More tales from the rock and roll road.

It’s 1973, and Starchild, the band I was hired to front, had just recently played the Button South in Ft. Lauderdale.  At the time, this was THE big venue in South Florida for bands like us: long haired rock in the time of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

Many big names at the time were launched there and even those who had already “made it” would occasionally come back for an appearance.  A big stage kind of place.  Our manager Angie had used her considerable contacts to get us booked there, so we were under great pressure to do well.

Mike Pinera’s Blues Image (“Ride Captain Ride”) had just been there the week before.  Later into the 80’s you could see the Kinks, Foghat, the Ramones, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Motorhead…the list goes on.

It was a good night.  A step up the ladder.

So Angie took it up a notch and booked us at the biggest nightclub in West Palm Beach.  It was harder to get on the schedule there than it is to get a job at USAID today.

Neal’s was a large two story building right on the main street cutting through downtown West Palm.  I heard that it had been built as a theatre in the 1920’s and split into two floors.

There was a large ballroom on the top floor with a substantial stage.

Downstairs was a smaller version.

Being the new kids, we of course had the bottom floor and stage.

But it was prestigious nonetheless.  The headliners, a prominent local band called Dalas Star featuring Charles Cook, would play a 45 minute set, then we would play the same below.

Dalas Star had opened numerous shows at the West Palm Beach Auditorium and were very popular up and down the Florida coast.

They were a really great band, but it didn’t hurt that they had a girl backup singer who wore skimpy tight-fitting outfits and who had been blessed with rather voluminous body parts which were difficult to ignore.

Starchild had… ME.  Nowhere near that kind of crowd pleaser.  I wouldn’t have looked too good in Spandex shorts.  Luckily, our band’s performances made up for that.

So, jealousy tainted our conversations about Dalas Star every time we were on break.

The big topic that night was the fact that it was Charlie Cook’s birthday. He was turning 30 years old.

Now, I was 24 and the rest of Starchild was even a bit younger.

It amazes me looking back just how stupid and silly guys at that age can really be.  We were howling, making every joke possible.

“He’ll be in a nursing home before they come back here!”

“No!  They don’t allow wheelchairs on stage!”

“What kind of underwear does Cook wear?  Depends.”

And on and on.

If you wait long enough, karma will catch up with you.

Charles Cook is STILL playing, though in small venues.

(Unfortunately the band name is the Fog.)  Starchild?  There are only two of us still alive.  And I have shoes I still wear that are 30 years old.

The night went pretty well except when we were loading out to leave. Our bass player decided to pillage their liquor storage room in the basement.

That was a typical exercise in those days by bands who felt that they weren’t being compensated enough.(The pay today in 2025 is in the same dollar amount. But they lock the booze up much better.)

The slit of a window in this old building was at ground level, but Joe managed to squeeze cases of whiskey out to our waiting sound tech.

Thinking he heard someone about to come in (but weren’t), he decided to escape through the window opening.  We were mighty skinny in those days, but not skinny enough.  Joe was stuck halfway through.

Someone found a screwdriver and quickly freed him by taking the window frame out.  We were in a hurry and didn’t put the window back, so some wandering bum probably got lucky later.

And we hauled butt out of there.

Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.