Welcome to "Benefit Street /The American Dream"

The Slithy Toves gyre and gimble upon the stage

The Slithy Toves / The American Dream

Mike Parker, Al Silverman, David Noyes Roberts, Rob Carlson

              In some sort of convoluted “because of a nail…” way the story of my professional music career began with coffee milk. Coffee milk is like chocolate milk, only with coffee syrup instead of chocolate. It exists, to my knowledge, only in Rhode Island. It’s delicious, you should try it. Why no one ever came up with “Mocha Milk” escapes me. You got chocolate milk, you got coffee milk. Come on, push the envelope. But you can’t ask for too much. It is Rhode Island, after all.

              I discovered it soon after my arrival at Brown University. Myself and a room mate, David Thomas by name, were housed initially in what is now called the Keeney Quad, then called the West Quad, otherwise styled the “Freshman Ghetto.” We were a big class and Thomas and I were housed in an “emergency double.” That was a single with two guys in it. Ghetto?You bet. We soon opted to move to a real double in the Wriston Quadrangle, which is one of the reasons I know so few of my Class of ’70 classmates. But that’s another story.

              At the corner of the Quad was a “Machine City”, lined with vending machines, vending among other things, coffee milk, the true deliciousness of which I had just discovered. Next to the machines was a bulletin board. It was on a trip to Machine City for coffee milk that I saw a note on the board which read “Musicians wanted. Positions open in established band” and directed the reader to a room in Marcy House. That sounded good to me.  Then as now there is nothing I would rather do than get together with other people and play music. All through high school during the Folk Music scare of the early Sixties I had a “folk” trio a la Peter, Paul and Mary, or the Chad Mitchell Trio. Then along came the Beatles and the Byrds, Dylan went electric and the world changed. I heard “Mr. Tamborine Man” and knew then and there I had to get an electric guitar.

               So I pestered my Dad, who didn’t understand why if I already had an acoustic guitar I needed an electric one too. Eventually he gave in and loaned me the money to get a solid body Rickenbacker 12-string from another kid, which could not be tuned and broke strings constantly, but it was what McGuinn played, or sort of, so I was happy.

               Thus I arrived in Brunonia ready to rock and roll. And here was my chance. An established band! So I went to the appointed room in Marcy House and knocked on the door. A voice said to come in and there, guitar in hand, sat Al Silverman. I introduced myself, told him I sang and played guitar and asked about the established band. Al said, “We’re it, so far. We’re looking for two other guys.”Somehow I had expected more. But Al went to work and within a week had come up with a drummer, Mike Parker, and a bass player named David Roberts, both sophomores, like Al. And you know, it wasn’t too bad.

              Parker was from upstate New York and not only played decent drums, he could sing well. Roberts was a Massachusetts kid who had, or soon got, a Hoffner bass, like McCartney played. And he could sing too, especially the high parts. My role was as a lead singer/rhythm player. So we had two lead singers, a high voice and a competent drummer. Al didn’t sing but busted his ass learning guitar parts off records so he could play them note for note. We could cover the Beatles and Byrds and Stones, and Parker knew a bunch of garage band rockers like “Tobacco Road” and “Gloria”.

              So we had a band. All we lacked was a name, and of course, any sort of equipment. Al had a decent guitar and possibly an amp, but our entire sound system was a Sears Silvertone guitar amp that Parker had. We set it up beside the drums and plugged a couple mics into it. I think I also ran my guitar through it. It sounded pretty much like a taxicab intercom.

               We did better in the name department, or so we thought at the time. Al came up with “The Slithy Toves”, from Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. We all liked it and that was that.After a couple rehearsals and one gig in the West Quad it became apparent that the lack of equipment was a major problem. So what to do? Why, go back and pester Dad, of course! Somehow I persuaded my dear rock-ribbed Republican, North Dakota born and bred, conservative chemist father, a man whose idea of good music was Nelson Eddy and actually enjoyed Lawrence Welk, to buy us some Fender amps on the promise of paying him back from gigs. It is only now that I am a father that I understand why he did that. Because you’ll do just about any kind of shit for your kids, that’s why.

               Enter David C. Henry. I don’t know where Al found this slug but he purported to be an agent who could get us all kinds of off campus gigs. He took us out to somewhere in Rhode Island and we played for somebody. I don’t remember the details. It doesn’t matter, we didn’t get hired. What I do remember is when we brought our brand new equipment back to campus David C. Henry generously offered to help us carry it in to where we stored it in the basement of Marcy House. What a guy.That night the store room at Marcy House was broken into and all our stuff was ripped off. We never, of course, saw David C. Henry (no doubt not his real name) again. Which also tells you something about the Brown campus cops. In the wee small hours of the morning something about the size of a Volkswagen was carried past their office at the gates of Wriston Quadrangle by people who had no business being there and it somehow escaped their notice.

               “Hello, Dad?” It was a long phone call. The upshot was that since we were not professionals (boy were we ever) the amps were covered by his homeowners policy. So we got more amps. The guy at the music store was starting to like us a lot. Good ol’ Dad.

               So the Slithy Toves were back in business. I finally came to realize that although McGuinn played a Rickenbacker 12 string and sounded great, his guitar was a lot better than mine. Plus, of course, he was good. My Rick just broke strings and went out of tune all the time because I had (still do) the touch of a poorly coordinated gorilla. Al found a guitar for me in New York, a Gretsch Chet Atkins model with a mere six strings, which reduced my tuning problems by fifty percent. I think it was also about this time Dave got his Hoffner Beatle bass.

               We started to get gigs at Brown parties. Brown had fraternities, but they weren’t as big a deal as at some other campuses. With no off-campus fraternity (the term “frat” was never used out of sheer Ivy League snobbery) houses allowed, the rooms were the same, and everybody ate at the Ratty (Sharpe Refectory to the uninitiated), so the food was the same. The only advantage was that the social life was purported to be better. I don’t know, I never joined one. All I wanted to do on the weekends was play in the band so I had no social life anyway. A couple of the independent houses had good parties too, and Diman House became one of our favorites. Once we got good we worked every weekend, often two nights, and made decent money. And we did get good. We had strong vocals with three part harmony and Al knew the guitar parts verbatim.

              There is a lot to be said for knowing when to quit. Ask Napoleon, or Hitler. With them it was invading Russia. With us it was Pawtucket. I’m pretty sure it was Al’s idea. He was the leader, the Boss Tove as it were, and he was ambitious. We wanted to work more than just the Brown Campus, especially during vacation weeks and such, so Al went to work. I don’t remember the details but somehow or other we got booked for a few nights into a nightclub in Pawtucket run by a guy named “Spike.” I kid you not, “Spike.” We followed a band called “Bobby Duke and the Counts,” if memory serves, who were all black and basically did the James Brown show. It was the spring of 1967. The Beatles and the British invasion was really happening big time at this point and the Summer of Love was just around the corner. Our hair was getting pretty long at this point and we wore beads and bellbottoms, so I guess Spike wanted to go with the trend. I have no other explanation. That said, this was really not the room for us.

              For me it was a revelation. I was a white kid from Westport, Connecticut, enrolled at great expense in the Hallowed Halls of Ivy. I had never worked in a place with career criminals, pimps and hookers before. I remember explaining from the stage one evening how a harmonica worked, you blow for one chord and sucked for another. Some people at the bar found this amusing. I pressed on, saying something along the lines of “no, clowns, that’s really how it works.” An audible and ominous murmur rippled around room and one of my band mates suggested I shut up before we all got killed. So I did. We probably wouldn’t have actually been killed, just seriously beaten and left in a parking lot, but good sense prevailed.

              We worked at least one other place in Pawtucket but I think only lasted one night, which only added to my growing realization that there was a whole big world out there to which we had not been introduced. I think Parker and Roberts were undergoing the same epiphany. Roberts was from some suburb in Massachusetts (North Brookfield, more of an exurb) and Parker was from a place called Sandy Creek in upstate New York which his father essentially owned and was too small to have a village idiot so they all took turns. Al was from the Bronx (the Grand Concourse) so maybe he was more familiar with the demi-monde than the rest of us. I don’t know.

              What I do know was that Al was not to be denied. Summer was approaching and we decided unanimously that rather than go back home and do the usual shitty summer jobs that college kids traditionally did we would see if we could keep the band working over the summer. Rhode Island seemed like a pretty small pond for the reason that it is. They don’t come much smaller. So Al went up to Boston to look for a big time agent. He came back with the name Larry Jaspin. That may not be the correct spelling, but it probably wasn’t his real name either.

             Jaspin was the sort of agent that had two Doberman Pinschers. A two dog agent. And a gun. This should have told us something, but it didn’t. Did I mention Napoleon and Hitler? I believe I did. I guess Jaspin saw in us the same thing Spike saw, four long haired guys in a guitar band, which was all the rage at the time. Most of the professional bands around were more along the Bobby Duke lines, with horns and an identifiable front man, usually called “Somebody and the Somethings” doing Four Seasons and R&B. So it’s the Summer of Love, the times they are a-changin’ and along comes the Slithy Toves. Voila!

     One problem became immediately apparent, however. The name.  While Lewis Carroll has a certain cachet on a college campus he is not well known in Mafia bars. So Jaspin books us into this place in Weymouth and first thing the guy says is “What the f*** is this? The Shitty Frogs? What kind name for a band is that?” I assume we explained but I think it was pretty much lost on him. It didn’t matter. We never went back there anyway.

                 The reason we never went back there was we worked all week and never got paid. This was not a very successful or well-run boit de nuit and at the end of the week the manager/bartender cleaned out the cash register and ran off with the go-go dancer, professionally known as Shannon Daniels.

               Shannon was not much of a dancer, but she was apparently bonking the manager, so she got to dance. Dave Roberts recalls how at one point in the proceedings Mr. Manager yelled out, “Let the little lady sing a song!” So Shannon doesn’t miss a beat. She turns and says to us, “Kansas City, boys, in C.” Okay, we can do that. It’s just three chords in C. Unfortunately C is not Shannon’s key. Nor is anything else. I mean, this girl can’t sing, at all, and wouldn’t know the key of C if it bit her, which it probably would if it could. Nobody cared. So we got through it. 

              At the end of the week we packed up our gear and left on the promise we’d be paid the next day. Over the years I have been told by other club owners, “Sorry, but we’ve closed the safe for the night and I don’t know the combination. Stop by tomorrow and we’ll take care of you.” But I eschew it. From this early experience I developed one very basic tenet - a religious principle, if you will - of night club work: Never, ever, leave without the money. Stay all night if you have to, call the police if you have to, but get paid then and there. Amen. (From this principle David Roberts formulated his seminal corollary, “Omnes clubowneres assholes sunt”.) It has served me well over the years and I owe it all to that lunchbag in Weymouth. And I never stopped to thank him. That night, he cleaned out the cash register and left for greener pastures with Shannon. Next day the place was closed, out of business. At least we got our gear out, sparing me yet another long phone call to my Dad. 

               So, flat broke, we retreated to a very posh condo in Cambridge owned by a friend of Roberts', or a friend of Roberts' very posh girlfriend, Diane (“Sexy Di”) Cook if memory serves me. After sharing beds with Roberts in motels that would have been a welcome addition to Stalin’s gulags it was a welcome touch of civilization. I was also sick at this point and the rock and roll life didn’t look so inviting any more. I remember sleeping on the floor under a real bearskin rug, the only time I have ever encountered a real bearskin. It was incredibly warm and I sweated out the fever that night. The next day things looked better. 

               The next period is more than a little hazy but the upshot is we decided to press on. I think it was about this time we realized the Slithy Toves was not going to cut it and started thinking about another name. I don’t remember who came up with the “American Dream,” after the Edward Albee play, but we liked it. And so the Slithy Toves became the American Dream and set out for new adventures.