{"id":31432,"date":"2024-03-13T08:00:33","date_gmt":"2024-03-13T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=31432"},"modified":"2024-08-07T09:46:06","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T13:46:06","slug":"on-the-scene-1975","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/13\/on-the-scene-1975\/","title":{"rendered":"ON THE SCENE (1975)"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI auditioned<\/strong><\/span> for a soul band at East 91 Street and Union Avenue. I had on red Adidas tennis shoes. The bandleader, Amos, liked the colors: the red shoes and my white skin. He said, \u201cAin\u2019t no Holiday Inn going to hire no band without a white guy, and right now there ain\u2019t nary a grain of salt in this room.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wasn’t too good on sax but I could play harmonica. Amos was intrigued by the harp; he considered the harmonica \u201ccountry\u201d — not a respectable axe for a black man but OK for a white guy. He said, \u201cWe can use that harp. You hip to Tower of Power? They got a bad white dude on harp. You hip to War? Another bad brother of yours on harp.\u201d<\/p>\n

The keyboard player had doubts, not about me so much, but about pot. He was exasperated by Amos’ marijuana smoking. The keyboard guy had qualms about playing in bars where customers might be high on marijuana. \u201cWeed is communicating with the demon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Amos said, \u201cWhat you think? What you going to do when we play cabarets and shit? It ain\u2019t no motherfucking church!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI quit,” the keyboardist said.<\/p>\n

Things fell<\/strong><\/span> apart. Amos\u2019 young son sat in on drums the next rehearsal, and then we had a mediocre female drummer. A horn player \u2013 an old guy (about 40) \u2013 had no teeth. He said, \u201cMan, I can\u2019t play without my choppers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amos said we should move in a different direction: “gutbucket blues” or “even country western.” (I didn’t bring up klezmer because I hadn’t heard of it in 1975.) Amos said, \u201cI\u2019m unemployed! I\u2019ll try anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" One night I stopped by the Hibachi Lounge at Union Avenue and East 103 Street. That venue was supposed to be our first gig. The Hibachi bouncer, wearing a red jumpsuit and red wide-brim hat, hung out at the pay phone, <\/em>talking and shuckling <\/em>(davening) like he was listening to Dial-A-Jewish-Concept. Several women line-danced to disco music from the jukebox. A couple women stared at me. Was it my red tennis shoes?<\/p>\n

We never did play a gig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I auditioned for a soul band at East 91 Street and Union Avenue. I had on red Adidas tennis shoes. The bandleader, Amos, liked the colors: the red shoes and my white skin. He said, \u201cAin\u2019t no Holiday Inn going to hire no band without a white guy, and right now there ain\u2019t nary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31432"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31547,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31432\/revisions\/31547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}