The band was on a recent high-note having recently performed at the Port Colborne West Side Arena in Canada, Parousia’s first arena-sized gig and we nailed it! We came away from that show tasting for the first time what rock stardom could be like, and we wanted more.
Then, one-weekend later the band played back-to-back shows. The first was in the afternoon for The Hertel Happening on Hertel Avenue in Buffalo, NY, an outdoor art & music festival where the band’s performance was captured in a photo and published in The Buffalo Evening News. Later that night, the band performed at The Eagles Roost, a club by the lake in Olcott, NY.
Tonight’s gig on Friday August 7, 1981 was the band’s second gig at ‘New York New York’ which was beginning to be a popular little place to see a good band not under the strangle hold of StarStruck productions. Bands like “Stiff Mitten” a bunch of blokes we knew well from rehearsal at the Music Mall in Cheektowaga played here.
The coverage for Parousia in the local print media for tonight’s show was very amusing, and maddening all at the same time… local papers had Parousia’s name misspelled as “Perosia” and “Barousia” It seemed as though the band’s misspelled name was starting to become “a thing”… It caused us to wonder if the press was having a go at us, like a tease…
The band drummed up a nice sized crowd on this particular Friday and was paid $200.00 as agreed. Dave Styn “head-roadie” & sound-guy earned $40.00; Mike Carroll, the lighting tech earned $40.00. Keith Huels, earned his roadie fee of $10.00 and Steve Styn took in a whopping $15.00, Barry got his usual $10.00 for gas and $60.00 additional for a guitar repair. Then of course Backstage took pity us and reduced their booking fee to 10%, but the truck rental expense ate up another $46.00. All-in-all the expense for the gig totaled $236.00 putting the band $36.00 in the hole!