Sunday, December 5, 2010

Wet Tee Shirt Contests (or OMG not again)!

During my last year of being a full time musician, I played in a house band six nights a week at a very popular club in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. It was a great gig and we backed up a lot of headline bands that were once popular like Three Dog Night, The Supremes, Frankie Valley etc. The music was interesting and it was fun getting your picture taken with former famous musicians (can't say I know where all those pictures went though).

In the eighties, Ft. Lauderdale was THE place for college spring break, and hey, I was just out of college myself, so I truly enjoyed being at the center of the college spring break party scene. When we were not backing up former superstar musicians, it was our job to get the college crowd partying and dancing (not that it was hard to do with the amount of alcohol flowing in this club) remember the drinking age was eighteen back in those days!

Once the spring break season started we found out from the club owner that every Thursday night the band had the laborious task of judging the Wet Tee Shirt contest. This is where college girls from all across our great nation came to the club wearing a tee shirt with no bra, got hosed down with water, and then proceeded to take just about EVERYTHING off so that they could win the $100 grand prize. Word soon spread about this wonderful event and Thursday night was a happening at this club.

I remember thinking how God had truly smiled on me, giving this WONDERFUL job of watching co-eds from every college campus across these great United States jump up on stage right in front of me, take off every stitch of clothing while doing the most erotic dances I have ever witnessed! I HAD TRULY DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN! AND I WAS GETTING PAID TO DO THIS!!!!!!!

Now understand, I went to college for five years (more on that later) and I remember saying to myself "Where were these girls when I was in college?" But I surmised, I went to Eastman School of Music, spent six to seven hours a day in a practice room and maybe, just maybe, I did not get out enough to see that said girls actually did exist on college campuses.

Now after several weeks of doing this tough job I started to notice something. These drop dead co-eds with the PERFECT bodies never seemed to go back to college. I also remember thinking..."wow my spring break was only one week long, I went to the wrong school." After three months of judging the SAME girls doing the SAME gross things (yes, by this time it had gone from erotic to "oh god please don't do that again in front of me."

I was young, naive,  and a little slow on the uptake when it FINALLY hit me that these were not college girls at all, but local strippers! Needless to say it got VERY boring after three months and I was GLAD to see the spring break season end. But, hey! The REAL college crowd never caught on to this marketing ploy. I mean, they were only there for a week and then they headed back north, east, and west to continue their college careers while trying to locate these Drop Dead  Gorgeous girls on their own campus!!

Stay cool!

Rik

Friday, December 3, 2010

Food Fights!

One of the more boring aspects of being on the road was driving from gig to gig. While we usually stayed at a gig for 2-6 weeks, we still had some long hauls, especially when driving from NY to Miami, which we did at least twice a year. Typically leaving NY on a Saturday night after a gig and having to open in Miami on a Monday. We did ANYTHING to stay awake!!!!

We usually traveled in pairs with one person driving and the other person trying to stay awake. A game that we invented to keep EVERYONE awake was the food fight while going 65 down the interstate (at that time the speed limit was 55).

Here's how it worked. The driver of said vehicle would pull along side another vehicle in our caravan, and the passenger would throw as much food etc. at the other vehicle, while the passenger in the other vehicle was doing the same. It made for some VERY funny moments. And while I can't say that it was the safest driving habit, we did have a TOTAL blast seeing what food items would be coming out from your road foe. Jello and pudding cups was a favorite from my van!

I can only imagine what other cars must have thought about this event. It would have been a "hoot" to watch this!

rp