Hello Gary!
On 18 Feb 98, Gary Gilmore wrote to Rich Lockyer:
 GG> The stage was one of the first casualties.  Now it's a DJ (playing the
 GG> same old tired DJ crap), and it's just not 'home' anymore.
Bingo... Give me a good band or give me Sweet Timmy and the NoTones... live 
music is live music and a band has to be REALLY bad before I'll complain.
 GG> I still go in there because some of my friends do (and the owner is an 
old
 GG> friend), but without the live bands (good or bad), it's not the same.  
The
 GG> other rock bar still does bands, but it's all the "thrashy" crap I don't
 GG> care for.  :-(
Probably around the mid '80s was when the scene really started to change out 
here.  Clubs used more and more DJs instead of top 40 bands (they had to have 
one on on full-time staff for the band breaks anyways so why pay a band?), 
and "original" bands were doing "pay to play" one set-one night at thrash 
clubs (and I love listening to thrash in a club setting).  I quit going to 
clubs with any regularity around '88 or '89, and today, I could only tell you 
about maybe three places that regularly have live bands.
My friend Marty (helped on my tape used in ET1 and ET2) decided to switch to 
all original around '88.  They dropped the name "Pocketful" and started going 
by an altered spelling of his last name, changing Monserret to Montserratte 
(pronounced like the island).  They were about 10 years too late, and the 
point hit home when we saw them at Gazarri's.  Quincy Jones was at the table 
behind us.  He was polite to the band and closed the club with the rest of 
us, but several times through the night, I overheard him tell the guy at his 
table "too bad, this stuff is just too old".
He liked them, but he knew that it was too late for a "eurometal" band to get 
started.  The same thing happened to White Tiger, and they had two relatively 
big names (Mark St. John and Don Donato) and Pocketful's original drummer. 
They released one album that was somewhat overproduced (but still good) and 
were never seen again.
C-ya! Rich
--- GoldED 2.40
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