailing as soon as we got into the city to hop on the subway, not unlike our cat running away when my mom and us kids got back from Mexico 1967. That was just in time to catch the Detroit riots whereas this was all post tour riot. It had been a long, strange trip. I took the van to JFK airport to return it and filled out the claim form report at the Budget Rental office, but about nine months later Budget sent me a bill for $3800 claiming that I had failed to fill out any form reporting the damage when I returned the van. This is why no one likes Capitalism and particularly not insurance companies. Luckily, I had retained my copy of that form, even after all those months had passed, and I sent them a copy.

‘Pataphysical Graffiti, our long-awaited response to Led Zeppelin:

Help You Out: The Go

In December 2008, we drove back to Detroit again and played two shows, at Jumbo’s Bar in the Cass Corridor for their Christmas party with Detroit band Magic Shoppe and also at the Lager House in Corktown with The Volebeats, old friends who had played with the Don’t Look Now Jug Band back in the late 80’s. We did some radio show appearances too, one with just Audrey and me being interviewed on the public radio station WDET and another on WJR, a big AM station in Detroit, where we appeared on the Mitch Albom show.

Albom had started as a sportswriter with the Detroit Free Press and still wrote a weekly column, but he also had written best-selling, but somewhat treacly books like, “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.” Those books made him one of the all-time top sellers in both fiction and non-fiction. It was like: 1. The Bible; 2. Gone With the Wind; 3. Tuesdays With Morrie. He was a rare double threat, writing best-sellers in both fiction and non. But he also got into trouble by sometimes mixing fact with fiction in his sports writing. That is where his mastery of both forms came back to bite him.

Part of Albom’s empire now included this AM radio talk show, and the format was him and his sidekick blabbing. We appeared just as the auto companies were all going bankrupt and it was not clear there was going to be a bailout. So that was the cheery theme that day: auto industry apocalypse. And then there was lead music, so-called bumpers, going to and from the ads. That is when we played. These radio shows were set up by my ex-Stuy Town roommate, Matt Lee, who had returned to Detroit and booked the bands for Albom and also was a publicist. Matty had gone legit. He was a natural publicist (a talker) but he still retained a taste for the outlaw life. Both he and his identical twin brother, Dave, a criminal lawyer, were Detroit playas. Once when he was going on about being a twin, I told Matt that my sister Cindy and I were twins (despite her being six years my senior). He believed me, at least for a while.

I was prepared to not like Albom, but he loved our band. He could not believe the songs we were playing were not hits. They were not; believe it. Albom played music too, including with a band comprised of writers like Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Matt Groening and Steven King, called the Rock Bottom Remainders. So, since he liked LSC, I decided Mitch was ok. I still have not become a fan of his books though. But I’m no book critic. I did however study English literature at Columbia.

We tracked two songs, “Sur La Plage” and “If You See Something, Say Something,” at Detroit’s Ghetto Recorder with Jim Diamond, who had worked with the White Stripes in their early days and become something of a garage rock recording celebrity. We did that between our gigs and an epic Detroit house party after the Jumbo’s gig at the home of Steve Nawara (who was in Magic Shoppe but whom we also knew from the Electric 6 and Detroit Cobras). Jumbos was a bar I remembered from my stint in the Cass Corridor when it was all hookers, hustlers and real street people. At this point, more than 20 years later, some hipsters, like Steve and his friends, had discovered the place. It was a fun Christmas party, full of every stripe of Detroiter, and free drinks flowed for hours. We played a fairly drunken, rip-roaring set where I had to make sure not to hit my head on the ceiling because the raised stage was a little close to the dropped ceiling. But no one was injured.

After the Jumbo’s show, despite having consumed free drinks for hours, we went over to Steve’s place for the big house party full of Motor City hipsters, where true to form, everyone stayed up all night doing cocaine and listening to vinyl records (which had become a thing by then) while I slept, drunk and stoned, again. The next afternoon we rolled into the Ghetto Recorder to finish the work on our two songs. Gina spent most of it sleeping in Jim’s bed. The vocalists powered through with their overdubs, the kind you get after being up all night at a party doing drugs. Actually, they were good, all things considered.

Those songs were the first two songs towards what would be our 2010 record, “‘Pataphysical Graffiti.” I liked to explain to people that our recording was like Led Zeppelin’s masterpiece, “Physical Graffiti,” but better because it had one more song (a total of 16!) and was in French. Physical Graffiti, though purporting to be a double album, weighed in at a mere 15 songs and was in English. I won’t explain the science of ‘pataphysics,’ except to say it is the science of imaginary solutions, and the great French writer Alfred Jarry of Ubu Roi fame is its patron saint. I was glad to align our project with Jarry and French polymath Boris Vian.

Jim Diamond and even Steve Nawara marveled at our stamina. It was pretty impressive, the concentrated partying, playing shows, recording and radio appearances, all in a couple of days. The last night, Sunday, we went to a concert where Steve dj’ed and cool Detroit garage rock band, the Hentchmen, played at Cliff Bell’s, a restored art deco bar around the corner from Ghetto Recorder. Then we did the 13-hour drive back home the next day. We were Vikings on shore leave, but now had to return to the Dragon Boat, New York City.

We will Always Have Paris:

Here, There and Everywhere: The Beatles

In 2009, I was contacted out of the blue, or rather via MySpace, by a French booking agent, Jean-Luc Jousse, who had noticed that I was friends with Andy Shernoff and had a French band in New York. I now had a French connection. If only all of rock n roll were so easy. Jean Luc had a small music festival offer in Châlons-en-Champagne France called the Festival des Musiques d’Ici et d’Ailleurs. It fit us perfectly since our music truly was both from “here” or “ici” (France) and from “elsewhere” or “ailleurs” (Faux France). And it was in the Champagne region. Enough of this terrible sparkling wine I would not give to my dog! The festival paid pretty well but not enough to cover airfares for all seven of us (John Wachter had left the band because he had a couple of young kids). I spoke with my French friend Olivier from the Don’t Look Now Jug Band, the guy who with his wife Rosa had turned me on to French music. He said, “You probably want to line up ten or eleven of these festival gigs.” Yes, I probably did.

Of course, that was preferable, but wildly unrealistic for us. I had been playing in the band for eleven years and this was the first time we were offered any gig in France. Worse, another good friend in France, Nathalie Petit, had tried to get us a gig at the Francofolies festival in Rochefort, a big festival there, a couple years earlier. She passed along our information through her contacts at Les Inrockuptibles magazine (a sort of French Rolling Stone, except there actually was a French Rolling Stone), but somehow, they contacted our rival band, and they played our gig. That was getting old. They claimed that Les Sans Culottes no longer existed. I decided to do the French festival gig and pay for it however I needed to.

Bastille Day in Minneapolis:

At the Hotel:

Luckily, we were contacted by the Bastille Day in Minneapolis people at the Barbette restaurant, again. The money from that gig, plus the money from our French festival gig, covered our air fare. I booked two more gigs in Paris through Nathalie, who was plugged into the Paris garage rock scene. And Nathalie graciously and heroically managed to find free accommodations for us all. I arranged to use the drum kit of Hugo, Olivier’s son, and Nathalie provided a bass amp too. We all flew over to Paree the last Wednesday in July, direct to Charles de Gaulle, arriving in the early morning. Olivier and his wife Rosa were there to greet us and transported us by two cars to Nathalie’s place in the 19th Arrondissement, Belleville/ Buttes Chaumont neighborhood. Lafayette, we are here.

We will always have Paris:

Nathalie at the Jolie Mome, our home away from home in Paris:

Get It While You Can: The Dirtbombs

When we got to Nathalie’s place at about 9 a.m., exhausted from no sleep, initially I thought Nathalie was crazy. How had I failed to notice before during all of the times that we had previously hung out that Nathalie was nuts? She was talking in English but making no sense. But then I realized she had been up all night waiting for us and had been drinking while waiting. She was just completely excited and trashed, not crazy. Well, a little crazy. We had a gig that night, Thursday, at La Féline, a small but cool rock ‘n roll bar in the nearby Ménilmontant neighborhood. I had traveled enough that I knew not to go to sleep, despite being so tired from my sleepless flight, but to simply power through to overcome the jet lag and synch with Paris time. I took a long walk with Jon Heagle along the Canal St. Martin all the way to the Jardin du Luxembourg. Margie and I had rented an apartment in the Buttes Chaumont neighborhood the previous September and I was quite familiar with it.

Olivier had thoughtfully given me a cheap portable phone, and as Heagle and I were walking back along the Boulevard St. Michel, making our way to the Métro to return to Belleville, I got a call. It was a small newspaper in Châlons, the festival site, trying to interview me for the upcoming gig. I was on a crowded French street trying to conduct an interview in French over this cell phone while jet lagged and tired from our long walk. I did the interview, though, and a nice, promo-type article appeared two days later when we played in Châlons entitled “Without Culottes but With Humor” (in French, “sans culottes mais plein d’humeur). I was not thrilled with “the band is funny” angle, but ultimately I don’t think the audience at the show found us very funny. We were très serious and loaded for bear. Or beer. And Champagne.

Belleville:

No Culottes But Lots of Humor:

On July 9th, the newly reformed band made its debut at Freddy’s Bar. A firebird rising from the ashes. Like the motto of the city of Detroit, following the giant fire of 1805 that nearly destroyed the city, “Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus,” which translates to “We hope for better things; it shall arise from the ashes.” I was hoping for better things. A lot of my friends showed up because they knew what had happened. It was a celebration, almost a return to our debut gig there in April 1998. I wore a khaki military shirt with epaulets (my fashion “sense” left me largely powerless in front of epaulets — along with dashikis), a French flag patch on one shoulder, U.S. 1st Cavalry patch on the other, and a hard-shell World War II army helmet won in a card game long ago. I felt like I had been to war. And it was great to win. U.S.A! Part of a longstanding tradition of Americans stepping up to win a war for the French against some unspeakably evil menace. Of course, we are eternally grateful for the assistance of Messrs. Lafayette and Rochambeau during our revolution.

LSC at LA’s Spaceland:

Moi Je Joue: Brigitte Bardot

We continued to play with our revamped line-up but were now in an unfriendly competition with our former band mates who were also gigging around town, albeit with a different name. Battling our evil doppelgänger. In retrospect, there was something awesome about this. Not many bands, or even individuals outside of the Marvel or DC Comics universe/s(?) have this opportunity. Had things not gotten so ugly we could have perhaps parlayed this into some sort of French band pro wrestling thing. But that didn’t happen. It was probably for the best.

Having lost the court battle, they turned to the court of public opinion. Don used his connections at Slate to write about how his French rock n roll band was taken from him unfairly by a no-good evil lawyer, who had been thrown out of the band. They were too artistic to want to fight in court, the piece explained, and so they withdrew from the case, even though they were plainly entitled to use the name. Someone forwarded the article to me after a lawyer friend of theirs saw it, with that lawyer adding that it was the worst article ever about a court battle. That person was able to read between the lines and see that the things Don complained about, like being in Federal court, where trademark cases were supposed to be brought, were normal, and how misleading Don’s account was in general. I was emotionally exhausted and did not comment and point out the countless misleading or outright false things in the piece. But unfortunately the internet is forever. And aside from Snopes, there is not a lot of fact checking.

Edith Pissoff at LA’s The Bordello:

Opium for the People: Gong

Our own LSC album was recorded 13 months after the court victory. In the interim, because of Scott’s limited guitar ability (he was a proud “punk rock” guitarist), we had brought in a second guitarist, John “Jean L’Effete” Wachter. John played a Dave Davies-style of guitar that suited our 60’s-rock sound. Bassist Patrick insisted Scott was not “kick ass” enough of a player (Patrick was from Australia where I gathered people still said things like that), so he left. But we replaced him with Gina Rodriguez, (aka Francoise Hardly or Jeanaté). Gina was cool, sexy and a great bass player. She grooved and danced around on stage while she played. Margie said that my grandmother up in heaven was looking after me the day Gina came along. Gina had played in a band called Moisturizer with a woman who played baritone sax, Paula. They were Moist Paula and Moist Gina. When Scott saw that Gina’s email was “moistgina@….” he was very excited. He pronounced it gyna.

Sid Vichyssoise:

Highly Inflammable: X-Ray Spex

Scott only lasted another six months. One hot summer night we played at a great little Brooklyn music venue, Magnetic Field. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, Scott had anointed himself the band’s energy czar. The band was playing hard that night. After the break with Jer, et al, we went in a more rawk direction because I thought we previously had been a little too cabaret and musical theater kids. I wanted to put more of the Motor City, MC5 kind of energy into the band. Kick out the jams, motherfuckers — or get off the fuckin’ stage. I liked that philosophy. We had that going with Kathleen, who was a rocker, and Audrey was from Jerzee, and we now had twin guitars. And we had written new, more rocking songs. Everyone was working up a sweaty lather, but Scott screamed that our energy level was too low. Gavin, soaking in sweat, replied, not inappropriately, “Fuck you,” and Scott, who was philosophically a believer in the power of anger, slammed his fist down on Gavin’s keyboard, breaking one of the keys.

He challenged Gavin to a fight on stage. Rock n Roll! Thankfully, no fight ensued but the other band members, particularly Kathleen, Audrey and Gina (and Gavin), were freaked out by the incident. The band had been through enough fighting. Scott promptly saw that he had fucked up and said to me, “No need for a band meeting.” The old Jedi mind trick. I was never a big Star Wars fan.

LSC Keyboard wizard: Johnny Dieppe (Gavin):

Orgone Accumulator: Hawkwind

We met in the back patio of Soda, a bar on Vanderbilt near our rehearsal space. One by one the band members complained about Scott being “aggro” (tr: too aggressive) and needing to calm down. Finally, our group’s group therapy was in session. In this regard we were a little like the band Metallica which at one point hired its own band therapist. For us, like everything else, we had to do it ourselves. We were on a low budget. Drummer Benji said how he hated being micromanaged by Scott (who also played drums). John Wachter, calm but plainspoken, simply said Scott had to go. Kathleen, who was herself no stranger to all sorts of angry outbursts, told Scott he had an anger management problem. I doubted she had many opportunities to say that to other people, so it must have been satisfying. Kathleen was the kind of person who while flying to her honeymoon in Italy had to be separated from her husband on the plane because they were fighting so much. She could flip from super happy to lividly angry in a second. “Hello Dr. Jekyll” was not just a Serge Gainsbourg song.

I told Scott that he could stay in the band if he promised to control his temper. But Scott replied, “I see that there is nothing I can say” and stalked off. Shades of Andy’s retirement from French rock. He really did believe in the power of anger, like in the Clash song, “Clampdown,” “Let fury have the hour, anger can be power d’you know that you can use it?” I loved the Clash but had realized long ago that they were not the best choice for lifestyle management tips. Scott returned from his car with a bottle of some Sake-like beverage from Japan. He said that he wanted to open it after we completed our recording, which was slated to happen in a few weeks. Now we were supposed to feel guilty for “forcing” him to quit, I guess. Scott never spoke to me until I saw him 20 years later when I ran into him at his job at a museum in the French Quarter. We hugged and shared stories and later met for dinner. A happy ending. He also seemed noticeably less angry.

Photos of LSC lineup prior to recording Le Weekender. Scott aka Ali La Pointe pictured top right:

Theo Nugent in France, showing those Frenchies how it’s done.

Also happily, ex-Tombstoners’ guitarist, Jon Heagle, was eager to join the band after having moved back to Brooklyn from Texas. We were an unlucky band, in a way, but also kept lucking out with our replacements. We would lose a Wally Pipp and gain a Lou Gehrig. There are tons of great guitar players in NYC, but Heagle was the one at home transcribing Wayne Shorter sax solos for guitar. Now we had Heagle’s virtuosic shredding and jazz licks and John Wachter with his 60’s rock guitar playing, the best of both worlds. Heagle was dubbed Theo Nugent after the vile right-wing nut who liked to call himself the “Motor City Madman.” Actually, I am pretty sure Ted was a suburbanite.

Edith P:

Takin a Ride: The Replacements

Heagle joined just in time for our trip to Minneapolis to play a Bastille Day block party sponsored by Barbette, a French restaurant there. It was 100 degrees that day and we played the show and after went to a bar to see another NYC band, the Fresh Kills, where I shot pool and was in the zone, making one amazing shot after another. That is usually between 6 and 8 beers, but after 8 my skills drop off.

Then we all went to a lake called the Hidden Beach. I was stuffed into the front seat of Heagle’s cousin Randy’s Porsche as we sped over there at 2 a.m. Randy was an odd dude, but he had a convertible and liked to drive fast. We undressed and went in sans culottes. However, the lake bottom was coated with some sort of a cakey mud substance. We went back to our hotel just to shower and catch a 6 a.m. flight only to discover the Hidden Beach’s gross reveal. Formerly hidden, now revealed.

Yeah You Can: The Mooney Suzuki

On our return, we began work on our new recording, “Le Weekender.” We recorded it in DUMBO at Atomic Recording with a heavy metal producer, Dean Baltulonis. It was the same building where we used to rehearse in Mike DeSeve’s loft. Because the bathroom was located down the hall, Mike had placed a large container of kitty litter in his loft for peeing. Atomic had its own bathroom, thankfully. It was now a more gentrified, 7-years-later-version of DUMBO. Once the gourmet grocery store Peas and Pickles came to the area, there was no stopping the gentrification! Actually, almost all of the buildings in the area were owned by one guy, David Walentas. His strategy seemed to be to encourage artists to move into the area and give them cheap rents. Once the artists had established a beachhead and given the area a certain artistic cachet, then he would jack up the rents and get the bourgeois wanna-be-cool types in there. It worked.

Also, for the first time we had a real record deal. Audrey’s friend Chris Powers, was working for a small record company, Vibratone. We had lost our relationship with Castro’s Aeronaut, of course, although he continued to collect money for our recordings, unfortunately, and failed to comply with his reporting and payout requirements, of course). Vibratone paid for recording, mixing, mastering, manufacturing the CDs and even hired a publicist. A definite upgrade.

I wrote the lyrics to the songs (save one a friend of Audrey’s wrote), and all or part of the music to a number of the tunes: “Les Chatons” (about our new kittens, Albert and Pearl, who had been a source of joy in tough times during the lawsuit -- message to the world: kittens are not overrated); “Le Weekender” (about the French nickname for the 36-hour Viagra pill); “Basquiat,” (the great Brooklyn graffiti artist and painter); “Les Enfants Terribles” (about a rival band); and “Médications Dans une Crise” (a variation of the Frank O’Hara poem title). Gavin, Audrey, John Wachter and Jon Heagle all contributed tunes, so it was a strong team effort. It was a very rocking, angry and witty record that reflected a lot of the turmoil that preceded it both in its musical style and lyrical content.

We had to record it on time and on Vibratone’s budget and we did it, 13 songs clocking in at one hour’s worth of music. Chris Powers worked for a PR company and he hired our publicist, Perry, who thought it unwise to attack all of the horrible and untrue things the rival band was saying about our band — or, really, about me. So, rather than spend our money to set the factual record straight, we just let the lies stay out there, ostensibly because Perry thought it sounded childish and petty. We had not engaged in any of that, or at least I had not.

Gavin, unbeknownst to the rest of us, had engaged with them some. When I discovered his jousting with the forces of evil and their supporters, all quite hilarious, I dubbed him “the Wolverine.” He had a flair for it. But I preferred not to dabble in the dark arts on the internet. Perry was compromised, however, because the same woman who had posed as fake Audrey in the New and Yorker photo — was in both our rival band and in Perry’s band. I guess that was some insight into that woman, Varona’s friend. She was willing to pretend to be Audrey just to be in a magazine photo, and now she had joined the other band as a sort of full-time ersatz Audrey.

Sid and Edith at Slim’s in SF:

Shitlist: L7

That fall, at a show at Piano’s, a nightclub on Ludlow Street, I met Donita Sparks, the guitarist and lead singer of L.A. all-girl grunge-era rock band, L7. I discovered that Donita was an LSC fan. I was flattered, as I thought L7 was great. She had gone to see Les Sans Culottes in L.A., just after our court case. The rival band had billed itself as LSC, but she had somehow heard some of what happened and referred to them as the “illegal impostors.” Nice. She told me how lame she thought they were and was really supportive of me and the band. She even invited us out to play a New Year’s Eve show in L.A. with her new band, Donita Sparks and the Stellar Moments. We couldn’t do it, though we wanted to get back to California again and do that gig. She understood and replied, “Can’t blame a girl for tryin’.” I didn’t. And you can’t.

I did make a plan to take the band back to California in the Spring of 2007, and we played with Donita’s band then. We played a couple of shows in L.A.: a 60’s party at the Bordello, a cool-looking nightclub in Japantown and with Donita at the former Spaceland, now called the Satellite, a club in then-trendy Silver Lake area. Groovy 60’s parties were something that was happening in L.A. that we did not really have in NYC. It was a nice little scene. However, both Don Crone and Juan Castro showed up at our show with Donita’s new band at Spaceland. Don spoke with Audrey and said he wanted the acrimony to end. Audrey replied that she had heard they were just on the radio in NYC talking about how much I stank along with other bad stuff about our band.

One way to stop the acrimony would be to actually stop saying horrible stuff about us, Audrey explained. Our former bassist Gil was working as sound man at WNYC that day they appeared on the Soundcheck program and alerted some people, who told me about their appearance. Coincidentally that radio show’s producer, Giselle, had seen the Jug Addicts in Brooklyn at Barbès not long before and gave me her card. Small world sometimes. So, while they were on the radio saying bad stuff about us, attacking our legitimacy, how we had stolen the band from them, I emailed Giselle a short piece I had written giving the real story. The host was able to confront them with truth. Awkward. After, Castro wrote to me, “You are welcome for the free publicity.” Actually, the publicity was my doing. The radio host was able to confront them with some of the real story rather than their fake story, so that was the “free publicity.”

At the Spaceland gig, Castro said to Audrey, “Who is the skank?”, asking about Gina, our cool and sexy bassist. I guess he was threatened by her but still it was so weirdly hostile. Castro also approached Gina at the bar at one point and said, “I’m the bad guy.” Gina had no idea who he was or what he was talking about. She simply walked away. Castro assumed we had briefed her on the past controversy and him, but in fact we had never mentioned anything to her. Perhaps her refusal to give him the time of day contributed to his skank line? We played all of the songs on our new “Le Weekender” CD and the band was more than pumped, it was practically a riot on stage.

At some point during the show Castro left. Perhaps when we were doing our song “Les Enfants Terribles?” Or it might have been just his failure to have anyone really pay attention to him. After, we went to a party in the hills of Silver Lake with Donita and her friends. Donita said, “You are on tour, why not go to a party after the show?” Sound reasoning. We really did not have to be asked twice to go to a party. There was a real satisfaction in returning to California after all we had been through and rocking out with good people like Donita.

Then we played in San Francisco at the Hemlock in the not-yet-gentrified Polk Gulch area with Ralph Carney’s Serious Jass Band. I had befriended Ralph via the internet with both of us wondering if we had common Carney relatives. I thought some of my father’s family had moved from Frostburg, Maryland up to Akron, where Ralph was from, to work in the tire plants there, so it seemed possible. We stayed in touch and it was fun playing with his band and getting to know him some. He was a loveable eccentric and very talented musician. He had a crush on Audrey, who demurred, but he came to her rescue when at one point during our show she unwittingly stepped off the stage. She was about to have a bad fall when Ralph caught her! I saw Ralph again a few times over the years and then put him in touch with old Metropolecats’ guitarist Doug, who was running a swing music band in Portland, after Ralph fled gentrified S.F. for Portland. Ralph died there from a freakish accident, ironically a fatal fall, a couple years ago.

Right Around the Corner: The Detroit Cobras

I got us on some bills with the Detroit Cobras, at the Mercury Lounge in NYC and at Asbury Lanes, a great mid-century-modern decor bowling alley in Asbury Park. They both went well and, as had been my hope and secret plan, Rachel, the Cobra’s singer, liked us and asked us to do a tour with them. I don’t know why I thought that might happen, since it never happened before or since, but I thought it might. We had played with them some years earlier at the Bowery Ballroom and made some impression (the opener was the later very famous, Black Keys). They liked that we rocked and had “stage clothes.” The Cobras also asked Gina to play bass with them on tour, but the catch was they did not want Gina playing bass with us. So, we asked our friend Oweinama Biu to do it. If we could not have Gina, the always very stylish and cool Oweinama was the next best thing. Sid Vichyssoise to the rescue. We did our tour with the Cobras in June of 2008, flying out to Long Beach, California and driving down to San Diego to play the Casbah for our first gig.

As it happened, Audrey’s mother, who had been ill for a long while, died just then. Audrey was a trooper and went out for the funeral in California and then joined us pretty much directly from the cemetery. Oweinama had brought along a large sheet of acid so that tour was marked by Audrey, in deep grief, and Oweinama, with a pretty serious crush on Audrey, taking acid all of the time, joined by other members of the band. Rachel, who had been so friendly when we last saw her in Asbury Park, now acted like we were uninvited guests crashing in her living room. We had caught her two times when she was super nice, but most of the time the Cobras dynamic was good cop, bad cop, with the guitarist and other main member, Mary, acting as the good cop. Rachel clearly now had issues with Gina, whom she felt was upstaging her, since Gina dressed sharp and grooved on bass. There was room for just one star.

We played shows in S.D., L.A. (at the Troubadour), San Jose, S.F. (at Boz Scagg’s place, Slim’s), Portland and Seattle along the West Coast supporting the Cobras. In S.F, we stayed at drummer Tom’s folks’ place in Berkeley, a beautiful home up in the hills. It was a lot of work for me organizing our travel and accommodations, but the tour was a blast with the band fully revved up and loving the chance to play in bigger rooms opening for the Cobras.

Rachel could be very temperamental, for no apparent reason. Their shows suffered sometimes as a result, whereas, we just came out with the pedal to the metal for every single show. After the Portland show at the Doug Fir Lounge, we stayed at the adjoining motel. The party had already started in our green room after our set where the Lounge staff generously provided us with a second bottle of complimentary whisky. I assume you drink Jack Daniels? We continued partying and celebrating on the outdoor patio and then into one of the rooms.

I fell out on someone’s bed, sufficiently drunk, but as I slept mayhem ensued. This was often the case. In my mind, I was pacing myself by waiting until after the gig to get drunk. Kathleen was in full effect and got drunk and broke some glass and then cut herself pretty badly getting blood all over everything as she jumped all over the room. I woke up the next morning covered with odd little objects my drunken and whimsical bandmates had decorated me with as I snored away. I saw the place was truly a disaster, Keith Moon levels of damage, and it was my credit card that was at the front desk. I told the band that we needed to pack up and leave ASAP. We managed to get into the van and happily make our getaway, but as we drove, drummer Tom asked if anyone had grabbed his drum hardware, i.e., cymbal stands and such from the club. No Tom, we replied, “Why would we grab your stuff?” We had to go back, and Tom had to gain entry to the club and grab his stuff but still, thankfully, we made a second escape.

The Promised Land: Chuck Berry

Edith Pissoff and Kit Kat in Brooklyn’s Southpaw green room:

Ask the Angels: Patti Smith Group

I decided to get the band up and running again. One monkey don’t stop no show, even if now it was two monkeys, or three, including replacing Peter, now in Japan with his cancer-stricken Japanese girlfriend. I also had the lawsuit to deal with, so it was a multi-front battle. I recruited Ben Simborski (Max Gauche) on drums, and guitarist Scott M. X. Turner (Ali La Pointe), formerly of our minor league franchise, The Spunk Lads. And I asked Gavin Smith (Johnny Dieppe), to play keys. Gavin had got a raw deal from our band. He was playing with our Japanese league affiliate, Gaijin a Go Go, and we should have asked him to join after Mike quit. But Don, Varona and Jer claimed that Gavin did not “look” right. Gavin was short and gray haired. Of course, Jer had been bald. Jer must have heard that I had asked Gavin to be in our reformed band, and so he immediately contacted Gavin and told him that I had said bad things about Gaijin a Go Go. Gavin then confronted me, and I told him, honestly, that yes I had been put off by how Gaijin never acknowledged LSC as an inspiration. Gavin understood and joined our band.

The rival LSC band then approached Audrey to join them. No doubt they saw how her continuing presence in the original, and now rapidly replenished LSC, undermined their venture. They went to the Lower East Side bar where Audrey was working, owned by Foosh, the friend of Jer’s who had mixed our “The Ennui and the Ecstasy” record who was now in the biergarten business. Biergartens had suddenly become a thing in NYC. Foosh had worked for one of the first new biergarten guys, his friend from Köln or Cologne, Sylvester, and now was just running with Sly’s concept. But at least Foosh started a different place with a different name, unlike my ex band mates, who simply tried to hijack the original LSC. They ambushed Audrey when she was trapped behind the bar. When they asked her to be in their band, Audrey responded, “Why would I join your band? I already have my own band.” Zing. As for Patrick or Kathleen, the rival band never acknowledged them; they simply were written out of their narrative.

LSC bassist: Jeanate:

Just prior to our big hearing date, Audrey disappeared. I left countless voicemails and sent her emails but heard back nothing, just crickets, from my star witness. She even did not come to our rehearsals. I wanted to prep her for her testimony. That was a little crazy, because as an appeals lawyer I was not used to questioning witnesses. All of my cases were before a panel of judges, and this was an entirely new universe for me. I left the questions I meant to ask Audrey in her mailbox, but I was really freaking out. It seemed that she had just flaked and all of the work I had done might be for naught. I went to court that day, not sure if she would even show, but thankfully, Audrey was there. “Of course, I was coming to court,” she said. Of course. But she had been even more nervous and anxious than me, and I gathered that is why she went underground.

Party Lights: Claudine Clark

I put Audrey on the stand at the hearing. If ever there was a person not cast to be a star witness it was Audrey. But actually, she did great. It was also the first and only time in my legal career that I conducted direct examination. Judge Conway Casey had a prickly and irritable disposition. So, the stars were aligned. I was not sure if it was just because of our two-bit case — though I felt that my entire life was on the line — or if he was always that way. Going blind had to be a downer. He was rude and caustic to me, but thankfully I was a Legal Aid lawyer. I was used to rude, dismissive and hostile judges. That was my stock in trade. Best of all, the judge was even worse to their lawyer, Jer’s pal, at one point seemingly mocking his Polish-sounding last name and quizzing him about whether he knew the true meaning and origin of the word “incarnation.” Like I said, the judge was difficult.

Judge Conway Casey, however allowed me some leeway in conducting the hearing, knowing I was an appeals lawyer. And I knew that I was legally allowed to introduce into evidence emails from the rival group, as “party admissions.” They were effectively hoisted on their own petard because their own emails showed they were not in the band. I was sentimental and had been keeping various scrapbooks about my bands and music activities since 1987 with the Don’t Look Now Jug Band back in Detroit. I had copied and pasted their emails into my scrap book, just as part of my normal habit of preserving the history of the band. Now, I had them all available for our court battle, every damn and damning one. Email, which had been the scourge of the band, a largely destructive force, now saved the day. That and the noble art of scrapbooking.

Those emails definitively showed who was actually in the band and exposed the lie of their claim to still be in the band. Notably, the big “band meeting” email Jer had sent out just before the takeover did not include any of the ex-members, but included me, Peter, Patrick and Audrey. And I had the email where Jer purported to fire Kathleen that again included none of those people. And I had their various emails announcing that they were quitting the band or asking permission to sit in at our gigs. I had Audrey read these emails into the record and our blind judge finally saw what was going on. He was being lied to by all of them and their lawyer and now the judge was really not happy.

Clermont and Edith Pissoff outside the Last Exit Bar at Atlantic Antic:

The hearing lasted a few hours, but Judge Casey had heard enough. The upstart Les Sans Culottes were poised to play our gigs we had booked in California. Their lawyer asked for a long adjournment so they could play those shows. The judge looked toward me. “Mr. Carney, I know you are seeking a preliminary injunction because you say the other band is causing immediate and irreparable harm to you. You don’t agree with further delay do you?” It was the best question in the world, the kind of softball question judges normally asked prosecutors in my appeals. “No judge, I would like to have the hearing continued and concluded as soon as possible,” I said, knowing that we had won.

Judge Conway Casey then admonished their lawyer, warning him that he should think long and hard about what he was doing. There would be consequences for misrepresenting things to the court. This was not a game. My point exactly. You tell ‘em judgiepoo. It was particularly satisfying to see the judge threatening sanctions against their lawyer. And although Ryman Williams never showed up for any of the proceedings, Juan Castro had flown in from L.A. to be part of it, his hair dyed a daring chestnut brown. My neighbor, Gerard, a gay guy who worked as a lawyer for the I.R.S., saw Castro and later said, “Who is that guy who looks like he’s from L.A.?” Yes, indeed.

When the Whip Comes Down: The Rolling Stones

To force their hand and settle the case, Judge Conway Casey then scheduled the next court date to conflict with their shows in California. The hearing ended and the clerk gave me back my exhibits. He knew it was over. I walked out with Audrey and gathered Patrick who, as a potential witness, had to wait outside the courtroom. Audrey said, “I need to go to a bar and get a drink!” I was ready for one too. We went to the nearest bar I could think of, the Beekman, an Irish place on Beekman Street off of Park Row. A place I will forever cherish, despite it being an otherwise meh bar.

On the way over, just outside the courthouse, we walked past Jer’s wife Annette. Jer had met her through our band when we did a show with her klezmer band, Golem. They connected over the play “The Producers,” which was a big thing then, and they had their wedding featured in the Sunday N.Y. Times wedding announcements, “Producers’ Wedding.” I always wondered who were the sort of people who announced their wedding in the N.Y. Times. Now I knew. They had hired a publicist in order to achieve that goal, and their wedding announcement featured their “meet cute” angle.

Jer attempted to justify the scheme to others by claiming that I was about to throw him out of the band, so his hand was forced. Also, he claimed to have created all of the financial gain for the band and that made it “his” band, according to him. Of course, he was not solely responsible for the band’s success, financial or otherwise. I mean, he had begged me to be in the band after seeing our photo and write up in the New Yorker. But that was just another story of theirs. I discovered that they had been plotting this type of move involving the return of Don and Varona for months. Jer had asked Audrey some months earlier how she thought I would feel about their return and she had said I would not like it. Oddly they never asked me. I might’ve been ok with it except it was hardly fair to Kathleen.

It seemed that they even had worked on secret recordings during the few months hiatus the band had before we selected Kathleen. They released those recordings shortly after the court battle.

That explained Jer’s lack of interest in selecting a new singer, Varona’s showing up

LSC Flyer at LA’s Spaceland:

at that last gig saying to Audrey “we gotta talk,” and even Castro’s showing up for Varona’s last gig wanting to talk to me —- but then reconsidering. Jer’s “band meeting” was probably just to unveil this whole new plan. Their takeover plan had been in the works for some time, it seemed.

In addition, an interview we had done with NPR in the summer of 2004 when Varona was still in the band finally aired in early April 2005, right before their coup attempt. Undoubtedly, that bit of publicity got some ex-members thinking that there was still some milk left in the old cow and to try and get back in the band again — or take over the old band — even while they lacked the courage or confidence to start their own band. We had heard that such interviews on average generate 5,000 additional CD sales and our distributor requested more stock. For a bunch who thought they were so talented, it was telling that they simply were too scared to do their own thing rather than take over LSC.

Annette had to know all about these machinations and had stood by the Jer -- although eventually they would divorce. A mutual love of Mel Brooks was not enough. Audrey sensibly and simply applied Occam’s Razor to the whole plot, noting that they were deeply narcissistic. Also, shallow, grasping and greedy, but, yes, the simplest explanation is usually the best.

I looked at Annette standing outside the courtroom and she looked away. It was similar to an incident that would happen a year or so later when Margie and I were riding our bikes back from Coney Island. We were coming up Ocean Parkway but had detoured onto some neighborhood streets and we spotted Jer and Annette walking down the street. They spotted us and ran and hid behind some bushes. It was almost Biblical, running and hiding their shame. The next day, Jer sent me a disingenuous email, feigning casualness and saying, “Hey, I think we might have seen you the other day, what a coincidence.” No mention of their running and hiding. A year later, when we were playing a big show at Brooklyn venue Southpaw opening for an awesome Detroit band, The Dirtbombs, he asked to be put on the guest list. We told him there was no room on the list.

Don’t Mess With Bill: The Marvelettes

Outside of the Moynihan courthouse, I avoided making any sort of triumphant gesture toward Annette, though I felt like a million dollars knowing that we had just won. Instead, we went to the bar, joined by Margie and original drummer Spike, where we celebrated our victory. While we drank, my phone was blowing up with multiple messages from their attorney announcing that they were ready to settle completely on my terms and give everything back. I was in no hurry to respond. Another Guiness please. Drinks all round.

They had announced their takeover on April 21 and less than three months later they had been shut down. Yes, I was a musician, and yes I was a lawyer, and yes I was from Detroit’s East Side and not willing to walk away from what I had created and loved. They probably should have thought about that, rather than creating an imaginary “corporation” and touting themselves as the real talent. We signed the settlement agreement on July 14, Bastille Day. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, and Hail to the Victors, as we say at the University of Michigan law school. A guy named Clarence Darrow went to school there too.

I did it myself, DIY, as my first and only time as a civil lawyer (that is, not criminal, my regular Legal Aid gig) stopping them from using the name of my band. Nom de guerre indeed. That brought together my two lives that had previously seemed in conflict. Lawyer meet musician. Musician meet lawyer. I was a person who was never quite sure why I had become a lawyer. But being in a job helping others and gaining the skills to ultimately help myself, saving the thing I had created and held most dear, it became clear, that’s why I was doing both things. I was a Detroiter, in exile in New York, who was a jug band-French rock n roller lawyer. It all made perfect sense.

Too Much Monkey Business: Chuck Berry

A few days later Jer contacted me to say that we had to talk business. We needed to formalize our business relationship. My jaw dropped. Formalize a business with him? I thought I had just done that in federal court. I suppose it was not too different than Mike DeSeve sending me the “I heard my name came up” email, pretending nothing had really happened. I politely told him no; I was not interested in doing any further business with him. So, while our “realities” converged briefly in court, he was off on another planet again soon after. Get out the butterfly nets. He kept insisting how whatever it was he had in mind was absolutely necessary, but I told him that we were going to have to “agree to disagree” and hung up.

Aside from not having to deal with them, the other great thing that emerged from the court battle was it strengthened my relationship with Margie. At that point we had been married over ten years and had faced different challenges together. In 2000, Margie had a case of Budweiser beer bottles fall on her head at the restaurant where she worked. Margie had been pursuing an acting career, in theater, since before I met her. But like many actors she had a non-acting job, and restaurants allowed for flexibility in scheduling when she did get a job.

Acting was a worse gig than music from what I discerned. At least with music you were able to gig pretty frequently but with acting there were so many actors chasing so few roles. Often it was tough just to get in a show. And harder to get in a show where you might get noticed and advance to the next level. But with music, there were tons or bars willing to have a band play and give them a free beer. No money, but beer. In prison the currency was cigarettes; in music, beer.

Kit Kat and Clermont at Atlantic Antic:

Only the Strong Survive: Jerry Butler

Margie’s waitress gig was at Sequoia, a restaurant at the South Street Seaport. One day another worker carelessly put the case of beer on a high shelf in their work refrigerator. When Margie opened the door to get a customer something from the refrigerator the case of beer crashed down on her head, shoving her face into a lower shelf and knocking out or severely loosening most of her front teeth. Over the course of years, she had multiple dental surgeries to put in replacement teeth and for some of those periods she went around with no front teeth or a fake teeth “flipper.” That is hard for anyone, let alone a beautiful woman, who also is looking to make a living acting where looks are a real factor. So, we had got through that together, because it was a tough time for her and I needed to be there to help her through that crisis. We came out stronger. She stopped drinking Budweiser. I shifted over to IPA’s.

LSC in Minneapolis:

Thanks a Lot: Ernest Tubb

The whole band hostile takeover attempt, court battle and disinformation campaign was another thing that we went through together. It was another trial-by-fire experience that brought us closer. Good things can emerge out of terrible experiences. For me, it was both being able to use my legal skills to come to the aid of my life in music and to stand up for myself, as I had always tried to do my entire life when bullied. Win or lose it was important to fight and if nothing else go down swinging. And I realized even more how much I loved and needed Margie and how having a good person by your side is worth more than anything in the entire world. Even had I lost the court battle, that realization alone would have been a victory.

Two of a Kind: Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer

I had successfully refilled the ranks of the band, and we had rehearsed and were ready to gig. We had a show listed for July 9^th, two days after that last hearing. The fact that I could inform Judge Conway Casey during the hearing that we were still an ongoing entity with upcoming gigs scheduled was certainly a plus. He “saw” I was not a lone disgruntled singer voted out of the band, even while the others were using my band’s name improperly. And I still had a band called Les Sans Culottes.

Also, on July 9th, before we finalized the order forbidding their use of the name, the rival “Les Sans Culottes” — our tribute band — played. Their gig also was listed in the Voice as “Les Sans Culottes” along with ours. Some lucky fans could have seen two LSC shows in one night! My dream of franchising was almost a reality. Of course, the ersatz LSC wasn’t bad. After all, I had groomed most of them in the original LSC. I was becoming a sort of French rock n roll Art Blakey or Miles Davis.

The rival LSC did go out to play what had been originally scheduled as our gigs in California, though they were now legally barred from using the LSC name. They tried to hang on to everything as long as possible, including our websites, and delayed complying with the court order mandating that they give everything back to me. Initially, and unironically, they changed their name to “Les Enfants Terribles.” Perfection has been achieved. I had even choicer suggestions but calling themselves the “terrible children” was a start. At some point, sadly, they reconsidered. Perhaps the irony was not completely lost on them. They redubbed themselves “Nous Non Plus” or “Us No More” or “Us Neither” with echoes of the Serge Gainsbourg song “Je t’aime … moi, non plus.” They were themselves no longer. Or they had fully revealed their true selves. They left me nonplussed in both the original and English sense of that word (confused and disturbed), and in the America sense (unperturbed), which means exactly its opposite. Language.

LSC Re-emerge at Freddy’s July 9 after the Court Battle; Clermont in vintage WWII helmet won in a poker game:

I’m Set Free: The Velvet Underground

On July 9th, the newly reformed band made its debut at Freddy’s Bar. A firebird rising from the ashes. Like the motto of the city of Detroit, following the giant fire of 1805 that nearly destroyed the city, “Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus,” which translates to “We hope for better things; it shall arise from the ashes.” I was hoping for better things. A lot of my friends showed up because they knew what had happened. It was a celebration, almost a return to our debut gig there in April 1998. I wore a khaki military shirt with epaulets (my fashion “sense” left me largely powerless in front of epaulets — along with dashikis), a French flag patch on one shoulder, U.S. 1st Cavalry patch on the other, and a hard shell World War II army helmet won in a card game long ago. I felt like I had been to war. And it was great to win. U.S.A! Part of a longstanding tradition of Americans stepping up to win a war for the French against some unspeakably evil menace. Of course, we are eternally grateful for the assistance of Messrs. Lafayette and Rochambeau during our revolution.

Joe’s Pub artist sketch of LSC performing there:

Moi Je Joue: Brigitte Bardot