WITH SOME 500 PERFORMANCES
under our belts, one might think we're getting just a little carried away
with ourselves. To right the reckless list of the party barge was the grounding
ballast of the noble dissent -- the newspaper critics whose job it was to
blow the foam off our mugs by praising our comic ingenuity, stage presence
and energy level, but unable to categorize our post-moderne vaudeville show
any other way, tagged us with the inevitable moniker "Nostalgia merchants",
no matter how fast, how skilled or how far off the track we drove those chopped,
blocked, re-painted musical vehicles that we had stolen. Well, it was the
was horse we rode in on, but by now we were as different from Sha Na Na as
Flipper is
from that fish that starred in Jaws.
Under
constant self-imposed pressure to come up with original comedy material, the
Glass Packs show in mid-1974 began to resemble the format that we perform
today; more scripted vignettes that showcased the acting talents of Bob Sarlatte,
the writing of Gary Murphy, the stage direction of piano stunt man Larry Strawther,
the other worldly courage of the Mighty Quinn, the singing and drumming of
Mike Moore, the guitar work of Rob Birsinger and the giant Cajones of bassman
Bruce He's-So-Fine Lopez. While we still continued to use familiar A.M Radio
hits as the binding to this magazine, the featured articles were becoming
more diverse. (E.g. the Mighty Quinn played late night TV host Sid Harthra,
a cigar chomping Hari Krishna hawking yak hair incense to the tune of "Boogaloo
Down Broadway")
As a result, the coeds-pouring-milk-shake-tins-full-of-beer parties gave way
to a more sophisticated debauchery - velvet roped, maitre'd tipping, gorgeous
hat check girl swanky night clubs -- and we don't mean the likes of Sunnyvale's
Oddessey Room where they handed out actual wooden nickels on ladies night
as free drink chits or the Bayside turtle races at Zack's in Sausalito which
we watched each Tuesday night from the upstairs stage of the Boathouse next
door. (We did play everywhere with electricity).
No, Phase III began in mid-1974 in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia at
"The Cave" -- an 800 seat paper mache' cavern with a rock formation
balcony above a series of cozy cave-like candle-lit booths with hanging stalactites
-- home away from Vegas to the Mitzi
Gaynors, Tony Bennetts, Vic Domones and other late 50's mid-60's top line
acts who worked out their kinks before a crowd of Canadians before heading
Southwest for the Dessert Inn. The Cave was a place not unlike San Francisco's
Bimbo's 365 Club with a perimeter
of private Lincoln booths overhead.
It was, however, with some apprehension that the Glass Packs returned to the
Cave in 1974 as this same Cave was the site of our first and only Blimpcrash,
a 1973 opening night debacle of disastrous proportions that was chronicled
in the only vicious review that we ever endured, one so negative it was positive
like the way heat can be so hot its cold. Don Stanley, the music critic from
the Vancouver Sun, hated us in the same way the Hatfields hated the McCoys.
If you never been harpooned, it goes something like this . . ..
The 1973 opening night began with a temporary roadie dropping our tuned guitars
on his way downstairs from our dressing room to set them on the stands in
front of our amps right before we went on stage. Fearful of the consequences
of full disclosure to the cocky Glass Packs awaiting their usual warm embrace,
Gomo (his real name), the roadie, said nothing and let us go on stage believing
that our guitars were as we last touched them.
The opening number, "Rama Lama Ding Dong" began a capella with the
sole tonal guidance of a single note from the only properly tuned instrument
on the stage -- the half-ton grand piano that Gomo, our soon to be former
roadie, couldn't lift and therefore couldn't drop. We're four bars into the
singing, and so far so good. Then like a thunder clap our voices were joined
by the dissonance of the dropped out of tune guitars causing the crowd to
dive for cover as the sound of Armageddon exploded from the stage, a sound
more industrial than musical. By design, our show was on wheels so there was
no stopping the bus, no chance to adequately re-tune, and the heat of the
spotlight found us squirming for the next hour like the Beagle Boys dodging
in and out of the hot glare of the prison search light. Busted.
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