Lawrence had been guesting with the band for a few months, and at one of Frank's last shows, at the All Aboard, he had first played the Rhodes. As a foreshadowing of things to come, one of the Anowa Drummers sat in with us. Incidentally, this show exists on DAT and my notes tells me it's possibly our greatest show of all time. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I wrote.
So we had Dancing Lawrence. I don't know how we ended up asking my brother to join! I should ask him! All I know is Steve, who had the distinction of attending rehearsals of every incarnation going back to the Ward days, came into the band on accordion and percussion.
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| The Brothers Goodman, Steve (l) & Mike (r), around the time Steve joined the band. |
We had a weird gig to fulfill, Frank or no Frank. I'd have to refresh people about what the early 90s was REALLY like - as opposed to how it's being marketed now - and who has time for that? Suffice to say, it was this camping lodge upstate that had a rock and roll mentality, let's just put it that way. Billy Capozzi, always hustling some of our weirdest gigs, promoted this show as "Don't Need Dope To Dance". What I think Billy meant was you don't need heroin to dance because.....er.......
It ended up being a hell weekend. It was we who got hustled (Billy included). We didn't get paid. To add insult to injury, we had to pay our own room and board - NOT what we were expecting. There was nobody there. A few friends came up with us, and there was a local guy at the bar who, as you can hear, liked us, but it was small consolation. Couldn't have been more than 15 people, tops. We played two shows, this is the only one I have (they were recorded on DAT).
But....with absolute respectful, empathetic and sympathetic support from Lawrence, Steve and Louis, the "core trio" eventually rise to the occasion. We weren't out of the woods yet. In fact, we literally were in the woods! There was much work to do. But we were going to push on. And these shows showed us the path forward. This could work. And so began a crazy, jazzy, anything-goes period that I have always thought of as our "circus era"!
* "Move Closer" is the seed from which "Someone's In My Head" and the later-era LOOB song "Coffemaker" come from. I think it was me who put the kibosh on "Move Closer", and suggested we remove the end part and put it into our fledgling but promising new song "Someone's In My Head". Listening to "Move Closer" now, and listening to the lyrics closely, I can see how lovely that coda originally fit in with "Coffeemaker", which was/is a really nice song.
On the other hand...."Someone's In My Head" and that coda.....that's perfection!
Arrowhead Ranch, 11/9/91
Smile
Thundersong
Wintertime
I Owe ->
Gimme Fun ->
It's All Right
Bambaleda
Move Closer
Sailing
Baby, It's Warm Outside
* We also played "I Know Your Name", right before "Sailing" but it's missing from this cassette.
Hubert Poole - guitar, vocal, percussion
Ted Schreiber - bass, vocal, percussion
Michael Goodman - drums, vocal
Lawrence Krauser - electric piano, synth, trumpet
Steve Goodman - percussion, accordion
Louis DeVirgilio - trumpet
recorded on DAT, this is a dub I made for my brother.
download here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/57ad9dd40y7mvoj/1991-11-09+Arrowhead+Ranch.zip
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After I wrote the above post, I found some materials in storage:
First, the October announcement of the gig - there is a story about the Lauterbach's gig that's mentioned, but I'm going to leave that for another time.
Instead....Frank left us flat! Here's what I happened to find in an old notebook I just happened to grab out of my storage locker the other day:
Here's my verdict upon seeing the work we had cut out for us, from that first rehearsal without Frank:
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| Mike's verdict: "Fuck!" |
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| "The worst gigs we've ever played" and "weekend of disaster". Still....a mighty good "Sailing"!!! |
