…2..3..4 by Chris Busone.
When I was a young upstart, starting up, as a native of Green Island, Troy was “The City” to me and my friends. When we uttered such anticipatory phrases as “Let’s go to the City tonight,” we weren’t talking about Detroit, Philadelphia, Kathmandu, or even New York City. We were talking about Troy, New York.
But until we reached our eighteenth birthdays, we were forced to wait impatiently for Father Time’s chronological swatch to get us to that magic number, eighteen, which was (in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s) the legal drinking age. Yes, it was a crazy time when the governmental “powers that be” deigned that the age of eighteen constituted not only someone who could serve, fight, and in far too many cases, die for their country, but could also be trusted with the heavy responsibility of half priced domestic drafts and two-for-one well-drinks on Tuesdays.
But the consumption of alcohol, while a big frothy check in the plus column, was not the main motivation for our antsy attitude with the Gregorian calendar. We wanted entre to the clubs in Troy where we could see and, in most cases, stand uncomfortably close to, the players that we had been hearing about and trying to emulate since we picked up our respective instruments. Predictively, we jumped the gun, got some fake IDs, and started hitting the clubs at sixteen (while simultaneously looking twelve). Most would allow us in, provided we didn’t drink and kept out of trouble. This meant at sixteen we got to see, in Troy, amazing talents like Joe Mele, Charlie Smith, The Rockin’ Dakotas with Johnny Rabb and holy crap Emerald City!
Those nights were, and remain, some of the most musically rewarding of my life. And it was the vibrant Troy scene at the time that I have to thank for that. I’ve made no secret of my affection for my home city. My latest record (shameless self-promotion alert!) is, in point of fact, a tribute to my beloved city of Troy. And to this day, it still freaks me out a little to think that most of those artists I saw back then became my friends in later life. So, when I wanted to write about Troy’s scene over the years, I decided that my individual memories, while nostalgic and cockle-warming to me, may be better served by the addition of some recollections from those early influences I first encountered in Troy.
This is new territory for me. Rather than cracking open my head and letting the contents spill onto the keyboard of my Mac in whatever haphazard fashion they choose, I was now going to do actual leg-work and research like an honest-to-goodness writer. Q & A sessions. Meticulously gleaning through notes for precious tidbits that shine a light and tantalize the imagination of the reader. Rewrites! Deadlines! Extra! Extra!
I was exhausted by the mere thought of it. But I soldiered on.
Two names immediately popped into my head as ideal resources for this inaugural journalistic sojourn: the aforementioned guitar god and my treasured friend, Joe Mele and one of the most entertaining, generous and gracious humans I’ve met throughout these many years, owner of the River Street Beat Shop and recent Listen Up Hero award recipient, Jimmy Barrett.
I spoke with Jimmy first. I love spending time with Jimmy Barrett. His exuberance for music, the people who make it, the places it’s made, and hell, for life in general, is infectious and always welcome.
He led off in his patented self-deprecating manner. “I’m not a great musician like you, Chris,” he said. “But I played a lot of those clubs in town in the ’60s. We played the Riviera Lounge on River Street, on the site of the old city hall. It was an amazing place. Real class. All the big bands played there. I was in a band that tried to get in there for months. Once we did, we were so bad that they told us they would never book us again. So, we changed our name and tried to get another gig there. And it worked….hahahaha!”
Jimmy also told me of a club on the strip that, for whatever architectural reason, erected their stage behind the bar and only four feet below the ceiling. Consequently, they hired a band comprised of persons of shorter stature as their house band, because no one else could fit on the stage. “It was wild!” Jimmy remembered.
Joe Mele regaled me with many great memories and pinpointed the exact starting point of when the scene broke wide open.
“It was ’64-’65, and we were playing at this bar, Paul’s, on River Street. It was upstairs. We stopped into the Riviera Lounge, and there was this band playing called the In-Sects. They spelled just like that with the dash in the middle. And when they got done, we talked, told them we were players, and by the end of the night, they asked us if we wanted to join the band and come back to Brooklyn with them. It was that quick. So, we did that for the summer and played the Jersey Shore. After that, I went to London for a while. When I came back, Art Hilton said he wanted to open a music store in Downtown Troy and asked me to help. Music stores only sold sheet music back then, but Art had an idea to sell instruments … guitars, amps … All of a sudden, there were four or five music stores downtown – Hilton’s, George’s, Drome Sound, Romeo’s – all doing it. And everybody wanted to be in a band. The stores were packed.”
Joe went on to say that, with all these players looking for a place to play, the existing bars started booking bands. As the scene grew, actual clubs began to pop up, specifically designed for live music. “Then it just exploded,” Joe recalled. “We were playing everywhere. Six nights a week, 10 pm-3 am. And the places were packed every night. And it just kept growing. Every six months, there’d be more clubs, more bands. The strip was happening. Oh, ya man, it was a scene.”
When I asked Jimmy and Joe about the bands at the center of this Trojan explosion in the early years, the same names kept popping up; Mother Flag & Country, Back Bay Brew, Merlin’s Minstrels, The Knickerbockers, and Bobby Dick & The Sundowners who, along with Jimi Hendrix, went on tour with the Monkeys.
I got so much great stuff from Jimmy and Joe about those early years, I could go on for pages and pages. But I’d like to slip in a few of my own memories if I may.
The first clubs in Troy that would let us in to soak up the musical inspiration were the Tele Tavern and Petar’s. So, after being exuberant audience members in these places, it was a real thrill when we got to play them a few years later. There we were on the same stages where we had watched, transfixed on our heroes. And now we played as other young people stared in wide-eyed wonder at us in the same way. Life can be some full-circle sh*t sometimes.
We loved the downtown scene, but when we turned up Morrison Ave and climbed the hill that led to the Ilium Apartment Complex and traveled deep into its back parking lot, there stood Dudley Do-Rights. To us, a monolith of music in Troy. There I saw amazing bands like 805, New York Flyers, Talas (my personal favs … still love the power trio), Eros, Teaser, The Jimmy Carter Show, and acts like Rob Zombie, Root Boy Slim, David Sanchez, Billion Dollar Babies, and Lita Ford. So, when we actually took that stage and trod that well-worn, hallowed rock & roll ground, we were convinced that the goal had been reached and stardom was there for the taking, a mere arm’s length away. These were amazing years for a young musician in this area.
I understand that it may seem to some that the local scene isn’t what it used to be, and that may be true. But what is? Politics? Civility? The price of … well … everything?
Joe Mele tells me, as far as the club scene is concerned, that the turning point came due to three instances of causation. “First disco hit in the late ‘70s,” Joe explained. “Then in the ‘80s, there was the drinking age change from 18 to 21. But the really big thing was cable TV. Nobody ever talks about that, but people went from three channels to a thousand, and they never had to leave their chair. They just stopped going out. That was huge, man.” I’ve learned to believe Joe Mele when he tells me these types of things because, even if I’m wary at first, inevitably it turns out he was right. But let me build on that last point.
MTV. Up to that point, the only way to see a live band with lights and sound and sweaty, long-haired musicians was at a concert or in a club. But once MTV was available in everyone’s home, through cable TV (Ya OK, Joe was right again), you could see national acts playing live with full stage shows all day and all night. It was hard to compete with that for a bar band. There was no doubting that a change was looming.
There is nothing permanent except change. And, while the scene has undoubtedly changed, it had to. Change is the law of life. But make no mistake, years from now there will absolutely be people looking back on these days, the here and now we currently occupy, and they will recall them fondly as “the good ol’ days.”
So, while it’s great to look back and reminisce, let’s not forget to enjoy the now. Let’s remember to save today in our bank of memories, because some pain in the ass who’s writing an article for a magazine may call you someday 20 years from now and ask you what the scene was like in 2025. And you’ll want to tell this nuisance that we lived it to the fullest, got all we could from our time, and kept getting up on those stages and counting it off..2..3..4.
More from Chris Busone…
