Why exactly we agreed to play here I just don’t know. It was another paying gig I guess and we had to do what we needed to do to pay the rent at our rehearsal space on Rano, make repairs to the band equipment, pay the roadies, rent the P.A. and a 14’ U-haul truck to carry it around in.

We had a lot of gear to haul with seven musicians and the list of stuff kept growing as we added to the show.  A Wurlitzer organ, a Fender Rhodes piano, a Moog synthesizer, two (2) five- foot Peavey Amps, a Sound City Cabinet with a separate home-made amp (courtesy of John McGovern), three guitars in cases with too many guitar effect pedals to count, a double-kit of Kent drums with hardware and cymbals (plus an 8’ x 6’ plywood drum platform), a flute, a full-sized accordion and a Glockenspiel.

Then there was the Lighting and P.A. equipment; a crap-load of mics with microphone stands, a set of Perkins cabinets, a pair of horns, a pair of stage monitors (if we had the amp to run them), two P.A. amps, two crossovers, E.Q. and a Peavey sound board.  >whew<  it exhausts me just listing it here much less having to haul it around all over Western NY in-and-out of clubs from U-haul to rehearsal room.

On most nights, we were lucky to have any vocal effects at all; even basic reverb at times was a challenge depending on the layout and the size of the club. Feedback was a major issue and it seemed that even a tiny bit of reverb brought on a deafening squeal.  Yet in spite of all this, the band Parousia was running seven-member strong at this point. For the first time we were playing gigs in every month of the year. In January, we had a great Saturday and Sunday show at McVan’s.

In February we played at Mark Freeland’s First Annual Music Awards at McVan’s. In March we had a back-to-back weekend gigs at Brush Garden’s in Chaffee, NY.  In April we played a concert in the Katharine Cornell Theatre at the University Of Buffalo and played our first gig for the attending academia at the think-tank braniac high-school, Calasanctius prepatory.

In May, we were back at McVan’s to do a show with Kent Weber and Aunt Helen and twice again in June to play a show with Rasputin. Then July hit and things really heated up for the summer. In the first week of July alone we played five gigs. July 1^st at McVan’s, July 2, a live concert in Riverside Park, with a follow-up one-song performance on July 4^th at the Talent Show competition.

July 6^th was a real test of our abilities. We played live on Gary Storm’s “Oil of Dog” radio show (WBFO) at about 2:00 am where we premiered our original tunes such as “Cotton Holiday” and “Angel”.  Then that same day played a live show at Tell it To McGinty’s Pub on Friday and then again on Saturday.

We finally ended the month of July here at the Circus Bar, a small biker bar in Riverside/Black-Rock area. The clientele didn’t mind the harder-edges numbers like Cat Scratch Fever, Train Kept a Rollin’, White Punks on Dope and (of course) Free Bird but not so much for  songs like School, The Portrait, Sing Child Sing or our own original songs like “Malmedy” and “You Got Me all Crazy”.

The place was too small for our seven-piece band, but that didn’t stop us from taking over most of the bar with our gear and entourage and giving the loudest performance the Circus Bar customers were ever going to hear from a local act (with the possible exception of Talas of course).  I bet their ears are still ringing.