Then, two weeks ago I look in the Voice and see that Arthur Lee is playing the Bottom Line the same night. Damn! He's on a mini-tour now, promoting the new Love box-set on Rhino (excellent, by the way--it contains 'most everything you'd want to hear, plus a very wonderful booklet) and it's highly unlikely he'll be back in these parts anytime soon. But the tickets for this Pennsylvania thing had already been procured.

Trouble is, it's in Pennsylvania. I have nothing against the state--well, yes I guess I do. My sister went to college in Allentown in the late 70s and I was out there a lot. As long as you hung around the Theatre People (which are essentially the same anywhere you go) you're OK--but you can't venture out into the neighborhood. It's kinda like going to Stepford. I had seen this before, too--when I myself was in college, my girlfriend at the time was from Cinnaminson, NJ, which is for all intents and purposes IN Pennsylvania, being right over the water from Philadelphia. First of all, they TALK funny. Wendy remembers this as well, from her experiences in college with South Jersey Roommates--they would say things like "I can't wait for the semester to end so I can go HEUME." Well, lotsa people talk funny and I can't kill all of them, so that much will have to slide I guess. Also: these people share a trait with New Englanders in that they have a marked distaste for anyone who "don't come from 'round here, do ya?" But they're less tolerant and also more obvious about it. My friend Bob Pagani, whom I don't currently know the whereabouts of, was forced by his radio career to spend some considerable amount of time in the A.B.E., which is what the locals call the Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton area--and he has a theory about Easton: it's where the circus wagons broke down for good.

I believe I already told you about my latest Pennsylvania experience: a trip out there last year to see our friends John and Deb in Bethlehem (they MOVED there, of course) because their daughter Kate was in one of the marching bands in some parade. Just a regular holiday parade, no mummers. Now I have long teased John about living in that place, telling him that Pennsylvania is where they grow Nazis for the rest of the country. And there's more than a kernel of truth there: according to Bob, the Perkins restaurant in Allentown, where I used to eat when visiting my sister, is nowadays the Friday and Saturday night epicenter of Nazi Skinhead youth culture in the Delaware Valley. The police are powerless to stop these little twits, and they apparently do more than just congregate. But anyway. So we go to this parade, and fronting the final marching band--I think I told you this already--are two little boys in GERMAN ARMY UNIFORMS, complete with armbands. No swastika, but jackboots and everything. I grabbed John's arm and hissed "What the F*** am I looking at????" and he insisted that I shut up for my own good. I don't know whether that was more funny or more harrowing. I'll NEVER know.

"Steppenwolf", as you might have guessed, consists of John Kay and a bunch of poodle-haired KIDS in spandex.. The good news is that John looks and sounds absolutely great. His voice has not lost one speck of power. He has cultivated a kind of a Geraldo Rivera look but it works. Howver I note quickly, with more than a little chagrin, that I hear a bass and there's NO BASS PLAYER--hello. And the Keith Emerson Guy behind this HUGE pile of gear is not playing a keyboard bass, either. It's all on MIDI. It sounded okay, but it's just WRONG. Nick St. Nicholas is not very high on my list of "People Who Can Effectively Be Replaced By Microchips," how about YOUR list? I notice also that the drum kit is not miked except for the cymbals. This is another new dodge that a lot of these chipheads are pulling nowadays: the drums all have contact mics that trigger MIDI'ed samples of Perfect Drum Sounds. That's why the snare always sounded the same no matter how the little f*** hit the thing. And the guitar player was the same old Randy Rhoads CRAP--don't any of these guys know that Poodle Metal is dead??? That Cinderella, Winger and Poison can't get arrested in 1995????

Yeah but anyway John was real good. His new material seems like it was written for this kind of band to play, which is not so good, but he sang the old songs like he had written them yesterday.

During the first intermission some announcer was gamely announcing the upcoming acts for the "summer season"--among them, Gallagher. Yes? I took the intermission opportunity to share my Nazi theory with Frankel, and also pointed out that on account of his name he would probably be the first one loaded on the truck.

Jefferson What? was next, and they were brilliant as usual. Paul was electric this time instead of acoustic, and standing up instead of chaired. When we saw them at Tramps he was sitting down all night--I was afraid there was something wrong with him. Nope. As for Marty, he was in very good voice and the only problem was that he has gone bottle-blonde again, not a very good look for him. He looks like someone who would have been on Dragnet in 1969, arrested for selling pills to innocent high school kids, in an attempt to Lead Them Down The Wrong Path. Jack was, of course, Jack. They never said who the drummer was, and the Substitute Grace, Diana Mangano, was much better than when we had seen them last winter. Excellent, in fact.

Paul's new material is the same old stuff and just as good. How does he do that? Marty's new material was a little annoying to me though--very good tunes but with lyrics that don't seem to go much of anywhere. One, called Goddess, consists of not much more than "You're a goddess, you're a goddess, you're a goddess, goddess of loooooooooove" ad infinitum, and the other song is called--I am not making this up--Let's All Smoke the Ganja Of Love.

Now, sitting in front of me--RIGHT in front of me--is a Very Tall Person who looks like a cross between Martin Mull and Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick--the guy has got Meat Department Manager practically tattooed on his forehead. (And yes, I know that when I get to St. Peter's gate they're gonna remind me of that crack and say, "What exactly were YOU doing for a living when you made that excellent little jibe, nitwit?" but I'll cross that rainbow bridge when I come to it.) Where was I? Oh, yeah, so anyway the guy was vexing me because he would not hold still--he kept leaning over to nuzzle or speak to or drool on his Pennsylvania Mama to his right, who had the same f***ing Dorothy Hamill haircut that they ALL HAVE--and I couldn't see anything. He was quite a tall fellow. So I quietly dubbed him "Horst Wurst" since I needed something to call him in the creative epithets I was devising under my breath.

Well, the set ends and this guy turns around and says to me and Wendy (mainly Wendy, since I turned my head to try and talk to Bill) "Well, I sure feel silly--I thought that was Procol Harum! Isn't Jefferson Starship the band that did "Jane" and "We Built This City?????"

Well, fair enough. Wendy tried to explain patiently--he seemed like a perfectly nice guy after all, and being an idiot is still not a crime yet. He listened intently and then said, loud enough for the whole place to hear, "Well they should give you some kind of program or something that tells you, you know, which guys left to join what other bands or which other people came from other bands to take their places!" Wendy actually took the time to explain to him that that would be a very long list and not practical. He seemed to accept this. But then he said "I didn't even hear any songs I recognized!" Let the record show that they played not only White Rabbit, Somebody To Love and Volunteers, but also---c'mon, Horst!---Miracles.

Well, anyway, he wound up the subject with "So that wasn't Grace Slick then, right?" (Diana appears to be in her late twenties, as near as I can make out. Maybe a LITTLE older than that, but not much. And wearing a slinky sleeveless thing that would have, um, "revealed Grace's age," shall we say, had she worn it instead.) Well then, he wondered who the heck Procol Harum was, and Wendy threw a few song titles at him. Nothing. Not even Whiter Shade Of Pale. I left her on her own, I was not going to help. So she dismissed Horst with "You'll know it when you hear it." So I turned to Bill and said quietly, "See, I was right--these people just COME here. It's a show--that's all they know."

As I'm saying this, the guy on the house PA announces that a Jennifer Goldstein (which he pronounces "STYNE", natch) should come to the office. He repeats this announcement a few minutes later. Finally, after about ten minutes, he now wants a "Cindy Kleinberg" to come to the office. I turned to Frankel and said, "You see?? I was right--they're taking all the Jews out one at a time."

Back to Horst--the point I wanted to make was not about him being ignorant, which again is no crime, and better he should educate himself now than never. The point is about these people in general--how could he turn around and say to complete strangers at a rock and roll show, "Duh, I thought that was Procol Harum" and "They should give us a scorecard" without a shred of......of......of what? The punch line is, of course, that he expects, and apparently has every right to expect, that every other person in that theatre is right in the same boat WITH him. Can you imagine someone at the Bottom Line turning around and saying that???? Of course you can't--in more civilized parts of America people at least know not to wave their ignorance like a big German Flag, don't they? Not Horst. And not this other guy either, whom I'll tell you about in a second.....

So Procol Harum comes out (why were THEY headlining, I wonder?) and, as I expect, it's Gary Brooker and a bunch of kids. English kids, though--so, leather, not spandex. In marked contrast to The Steppenwolf Experience from earlier, though. Brooker, like Kay, sounds exactly as he did in 1972. Seriously. There's no air in the high notes, at all. Just perfect. However, the years have changed his appearance a little bit--he now looks like a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Howard Hesseman. That's not a bad thing, of course, it just makes the contrast between him and the KIDS on stage with him more marked.

Well, this batch of kids, unlike the Steppenwolf Kids, sound great. The organist in particular really has Matthew Fisher down to a T. And the guitarist and drummer apparently do NOT think they're auditioning for Van Halen--they were just fine. Very faithful. Although they didn't play any of my favorites, it was a great set. Until, three songs in, some guy on our immediate right bolts out of his chair and screams, I mean SCREAMS: "YOU SUCK, M*TH*RF***ER!!! GET OFF THE STAGE!! YOU SUCK!! WE ALL CAME HERE TO SEE STEPPENWOOOOOOOOLF!!! F*** YOU, M*TH*RF***ER!!!" and bolted out the door.

Consider this, now. He SAW Steppenwolf. If it bothered him that they only played for about 35 minutes, it didn't occur to him once during the entire hour-long Starship set that followed. And it was quite clear from his tone that he expected the entire audience to follow him out the door en masse in agreement. My mind flashed back immediately to Horst--these people do not THINK the way we do. Each of these two guys was totally convinced that the entire mob was in the same Mental Canoe with them. Weird.

The other funny thing was the way Security seems to work in this theatre--at least five "ushers", read: bouncers, watched and listened to this guy's entire tirade (which occurred right at the beginning of a very quiet song, and EVERYBODY in the place, including the band, heard every word of it) and waited until he had made his way all the way up the aisle, around the back of the theatre, and out into the Popcorn Lobby--and THEN and only then they bolted toward the door as one, following him out like the Keystone Kops. I don't know what happened outside but I'll assume they tossed him on the truck with the Jews.

We felt lucky to escape with our lives. It was a good show though!

Oh, I forgot the Procol Harum Punchline--and the one that proves I, like Horst, can admit it when I'M the idiot:

They wrap up with Whiter Shade of Pale, and again I'm thinking what a great Fisher this little guy does, when Brooker howls, "Matthew Fisher on the organ!" It was HIM. I guess that's why he played it so good. I don't feel all THAT bad--everyone else was fooled as well and he does look awfully young. Especially next to Grandpa Gary.

In other Exciting Weekend News: ever since Wendy made a Bromberg Disciple out of me, the guy's never come back to New York. Four years now. So Saturday I'm reading my Village Voice and there at the end of the Bottom Line ad: "David Bromberg's 50th Birthday Party, sponsored by the Bottom Line, at Town Hall 9/8/95." Yippee. So we woke up today and drove straight into NYC to get tickets. All the while I'm hoping two things: 1) that it won't be the same kind of bloodbath the LAST fiftieth birthday concert we went to turned out to be, and 2) that we won't show up at Town Hall on 9/8 and find out that the show is really at Stonybrook University. Those two jokes just for you, no charge. I absolutely love Town Hall and I haven't been there since 1977. (Gino Vannelli, for you trivia fans. When he was still great and nobody knew about him yet. More trivia: I have never seen more panting women in a concert audience.)

After procuring the tickets, we elected to walk a few blocks uptown to this store Wendy had read about, called ABC Home Furnishings or something like that. Six huge floors full of new and antique furniture, fabrics, knick-knacks--the place is unbelievably huge. And in the middle of Manhattan. I saw about three hundred well-worn chunks of wood that I absolutely had to have in my house. But we of course had left our $15 million in cash in our other pants. So we didn't get any.

I absolutely adore wandering around Manhattan, and I never have time to do it anymore. So this was a real good day.