Fiddle Faddle for a fan.
When your band is starting out you take all the gigs you can get. So, when we were asked to play a show in a girl’s bedroom we didn’t hesitate. The bedroom was on Avondale or Belmont or one of those streets by Cobbs Hill in Rochester, New York and was an old three-story attic that ran the length of the home with wooden beams stretching along leading to windows overlooking the neighborhood.
It was winter, maybe February, and the snow created crunchy footsteps through the front yard, our gear clanging up three flights of stairs and our voices echoing down the street. The bottom floor was an apartment and her house was in the next two floors. Someone said she owned a few houses. Someone said she owned half the street. Someone said she was the heir to the Cadbury Egg Fortune. I didn’t care. She came to our shows and liked the band and offered us a cooler full of High Life and a a few packs of Marlboros to play a show in her bedroom.
We sound checked as people started showing up. There was booze, food, and joints being passed around. We mostly stayed upstairs where our dear, dear hostess kept our cooler in her bedroom stocked. I got drunk and found myself roaming. I went downstairs to find some whiskey for the boys and the place was packed. A man in a suit and tie was standing near a long-clothed table covered in snacks. He had a trimmed mustache and a nice haircut, and had on pointed shiny shoes. He seemed a little out of place for a punk rock crowd. He noticed me staring at him and joked about the food.
“Is this Fiddle Faddle”? He asked. “Boy I haven’t seen this stuff in years and years”. He put some on a plate.
“Well, it’s time then. You came to this party for the Fiddle Faddle”, I replied.
“I’m John”, he said.
“Well John, I’m the entertainment. See you on the third floor”.
John had played a little guitar in his youth and we shot the breeze a bit about equipment. He was a lawyer of some kind. A nice mild-mannered man who was invited to a party and showed up. The crowd was a young one and John was not. His personality was the type to never say no, especially to someone as polite and fun as our dear, dear hostess, whom I found just shortly after leaving John, smoking on a porch.
She was well dressed, a neat black skirt and matching black top, a good-looking woman who traversed from gorgeous to handsome in a single conversation. She morphed into her environment, a shape shifting lizard, an alien. Tonight, she was a woman of high esteem, the dear, dear hostess of a distinguished winter gala, a person who invited all, no matter where they come from, to enjoy the table of sweets and snacks, the bar, and the coolers full of cold ones.
“Do you need anything before the show?”
“Whiskey?” I asked and she poured me a big cup.
“If you need anything else let me know. By the way, stay away from the Fiddle Faddle until you’re done playing”. She winked, straightened her skirt and skittered back to the party.
I walked by John on the way back up the stairs. He was holding a full plate of fiddle Faddle. He was standing by himself. He was sweating intensely; his tie was loose and his hair matted to his glistening forehead. He never made eye contact with me but he knew someone was close to the fiddle Faddle, his fiddle Faddle, the beginning of one wild night for the mild-mannered lawyer.
We started the show about 45 minutes later. During the second song, I stepped back and suddenly standing in between me and the microphone was John, sweating intensely, his tie now gone, shirt open, sweat coming off him in buckets, his eyes the size of dinner plates. He was talking a mile a minute. I couldn’t hear on account of the bass and drums but I got close and he was talking about my guitar. It may have been in another language. A new one. An invented one. I gently moved him out of the way. He didn’t go very far.
John stayed right up front and was one big smile, a large set of smiling, talking teeth, dancing, talking, sweating, sweat flinging from his hair onto my guitar. He looked closely at it. He told me we were the greatest rock band in the world. He told me this was the night. This was the night that he would finally know. He pointed assuredly to his own temple and repeated through the sweat “I know” he said over and over, pointing again and again to his own temple.
We packed up and left around 1am. Someone said the cops told us to shut it down but they never came to the third floor. We took our beers and cigarettes and left. A few weeks later I was in a deli getting a sub when in walked John. When I turned to leave, we made eye contact. He tried to look away, embarrassed.
“Hey John. I hear the fiddle Faddle is good here”.
“I know”, he said pointing to his temple. His face exploded into a smile, his eyes wide, as wide as they were that night. The night we played a show in a girl’s bedroom.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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