17- The end of the sixties

I was supposed to meet up with Hank and possibly Jimmy in New York at the Jerry Lewis telethon on Labor Day three weeks after Woodstock.

I made arrangements with Frank on 42nd Street when he was going down into a subway back to Lori’s place in the East Village. He had taken acid and was getting off, asking me to take him home so he wouldn’t get lost.

I was already late to meet Vinnie for the ride back to Fort Dix. We were both AWOL and I did not want to miss bed check.

I couldn’t find them in the crowd – and much later learned Jimmy never came.

I assumed Frank might have forgotten in the haze of his acid trip, but I waited for him, accidentally bumping into Soupy Sales on the sidewalk before I gave up.

I did not realize that this would be the last chance I would see any of them for a whole year – even though I got discharged from the Army at the end of October.

Frank called it a weird dream, me leaving him tripping and then finding out in mid-November that I had taken off somewhere after stealing a bunch of my uncle’s money (another run away attempt, but this time with a bundle of cash) only to have my uncles set up outside the Little Falls Laundry to follow him and my other friends around, my family assuming Jimmy or Frank or Alf or Bob were hiding me out just the way they did the last time.

They were like undercover cops waiting outside Lori’s apartment, watching my friends come and go, following each of them on the assumption one of them would lead me to where I was hiding out.

“They were armed to the teeth,” Jimmy recalled. “They had those World War II rifles with them, and they scared the living daylights out of me.”

Then, on the block where Lori lived my uncles saw someone who looked like me and the chase began. The poor fool thought they were the police, but didn’t wait around to make sure, he started to run, and my uncles ran after him, waving their guns.

A brief report of this later appeared in the East Village Other although no names were used, and no one was arrested.

The guy must have been on speed because he gave a good account for himself running through the East Village and into the West Village, my uncles falling back one by one until Ritchie finally tackled him in Washington Square Park where he discovered the mistake and let him go.

I tried to write Frank from the West Coast but put Lori’s real name instead of the name she was using to collect welfare on, and the letter came back. So, Frank didn’t know where I was until I tried another letter, which amazed Jimmy.

“You put Frank’s name on it, no street number, and somehow he got it,” Jimmy later recalled. “Strange.”

Life in the Garley Gang went on without me, of course, everybody doing a lot of drugs, highlighted by a New Year’s Eve bash at the Filmore East on Dec. 31, 1969.

If I hadn’t been on the run from the police at the time, I would have likely jointed them in their caravan to Manhattan to see Jimi Hendrix perform.

Frank had missed Hendrix at Woodstock after coming down with pneumonia while also tripping on LSD and was flown out clutching the arm of the media, pleading to remain until Hendrix played.

He vowed not to miss him again.

“He started taking drugs before he went,” Jimmy told me later. “All kinds of different drugs. One drug after another, saying he wasn’t getting off. We kept telling him to stop taking the stuff until he was sure, then suddenly he’s off his rocker. He was ok at the concert. But when we got back to his and Lori’s apartment on East 5th Street he was off his rocker. He just bounced up and down and all around, bouncing off the walls, then out the door into the hall. He was naked except for his socks. We started to go downstairs, but when we blocked him, he ran to the roof instead. There is was naked in the cold running from snow-covered roof to snow covered roof until we tackled him and dragged him back to the apartment, keeping guard on him until he started to come down.”

This incent followed by a few other incidents involving LSD convinced Jimmy that Frank would not live to see 25 years old, and the five-dollar bet with Frank that he wouldn’t.

Look to the skies, Jimmy says (Dec.19, 1999)

December 19, 1999

An old horror movie ends with a warning to people to look to the skies, part of its message when beings from outer space intend to invade us in the future.

According to Jimmy, not only have we already been invaded, but the government knows about it and may well be part of a vast conspiracy to undermine humankind.

This is nothing new. Jimmy has postulated some version of this since the early 1970s, part of an outgrowth of the Pentagon Papers era when we all began to suspect that someone – especially government – is lying to us about something, even if we’re not sure exactly what or why they are lying.

But over the years, Jimmy has compiled more and more “data” so that with each visit we are exposed to yet another aspect of this great conspiracy.

Yesterday’s visit introduced us to the concept of “chem trails” in which high-flying jets eject chemicals into the atmosphere. From the ground these look like vapor trail that are supposedly the biproduct of air flight.

Jimmy, however, points to the crisscross pattern which were very evident above the shopping mall yesterday and he tells us they are no accident.

Jimmy has the gift of gab the way his father, Basil did, and sometimes as with Basil, it is difficult to tell whether he is stating fact or simply spinning a tale to entertain us.

But he can be convincing and sometimes, I am conflicted over whether or not to take at face value many of his more outrageous concepts.

Paranoids – and I’m not claiming Jimmy is one – can be very convincing because they believe the illusion so thoroughly and for that reason pull you in.

They – and this does include Jimmy – spend a lot of time gathering “evidence” making it extremely difficult to argue against them since most people do not have the time or energy to research every one of their “facts.”

In the case of chem trails it would take a full government disclosure to prove or disprove his claim.

But even then, Jimmy might suggest the government is holding back or flat out lying.

So, you can’t win.

“You find the truth in odd places,” he told us over coffee at the mall. “What better way to hide the truth than to include it in something that can be proven as a lie.”

“What?”

“It makes sense. If they want to cover something up, they package it so that when you dismiss the lie, you also dismiss the truth,” Jimmy said.

This had my head spinning.

Jimmy said clues regarding space aliens are everywhere.

“You only need to know where to look,” he said.

And Jimmy has looked for years, learning to read the sacred texts of people like Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Graves, tracing the conspiracies of thee past until he knew them all as will as the original conspirators.

While the seeds of Jimmy’s theories were planted in his brain years ago, many began to bloom when he discovered the internet (he was on the net before webpages even existed) where he found kindred spirits.

Jimmy said there are three possible reasons why the United states Government would want to spray the skies above its own population.

First the government may be testing some kind of chemical delivery system.

Secondly, the government is already delivering some chemical agent designed to affect us.

Thirdly, the government is beefing up the depleted ozone to keep up from being fried by ultraviolent rays from space.

“Of the three, I think the last is most likely,” Jimmy said, again pointing up at the crisscrossed pattern in the sky above the mall. “But I wouldn’t discount the first two theories.”

The government, he said, could be testing a delivery system that would provide an antidote to a chemical attack by terrorists – or mood-altering substances in case of a riot or a revolution.

Or the government could already to acting to counter some attack that has already occurred.

“Haven’t you noticed how many people are suffering colds that last eight to ten weeks?” Jimmy asked.

Of course, the government itself might be attacking us or experimenting on us.

The more Jimmy talked, the more believable his tale began. We started looking around, at the sky, at other people in the mall.

Were we being watched?

On the ride home after leaving Jimmy at the front door of the library (he didn’t want us to see where he lived), we decided we didn’t really want to know the truth.

If the world is controlled by alien beings, if the government is conducting experiments on us, we would not be able to stop it, and it was pointless to keep looking to the skies, or over our shoulders.

A mutual friend later told me that many intelligent people fall for ideas like Jimmy’s – people capable of building mountains of conspiracies out of mole hills of circumstances.

“They live dull lives,” this practical friend said. “they need these things to make their lives seem exciting.”

Out of curiosity, I went onto the internet to look up “chem trails” and came upon thousands of pages of documentation, personal testimony, photographs of airplane, even satellite images of the patterns.

I downloaded some until at one point my computer jammed.

On any other day I would have thought nothing of the matter, except to get angry about how old and inadequate my personal computer was in the age of complicated internet imagery.

But this time, the first thought that struck me was: “They found out I’m looking into this.”

They? Who?

With a sigh, I turned off my computer and went bed.

Jessica is not Ginger (June 1, 1985)

June 1, 1985

So, what do we know about Jessica?

What kind of woman is it that has dragged Jimmy over the coals?

She is 22, the same Susan was when I dated her five years ago.

She is pretty, but not beautiful – her mouth is too wide so popular in Atlantic City or Madison Avenue pageantry. While not fat, she is what some people call “big boned” and tends to stand out in a crowd.

She looks a little like Ginger, just not nearly as special. Ginger has inner beauty Jessica lacks.

She is dominant – both a fault and an attribute. But she does not seem to function well in confusion or emotional crisis.

What stands out most is her gall. She like many people her age presumes she knows things she doesn’t and tends to comment on everything even when she shouldn’t.

She reminds me a lot of Jimmy, who in his early days managed to twist facts and figures to verify anything he had to say.

Unfortunately, Jessica lacks the talent to make facts work for her the way Jimmy could and often talks on the wrong side of the facts.

Like many Americans, Jessica is materialistic, and Jimmy in long talks with me has made many, many attempts to defend this side of her.

“She has to look out for herself, you know,” he told me more than once.”

But this side of her is irritating. She seems to care for nothing else but herself.

Today, for instance, one of the Fotomat booths she worked in, got into a shit load of trouble with customers because earlier this week she insisted on going to lunch before the truck from the lab delivered people’s processed photos or picking up the orders that needed to do to the lab – totally screwing up the orders for the rest of the week and creating havoc as customers came to pick up film that wasn’t ready.

Worse still, she didn’t stick around to hear the complaints, choosing not to come into work so that Tony – one of the true gentlemen in this business – had to handle the mess.

“She just doesn’t care,” Bob, the area manager said, “and I might have to fire her, Jim or no Jim.”

Bob likes Jim but is a bit anal when it comes to business.

It is difficult to see how Jessica attitude will benefit her in the future.

To be honest, this kind of attitude hasn’t helped Jimmy much, although Jimmy is smarter, and sometimes kinder, and people tend to have extreme reactions to him, to either absolutely love him, or hate him.

But what is Jessica’s motive here?

I don’t know her well enough to read her in regard to Jimmy.

She said she wants to work in graphic design. This is part of Jimmy’s attraction to her.

She seems to have talent as an artist. But she’s too selfish ever to settle for the starving artist bit the way Jimmy seemingly has.

She wants everything up front.

She appears to have more ambition than ability.

She just graduated college but refuses to get a job in the film company that offered her one, saying she doesn’t want to work an assembly line like a robot.

She seems to think working regular work might hurt her ability to create later.

I keep thinking that a dose of humility would do her some good and shock her into recognizing that we all have to make a living somehow while finding our way to better things.

But this seems unlikely.

I raise this with Jimmy who tells me she’ll grow out of it.

Jessica is not Ginger, no matter how much Jimmy seems to want her to be. She has none of Ginger’s sensibilities or more importantly, none of Ginger’s heart.

Jessica seems destined for a self-created torture chamber of a boring existence.

Cornel Wilde

January 15, 2014

 I don't think anybody intended for us to do what we did.

 Jimmy just wanted to do another one of those tapes that we always used to do like the one he did when I was out in Portland.

 Or the one we did for Ginger when we were in Jimmy's parents’ basement in Pompton Lakes.

Someone had a tape recorder; Jimmy had a guitar and he wanted us all to sing along.

We weren't even really drunk or high the way we were for the Pine Street recording that Christmas Eve when I gave Frank Quackenbush a tape recorder.

 I'm sure we were high but not that high and not high enough to explain what happened.

Jimmy started strumming the usual stuff, Neil Young and The Beatles but then someone noticed an old drum that Lewis had brought back from Afghanistan and decided that might make a good accompaniment.

 I'm not sure just who it was that grabbed it up-- maybe Louis maybe Julie maybe somebody else.

We were in the big apartment in Passaic at 86 Passaic Street it was filled with all of those fancy furniture, items that Garrick would later inherit and store in Frank Quackenbush’s basement until long after Frank died in 1995 and Ann died sometime in the early 2000s and may still even be rotting there today now that Darren owns the old house in Haledon.

When the beating started, when that drum started, the feeling that old apartment in Passaic changed, we all changed; it was as if we had reverted back to our roots back before there was a differentiation between white and black or Asian and we were all part of some primitive tribe.

Everybody wanted to get involved with the beat and so people started pounding on things, on the table top, on the couch even on their own knees or just clapped -- and then somebody figured out that they could use pots and pans and so they went in to the kitchen and brought out everything that was metal and all the utensils  and started beating on the pots and pans to the beat of the drum.

It was manic and it caught us all up in a fever of something I don't think any of us understood. We all got louder and faster and we beat harder.

And then in the midst of all this Jimmy started playing guitar, not like the old days where he was just finding some tunes that he remembered on the radio but something original, something that seemed to flow in and out of the drumbeats.

Then he started the sing

“Cornel Wilde. Cornel Wilde; where are you running to, man; you got no clothes on you.”

He was referring to the actor that played in naked prey in which a man was set loose in the jungle and was hunted, the movie somehow fitting in Jimmy's perverse vision of Africa and at the same time it fit this passionate thing that was going on, escalating, and vibrating and tearing up the air till we could hardly breathe; we just pounded; he sang; he strummed the guitar; we pounded harder; he played harder; he sang more.

When the whole thing ended the silence was so profound, we could only hear the crickets and the distant sound of traffic from the highway.

Nobody spoke for a very long time. Then somebody turned off the tape recorder and remove the tape

I do not know what happened to it which is what I told Jimmy this week when he called me up asking if I had it he is putting together all the old tapes that we did and thought that the songs from that night were valuable to include.

Jimmy goes through this phase every once in while in an attempt to build something out of those odd moments in our lives. But this didn’t find any of those other tapes we made, and I told him as much because it was so different even from the weird stuff he and I recorded together while high.

I told him maybe he could rerecord the song since he knew it at heart and probably had replayed it in his memory for all the years between now and back then.

But we both knew it could never be the same and that one special moment was something we could never duplicate.

The band was supposed to be fun, not a job (July 20, 2004)

July 20, 2004

John thinks Jimmy may have lost his voice, something Garrick alluded to also, though did not state it as strongly as John.

John said Jimmy’s voice gave out before the night was over at the Grasshopper and was hoarse the whole next day.

Garrick said Jimmy tends not to sing until the night of the performance, so his voice gives out.

Neither bothered to mention just how long the sets are, way out of keeping with what the audience wanted in either of the two last gigs.

With stress and cigarette smoke, I was hoarse the next day, too, and I didn’t sing a single note.

In thinking about the situation, maybe Jimmy is right – we’re all too old to be playing late nights of hard rock when we all would rather be home in bed.

Jimmy got into the latest hassle by saying he wanted to perform out – he, John and maybe Garrick, here and there as a trio.

Before long, John and Garrick threw open the doors and turned these gigs into a blast from the unbearable past, dragging in heavy equipment, inflating the music nearly as much as their egos.

Jimmy has a day job, and said he doesn’t need one at night, too – and though Garrick says the band will play only one night a month, the band would have to practice once a week – a chore for the young, but a burden for someone as old as Pauly, who just wanted to get into the scene for fun.

This isn’t to excuse Jimmy, who can be a pain at times. He’s rude, unreasonable and self-centered. But he could also possibly be right.

It amazes me how little really changes over time and we keep running into the same brick wall of issues regardless of how old we are.

These personality difficulties go all the way back to the roots of the band. But over the last few years, we have seen these same issues come back like a computer virus, often involving the same people, or mirroring those long gone such as Ritchie Gordy – who stole John’s wife at Garrick’s 50th birthday party a few years ago the way members of the band used to steal each other’s girlfriends when we were all young.

Even Garrick brings up old issues and reopens old wounds, often recalling slights from when they were kids as if building a criminal case against Jimmy.

Videos from Al & Sharon's wedding (Oct. 14, 1990)

The Wedding (Oct 14, 1990)

Blues song with Michael Alexander

And I love her

Little Wing

Round and Round -- Down by the River

Gaia

Sheer Delight

The losing end

Love of the Common Man

Texas

The death of the band (July 18, 2004)

July 18, 2004

We’re too fucking old to be going through this shit again.

But here we are, accusations being tossed around like bean bags, most of which have Jimmy Garland’s name attached.

At 55, Jimmy is eliciting the same negativity he did at 17, being blamed by his friends for a bad attitude and for supposedly threatening to break up the band – again.

John was so peeved at Jimmy that he yanked Jimmy’s name off the band’s website.

Garrick claims Jimmy said nasty things about the band’s other guitarist, Pete.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him (meaning Jimmy),” Garrick told me during a two-hour telephone conversation last night.

Even Garrick isn’t certain what caused this latest episode of “How the Band Turns,” but his has several theories.

“Jimmy was really upset about Memorial Day,” Garrick said. “He wouldn’t even talk to John after that and wouldn’t call him for weeks. This is from a man that used to call John more than once a day and at any time of day or night.”

 “While Patti (Jimmy’s sister) hated the midnight phone calls, John hates the silence more,” Garrick said, unable to put together the jigsaw puzzle of what is going on in Jimmy’s head.

Jimmy told me prior to the July 9 gig at the Grasshopper that he no longer wanted to perform in bars, a position he maintained since last year’s gig at the Mount Arlington Fire House.

Jimmy predicted that July 9 would be the last time he would perform with the band, one of the reasons why I made a point of making sure I got there. Jimmy said he intended to severe his ties with John and take off in another direction with his nephew, Robbie.

But at the Grasshopper performance, Jimmy’s other sister, Sue – almost acting like Jimmy’s business manager – said Jimmy would live up to his agreement to play a second gig in August after which all bets were off.

Garrick claims many of the current troubles started with the fire house gig more than a year ago. While Jimmy was happy with John’s recoding a computer music program of drums and other instruments to serve as a background against which they could play, John disliked the mechanical aspect and wanted to fill out the band with real musicians.

Adding insult to injury, Jimmy reportedly wants to fire Garrick claiming Garrick plays bass badly. Yet Jimmy, who Garrick admits plays bass very well, refuses to play bass.

This argument became more heated when Pete joined the band and Jimmy insisted Pete play bass instead, leaving Jimmy – who has less talent for guitar than Pete – to play rhythm guitar.

Jimmy flat out told me after the Grasshopper gig that he saw no reason why Garrick should be in the band.

“He serves no purpose,” Jimmy said.

Last night, Garrick told me that Jimmy acted mean towards Pete and John.

“And I don’t know why,” Garrick said. “Maybe he’s jealous of Pete.”

As good as a singer as Jimmy is, Garrick said, age and lack of regular performance has left Jimmy’s voice weak.

“I don’t think he can last out a whole night,” Garrick said.

Garrick believes Jimmy didn’t want Pete to join the band and that Jimmy wanted to go back to the duo he and John had in 1980, simple, uncomplicated and not much work.

Even Jimmy told me he wanted to perform, not practice.

Garrick claims Jimmy is sloppy and tends to want to do things once and then walk away.

This brings us to the performance on Memorial Day when cool weather and lack of interest left the band to play before only a handful of people.

Jimmy wanted to call the whole things off. John and the others, who come a long way to play, insisted they go on, using the time as a practice session to run through the songs.

This seems to have been the last straw for Jimmy.

“I don’t think he liked the way John took control,” Garrick said. “Jimmy has always been in control of everything. He might also have been embarrassed.”

The lack of interest by the local community and the numerous mistakes by the band may have upset Jimmy.

“So, he didn’t wall John for weeks,” Garrick said. “Jimmy doesn’t call me at all.”

Jimmy may have also angered John by plotting to steal the band’s drummer to have him play with the band Jimmy and Robbie are starting.

This bickering, of course, is nothing new.

The band has always gone through such fights in the past, frequently causing Jimmy to quit.

But this time many of the volatile personalities no longer exist as they had in other versions of the band.

“John has bent over backwards to accommodate Jimmy,” Garrick said. “Jimmy can sing or not sing, play whatever songs he wants, and he doesn’t’ even have to practice when we do. He can just show up to sing. But none of that is good enough for him. So, I don’t know what to say.”

Is this merely Jimmy’s old habits repeating themselves or has something happened we don’t know about, some detail we missed in examining Jimmy’s behavior.

Garrick’s reaction is a mixture of confusion, anger and hurt.

Jimmy’s diverse talents have always allowed him to get by doing as little as possible. Early on, his brilliance and cleverness got him the attention he needed without need of significant work – a kind of jazzing around that caused him and others to believe he was destined to succeed at something someday.

Well, someday came and he has yet to succeed, and now, down the road, he sees not a bright future, but rather the grave – and having done so little for so long, he grasps at hope to give him some measure of recognition. Yet, he is unprepared, unpolished and can only rely on his old talent for the superficial at an age when jazzing around is no longer cute or clever, and people expect him to give them something of substance – when he does not know how.

And as a result, he seeks out people who do not know enough to hold him to that higher standard, such as he nephew Robbie or even – me.

The sheep look up album 1993

This is John, Jimmy and others recorded in early 1990s. 

sheep

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

sheep 

Sophisticatos First Album 1991

This is my favorite album by Jimmy, John and Chip recorded in 1990. These tracks from from a tape played so often there is some damage. But you'll get the idea.


First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

First albumn

Sleeper at the Red Barron (labor day 1978)

I recorded this off the board on Labor Day weekend at the Red Baron. The band did many more songs over its year-long existence, but this remains the only recording of this variation. These are links to the music song by song as they were recorded that night

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

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Sleeper 1

Sleeper 1

Jimmy Garland and the Temple of Doom (March 1, 2007)

March 1, 2007

Jimmy introduced me to Indiana Jones back in 1980 he said it was the best movie he ever saw outside of Lawrence of Arabia of course.

I didn't know it at the time how much it fit into a mythology that Jimmy had been selling for quite some time, about the concept of who Christ was and the Christian history.

Jimmy knew about the Nazi search for artifacts long before it became popular knowledge. He had been researching that for years just the way he researched climate change – perpetually pestering me with promises that the world would end soon as put us all out of misery.

He hated the second Indiana Jones movie as much as I did and understood just how much it had ripped off old cliffhanger movies and those dance movies from the 1930s that seemed so risqué at the time.

But when the Last Crusade movie came out Jimmy was fully in his element, having research all of that long before – even though he knew the grail wasn’t really cup of Christ at all.

It with smug satisfaction Jimmy understood that the world had finally caught up to where he had been all along and how people were finally waking up to understand some of the more interesting aspects of World War II.

Since our teens, Jimmy kept telling me that the Nazis had been obsessed with religious mythology and spent a good portion of the 1930s in a desperate search for icons they could use as weapons.

Recently, Jimmy was both pleased and disappointed when The DaVinci Code came out -- partly because he knew the end long before the author probably did having, spread that stuff to us about the Grail being the descendants of Christ not the cup in which held His dying blood.

For years, Jimmy used to pull books off a bookshelf at the Haas house on the lake to explain what was really going on in history, informing us the back stories from the Templar Knights in

He understood it all.

Even now, I am still his unwilling student to whom he feels the need to impart his knowledge, before the world comes to an end or modern media bastardizes it into something too slick to be real.

I got a number of private sessions up at Ginger's house in Towaco where Jimmy would refer to some of this historic data while we both got stoned and played Mastermind.

He is an Irish Catholic heretic much like Graham Greene and is convinced that I had the makings of one as well

 I'm not sure I do but I certainly found the whole game entertaining.

Jimmy quits the band again? (July 16, 2004)

  

July 16, 2004

I didn’t even notice Jimmy’s name missing from the band’s website until Sharon mentioned not seeing it.

When I talked to Jimmy yesterday, he was surprised the John had left old photographs of him up.

All this is the usual band politics, played out in our 50s in much the same way as it was when we were in our 20s.

Jimmy said he doesn’t want to play in bars anymore.

John, according to Garrick, claim bars are the few places left where the band can play.

For most of our lives Jimmy has shown a distinct distain for the bar scene, rarely falling into the usual web of drugs, sex and ego.

During those years, he tended to engage in an uncomfortable dance, lured into performing, then becoming disgusted with the scene, he quits, only to get lured back with promises the band never intends to keep.

Garrick calls Jimmy lazy, and claims Jimmy can’t commit. But it is all infinitely more complex, clashing motivations and ultimate goals.

Jimmy wants to play but not before a crowd of drunken fools – like those we saw hooting and hollering at the Grasshopper when the band played there last week.

“I don’t want to be standing up there in a haze of cigarette smoke,” he told me before the band went on.

Jimmy doesn’t return to the band to relive past glories but is driven by some compulsion beyond ego or sex, a need to stir up a creative stew started in the band’s youth yet never fully cooked.

That Friday in the bar, the band came alive in a way it could not in any other venue, calling up internal resources they had learned by rote, the grind of regular bar performances having taught them all on some level something fundamental they could not have learned at home regardless of how much they practiced, something that worked down deep into their DNA and came out at times like these.

Yet just as fundamental is Jimmy’s dismay, this feeling of wasted time, this fear that he might forever get caught up in these cursed places, rolling songs up one side of a hill to watch them roll back down into a haze of smoke and a maze of drunken faces, each time Jimmy forced to push the music back up the hill until old age and death end the cycle.

Jimmy knows he can’t escape the curse totally. So, he’s arranged to play with his nephew Robbie, as if to subdue the craving that always draws him back into the band’s seductive arms. He’s looking for a less frequent fix and a far less hostile environment – once or twice a month, as a house band in some coffee shop somewhere that does not (in his words) require him to practice so much or work so hard.

And the others, who need his talent, simply shake their heads, removing his name from the website and wait out the time until Jimmy’s cravings for real performance draw him back into their welcoming arms, each of the band members (in particular John) hoping they don’t die before the cycle starts again.

The last dance that wasn’t the last (July 10, 2004)

 

July 10, 2004

Jimmy said this would be the last dance the band would dance, barroom stuff just too strenuous for old men like us.

“I’m sick of drunks and cigarette smoke,” he told me yesterday when I called to find out what time the band went on.

So, with Jimmy predicting the end of an era at a place so close to where we all started, I called a tape recorder and camera to record the last vestige of the band.

We came early – unused to the rock and roll life which started late and dragged out into the early morning hours. It was one of those small details that made me give it all up in the first place, unable to put up with the lack of sleep and excess of alcohol.

Even 9 p.m. – which we thought the band started at – proved too early, but we did not find that out until after we had arrived.

To waste time, I drove around the old stomping ground, the history of the Garley Gang so imprinted on its face that everywhere I looked I saw memories – even in the spaces so-called progress had neutered with new construction, such as the wedding hall where the bad and bowling alley once stood, condos where Garrick’s cottage once was, and sacrilege of sacrileges town houses on the property once home to the Red Baron (later called Rose Buds.)

We stopped on Main Street for food – an unnecessary arrangement since the Grasshopper (once known as The Locker Room) also served food we could have partaken in had we known standing outside.

Traffic passed us along Main Street, thick with the same kinds of faces I recalled from living and later reporting there, pale-faced Republicans who had for the mot part fended off the assault of immigrants from Paterson by keeping their taxes high and property values exorbitant.

This was the birthplace of the Garley Gang revolution, as suburban in its entirety as any of the popular Sixties rebellions better remembered in history.

When we got back to the Grasshopper, Jimmy waited in the parking lot (He always seemed to anticipate our arrival.) Nearly every parking slot was filled. Jimmy jealously guarded a vacant spot near the door so that the band could unload its equipment when they arrived.

“They’re still eating dinner in here,” Jimmy told us as we walked up from the lower level where we had found a lucky spot at the end of an aisle.

Jimmy looked as he has always looked, wearing a blue baseball cap, a buttoned-down shirt, jeans and sneakers – a uniform I would insist he get buried in since I fully believe he came into this world wearing such an outfit.

But he did look grayer – not old. Jimmy never aged. He was born an adult and looked now as he had when I first met him at the dry cleaner on East Main Street all so many years ago.

Sharon was annoyed at the idea that the band would start even later than we’d anticipated, rock and roll never started on time – especially with this cast of characters.

While the Locker Room had no where near the same depth of history as the now-demolished Red Barron, the band in its various incarnations had played here from time to time.

For me, the most memorable occurred in the early 1980s (1983 or early 1984) when John, Jimmy, Rich Gordy and several others tried to start a rhythm and blues band with me as sound man. That incarnation lasted only for one gig of two nights in this establishment when the band members – many stoned-on heroin – smashed up their own equipment at the end of the second night in a heart-stopping sequence I will remember until my grave.

We were not standing there long when Garrick arrived up in his Ford Bronco, larger than he had been, wearing a plaid shirt and a New York Yankees hat – a lifelong commitment to the most capitalistic of American sports teams.

Garrick was apparently in a playful mood, ducking behind parked cars to keep us from seeing him until he got right up on us.

We never stop being like kids whenever we get together, perpetual adolescents, inspired no doubt this time by being so close to the place of our roots. We fell back into the same mental state we had as teens, thinking and acting the same way, unable to kick the habit we had developed over a life time from an era when we saw each other four or even five times a week rather than five or six times a year as we did now.

But such meetings made us aware that part of our crew, the fourth suit in this historic deck of cards, was missing, gone back in 1995, leaving a permanent gaping hole in each of us, and tainting these get-togethers with just a touch of sadness.

Frank had spent so much time around the band that some considered him an unofficial member. Even after his death, Frank’s spirit seemed to appear in and around us each time the band got back together to play.

And here, we all felt it again. I looked at Jimmy, Jimmy looked at Garrick, Garrick looked at me. And we knew.

By this time, other people started to arrive – including my former work mates at the Bloomfield newspaper, O’Keefe and Kelly who I had invited to come see the bad, both giving Jimmy a run for sarcasm, although Jimmy retained his title because he was rarely bitter the way these two often were, though listening to them together was like hearing the sound track to one of those spiffy 1930s movies such as His Girl Friday.

Kelly would have made Jonathan Swift sound positive and continued an ongoing rant against Jersey City where he had also worked briefly with me and against Caren, the editor, who had treated him like a rookie. He did not understand why I needed to take as many pictures of the band as I did that night and had done at a previous event at a picnic in Mouth Arlington. He seemed to think I was working instead of getting drunk and having fun like the good Irishman he was.

John Monett arrived a short time later with his new girlfriend – who turned out to be Jimmy’s youngest sister, Patti, and Patti’s (therefore Jimmy’s) mother, and had also brought a truck full of equipment we had previously presumed Garrick had brought.

It was another flash back to that time when Garrick and I did most of the hauling of such stuff for this band and for varieties of it that included John Ritchie, and how weary we were after dropping the equipment off in Little Falls before stumbling into the 24-hour 7-11 on Squirrelwood Road in West Paterson for food before heading home to sleep.

We all stood in the parking lot waiting for people inside to finish their meals, one crowd taking the place of the other, much like changing shifts in the factories some of our fathers worked in when they were young.

I recognized many of the arriving faces, even though I could not put a name to them, from those days when the band played regularly, coming on this night with the same nostalgia I felt, and guaranteeing the band would have a good crowd and keep bar management happy.

Once inside, I discovered the interior had changed greatly from that previous time almost twenty years earlier when I was last here, the bits and pieces of the interior shifted into a different format, so it was difficult to envision how it had been. It was the crowd that kept the memory alive, pouring in like a rising tide of memories.

One by one the most familiar people came up to say hello, Pam – the underage girl the band used to sneak into the Red Baron with her even younger sister, Arlene who Frank for a time had a crush on. Garrick’s cousin Stevie came, too – but without the boa constrictor Jimmy once loved but stopped loving when it shit on his feet in a softball field behind Ginger’s house in Towaco. Dawn and her husband Frank came, too, people with whom we often shared Christmas Eve on our never-ending search each year for Christmas.

When Jimmy got behind the microphone, it was not the aging Jimmy I had talked to on the phone, a glint coming back into his eyes as he looked out at the crowd. Perhaps he imagined he was back on that tiny stall of a stage in the Red Baron all so many years ago, seeing the same faces now as he did not, feeling the same energy course through his veins.

John Lennon once said in reference to The Beatles, that the story is about the music.

The same could be said that night in regard to Jimmy Garland.