NY Story #6: A Night To Remember (Come On at CBGB)

"DB X 2 ,eno, & Bianca
see Come On At CBGB winter '78

My 1st New York band was started with my german neighbor ralf (on bass), his friend & screenplay collaborator jamie handling vocal chores, my friend page the r.i.s.d. graduate/ airbrush artist contributing rehearsal space & drumming, and the lovely elena (met when she was but a hi school senior at Stuyvesant School, for bright kids!) on 2nd guitar…me: lead g. & musical direction!

*Just Added! GE as JOKER for Page Wood's airbrush illustration (1978)

We were in the new wave mold, coulda-shoulda-been on NO NEW YORK for instance, received both favorable & unfav. comparisons to Talking Heads (only a Clintonesque fool would deny any influence!) who were friends of ours!

Page & I (both Pisces ) are still good pals, as I knew we'd be the first evening I happened over to his loft & saw we had 80% the same taste in records! We had 2 commitments one Monday -Tuesday of the winter of '78: David Bowie's 1st night of 2 in concert at the Garden , and an early Come On gig at CBGB the next night....

Up in the not-great seats looking down on the pre-show stage, I hazarded a guess as to how the concert might open: LOW was just released & I felt maybe the'y'd begin with one of the slow strange moody pieces from side 2 & sure ENOugh, Warsawa opened!…Adrain Belew was featured in the band as the newest guitar-hero ( I didn't care for his farmboy-in-overalls look or showoffy style) being myself perhaps at the vanguard of a most modern/ prepostmodern anti-guitar-hero style eschewing effects & 'sexy' screaming solos!

There Page & I were dateless, perhaps a touch preoccupied with the pressures of a CBGB!- Big Time!-Gig the next nite! Trying to groove on the cavernous impersonal cattle-herded ambience of Madison Square G. with our heroes bowie & eno entertaining!

...THE NEXT EVENING...

The first set at CB's went OK, I probably broke a string ( many an early gig's vexing challenge), and we were hanging around trying to relax before the 2nd set (for mainly our friends) on a slowish night, when Hilly-the-owner's daughter rushed back to tell us: "You guys gotta get on stage NOW!-David Bowie, Eno and Bianca Jagger just showed up with David Byrne!!!"

Wo! Whatta guy! David of Talking Heads truly coming through with a noble favor! (Maybe I'd done them 1 or 2 since we'd met) -Bringing these cats down to see us after Bowie's last show at the Garden, Byrne having checked us out & dug our set at Max's KC a week or 2 earlier...

SO... On we went! The club, the hour, the focus, the glory, the sweat, the energy! (Eno to Bowie halfway thru our show: "What do you thing of the 'new dissonance?'" --"It's quite marvelous, actually!")

(Meanwhile, enjoy COME ON's "Disney Land" 1:52)

But the disco bunny Bianca wanted to leave! before we'd done, so Bowie took her to Studio 54, & eno remained to meet with us & chat over tea at a friend's nearby loft, where the Heads also always hung out between their CB's shows!

&that, dear patient reader-so-far, was about all that happened from that magically promising-seeming nite! Bowie & Eno were spread pretty thin w/ commitments to devo, the B52's, "no new york", who the fuck knows what else?, yeah we got some publicity mileage & local clout from the evening, but the fate of COME ON was to be (hang head & weep, schmuck!) ALBUMLESS!

Altho' we did put on a mean skit BUSINESSMEN IN SPACE at the new wave vaudeville show (curated by ann magnuson circa 1979) where we met Klaus Nomi, the true show-stealer of that venue & created some more cognoscenti-only history!



Wouldn't ya know, bowie'd come along a few months later & 1/2 glom on... give - a - break - to nomi, by asking him & joey arias to back him (in Bendel's gowns) on Saturday Night Live!

Which reminds me in closing of the perpetual- wannabe's / sour grapes version /of the fact (which I was secretly 'proud of' for several years) that: David Bowie had seen me onstage more times than I had him! (He caught my subsequent band Strange Party's opening night extravaganza for Danceteria, & dug our horn player Steve enough to make him an offer to tour with him! & who could refuse?) The score of who's -seen- who? got even …back at MSG where I saw Steve onstage behind DB with…the Borneo Horns!

At least, that concert as a freebie!