There just seems to be no end to all of these memorial shows; our rock & roll community seems to be dying off way too quickly, especially if you’re male and in your 40s.  Hmmm….that puts me right into the “don’t expect to be around for too long” demographic.  Last Thursday I was at the Tony Fusco memorial at the Magic Bag with the 3D Invisibles and the Gaza Strippers.  The music is always part of these events, but it’s more important to just talk to people and think about what has happened.  I didn’t know Tony well; just bought records here and there, so I wasn’t that personally involved, but I just started thinking about what kind of memorial show (if any) there would be if my life came to a screeching halt. 

The first thing to do is to pick a venue.  With apologies to the Magic Bag and anywhere else north of 8 mile – I just need to be associated with something in the city.  That rock & roll soul I need just doesn’t go into the suburbs.  We could start with the usual candidates in Detroit.  The Lager House – just too obvious and popular.  I love the place, but it just hasn’t had enough years as a true rock & roll bar to make it a fitting place for a great memorial show.  The same holds for the dearly departed Gold Dollar.  The New Miami has been around forever, but it’s really reserved for the men who risked and gave their lives in Vietnam.  I would have no business encroaching on their space in the universe.  That leaves the Magic Bag – and that place is just way too big for me.  The crowd for my memorial show would be minimal; it would look like one of these Sunday night shows where there’s about 20 people hanging around by the stage and an out-of-town band is wondering why Detroit has such a good reputation for music.

It may callous to consider the venue capacity for your last show, but you really need to be realistic.  If you’re in a cool band or are an outgoing, gregarious person – then you can count on a full house.  However, if you’re like me and are shy and quiet, then it’s going to take a lot more work to get anybody to show up.  I’m like that dude in the movie “Cooler” – he’s the guy that casinos bring in when they want to stop people around him from winning.  They bring me in when they want stop people around me from having fun.  Therefore, I’m going to need things like free beer to bring people into my memorial show.  Hopefully, the insurance will cover that.

Since we’ve eliminated the Detroit bars from consideration – it’s time to move on to my old stomping grounds – Hamtramck.  Lili’s would be an obvious choice, but it’s closed now.  The Painted Lady may be in the same building, but it just hasn’t had a chance to grow on me yet.  The Belmont was never in the running; any place that has DJ’s spinning dance music on other nights is off the list.  Small’s is OK, but it’s just way too trendy and I don’t want Clear Channel to have anything to do with my memorial.  That leaves the obvious choice – Paycheck’s.  At one time Paycheck’s was the coolest place in town – bands from around the world played there.  Now this once popular showcase just occasionally has decent bands – most of the time it just hangs around with no purpose in life at all – just like me. 

Now comes the hard part – we need to find some bands that will actually want to play at this show.  I figure that 3 bands is just about right – any more and it gets too rushed and the sets need to get cut down.  It probably doesn’t make sense to get any very popular bands either.  The bands that are putting out records and touring the country really don’t want to get involved in some memorial show for a dude that nobody ever head of anyway.  I would also want at least one band that has survived with me back from the original days at Bookie’s.  And since I just saw them play at Tony’s memorial – I would really need the 3D Invisibles.  They are so consistent and yet so timely and cool.  Since I also love all those campy horror movies – they would be my first choice to play my memorial.  (I wonder if you can book your own memorial show ahead of time – they have ads for paying for funerals, but nothing about getting a band). 

There’s a lot of cool other bands from the Bookies era still playing around regularly (Cinecyde, Flirt, Ramrods, Sillies), but the songs about zombies cast the deciding vote.  I also need a younger, more contemporary band – that couldn’t care less about Bookies or that whole scene.  There are some great candidates, but I really would like to see (or at least have the 12 people or so that might show up by accident see) Human Eye.  They are absolutely fabulous – or they may be totally unlistenable – so I need them.  I can totally relate to that.   Whatever, the case, I cannot stay away if they’re playing.  We also need a third band & I’ll keep that open – on the off chance that somebody might actually read this and be upset that I didn’t mention them. 

Now that I’ve spent all of this time planning this – I just realized that somebody else would actually have to organize this show as I really won’t be around anymore.   That doesn’t seem very likely, so this may just be another exercise in futility.

In any case, I really don't want to go any more "tribute" shows for a very long time, so please take care of yourselves !!!!  I'll try to do my part also, so that nobody will need to worry about planning this show for me either.