In the 1970’s, a School Shooting in Saratoga Springs
SARATOGA SPRINGS — It was 11:30 on a Friday morning in December and the children were in the school playground making believe they were monsters, or earth men, or chasing each other around in a game of tag. Daniel Insetta, the school guard on duty, heard the pops – first one, then another, then two quick shots - and called police.
The stores on Broadway and inside the Pyramid Mall in the mid-1970s were preparing for the holiday season. For residents in and around the city, there was a lot going on. There was a local screening premier of Diana Ross’ “Mahogany” at the Saratoga Cinema at 7 p.m. and Louis and Sally Killen were staging their style of British folk-singing downtown at Lena’s café. Some simply decided to cash their paychecks and set the four bucks aside it would take to purchase the tickets to see Asleep at the Wheel at the Great Saratoga Music Hall later in the month.
In the apartment complex across the street from the playground at St. Peter’s Elementary School, building super Jim Rodgers visited George McCode in his second-floor apartment to discuss a $102 rent bill that was due. McCode told the super he thought his wife had already paid the bill, paid it before she left with the couple’s young daughter and headed for Georgia. She had not, the super informed the 32-year-old McCode, who a month earlier received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy after serving at the Kesselring site in West Milton.
As McCode called his wife on the telephone from his residence inside the Gaslight apartment complex, third-grade teacher Lillian Pratt led 40 students to the playground outside, where they joined their younger elementary schoolmates shortly before noon. McCode hung up the telephone after talking with his wife.
A demolition crew tore through the Empire and Brooklyn hotels north of his apartment on Hamilton Street. The Saratoga Springs Urban Renewal Spring Valley North Project was leveling land to make way for a city center. On South Broadway, Natale American hosted a used car sale in a lot parked with Camaros and Gremlins, Hornets and Torinos. A ’69 Volkswagen Bus could be got for $1,595. Realtors offered four-bedroom Victorian-style colonial homes fitted with fireplaces for $29,900, financing available. At City Hall, the council voted to cut $7,500 in appropriations to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, sending venue general manager Craig Hankenson to embark on a grass-roots fundraising drive to meet budget demands.
Shortly before noon, in the playground at St. Peter’s, third-grade teacher Lillian Pratt heard what she thought were fireworks, coming from the Gaslight Apartments across the street. Second-grade teacher Judy Vetrano heard four pops and when she looked across the schoolyard she saw a little girl lying down in the corner of the playground, blood streaming from her foot.The children were hustled back inside the classrooms of the elementary school building. Some were crying. Two 7-year-old girls were injured.
Kim Bemis was brought to Saratoga Hospital to remove the bullet from the heel of her foot. Moira D’Andrea returned to her classroom with a slight wound from a ricochet bullet which caught her in one of her feet.
When police arrived and sealed off the area, they headed for the housing complex that overlooked the schoolyard across the street. Forcing their way through the barricaded door of McCode’s second-floor apartment, they found four spent 22-cal. shells next to an open living room window. A fifth shell was located next to the 32-year-old man, who was discovered lying on his bedroom floor, bleeding. He died early the next morning at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady.
“Every time somebody acts like, hey, it can’t happen in Saratoga Springs, I say, it already has happened in Saratoga Springs,” Police Chief Greg Veitch said about the incident, decades later.
Forty-five minutes after the shooting the building superintendent received a money-telegram from the man’s wife with payment for the rent bill that was due. Kimberly Bemis recovered from the bullet wound, graduated from Saratoga Springs High School in 1987 and later relocated to Stillwater. Moira D’Andrea became a three-time Olympian speed skater in the 1980s and 90s, relocated to Canada, and became an instructor, teaching others in the sport.
Originally published as “Sniper Takes Aim: It Can’t Happen Here? It Already Has,” in the book “Saratoga Stories: Magic And Loss,” by Thomas Dimopoulos, 2015, Shires Press.
Local Music Legends Inducted into HOF June 7 at UPH
SARATOGA SPRINGS —Eight legends of the local music scene will be honored in an induction ceremony for The Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Hall of Fame class of 2022. The event will take place at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, June 7 at Universal Preservation Hall.
Inductees include ambient music artist Sara Ayers; music promoter Greg Bell; the late Brooks Brown, founder of independent radio station WEQX; Michael Eck, poet, solo artist, member of several musical acts, and a producer and music critic; the late Greg Haymes, longtime TU music writer, founder of the publication Nippertown and lead vocalist of the band Blotto; Grammy- and Academy Awarding-winning music producer and Spa City resident Joel Moss; solo artist Rich Ortiz; and the Troy rock trio Super 400.
Haymes, who passed away in 2019, was one of the first people I met in the region when moving here in the 1990s.
Supreme master of musical knowledgeable and grand enthusiast as an A&E music scribe, Haymes shined a light on the region’s activities where it ought be shined, for all to see, and offered thoughtful encouragement for musical ensembles of all kinds, including my own. He also helped get me my earliest writing gigs at the TU, don’t you know. The memories are plentiful: standing together awaiting the stage arrival of Neil Young at SPAC; gossiping back-and-forth between readings at Bob Dylan’s birthday celebration gathering at the Old Chapel at Union College in Schenectady; sharing a patch of Shepard Park grass as David Amram wonderfully navigated a collaboration between the T.S. Monk Sextet and Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra during the Lake George Jazz Festival. That last one, in mid-September 2001, was the first time many of us had mustered the courage to gather together in a public space during those twitchy, nerve-frazzled days immediately following the attacks of 9/11.
In 2017, I had hosted an event at Saratoga Springs Public Library – “The History of Rock and Roll: Saratoga and Beyond,” which featured a panel of talented and gifted luminaries from across the region – Greg Haymes, among them.
Published for the first time, here is a partial transcript of what he said:
“August 10 is the anniversary of the first gig I played in Saratoga. It was with the Star-Spangled Washboard band. We went on an played a couple of more shows, at Caffe Lena, and within a year we played at SPAC, opening for Sha Na Na. A year after that, 1974, we played at the Saratoga Fair. Remember the Saratoga Fair? It was at the racetrack, a 10-day fair in June. It was Mac Davis, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Red Skeleton – who is the one I remember most because we played that same day. I remember him sitting in front of this little booth where he was selling his paintings for clowns that he did. How cool is that? Tickets were $2.50 a day. $1 parking charge. Not too bad,” Haymes remembered.
“Star-Spangled Washboard Band lasted through about September ’78 and everybody went their separate ways and got ‘Real Jobs.’ I worked at a record store – not a real job! And our bass player, Cheese Blotto, got a job bartending at his friends who had just opened a bar that was called 17 Maple Avenue.
“The Washboard band had broken up, but we were still around. One Friday on Saturday, one or two of us would show up. You never knew who was going to show up. We would play and whoever would show up would play. Eventually it coalesced into a group and we needed a name. We came up with the name Blotto. We came up with these little cardboard convention badges that would say: Hello My Name Is. That became the title of our first record: Hello My Name is Blotto.
“Like I said, anybody would get up and play with us. There was a night, late in the evening, we’re doing our third set or something. We did mostly ‘60s covers, off the wall stuff: Freddie & The Dreamers, Ballad of the Green Beret, Mother’s Little Helper – I’d bring out a medicine chest in the middle of the song and everybody would be throwing pills all over the place. That’s the kind of band it was. So, one night there’s a group of gentlemen who come in and stand in the back. Big poodle hair. Satin baseball jackets with the sleeves pushed up. This was like ’79. So naturally we started making fun of them. They’re a band? ahaha, it’s a Friday night and they’re not playing anywhere.
“Hey, you wanna come up and jam? So we did “House of the Rising Sun,” and “Johnny B. Goode,” because everybody does “Johnny B. Goode,” and I think we also did “We Gotta Get Outta This Place.” I think it was maybe four guys came in, the drummer came up, the guitar player. And they were pretty good! We were very impressed. After our set it was time to say thank you, wrap up the night and we asked them who they are. The guitar player’s Neil, the drummer’s Steve…it was Journey, who had just finished playing at SPAC earlier that evening. They were pretty cool about it.
“Two years later I was in Colonie Center, somebody said ‘Have you seen the poster?’ We had to go to Spencer’s Gifts and in the back there were these racks of posters and there’s a Journey poster. They’re just kinda standing there. There are some green trees and some white pillars and I’m looking at it, and… hanging from Steve Smith’s belt-loop is a cardboard tag that says: “Hello! My Name is Blotto. What’s Yours?’’
The ceremony will feature live music, a presentation of a brief video about each artist, and acceptance speeches. Tickets are $50 and are on sale at universalpreservationhall.org. Admission includes complimentary hors d’oeuvres. A bronze plaque is placed on the Hall of Fame wall at UPH for each inductee, and a video about each inductee will play there in a loop with past, present, and future recipients.
Washington Street Building Demolished, Saratoga Candy Co. Relocated
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Washington Street building that housed the Saratoga Candy Company for nearly a quarter of a century was demolished last week. A new, multi-story mixed-use hotel/residential development is targeted for the space.
“It’s bittersweet to say goodbye to my O. G. baby store after 23 years,” says Saratoga Candy Co. owner Dawn Oesch. ”I spent more time there than anywhere I have ever lived. Baking stuff at 2 in the morning, showing up at 5 in the morning to get ready for something.”
The neighborhood candy store has been relocated to 353 Broadway, lower level, around the corner from the former spot, and in a similarly sized space, and may also be found online at: www.saratogasweets.com.
Building That Housed D’Andrea’s Liquor Store Facing Wrecking Ball
SARATOGA SPRINGS — A longtime West Avenue building may soon be demolished.
The city’s Land Use Boards are this slated this week to determine the existence of any potential architectural or historic significance of the building that once housed D’Andrea’s Liquor Store on West Avenue, with a potential review of demolishing the structure.
The single-story 2,200 square foot building stands on the northwest corner of Washington Street/Route 29 and West Avenue, and is perhaps most noticeable to passing motorists for its exterior letter design exhibiting Spanish and Greek, Italian, German and other languages in color-filled period script.
It has previously served as a restaurant, and then a liquor store. In the summer of 2016, shortly after the liquor store closed, Faust D’Andrea sold the lot to David Mohr - president of 81 West Realty Inc., who acquired the property for $1.5 million, according to the Albany Business Review.
81 West Realty Inc. is the applicant to the city asking for the architectural/historic review, citing that the building “has been classified as an ‘unsafe structure.’ We are proposing to demolish this building and clear the lot.”
Spa City Doesn’t Get Stefanik After All: Final Congressional Map Keeps Saratoga Springs in Greater Capital Region
SARATOGA SPRINGS — In an 11th hour change to his draft map that would have shifted Saratoga Springs voters into the 21st congressional voting district, court-appointed special master Jonathan Cervas on May 21 released his final map, setting district boundaries along Saratoga County lines.
Previously, the draft map split Saratoga County in a jagged west-to-east manner and placed Spa City voters in a district alongside those in Plattsburgh, Potsdam and other North Country municipalities along the Canadian border. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik currently represents the 21st district.
The final map places all of Saratoga County into district 20, alongside Capital Region municipalities Albany, Schenectady and Troy, currently represented by Democrat Congressman Paul Tonko.
The draft map was released Monday May 16 and requested public input. Many did. Saratoga Springs City Mayor Ron Kim gathered with the respective mayors of Albany, Amsterdam, Schenectady and Troy to call upon Cervas to keep Saratoga Springs in NY-20 as it had been for the last 10 years.
The city of Amsterdam, Tonko’s home district was not included and will instead be in Stefanik’s NY-21 district.
In re-setting all of Saratoga County into NY-20, Stefanik’s home district of the town of Saratoga - previously been in NY-21, was shifted to Tonko’s NY-20 district.
The Constitution requires members of the House live in the state they represent, though not necessarily in the same district.
New Draft Map Redistricts Capital Region, Saratoga Springs Voters
SARATOGA SPRINGS — A new draft mapping the state’s Congressional Districts for the next decade shifts a greater number of Saratoga voters from District 20 to District 21.
The proposed maps, drawn by court-appointed special master Jonathan R. Cervas, would specifically shift a larger number of Saratoga Springs residents into the 21st District, effectively placing Spa City voters in a district alongside those in Plattsburgh, Potsdam and other municipalities along the Canadian border. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik currently represents the 21st district.
The map, from court-appointed special master Jonathan Cervas, splits Saratoga County in a jagged west-to-east manner. The proposed new District 21 begins at the Kayderosserass Creek line at South Broadway, and includes most of Saratoga Spa State Park and points north – including Saratoga Race Course, Yaddo, downtown Saratoga Springs, west to Greenfield and east to Schuylerville, and includes Wilton, Warren and Washington Counties and extends north to the Canadian border.
“I look forward to running for re-election in NY-21 where I have been honored and humbled to earn historic support every election cycle. I will always work my very hardest to deliver real results for the hardworking families in Upstate New York and the North Country,” Stefanik said, in a statement. The town of Saratoga, where Stefanik maintains her home, would remain in her 21st district.
Democrat Congressman Paul Tonko, who lives in Amsterdam, would see his home district carved away from the 20th Congressional District he currently represents. The draft map for District 20 includes: Ballston Spa, Malta, Milton – and the Saratoga County Airport, Round Lake, Malta, and most of Saratoga Lake, Clifton Park, Halfmoon, Mechanicville, as well as Albany, Schenectady, Troy and their surrounding communities.
“I stand with our residents who loudly voiced that Albany, Amsterdam, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady and Troy must remain in the same district so we can continue to speak with a unified voice in Washington. I urge the (special master) to listen to the voters in the Capital District in his final maps. Anything less hamstrings our ability to get things done for our communities,” Tonko said in a statement.
Representatives are not required to reside in the districts they represent. “If today’s maps are finalized, I intend to run for reelection in New York’s 20th Congressional District,” Tonko said.
By The Numbers
District 21 – Saratoga County and points north and southwest, is one of only three of the state’s 26 Districts that lean Republican, with a 56.6% to 43.5% split, according to the Cervas special master proposal. Current officeholder: Elise Stefanik (R).
District 20 – Saratoga County and points south shows a 57.3% - 42.7% split favoring Democrats. Current officeholder; Paul Tonko (D).
Overall, there are 26 districts in New York with 3 districts leaning Republican, 15 leaning Democratic, and eight that fall in the 45-55% competitive range.
The last Congressional races were held in 2020. In District 20, nearly 360,000 votes were counted. Democrat Paul Tonko defeated Republican challenger Elizabeth Joy by about 80,000 votes, with Tonko gaining 9,000 votes in that margin of victory in Saratoga County from about 81,000 overall county voters.
In District 21, about 320,000 voted. Republican Elise Stefanik defeated Democrat challenger Tedra Cobb by about 56,000 votes. In the smaller segment of Saratoga County residents, about 52,000 voted, with Stefanik posting a 7,000 vote advantage difference.
The maps are anticipated to be finalized May 20.
Coming June 1: Gas Relief for Motorists
BALLSTON SPA — The county Board of Supervisors staged a 30-minute special meeting May 11 and approved a pump savings cost for motorists in Saratoga of about .06 per gallon, which will go into effect on June 1.
The tax savings at the pump was approved by the majority of the board, although some expressed concern that the reduction may ultimately lead to less tax revenue for county municipalities.
The move dovetails with a previously announced state measure, also going into effect June 1, that will provide motorists across the state with a savings of about .16 per gallon.
“New York State recently vested New York counties with the authority to cap their sales tax that is paid on fuel at the pump,” county Board of Supervisors Chairman Todd Kusnierz said during the May 11 meeting. “I can tell you on my way down here I fueled up in northern Saratoga County and the price was $4.69 per gallon. And the price of diesel is even higher than that,” he said. “We don’t want the residents of Saratoga County to have to choose between buying food, buying prescriptions and putting fuel in their tanks.”
On April 9, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the state will suspend the state sales tax on motor fuels and called on counties to do the same. The special meeting of the county board was called to get in under a time deadline.
Kusnierz said the reductions would equal about .06 cents savings per gallon for Saratoga County consumers. A separate state reduction - about .16 cents per gallon - would be added, totaling approximately .22 cents per gallon in overall savings. “We anticipate the savings may be as high as $4 million during this period.”
Supervisors Joe Grasso and Jean Raymond expressed concern that the savings at-the-pump may later adversely affect municipalities dependent on the sales tax revenue, and Saratoga Springs City Supervisor Tara Gaston cast the lone vote against the measure.
“I have real reservations that this is going to be as effective as we would like it to be because we have absolutely no way of monitoring this in any way,” Supervisor Raymond said.
“I was in the business directly and indirectly for probably 30 years so I’m more than passingly familiar with how this works. On the other hand, if we can do anything to help people, I think that’s important, so I am reluctantly going to support it,” said Raymond, adding of the estimated $4 million tax savings “$2 million is going to come out of the pockets of all the towns and cities and villages when we come to the sales tax.”
The measure, which goes into effect June 1, switches from an overall percentage of total sales tax to taxing only the first two dollars of each gallon of gas that is sold, according to the county attorney.
Loss of A Saratoga Icon
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Despite that more than a half-century had gone by since he first visited the Spa City, Hud Armstrong could effortlessly recall the first time he laid eyes on the place that would become home.
“It was back in the ‘50s and we were living in South Glens Falls,” he remembered, during a recent sidewalk conversation that took place on Broadway, or Caroline Street, or any one of the number of downtown thoroughfares where Hud shared his stories with anyone who asked. “We would drive down Route 9, turn onto North Broadway where the arterial is, and come right into town. This was back when the Grand Union Hotel was still was there. I remember those huge hotels. And the big mansion that stood right on the corner next to the firehouse,” he said. “I took one look and went…Wow.”
Hudson “Hud” Armstrong, longtime city resident, bartender, illustrator, passed away on May 11. He is survived by his family, including brothers Stuart and Don.
He started drawing at the age of four while listening to the radio because he wanted to see what things looked like. In the 1960s, he celebrated his 21st birthday by completing basic training, then going to see the company commander who would decide his next move.
“He looked over my file and saw I had a background in art. I don’t know what it was about my dossier, but something in there made him think, ‘Hey, this guy will be really good in amphibians!’ So off I went for amphibian training and ended up being sent to Qui Nhon,” he remembered of his time on the Vietnam coast, south of Da Nang.
He returned from a military tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968, settled down in Saratoga Springs and began mixing cocktails at a variety of city taverns, and illustrating a number of works – twin vocations in which he would be involved for all of his days.
Today his work graces the walls of the council’s chambers at City Hall – painted in 1974, the Tin & Lint, and is emblazoned across the annual Chowderfest t-shirts, depicting happy childhood faces and local scenes brought to life. In 2021 he published an art book, “Booker D and the NGs,” culled from his 300 pages of illustrations and accompanying texts he created over a 15-year period. A mural of massive proportions hangs in the lobby of the Mabee Building that depicts contemporary people done up in a 19th century style at the old Saratoga train station. The mural measures 19 feet long and features 237 different Saratogians, and five dogs.
“The city has grown and…there are growing pains, but I have to remind people that a lot of these new buildings they see were built on vacant lots. Houses weren’t torn down. We had a lot of vacant lots,” Hud recalled during one random sidewalk conversation during the summer of 2017.
“When the Tin & Lint opened, I remember sitting in there and having conversations with people who would say, ‘Why would you want to move here? There are so many businesses that are boarded-up. It’s falling down.’ And we said: no, it’s all open. It’s ready to start all over again,” he said. “That’s why I’ve stayed around. And it’s been phenomenal to watch.”
An online fundraiser has been arranged to celebrate the life of Hud Armstrong and to help his family cover funeral expenses. The site may be found at: gofundme.com (and under search: Hud Armstrong). All funds gathered from this campaign will go to Hud’s brother, Don, as he and his family navigate their loss.
All Together Now: Arts Celebration Weekend in Saratoga Slated For June 2-5
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Zac Brown and Robert Plant will stage shows at SPAC. Guided tours will be provided at the Tang Museum. There will be live music for folks performed at Caffe Lena, “opera under the stars,” and staged theater by HMT. The gardens at Yaddo will host their long-awaited return.
These are some of the showcased events scheduled to take place in early June which provided the focus of this week’s collaborative announcement by the city of Saratoga Springs and local cultural organizations to kick-off the summer season.
It’s called “All Together Now,” and serves as an official reopening of Saratoga’s cultural destinations.
“’All Together Now’ celebrates (our) incredible cultural richness. What’s amazing is nothing was specially produced for it. It is literally a snapshot of all the amazing things already happening in the city and the county on a particular weekend in June,” Elizabeth Sobol, president and CEO of Saratoga Performing Arts Center said at a presser held May 17 at Saratoga Arts. “Our aim is to capture this moment. To shine a light upon it.”
“All Together Now: Arts Celebration Weekend in Saratoga” will be held June 2-5 and serves as an official re-opening of Saratoga’s cultural destinations. It is the culmination of two years of collaboration across organizations to fulfill the community’s need for the arts after navigating through pandemic-related hardships and obstacles.
“We’re all aware that towns and cities everywhere are facing health challenges – challenges of mistrust and division, addiction and stress. We are offering an antidote. It’s called human creativity,” said Sarah Craig, Executive Director of Caffè Lena, which will be staging a jazz chart-topper, a bilingual global folk singer, a downstate alt-country band and a free children’s concert the first weekend in June. “How do I know this works? Every day and night year-round I get to see the power of music unlock something inside of people.”
Closed for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Yaddo artists’ retreat will open its gardens to the community from 12-4 p.m. for a poetry and dance event Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5. The Tang Teaching Museum will host a variety of free art exhibitions throughout the weekend-long event.
Across town, presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco will be featured June 5 at a Festival of Young Artists at SPAC, visitors will be welcomed inside into the grounds newest building, The Pines at SPAC, for an exhibit displaying Mikhail Baryshnikov’s photographs of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
This week’s gathering featured in-person commentary by Saratoga Springs mayor Ron Kim, Saratoga Arts Executive Director Louise Kerr, Tang Museum Dayton Director Ian Berry and Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce President Todd Shimkus.
Sen. Daphne Jordan made an announcement proclaiming Saratoga Springs as an arts and culture tourism destination, and verbally spun the Beatles-inspired event slogan – “All Together Now” – into a different fab four tune: “The smiles returning to the faces/ It seems like years since it’s been here,” she said, “Here comes the sun.”
From Thursday, June 2 through Sunday, June 5 about 40 free and ticketed events will be happening in or a short distance from downtown Saratoga Springs.
Saratoga Arts will host a ‘raise a glass to the arts’ kickoff event at 320 Broadway from 5-6:30 p.m. Friday, June 3 and will present the first-ever Saratoga Arts Community Talent Show the next afternoon at the Saratoga City Music Hall.
For the full lineup of activities during All Together Now: Arts Celebration Weekend in Saratoga, visit: saratoga.org/arts.
Guitar Legend This Weekend in Spa City
SARATOGA SPRINGS — It is Friday afternoon. A steel-silver sky dangles over a blacktop lot that cradles a motorcar blazoned in gunmetal gray.
Inside the car, the beautiful tone fragments that flow from Richard Lloyd’s guitar gush from the speakers. The band is Television. The music is “Marquee Moon.”
“I remember, how the darkness doubled. I recall, lightning struck itself.
I was listening, listening to the rain. I was hearing, hearing something else…”
Just at that moment, the ring of the phone cuts through all sweetness and melancholy, and bullies its way across the Bluetooth, sounding over the speakers of the car.
“This is Richard Lloyd,” the voice says. “It looks like it’s going to rain here. Is it raining where you are?”
The wondrous season lands in Saratoga early this year. Richard Lloyd performs Saturday, May 14 at Putnam Den with his four-piece band. “Kevin Tooley, David Leonard and a new guy, Steve Geller. Two guitars, bass and drums,” Lloyd explains. Local favorites Family Tree opens the show. Lloyd says the show will feature songs from across his career. And a rich career it is.
There are more than a half-dozen solo albums to his credit, loaded with anthemic guitars and tuneful gems that in a just and more welcoming country would have returned innumerable radio hits. His craftsmanship as a six-string practitioner is showcased in a popular YouTube site someone put up heralding guitar drone theory and “the use the mixolydian scale to create a Richard Lloyd style solo.”
Then there is Television. The four-member ensemble produced two albums – “Marquee Moon” and “Adventure” during their initial forage through the late 1970s - and a created a presence whose influence to this very day cannot be overstated.
“Marquee Moon” in particular is hailed far-and-wide as a musical masterpiece. You have to wonder if he’s tired of talking about. “I’m just glad it still sells,” Lloyd responds, with a chuckle. “Forty-five years later, and I still get paid.”
He was born in the fall of 1951 in Pittsburgh – six years after the end of World War II, and at the start of the Cold War. “People at that time were in a strange halfway state – between the exhilaration of recovery from war and the threat of nuclear annihilation,” he reflects in his 2017 memoir “Everything Is Combustible.”
Lloyd was a New York City kid at a time when the city was ripping apart at the seams. He hung out at Max’s Kansas City and memorably recalls going to see the New York Dolls at the Hotel Diplomat.
“I was taken aback by the audience,” Lloyd says. “Everybody was dressed to the nines - and they were more interested in each other than they were in the band. The band facilitated this scene, but it wasn’t like a normal concert where people are paying attention to what’s onstage.” It was a time when bands were starting to play in front of big crowds in large arenas. “It was very cut-and-dried. Performer. Audience. Performer. Audience. All of a sudden there was a break in that. And that’s what it was like at CB’s as well, because if you played there regularly you got in for free, so there was always a lot of talented people there – not just musicians, but journalists and photographers and actors and writers. It was a very interesting time in New York.”
Lloyd and Television were instrumental in what was to transpire at CBGB. The Mercer Arts Center – the only showplace in town for creatives in 1973 – had collapsed in a heap of rubble on an August afternoon.
“It fell down, while I was on my way (there), in a car driving from L.A. to New York,” said Lloyd, while sitting in a car traveling from New York to New Haven.
“And you’re in a car now. Hopefully nothing’s falling down anywhere,” was the sequence of words that tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“I. Hope. Not,” he replied.
Lloyd was living in Chinatown with Terry Ork. An assistant to Andy Warhol, Ork was perhaps inspired by Warhol’s sponsorship that had initiated the blooming of the Velvet Underground a decade earlier and engaged in doing something with a band in a similar way. It was their visit to a Manhattan club on an audition night, that produced the first meeting between Lloyd and transplanted Delaware schoolmates Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine.
“It was a cabaret club. People like Liza Minelli and Peter Lemongello played there,” Lloyd says. Verlaine played three songs on his audition night. That 10-minute set led to the collaborative formation that eventually became Television.
Looking for a place that would let them play on a public stage, they found a dive on the Bowery and approached the owner – as the story goes - while he stood atop a stepladder fiddling with the canopy in front of his bar, convincing him he should showcase live original music in his bar. That owner was Hilly Kristal. The club was CBGB. Despite the moniker depicting what Kristal had imagined his bar showcasing (the acronym represents Country, BlueGrass and Blues), a new wave of creative people would discover the venue as a place to unveil their talents – Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie and The Ramones, among scores of others.
“It was like throwing a three-year-long New Year’s Eve party. It was a lot of fun. We made a rule that you had to play original music. No covers. Maybe one, if you did two - you’d never play there again,” Lloyd says. “We weren’t very good in the beginning. Technically we were pretty crappy. But there was an impulse there.”
By the spring of 1975 and a few short years since Lloyd had gone to watch the New York Dolls perform, Television was opening for the band.
“It seemed that time represented a sort-of changing-of-the-guard. What do you recall of those shows?” I asked Lloyd.
“Well, somebody’s got to go on first, so, yeah, we did,” he said.
“Any memories that stand out?”
“Malcolm McLaren wanted to manage us, and we said no,” he says of the British impresario who worked with designer Vivienne Westwood and was at that point working with the Dolls.
“So, he went back home to England to get his own band going.”
“He put together a band based on all of the things we were doing,” Lloyd says. That band was The Sex Pistols.
“Does that ever bug you?”
“Ah, only when it got written up as history - that it started in London. And it didn’t. It started in New York,” Lloyd says. “America is so big that you disappear in it, whereas if you’re in England and you make a splash, you’re in the daily papers for Crissakes.”
In early 1977, Television’s debut, “Marquee Moon” was released and hit the Top 30 in the U.K. But America was asleep. The second album, “Adventure,” was issued in 1978. Later that year I smuggled myself (nobody checked ID’s in those days) and a palm-size Instamatic camera into the Bottom Line club to watch the band play. Lloyd wore a black button-up shirt, which I know not from memory but in a blurred, ghostly image that somehow has survived to this day. Patti Smith sat across the table, transfixed by the music coming from the stage. We all were. The band was mesmerizing. The next day the band was no more.
“We broke up. That’s right. That was our swan song,” Lloyd says. “We didn’t tell anybody, but we already knew we were going to disband.”
The members of the group embarked on their respective solo careers, and there have been a few get- togethers resulting in one studio album. He puts little chance in the band getting together in the future.
“It’s amicable, but we’re not going to be playing together again. I don’t see that happening. Tom’s semi-retired, or retired completely,” Lloyd says.
Lloyd estimates he worked about two weeks in the first two years of the initial wave of the pandemic, but he’s now back out on stage performing. So far, so good. He says he continues to carry close-to-heart the works of philosopher and mystic G.I. Gurdjieff.
“He was a very interesting fellow and well worth looking up,” Lloyd says. “It was all about being aware. Being conscious. Inhabiting your life more fully. I don’t go to church, so it’s my spiritual interest.”
An interest in visual art has seen him produce his own works. He’s sold a couple of hundred of his paintings in recent years.
“I color. I’m crazy about rich, vibrant color,” Lloyd says.
“The same could be said about sound.”
“You bet. Sound and light – they’re related. They’re just octaves away from each other.”
Richard Lloyd performs with his band Saturday, May 14 at Putnam Place, 63A Putnam St., Saratoga Springs. Also appearing: Family Tree. Doors open 8 p.m., show starts at 9. Tickets: $15, putnamplace.com.
