First Moving Targets Gig

The Moving Targets first gig was  on Christmas eve 1983 with the Bad Brains and Scream at legendary CBGBs in New York City.

We were big fans of the Bad Brains and went to see them at the Living Room in Providence, RI. We got backstage before their set, offered them a huge doobie, and handed their manager a cassette of an early rehearsal we'd made. He handed us his business card through a mystical cloud of  Ganga and told us to call him in a week.

A week later we gave him a call and asked him what he thought of the tape. He mentioned that he had misplaced it and urged us to mail him another one. Just then Pat Leonard (who was at my side during this conversation) punched me in the arm and suggested that we race over to Pat Brady's place and play for him over the phone. He told me that was an interesting idea, and to call back when we were ready to rock. We called Brady and jumped in my Dodge Dart. We ran through a couple of  quick tunes at Pat's While his Mom held the phone in the air while simultaneously trying to plug both ears, and passed the audition. Micheal told us we could open for the 'Brains in to weeks at CBGBs. We would also get $100.00 for our trouble.

The day of the show we took Pat Brady's van with a u-haul attached (costing half of our pay before we even left the driveway), and headed towards New York with our pals Kevin Cordima doing lights and George Norris who would be handling "security".None of us had been to NYC before, so there was excitement in the air mixed with a little fear. We pulled up to the Bowery at about 4:00pm to a locked door, a sidewalk full of winos, and nowhere to park. We dumped our shit in front of the club door while Brady found a parking garage. That took care of the rest of our gig money.

Trying to fit in, we took turns asking George to run across the street for beer while we made friends with everybody in fornt of the joint. Finally someone opened up the club and let us in. The place was a real dump, smelling of stale beer (maybe that could have been us), vomit, and cigarettes. Sill, we were honored to be playing our first show in such a famous venue. We did our soundcheck, move our gear and saddled up to the bar. We got a round of drinks and the barmaid told us we would be getting a case of beer before our set. At this point it was 7:00pm and we weren't going onstage until 11:00pm. We ordered a few more drinks, tipped the barmaid well, and convinced her to give us the case a little earlier.

Around an hour later, people started coming through the door. Joey Ramone elbowed up to the bar along with a few other folks I swore I'd seen in the pages of N.Y. Rock Scene magazine. I saw Johnny Thunders go into the mens room. This was going to be our finest moment, playing in front of our heroes. Little did we know that they would soon be long gone when the 8:00 to 10:00 Happy Hour was over. Drunk as skunks, we took the stage and raced through the set, jumping around and breaking a few strings. We got some scattered applause (mostly for Brady's skills on the drums, no doubt), and wheeled our stuff off the stage.

Our good friend Kevin, who had his fair share of alcohol as well, suggested we smoke a "Celebration joint" with the Bad Brains, who were now in the dressing room behind ours. We requested an audience with the kings of Rasta Punk and sparked up the Victory bud. Although it was the middle of winter in NYC, a couple of the band members, as well as their roadies, were barefootin' it. Kevin took an extra-huge draw from the spliff, turned blue, and exploded in a multi-colored projectile of watery goo, covering the floor and toes of the group. They screamed like banshees at the first rays of dawn and scattered out of the way like mice with the lights suddenly turned .. our appologies, a deckhand appeared with an old mop that only made their dressing room smell worse.

The Bad Brains hit the stage at around 3:00am and they were all wearing sneakers. They played a phenomenal, blistering show, and still thanked us from the stage for playing with them. The night ended with Hilly tossing us some crumpled $5s and $10s that smelled like vomit. We made our way back home with our first show under our belt.