I've decided to start making blog entries. The overall title is "Playing In A Band". I will be posting various stories and anecdotes relative to my 44 years of playing in clubs and bars in New Jersey. Here is the first one. This is exactly what happened one night as far as I can remember.
I was in a band called Godzilla in 1970. We wanted to be "real heavy" thus the name. We were playing 5 nights a week in a club called the Pandemonium on Rt 35 in Ocean Twshp. New Jersey. (There's a Burger King there now). This was the next town West of Asbury Park. Up the road about a mile west in an industrial park there was a surfboard factory where Tinker West, a NJ renaissance man conducted his business. It was also where a band he managed called Steel Mill rehearsed.
By this time Bruce already had a pretty heavy rep among South Jersey musicians and I had seen him play at Neptune H.S. and the Upstage but didn't take him too seriously because he didn't seem to play out much.
One night he came in with Steve Van Zandt and some of the other guys in his band and watched us play. Our first set always consisted of a 40 minute free form jam, no designated key or time signature. We're just warming up. (After a few weeks more people seemed to come for the jam then to hear us play our originals).
I approached Bruce, being the nervy young man I was at the time, and suggested I come up to the factory with my amp the next night since the band was off and he and I could just jam some blues. He said OK.
When I got to the front door the next night Bruce didn't seemed too thrilled to see me saying he was feeling a bit tired. Since I had already unloaded my very heavy Fender twin with 2 massive EV 12's in it out of the car I said something to the effect of, "ahh, come on, we'll just jam a little while". He graciously relented and we proceeded to this huge room with a beautiful Hammond B3 organ on a little platform, drums, Marshall stack. etc. Very...