Wednesday, July 23, 2008

East Side Cafe

One of our next performances after Greenstreets was at the East Side Cafe on Greenville Ave north of Park Lane. It was a small place with concrete floors and a lot of glass. This was definitely a "live" venue. Bill Millet set this up and used his connections to get Time/Warner Cable for the cit of Dallas to tape the performance. Time Warner had a new remote truck and they needed to try it out. So, just a few months after starting out the Bomblets were being professionally taped. In addition to this Bill knew Mark OConnor the virtuoso violinist who also performed on with Spatz, Bill's band. 
We learned something at this performance. The audiences for bands and for comedy are completely different. Comedy audiences need to listen to get the jokes, band audiences can't hear anything during the show because the music is so loud, and they can't hear anything during the breaks because everyone is yelling after the loud music. 
We performed one set during the first break, and I think the twelve or thirteen people who could still hear enjoyed it, the other twoo hundred people all seemed to be ordering blender drinks at the same time. 
We bailed and went home after the first set. 
Thanks to Diana Galloway-OConnor (no relation to Mark) who jogged my memory.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Greenstreets

Our first paying gig was at Greenstreets on Walnut Hill Lane near
Composite in Dallas. This was restaurant row, at one time there were
over a dozen restaurants on this strip, eventually access killed it and
the entiore group moved farther south to the intersection of Stemmons,
Loop 12 and Northwest Highway. But in in 1982 it was till hopping. We
performed for four weekends I believe on Friday and Saturday nights.
This was the first public showing of a standard, Copy Machine, Arlene did her Cucumbers Are Better Than Men solo, and others I will remember when I edit this post.


We met Bill Millet and his band here and eventually
performed with them several times over the next couple of years. he was
married at the time to a beautiful Hawaiian woman. Another trend we
atrted here was playing at venues on the verge of bankruptcy.
Greenstreets went into receivership before we finished out booking and
we had to get with the landlord to rescue the props we had stored
there.