This was a very busy week for Parousia and it all started on Wednesday, October 8th when we performed at the Pardi Bar in Cheektowaga, NY and then on Thursday, October 9th at the Holland Willows in Olean, where at the end of the night my brother’s foot got smashed when the equipment truck backed into it against the loading dock.
We rested on Friday the 10th and on Saturday the 11th we had this gig in Orchard Park which was fraught with problems and in hindsight has earned the title of “nightmare gig” in the annals of Parousia history. 
Earlier in the night we rented a box truck from Keith Gregor’s Music Mall as we had done all during the week for the other gigs. We had no reason to think the truck would have problems but on the way to Orchard Park the truck broke down and it was major. The drive shaft broke and there was no way for us to repair it. The truck was full to the brim with all of our equipment, guitars, amps, a seven piece drum kit, a B3 Hammond organ with Leslie speaker, Fender Rhodes, ARP & Moog synthesizers plus the entire P.A. System…
It wasn’t easy to find a tow yard on a Saturday night equipped with a truck powerful enough to tow a fully loaded 14ft truck to the club and on time for the gig. Forget about sound check, we only had enough time to set up the stage and start the show.
Oh, if only it were that simple.
Yeah, it was something like this, except it was dark, cold and snowing. And the truck didn’t belong to a national franchise with customer service.
Buffalo’s Best Grill formerly the Southtowner
We started more than an hour late and our P.A. system was acting up in a major way. First problem, we were picking up a nearby AM radio signal from WKBW that bled into our P.A. system. Our P.A. was like a giant AM radio broadcast. We were freakin’ out.
Then second problem. …Patrick was desperately trying to get the left side of the P.A. stack working. We had a bad stereo Y-splitter with no spare and that was very bad news.
Patt kept working with it hoping for a miracle when our manager Rick Falcowski walked up to us near the side of the stage and threatened us… “if you guys don’t get on the stage right now, you won’t believe what I’m gonna’ do”.
Well, that struck ‘the fear of God’ into us. So, with only one half of our P.A. working we hit the stage and played loud enough to try and mask the AM radio signal blasting from our horn, mid range cabinet and bass scoop. My brother Barry had to play his guitar in a Lazy Boy recliner because of his broken foot. I can only imagine how it looked and sounded for the audience.
We got through our set and, considering all that happened we did a pretty good job and people liked us, broken foot and all. But at the end of the night the club owner withheld pay because we started too late. He shorted us $100.00 and we really needed it considering the cost of the tow truck on a Saturday night.
I guess Karma eventually caught up with him a few months later when mysteriously the Southtowner burned to the ground… no, we had nothing to do with it… seriously, we all have alibi’s… I’m calling my lawyer.
“Parousia had absolutely nothing to do with the demise of the Southtowner” – their attorney.
I remember that nightmare well. It’s the only time I ever actually cried at a gig. You can imagine the frustration of hearing a radio station coming through the PA just as clear as if it was your own transistor radio. Spinal Tap comes to mind. I changed cords and cables, tried different configurations, grounding plugs and ungrounding them. Nothing worked. We played with the station coming through the speakers, sometimes it was louder than the music. And Barry sitting there in a chair in the middle of the stage singing Jethro Tull! What we must have looked like!