Recalling those last days with the Shayds Dec. 16, 1985

  

It has been six years since my last Christmas with The Shayds, although briefly in 1982 around this time, some members tried to reform in what became an embarrassing disaster at the Locker Room in Cedar Grove.

I met Fran at the Fotomat booth in Clifton; while the band practiced for their big event a few blocks away.

This should have warned me, a premotion of doom, for that future time when my life would become completely entwined with Pauly’s in a way far more intrusive than before. Pauly, despites his chaotic history, wasn’t to blame for the demise the band.

I would blame the place, only it was not the same place we played years prior to that, even though it bore the same name – spiffed up for the 1980s to attract a new and perhaps younger crowd.

The old place attracted old desperate lost souls with vinegar instead of blood and piss for brains, constantly in search of pussy that didn’t want them.

We all thought ourselves studs back then – a typical drunken illusion we might never get over.

I blame John for that band’s demise – even though that might be unfair – since he hardly had any energy left after expending it all on the Shayds.

I’m not sure he was even serious about the new band since he showed up stoned and late for all of its three gigs, when the whole thing fell apart during the last gig, and that was that.

Many of the old fans – those that had immigrated from the previous versions – sat shocked at what they saw, drawn to this new version because of the tender feelings they had for the past – the Shayds and the Sophisticatos – two bands that had split off the original Sleeper in 1977-78.

When the split happened in early 1979, I took up work with the Shayds after I had been fired from the wine company and prior to that Cosmetics Plus.

I felt at home among these people, feeling as if I had known them all my life, having attended to them in all their previous incarnation, more family than friends, but certainly friends as well.

I tried to keep up with both factions, although that proved difficult, working nights and going back to college by day leaving me little free time to go see the other band, aware even then that the high hopes we all had for the band’s success would not, could not happen, partly because of some inner flaw in its members that doomed them even in those rare moments when they appeared to be on the brink.

Garrick, the man behind the scenes during the former incarnations went with Pauly while I went with John.

Six years ago, I recall working alone unloading the equipment at the club near the Bergen Mall, wondering how the new year would change my life as I struggled to find my own measure of success that had nothing to do with music.

These days, neither band exists, except in memory, sent on their different paths to different ways of life, as I plod on, getting ready for yet another new year and another set of potential changes that might bring me closer to what I ultimately want.

 

 1985 Menu


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