[3] PRESENTING LITTLE OTIS AND THE UPSETTERS The Gospel According to St. Eddie Nazarican Loisaida 1977 Creativity What's happening When a person is creative What's the imagination Where does it come from How does it work How do you evoke creativity How do we develop situations And atmosphere to make These things happen more How do we transfer That same creativity Caught by the ritual That happens When the musicians Play Or the poets Read How do we make it happen How can we be in that deep place In ourselves in the midst of all The other things that are happening That is the direction were taking It's a humanistic perspective And It has to be one that sees The human being in that light Its about human values That's all IT is IT can be Studied Measured And Done over and over again We have to learn how to do that WBGU TV hires me in the summer of 1983 as an on-line TV producer. They get what they pay for at $14,000 a year. Two low budget local half hour live news shows and one entertainment program a week. But I plug into my experience on the Lower East Side, Felix and Izzy. They make do with what they have so I dive right in. Live TV is nuts. It’s cheaper for a show to go live but anything can happen and it usually does. I’m learning as I go along. I book the Conductor of the Toledo Symphony for an interview at the behest of station management on the arts entertainment program. Boring but screw it. They pay the bills. The entire show is based around this man. We work for weeks on it. Get footage of the symphony in action, videotape testimonials, so on and so forth. The day of the show comes and he drops dead. I react in typical fashion when my director tells me, “The conductor is heading for that big concerto in sky.” “What do you mean?” “Dead.” “Dead?” “Stone cold D-e-a-d, DEAD!.” “Oh Thank You God! I can’t believe this. An hour to production. Do you think you could have worked out your timing a little better. God! Huh, oh god almighty. I know I’m an insignificant pawn in this grand chess game you got going on but couldn’t you have just considered the whole picture and had this son of a bitch drop dead in the tub after his day was done or better yet screwing his mistress anything anthing but this.” My director attempts to get me focused. Deb is a gentle shy young woman but underneath she posseses the mouth and humor of a sailor. “Well (pause) we might want to submit our resumes now that there’s an opening at the Symphony. I mean, what does it take to wave a baton?” “Very Funny, Very funny. All right you want to be funny. I got your funny for you. I’ll show you funny. Mr. Funny God …. Oh yeah, funny, funny God!” “Ah, hell Luis, have some heart. How do you think the conductor feels. He’s cold on a slab at the morgue! So, what are we going to do so we don’t end up with … pardon this but I must … GOD DAMN DEAD AIR!” “We’ll figure it out.” The crew helps me put the program together in a half hour. I draw from my experience with Felix Romero’s Otra Cosa live theater shows with interesting results. We open with this beautifully lit glossy shot of cute innocent wide eyed seven year old kid shoving a hard boiled egg into his mouth on set and the off camera announcer asking “But is it art?” It becomes 28 minutes of media anarchy. The crew – all 12 of them young pros – contribute a series of experimental music videos we use to get into and out of segments. I call up my friend Manny Enriquez whose work is hanging in the Toledo Museum of Art, Detroit and Chicago to appear on the emergency show. Manny is a Mexican Vietnam Vet who translates his post traumatic stress by painting these beautiful raised pastel sea lilly’s and aquatic dreams. But when he’s not painting he’s a hard drinking vato who works the Chevrolet plant near Toledo and drives his wife Vera crazy. I track Manny down to Howard’s Bar on Main Street and he’s already pounding but agrees to come on the show on such short notice and bring some of his latest work. The interview opens well enough. “So tell us Manny, how do you get inspired to paint these scenes. They’re just marvelous.” Manny describes part of his artistic motivation in all earnestness, “I watch a lot of nature shows about the animal kingdom. You know it all boils down to one thing – life and death … someone or something out there is always ready to pounce on you and eat.” Well, this is all good but then Manny became Manny. “And when I’ve seen enough of that I usually reach under my recliner and pull out my gun (producing a fake but realistic looking pistol on set) … shoot off a couple of rounds in the house … Hijole …VERA, MUJER! BUSCA ME LAS CRAYOLAS QUE VOY A PINTAR! and then I go up to my studio for a couple of hours! Orale, a la chingada.” The chyron guy actually pisses on himself next to me in the booth. There’s stunned silence on the set. The host nervously smiles as perspiration trickles down his temple and quickly exclaims, “Ah, interesting. Well, I understand you’re a busy man.” “No, I have nowhere to go.” “Okayyyyyy. Let’s go to break.” We get Manny out of there quick and back to his farm where he can blast all he wants. The thing is he really does shoot his magnum off in his house when he’s drunk. I think sometimes he’s back in Vietnam. But he never let on where he’s in his head. He just levels an intense Aztec stare that goes right through me. His eyes open like he can see not only me but the whole world at once. The other guest is a young woman from the area whose on break from being a clown with Ringling Brothers Red Circus. I’m fooling around with her at the time. She has this habit of wearing her big circus shoes when we make love. She thinks her feet are ugly. Hey, she’ s a clown in a size 4 body that’s silky smooth. What do I know? Anyway, I team her up with this local Las Vegas type magician. He’s supposed to make her disappear. Under all the stress we have a preshow argument and she gets even. When the magician opens the cabinet door she’s naked except for the floppy shoes, wig and horn. Lucky for us, the cameraman misses the shot and is still on the host whose so shocked he can only repeat the show’s theme But Is It Art? We quickly go to break. We close the program with the host dressed in a Salvation Army Major’s Uniform taking a Polaroid of the young kid with another egg in his mouth blowing out the yellow mush. The credits run over the exposing picture. The off camera announcer repeats endlessly over Nat King Cole singing Ain’t Misbehavin, “But tell us, Is It Art.” Management thinks its, “Tasteless, artless and fruitless.” I think it’s the most honest work I ever present on TV. Hey, it isn’t news. It’s entertainment. My crew and I are entertained. We send up all those predictable PBS arts magazines. Management orders taped shows the following week. Bowling Green Ohio is a real University town. The townies number only about two thousand but when school kicks in there’s 50, 000 Buckeye kids who flood the place. It’s a drinking and weed mecca where local rock and roll bands out of Toledo, Cleveland and Detroit rule experimenting with everything under the sun. It’s not the only experimentation taking placed. A dedicated hippie Bowling Green ungergrad working at the TV station takes me on my first LSD trip. In all I take 28 trips over ten years which I keep a dream book about. 5 take place at Bowling Green State University. 22 at Amherst College. One with the Grateful Dead in Albany. Bowling Green Steve -- the original dharma bum – schools me on tripping then trips me out. It’s like an eight hour manic episode. “You should never be in a depressed mood. Always be up. Start around three pm. The trip usually lasts 8-10 hours so you’ll be crashing around 1 AM. Get some beer and valium and pop that immediately at 1 AM. Then smoke yourself to sleep after a long hot shower.” “Ok, do you feel it coming on. Good Let’s take a walk in the country. See, its good to walk in the woods under the open sky while you’re tripping. Ok, relaxed. You sure? “OK, Now I’m going to kill you!” “What the hell.” “Just fooling around. Never let yourself drift too far away. Appreciate and observe everything. It puts you in a dream you have control over. And keep a Trip Dream Book. You’ll be surprised what comes out.” Meanwhile, back at the music ranch. I meet Steve Athanas and his Wet Shavers at Howard’s Bar – the main watering hole for townies and students. It’s a huge place. You walk in on this long bar and you can hear the music pumping from the adjoining room. You go through an arch and there’s a huge room with another long bar and three pool tables. The raised stage is buried at the other end of the second bar. The first night I go there I’m drawn by viscious Motown licks easing their way through the woodwork to the street outside. It’s an edgy New Wave Motown sound. It’s a piece of home. “This has got to be the funkiest black band ever, I’m going to check it out.” Imagine my surprise when I turn the bar’s archway and there’s this stocky first generation Greek guy on top of the bar bent low singing Stop The Love You Save to a mob of jumping college students. Another wild island boy on the mainland. The other guys in the band are these skinny white guys who look like the Bowery Boys in Dead End. But it’s tight. It’s bright. It’s right. It’s The Wet Shavers. On break I approach Steve, “My name is Luis. I’m from New York. I like your band. I got a set of congas outside in the car. Can I sit in.?” “Sure. End of the third set.” Just like that. You know, a lot of musicians even on the bar circuit hate it when people they don’t know sit in. It can really throw a band off. But Steve is so sure of his act that he doesn’t care. Besides, they never mike you the first time you sit in and when they get going The Wet Shavers can pump up the volume if you’re wack. “We’ll do Take Me To The River – you know that?” “Al Green?” “Yeah, he did it first but we’re doing a riff on the Talking Heads version. Take a solo when I jump over you.” He doesn’t really jump but he spins and kicks the trap drums top cymbal right on the downbeat. Not only do I get to play and solo but on the spur of the moment Steve put me on the mike. I don’t know the words to the song so I go into what I know, rapping Mikey Pinero’s Mambo Tu Le Lop poem from Short Eyes. Steve is good and I can keep up with him. “You don’t ever have to ask to sit in again. You can play with us anytime.” Hello Abby Abby answer the phone It’s Friday night And for once I’m alone I’m not lonely That’s the problem And I need your advice Right away They’re like liquor to me I can’t explain What kind of problem Is this I’ve called your talk show Cause I got a disease It not a social one No not herpes I got too many women And it drives me insane I’m so vain They’re like liquor to me I can’t explain What kind of problem is this Girl Girl Girl Girlaholic Got too much I don’t know what to do Girl Girl Girl Girlaholc Yeah Got Too Much Got Too Much Got Too Much © 1982 steve athanas I play with The Wet Shavers on and off for more than a year while working with WBGU TV. The coolest is when they open for NRBQ in Toledo. Crazy Joey, NRBQ’s piano player, influences Steve with his periodic musical madness. For example, one night the gut blues psycho genius passes out photocopies of an arrangement throughout the club. He kicks the song off at the top of the set and then proceeds to have the audience participate in deconstructing and reassembling the tune for the rest of the night. It’s blues anarchy. He takes that song to more places than there’s government cheese. Steve has a good teacher. Years later I’m at a Neville Brothers concert in Tucson, Arizona shooting the breeze with a roadie. I mention I had lived in Bowling Green and Toledo Ohio and her eyes light up. “There was this band I saw from out there. They had a great 45 called Blue Money the … the …” “Wet Shavers.” “Yeah, the Wet Shavers … it was great! They knew how to throw a party!” I often wonder why Steve and his crew don’t break out of Toledo and go national during the early MTV days. They’re equal to Blotto from Albany who score with I Wanna Be A Lifeguard. Steve’s Blue Money and Girlaholic are local pop ditties that still sparkle with youthful urgency. Today, you can find him in Toledo. He runs his own nightclub called, what else Stevie J’s, and hosts a kicking houseband called The Homewreckers. Celebrity. It’s all a matter of perspective. Working a bar band on the local circuit means you have to play four sets of music a night – usually about 42 songs. A good band works three to four nights a week and vary their song lists to fit the evening. What sets Steve apart is that he does a show. He’s Stevarino, Sir Steven, Stevalicious and a host of other characters all channeling through him. He has few rivals except when it comes to Maureen Davis and the Movers. Maureen’s got guts and overcomes a bad thyroid to be a hit. This little five foot Jewish spitfire ends up on Broadway in a couple of years appearing in Into The Woods. She later moves to Hollywood. But for now she’s in Toledo and rocks both covers and originals. Maureen’s mom had sung with the Chic Webb orchestra and one night she shows at a gig. They do a version of the Righteous Brothers song Unchained Melody -- later made famous in Ghost -- that leaves the audience crying. That was pure heart between those two women that night. It was the first time the two of them perform on stage together. Words to describe that event? Where can I begin? It’s timeless and beautiful. Once Maureen leaves for the night the boys throws these cocaine fueled parties into the next day. It get’s so that there’s a dealer on the payroll. Those are some after hour parties. Creedence plays, weed, booze, broads, plates of snow and sex in every room of the house. But the rehersals at 2 PM are monstrous and the band exudes a hip white boy menance at showtime that reveles in their tight playing and too many bad habits. My brother Ronnie visits me in Bowling Green and we go see Maureen perform in Toledo. The three of us clear out the club’s dance floor in between sets. My brother throws her to me over his back, through his legs around her hips. We just burn the place out Jitterbugging and Salsa dancing at the same time to a hip hop funk beat. At the end of it all we’re exhausted and as I slip back in my chair I tell Ronnie, “Damn , she got a big …ummmm…but I like it!” Actually, I love her because we connect on a creative level and that supercedes any physical encounter. We kiss once and then just look at each other laughing, “Oh we better not screw this up!” We’re tight to the point where we can be apart for a long period of time and when we see each other our conversation picks up where we left off. I come up with a rockabilly piece that is my earliest character sketch. It’s dedicated to Mo and I used Los Lobos as the guide in structuring the song. I’ve been able to use that tune for more than twenty years and never tire of it. I’ll tell you what it’s like.When I want to have her close again or just rip up a room peforming I go into that tune. I’m right there again. We took our little floor show from Toledo to Broadway. Maureen had my brother and I appear as her guest performers at the Broadway Criterion. At the time she’s featured on The Great White Way in Into The Woods and recording in New York. That woman remembers her friends and I’m grateful for her generosity. It’s the only time my brother and I perform together. But we do it on Broadway. You go bronx doggggggggs! Maureen and The Movers discover and devour Los Lobos. They hip me to the East L.A. raza’s first EP when it initially reaches Toledo. The band quickly adopts and rocks Let’s Say Goodnight and C’mon Let’s Go Lobos style. I immediately recognize it as Latino music in a rock shell but what these Toledo guys are doing with it shows me the Latin Tinge in hipster USA is getting stronger. My man Ray Salazar is living proof of it. He is Toledo’s answer to David Hidalgo and company. Ray heads up Blues Confidential. He’s a rough and tumble first generation Mexican guitarist/socialist revolutionary who can hold his own against all comers. His family comes to Ohio picking tomatoes. Blues Confidential is a heavy drinking blues band. Some of these guys have been together for ten years or more and they all worked blue collar day jobs. They’re a textbook of U.S. Blues and Funk Rock with Ray splashing memories of Latin lullabyes off his guitar. I barnstorm with them through a variety of South Side Toledo biker bars. They also play the underground after hours in Detroit. “Man, we were hired to play in this Motor City place once, The Axle Club, and last call came. Next thing I know doors are being bolted shut, lights flashing, a siren goes off… WooooOOOOO! … these four big black guys appear out of no where with long flaslights and ugly strippers start to come out of the back room. The kind of strippers that have a button on their hip you press and their legs fly open. Boink! Shit freaked me out. I grabbed my guitar and I’m thinking, man have I just entered hell! It was like being in a Dali nightmare.” Blues Confidential let me rip with Poppa’s Got A Brand New Bag on a couple of gigs. I went about switching from English to Spanish lyrics – yeah, a Puerto Rican James Brown. Instead of Ha I would say Wepa and stuff like that. A total goof. On New Year’s Night 1984 at the stroke of midnight in a dark roadhouse bar they sing Bring It On Home (the Sam Cooke standard) in perfect five part harmony. I’m hooked and form my own group. Tonight one show only: LITTLE OTIS AND THE UPSETTERS. Send me some loving Send it I pray How can I love you When you’re so far away Won’t you send me some kisses I still feel their touch I love you so badly I love you so much So much So much My days are so lonely My nights are so blue I’m here and I’m alone I’m just waiting on you There’s no Otis. We’re all happy as shit to have a regular gig so no one’s upset but the band’s name tells the truth, “We’re a party band. Please to meet ya.” The name is a play on the two R&B artists we want to emulate – Little Richard (with Jimi Hendrix on guitar covering all the horn lines) and Otis Redding (backed by Booker T) topped off by the sound of Sam The Sham and his Pharoahs. There’s a popular group in the area called the Exciterz so I do a play on their moniker for our band The Upsetters. We eventually split a profitable gig billed as A Night To Excite and Upset You. It’s a peculiar mix of crowds. We’re homeboys and fraternity girls. They’re gothic and leather. But the night comes off great as we rotate the sets. It was the first time that’s done in Bowling Green and it’s pure theater and profitable. Everyone gets paid that night. A good party always rocks. The thing about rock and roll, like salsa, is that it allows you to do what’s on your mind and accent it with a kicking beat. If your clever enough you can transcend the form. A lot of bar bands do on a nightly level. We didn’t (later groups I formed did particularly the El Extreme band out of Albany) but Little Otis has a good time hitting the ceiling with a couple of tunes we wrote ourselves. And we screw with the covers. I bring this Old Chubby Checker record in slugged Twistin Round The World for the band to cover. In our hands the horn section (two trombones and a sax) did the bebop riffs from Dizzy Gillespies Salt Peanuts and the guitar laid an Ozzy Osbourne type lead. We split the voices in thirds with a Mitch Ryder shout and the drummer did his best runaway train beat stoked by our congas and timbales that had the room gasping by the end of the three minute tune. My vocal partner in The Upsetters Rasman Norman helps me polish off an original bilingual reggae tune titled Biscuit Head that’s featured by the Talkwork Series in the early nineties and helps me land a deal with Blue Lunch Records nine years after we write it in a parking lot. The Little Otis formula is deceptively simple: 60 Percent Cover Songs Every variation on the Latin Chords of Louie Louie Hang on Sloopy, La Bamba, Guantanamera et al 40 Percent original Tunes Heavy Metal/Punk Bass Player Jazz Drummer Meat and Potatos lead rock guitar Country Western second guitar Blues Harp Player Be Bop Jazz alto sax Orchestra Trombone Player GratefulDead/Finkadelic Keyboard player Lead Female Singer – soul Second Male Voice – Reggae doubling on congas Lead Male Singer – R&B/Salsa doubling on timbales Guests:Anyone from the town who thinks they can keep up. Props – What you got -- well eat anything We experiment with crazy college coeds and mushrooms besides smoking and selling pounds of weed until we loose Timbo our harp player in a police sting. But, we’re paying $230 a quarter pound for some serious green bud University boys drive in from across Ohio and Michigan so it’s a nice party while it lasts. The key to our success lays in getting the boys in the band to find a common ground musically. This is my form of politics adopted fom Eddie Figueroa at the New Rican. My form of revolution. Look for a way to get the sound of the Real America translated into something new and universal. The cover playlist reads like a 60’s WABC Top 40 Hit parade while the originals twist the lessons learned from the covers to create our own special sound. Music 101 Raw. A rock band is like a marriage of cultures. If you can make all the pieces hum in unison then you reach Nirvana. My bass player Ron Wagner is a second generation German farmboy from Bowling Green who learns bass by playing along with countless records. Every kind of record. He masters heavy metal base while deciphering the long classical pasages that infects so much of metal. His attention to time and how the bass effectively wraps itself around the drum beat adds an edge to the group. I teach myself timbales by listening to countless records. He teaches me to ride the top beat as color not a lead. We understand what we’re trying to do intuitively. Ron catches Devo’s first night as a bar band in Akron, “They’re terrible and get booed. Look where they’re at today. Anything’s possible.” Ron gives up the farm a few years ago but stays in the local music scene heading up the largest audio supply business in the region. Anything from a one room cafe to the annual tractor pull concert at the Fair Grounds. He takes me deep into rock country during the Otis days; to places where farmers work hard hours sometimes tripping on LSD while they plow their fields. At night they want to get a little drunk, jump around a bit, have a little fight and end up at the farm. He books us into the Varsity Club. They remove the plexiglass in front of the bandstand a couple of months before we arrive but they still have a double barred steel rail around the stage. “Yo, what kind of place is this?” “Rock and Roll, Lou. Look, we can’t get too blasted tonight. It’s best to stay on our toes.” “Hey, what are you talking about?” “Just be cool.” “Yo, what kind of place is this?” The place starts to fill up and this crew of brawny farmboys and girls come in and begin to drink. I mean drink. Drinks on the bar, the floor, the pool table and even in the bathroom. They’re smoking doobies outside and dosing in the shadows. There’s a bunch of regulars left over from happy hour. These weathered old mules can knock you out with a knuckle. We kick off the show and hit them with every Delta 88 rocker we have. They’re jumping around. Things are going nice and then from the corner of my eye I see this old farmer get up, hoist a pitcher of beer and bean this farmboy in the head. Pandemonium breaks loose. Cups are flying, girls screaming and through it all Ron just keeps saying. “Play the song out and back to the head!” Well, sure enough by the time we get back to the top of the form the bouncers throw at least seven people out and the place is back rocking. Damn. I never have any delusions that I’ll become a rock star like Devo but I now know how it feels when all the musical pistons are firing in a band and the engine is blowing mega rpms. The entire room tilts, the dancers are in sync and not a note is missed. You can feel the music as it rushes over you like a wave. Now picture 10 people doing that at once on stage playing their own composition; mixing different styles but making sense on a primal level. Now take the next step and imagine 200 people experiencing that in a club. It stops time. This is the real Rock and Roll Experience in the United States. It’s a tribal thing. Just like a Salsa jam. Anyone who tells you different hasn’t felt it yet. Besides, it’s fun for a while if you take it for what it is, an experience. Still working full time at WBGU in 1984, I book the band a weekly gig on Tuesday nights at The Tradewinds on Main Street. It’s a second floor club which is cool because all the fun clubs in my world are always on a second floor. Showtime is 9:30. But the club has a chicken wing happy hour from six to eight. I give the town my version of the New Rican Village and rig it to start by showing a movie at 8:00 booking stuff like Goldgfinger and Zardoz. Plus we presented videos created by my crew at the TV station. The band kicks in at 9:30 and we’d play until one. I’d have breakdancers from Toledo do a floor show. We manage to draw two hundred paying customers every Tuedsay and build that night up. If you’re into it, a bar band is a business that you can do on a local level and make some tax free bucks. Whose going to report 50 bucks a night. Playing the Tradewinds I meet my first gay punk band – Proof of Utah. They draw their inspiration from novelist William Burroughs and play quick two minute tunes about shooting down art canvasses, their friends and the other bands around them. Their most concise piece is a tune that lasts less than 40 seconds. The lead guitarist hits his strings with a beer bottle creating an awful feedback, the drummer beats a fast assault on the tom tom drum and the singer simply shouts, “All my friends are in bands and they suck!” The song comes to a crashing halt. Such is life in their crowd. They dose my drink with PCP Halloween 1984. My girlfriend’s best friend finds me wandering on Main Street and takes me to our apartment. Paulette tells me my eyes are rolling in my head. The last thing I remember is walking out into the apartment courtyard. There’s fresh crystallized snow on the ground flickering like a thousand little stars. The sky is a strange orange red. The full moon is a brilliant white beam that overpowers even the courtyard floodlights. I can see the words I speak in front of me frozen in the air from my breath. I wake up the next morning alone naked in my bed but I don’t know where I am or how I got there. The room feels like a mausoleum. I get flashbacks to the courtyard scene and find my dream book where I describe meeting George Washingon Carver in sea of peanuts, “I listen all around me because He speaks to me in everything” and then some strange heiroglyphics.” It freaks me out. I call my brother in New York and start making plans to go back to the city. In the meantime, I run a Country Western Bar for my girlfriend’s parents called The Corn City Bar for three months while I wait to settle up with WBGU. There is a matter of three thousand dollars they owe me. My getaway/bail money. The Corn City Bar in Deshler Ohio is my real life set of Deliverance. Everyone is gone in that town. Mexican, White and the occassional Black. Deschler is known as the crossroads of the B&O railroad but it’s heyday has been long gone. It’s poor farming country dotted with raucous bars and outlaw families. One particulary nasty outfit is the Pardo family. A bunch of Mexican brothers who raise hell. The Wheeler brothers are a handful too. Hippie White Boys who rustle cows and butcher them when they’re hungry. When any of these guys get drunk they square off. Paulette’s parents have a special jalapeno juice they slip into their drinks if trouble is brewing and it cools them out. But every once in a while they clear out a place. Country Western bands are really funny as the night goes on. They get filthier too so that by the fourth set the songs are rhyming strings of expletives. But what the hell, everyones drunk. Really drunk. I end up with two Mexican cousins in the back room of the Corn City and the three of us play butt naked bingo. That’s a lot of work, I don’t care what pornos show. We’re joined by their guera cousin. She’s half German and Mexican. Without missing a beat she gets naked and joins us doing both me and her cousins. This is not an isolated case but you got to hit trailer park central before stuff like this starts to happen. Paulette suspects I’m up to something and let me know what time it is in our relationship. She gives me a pair of sneakers at Christmas and asks, “What do you call a musician whose girlfriend just broke up with him?” “What?” “Homeless. Hit the road jack.” I fly to New York in early February 1985 and return to Amherst to get my degree. Maybe things changed. But first we throw a blowout at the Corn City Bar that is a fitting bon voyage. Yeah baby You got the kind of things That make Ivory soap So smooth and tasty I’m going to do you up Just like a french dinner She Got A Big But I Like it She Got A Big But I Like It’s nice and wide High and tight And when I get home Late at night I fall in I fall in I fall in My baby she treats Me nice and rough Rocks my body Oh so tough Ain’t nothing quite compares She does it up even with her hair Fall in Fall in Fall in All the way from Louisiana It’s Mr. Speedboat Yeah Baby Rock me steady Easy Now Easy Ooh yeah She rocks my world She gives me a twirl yeah Bring it down boys Hey When I come home late night And I spread out my babys arms How does she sound Hey! and what about when I reach A little bit lower how does she sound HeY! And what about when I put my neck Right into it And hit that spot HEY! Momma told me about days like This but I never believed her Now I’m going to do things to you baby That make soap bubbles burst Bring it up boys She Got A Big But I Like it She Got A Big But I Like It’s nice and wide High and tight And when I get home Late at night I fall in I fall in I fall in She got skinny legs And no butt to speak of You might say she’s A sexy night creature She wears her hair Real crazy Like the girls On MTV Aint nothing quite Like her She’s my baby My baby My baby Yeah She Got A Big But I Like it She Got A Big But I Like It’s nice and wide And when I get home Late at night I fall in I fall in I fall in It’s a bathtub I’m talking about With glistening drops Of blues tinged ecstasy Little Otis Greets the crowd Backed up by his boys The Upsetters Dark shirts pressed To razor sharpness Shaded glasses Polished to perfection A tumbler of Black Velvet In Otis right palm A cigarette dangling With an air of menace In his left The music’s fiugers Pry open the assembled souls Carrying whispers of delight As Little Otis and the Upsetters Celebrate their High Mass tonight In A Major For melodic saints and sinners The nearness of the congregation eliciting a sweet sensation From his voice It’s cadence drifting through The smoky bar I put a spell on you baby! Otis feels a closeness Like the night creeping Over the horizon And entering The farthest reaches East of Eden The crowd sighs And the boys fly Twisting cover songs To their own whims In their hearts The boys completely understand That the magic they feel Is the love they have For the music For the passion For the ecstasy The gentle breezes escaping From their throats As they sing their Twisty Love Incite the crowd To let go Dancers on the night winds While the Upsetters reach deep Into their Bible Of Blues Confidential Prayers One song left in the set Milo Buy the whole house A Wet Shaved drink Compliments of Stevie J. And save a dance with Mo Over there For ME Then the boys slip Into a whole other dimension For tonight is Otis’ last night Of doing covers For tonight they dream New Dreams And at the stroke of midnight Unleash them to greet The new day And blast into the future The boys set off a bomb Driven by Ron’s bass Fueled by Timbo’s harp Flavored by Rasman Norman Beating a Caribbean Drum As Phil N. DeBlanc’s Kansas City sax growls At Billie’s parachuting guitar riffs A new gospel is born As the congregation Greet the Upsetters With jubulation It’s the way of the bar band When they take the risk To do something new And when it comes from the heart It always rings true |
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