t o i l i n g  m i d g e t s

THE BLUEST SKIES YOU'VE EVER SEEN ARE IN SEATTLE (continued)

BY PAUL HOOD

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the sucess of those we don't like?" - Jean Cocteau

When I got back from NY, I was filled with stories of the "big city". The experience stayed with me like a dream, or the smoke from a hundred cigarettes in a dimly lit club. There was the incident at a club uptown, where the Zero's were threatened with an east coast blackball by its owners, thugish types who boasted control over the entire NY area club scene. Afterward, the band did have what seemed like extra bad luck. Javier's vintage Gibson guitar was stolen after the gig at Max's Kansas City (where I'd been three years earlier, unsuccessfully trying to convince Wayne County of the high quality underground scene in Seattle) and mysteriously, half of their remaining gigs were canceled. On our return from a Philadelphia show, we saw from a stoplight, a gang of "kids" that attacked a couple, strolling arm in arm - and how the boyfriend defended both himself and the girl most effectively with his fat leather belt with its klunky bad-ass buckle made of brass. He kept five or six guys at bay- swinging his weapon with great skill, bouncing it off the face of the first would-be attacker and dropping him in his tracks . The rest of then gang slunk back into the park with great haste...

I could go on romantically about NY pizza, clubs, art, Walter Steading performing on a cable TV program called "TV House Party" that Steve Clark had taken Jeri and I to... Well, when I got back to SF, I probably did go on a bit about it for some time, after all, I was energized - you could say I was I was pumped!!

First thing on my agenda was to find a place to live, so as not to fully infringe on my sister Joanna, who allowed me to stay with her near the SF Conservatory of Music, where she attended school, studying the viola.

Craig and I spent a lot of time together at his Nob hill apartment playing music while watching TV with the sound off - especially old versions of Star Trek, and soon I was dubbed "Spock," although I'm not sure why, exactly. My dry sense of humor, perhaps. Craig and Debbie Sue were on the outs and so it seemed appropriate that we name our first co-written song "All the Girls Cry."

Jonathan and I also spent lots of time together; he tried to teach me how to skateboardand so I hung out with his friends, Jack's team, who were at every Midgets show and dubbed our instrumental sound "Absolute Music." At many punk shows, people would slam dance or mosh in front of the stage, but when Jack's team was there, you saw kids doing donuts on their skate boards, and this happened from Sacramento to LA.

About this time, I met a woman named Pat who liked my Todd Rundgren tee shirt, and curly red hair (so I am told) and as we grew aquainted, her Bette Midler-like personality and sense of humor came to the fore, and the other Midgets made fun of how bold and risque she was towards me. Two things happened that the Midgets could thank her for today (and if we somehow forgot, thanks again!), those being band photos taken at the site of one of G Lucas' films THX1138 (a favorite Midget movie), and her introduction of me to Mr. Tom Mallon on the occasion of a demo voice over that Pat was doing at Tom's home studio in the Haight.

For the photo shoot, Tim was again absent but we went ahead anyway without him, with the photos looking really sci-fi, which is what we were hoping for... bleak, cold and futuristic.

After meeting with Tom, we set up a session with the Midgets to record all of the songs we knew, plus one improvised song called "Aqua Dub" with Craig and I banging out the chords on a piano, and the band did its best to play in the reggae-dub style. Throughout the sessions, Tim had a tough time staying awake, and later it seemed to me that his style of "off-kilter" and "backwards" playing was enhanced by this inability to stay awake - he was literally falling asleep at the drum kit, and after we finished the main run through of songs, he curled up on the couch for a snooze while we finished rough mixes.

Craig and I then decided to take the tapes to an actual reggae studio in Oakland where Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus had worked to see what a Rasta engineer might come up with in true dub style. Imagine his surprise when he turned up the bass channel and found nothing at all to work with! By that, I mean (in the words of one LP reviewer a year or so later) that our band had an "invisible bass player," and literally, there was nothing that could be done with the tracks. This of course did not dissuade Craig from pointing out that a lot could be done with the rhythm section he and Tim had become and then add or subtract my sound effects (guitar playing)! In fact, the Rasta mixing the session was convinced that we'd invented a whole new style of music!!!!!!!!!

Others were not so convinced, but with our demo tape in hand, I went around to clubs to introduce myself and re-introduce the band. Most people still perceived Toiling Midgets as being the punk rock group Negative Trend, whose claim to fame was out-punking the Sex Pistols at Winterland in SF. This pissed off local music mafioso Bill Graham and helped get us blackballed from the club scene; except maybe by Dirk Dirkson at the Mabuhay Gardens club on Broadway.

We could still get shows at the "Fab Mab" as the Midgets, and soon added the Roosevelt club, Savoy Tivoli in North Beach, Sound of Music and 10th Street Hall to our list of favorite haunts. We played Sproul Plaza in Berkeley, site of the campus riots during the 60's and we even played at one of the frat houses. We played a lot of shows that year instrumentally and for some reason we shared the bill with groups that seemed incompatible, such as Romeo Void, Translator, and the group we loved to hate, Flipper.

Not that we hated Flipper, but Craig especially disliked being lumped into a category with his ex-band mates Steve dePace, and Will Shatter, who formed the group after Negative Trend broke up and featured Ricky Williams of the Sleepers for about 5 minutes. Ricky actually was the one who named the band. Their trademark sound was noisy, and tuneless, and Craig took pride in the fact that he wrote songs with real structure and melody, qualities Flipper didn't seem to care about. In fact, they made "not caring" a theme and badge of honor... anyway, there came to be a kind of rivalry between the two bands, at least in the eyes of many in the local music scene.

This rivalry was made painfully obvious to me when Public Image Limited came to town for the first time and Flipper was announced as the opening act, when (we thought) it had been promised to The Midgets. I was mortified and convinced Craig on the day of the show to go early to the South of Market Cultural Center with our guitars and refuse to leave until we'd had a chance to play - seeing as how we thought we were supposed to be on the bill already.

We arrived at noon, when the promoters Paul Rat, and David ? were supposed to show up, and when we found they hadn't yet arrived, we pulled out our guitars for a parking lot jam session. It wasn't too long a wait and they seemed greatly amused to see us there, toiling. Peter Urban, also working inside, stepped to bat for us to see what he could do.

After about 3 1/2 hours, Peter came out with the "good news". We could go on first, using Flipper's drumset, but we wouldn't get a sound check, nor would we be paid. We took this as good news, except that Jonathan was still in Marin at a State high school fencing tournament, and would meet us there (we hoped). Tim, was another matter; he was in either Menlo Park or Palo Alto and we hadn't been able to reach him all day. In addition, we didn't have a car to transport our equipment, but figured we could score a taxi in time.

While across the street in a phone booth, we frantically tried to reach Tim, and left a message with his girlfriend Lisa, who gave no reassurance that Tim could be reached in time. At that moment two things happened. I'd just hung up when we could see Jonathan with his bass case, a couple blocks away in the distance, and pulling up to the phone booth was a fellow in a VW wagon who, I assumed, needed the phone. I was wrong. This guy, whose name I'll never remember, wanted to ask us directions to a club he'd never heard of South of Market where a group called PIL was playing.

I looked at Craig as if my prayers had been answered. We had little more than an hour to get back to the club with our gear, and I asked the guy if he wanted to get into the show for free! All he had to do was drive some amps with Jonathan from the rehearsal space back to the gig. He was hesitant, but agreed. The magic was happening again, just as it was when Craig asked me to join the band...but where was Tim?

Time was running out and as we began to load gear in front of the SOMA-Center, I noticed some familiar faces lingering in the line to get in. Erich Werner, Roland and Paul Barker and Bill Reiflin of The Blackouts from Seattle, were there for the show and I had an idea! If Tim didn't show up, chances were that Craig wouldn't want to play. Indeed, I could not imagine any drummer in the world that could fill Tim's drum seat, except for one, and instantly I was asking Bill if he would sit in for Tim-in about 20 minutes, we had a gig to play! Never mind he had never heard us before, but to me, it was like the final puzzle piece put into place. He just smiled, shrugged, and sheepishly agreed. I don't even know where he got his drumsticks as he joined us on-stage, and we set it all up. What luck!

We had to ask for a sound check. Paul Rat agreed, but since there was no curtain, the 1-2,000 people already there would be witness to it all. We ran through 3 songs, "Dollhouse Bricks", "Desperation" and "Destiny" and Bill sounded awesome, big and powerful! It was weird, huddled around Bill in the tradition of the Midgets live shows: backs to the audience, eyes on the drummer. He was fluid, intuitive and seemed to anticipate our drastic tempo changes by attacking the fills in a most delightful way.

Afterwards, we unplugged and gathered together to map out our set and strategy for locking in intros and endings. The lights dimmed, and Rat told us to start. I took a deep breath. I could still see people filing into the building, a long structure, much like an airplane hanger, very long and not very wide. I had just strapped on my Les Paul and I happened to glance toward the backstage area. Right at that moment I noticed the stage door open and the familiar silhouette of Tim come into focus, late AGAIN! He jumped up on the stage to replace Bill, before Mr. Reiflin even had a chance to "officially" be Midget for a day! Wow! Talk about timing! The first thing Tim did was to re-arrange the drumset, since he's left handed...to the chagrin of Flipper's drummer, who didn't want a thing moved - what else could Tim do?

We couldn't have played more than about 20 minutes before they told us, enough! Then, thanks to the Prima Donna known as Johnny Rotten, us and all our guests got kicked out of the backstage area, but what a RUSH! Couldn't thank those boys enough! Also, the gig brought us our first review, though it was a Seattle paper, the Rocket, not a California paper to do the honors. They complained that we didn't have a singer, were big on attitude and looks and lacking in musical content. They also mentioned me by name, son of the "famous NW jazz piano player." I think they mentioned Flipper, too and after that we were forever lumped in with them.

more to come...

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