WAR played immediately before us, and got the whole place swaying to their groove which set the stage for us to go on and be as funky as we wanted to - and with Gap Band., and Kool and The Gang to follow, we had to be some kinda' funky to please this crowd. A Love Of Your Own proved to be everyone's favourites, dropped on the plate at exactly the right moments. Oh, and talking of instincts, he had to use all his native ones the next evening when he walked to the corner store for some cigarettes, and a local punk suggested that Phil should make a voluntary monetary contribution to his cause. Our boy, in true generous Brooklyn form, begged to differ, when the guy suddenly decided to up the ante by telling Phil that he was ready to enforce his demands with the knife he was carrying. End of Mexican standoff, and proof positive that imaginary gun beats imaginary knife any day.
Life imitates farce.
They decided to can the opening act on the night, so we really got a chance to stretch, and play for a good couple of hours which afforded us the chance to air just about all the tunes we love to play - even some we had almost forgotten, it's been so long since we played them. Anyway, we needn't have worried with the crowd we had there. Needless to say it was brilliant on the night, and the entire audience sang the 'mother' for us, too. The only downside to the whole visit was having to go straight from there to the airport for a dawn flight back to New York, which we were literally poured on to, and which went via Memphis for a stop en route. I don't think anyone was even aware of takeoff, and the first thing I knew, we were parked on the tarmac in Memphis on what appeared to me to now be a completely empty plane.