Just spoke with my former Area Z band mate Paul Cole (currently with The BackBeat in Chapel Hill)..He tells me his current drummer Chris Chamis was doing sound for the dBs in the days of that Grotto visit..and some of you guys went to High School together at Reynolds in Winston...The world keeps getting smaller...Chamis is a first class good guy, I'm not saying that just because he lets me sit in on the drums for a song or two when I show up for a BackBeat gig...Paul and I go back to the days of Charlotte's Milestone Club...anyone remember that beautiful den of elegance?

Great little hole-in-the-wall place.
Only served Miller in the bottle
and run by a little bearded gnome of a guy
whose name escapes me. One of the best shows I
ever saw there was The dB's, sometime
a little after Stamey left the group.
Seems like yesterday.
Eugene

Yes, the Grotto and the Milestone are two very memorable places for us. You used to not be able to see the soundman from the stage at the Grotto, and someone once told me that, despite Yale's proximity to the club, no self-respecting Eli would ever show his or her face in there. The Milestone was run by Billy Flowers. It certainly influenced my decision to never carpet my home with beer-soaked Astroturf.

Yeah, Bill Flowers was always going off on tangents, you could'nt keep him on ONE subject...way out there..spoke of installing a periscope in the club so he could see what was going on outside..Our band had a temporary arrangement to use the club as a practice place in the off hours...we had no key..the deal was that we'd just break into the place each time...A few times when we would show up at the club early to set up for a gig that night..he'd walk up with a fist full of cash saying, hey man, I'm out of beer, can one of you guys go to the grocery store and pick up 10 cases?...uh..how about a Carpet Genie too Bill?.... I can still smell it....Don