My mother the enigma...

By 1975 I had left Cheeba and formed the funk/disco group 'Oreo' out of Hartford, Connecticut.

But by now I had an increasing 'itch' to join my rising super-star friend Eric Gotthelf and my mother (*the enigma), the 'star of Phantom of the Opera'!!, who I was SURE would be rising once again in glorious Hollywood comeback in her familiar movie-star Los Angeles, the place of my birth and for me, the land that held mythical proportion since childhood. Both were now THERE, and I was in no-wheres-ville Hartford, Connecticut. Both would be catching their rising star to fame and fortune.....soon. I would look back, with twisted yearning, from a long time ago, that I had nannies and shiny things but it was sadly 'interrupted' by a lot of pain and 'bad luck.' I think I sensed if I could just get out there with mom and Eric....it would all coming flowing back. I knew I could at least depend on mom, 'cause she promised....she was "going back to work!" She was going to get back to work in 'Show Business!' And redeem her two loving sons.

*My ability to describe my mother as 'enigma,' has only come as of late. But 'enigma' clearly describes her own personal battles. She was sadly an enigma unto to herself....the whole of her lifetime. However, she deeply loved her two boys the only way she knew.

California Dreamin'.....I was soon on my way...

But unfortunately where ever I went there I was....

....and when you pick a partner (for your resurrection) with inherent personality disorder...

...your doomed.

Stay tuned for those (abridged) 'Crazy California Years.'

Cheeba

Oreo

1976- I was the lead singer in a funk/disco band named Oreo. A popular Rand B funk band in central Conn. Ala “Play that Funky Music White Boy”. One summer weekend we were playing a nightclub named “Plush bottoms” in Thomaston, Conn. 'Sally' was the cute waitress and I was the swaggering, omnipotent front man. It was a match made in nightclub hell.

That Saturday night after my last set, Sally and I decided that we’d go to Misquamicut Beach and spend the night on the sand. Misquamicut was a two and a half hour drive on the Rhode Island coast. With a few drinks in our gut, her boyfriend in the backseat, we drove and drove north on Interstate 95 Sally’s yellow Chevrolet Vega to the sands of Misquamicut. We arrived around 4am, on margarita auto-pilot. I remember waking up in a hot blazing sun, hot sandy, sweaty blankets creasing my face, surrounded by people; throngs of beach goers, ambivalent to these three fully clothed, semi-comatose, sand-caked human figures in their midst.

It isn’t any wonder that I don’t remember very much of what went on the rest of that afternoon, except for the occasional fried clam and Coca-Cola, and the hangover-ed make believe attempt at enjoying this vacationed New England beach.

On the trip back that evening, with Sally's boyfriend in the backseat (asleep)...I fell asleep (at the wheel) at 65 miles an hour heading south on Interstate 95. The car was totaled, Sally's head was ripped open, I was bumped and bruised and the boyfriend was left unscathed. Little did I know that this event was our baptismal double act on the road to insanity, madness and ‘what the fuck?’....ad nauseum.

Sally (19 yo) and I knew each other six weeks when we moved in together in an apartment near Park Street in Hartford. The above picture is of my brother Philip (in the back seat of '69 Bonneville) when he came up to stay with us (to try his hand at his first rehab)two months before Sally and I were to leave for California in my newly purchased 1969 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham....my road chariot that would deliver me to my land of golden opportunity....the land of Vast Mythical Proportion.

1969 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham

Cheeba mates: Eric Gotthelf and Danny Sacharoff (the collie is 'General').