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Total fan here.I would love to hear Lonewolf talk about that memory.When Nilsson had that breathrough song, 'Everybody's Talkin' off of the movie, 'Midnight Cowboy', I thought...here is an American with the vocal chops to take on the Beatles.It is wonderful that we got so many great songs and recordings, but also so sad that he couldn't keep his demons at bay.I even loved his silly songs.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbgv8PkO9eo&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1I can't recommend that recent documentary enough.Russell, maybe that is Chris on guitar in the video.
Chris - you must have some rich memories.
In between the fall of the Mercer Arts Center and the rise of CBGB, groups like the pre-Blondie Stillettoes, Suicide, and Wayne County, and glitter casualties like Teenage Lust and the Harlots of 42nd Street hit its stage, while celebs like Lou Reed and David Bowie headed there for a walk on the slum side…The place was run by two very old bull dykes, Tommy and Butch. Tommy worked the door and Butch handled the bar. When I first saw them, they looked as if they’d been there for twenty years—which, in fact, they had. It took me a while to figure out they weren’t men…Butch had to speak through a voice box she held to her throat. The stage was behind the bar, so with the band playing or dance music blasting it was impossible to make out what she was saying. If she was asking you what you had ordered you had to nod and hope for the best. The place had the effect that all good sleazy joints do, of making it seem that once you were inside, the world outside didn’t exist. Going in you really entered an underworld. It was a basement club, and to get to it you had to walk down a steep stairway, lined with photographs of famous female impersonators, actresses and celebrities. It had an aura of sadness and tragedy, a Cinderella quality that was especially apparent at the end of the night, when the music stopped, the lights came up and the dark mysterious faces were suddenly revealed in all their stubble…There was nothing very remarkable about Club 82. It was dark and smelled, as all nightclubs do, of cigarettes and stale beer. The walls were mirrored and the ceiling was decorated with those rotating, strobe-lighted globes that Saturday Night Fever would soon make very popular. There was a hallway or foyer that ran behind the stage from one side of the place to the other, and often this was used by people to make out…Guys with girls, girls with girls, and guys with guys. Half of the times you couldn’t tell who was with who, and that, I guess, was part of the attraction. The dance floor was to one side of the bar and stage. A few tables bordered this, but most of the seats were on a raised section which reached back into the greater darkness. Here people engaged in more serious matters, like snorting coke and getting head, sometimes simultaneously. Sometimes there’d be no one in the place but a handful of drag queens, some glam rockers looking for the scene, and us. Other times it would be packed with tourists, weekend voyeurs anxious to be hip, well-heeled individuals trying to impress their dates with some downtown slumming, gold coke spoons and openness to transvestitism.
