i mentioned a few months back that a good friend of mine was hosting pat dinizio of the smithereens for a living room concert...well, last night, was the big show, and it was very entertaining. not being a big smithereens fan, i only recognized "a girl like you" and "blood and roses", but it was still a blast. and man, can that guy sing. he has a very strong and powerful voice that really fills up a room. he also did "you've got to hide your love away" and "i'll be back" for the beatle crowd, which set your ol' starbuck's heart a twitterin....

the most interesting part of the whole thing was hearing the stories of a grisled veteran of the music business. he mentioned both before and after the show about how much the biz has changed over the last 15 years or so, what with sharing of music and the interweb and all, and how much that has negatively effected the $ that people make. i already knew that was the case, but to hear him talk about it was pretty interesting. he also told the story about how he wrote "blood and roses": back in the day, he was living with a girlfriend who, according to him, had the most amazing voice in new york...problem was, they would fight all the time, which was unhealthy for the relationship. after one particular row, he went down to the bar and ended up spending his last dollars on beer and ended up getting completely shitfaced. he knew he was in for it with the girlfriend, but he drank his money away anyway. as he was walking home at about 5 AM, however, he had to go through a seedy part of town, and he kept bumping in to street vagrants, whom he thought were going to mug him, and cops, whom he thought were going to arrest him for being a complete drunk....so he stepped up his pace, and ended up walked a very cadenced pace really fast. as he was walking, that opening bass line popped into his head, matching itself up with the cadence he was walking, and by the next six blocks or so he had the song written. he was so excited...but he needed to get past his girlfriend to his tape recorder so he could get it down before he forgot it. usually, he said, when they had fights, she would take all his clothes, guitars and records and dump them out on the landing outside their apartment...but this time, his shit wasn't there when he got home, so he thought he could sneak in and get the song down before she noticed he was home...but when he was fumbling with his keys, as drunks are known to do, she opened the door on him and started screaming at him....he responded with saying that he was sorry, but that he had just come up with a great song and needed to get it down quick....being a musician herself, she stopped, sighed, and said, "...i'll go get the tape recorder...."

so many interesting stories....so many names dropped....after everyone else had left, i was standing around talking to our paul guy from the beatle band, who went to the show with me. our friend who hosted the show and dinizio came back to the back room after dinizio finished hawking his CDs...and we introduced ourselves. the first thing out of my mouth was the ultimate question that our paul and i have been arguing about for years. i figured that someone of dinizio's experience and stature would surely see my side of the argument, despite the fact that he is a beatles fan. "Say pat," i asked, "which version of 'i wanna be your man' is better: the beatles' or the stones'? "no question," he said. "the beatles rock that song longer and harder than the stones ever did." sigh....

in any case, he went on to talk about the stones a bit...he played a few gigs in new york with chuck leavell and bobby keys...loved hanging out with bobby. i told him a few stones tour stories about bobby...dropping TVs out the hotel window with keith and so on...he said he heard keith was a bit hard to work with and i countered by reminding him not to cut the shepherd's pie if he ever found himself backstage with the boys. anyway, we listened to his stories for about 45 minutes....about how, the first time he ever jammed with macca, he was all nervous and excited...then linda came up to him, kissed him on the cheek, and said, "paul and i both love the smithereens!" backstage watching a george harrison concert...the most interesting was when the smithereens opened for the ramones. the ramones were, apparently, really hard to work with. they never associated themselves with opening bands, were dicks with their equipment, and refused to let people into their dressing rooms, etc etc. however, after the smithereens had pleyed with them for awhile, the ramones invited them out for drinks afterwards. they ended up going to some bar after their next show and drink the place out...the bartender, who was a grisled old WWII vet, wanted to close up and go home, but the ramones wouldn't let him. the bartender got a bit peeved and called "last call", to which joey ramone scowled, looked the bartender in the face and said, "fine. i'll take 40 budwisers." the bartended obliged, and both bands slammed them all.

in any case, a great show!

Really glad you posted that, Starbuck! I love the Smithereens and agree about Dinizio's voice and the excellent songwriting. It's because of those things that I can forgive him the "I Wanna Be Your Man" comment.  ::) {STRONGLY disagree}.

Great read! I know that took a lot of time to type, but I really appreciate it.  :) :-*