This week has been slow at the diamond store. 99% of the Upper East Side has fled Manhattan for the Hamptons, Duchess County, Maine, the South of France, and hundreds of other elegant destinations around the globe. Tuesday afternoon my boss left early for her piano lessons.
"You should go home too." She liked the safe shut as soon as she was gone.
"I'll start closing now."
Right before I shut the safe and threw the alarm, my flip phone rang.
"It was Dakota from Weird Womb.
on the Upp
Tonight at Friends and Lovers in Brooklyn.
641 Classon Avenue.
10pm.
Come Sober.
Leave Drunk.
Weird Womb plays as good as they look.
To see WEIRD WOMB please go to this URL
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152801129789045&oid=337662963010345&saved
Last week Dakota Pollock of Weird Womb asked me to write a band bio.
I became friends with the group's singer and Johnny the guitarist at the 169 Lounge, Chinatown's epic dive bar on East Broadway and had seen the Tucson quartet at Shea Stadium, so I told Dakota, "Sure."
They were my favorite new band and I wrote the following;
After Weird Womb fulfilled their anti-social studies in Tucson, the garage-punk quartet drifted to New York and forged their music in the crucible of infamy. The endless hours of rehearsal have rewarded Weird Womb with a tight onstage persona of a band seeking the enlightenment of oblivion, as the four friends devoutly reincarnate the sonic soul of rebellion within a solid wall of guitars, bass, and drums topped by their frontman Dakota Pollock singing UNDER MY SCUM and PALE PISS.
Their ‘Ruined by the 90′s’ tour will hit the road in the late summer, but until then catch Weird Womb when and where you can in New York.
They don't suck.
Dakota liked it and on Friday I sat at the bar of the 169, drinking 'gansetts' and eating oysters, while extolling the virtues of the MC5. The lead guitarist Johnny Saczko was in agreement and said, "You know you should be our tour manager this summer."
"Where you going?" I didn't have a steady job. In fact I had no job.
"The West Coast." Johnny was a little older than Dakota, whom he had met at a troubled youth office in downtown Tucson along with the other band members Eric Parisi, the drummer, and bass player Brad Pitt.
"Like LA, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco?"
"Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz aren't into punk."
"You're a punk band, I thought you were a BeeGees cover band."
"We don't do covers. We're hitting San Jose and Arcata. Your job would be organizing everything, driving the van, and making sure we get paid."
"Cool." I liked the idea of handling the money. I shouted to Dakota at the other end of the bar. "Yo, I'm your new tour manager."
He walked down to us and Johnny explained the plan.
"Great, can you stay up past midnight?"
"Not in New York, but I'll have a three-hour timezone advantage on the West Coast." That put my pillowtime a little past 2AM. "Anywhere else other than California?"
"Oregon, Washington, Montana, North Dakota."
This was a dream trip.
"Count me in."
We toasted my new job with whiskey shots.
It had a nice ring to it.
Weird Womb's tour manager.
To hear Weird Womb's PALE PISS, go to this URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBNcHgt614A
Dakota and Johnny are bartenders at the 169 Lounge on East Broadway. They treated me like a prince, because I have the last quaaludes on Earth. Dakota wants one bad.
"If you give me one, you'll never have to pay for a drink in this bar." Dakota came from Arizona. He was less than half my age. The longhaired guitarist thought his doing a lude could be a significant dent in the Tragic 2000s.
I showed him the jar.
1974 Rorers.
"What about if I let you touch the bottle?" 'Ludes were extinct, but I took the jar out of my pocket.
"Let me see." David Hustle was my drinking companion. We went back to back when 'ludes were $5 at Danceteria.
"Not a chance." I shook my head. "What about you, Dakota?"
I dangled the bottle in front of his eyes.
"I'm not a pervert." Dakota pulled a can of 'Gansett from the beer cooler. "One pill. All the drinks you want for the rest of your life."
"I'll think about it."
"Ha, I told you he wouldn't give you one." Johnny played in the same band as Dakota.
Weird Womb.
"I might." I couldn't think of a good reason, then again a friend of mine had boosted one in Thailand, so there were only two in this jar. The secret stash of the other two jars was in Staten Island and I wasn't saying where.
"What if I let you sing on stage with us?"
"When?" I thought I had a good voice.
"Thursday night. The 20th at Shea Stadium. The bar not the baseball field."
"You're not seriously thinking about letting him sing?" David groaned in disbelief.
"I have a good voice."
"Only because you don't have to listen to it."
"Ha, ha." I did think I had a good voice and told Dakota, "I'll see you at Shea Stadium."
"Bring the ludes with you."
"And a gun." The Rorers weren't safe in a crowd.
"You really are evil," David commented with a sneer. He had hated me as a bouncer at Hurrah. I was meaner than a shave rattlesnake in those years, but we had outlived most of our friends, so it was him and me for better or worse.
With or without the 'ludes.
To see WEIRD WOMB tonight, go to Shea Stadium at 20 Meadow Street in Brooklyn. The nearest subway of Grand Street on the L.
To hear PALE PISS by Weird Womb, please go to this URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G-0rXELQd0
