DISCO INFERNO

from chapter #18

It was early Friday evening, and the singer had arrived at the house, a little worst for wear, yet in good shape, considering he had just finished a nine-hour trip on a bus from Baltimore. He was a well-built dude with broad shoulders a clean- face and he was sporting a big Afro. He had a resemblance to Otis Redding. We welcomed him at the door, and helped him with his bags, and offered him something to drink. He was still a little woozy from the trip, but that didn’t stop him from sucking down a beer with one hand while reaching for one of the many fatties we had rolled on the table. He was excited to find out that we were having a party that night. It would be a perfect way to introduce him to many of our regular friends and fans. We showed him to his room so he could get settled and prepared for the party.

             The house was roomy and impeccably arranged, with three large bedrooms upstairs, a large eat-in kitchen, a bedroom, bath and living room on the first floor. We pulled out all the stops with the food and drinks. The lighting was right, and the aroma of the succulent herbs and incenses graced the air. Some of our close friends and a couple of the band members came early to help us prepare. It was only 8:30 when Dino showed up. He was the most popular guy in New Bedford, and a damned good sax player. He was tall, handsome, and smooth, and he knew all the fine babes in town. Dino was one of my best friends, and we hung out together a lot, but when he showed up wearing those same ugly brown pants, I was a little shocked. Those pants were an awful color between brown and mustard, and I hated them. Either he had ten pairs of them, or everybody in town was use to them, except me. They really didn’t bother me that much, but I use to get a kick out of ribbing him about them. Although he wore the pants all the time, they were clean and had a nice crease in them.

            It was no secret that Dino was kind of a klutz, and had big feet to back it up. He told me the story of the wedding cake he smashed at his cousin's wedding, so I wasn’t surprised at all, when he came through the door, caught his foot in the rug and went ass-over-tea kettle into the table, sending everything flying across the room. It was a good thing it was only 8:30. We got a big chuckle out of it and we had a chance to clean up the mess. Dino was a good sport, and a party just wasn’t a party without him. We introduced him to the singer, who was really getting a big kick out of our antics, and couldn’t believe the craziness that was already happening.

We took this opportunity to tell a few more band tales to the singer, while we were getting stoked for the party.

“ How about the time when we were playing at the club next to the bowling alley,” someone yelled! We were of course, playing at our peak; running tunes, i.e. Ninety-nine and a half, Engine # 9, and other jamming tunes by Pickett. We had a couple of other horns playing with us that night, because this was a big time high energy club, and you had to be kicking to play there. We were jamming so hard; sweat was running down or faces and causing a temporary blindness, as we played with our eyes closed most of the time. All of a sudden we heard the crowd burst into laughter, as we were vigorously performing our James brown two-step. When we opened our eyes to see what was going on, we saw Dino lying on the floor. He had missed a step and fell off the stage, with the sax going one way and he went the opposite way, taking out a table in the process. Of course the whole thing fell apart after that. We had to take a break.

We had to squeeze in at least one more story while our new guest was nearly rolling on the floor, so we continued to tell him about the same gig, which was a "six- nighter." The club was packed every night, so it was fun to make plans about which of the many beautiful girls we would be hitting on the next night. It was like deja vous, when right in the middle of a jamming song, for some reason the trombone player captivated by a big-breasted girl that kept dancing in front of the stage where he was playing. Suddenly the soulful upbeat cadence was broken when the slide on the trombone in-advertenly reached out and caught the breast of the dancing girl. She grabbed the end of the slide, separating it from the rest of the instrument, leaving the bone player with the other half in his hands. Then she proceeded to bend and twist the slide into an un-repairable condition. Of course there was more hysteria on the stage and in the crowd, as the snagled tooth bone player just stood there totally embarrassed. Luckily he had and extra instrument with him, leading me to believe that he may have had this experience before. 

            One by one people stared to arrive at he house, and we took turns showing the guest around. It was 9:00 when our boss, the electrician arrived, with his wife, who looked better than the picture he had shown to biddy and me at work. It was still early and there was only a small group of people there at that time. The house was big, so there was plenty of room where people could get lost.

The party was well under way and we were jamming to tunes i.e. “Let’s stay together”, Al Greene; “Taking it to the street”, “Long train running” Doobies; “Funky chicken”, Rufus Thomas, etc. We were having a good time when the singer came staggering down the stairs and into the living room where most of the people were gathered. He had a big grin on his face when he entered the room. He came over to me and said.” I’m never going back to Baltimore.”

            I just laughed and didn’t think much about what he was saying, until Biddy told me that something was going on with the electrician upstairs. Biddy was laughing while secretly sharing this bit of information with me. I went upstairs to see what was going on, and what to my surprise; there was a small line of guys forming out side of the singer’s room, waiting to have a turn with the electrician’s wife. The electrician was in the room watching as these guys were taking turns having sex with his wife. I knew right away that this guy was a nut, so I politely told him to wrap up his activities and get out. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This guy had no shame. The guys upstairs were all laughing and flipping out as if they were suffering from A.D.D. They were laughing at the outrageous couple, while the folks downstairs were totally un-aware at what was happening. We were all laughing and chuckling at what became an inside joke among the sex crazed participants as we headed back downstairs.

            Minutes later the couple came down, and was quickly escorted out the door. There was no apparent disruption of the party, because the majority of the people were having too much fun to notice anything else. Now I know why the singer had a big smile on his face when he had returned to the party from his adventures upstairs. For sure he wasn’t going back to Baltimore, because he was three-sheets-to-the-wind and sitting in a corner of the room. He was two seconds away from passing out, but apparently still having the time of his life. He was so far gone, that he missed his opportunity to meet some of the other people at the party, especially the ladies. He was the first one to hook up with the electrician’s wife, and I’m sure he wasn’t about to turn down a situation like that, being new in town and all that. It only made sense that the electrician would con him into doing something like that, because he was new to town and didn’t have a clue. Unfortunately he burned himself out before the party even started.

The mini commotion was over for now, and it only took a few moments to get back in the grove. It was about 11:00 and the people really started to arrive at a steady pace. The mix was good with plenty of beautiful girls there to help keep the guys in check. We were jamming to tunes i.e., Cloud nine, The Temptations; Stop in the name of love, The Supremes, Cisco kid, War; etc, when Biddy came from the kitchen into the living and said in a cool quiet voice, “the house is on fire.”

            There was a pause because everybody was wiped out and into a serious party groove. Then all at once everybody jumped up at the same time and asked in unison, “the house is on fire?” When we looked outside, we could see orange flames lick the window and the side of the house. The fire appeared to be directly outside of the rear door, which was easily accessed from the kitchen. Somehow, we started to grab buckets of water and proceeded to carry them through the front door, and all the way around the house to the rear door, where the fire was located. We doused the rising flames with several buckets of water before someone realized that all we had to do was open the rear door in the kitchen and hand the water out from there. We were all stewed out of our minds, so thinking rationally at that time was not in the mix.

We did manage to get to flames out before someone in the neighborhood saw them. That’s when we noticed that a mattress from the second floor had been placed against the house in attempt the burn our ass out of the party. We were laughing hysterically when we realized that it probably was the electrician who had set the fire after we had thrown him out. Now that the danger had passed we continued to laugh at how stupid we must have looked, running around the hose with pots and pans of water, when all we had to do was throw the water out the rear door. Dino kept making jokes about how we looked like the Three Stooges trying to put out a fire. It took us a few minutes too regain our composure, and get back into a party groove, but we managed.

 

 Tavares, formally The "Turnpikes" 

In spite of all this craziness we continued to party. Luckily there was no real harm done, save for a burnt mattress in the back yard that we somehow managed to extinguish without the fire department coming. Amazingly the singer slept through the whole incident. He had smoked so much dope; you could see waves coming out of his head. We spent the rest of the night talking about the weirdo contractor and his wife, and sharing the incident with the new comers to the party. We took turns looking out the window for the rest of the party. After all there was a little bit of paranoia attached to our activities. We kept the action going by playing tunes like; “It only takes a minute”; Turnpikes, “Super fly”, Curtis Mayfield, etc.

    It was about 2:00 a.m., and the local clubs were closed, allowing a few more people to show up. A few of the guys from the Turnpikes came by, including Chubby, Butch, Tiny and a couple of the band members. They were not too late arriving, because there was plenty of refreshments left, and still plenty of people with whom they could meet and mix. They were the local heroes and everybody loved them and enjoyed their being there .of course they added a little more oomph to a party that had some memorable highlights indeed, but wasn’t quite over yet. They hung out for a while, and then they moved on as the party started to end.