Strange Way to Live. Carl Dixon
Good Friday and we had the night off because of the religious holiday, so we all went out and got drunk and smoked cigars. It was actually fun to blow off steam. Out on the town I must have cut quite a wasted figure, but a petite young lady in her mid-twenties with long blond hair showed a keen interest in me even so. She suggested that we could go somewhere, and somehow a room was rented. When we got there she removed her very high heels, and even to my double vision it was obvious she was in fact not only petite but tiny, like maybe four foot eight. Probably something ensued. I don’t remember. In the morning she was gone and my pockets were empty. She must’ve needed the cash more than I did.
Next day most Alvins straggled into the Atlantic Place around dinnertime in search of food, badly hung over and with “the big quit” fresh on our minds. That’s when we discovered that we were supposed to have played two matinee shows that afternoon. We had now made our disgrace complete by failing to appear for this time-honoured Saturday afternoon whoop-up. A long night followed as we wore our failure. Please let this end, we prayed, so we can get on to the next town and start fresh.
Harbour Grace and its Pirate’s Cave club was next. Mercifully, it was a fairly short drive on Sunday, just an hour or so. We pulled up to the building and the owner, Sam, a great big fella, and his bartender came out to greet us with broad smiles and friendly handshakes. Nice welcome. Then they peered past us into the van and said, “So, where’s the girl?”
We soon realized that when the Alvin Shoes promo photo had arrived from Pizzazz, they’d mistaken me for a girl singer. Hoo, boy! Must have been the hat. Their disappointment was plain as we left them to go claim our rooms in the band house.
We had the night off, so we wondered what to do. There was a public swimming pool in Carbonear, a town about ten miles away, so we decided it would be fun to go make a splash and change up the mood. After some paddling about and silliness in the water, I thought it would be goofy and fun to have a dog paddle race, and everyone greeted this idea with enthusiasm. A harmless bit of play, you’d think, and so it was until I reached the end of the pool, about to win, and reached up with my left arm to touch. Trouble was that I’d dislocated that shoulder twice in the previous year and the joint now slipped off the bone again from the water resistance. I yelled in pain as I started to sink in the deep end, and the lifeguard came running to pull me up by my good arm. Off to the hospital now, me still in bathing suit, where they were not super quick in the emerg ward. With that particular injury, shoulder dislocation (I’ve had seven of them over the years), the area is numbed a bit at first by the shock, but after half an hour or so it begins to go into excruciating spasms as the joint demands to be restored to its proper position. By about an hour after the injury, I was failing to suppress a few gasps and moans in the waiting room, and a nurse came out to scold me in stern Newfoundland tones.
“You just be quiet now with all your noise, there’s pee-pull in here who’s really hurt! Hush!”
Eventually a doctor twisted my shoulder back on and applied a body brace to immobilize the arm. Well, that was just great. How would I play guitar now?
“The singer’s got a broken neck!” Big Sam the club owner complained as he called the agent to fire us. It was bad enough the singer wasn’t a girl; now I was sporting a sling from a major injury and awkwardly playing rough guitar with my arm immobilized.
Next day we woke up fired. I’d never been fired before. I was called in to the Pirate’s Cave office to receive the news and learn how little we were going to receive of our pay. A one-eighth portion was all we’d get because weeknights are worth less than the weekend. Also, we had to move out of the band house, now. A band called the Rhythm Method who had the week off happened to have turned up looking for somewhere to stay, and they’d now take over our week. I got mad and frustrated and was ready to physically contest Big Sam, even with my dislocated shoulder, for a greater portion of our reduced fee until he warned me that he used to be a pro wrestler and I should just drive off now, like a good lad. I took his meaning. I actually shook hands with Sam as we left. It was nice of him to give me the warning instead of just flinging me about.
Well, we had to stay somewhere, so we moved on to Corner Brook, and I rented us some rooms with the credit card. We just had to hang on until the next week at Grand Falls-Windsor and Stephenville after that, tightening our belts for a few days, and we’d still get some cash to take home.
I got my own room and the others doubled up because we were now on opposite sides of the who-quit-who divide. How excited I was to get a slip of paper from the front desk of the Corner Brook hotel saying I had a telegram. Wow, receiving my first-ever telegram, like a scene from an old-time movie! What could it be?
I went to the office to claim it. It was an official notice that we were fired from our tour-ending week in Stephenville because of “false advertising.” They’d read the reviews from St. John’s and monitored our faltering progress. Hit me again, bartender. Wow, fired twice now.
There was a nice lady in Grand Falls who owned the club we were booked into next, the Loggers Lounge. She permitted us to come in a day early to take up rooms at the Cloverleaf Motel, where all the bands stayed. That night we went in to watch the band that was finishing up its week. Cool name on them too — Firefly — from Montreal; strong presentation, good singing, good playing. I acutely felt the contrast between us and them, and I wanted to feel like them, not us.
Our turn now at the Loggers, and over the following nights it was a forlorn bunch of Alvins who were releasing flatulent performances to the patrons who stuck with us. The feeling of surrender was following us like a bad smell as we played out the string. I didn’t know yet how to summon up the good stuff when I needed it.
We finished up on the weekend, got the money (which was enough to get us home, at least), and moved on. We stopped at the Lorelei Lounge in Stephenville to see Steve Butler, the guy who had fired us by telegram. I don’t know what I thought would happen. Maybe he’d relent and give us a week if we were there anyway? He gave us all a shot of whisky in mid-afternoon, the civil thing to do, and sent us on our way. We got to the ferry boarding dock back at Port aux Basques, where the bands Firefly and Rhythm Method unexpectedly would share the crossing with us after completing their own tours. I befriended people in both bands, presciently getting names and phone numbers. The next contact with Firefly lay just around the corner; playing with Mark Severn from Rhythm Method lay many years in the future.
All that was left was to drive all the way back to Barrie with no stops. All the guys grew happier as we neared home. Still sporting my shoulder brace but back to lifting dumbbells to build strength as we motored along, I was convinced I had to be hard to get through this change. Over the following two months Alvin Shoes would play out the string of remaining shows around Ontario before grinding to a halt.
The story seems unbelievable when you take it in whole. If luck is the moment where preparation meets opportunity, this misadventure was the precise opposite. We didn’t know how naive and unprepared we were, even when it was over. For my part, I didn’t understand how badly we’d done until I learned how to do it better.
Four of the five people who experienced all this took it as a sign from the gods to go home and return to regular jobs or school and a quieter, more sensible life. One of the five took it as a sign to search for his next band.
ode to a firefly
Firefly’s soundman, Chris Chamberlain, has remained a friend over the years, and remembers our first meeting: “We could all see that you were something special and a gifted performer.”
Firefly watched us somewhere, and we in turn had watched Firefly in Grand Falls on one of our nights off; they had really impressed me. After I’d spent a couple of months back at home, licking my wounds after Alvin Shoes’ final death throes, I called Richard from Firefly just to say hello. It was now August 1979. He shared with me that Darryl, their drummer, had decided to quit. Feeling my pulse quicken, I blurted out, “I’m a drummer. Can I audition for you?” Richard wasn’t sure at first, but I talked him into it, and the next day I was on the highway to Montreal in my parents’ second car. Firefly was set up for auditions with Darryl’s kit in their rehearsal basement. I slept on Richard’s couch and then got ready