26th August - Amityville Horror

Two gigs to play on the 26th - the first at Lefty's in Lindenhust, Long Island, NY and the second at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn, NY. After travelling for miles in sweltering conditions we arrived at Lefty's in good spirits - although I did wonder why I was unpacking the trailer on my own until I realised that the free (for us) BBQ would come to an end at 7:30 and it was already 6:45! Having set up in double quick time we got an initial feel for the bar - I stroked the part of my body under my head and realised it was sore. Yes I was a redneck too! The sign in the toilets for the previous nights entertainment should have told us everything we needed to know - they had been played to by a 17 piece big band playing all the hits by Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey - presumably by using muted trumpets, acoustic guitar and brushes on the drums. Chris'sake we're a frickin' rock band. Sure enough, before we started the muttering began and someone able to string syllables together into proto-words came over stuttering something like 'you ain't all gonna be too loud for us are you now?' - of course not, my good man, replied Lord Larrington of Skycrest our Manager, 'we wouldn't want to frighten your chickens'. Well, we took them down Route 66, reminded them that Johnny is often Good and reflected that Summertime can give you the blues. Up trots the old rouge-scragged barkeep - 'I say boy, I say boy, its so loud my cockroach is frightened and I can't hear what the barflies are asking for' Mustering all the dignity he could, and keeping sarcasm to a minimum, Lord Larrington replied 'and of course these people are complete strangers and don't come in EVERY night ordering the same things by pointing'. The only occasion we haven't played Fire On The Moon as our closing number was here, I'd had enough, took on collective responsibility for being stroppy and said 'fuck 'em. Its like pearls before swine. Lets go'.

 And off we went to Brooklyn where we went on at 12:00, played in a great atmospheric venue to an appreciative audience. Well we think the expressions used such as 'fucking awesome', 'you rocked' etc translate well to UK English so the night wasn't lost.

 And the Amityville reference - well to get to Lindenhurst we had to go through Hicksville and the next town was Amityville, just a few hundred yards away. We should have known!

 Steve