This was Parousia’s first gig at the Plant 6 on Niagara Street in Black Rock. It was very near the band’s primary long-term performance venue, McVan’s nite club (Niagara and Hertel) and our rehearsal place was just down the road in the old King sewing factory bldg. on Rano.

The Plant-6 on Niagara Street was very small venue to say the least. Unlike McVan’s, it was not known for attracting the art community, it was primarily a sport’s bar that served as a watering hole for local baseball teams looking for a cheap place to drink after the game.  The club was barely big enough for the band to cram all the instruments against the back wall, much less a P.A. system.

When we started to play, we were LOUD, our sound rocked the walls in that tiny place and the audience liked it!  The audience was an uber-rowdy bunch and that was ok by us.

Anyone who played on stage will tell you… there is nothing worse than an audience more interested in the TV hanging on the wall, instead of the band on stage. …That was not the Plant-6.  In all honesty, at times, the audience was so out-of-control that we feared for our lives…

Like the flyer says, (before it was defaced by a ‘mouth-breather’, making it politically incorrect) besides being Parousia’s first gig at Plant-6 Niagara, it was the first time on stage with singer Michelle Improta. (last name shoulda’ been Implode-a). She was brought in by the band to replace Kim Watts on vocals and harmonies.

This was a “showcase gig” for the purpose of providing the bar owner a chance to see the band perform and decide if he liked it enough to book a full weekend, Friday and Saturday night. As such, the band played just one set of music including “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, “White Punks On Dope” by the Tubes, “Pinball Wizard” by the WHO and “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The owner instantly liked us. Michelle sang three songs in all and did OK for the first go-around.

Michelle’s vocal abilities needed work, but she really wasn’t interested in working on that. Yes, she was very cute and unlike Kim, she was heterosexual and liked to use her looks to get what she wanted from men.  To the band, Michelle was what we called a “prima-donna”. She didn’t like attending rehearsals and didn’t want to help-out with any of the production work (carrying equipment in and out, setting up, marketing, etc). She just wanted to sing on stage and be liked.

We don’t know why she wanted to play in a band. It didn’t seem like she was interested in improving her sound… …Maybe joining a rock band was a passive-aggressive stance against her boyfriend’s need to possess?  She placed a considerable importance and concern on her recent engagement to her fiancé, Buffalo cop… a cop that did not like his fiancé joining a rock band full of dudes to perform in crappy bars to a bunch of drunk / high (and god knows what else) baseball-payers until two-thirty in the morning.

Two rehearsals and one show later, Michelle fucked us over at the next gig, Frank’s Casa Nova, October 5, 1979. She never showed-up and never called to cancel. That was the end of that…    After that time-waster, Kim Watts re-joined the band to perform at Kelly’s Inn on October 12 & 13^th and all was right again with the world for a while…