My Friend...
Dennis played a LOT of Backgammon while at Berkley...
Dennis & my roommate at Berkley
|
Dennis & me
|
We met at Berkley. I recall a lot of Backgammon and cheesesteak sandwiches at some dump down the street from school.
We went to visit a friend of mine (Dave) from the Army, who lived in Rhode Island.
The three of us recorded a few songs there; can't find the tapes though.
Here's a site from Dave & I. (no need to go there now, but that site has an interesting story as well)
As he was pulling away from school at the end of our summer semester (probably in the car with mom & dad), he
yelled back to me:
"Hey, if we can, we should try to get some gigs when we get settled"
I thought nothing of it at the time, figuring we'd never do it, but within a few weeks Dennis called me
and we were playing out together. Our first job was up in Denville somewhere. I just remember it being
small, but fun. I remember Dennis' family and Lucy being there. We only had enough songs for about 1 hour
of music, so we just faked it (poorly, I might add!). Did one set together, one set each solo, and then we
repeated the first set together to finish the night. Didn't have anything memorizied and I distinctly remember
when I was playing (and relying on sheet music), someone walked in and the doorway breeze blew the
music off the stand... UGH!!! I still blush when I think about having to stop the song, pick up the music
and start over while up on stage. Dennis, on the other hand, was a ham on stage, and did just fine!
We went on to play at a lot of little places over the next few years, here are some pictures...
This was at a place called DeStefano's in Kenilworth. We played
here weekly for quite a while. Just a saloon, but a real lot of
fun.
Note that at this point we had already settled on a name for our "band":
Boylston Inc.
Boylston Street was the address of Berkley.
Below are the only other pics I have of us, all taken by a friend, Danny Sastry, at a club called Penny Arcade
which was up in the Whippany area on Rt 10 as I recall...
Click on a few of the pictures for some really poor quality (but that's all I have!) recordings of Dennis and I
while rehearsing at my house in Roselle.
|
|
|
|
This is by far my favorite picture of Dennis...
Typical: he was a ham and I was struggling to remember the lyrics! :-)
(click on it to hear a song Dennis wrote)
|
|
Here's a picture of my family. Click on it for a recording of a song that Lucy wrote and I performed.
