Reminiscing about Crudsy’s makes me think of a band I once saw there called Bailter Space. I would never have gone to see them on my own but, at the time, I was dating Lilly, my future wife, and she wanted to go.
The details of the evening are a little murky. I recall walking in and seeing a small crowd of regulars. Most of these people were in bands themselves. This was one thing that I had begun to notice about venues that featured Indie music. Audiences were usually composed of people who were either in bands or knew someone in the band or worked at a record store or second-hand clothing store that was frequented by people in bands. You seldom saw anyone who fell outside of this group.
We walked up to the bar and ordered drinks. The bartender was a young girl named Mary Salzano. She was a fan of the music from way back and she looked it. We were there a few minutes when Lilly intimated that she wanted to get into the dressing room to meet the band. Lilly also was in a band that had played Crudsy’s several times and she was on good terms with the manager.
After a little negotiating we somehow ended up in the dressing room. For the uninitiated “dressing room” is just a euphemism for a crappy area that the club has designated as the place where bands can change, tune their instruments, eat, drink and, basically, do whatever they please. In this case, the dressing room was also the manager’s office. The walls were lined with posters of previous shows – The Three Ton Chains, Bunny, Black Majorka, The Sylvains, Unit Dupree. Bands that no longer existed, bands no one remembered. Bailter Space would likely soon have their own show poster on the wall.
Beneath the posters was a couch and on this couch sat the evening’s featured act. It was clear that it had been a long tour because they looked like they had just gotten out of jail. The unhealthy patina gracing individuals who have been too long on the road is hard to describe. One look, however, should dissuade anyone from seeking this line of work.
There were three members in the band. The guitarist/singer and, presumably, leader was somewhat belligerent to no one and everyone in particular. He was either drunk, stoned or both. I don’t remember what his band-mates were like. We stayed there for a little while and then we were tactfully asked to leave by the manager of the club.
Having been ushered out of the office, I thought the show would soon start but I was wrong. A good hour passed before Bailter Space appeared. In the interim, I drank, talked to Lilly and gazed at the customers. Crudsy’s doubled as a bar and laundromat. The washing machines were in the back. The people doing their laundry weren’t very notable – college kids, welfare mothers, an occasional arty type. The bar patrons were of more interest to me. Most were either half-assed musicians or they were working on being half-assed musicians. In truth, they were perfecting their notion of cool. Oddly enough, their notion of cool made them look like half-assed musicians.
Bailter Space
At around midnight, the bass player and drummer for Bailter Space made their way to the stage. The singer/guitarist was nowhere in sight. Not having wanted to go to the show to begin with and then having to endure two hours of tedium, I hinted at leaving. Lilly insisted on staying.
The singer/guitarist arrived about 10 minutes after the other members of the band. He stumbled to the stage, knocking over a chair and bumping into several tables. Looking at the paltry crowd, he slung a guitar over his shoulder and began playing strange, discordant notes that seemed to puzzle his band-mates as much as it did the audience. The bassist and drummer eventually joined in but when they did, the singer stopped playing and launched into an unintelligible rant against the crowd. The band, then, also stopped playing and, in turn, he started playing again. This pattern continued throughout the set.
At a certain point he began maniacally yelling into the microphone. His body swayed as he waved his arms in the air. In a sudden misstep he fell off the stage – which was only a few feet off the floor – but he slowly climbed back up to continue the performance. The fall only seemed to strengthen his resolve. He picked up the mic stand and threw it into the audience, narrowly missing a little Indie girl and her boyfriend. With that, the manager killed the sound. The singer then dove off the stage and landed with a crash onto a table, knocking it over, along with a couple of chairs. Through the combined efforts of his band-mates and the club manager he was collected from the floor and escorted back to the dressing room.
That was the end of the show. Lilly and I stared at each other and then she laughed. We finished our drinks and left. It was a beautiful summer night. We walked slowly down the grungy street, past the Grunt Bar and the panhandling punk kids, to my car. Since it was a weeknight and it was late, there wasn’t much traffic. I enjoyed having the roads to myself on my drive back home.
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© 2013 by Maurice Mattei
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