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OK, so here is my Romantics story. I apologize in advance to MGIM for any disparaging remarks or references I make to Detroit and/or Michigan.
Back in April of 1999 I was 24 and working a shitty job in a call center. I was doing ISP tech support back when a 56K modem was the standard and most normal people had an email address that likely ended in @aol.com. I was a regular on whatever Mets board we were on at the time…probably the MOFO as the board wars had not yet happened (or the grand-slam-single for that matter).
My band had just released our 3rd studio album. It was and still is my least favorite work we’ve done. The music and production was mostly unprepared and ham-fisted…but while the album sucked, we were honing our live playing skills which were becoming quite good.
We had taken a couple of road trips out east. Our first, in 1996, was to Toronto and back for a long weekend. In 1997 I recall one weekend where we did a “nothing but drive” tour: Chicago on Friday, New York on Saturday (most likely an early show & a late show), then Detroit on Sunday. Somehow, we were able to travel close to 2000 miles without missing any work. 1998 saw us take two weeks up and down the east coast.
By 1999 we were ready to try 21 days on the road and even incorporated a southern leg that included Texas, New Orleans and Atlanta before heading to the east coast. This was at a time when we were still four guys plus all of out gear stuffed into an Econoline van. We knew nothing of motel rooms. Luxury was sleeping on the cat-piss-stained hardwood floor of a local band or groupie. This was a tour that wrecked us all for a long time. It inspired us to invest in a short bus and to pre-reserve Motel 6 rooms for all subsequent tours.
By the time we got to Michigan, we were already two-thirds of the way through the tour. We had played 3 shows in Canada and crossed the boarder into Detroit. We had played Detroit a few times before, mostly at downtown bars like The Magic Stick and The Old Miami. If you’ve never been to Detroit, it is like nowhere I have ever been. I’ve been back since 1999, and it has improved, but back then I remember deserted city streets with steam pluming out of manholes. We would drive around and see parked cars on fire and blocks and blocks of houses that had been burned out and abandoned.
Somehow on this tour we had booked a show at a place called The Stone House. We had no idea what to expect…and nothing could have prepared us for what was to come. It is a biker bar inside a house surrounded by urban decay. Located approximately at Woodward Ave and 8 Mile Rd (remember that Eminem movie? Uh-huh) and evidently it stands there to this day.
We had arrived at the bar in the late afternoon. We parked on the street and walked up the steps to the porch on this strange Victorian beast. A big biker opened the door and asked us if it was our van on the street. Once we replied that it was, he hurriedly ran back into the house and grabbed a set of keys and told us to get it off the street before somebody took it. He directed us to the back of the house and locked the van in a fenced in pen with access to the back porch.
The kitchen to this house still serves as the kitchen, but the living room has been turned into a bar and bands play in the parlor. There is no stage…you play on the floor. The lady who was running the show was an old biker woman named Skitch. Apparently, it was somebody’s birthday, but when everyone has a biker name like Big Bear and Little Pete, it’s hard to remember exactly whose birthday it was.
By the time we played, the house was PACKED with people. We were literally playing to faces inches away from our own. It was actually a really fun show. When we were done, we were soaked in beer and sweat. We were followed by another band, The Immortal Winos of Soul who took over the reins of being loud and obnoxious. The drunken crowd loved them every bit as much as they loved us.
Because of the birthday celebration, hundreds of free Jell-O shots were being passed around. Being in the band, we got free beer and all of us proceeded to get pretty hammered. It was impossible to imagine, but the house held more and more people as the night went on. It got to the point where it was actually uncomfortable to move around…but the beer, Jell-O and mere spectacle of it all made it seem alright.
Around midnight, we noticed that at the end of the bar (in the living room) an entourage of people had converged. We asked Skitch about who was sitting over there and when she responded that it was the bass player for the Romantics (Rich Cole), we had to crash the entourage.
The corner of the bar was literally in a corner of the room. It was elevated as if for royalty and, even though you couldn’t catch a glimpse of him until you got closer, the man who sat there seemed to be treated like he was royalty around these parts. His hair was platinum blond, long and stringy. His eyes were sunken and his lips and fingers were yellowed by nicotine.
In order to talk to him we had to wait in a kind of line. Skitch later told us that he lived around the neighborhood and would come down at least once a week. Many of the bar’s patrons already knew him and were talking about good time past or mutual friends. Once we got to our turn, the look in his eyes told us he knew we were tourists just passing through.
We obviously asked about the Romantics. He said he didsn’t play with them anymore, but he was still in touch with them and was able to live off of the royalties. We asked if he was in any other bands. He said he was always working on projects. We asked why he hangs out at The Stone House. He said that they were the best people he had ever met.
Before long, it was obvious that he had had enough of us and we moved on. We drank more and more. The house slowly thinned out and we didn’t even notice when Rich left.
Our drummer found out why he was hitting it off so well with the ladies that night when they told him it would be $100 for them to spend the night with him. We slept at the Immortal Winos of Soul’s practice house, which was around the corner. Our guitar player got locked out and when he pounded on the door to be let back in, the rest of us had passed out and couldn’t hear him. He broke into a camper parked on the street and slept there for the night.
The next morning hit us like a freight train. Halfway still drunk and our heads pounding, we tried to navigate out of Detroit on to our next stop in Toledo. The Stone House still remains one of the strangest gigs I’ve ever been a part of. I’m glad I experienced it…but I never want to go back.
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