The first time we played at the Moravian Lounge ( or the “The Mo” as we called it) was in the fall of 1976. The gig was 5 sets a night, 5 days a week and we ended up staying there (the first time) for about 50 weeks. The Mo was in a suburb called Clinton Township in the outer ring of the Detroit Metropolitan area, not far from lake Sinclair in Macomb county. I had turned 18 the previous May and was already pretty indoctrinated to the bar band life.

Most of the area was farms until the 1960s but there were still plenty of farms and farmers around. The patrons of the bar were mostly people who worked in a nearby auto plant or family farms close by.

When you’re at the same place for too long you get to know more than you want to about the people you see every day, especially when the booze is free-flowing and you’re at a age when you’re thinking about sex 24 hours a day.

The bar was owned by the Kallikak family, and at this time was run by the middle brother named Teddy.

Teddy was a big guy who apparently didn’t have dental insurance, with a glass eye and a hot temper. When fights broke out, which they often did, he was the one that went into action. I never had a problem with him, but I heard him yelling “ready to go” many a time. There were lots of fights at the Mo.

His girlfriend was named Annie. She was a part-time waitress at the bar, but like many of the women who worked at “The Mo,” she also danced at a nearby “gentlemen’s” club a few nights a week, where the “real money” was. 

She and Teddy used to get into it pretty good sometimes and he would knock her around and slap her. One night it got really bad. I had gone out to parking lot on a break and walked back in the kitchen entrance, past by his office door. They were screaming at one another. I could hear there was some kind of physical altercation happening, like pushing and shoving, then someone being slammed into a wall. She was crying and telling him to stop. It made me feel sick to my stomach. 

The next day when I walked in she was tending bar, he wasn’t there yet. She had a big black eye that was covered in make-up, but it wasn’t hard not to notice even in the dark bar, especially for the people who heard the scuffle and knew Eddie. She looked like a scared ghost waiting for her attacker to walk through the door. He was a real fucking prince and I got the feeling she wished both he and she were dead. She must have been in a tough spot.

The first time we played at the Moravian Lounge the bar was owned by a guy named Louie. Louie was probably the more sane of the three brothers in the family. It was cleaner and smaller than Charlie Brown’s, a blue-collar place for sure, but not a biker bar. Initially, it was a one-week stint and seemed pretty normal. By the time the week was up, Dennis had made arrangements for us to come back for several months.

The Spiders

At the back of the bar, near the exit, were the regulars that the guys in the band referred to as “the spiders.” You didn’t want to get caught by the spiders in the spider’s web, because they were pretty much all nuts, and they could hold you there for a while talking crazy shit. They might even try to pick a fight or something. They were the five or six guys sitting on stools, the first people you would see if you went in the rear entrance, the guys who gave you the first impression of the bar, where you would decide if you were going to stay or not.

“The Spiders” were Eddie and his brother Tom, whom I referred to as “The Baby;” a guy they called “Adameyer” (real name Adam Meyer); a big younger guy named Ralph; and a couple of others who radiated the aura of evil; a must to avoid, they may have been Borg like on Star Trek.

“The Baby” had the same proportions as a giant toddler, built much in the same way as actor Tor Johnson of “Plan Nine From Outer Space” fame, only more toddleresque and less athletic. I never saw him do much except “baby walk” and “baby dance” occasionally. Babies are naturally a bit bow legged because of being in the cramped quarters of the womb. They also tend to bend their knees a bit to help themselves balance and support their body weight. “The Baby” had all of those characteristics and was a bit of a snappy dresser to boot.

Ralph was a big, athletic looking guy, who I’m guessing worked for GM. He had a really nice Chevy Malibu with a stick shift that he would occasionally squeal out of the parking lot in. He was a nice enough guy except when he wasn’t, and that was awful.

I don’t think we were at “The Mo” for more than a couple of weeks when Dennis brought in Don Jones. It may even have been at the behest of Eddie the owner. Dennis knew Don from another oldies band called “Crunch and the Daddy Cools.” Don played sax, guitar, flute, and harmonica, and sang. I guess that made him an “all around man.” Musically, Don was icing on a cake, personality-wise, he brought a deep, dark, dropped-out-of-art-school sense of humor that we all took to right away. He also came from a slightly different place than we did, because he was kind of a “Jazz boy.” For decades he used to take horn lessons from the late, great Sam Sanders at Oakland University. Just like us, he took his music seriously, he was a quick study, and he was funny. Still is. I became friends with both he and his wife Leslie and about eight years after we met, I married Leslie’s sister Tammy.

The Pacer

Around the time we moved to the Moravian, Dennis bought an AMC Pacer station wagon. The Pacer was described by Motor Trend magazine in 1976 as “a flying fishbowl” and “George Jetson’s mode of transportation.” On CBS news, as the car debuted, it was declared “one of the fifteen ugliest cars ever made.” That said, it was still reliable transportation and not nearly as bad as some of the other gas guzzlers of that time; Dennis’s had a bitchin’ AM/FM/ Stereo 8-track player as well.

https://www.autobarnclassiccars.com/vehicles/218/1975-amc-pacer

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/farewell-from-keith/Content?oid=2170302

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Pacer#cite_note-10

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Station-Albums/WJR-50-Years.pdf

Riding in that car, the two tapes I remember listening to the most were Louis Jordan’s Greatest Hits and Al Green’s Greatest Hits Volume II. We used to also listen to The Fabulous Coachman on WDET, or sometimes Weekend Jazz Scene with Gene Elzy on WJR during breaks.

The Pacer became sort of the de facto clubhouse when it was parked at the Mo. Truth be told, after a while during the summer, we used to stop at the liquor store on the way to the bar so we could drink in the parking lot as opposed to hanging out in the bar.

When you play at the same place for a while, you can get REALLY sick of the songs on the juke box.

Dale Reed

Rick Beohms bought a Peavey PA while we were playing at Charlie Brown’s. It consisted of a powered eight-channel mixer, two cabinets loaded with two fifteen-inch speakers with a “hyperbolic horn,” and a hundred-foot snake, so the microphones were plugged in at the stage, but the sound man could be out in the audience.

Dale Reed was our sound man. He was a childhood friend of Dennis’s. For a while Dale wore roller skates when he mixed, I guess so he could get around the room better to check out the sound and look at girls. That, or it was just more fun that way. I’m sure he must have had a day gig, because I don’t think we paid him much of anything, but he was a very nice smiling sort of guy and a fine sound mixer. He married one the Moravian women, named Cindy. About a decade later, I heard Dale had committed suicide. I understand he had suffered with many long battles with depression over the years. The mind can be very cruel.

Stylin’

Brylcreem  Dippity-Do

When Marshall joined the band back at the Stock Exchange we all went down to an old fashioned clothing store and bought matching suits with cummerbunds. Rick, Marshall, and I had grey suits and Dennis had a white suit and wore a black shirt and white tie. There are some pictures around still.

 At some point we expanded our wardrobe further and got blue crushed-velvet suits. We also used to put Brylcreem or Dippity Do in our hair and slick it back like greasers. The first time I put Brylcreem in my hair I realized it was like putting lithium grease on your head, it took days to get it out. I preferred the water-soluble Dippity Do because it rinsed out with water, though Brylcreem did have kind of a recognizable old fashioned smell to it. At one point, my hair was long enough so I tied it back into a pony tail, like a greaser Mullet. Anyway, for a while , we looked supper club ready.

We always did pretty well at the Mo. There were always a least a couple of hours a night where there were people drinking and dancing unless there was a snowstorm or something. There was an ever-revolving cast of characters, especially girls to talk to, so that made nights more interesting and the time fly by. It’s always good to have a muse to perform to.

Occasionally “normal”