Under My Thumb

After the "living on my own" experiment failed and my band, Maiden Cane had splintered, I was back in my parent's house but was allocated to the basement. I missed my ORANGE ROOM, but the basement was cozy enough. The olive green area that had once been our family room and hosted hundreds of parties, was now considered my apartment. It was temporary but gave me time to decide what to do with myself. I wasn't living there long when my mom asked if I'd like to have my surprise 21st birthday party in the basement. "It's not a surprise if you tell me about it," I said. She replied, "The surprise is that I'm gonna let you clean the basement," It was an extremely successful party with friends from all social circles participating. Scott Sommerville brought his brother Mike who wrote "Never Been Any Reason" and "Love Me Tonight" while in the band, Headeast. Another friend brought an eye dropper with liquid LSD. It would be one of the last times that I indulged in such madness. I needed to turn over a new leaf...but not that night.

The summer of 1980, was spent playing music with a new band called The Untouchables. The band was made up of myself and three other Limestone friends along with a lead singer who thought he was Mick Jagger. I was happy to have some pocket money coming in on a semi-regular basis but my mom and dad were getting impatient with me. What was I going to do with my life???? That seemed to be the nagging question that kept arising every few weeks. The problem was...I didn't know. Eventually, we agreed that I would go back to ICC the following semester, but that wasn't until Jan 1981; a good six months away. My dad was not happy about paying for the classes but my mom took care of that wrinkle. My dad felt that I had made my bed by quitting school back in February of 1979 and I should look for any work I could find. I understand his feelings now but back then I probably took their generosity for granted.

The Untouchables were a fun band that played the Peoria Musical Enterprises bar circuit in Central Illinois and Burlington Iowa. Most of us had come out of hard rock bands that played the music of Montrose, Ted Nugent, Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult, and others, but the scene was changing and New Wave and Punk rock bands were now the rage. There had also been a renewed interest in '60s bands like the Kinks and The Who, so we began building sets lists by bands that included, Cheap Trick, Iggy Pop, The Vapors, Bram Trychowsky, The Pretenders as well as a healthy dose of The Who, Kinks and Rolling Stones. We wore skinny ties and suit jackets with tight jeans while Danny Light and I played Gibson Les Pauls through 50 Watt Marshalls with 8x10 slanted cabinets. We were loud!!!!

Since the disco craze had not completely died out yet, women liked to dance on the lit dance floors for extended workouts. To please the dancers' we would often take the middle section of a four-on-the-floor song and break it down to just drums or just drums and bass guitar much like record companies were doing with extended 12" dance mixes of tunes like Miss You by the Rolling Stones. We did this often with songs like "Superman" by the Kinks and "Under My Thumb" by the Stones.

The band was well into our second set at some club somewhere in Bumfuck Egypt. We'd been having a good night and drinking a lot of draft beer. People were bringing several plastic cups of cold beer up to the stage at a time and we were doing our best to graciously finish them all. I seem to remember the stage we were on was low to the ground and the lights were almost in our faces. There was a railing on each side of the stage and my side was usually stage right. I glanced over to the railing on my side and there were at least four beers lined up for me to drink and I couldn't let them waste. The dance floor was PACKED with sultry-dressed young women and several bikers when we reached the extended drum solo bit in the middle of "Under My Thumb." "Great," I thought, I'd have several minutes to down some of those golden brews that were lined up on my side of the stage. I had downed two by the time Steve Suit's bass guitar joined Darin's drum beat. I knew that the singer would ad-lib for a few minutes and I'd get all four beers down during this well-timed little break. I picked up the last of four beers and without much notice, I realized that Glen was about to lead us out of the dance section and BACK INTO THE SONG!!! This was the point of the song where I'd usually do a high "Pete Townsend" leap right before we all crashed on a triumphant A chord together!!!!

The beer in my hand was only about a quarter of the way drained when I realized I needed to either finish the beer and miss the musical cue to come crashing in with the rest of the band OR... GET RID OF THE BEER ASAP and not miss the A chord!!!! I chose option number two. So...with a split second to spare, I lobbed the full cup of beer into the packed dance floor like a live hand grenade before jumping high in the air and pulling off a perfectly timed scissor leap, hitting the A power chord just in time. I'm sure it looked theatrical and cool as hell!!!!

I noticed a little scuffling going on by the dance floor but didn't think too much about it. Danny, our guitar player told me that he witnessed the whole thing!!! Apparently, my hastily tossed beer bomb landed directly on a leather-clad, bearded biker who was now searching every square inch of the dance floor to locate the asshole who had just dowsed him in sticky yellow Budweiser and beat him to a bloody pulp! Lucky for me, the guy was totally unaware that the guitar player in the band was the asshole!!!!

Just another lucky Tale From The Orange Room.