Friday, March 27, 2015

"Steve Antos Night", Rocky Point Studio, August 26, 1990






























































At last.

If there was any night I could travel back in time and relive as a musician, this is the one.  At least as far as my LOOB time.  (though, man, I actually WOULD love to see the old office space one last time! But we could barely make it to the office half the time, and when we did, it was often only for short periods of time, so I'm picking this one!).

The first thing about this night/rehearsal....it's LONG.  In another dimension, we're probably STILL in that room, jamming. We filled three tapes, both sides.  We had a special guest playing with us, Steve Antos, on guitar.  Steve's performance is so tasteful on these tapes, he blends in so seamlessly with Life Out Of Balance, we actually considered asking him to join.  Three guitar players, though....we just couldn't make that work for us in our minds! Who has three guitar players? The Outlaws?  It was seriously bandied about though.  On these tapes, Steve is like the overdub Hubie or Frank would have played. Because of this, these tapes were always called "Steve Antos Night", or  "The Steve Antos Tapes". 

Steve wasn't our only guest.  For one thing, there was another Steve, future LOOB member and brother of me, Steve Goodman.  My brother attended many rehearsals over the years (first appearance on a tape: June 1987, Ward's basement!  He also engineered the one rehearsal taped with Howie, so he can lay claim to being the only person to have seen all incarnations of LOOB from 1987 through 1994); on this night he makes his debut as a musical participant, during the percussion free-for-all in the night's finale, "Gimme Fun".

Now, the two Steves would have been more than enough guests for the evening, but in fact, this night was basically a small party.  Lisa, Sylvia Marmo, and at least two people that I don't remember too much about: Dale and Regina, are in attendance. Regina even gets up and sings with the band a couple of times!  I also seem to ask a "Paul" for something, and I don't think it's Paul Poole (brother of Hubie, director of Scapegrace)....I have a vague memory as I type now of a young couple that we didn't know in attendance, perhaps that's who it was. 

Any rehearsal that has TWO "Sailing"s, TWO "Gimme Fun"s, plus a great acoustic session (where everyone sings along to Bob Marley songs)....and basically a run-through of our entire songlist, including ancient surprises ("On The Cover", "Unlock The Door"!), covers galore, and perfect versions of some of our best songs....is alright by me!  It's more like what DOESN'T this tape have?

Both "Sailing"s are incredible.  The second one, however, is legend.  In one long hour & ten minute chunk of music, we run through "I Know Your Name", the ultimate "Sailing", "Castles And Planes", "The Advocate", "Unlock The Door"(!), "Minnie's Cold Glass Eye"(!!), "Stir It Up" and finally land on a mammoth "Gimme Fun".  When we wind up, the energy is palpable, electric......eeeeeelectric. You are back at that party.  It has such a spontaneous burst of applause and cheering, it gives new meaning to the LOOB credo: "Hey people, feel it".  No gig was ever as great as this, no reception ever as special.

Tape 1: the most neglected "Sailing" of all time, due to its eclipse by the version on Tape 3!
That's not to say that every single thing on these tapes is going on the box set!  The first set of songs sounds great - but you can tell we're in danger of peaking a little early!  Obviously having a third guitar player (who immediately sounds good) made us naturally lean towards the jammier stuff.  When we're ready to get down to business, we start with "Return Britain".  A funny moment happens in the middle of "Britain" where I must have signaled to Hubie something like "Hey man, put on the pedal and let's slip into that crazy jam we do!" (later to appear in "Scapegrace").  After this ill-advised notion fails, Hubie goes to the mic and announces "This was Mike's idea"! Ha!!!!  WHOOOOOO'S TOOOOOOO BLAAAAAAAME (old Life Out Of Balance game).  Yeah, I was definitely overthinking things! After a ferocious "It's All Right", you get the surprise of your life as we lift off into "Sailing".  Tragically, someone paused the tape for a few moments during this magical transition, but we go onto play an 18 minute "Sailing"... version one of the night! When Hubie goes to take a break, the hippies have a pretty bad Dead singalong before we retire to the couch and have a beautiful Marley singalong!  At this point, the band was listening to "Kaya" every other day.  We also drop into a bit of James Brown and even a short bit of Poi Dog Pondering! At the end of this acoustic portion, we do a thing that I had forgotten about, called "You're Right"!  Let's see how many of you remember that one!

One remarkable thing about Steve Antos on these tapes - there are a few instances where we run down the chords and arrangement with him - quickly - but most of these songs pop up through transitions and segueways. He was picking this all up on the fly.....and I defy you to find one moment where he hits a wrong note, or gets in the way of an arrangement. That's pretty impressive given over 200 minutes of recorded tape!
Going back inside we play some more, including version one of "Gimme Fun" (the subdued version) and a giant, wild "Beating A Dead Horse" that slips into that "art rock jam" we had tried to break into earlier, before it lands on "Jack On The Road" (which, as usual, gets cut off! I told you it was an elusive song!).  We took another break, came back in.......and then, my friends, you get what you paid your ticket for. Tape number three. One long solid block of music...
That's the tape, Officer, that's the one that done it.
Without naming names, I know some of our audience that night had gone psychedelic and sparkly, I can only imagine what it must have been like to hear this music live, at that moment, in that state, because listening to it now, stone cold sober, makes me feel like I could evaporate into nirvana.  The good times are dripping all over this tape....but more than that, some of the greatest music I've ever been a part of.

Enjoy, you spacecats!
The Rocky Point Studio, as remembered by Frank.  Amazingly, there are no known photographs of this rehearsal space.  The sliding glass door was covered with a thick curtain.  Our guests would observe from the "control room". On this night, Steve Antos was positioned to the right of Frank (if memory serves me right!)  Click to enlarge.

"Steve Antos Night", Rocky Point Studio, 8/26/90
Jammin'
Return Britain
Don't Let Me Down
It's All Right ->
Sailing
On The Road Again * ->
Not Fade Away *
Stir It Up
Satisfy My Soul
I'm Crying
Don't Step On The Blue Grass
Licking Stick
What You Say
Windstorm
Babaloo
You're Right
Gimme Fun
Is It Safe?
Wintertime
Beating A Dead Horse (with Scapegrace "art rock" jam) ->
Jack On The Road  /
On The Cover ->
We Both Wobble
I Know Your Name ->
Sailing ->
Castles And Planes ->
The Advocate ->
Unlock The Door ->
Minnie's Cold Glass Eye ->
Stir It Up ->
Gimme Fun

Hubert Poole - guitar, vocal, percussion
Frank Russell - guitar, vocal, percussion
Ted Schreiber - bass, vocal, harmonica, acoustic guitar, percussion
Michael Goodman - drums, cuatro, vocal, percussion
Steve Antos - guitar
Steve Goodman - percussion on "Gimme Fun"
Regina (?) - vocal on "Don't Let Me Down", "On The Road Again", "Stir It Up"
Lisa Devirgilio, Sylvia Marmo, Dale, Paul (?) & possibly others: vocals, percussion, cheering, great vibes

*Hubie does not play on *  He is blameless.

Recorded on two tracks of a Tascam Portastudio cassette 4-track.  Early on someone has a trigger happy finger with the pause button, but luckily they learn their lesson - albeit after a cut in the crucial and surprising transition between "It's All Right" and the first "Sailing"! There is a wild mix that incorporates a backwards "Babaloo" into this version of "It's All Right" here.

mp3s
1: http://www.mediafire.com/download/i63010viti9th7d/1990-08-26_Steve_Antos_Night_-_1.zip
2: http://www.mediafire.com/download/zwr9kvd9yko3ny2/1990-08-26+Steve+Antos+Night+-+2.zip
3: http://www.mediafire.com/download/6uuvjx9m40s6elo/1990-08-26_Steve_Antos_Night_-_3.zip

flacs (to create less folders to download, I opted to put some of these flacs out of order)
1: http://www49.zippyshare.com/v/ctKduLQc/file.html

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