The Sky - Gig recollections

Catherine Laycock School for Girls, Fairfield, CT - Spring, 1969 (?)

No-one can quite remember how we got this gig, far from our usual stomping grounds. Probably through somebody's Mom, or a girlfriend's Mom...? Certainly odd for a band of Catholic boys to be playing at a WASP-y private girls boarding school near Greenwich... Myke does recall that it was one of his last gigs with the band, before he changed schools.

Nobody remembers much about the gig itself... There was a nightmarish rainy drive up Rte. 95 in our beater Ford Econoline; then searching for the school, which was near the shore, south of Rte 1. (The Econoline is a story in itself: purchased with the help of "Spatzie," drummer Paul Zimmer's motorhead pal, it was blue and constantly in need of maintenance, like any band vehicle.) We were late, stoned and sheepish, and rushed to unload and set up. Our home-made PA columns, the speaker jacks of which were always falling out and had to be jerry-rigged to work, kept cutting out despite the duct tape...
Perhaps more will fall into place...
Dave

Cedar Lake Club House, 1970 (?)

The only other gig I remember (at this point) is my first Cedar Lake gig: the van broke down and we were hours late!! The house applauded as we ran in and set up (at the top of the stairs, opposite the fireplace, where we set up nowadays). We kicked ass that night (Heartbreaker, Live at Leeds, etc., etc.)!!
Dennis

St. Mary's School, Denville, NJ - Fall, 1970

The Sky at this time consisted of Dave, Kev and Dennis: a power trio. We played a mix of "Live At Leeds" period Who, "Led Zeppelin III," Jeff Beck Group, Cream and various other stuff I can' t recall. We were pretty good too. Kev could really nail the Robert Plant screamy stuff, Dennis was Keith Moon, and I had a cherry-red SG and could swing a mean windmill.

The gig was a classic dance-in-the-gym at this Catholic Jr. high school. I don't remember much about the gig itself, except that it was a big stage. Great for Townsend jumps and stuff. Some kid came up to me and told me that he'd seen Led Zeppelin, and I played Jimmy Page better than Jimmy Page did! Nice! (Joe says it was our version of "Heartbreaker" that "caused the young jaws to drop") Dennis recalls all of us sitting in a circle on the floor behind the drums during a break, smoking some weed his older brother Bill had brought up from Fla. rolled in one of Dave's cigarettes (Dave noted, in the vernacular of the day: "Whew.... waddaya mean, good dope?") Somebody else was with us as a sort of road manager, maybe Dennis' brother Joe, or inveterate pals and hangers-on Scott Butler or Chris Severud. (I'm thinking Chris…)

So, we did the gig and were loading out through the hall adjacent to the stage, heading out to the parking lot. We had our PA, Dennis' drums, Kev had a big Bassman cabinet, I had Vox columns or something, so we had to make a few trips out to Kev's parent's gold Chevy station wagon. As we were humping the gear through this hallway we became aware of these other guys hanging around, toking a little weed, talking, leaning on the lockers. I thought they were friends of Kev's, or just some crazy Denville characters, of which there were many. So we just did the "hey man, it's cool" as we went by with another speaker cab or something…

It was getting dark, and as we were almost finished loading out we became aware that the vibe had changed: some other guys had shown up, and were talking animatedly with the original hangers-out. They were not happy with these guys, and, as we went past in the hall, they were looking at us like we had something to do with it. (Where were the nuns or chaperons while all this was going on?!?) The bad guys really started giving us the evil eye.

We were now out by the car, having just packed up the final gear. One of the original guys took off out the door, with one of the rough boys in pursuit, brandishing a knife! Seeing this we said "Holy shit!" or something to that effect, and jumped in the car. We took off, with the bad guys in hot pursuit up Rte. 46 East. They were right with us, and had somehow decided that WE were the ones who had burned them. We decided we'd better get to some public place so they couldn't do anything to us, and then we'd figure it out. So we went Paul's Diner on 46. It was Saturday night, about 11:30, and the place was packed with kids.

Incredibly, we got a table in the back near the phone and men's room, cowering as the bad guys came in looking for us. They realized they couldn't really touch us in the diner, but looked threateningly at us across the room. Clueless as to why all this was happening, we assumed that it must have had something to do with a dope deal gone bad. They were obviously going to wait us out: they'd leave when we left, and give us a pounding (or worse) in the parking lot!

After nursing our coffees for a while, somebody, probably Joe or Chris (in retrospect it seems like something Chris would come up with…) decided to call the cops, the last thing we would normally think of! Which he did: went to the phone near the men's room and called the Denville cops. Told them that there was a fight brewing at the diner and they'd better get there quick. We waited till the police car was just arriving and somehow high-tailed it out of there, avoiding our seemingly inevitable fate at the hands of the local drug lords. Never saw them again, never found out the "real" story.

Strange times…
Dave