Chapter 4 – The Gig
We had a plan. The three of us - me, Tom and Win - had been to a couple more of the Planets’ practices, and we were getting along pretty well with the guys in the band. They still gave us a lot of shit, just because we were younger and they could, but it was mostly humorous, and they appreciated that we were becoming their biggest fans. Rollo was with us some of the time, but he was certain that his parents wouldn’t let him out the night of the dance, and we suspected that he was a little more intimidated by the guys than we were.
The dance was supposed to be for High School kids, but we knew that some of the eighth graders from our school, the more mature looking ones, were going to go. It wasn’t like the adults there were going to check IDs or anything. But they all knew who we were, and we figured they would try to keep us out. So we were going to go in early, with the band, and pretend to be their “roadies.” It was pretty ludicrous to think that they would have three skinny twelve-year-olds to help them carry and set up their equipment, but we figured, based on solid experience, that the adults running the dance would be careless and complacent, assuming, as they always did, that they were way smarter than any kids. Wrong.
So Win and I met up with Mac, one of the band members who lived on my side of town, and we waited for Karl’s pickup truck to show up with the equipment and the rest of the band. They pulled into the parking lot of the Essex Junction Firehouse, the three musician/hoodlums riding in the front and Tom squeezed between a couple of amplifiers in the back. It must have been an exciting ride for Tom; he was thin enough to squeeze in, but he could have been crushed if the load had shifted.
There were a couple of firemen there to open the building and show us where to set up. They were pretty nonchalant about it; they weren’t in charge of the dance; they were just in charge of the building. We hauled all of the stuff in, the band members laughing at us the whole time because they carried almost everything. We were a lot more help setting up, though. Win had memorized Karl’s drum setup, so he helped him with that, and Tom was intensely interested in the guitar and amplifier connections, so he was able to help with that. I just ran around doing whatever they told me to – running back to the truck to grab things, tripping over cords and dropping things, with Karl’s insane laugh following me everywhere.
It was getting dark as we finished with the equipment, and it was time for sound checks. Their equipment wasn’t very sophisticated, so there was only so much they could do, but at least they could adjust the volume of the guitars and the vocals. So Tom and Win and I stood out front and tried to tell them how to balance the sound. I was terrible at it, and Win wasn’t much better, but Tom had a good ear for it, so he was able to help them out.
By this time, the adults in charge were there, and kids were starting to show up. The guy who came over to talk to the band I recognized as one of the School Board members, and he frowned as he saw us, but we pretended to be very busy helping the band, so he ignored us, which was just what we wanted.
When the room was half full, it was time to start. The three of us wanted to be out front, so we could hear the music properly, so we took up positions on the fringes of the dance floor. We would spend the whole night moving around, dodging dancers and trying to find the best spots, and sometimes sitting for a while. The Planets started with “All Day and All of the Night,” by the Kinks, which they had recently learned. It was a hard driving song, just right for their style and guaranteed to get peoples’ attention.
The kids loved it, and the dance floor was soon full. People were still coming in, and by the time the first song finished, the room was almost full. Applause greeted the end of the song, but that wasn’t all. The guy in charge, the School Board guy, was in front of the band as soon as the song stopped, insisting that they had to turn the volume down. None of the kids were complaining, of course, but the adults were upset, so Karl and his buddies made a show of turning down the volume knobs on the amplifiers, then they started the next song.
I’m not sure if they had actually turned it down, or just pretended. It certainly didn’t sound any quieter, and the expressions on the adults’ faces were very unhappy. That’s the way it went all night – an endless back and forth, with The Planets insisting they were playing as quietly as they could, and the adults complaining over and over.
We were having a great time. It was the first time I had been to a dance of any kind, other than the Saturday nights at the Parish Hall, where they played records. But this was live music, and it was Rock and Roll. And feeling like we were part of it, as The Planets’ unofficial roadies, made it even more special. The atmosphere was electric, and it was the first time I had witnessed a big High School level social event, with all the flirting and posturing and gossiping. It was fascinating.
We knew quite a few of the kids there. My oldest brother was there, trying to avoid recognizing me as he chatted with various girls. Tom’s sister, Kelly, was there, as well as his oldest brother, and Win’s sister, with some of her eighth grade friends, as well. I saw Amy Ducharme, looking very pretty and dancing with several good-looking guys. She gave me a wave and a wink when she saw me, and I smiled back, wishing desperately that I were four years older.
There were a few kids from our class there, but not for long. Mac’s younger brother was there with Bobbo and Stewie; all three were on the “shit list,” and they were always in trouble. I don’t know what they did, or if they just got thrown out on principle, but there was a commotion at the back of the room and the adults gathered to eject them.
A few minutes later, I felt an elbow in my side, and Win was there, pointing towards the back of the room. Chris Poulos was standing there, a big grin on his face and his eyes darting back and forth from the band to every girl who walked by and back to the band. This time Chris was dressed for the younger crowd. He was wearing almost the exact outfit the Beatles were wearing the first time they came to the U.S. – a pale grey suit with no collar or lapel on the jacket, with a white button-down shirt and a skinny tie. I asked Win what he thought Chris was doing here, although he couldn’t hear me over the music. When we were able to talk between songs, we agreed that he was probably here just to pick up girls, although it didn’t seem quite proper, given the age difference.
The last song of the first set was “Shakin’ All Over,” a song that a lot of the kids didn’t know, although they certainly liked it. Tom had told us that it was a number one hit in the U.K. several years ago, by a band called Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, but it had never been covered by a popular band over here, as far as he knew. Karl had learned it from a band that played at Saxony and Rollerland. The song had a compelling guitar riff and a driving rhythm and it was a great tune to dance to.
The band had announced before starting the song that it was the last of the set. I noticed Chris Poulos making his way around the dance floor and, by the time the song finished, he was standing right next to the band. When the song ended, Chris immediately approached the guys in the band and started talking and shaking hands. Karl came out from behind his drums, and he and Chris talked for a couple of minutes. Karl nodded his head, and Chris turned around, facing the audience, and grabbed the lead singer’s microphone.
“Hey, kids! Great to see you here tonight! I’m Johnny Strong, from WDOT!”
He paused, as if expecting a big round of applause. There was some clapping, and a few people called out to him, but it wasn’t exactly an ovation.
Win and I looked at each other, stunned. Chris Poulos was Johnny Strong? Then he started talking again.
“How do you like The Planets, huh?” A bigger response this time. “Yeah, I like them, too. Listen kids, I’m going to be the guest host on Dance Date three weeks from tonight, it’s going to be Essex Junction night, and I’m going to have The Planets playing live on Channel Three!”
A bigger round of applause greeted that announcement. Dance Date played on Channel Three every Saturday, sometimes with live bands, and they always had kids from a particular High School as guests to dance to the music. This was going to be a big break for The Planets.
Tom had joined us from the other side of the room, and he couldn’t contain his laughter.
“It’s Chris, the guy we met at the Jackson Inn! He’s Johnny Strong!”
Well, we had guessed, of course, that it was a made-up name, but we never imagined it was one of the local Greeks. The Jackson Inn, one of Essex Junction’s oldest and most durable restaurants, was owned by a Greek family, from Cyprus, and it seemed, over the years, to be the center of a constant migration cycle. Many people from Cyprus and mainland Greece, mostly young, single men, came into the country, mostly legally, and started their American lives as cooks, dishwashers, or bartenders at the Inn. Some of them would go back after a while, but most of them stayed, sent for wives or sweethearts after a while, and settled down. A lot of them stayed in the restaurant business, and, within a few years, there were restaurants all over Chittenden County owned or operated by Greeks who had gotten their start at the Jackson Inn.
The guys in the band were headed outside for their break, while one of the adults put some 45s on the record player so the kids could keep dancing. We wanted to talk with Karl and the boys, so we followed them outside. When the first record turned out to be Johnny Mathis, dozens of the kids headed outside, as well, where the chaperones tried in vain to watch everyone. No drinking or smoking or necking!
Tom and Win and I were still chattering about Chris/Johnny as we gathered around Karl’s truck. All four of The Planets lit up cigarettes, and they each had a bottle of Coke. Karl was sitting in the truck, surreptitiously pouring something from a bottle into each of their Cokes in turn. When Karl got out of the truck, Win explained to him what we knew about Johnny Strong, and those guys started laughing, too.
Not that there was anything wrong with using a stage name; writers did it, actors did it, musicians did it. But it was the first time any of us had been that close to anyone who changed his image, as well as his name, so blatantly, and we thought it was hilarious.
The guys talked about playing Dance Date in three weeks, and how they would manage it and get ready for it, then they talked about the just-finished set - what went right and what went wrong – and went over their song list to figure out what they wanted to do in the second set. They ignored us, for the most part, until finally Karl asked us how they sounded. Tom talked a little bit about the balance of the vocals; Win and I just said it sounded great.
They had time for another smoke and then we all went back inside. The clueless adults in charge were playing a Pat Boone song from about six years earlier, thinking it was cutting edge music for the young, and most of the kids had either gone outside or were standing around drinking sodas and talking. No one was dancing. As the Planets grabbed their instruments and started warming up, the kids started streaming back inside.
When the set started, the dance floor quickly filled up again. Win and Tom actually danced a few times with some of the eighth grade girls who were there, but I didn’t. There were only maybe three girls in the whole village that I was comfortable talking with, much less dancing, and they weren’t there. I just stayed in the background and listened and watched.
I watched Amy Ducharme, of course. She was having fun, dancing with a lot of different guys and laughing a lot. We glanced at each other now and then, but we had agreed not to talk to each other in public so as to not arouse any suspicion about our term paper business. I didn’t mind; the time we spent together working at Jane’s apartment was well worth it.
Between songs, I saw Chris/Johnny approach Amy, and I assume he asked her for the next dance. She shook her head and turned away from him, which pleased me very much. There were plenty of girls willing to dance with him, but I was glad she wasn’t one of them.
Pretty soon we were getting to the end. Dances for kids didn’t go on very late in those days. The next to last song was “Louie Louie,” which everybody knew and loved to dance to. The Planets sang a set of lyrics they had come up with that were as suggestive as they thought they could get away with. Nobody knew what the actual lyrics were, although lots of boys boasted that they did. Tom was convinced that The Kingsmen had deliberately made the words unintelligible so as to make people think it was dirty. It worked, and a pretty mediocre song became immensely popular because of it.
Then the finale was “Rollerland.” It was becoming The Planets’ “signature song,” and quite a few of the older kids broke into applause when they heard it. They were the ones who had been to upstate New York to drink and dance. The guys made it last quite a while, even though the lyrics were really simple and repetitious. They just sang “gonna take my baby to Rollerland,” and “everybody’s going to Rollerland” over and over until Karl ended it with a wild drum flourish. And that was the end of the show.
There was a lot of applause and a few calls for an encore, but the guys were already breaking down the equipment, and I don’t think they had enough material at that point to do another song. Besides that, the adults in charge immediately turned the lights up, so everybody started leaving, some of them stopping to say hello to the band or congratulate them.
We knew they wanted to get out of there quickly because they had planned to drive over to Club Saxony. The firemen had told them it would be okay to leave their equipment overnight, and it was only a little after ten o’clock, so they were going to head over for some drinking and dancing.
Karl had promised to drop Tom off at his house, so Tom jumped in the back of the truck and off they went. Win and I talked in the parking lot for a few minutes, watching the older kids getting in their cars or walking home. Chris/Johnny was standing by his Mustang, a small group of boys and girls around him, and we guessed that he was offering a ride home to any girl who was willing. Most of them were with dates, though, and we didn’t stick around long enough to find out if he had any success.
Win walked up Pearl Street towards his house and I headed home on Lincoln. We would both be in some trouble getting home so late, but we were used to that. It was a fun walk for me, getting to see some of Essex Junction’s Saturday nightlife on my way home. I passed by Bouchard’s, pausing to watch J.C. throw some drunk into the street. I laughed, and J.C. looked at me, but, like I said, he didn’t really notice kids. I thought the guy must have started pretty early to get thrown out before ten-thirty. Of course, the bars closed at midnight on Saturday, so people did start pretty early.
A minute later I was passing Todd’s, where Sergeant Smithers was working. A few yards behind me, the guy who had been thrown out of Bouchard’s was stumbling towards Todd’s, obviously hoping to get served there. I didn’t think he had much of a chance, but I didn’t stop to watch; I had to get home.