ABOUT
LES VEGAS
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The Soft White Underbelly-
In the mid sixties, having gotten a song on a Peter Paul and Mary album I had some money coming in so I bought a 12 string guitar and a VW Bus which I outfitted for living and went out to Stony Brook Long Island where I encountered the Soft White Underbelly (the baby Blue Oyster Cult) and became their singer.
(A Lucky Monkey and the Soft White Underbelly.)
General Poultry -
In the early seventies, after a couple years with the Underbelly and another two traveling the world, I found myself back in New York City living in Soho. One day I found a feather boa behind a gallery and began playing on the streets of Soho as General Poultry, usually alone with my 12 string guitar, and occasionally with Perry Robinson, downbeat poll winning clarinetist or one of the other musicians I was meeting as the music director of Changes a music
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and backgammon club on the corner of Broome and Mercer, that had been created by Phil Ochs and others, to be a hangout for musicians and revolutionaries (Phil's words.)
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In the late seventies, having fathered two incredible children, I was living upstate New York in the Hudson Valley and a guy (Howie Also) turned up at the barn we were living in saying he had heard I had been the singer with the Underbelly and that I was now going to sing with his rock band, the Test Tube Babies. I doubted it, but soon I was singing with them. They were also a great band and when I found that they had no song about being Test Tube Babies, I immediately wrote one.
In the early 2000's I got a call from Albert Bouchard, original drummer and heart of the Blue Oyster Cult who asked me if I wanted to go to Paris (France) and play a gig there with him. I did (here it is), and we went over there and played with a group of French musicians who I continue to play with today, and had a rolliking good time where we played many of my tunes and many that Albert had written over his years drumming for the BOC including Astronomy which he had written with Lyricist Sandy Pearlman. This has become one of my favorite songs to sing. After that we traveled over to Paris every few years where we did a tour with
the Animals and then after Albert got too busy to go with us (check out his Imaginos records where he produces and plays the music he wrote with Pearlman), and then without Albert, we opened for Wishbone Ash, till the pandemic put a temporary halt to all that.
I still hope to get back to Paris to play with my fine Frenchie buddies and I pop up here and there in America if someone asks nicely.