I
admit I’m a little fuzzy on the exact chronology here, but which of us is not
at this age?
I
don’t recall the “first gig.” It may not
have been memorable, and that would explain my lack of recall. One early gig I do recall was the one upstairs
in the Endicott bowling alley called Rainbow Lanes. I’m sure it was an early gig, because I
recall that I was still playing the venerable Conrad bass. It may have been the one where we “loaded in”
out of my father’s Rolls Royce. That I recall it at all is because of an event
that happened in the midst of a song I was singing.
The
cheap leatherette strap I was using to hold up that heavy, unbalanced bass was
the kind that came with a series of holes punched in it. To adjust its length,
you put the strap button in a different hole.
In mid song, just as the girls were beginning to swoon, the top strap button
ripped out of the strap and suddenly I was holding this freaking log up with my
hands. Though I kept singing, I couldn’t
keep playing and pop the strap button into a different hole because I’d left my
third hand at home! So I stopped playing
and re-attached the strap, then proceeded to jump back into the instrumental
mix.
No
one in the band batted an eye. We all
went on as if nothing had happened. I
remember thinking at the time that it was now obvious we were a band, and one
unexplained momentary drop out like that no longer could derail us. Was it the first Pearls “eureka” moment? Probably not, but it’s the first one I
remember.
The
band that was playing in another meeting room at the bowling alley that night
was from the South Side of Binghamton.
They were called Jay Walker and
the Pedestrians. They were pretty
good, with much more involved stage antics than we ever worked up. That band was actually approaching the status
of “show band” at the time. In one of
our first marketing/business development prevarications we started telling
people that we had “opened” for Jay
Walker and the Pedestrians. It
worked to our advantage.
The
advantage came because another Tuskman, whose name I do not recall, was working
on some student board or committee that was responsible for vetting and
contracting for low-level student entertainment. He got us many jobs, at very low pay because
that’s all the money SUNY would allow student boards to spend. But he got us jobs. He probably got us the gigs in the snack
bar. He told the committee that we had
opened for Jay Walker and the
Pedestrians. Some of the amateur blockheads on the committee heard him say Junior Walker and the All Stars because
they didn’t know the difference. And so
that was the advantage.
I
soon got sick of that Japanese bass’ limitations and prevailed upon my Mom to
buy me a “real” bass that was good enough that it was balanced. I actually think my Mom & Dad were
pleasantly surprised that we were getting paid and fairly regularly. She went for the bass (a majestic Gibson EB-2
with a tobacco sunburst) but declined to spring for a bass amp. We went to Sam Ash in Brooklyn to buy the Gibson
bass. Probably the bass amp was declined
because on this same trip to Sam Ash she bought George that huge Gibson ES-355
TDC Stereo guitar and the Super Reverb amp.
I
went to work during winter break that year as a bellhop at the Lake Placid Club
to make enough money to buy the Bassman amp that Bill Crepet and I played
through for the duration. Fargin’ Harpur
was on a trimester calendar at the time so we had to take finals when we
returned from winter break. What
monsters. Anyway, I did more reading and
studying of invertebrate zoology on that winter break than I worked. The LPC noticed, and declined to hire me
back, or to hire me ever again, the following summer. But I got the Bassman.
So
there we were. We had a professional
drummer, expensive instruments, and a PA system.
COMING
UP: The Pearls name; where did it come
from? And, the Pearls determine to
improve their sound. Will it be a
keyboard guy, a 12-string guitar, or shall we get Bender to teach us how to
sing?
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