After the release of “Turnaround” the band was playing in Los Angeles about two-three times a month.  We alternated our gigs between the small & mid-sized clubs (Madame Wong’s, Club 88, etc) and the ‘big daddy’ clubs on the Sunset Strip (the Whiskey, the Roxy and the Troubadour). Luckily, local alternative FM radio station KROQ took us under their wing.

The D.J.’s (‘Ken Fusion’, ‘Jed the Fish’) sincerely liked our progressive tunes from our Turnaround E.P.  They played “Tiffany” and “Place Your Bets” and the first time I heard it, I was in a car on Hollywood Blvd. headed back home and I just about flipped out… I haphazardly parked, nearly missing a pedestrian and ran into the house to tell Patt, but he and Claude were already listening to it.

This show at Club 88 was our ninth show in Los Angeles. We continued to ‘step-it-up’ as best we could to match the competency of the top bands in town.  As you could imagine, the L.A. music scene was a whole new ball-game compared to that of Western NY.

In Buffalo, you could take risks and experiment with new songs or techniques right on stage… you could even suck on occasion yet the fans would continue to support you.   Not so in L.A.!  You were either great or not worth listening to.  There were too many talented musicians for anyone to care.  We simply had to do better.  After a year of not-playing out (due to our move from New York to California), it was a slow but focused effort to get Parousia back on stage.

As we watched and learned, we knew what we had to do.  First, each of us on our own had to practice, practice and practice!  I bought a drum-pad kit for my bedroom and rehearsed to a metronome every chance I got.  We tightened-up our set of music to a handful of our best tunes and worked on eliminating any gaps between songs on stage.  Robert and Patt created collapsible scenery and props so when we took the stage, we could quickly transform it and stand out from the pack.  Having the vocal finesse and flute prowess of Patt Connolly truly helped us get noticed in a town of long-hair guitar shredders and screamers.

We shared the night with the house band, ‘Celibate Boxer’, who went on at midnight. They had their own stage next to the bar. The waitress played in that band and i think other employees did too.  Opening the show was ‘Time and the Three O’Clock Hour’.  We were smack dab in the middle slot at 10:45 PM which was the prime spot. Most of the audience was there in the club by 10:30 pm.

To help advertise the show, we took out a ¼ page ad in New Music Seminar Magazine, a full page ad in Rock City News and a ¼ page ad in the L.A. Weekly.   All of the art was created by Robert Lowden who made the full-page ad into a cartoon adventure where I, (Ger-boy) begin to age-accelerate unnaturally due to listening to “too much Classic Rock”.  Frankie “the chip-head” (aka: keyboardist Bill (Frank) Simms) attempts to create an antidote to reverse the process.  The ad asks the question, “Will Frankie’s Magic Serum save the day?”  I suppose the idea was that you had to show up at Club 88 on Saturday July 30th to find out!