Everything was going pretty good for Biddy and me, and we were having the time of our lives working steadily, playing in the band and hanging out with the babes. We had plenty of nice clothes, a nice crib, and lots of good music to play on our stereo when we arrived at home. When we weren't playing, we would jump at the chance to go see another band, like the Blends. They were one of the hottest bands around, and could always be found playing somewhere in the Cape Cod/ New Bedford area. Unfortunately this passion for music would prove to be costly for us.
Our problem began, when we had invited a couple of babes from Providence to
stay over for the weekend. We had met the girls while playing a gig previously somewhere in East Providence. After playing a gig in the funky
little club, the girls grabbed us at the end of the night. These babes were very fine, making their offer of staying over difficult to refuse. The club
was jammed as usual, with people clamoring to get on the floor and dance to stuff like, "There's only so much oil in the ground", Tower of power;
Blood Sweat and Tears; Chicago; "Engine number nine", Wilson Pickett;"
Its your
thing", Isley Brothers; "Piece of my heart", Vanilla fudge
version; "Papa was a rolling stone", Temptations, etc. Then we would cool the crowd off with
something by Otis Redding, i.e., My "lovers prayer"; "Nothing
takes the place of you", Tousaint McCall, and "You've really got a hold on me,"
and maybe some instrumentals, featuring the sax or the organ taking the lead. We made
falling in love easy by delivering just the right amount of fast and slow tunes. By the time we got to the end of the night the ladies were ready to
get the hell out of there.
It was raining cats and dogs, when she grabbed my hand and escorted me off
the stage, out the door, and into a cab. I hardly had time to say so long to my pals before I was snatched from the
premises. Besides, all the other guys in the band were preoccupied anyway. A quick glance around the club revealed
a host of Cheshire cat type grins from the band members. It was too late then, she had me, and I was out of there. It wasn't the first time I had been
under this type of duress, so I was not surprised at all by what was happening. My roomy was gone off with one babe and I, with the other. The two
ladies had been hanging together all night, and obviously had made plans on how they were going to end the night. After spending a couple of nights at
the girls' houses, it was only proper to have invited them to our place in New Bedford.
Because of our busy schedule, a couple of weeks went by before we could
invite them over to our place. We didn't have a car, so they came to town via a bus from Providence, and then they caught a cab to our house from the
station. Not that we couldn't afford a car, we just didn't have a need for one, where it was just as easy to thumb a ride or catch a bus in those days.
Besides, we didn't go much more than walking distance from the house anyway, other than going to gigs. To get to the gigs we usually rented a van and most
of the band would ride along with the equipment. We tried to exhibit a little class by paying for their cab fare from the station in New Bedford.
This was a chill out weekend for us, not having any gigs to do. It felt good just be able to sit back and just enjoy the company of a couple of nice
chicks, without having the pains of dragging a bunch of equipment all over the place. When they arrived we had a
wonderful dinner of fried chicken, potato salad, corn bread, yams, the whole works. This was followed up by a
couple of big joints of dirt flavored Colombian Red twisted to perfection. The "jays" and the food were to be washed down with a gallon jug of
port wine
magical mystery punch. *
We had moved from the kitchen to the living room where the atmosphere had
been impeccably prompted. The ethos of this arrangement was truly implied. After saturating our brains with the flavors and the aromas
dajour, we
snuggled up to our lady friends and listened to sweet tunes i.e.," Mighty love," "One of a kind love affair", The Spinners; "Distant
Lover", Marvin Gaye; "So nice ", Mad Lads; "The hunter gets captured by the
game", The Marvelettes, etc. Eventually each couple would go to their respective rooms
to finish off the evening with merry love making.
The next day the girls got up first and made breakfast for us. Now we were
really living large, having the weekend off, having the girls over, and breakfast in bed. That was really cool. We took a walk around the
neighborhood and visited a few friends, who always welcomed you at the door with a big fatty, twisted in strawberry flavored paper, or something like
that. By the time we returned to the house, we were thoroughly wasted.
Sometimes it can be really rough being a musician, exposing yourself to the public that often jumps at the chance to get you stoned. In those days there was no such thing as "just say no." While we were
visiting one of our friends, Biddy had been pulled aside and was informed of a big gig that was coming up the next day on the Cape. He was told that the
"Blends" were going to be playing at the Greenway in Mashpee, and unfortunately, that's all we needed to hear. When he told me about the gig, I
just knew we had to go. I also knew that it wasn't going to be easy to just get rid of these babes and make it to the gig on time. These girls were smart
and they were having a really good time hanging out with us. After all, I was the 'Mayor' of the city, and Biddy was at least my assistant, if not the
'Chief of police.' That didn't really matter to these girls, they were not going to be ready to leave early the next morning and we knew that.
Everybody was going to be at the jam and we certainly didn't
want to miss it. Furthermore, we had been without that nightclub sound for two days now,
and the urge to be in that environment was nearly overwhelming.
It was late Saturday afternoon, and we were getting desperate to make arrangements to get
to the Cape. Somehow one of us would have to get out of the house and call one of our friends to get a ride to the club. Getting the ride wasn't going
to be a problem, but getting out of the house to make the call was the tricky part. These babes were enjoying themselves too much to let us out of their
sight for one moment. Eventually we came up with a reason to go out, i.e. a trip to the store to get some papers or some malted balls or something
to drink, in case we got stranded on the dessert after smoking all that herb.
When Biddy returned from the store, he had an unusually glowing smile on his
face, that even made me suspicious. The babe was fine, but audacious, and was willing to cast a shadow of doubt over his ass. She was so nice, it was hard
to think of her as the jealous type, but the disease was spreading around the room like wildfire. I think the "women's intuition" thing kicked in,
and all
I could do was start eating those goddamn milk balls.
It was Saturday night, and we spent the rest of the evening trying to be
cool, but it was kind of obvious to the girls that our minds were preoccupied with the events of the next day. They didn't have a clue about what was going
down, but if they had known, we would have been dead on the spot. These girls were from Providence, and they came packaged with that gangster edge. They
were fine on one hand, and not to be toyed with on the other. Nevertheless, the night went on with the aid of the giant bong sitting on the coffee table,
with tentacles hanging from it, like some kind of giant octopus.
Sunday morning came much too soon and we still hadn't come up with a way to
get out of the house, without upsetting the girls. When we got up, we tried to act like everything was cool, but these girls were highly suspicious and
they were keeping a close eye on us. As luck would have it, one of our friends from another band stopped by just to visit us. The girls were
upstairs getting dress and enjoying the spacious house with all kinds of pleasant sunlight streaming through the many windows. When I greeted my
friend at the door, we quickly made up a story about us having to help him move from one apartment to another. We would tell the girls that it was a
last minute thing, and he needed Biddy and me to help him. He was a fellow
musician, and he understood the situation we had created. He laughed when I told him about the situation, but quickly snapped back to a serious face when
he heard the girls coming down the stairs.
We introduced him to the girls, and told them the moving story all on the
same breath. We thought it was a brilliant story because we knew the ladies weren't going to be interested in moving any furniture. The girls looked a
little perplexed at first, but the story seemed to be legitimate enough to be believed. My friend just happened to be dressed in some tattered jeans, which
helped give credence to the story. We tried to cushion the news by telling them that they could stay at the house until we returned, and our friend
could give them a ride back to Providence when we finished moving. They weren't too happy with the arrangements, but they just swallowed hard and
accepted the sudden changes in our plans to have a good weekend. It was already 12 noon, and it only took us a few minutes to get out of there. The
gig would start at 1: 00 and all we had to do was stop by Karlton's house, where the band practiced, pick up our instruments, and meet our ride to the
Cape.
When we reached the club it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and the place
was already starting to get mobbed. We were starting to feel kind of guilty about leaving the girls back at the house, but we got over that soon enough,
after running into a couple of our female fans standing by the door of the club. The band was just starting to get into it as we pulled up to the joint.
I was having flashbacks of the first time I came here to listen to the same band with the real cool bass player, and Richie Harris was the trombone
player and leader of the band. Their latest edition to the band was a woman named Sharon. She was a very smooth singer with quite a bit of stage
experience under her belt. She sang a variety of songs, from jazz, blues and pop, to straight out soul. She was very professional, and knew how to get the
crowd moving.
We had ordered drinks for ourselves and the lady friends, whom we had
arbitrarily met when we arrived, just as Sharon was going on stage. She opened up her set with "Ain't no mountain high enough," and slid into
Aretha's "Do right woman", etc. Later on, "Big John" would
come onto the stage with a slamming "Turn back the hands of time", Tyrone Davis,
etc.
Biddy and I had a really good time hanging out with our musician friends, and
we wanted to stay for the evening session, but we knew we had to get back to New Bedford. We were having so much fun; we didn't give much thought to the
two women we had left in 'New B'. It was a very nice day, and we weren't looking for anything to disrupt it. We thought everything would be cool with
the girls, but really we had our fingers crossed, because we knew how volatile they could be. Therefore, there was a little anxiety building as we
drove back to the house.
When we went inside the house, we were shocked to find the girls were gone,
and so was our furniture, and everything else. The girls had cleaned us out. They had taken virtually everything we had; the stereo, records, clothes,
some furniture, even my personal photo album. The house was clean. It didn't look like anyone was living there. Right then and there we knew we had
screwed up. All we could do was laugh, because we knew the girls had ripped us off. At least they did leave the beds; otherwise we would have been
sleeping on the floor. There was plenty of food left in the fridge too. I
guessed they were in too much of a
hurry to take
that.
When we sat down to digest it all, we knew the girls were angry, because they had taken my photo album. They knew that I was very attached to the album,
which was laid out very nicely, and was filled with all kinds of pictures of various musicians I had met. It also had a chronology of friends I knew from
my Jr. High school days, including some pictures of old girlfriends. It really wasn't that big of a deal; because they didn't find the twelve hundred
dollars I had hidden under the floorboards in my closet. So it didn't take us
very long to get our selves back together, and that certainly didn't stop us from entertaining women at the house, we just never left any of them in the
house alone again. It was a simple lesson, of "Once bitten, twice
shy."