Should I stay … or should I go.

It was the question I asked before the fateful trip. The Asbury excursion. The one to reunite the three.

In my heart I was waiting for this moment. I couldn’t be in attendance last year. But this year I WANTED to be there. I hadn’t seen any of them since the mid-nineteen-eighties. For argument’s sake and our love of round numbers I’ll call it twenty-five. Had it been that long? Maybe. Maybe more. Even our collective (failing) brains could not arrive at an accurate accounting. At this age … what’s a few years give or take.

After trading eMails with Geoff … and his kind offer of plane fare … I was able to come up with the money to buy my own round-trip ticket on Continental. If I went for two weeks the fare was reduced to $400.00. Time I had. Money. Not so much. Friends like these? Not enough!

It was set. Asbury Park, August 11th and leave for my family in south Jersey on the morning of the 16th. But on August 14th … The Hoover Hootenanny!

Geoff’s lovely wife Tatiana picked me up from Newark Airport the evening of my arrival. Like most New York City transplants Geoff never learned to drive. Good thing Tatiana did! “Yo Hoov! How will I know your wife? Will she have a sign?” “Oh. She’ll have a sign!.”

Here I am. Back where it all started. It’s amazing. It’s amusing. It’s a place I’ve iconized in my minds eye. It was a place of growth and a place of rebirth. For me. For many. Part of something bigger than all of us. Youth. Art. Music. Lust. Passion. A culmination of time, talent, opportunity, and friendships, crystallizing into the stuff dreams are made of. But at what point do we wake up?

It’s now 2010 some 25 years later. Time has taken a toll, on memories and conditions. Asbury is still a town in transition. A town possibly on the verge of rebirth, but still a slow and painful one. As I walked the streets with my friends Geoff Hoover & Dorothy Orant Morrison, ghosts of days past shown themselves and at times were laid to rest. Places that were once dead were now gentrified. For better or worse. Time marches on. And so did we.

Good-bye Lake Union. Good-bye Puget Sound. Good-bye Seattle. Hello New Jersey?

New Jersey. Home of my youth and soon to be … vacation destination. I was off to see my friends Geoff Hoover & Dorothy Orant Morrison, and attend The Hoover Hootenanny. I would be staying with Geoff, his wife Tatiana and his three grown children, Indiana, Duke, and Texas in their home in Asbury Park. I hadn’t seen Geoff since somewhere mid 1980-ish. Our collective aging brain cells could not determine the exact time nor date, but that’s par for the course. Now in our 50′s … that’s do be expected????? OMFG!!!!

I spent August 11th through August 15th with the Hoovers in Asbury Park, NJ. On the 16th my niece Tracy would picked me up and transport me to my Mom’s home in Lanoka Harbor.

There were many more plans in the itinerary, but they were laid to rest by a cold and the upper respiratory distress caused by said cold. Fucking flying tube of germs!

Luckily I was able to make it through my stay with Geoff and family and the Hoover Hootenanny with flying colors … and the rumblings of a soar throat. The preamble to my cold. But an amazing time was had by all! Even me! Joe = Fun …. who would have thunk!

It all started with an idea and an eMail.

A long while back I started posting my Clash photos from the various shows I had attended over the years 1980-1982. My photos of the Clash @ The Palladium NYC 1980, the Clash @ Bonds NYC 1981, and the Clash @ Asbury Park Convention Hall 1982. When I was taking photographs I was more a fan with a camera. I wasn’t officially there as a journalist, but I have always been a documenter. A photograph by nature is a documentation of an event in time. Being a college student back then, if I had the money to spend on film and developing, or at least for the film, I would certainly take my camera to every show I went to. “In those day” (god did I just say that?) anyone could bring a camera into a venue and take photographs. Not so much now unless you’re press, or are sporting a camera phone or small digital number. But back then it was all allowed. No problem. So I have lots of “documentation” of bands I saw through the years. The Clash being one of them.

On March 7, 2009 3:45:30 PM PST I got a very interesting eMail from a gentleman named Daniel Garcia. It was a brief, yet rather interesting eMail, to say the least.

Okay. Since I started writing about Gary and company I’ve been getting mondo hits on my blog. One of those hits was from Kenny Douyotas (Smoots band drummer) himself. He left a comment.

Wow, I can’t believe I found this, why no pictures of me? The drummer never gets any respect…..

Oh Kenny … we all respect you. 

I eMailed him back and he sent me his phone number. So we chatted and played catch-up. One of the things he told me was he had a mix-down of the three songs that Smoots recorded in the studio. Plus he had some other tunes from a sound check, taped direct from the soundboard. The studio tunes he had already digitized, and the other tape he still had to digitize.

I remember being there. I was high up almost touching the sky. Nothing could bring me down short of a bullet to the brain or some other grand misstep. I’d never been this high. Not to see a show at least. Not to see HIM. It was like an out of body experience. I’m here … and I’m somewhere else …

It was a beautiful sunny post-summer Sunday. September 22, 1974 to be exact. Having just finished my senior year at Linden High School, followed by a summer of “workin’ in Daddy’s garage,” then moving into a Rahway apartment with my sister, sliding right into my first semester at F.I.T. as a photography major … it was a welcome respite.