You and Randall Lee

Hey friends-- Here's the song link up top this time, 'cause I might go on a while:

You and Randall Lee


Randall Lee Gibson IV, that is.  Fantastic drummer, and one of my faves.  Typical of that lot--- Stay in the pocket... don't mess with the flashy stuff... just drive that goddarn song, and MEAN IT...   Anyway, once when he was in Baltimore on one of those Scruffy tours, I saw him walking up 30th St. in Baltimore with a young lady.  The song came to me a decade later, and now we're another ten or so down the line.

You've already seen how much I love to try and dissect these songs and whatever primordial soup they may have arisen.  But I can promise you that I'm responsible for few more direct acts of musical tribute/ thievery/ pale imitation than the attached song-- It's a straight-up, 100% testimony to the impact that music, and a band, and a place in time can leave.  For a bunch of liquored-up, college kids in often bo-ring uptown Baltimore as the 80s were winding down, that band was Boston's Scruffy the Cat.

I recall the review of "Tiny Days" in the Baltimore City Paper: "Another Boston bar band quietly kicks ass."   My first show at the 8x10 Club sealed the deal.  Soon enough we were off a-shoutin' and a-baptizin', picking up steam and picking up converts.  This was IT!-- This was ROCK and ROLL!-- Or some kinda freewheeling hybrid of rock n' roll, honky-tonk, punk, R&B and lord knows what that was somehow hard-wired to our young rock n' roll souls. We'd read tea leaves, magazines and the CP listings for any sign of shows in Baltimore or DC, or maybe even Boston, NYC, Northampton, Port Chester or lord knows where.  Finally we realized we could just put Klausner on the case and just pay the band to play a gig for our own entertainment.  Huzzah!  And this despite the crimes that the Buttsteak and the Haggises 5 band routinely committed against "Mybaby..." and "Moons'" and "Betty" and "Rat" and "Russian".  (Hell, Fitz and I just sang, and probably once again ruined, "2day, 2morrow,4ever" across a campfire just this past weekend...)

Yep-- the Scruffy gigs were So Damned Good and the third LP was Going to Be #$%^'in Amazing.  But that was that.  Band breaks up, college is done.  Move it along, son.  Put it behind you.

Well, I was lucky enough to live in Boston after that, and saw a lot of Charlie Chesterman with the Harmony Rockets, and solo, and I dunno how many times with the Legendary Motorbikes, plugging away.  Plans sadly fell through to have the Motorbikes play at the Wack-Keating Belated Wedding Event/ Premature 2nd Anniversary Party a couple years back.  After that, I kept an eye out for Charlie gigs, hoping to catch up, but... nothing....  for many months....  strange....  Until, card-carrying stalker that I still must be, I happened to go to Charlie's ever-neglected and run-down website for the first time in a long while and...?  What the $%^&??  Cancer?  Benefit?  What the #%^#??

Well, more on all that business shortly.  In the meantime, this one goes out with eternal gratitude to Charlie and Randall and Stephen and Burns and Mac....