The Covid Scare is Over

Oh but the Media fear mongering will continue. It just drones on and on every day without end to the point where anyone who is still listening and taking the "news" seriously has got to have a screw loose at this point since it's not just a lie, it is all an Obvious lie.

"How can you say that, people are dying, yes, DYING from the Covid Virus every day!"

Yep, but apparently they aren't dying of anything else yet death stalks us every day at every turn. You could find blood in your stool tomorrow morning. I'd bet the last thing that would enter your head after that would be if you were going to catch the fucking flu.

It's all been over sold and the lock-downs just an economic suicide attempt by the Leftist governors of the Leftist States of America. In a move reminiscent of the Old South, the LS of A have made their own move at Secession. And just like the antebellum South, they are desperately trying to hold onto their untenable and outmoded way of life, the life of Taxpayer Servitude, the new slaves of the Liberal wealth redistributors. In this world, nobody ever gets too much. What you earn, you do not own. Your money is theirs to dole out to whomever they deem downtrodden. Except you, you stupid shit, you just get to pay so shut up, sit down and keep pretending this is real.

The Mask as a Symbol of Oppression

The hoax of the virus is that it's so deadly that the whole world has to stop, that you have to not work and go on the Dole, that you have to stop living your life and instead be in fear of losing it.

You call this living?

And the weird thing is, nobody really believes it anymore. People are walking around with their masks on their chins because it's ridiculous. Why are people wearing masks out side? There is a family that must live on my block because I encounter them out walking way too often for my liking. I call them the Fear Family because when they encounter me on the sidewalk, knowing full well by now that I'm not going to move, will walk in a line out in the street. And when they do this, I sing my "Covid Song" at them:

"Living in fear! Everybody's living in fear!
Hold onto your life, oh what a fright.
Stay away from every one, this is the life!"

Those stupid, stupid people. Wearing masks outside in the fresh fucking air and going out of their way to avoid people on the God-damned sidewalk. Fear much?

Few people are dying of this. Take away the 82.5% of the deceased Massachusetts residents who were in nursing homes and  hardly anybody has died of this in the state. Nobody 20 and under has died.

"Oh, but people 20 and under HAVE died." the fearful will chorus but what does that mean? Someone, somewhere, in a nation of 300 plus million people, has died of this. What are the odds?

"You must watch quite a bit of television." I'll answer since it's the television watchers who are the most fearful and stupid people I've met since this bullshit started.

There was a woman in work who repeated the lie she heard on TV like it was the gospel, that children with not symptoms are the most likely to spread the disease. It was apparent to me that she was incapable of rational thought since all flues are spread by the most obvious symptom: coughing. If you ain't coughing, you ain't spreading the virus. The report was later rescinded but the damage was done.

It was all a big lie. Covid didn't stay alive on surfaces for 24 freakin' hours, didn't survive in the cold, people didn't have it for two weeks before they knew they had it, children, rather than being "carriers" rarely even got it and if you need a fucking test to tell you that you've got it, how sick are you really if you didn't already know?

How stupid you must feel. But you should be feeling angry at the politicians that tried putting this over on us.

The lie is that hardly anyone outside of a nursing home is dying of this yet the states are cracking down on business harder than ever. I have been getting my coffee at a local quick mart for the last six months where it's self-serve. After 6 months of this, the state has told them no more self-serve. They now have to pour people's coffee for them. Does that make sense?

None of this has made sense from the beginning. It's not about public health. It's about creating chaos. With mobs in the streets, the mayors and governors doing nothing about it, closing businesses and  basically refusing to take charge, chaos grows.

Riots Not Polling Well

Scaring Middle American has never been a winning strategy and the Political Left never seems to get that. Or it's that they are incapable of any other strategy since they don't actually have any ideas. The Obama brand of fatalist pessimism still permeates the Democratic Party. They've got nothing else to offer.

But now even the Democrats are getting uneasy. Not because of the riots and violence but at the Perception of the riots and violence. They seem to be concerned that people are seeing such things in a negative light. People aren't running to join the Anarchist Revolution, they are instead running out of the states where the Revolutionaries are going crazy with the looting and burning.

Bad optics, they're saying. But still not a finger lifted by state government to stop it.

Everywhere, No Money

The states who've locked down the most stand to lose a bundle. But no Federal funds will be coming their way most likely ever. Since Donald Trump will win in a landslide, he's not going to be writing checks to New York, California, Main, Rhode Island or Massachusetts period. The House and Senate will look different and there may be less will on their part to even talk about state bailouts.

No, no, the states are on their own and have lost billions to the point of half the state budget is not coming in by way of taxes. How long the governors think they can defy gravity is anybodies guess but at some point, someone is going to need to get their money and it won't be there. 

Then what? 

The Anarchism of the American Left

Usually, Anarchism, by definition, is the desire and execution of far left elements of society to bring down governments in an anti-authoritarian revolt, to bring chaos due to a breakdown of government's ability to enforce its laws.

But what if your Anarchists ARE the government? What happens when they move to destroy their own states in an effort to destroy the over all economy and Federal government?

Well look no further!

The Leftists on the state level are exercising their own version of Anarchy by ignoring the Federal government and purposely sinking their state economies in an attempt to cripple the sitting President and exert jack-booted control of  all business in their domains.

This certainly turns the definition on it's head.

Understanding Anarchists 

Regular folks have a hard time understand how Anarchists think. Like Suicide Bombers, why would somebody destroy themselves just to get at someone else? If the state Governors crash their economies, wouldn't that hurt them and their supporters also?

Yes but...they don't care!

The goal is to reach the target. The costs will be only be weighed AFTER, win or lose. The point is to tear down, disrupt and destroy and if they are blown up in the turmoil they cause, well it will all be worth it in the end. To them, Martyrdom is a desirable achievement for the cause.

You, me, family, friends....all just collateral damage, means to an end. After all, this is War. Not for the hearts and minds of the people but for the fleeting opportunity to control them regardless if they want to be ruled or not.

Who thinks like that?

THEY do. And the sooner you figure it out, the better off we'll all be.

Crashing the States

How else can one explain the economic destruction being forced upon the United States by Leftist Governors like California's Gavin Newsom, Illinois's J.B. Pritzker, NJ Governor Phil Murphy, Connecticut's Ned Lamont, NY Governor Mario Cuomo, Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island and Massachusetts own Charlie Baker, who are closing businesses, giving orders, making demands and sending the Men with Guns after, not the criminal element, since the state courts are actually releasing convicted criminals back into society during this lock-down but sending them after ordinary taxpaying citizens.

This is for everybody, not just people who are at risk.

Is this for the Public Health?

Even if it saves JUST ONE LIFE, it'll all be worth it, won't it?

Well poverty has it's own health downside. And if people can't open their businesses, can't work, can't travel and if the hospitals are seeing nobody but people with the virus, we're going to have poverty.

So why would the Governors want to crash their own economies, it makes no sense.

Already told you, they don't care. All that matter is the goal.

Get Trump

The President can't run on the economy anymore, it's gone. The highest unemployment since the first Great Depression. The states are running record deficits, many even before this happened. Very little tax money coming in, hospitals laying people off and right now, I can confidently say that every town in the state of Massachusetts this week will be holding meetings about how many town employees they will have to furlough or lay off. The longer this goes on, the less and less there will be for everyone.

Still think this is to protect the populous from the Virus?

No Bailouts from the Feds

President Trump must stick to his guns about not rewarding this behavior and the chances are very good that no bailouts can even be possible before January since he has already vowed to veto bailout legislation. The Republican controlled Senate will not override a Presidential veto during an election year.

Should the Leftist opposition candidate, by some happenstance, prevail in November, they would not be able to write a check until they take office late January of 2021.

So...not gonna happen. The decision, should he actually sign such a bill, is the President's alone.

Square Yourself with God

We won't live forever and I for one am not interested in living like this. What an incredible waste of time it is running around being afraid you are going to die since, well, you're going to die, sooner or later. Most of us expect it to be later but we like to temp the Fates by seeing just what situations we can wriggle out of.

There is a daredevil in all of us, some more so and less so. Some people's idea of adventure may be hiking New Hampshire's Lafayette trail and for others, they aspire to jump out of a balloon at the world's highest edge with space. But each experiences the same thrill when they take that very first step.

After all, life is too short to live in fear.

Will Dr. Fauci Ever STFU?

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - Franklin D. Roosevelt - 1933

"Run for the hills, everybody is gonna DIE!" - Dr. Anthony Fauci - 2020

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" - Johnny Rotten - 1978
                                   

Rather than refer to the Corona Virus as his worst nightmare, Dr. Fauci has presented himself as the NATION'S worst nightmare.

As the country's top political fear merchant, Anthony Fauci is the worst kind of bureaucrat. A guy who has labored in obscurity for decades, sawing away at a job where nobody every heard his name and suddenly the President of the United States asks him his opinion on something and a camera turns on and he's suddenly everywhere at once. And what does he do?

He scares the BeJesus out of everybody to the point where the politically Leftist Governors get the idea to shut down the world's largest economy for 3 whole months.

And Fauci is still out there saying that it's just the beginning.

No, Dr. Fauci, it's the END!

Can somebody finally bring out the hook and get this LUNATIC off the stage? The country needs this guy like a hole in the head. Send him back to his office and quit asking him questions because you already know what "Dr. Death" is going to say; "This is going to be BAD! This will take YEARS to come out of! Better square yourself with GOD!"

Can't this guy just shut up? Hasn't he played politics enough with people's livelihoods?

The country has been crippled for years to come and it's all been one tremendous HOAX. Oh, the Virus is real but none of the information put out surrounding it has been right. The guy who said 2.2 Million people were going to die has been exposed as a fraud, The World Health Organization's information has been erratic at best and malicious at worst, the National Media seldom mentions details about who has died, where they died (like in a nursing home), how old they were and what their underlying conditions were. They've just counted numbers and those numbers too, are a lie.

We haven't heard about one Opiod overdose in three months. In a nation where 67,000 people died of drug overdoses last year, One quarter of the year goes by and nothing. They're all now dying of the Virus, right?

Now we're seeing thousands of looters and protesters looting and protesting in close quarters and no reported consequences. What's up with that? It's ok for them but YOU, shut up and stay home if you know what's good for you! Why is it that it always seems to be the criminal element that lives a freer lifestyle than the regular overly monitored citizen taxpayer? It makes no sense.

Fauci is a career government hack who has suddenly gained a forum and has joined his deep state comrades to put the entire nation into a tailspin and he's not done yet. The Leftist Media obviously loves him since they think this is actually hurting President Trump by creating chaos in the marketplace. But fear can quickly turn to resentment, especially when people discover they've been lied to. We'll just have to see how many people figure it out before November.

The cat is also out of the bag on how contagious the Virus is. Even though the WHO has been trying to walk it back, they said asymptomatic transmission of the Virus is rare. Combine this information with the total lie that a person could be asymptomatic for a full two weeks without knowing they had the Virus and one has to wonder just how stupid we all were to have believed word one about this considering the source of the information.

It's all been a big CON.

And here we still have some state Governors ignoring the new science because it conflicts with what they were trying to do in the first place, which was to crash their local economies to effect political change. They didn't give one Whit about public health or the science of the Virus. They have a mission to accomplish and facts and even their own careers seem to matter little in its execution.

That's just crazy.

But it's been a crazy political landscape for the last four years with one bullshit made-up attempt at the overthrow of the government and the Constitution after another. No plan is too extreme and no person too big to sacrifice.

And here too we get Dr. Wacko Fauci who admits "WE" don't know much about the Virus but in the next breath knows we're still at the beginning. Who is still believing this guy?

Turn this guy off. Turn off your television news, since that is your real problem if you think this is all being done for YOUR safety and the public health. If you haven't woken up to the con by now then there's nothing I can say to change things and you've just wasted 10 minutes of your life reading this far.

The coming economic strife will also effect your health but you won't be hearing Dr. Anthony Fauci talk about that while the camera is rolling.

You're on your own in that regard.

No More Bailouts Mr. President!

It's the Liberal State Governor's who've decided to scrap the U.S. Constitution, exert executive privilege and nuke their local economies with just a wave of the hand. These acts should not expect a reward.

Corporations big and small are receiving federal funds. The hospitals and state unemployment offices are also receiving federal funds...until July. But unemployment insurance funds won't cover the damage being wrought by these illegal shutdowns. Independent enterprise is being destroyed. If you are drawing a paycheck, your views are vastly different from those people who are NOT drawing a paycheck.

Bloated State Pension Contracts

It's a well known secret that many states, the Liberal States, have sold the taxpayer down the river with their incredible benefits hand-outs to their state workers. Over the years, due to declining tax revenues, the states have not kept up with their funding obligations, sending less money than required to fund the retirement funds these contracts require. Subsequently, most, if not all of these pension funds are WAY in the red.

The Federal Government is not and should not be responsible for this lack of fiscal responsibility. It's all fun and games in "Other People's Money-Land" until the well runs dry.

And here we are.

It's not like the Feds don't have a few fiscal responsibility issues of their own. Our future generations will pay dearly if this problem isn't addressed.

A Great Opportunity

This is a great opportunity to actually rectify the situation. It has been suggested by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow the states to file for bankruptcy. This will force them to go back and either re-negotiate these pension deals or render them void. There will be much political fallout to be sure but the problem will no longer be ignored.

If the states, in what increasing looks to be like less concerned with public health and more concerned with politics, want to crash their economies then the responsibility for repair falls to them.

Unsustainable Lock-down

I live in Massachusetts and our Liberal Governor, Charlie Baker, has determined that the lock-down will continue until May 18th. If Mr. Baker thinks he will reap political hay by crushing the livelihoods along with their Constitutional rights, he should think again. The consequences or his criminal acts will reverberate long after November. It'll take years to recover for some, never for others.

How the American people will view one of the major players in destroying the national economy is open to interpretation but I'm going to guess it won't be viewed favorably. I could be wrong since I'm mostly appalled by how my local town's citizenry have taken this all lying down.

Living in Fear

I'm here to tell you, you are going to DIE! As Hank Williams once sang, "No matter how I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world alive." And he should know, he died at age 27. So we're all gonna DIE!

But not today and not tomorrow. Please try to stay optimistic about that. Staying shut in the house, not going anywhere and jumping out of the way of people on the sidewalk IS NOT LIVING.

Right now, statistically, you have better odds of dying from the regular flu. That's right. You are not getting access to all the information. And if it wasn't for NYC's numbers, one would be hard pressed to say this Virus has had a more than average impact upon the nations annual flu-related mortality rate of 35,000 to 60,000 deaths per year. That's right.

Which leads me to another issue I have with all of this fear-mongering. Every year in this country approximately 35,000 people are killed in motor vehicle accidents, many horribly, and the multitudes horrendously injured defy description. Yet nobody seems compelled to slow down. They fearlessly barrel down the local streets and highways 20 mph over the speed limit. And when they callously and fatally run someone down, there they are crying in court "I didn't mean to do it!".

So why all of a sudden are people wearing masks outside (useless), treating people around them like Lepers and believing what the Governor says is the Law and Gospel?

I swear I don't recognize this place anymore.

The Truth About NYC

New York City is the biggest Welfare State in these United States. Their Elderly Services programs are the biggest and costliest in the nation. They offer extensive services to the elderly of low-means such as free housing, free food, assistance accessing Federal and State service health programs like Medicare, Medicaid and PACE. There are also numerous non-profit and faith-based organizations there that also provide assistance. New York City is sort of a Welfare Magnet for the elderly. So they have a boat-load of really old people not in very good shape, to be frank. A walk through the city will reveal the extent of it. There are huge high-rise elderly housing complexes and people brandishing their walkers dominate the sidewalks, everyone is living on top of each other.

The nursing home system in NYC, in accordance with it's size, is equally extensive and have turned out to be the flash point for the city's disproportionate Virus mortality rate, now up to 17,638 as of this writing.

So what does NY Governor Mario Cuomo do? Knowing that the elderly are the most susceptible to the Virus, he personally mandated the state nursing homes accept elderly applicants that are confirmed Corona Virus positive! Still wondering why the numbers are high there?

You will think I've made this up and I don't blame you.

The Politics of it All

It is unbelievably extreme to lock down the country for the flu. Listening to the Media go after President Trump during his press updates tells a tail of their concerted efforts to blame him for the Virus response. Add to it the new lock-down extensions of the state Governors where even the state of Maine, with only 1,040 cases in total and 51 deaths, is now locked down into May.

This is crazy. Our nation is currently $23 Trillion (I've also seen $ 26 T) so writing more checks isn't going to improve things. We're just printing money with no production behind it so  throwing more paper at the states, especially since they're doing this on purpose, makes no sense. If the states continue receiving federal funds, they'll never open up.

Let the chips fall for the lock-down states. It'll be open up or crash and burn. I also hope that all these businesses sue the state once the courts are re-opened.

Judgement awaits.

Media Spreading Virus Fear

Turn on the Television: Death!

Turn on the Radio: Death!

Listen to the news conferences, what are the reporters saying?

"Mr. President, what can you say to the people who are going to DIE!"

Are you kidding me? Who says things like that? Crazy people, that's who. Members of the National Media. Talking like the Virus is a virtual death sentence. You get it, you die!

Dead, you, now, it's over!

It's not a death sentence. Far from it. Yes, people are dying from it but the longer this goes on, the more people like myself are suspecting that there are other motivations behind the news beyond the concerns for public safety. The numbers just aren't adding up.

Governors Shut State Economies

Although by law it is supposed to take an act of the legislature, the Governors of many states have simply closed almost all businesses in their states with a wave of their hand.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, Mario Cuomo of New York, Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island and here in Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker have all crashed their state's economies in an effort to contain the virus. Well, I hope it's worth it because poverty has it's own health consequences, lots of them. Will there be someone keeping track of that?

Whether you believe Self-Isolation works or if you are a fan of Herd Immunity, you've gotta admit that what is going on is over-the-top extreme to shut everything down in the states for over 2 months and counting. No sales, no taxes, no demand and no income.

But the bills, they're still out there.

My landlord has yet to call me saying not to worry about anything and I'll bet the phone hasn't rung for many of these business owners either. Deferring the payments isn't going to help since they aren't going to actually go away. But their income has and it may not be coming back. And if it does, chances are they won't be able to cover the loses. But we won't know for a few months down the road if they ever free us up from these open-air prisons we're living in.

I don't have the time or the fortitude to list how all this shit is rolling downhill. From leases, to lien-holders to banks to tax revenue, liability insurance, auto and homes sales...don't get me started. But it all has to get paid back.

The names of these Governors will live in infamy if they don't get off their political high-horses and get people back to work sooner than later. If it goes on past May, who knows where they expect to get the money to cover the public service payrolls. Or will they actually cut the state budgets? They can't get the money out of all the private-sector unemployed they created. Good luck trying.

Invoking Science!

When someone says, "Listen to the Science!" or "People aren't listening to the Science!" I know that they are trying to pull the wool over my eyes. There's nothing to believe about science these days. There's always a political or monetary motivation behind the lions-share of scientific reporting that there's really no relying upon any of it for truth. Scientists have been caught cheating and colluding to "fix the problems" with their findings. We were better off with the Alchemists.

So when these knuckle-heads predicted 2.2 million people dead, 200,000 in the U.S, how on God's Green Earth can you believe this in the first place? How stupid are you? You're obviously being PLAYED!

And yet people just jump through the hoop every time the Media holds it out for them. Like circus animals. They're out there right now thinking wearing a mask is going to help, waging a finger at you for not "Social Distancing" like some Virus Nazi, or they leap off the sidewalk into the street when they encounter someone walking in their direction. Like if they do catch the Virus they'll say, "Perhaps I got it from that guy I passed on the sidewalk last week?".

Turn off the television you stupid twit, you'll feel a whole lot better.

And when this is over and the truth comes out, and it will come out, there are going to be quite a lot of people who should be totally ashamed of themselves and their behavior.

I said SHOULD be ashamed of themselves since we all know many of these people do this sort of thing all the time for a living and so it's just a job to them. Nothing personal. The others will just rationalize it all away until something else comes along to make people look in a different direction. (Cue the Water-skiing Squirrel!).

Depending on Government

Since the closing of the state businesses and the calling for bailouts, the Governors have forced President Trump into becoming FDR, to a point. The Feds were already running $26 Trillion in deficits before this happened so there's no money there either. They will have to print it if they want to hand it out. It won't matter how much they print, it won't be enough to cover the damage done.

Mitch McConnell came up with a great idea, to let the states file for bankruptcy. That drew howls from the Governors since that's the signal that it's time to open up their economies because the Feds will not be writing checks to bail them out. They don't like the idea because should they file for bankruptcy, that will void all the municipal union and public pension contracts and they would all have to renegotiated and, most likely, adjusted downward.

Time to open things up or face the music, Guv'nor.

The American Diet

The studies coming out of New York City in regards to the 12,000 plus people who have been counted to have died of the Virus, 89% of them had other life-threatening conditions including coronary artery disease, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. The two studies I read pointed squarely to the American diet of takeout-food, high-fat, high-salt and high-calories combined with a sedentary lifestyle. This explains why Japan, with the worlds oldest population, doesn't come close to the numbers of NYC alone never mind the whole country. Even though they smoke like chimneys and drink like fishes, they don't eat like crap! Very little fat in the Japanese diet and they aren't that into sweets either.

Living in Fear

Yes, pneumatic flu is a danger. It seems to ignore most but some people get it bad. And if you get it bad, you could die from it, like dozens of other things you could die from any time.

Do you really want to live this way? Do your really think this is a new normal? I don't. The sooner we get out there and start living, the sooner the virus will disappear. I am not going to live this way. I refuse. I resent the Governors destroying my livelihood by royal decree and becoming a law unto themselves for whatever the motivation. I think it's political frankly, and it stinks.

Time to give up the charade and get back to work. This is now not a crisis of epidemic but a crisis of government. The Virus didn't close down all the businesses, President Trump didn't close down all the businesses. The Governors, THEY closed down all the businesses.

Nobody should forget this.

Providence Rock & Roll Clubs: 1979 to 1984

My friends and I started going to Rock & Roll clubs at a time when you only had to LOOK 18 to get into a club in either Boston or Providence, Rhode Island. Most of the time, if you were tall, nobody at the door flinched when you came to pay the cover. Neither I nor my friends were ever "carded" going into a Providence club. But my first experiences in the Rock & Roll clubs in Providence had provided a lasting taste for live original rock music at the ground level and would deeply influence my life going forward. This is where I had first caught the sickness.

At the time, Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel and The Living Room were popular Providence clubs and were located practically across the street from each other in what passed for the Red Light district which was pretty much around the corner from the Providence Civic Center (Now the Dunkin Donuts Center). They both had their own sound systems and featured original rock & roll bands exclusively, having usually three bands play each evening. You could literally stand in the middle of the street and hear bands from both places playing and from that you could determine which place you'd rather go into first.

The main difference between the two clubs, from our perspective, was that Lupo’s served their beer in plastic cups and pitchers and The Living Room had regular bottled beer but not the bar bottles, they sold the bottles anyone could buy at the "Packie" or "Package Store" as we call beer stores here in the formerly industrialized North-East. That meant you could sneak in beers in your socks and just pull 'em out and nobody would be the wiser. We would do this after drinking a few in the parking lot before we went in for good measure. If the bouncers at Lupo's caught you with a bottle, they threw you out immediately so if you were on a "budget" you had to drink your fill in the parking lot before you went in. Haven't done THAT in a while. Must be a sign of adulthood.

Anyway...

The section of downtown Providence where these clubs were located featured high 5 to 6 story mostly brownstone buildings built at the turn of the last century, narrow streets and although there were working street lights, the light never quite seemed to reach the sidewalks somehow. Housed in these buildings there were a variety of peep shows, flop houses, nude dancing establishments and "dirty book" stores. It was always a dark area at night which afforded privacy when shooting beers in the parking lot but also, in retrospect, was also a good place for a murder. Not that anything that extreme ever happened while I was there.

The old Living Room was basically just a store front, much smaller than Lupo’s, and had a couch and a couple of stuffed chairs but mostly you just stood to watch the band. The band stand, which was a little higher than the floor, was on your left as you came in the door so you were right up with the band which was pretty good. Lupo’s, on the other hand, had a much higher raised stage, at least 5 feet, and a balcony section and was a good place to see a band from anywhere in the room. Of the two, Lupo's hosted the bigger, more popular bands.

The first band I ever saw at a club was at Lupo’s. The band was from Boston and they were called Shane Champagne after band founders Gary Shane and David Champagne. They were as professional an outfit as you'll ever see in a club and they all came out with their heads all moving in time to the songs and they were polished as hell. That was also the first time I saw a guy playing bass up close with his fingers and that was SO cool. They also played their hit song “Shadow World” which I recognized from the radio and which remains a great reggae tune. I went out and bought my first electric bass shortly after this show and the bass became my first love.

It was also at Lupo’s that I first saw perhaps the best band out of Rhode Island in those days, The Schemers, play their big hit “I Want Some Fun” years before they went on to win Boston’s Rock & Roll Rumble in 1984, beating out Boston Reggae/Ska band Dub 7 in the final. I was there for that too and they played a great set. Also saw The Hi-Beams who were Rumble runner ups the year before the Schemers took the contest.

The Living Room had some lesser known but still viable acts. One standout group was Rubber Rodeo which put out an EP titled “The Girl He Left Behind” which features a couple of cool covers: “Jolene” and the theme from the old spaghetti western movie featuring Clint Eastwood, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” They were a six piece band lead by brothers Bob and Barc Holmes and their girl singer, Trish Milliken was very good. Unfortunately their writing wasn't that strong. But they put on a good show and I occasionally put the EP on the turntable and it still sounds good. I remember they would dress all Country Western and pass out these toys called "Whistling Lariats" that you twirl and they...well they whistle. Yes, it was corny but I always liked it when bands did something more than just stand there and play. I mean, SAY a few syllables, let me know who you are. Rubber Rodeo did this very well.  

Saw one of Johnny Thunders gigs, if you can call it that, at Lupo’s. I didn't even know who the fuck Johnny Thunders was at the time and when he finally staggered out on stage as the headliner, a weird floppy hat on his head and a fender Telecaster in his hands, his backup group for the night was The Daughters I was told and he wandered from one end of the stage and back while the band played “Louie Louie” not seeming to know where the hell he was or why. I was referring to him as “Johnny No-Mind” when talking to my friends about it. Only later did someone I mentioned the show to inform me that he was a founding member of The New York Dolls.

By early 1991 Johnny Thunders was dead at 38 years old and after what I witnessed that night I don't know how he managed to hold on as long as that. Just goes to show, Rock and Roll can get you pretty fucked up. But I suppose growing up in New York City; he was probably already pretty fucked up before he found Rock and Roll.

Turns out that Lupo’s was a pretty rough place sometimes and there was a reason they served beer in plastic. One night when Shane Champagne was just getting into their headlining set, the room suddenly filled up with leather jackets, like a HUNDRED leather jackets and they were hollering, swearing, elbowing and throwing full cups of beer everywhere but mostly at the band. At one point, and I’ll never forget it, Gary Shane had had enough of that shit and he takes off his guitar, a Fender Telecaster, and holding it up over his head like an axe with one hand, leans over the edge of the stage pointing to the guy with the other and is about to bash him in the head. I can still see the guy putting his hands up saying "Wait, wait"…

And then we were out in the street. We just ran out of there with our drinks still in our hands. Years later when I got to play some gigs with Gary who had local hits with his next band Gary Shane & The Detour,  most notibly "The War Between Man & Machine", I asked him about that night and he doesn't remember a thing about it. He did however, autograph my 9 "Shane Champagne EP. When I took up the electric guitar years later, inspired by Gary's adept display of finess with the instrument, I also bought a Fender Telecaster for the same reason. The American Standard Telecaster is a good piece of wood that stays in tune after you have had to use it for a "drunk shield". The foreign made ones aren't nearly as solidly build.

There was another band that played both Lupo’s and The Living Room lot it seemed. Lou Miami and the Cosmetics were a “quirky” group and there was always something odd about “Lou” I thought until someone pointed out that he had shaved off his eyebrows. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but yeah, that was it. I can’t remember being impressed but I wasn't repulsed either and those guys seemed to be playing there pretty regularly.

By 1985 we had moved onto the Boston scene and didn't get back to Providence nearly as much. Eventually both places closed like most rock clubs do, suddenly, and the spot where the old Living Room was became the corner of a big ol’ tall office building. The owners later took over another struggling Providence rock club called The Center Stage and made THAT The Living Room for a while and that held out for a year or two afterwards but also closed.

The drinking age had started to go up incrementally to 21 years old in Massachusetts and the state of Rhode Island followed about a year later and the rock scene of “the old days” began to fade. It not only hurt the music business but I think the younger people missed out on a lot of cool music because 18 to 21 are the best “going out to see bands” years since many are still students and even if you were working you could burn the candle at both ends without feeling the effects as you do later. You had to be “cool” at a much younger age or somebody would settle you out in a hurry. By 21 you’re just onto other things and you don’t know what you’re missing and before you know it, you're dancing to a cover band playing "Mustang Sally" in some suburb joint thinking THAT is where it's at. It's sad really.

Lupo’s, after a few location changes, lives on as a concert club still in Providence catering now more to national touring original and tribute acts but occasionally having local original bands. It’s not the room it used to be but I’ve seen a few bands there and there’s a lot to be said about seeing original live music anywhere you can find it.

So if you are looking for something to do. Go See a Band!