Johnny Rollerfeet's Echo Chamber

I don’t know if any of the previous chapters in any way could have explained the lifestyle choices that led me toThe Psycho Waitress and so many women like her. Child of alcoholic parents, drug and alcohol addiction, a steady stream of brown organic mescaline, the intoxicating allure of danger, people, places and things, blah, blah, blah. I just craved a non-stop roller-coaster ride. Not to sound like Willie Nelson but I often look back at almost all of the women with great affection and a ‘Where are they now?’ inquisitiveness.

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My first very vague memory is being pushed down a snowy driveway on a sled by my mother. This had to be in Springfield Mass. where I was born. My next memory, I must have been around 4, is arriving at the house in Syracuse where I spent the next 25 years of my life. Snow, as anyone who lives in Upstate New York knows plays a major part of your life. It snows from pretty much October until May. If you don’t enjoy winter sports, which I abhorred, then you hang around and read and find comfort in books, radio and records. If you’re an only child which to a large extent I was in light of the fact that my sister was 15 years older than I was, than music and literature become your best friends. And so it was with me.

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We were always getting the opening slot for some up and coming recording band that was traveling through promoting their new release. They were typically defined as “New Wave’ whatever the hell that was. We were drawing astonishingly well for a band that didn’t play any “covers’ so the agent was making a mint putting asses in the seats and giving us a whopping $100. Suckers ‘til the end. It was fun however to play for that many people and take the challenge to blow the more successful radio played band off the fucking stage. Such was a band out of Canada called “The Kings”. Admittedly this was not The MC5 mopping the stage at The Grande with Cream but it fun none the less.

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In 1980 our band opened for Badfinger in Albany New York. I was certainly aware of them because of their hits, and the fact that they were The Beatles baby brother band, they were on their label, Apple, and were heavily touted and influenced by them. I also knew that they were broke and this led to the tragic suicide of one of their founding members, Pete Hamm. It was not a pretty sight.

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