Anybody want to share old recordings and stories?

After a little more than a year playing guitar I knew it was serious. I had a couple of early bands, won a high school battle of the bands and did gigs in Manhattan at some aging but famous Greenwich Village clubs. I had a side band then and we had a residency at a Blues/Jazz club in downtown Brooklyn called Dodgers Bar. Yes, it was near the old fields where the Dodgers used to play. The band was integrated with two white guys, one latino and one black guy, which was very rare then. The crowd were serious aficionados, so if my chops were weak, I'd probably get my ass kicked on the way out the door. I practiced hard then. I was able to get into the bar because I was tall and knew how to stay under the radar and keep my cool. Today, there's no way a 16 year old would be in a smoky blues bar all night! I actually made great money then.

A little later that year I joined with some guys who were a couple years older, two from Staten Island. One of the guys had actually made a label album with a band called Plum Nelly that I'd actually heard on the radio, which was amazing then. It wasn't like it is today, where anyone can publish themselves. To be on a label was like making it to the major leagues in baseball. Sink or swim, you made it there.

The band was named Pandora, and we instantly knew we were really good. We did a few local gigs, found a manager from Cleveland and went there to record a demo at a loft owned by a drummer for a band named Granicus. he was cool, stuck some SM57's in front of our amps, and we played songs live. We did a couple of lead guitar overdubs, but it was 4 tracks then and a quick recording, not a record company thing with a producer. We came back to NY, did a big showcase at Max's Kansas City and were offered some record deals. While waiting on that, the drummer and bass player were offered a gig with David Johansen, so they jumped ship, They did four albums and toured the world with hime, but still, they were hired, not partners like they would have been if we stayed together.

I was really pissed off because i knew the band would have been great. Fast forward twenty five years, someone heard our demo that had been left in a drawer somewhere and flipped. He showed it to a friend who loved it, and after showing it to some record company people, one small indie label actually made a CD of the demo, with no permission and put it out, with cartoon artwork imagining what we looked like. We only found out seven years later. It turned out Rolling Stone had written about the band saying we should come out now because this was our time, and the band was great.

When we finally found out, we contacted the label, and it turned out they had tried to find us but had no info. Instead of suing them, we embraced it, because it was lost in time and somehow magically became real again. The bass player of the band went on to play with some good acts. The drummer played with John Waite and later with Tom Petty. He became an A&R man and produced the soundtrack to the movie Philadelphia, winning the Oscar. The singer worked with Mick Jones and still works full time as a touring singer.

Another indie label has contacted us and will issue a vinyl LP of the band in 2018 and we'll be making a documentary about he group, which was at a crossroads in music history, being both Glam and Punk.

Here's one track: