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Copyright #Txu-588-536
WGA
#615482
Unpublished written work
based on my experiences playing drums on the streets in New York City with
the BMF Sextet after graduation from college, 1984 – 1986.
Excerpts (expletives deleted):
It was during the summer of 1984 that I started playing drums in a street band in New York. I heard through the grapevine that money could be made playing out in the street, and, as usual in New York, I was hurting for a gig (any gig). The band was called BMF.
My friend Danny Sadownick had been playing in the street with a band called Moment's Notice. Danny would see BMF playing outside also and wanted to play with BMF instead. The guys in Moment's Notice were into doing drugs around that time, so that made for the usual stupid problems -- cats not showing up, or forgetting what time they were supposed to show up, or arguing, etc.
Moment's Notice would play a daytime hit, then take a break and come back out in the evening. They wouldn't play during rush hour, so you know that left plenty of time between hits for all those fun drugs. The cats would go eat, lay up at home, and get high. One particular evening I suppose they got a little too high, because Danny went out to the evening hit, as planned, but none of the rest of the band showed up.
While he was sitting there, Danny saw Billy Newman, who was playing guitar with BMF. Billy asked Danny why he was sitting around, heard the story, and said, "Well, why don't you come play with us? We'll give you ten percent." Danny played with BMF that night, and instead of 10%, they gave him a full share of the take. They asked him to join up, so he did.
I started playing a few months after that. Frank Bambera had been playing drums with BMF, but Danny called me one night because Frank hadn't shown up to the hit. I never did find out why Frank didn't show up. That evening the band was made up of Vince Herring on Alto, Steve Hall on Tenor, Billy Newman on guitar, Heywood Peele on bass, Danny on congas, and Dick Weller on drums.
Heywood Peele and Billy Newman used to play their guitars through Moose battery amplifiers (Heywood used two). The amps would start to distort after a couple of hours and fade as the batteries ran down. It was hard to find somewhere to recharge them. Heywood figured we should use a portable gas generator instead.
Heywood brought the Gee to the hits for a long time, putting it on top of his amp and then wheeling that whole rig around with a handtruck. Eventually he decided he'd had enough of that, the Gee and the amp were too heavy, and would one of the sax players please take charge of the Gee? Everyone else was already loaded down with gear.
We put the Gee on a luggage carrier and tied it on with bungi cords. The Gee detail fell to Vinnie and Charley.
Sharing the Gee duty should have been a straightforward process of "you take it one day, I'll take it the next," but that method always seemed to break down. One guy would have a gig, or whatever, or wouldn't be going straight home, and so "could you please take the Gee today and I promise I'll take it tomorrow or for the next two days?" That eventually led to the new method of deciding who would take the Gee, which was: "You [ ]. You never take the [ ]ing Gee, man! [ ]! It's your turn, you lazy [ ]!" So whoever lost that argument would usually end up with the Gee. And of course whoever ended up with the Gee had been saddled with it unjustly.
The Gee needed to have the oil changed and air filter cleaned every 20 hours (according to the manual). We didn't really figure that out with our first Gee because I never recall seeing a manual for it. Anyway, behind all the other shit we had to get together to make the street hits, oil changes and filter cleanings fell by the wayside. Eventually the old Gee would start sounding like a helicopter and right when we'd be firing the band up and getting a big crowd -- blurp! The Gee would quit on us. That was the first symptom. We'd nurse it through the day because we'd be trying to keep our "stats" (earnings) high. The stores where you could buy motor oil in Manhattan were primarily all the way west or east of midtown, by the Hudson or the East River. That could mean an hour of travel time during the middle of the day, so oil changes usually were put off and wound up not getting done. Oil changes and air filter cleaning would eventually go from routine to emergency.
The Gee did get intermittent oil changes but eventually started sounding like a Bradley Fighting Machine and kept getting harder and harder to start. We'd have all our shit set up and be ready to go and I'd look over and see Charley pulling on the starter cord over and over. The Gee would just chug once or twice and then quit, like a dead lawnmower. Then Charley would plead with it.
"C'mon, baby. C'mon! You can do it, baby. C'mon! I needs the money. Just run today, and I promise I'll change the oil tomorrow!"
Sometimes that would coax it to life, but usually he'd have to turn nasty. "C'mon, you [ ]! [ ]! Start the [ ] up!" He'd start pulling on the cord harder and faster till Gee would start bouncing on the pavement, and the shaking would actually get the thing to start. So we got to pulling the cord and shaking the Gee back and forth to start it. It would gasp and puff and choke and finally start running, although it would sound as if it had wanted to stay off. Eventually it just seized up and the starter cord wouldn't pull anymore, so we had to invest in a new Gee.
It had always been in the grapevine that you could set up on the street and make some money, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before other cats started showing up outdoors. For a while we and a few other bands were pretty much the lone wolves out there, but it was no secret that we were making money. There was one summer, 1986, when it seemed like it was raining street bands.
One band that started seriously competing with us got dubbed the "BMF Reject Band" -- legends in their own minds. All the Rejects had played in BMF at one time or another, and had subsequently gotten boned off the gig. That meant they were pretty familiar with all our spots. We started running up against them on a regular basis.
We hit regularly on the weekend at Herald Square (also known as "Duffy" because the name Duffy Square was on an information stand near the subway entrance). By this time we were keeping quiet about where we were hittin', but it's hard to stay undercover when your [ ] is so visible. Eventually someone in the BMF Reject band sniffed us out. We showed up at Herald one day and there were the Rejects, already set up. They'd known to get there early because they knew it was our usual spot.
They saw us, so we went up and said hello. We told them they were on our spot, but of course they countered with, "Hey man, first come first serve." They were cracking up because they knew they had [ ]ed us up, and I think they enjoyed gettin' one over on the "A" Team. We tried a few more times to get them to give it up, but they weren't going to budge.
Billy Newman, who'd played guitar with BMF for a long time, kept saying, "Hey man, you know the deal. It ain't about who's spot it is. That's [ ]. If you guys had wanted this spot you should have gotten here earlier, that's all. First come first serve."
Heywood tried to reason with him. "C'mon, Billy, you know we been breakin' out this spot all season. You [ ] just tryin' to [ ] us up. Why don't you guys just go and find your own spots?"
CD chirped in, "Yeah, [ ]."
Billy laughed. "Hey, man, what can I say? You know the deal. We ain't movin' just because you say this is your spot. [ ] that. We were here first."
Heywood said, "Yeah, well maybe you'd move if you had a foot up your [ ]." Billy just shrugged and smiled, and one of the other Rejects fired up their Gee.
So you know we had to blow them out of the water, just on principle. We had a huddle. They had almost as much firepower as we did. They had a Gee, electric guitar and bass, sax and drums. So that meant that we were only up on them by one sax player and one drummer. Plus, they could break out the funk grooves. We could outplay them, though, and wasn't nobody gonna be [ ]in' with the "A" team! [ ] those [ ], man! We gonna [ ] them up. Duffy, hut!
We set up next to the statue on the north end of Herald. Well, it used to be a statue but now was a mountain of pigeons and pigeon [ ]. The Rejects were set up and playing about 50 feet south of us by the information stand. They were looking at us and laughing 'cause they knew what was up. But they had boned us off the most advantageous spot, so they weren't too concerned.
We got all ready, fired up the Gee, and lit into one of our funk tunes. John Cage would have loved it, listening to the two bands playing at once, right in the middle of Herald Square during lunchtime. They cranked up louder, and so did we. We started puttin' a hurtin' on them, though, and got some girls dancing out in front of our band. We kept the energy way up. I could still hear those guys playing, though, whenever our volume went down a little bit, like between solos. Their crowd got busted out slightly, and we built up one of our own, but it was turning into a draw, because we couldn't shut them down. The pigeons started freaking out and dropping bombs.
Heywood said, "We better move closer." So we moved up on them by about ten feet, and started breakin' it out just as fierce as we could. The crowd had figured out what was going on by this time, and started taking up sides. They were cheering or booing, depending on whom they had decided should be the victors. Guys would come up to us and say, "Yeah, man! Go, man, go! You're better than those guys, man! C'mon!"
The sax players from each band were getting pretty close to each other, and they started trying to outblow each other, pointing their horns at each other. It sounded unbelievable, two bands playing against each other like that. We all started to crack up, but there wasn't a chance that either band was gonna give it up.
Well, we kept putting a pretty good hurtin' on 'em, and the crowd was definitely leaning our way, but we still hadn't managed to crush them. We gave them a little play and had another quick huddle.
Heywood said, "Yo, man, we got to move closer." So we moved up right next to them. Their eyes started to bug a little, but they dug in their heels and started playing as loud as they could. These [ ]s were going down with the ship.