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I tried three times to learn a musical instrument. Firstly drums at 10 but the teacher was not too patient with my progress and I came to dislike him. Secondly with guitar, with my brother teaching me but that fell by the wayside as I had to memorize, by ear, the position of my hand on the fret board. My hand wouldn't cooperate. And lastly piano, and again you have to have coordination to pull that off. What my problem was....propioception. It's the ability to know where and what your body is doing at all time. Sports figures have this in abundance. I however, was a complete klutz and could never get my arms or legs to do those finer movements w/o it looking like spasticity. No ballerina was I.

At my brother's funeral, his best friend, T.M., Esquire (a lawyer) spoke of Ken's highlight of his life, when he was in a garage band called the Felbs.  The real name of the band was "The Paul Felber Mutha Fuck Yo' Ass Brown Bitch Biscuit Blues Band." However, even for the 70s which allowed anything, this was going too far. So they shortened it to The Felbs.  For the late Boomer generation, being a rock star was a dream as the 60's proved to be so incredibly prolific with creativity. You were adored and girls flung themselves at you. After playing local colleges and nightclubs, they slowly moved up to larger venues like Rocky Point and the Arena in Providence. Instead of playing in front of a few hundred people, it was creeping into the low thousands.

Where was I in this? A tagalong who humped equipment at times. A basic roadie and some tutoring from Mr Felber about acoustics and how to run a mixing board. Being a part of this and the ability to get into clubs, bars and colleges at 15 was fun. If lugging a cabinet and head into a venue, night as well stay as I looked semi official and could say...”I'm with the band.” In truth, no one really cared back then.

It was as close as I could get to rock stardom or near any musical talent. OK. Good enough I thought. I was part of it somehow.

It was at the Rathskellar at RIC in '79 when I saw my first A&R people from what I found out later was Capitol Records. Record companies had “talent scouts” crawling all over to find the next hit band aka: The Gravy Train Money Making Monster Profit Bonanza Hope. I was ordered by my brother not to fuck around nor get too drunk as the band had to put their best foot forward. He also suggested I sit near them to hopefully overhear any conversation. There was a man and women in their late 20's. She looked normal but the guy looked like he stepped off a Hollywood game show set. He had perfect hair, ala Deney Terrio, a perfect tan and the first silk suit I had ever seen. He also never took off his Raybans the entire time he was in the bar.

So I sat there and the band played. The two A&Rs didn't say much at all during the first set till the end when I overheard. “God...they play too loud!” They got up, shook the hands of the guys in the band with an excuse they had to check out a band in Boston. Well, maybe they did, maybe not. Anyways I quietly tell the band what they said and Mr Grzych, the singer, gets back on stage to apologize to the audience for playing too loud. A general shout of “NO! Play LOUDER!” rose up.

Still for a 15 year old me, it was cool to have witnessed this.

So the band keeps plugging away, playing and trying to get noticed by say, WBRU's Rock Hunt where The Schemers beat them out. Oh well.  

But then...

The band managed to to gain some notoriety and get a song played in the Boston radio market, WBCN, WVBF,WBZ and WAAF. “Stop & Go World” was the song. It was a combined style of the Young Adults and David Byrne. How anyone in the Boston area knew of this band or this song was a mystery to us all, but there you have it. There was some rotation of the song on the play lists of those stations.

And...two weeks later it was as if the song never occurred. Poof! Another regional one hit weekly wonder disappears.

Hoop Dreams. Only the very, very few ever get to hit it. Thousands start out and the top 5% perhaps makes it, even less have any staying power.

Still at my age now I can still be enthralled by it all. The ability to 1: Play an instrument and 2: Be able to write well crafted songs is amazing to me. Some people really do have this innate talent but not I. Oh well, I did have as small part in it at one time. What happened to the Felbs band? They all graduated college and got “real” jobs. Today they are all eligible for Social Security. I bet they, like I, hark back. 

 

 That's them. That's my brother covered in envelopes, aping the New Wave style then.

 

 

Breakfast at Tiffanys

 

Certain Things Redacted as These People Are Still Alive and Kicking.

A conversation I had with Nicco while we were driving the company van around the West Bay.

I was about 30, she 24. Nicco was an Audrey Hepburn gamine, RI style that is. Change the hair color to auburn and there you have her. She was born pretty and quickly realized that fact as I was told by her not-born-as-pretty sister.

We were passing Freedom Boat Club in Warwick, right by Chelo's Waterfront, when she nearly crawled into my lap as I was driving to look out the window for a particular car.

“Ohhh..he's not there...his car isn't there....his boat is in dock though.” she lamented.

I ask, “Which boat is that?”

She points to one of those cabin cruisers that had long tinted windows that seemed to wrap around the ship. My first reaction was lottery winnings. Nope. She went on to tell me he was part owner of the marina there and had numerous homes in West Greenwich and worked as a managing associate at IDS Financial. Which struck me for a bit because I had interviewed with them years prior when I was toying getting out of social services.

She then opened up an odd conversation with me that she never broached before. We had known each other at the job for about two years. She then dropped the following into my lap.

“Do you think it's wrong to be a 'kept woman?'” she asked.

“I guess so if you delude yourself into thinking you're not when you are, it'll be a problem.”

That was a polite way of softening my original thought: “If you're open to yourself as selling yourself as a high priced whore...I see no problem.”

She goes on.

“We met a few weeks ago at Christie's Landing in Newport. After a few dates, he said he'd pave the way for me. I could quit this job and never work again. I'd have everything I'd want if I...” and she trailed off.

“...fuck him as his personal 'lil' slut?” I almost wanted to say.

Nicco could come off as naive and innocent but I was told it was all an act. Her pissed off sister told me so once. Nicco had spent her dating life constantly “trading up” boyfriends as she discovered richer ones. Her sister, who wasn't ugly by any means, seems to have held a grudge against how easy Nicco's life could be at times, as guys fell over themselves to ingratiate themselves with her. Those same boys did not fall over for the sister though.

Nicco was a Days of Our Lives soap opera addict. She had told me a few years earlier she had gone to a “Meet n Greet” of those actors there in LA. Specifically to meet the character “Tony DiMera.” aka: Thaao Penghlis, a Greek actor that was sort of tall, dark and handsome. It sort of reminded me of those girls who wait in the greasy back alleys of concert venues, hoping to be picked by the lead singer/guitarist for a chance to have at an Alpha Male with lots of MONEY!

She wasn't the only girl there and managed to meet Thaao for 88 seconds before they moved the line of women along. A lost chance.

In that van that day, with her admission, which was sort of her thinking out loud if anything, cemented all the pieces of the puzzle together for me. She was a gold digger. An up and coming pretty face that had to make it by 30 or the game was over for her. She wasn't well educated by any means, kinda dumb but she was “girl street smart” as hell. She knew exactly which career path to take and had a definite goal. I came to find out her personal social skill set was devastating too.

Soo, time passes, I move on with my job/career and people I knew from then drift away, which was about 30 years ago now. But, I love to look up people and see “where are they now” and I found her.

She did it. She found that one CEO to marry. A guy involved with oil company computer security with ARAMCO..the giant Saudi/US oil conglomerate. I also came across a few pictures of her, by accident, on one of her friend's site. There she was, older, but sitting in a Gulfstream G7 private jet, holding a thumbs up sign, smiling into the camera as they flew to Gstaad Switzerland.

My mouth nearly dropped. Gtsaad! A private jet! Holy Sh*t thought I. She really did hit the husband lottery. There were just four other women on that plane and I tried to think what it costs to rent a G7...or perhaps use as a tax write off as a “business trip”...a rich wives' adventure to a very exclusive town in Switzerland.

She was probably the only gold digger girl I knew to have “made it.” All the others I had met blew it by screwing up the romance or didn't realize they'd be traded in for a younger, fresher version when they hit 28. I've seen that happen a few time as the boyfriend wants to trade in his old hag of a lease for a perky fresh 20 year old one.

So, did I try to get her when I knew her then? Yes. She was floating in between boyfriends when I started working on her. I got a well crafted “kiss off” in the parking lot one day after I had asked her out. I admit, she was really good at getting rid of guys who didn't measure up and I didn't. I didn't own a yacht nor did my career path say “Hamptons on Long Island”

“Oh..thank you.” she says, tracing her finger up and down my forearm, “But I'm not looking for a relationship right now...you can understand right?” And she leans in for a quick kiss on the cheek.

That face. Those eyes. That lion's mane of hair. The way she cocked her body as she listened to me. All of it disarms a guy in seconds. It did me.

After that blow off, I had told her sister what happened and how amazing Nicco's skills were. The sister, just rolled her eyes, “Dammit...she's been like that since she was FIVE! She ALWAYS got her way!”