Pact With The Devil

Gary Numan on the tv at Monty's Crown in Rochester, NY
Gary Numan on the tv at Monty’s Crown in Rochester, NY

I designed the menu for this place when it was Tuzz’s and Ted Williams held court here when it was Granna’s. He called it the “Literary Bar.” And then it was the Rose & Crown where Watkins & the Rapiers got their start. Today Monty’s Crown makes a pretty good rock n’ roll club. Tattooed women bartenders, cheap beer, dart board, pool table, very few tables and chairs in way of the stage and guys in Ramones t-shirts and Psychobilly leather jackets hanging around. And then there was this wacky slide show on the tv at the end of the bar.

It was the perfect setting for Terese Taylor and her band. Margaret Explosion’s bass player, Ken Frank, produced some tracks a few years back for Terese. Jeff Spevak calls her a “San Francisco country-punk, lo-fi guitar muse” and that’s seems to work although I didn’t really hear any country from her last night. You couldn’t hear the words either when it got loud but that only made it artier. James Whiton played some beautiful bowed bass and we told him so after the show.

SLT with Ken on bass channeled eighties Iggy. Marathon Mark was there. Did he used to be in SLT or am I confusing him with Luke Warm. Ted Williams was at the bar looking younger than he did in the eighties. The conversation turned to the “War in Heaven”, a poetry performance piece of Ted’s that Peggi and I played on. Robert Meyerowitz, who has been in Alaska for the last two decades or so responded to my fb post last week that he would be “attending” the Margaret Explosion gig at the Little. I just assumed he was kidding but there he was in the first table. He drove all the way from Anchorage! And when we were leaving the bar last night he was just walking in, true to form.

Peggi woke up this morning singing the theme from Ted William’s “The War In Heaven.”.

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