A story from the annals (or anals?) of my music career.
It’s 1975, and our band Starchild has left our cushy house band spot in North Palm Beach at the Pink Pussycat. (No, it wasn’t a strip club)
It was convenient for that period of time to not be moving from place to place and show to show, not having to break down equipment and set it up again, be able to go home at night, even though our “night” was usually three in the morning.
But 20-something musicians can only sit still so long, longing after a while for the excitement of a new place and new people.
It’s tossing the dice of course as to how things will go. It can be really good… or sometimes really bad.
The Pelican Hotel in Stuart, Florida was a case of the latter. Basically the “No Tell Motel’s” big brother.
I don’t remember who booked that on our schedule, but I wish I did.
It would be nice to be able to trash them in public and call them names that I wouldn’t be able to use here anyway.
The Pelican was a dilapidated tourist hotel from the 1930’s that had a small nightclub/bar inside it on the first floor.
It was on the water, the Intracoastal I believe, but that did not improve the ambiance at all.
As I was writing this I went online to see if there were any references to it… refreshing my memories. It was demolished many years back.
I did find a Facebook page with some comments from people who had frequented it way back when.
David G.: “The Dirty Bird.”
From Tana C.: “I heard there was a murder/suicide in the bar.”
Jim G. says: “We drank in the bar…really dark and cheesy.”
Lorraine K. wrote: “Awesome times!”
I think I must have dated Lorraine K. at some point. Naa… it was some other basket case.
Also in the comments, Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood had spent their honeymoon at the Pelican back in the 50’s. Somehow that’s hard to digest.
It had also been a central location for rum smuggling during Prohibition since it was right on the water. Now THAT would fit the image.
Our job was for a week – five nights on stage at the bar and included room and board. We should have paid THEM to NOT stay there.
Walking in through the front door we were hit with that smell… the smell of a building that had been boarded up for a long time. Musty. The odor of bugs, mouse droppings and old oil based wall paint.
The dingy, dank and dark bar was even worse. It seemed that they cleaned the carpeting with a half whiskey and half bleach solution. Aaah, more likely it had not been cleaned since the Depression. The stage stuck to your feet.
THEN… the hallways and rooms.
The entire inside of the hotel had been recently painted, a job that took maybe three hours to complete. Everything was sprayed – walls, furniture, beds, doors – with a bright weird looking white, with smelly cheap oil-based paint, drips throughout. The dust was hardly noticeable. Same with the spider webs.
Because the usual clientele was street level drug dealers and prostitutes, they probably charged by the quarter hour… kinda like lawyers.
We all slept with guns on the nightstand which caused unprimed white paint to rub off on my shotgun. Never was able to get it off.
Every possible roach and bug species populated the rooms, so the first day we complained and they sent a pest control man in to spray huge amounts of DDT or something… everywhere. Even on the made beds covered with dingy frayed sheets. If those sheets could talk…
Our drummer Jim McVeigh, went up to take a pre-show nap in his third floor room. Coming out onto the top of the shaky stairs, he was overcome by the fumes and toppled down two flights. My brother Steve, our sound man, had to take him to the hospital nearby.
That night we had to announce on stage that our drummer was not going to be with us. “Does anyone out there know how to play drums?” we pleaded. Some drunk at the bar volunteered. He actually wasn’t bad, for someone who could hardly stand and walk.
Jim made it the next night though he never was the same after that. we finished the week of our contract and said GOODBYE to the Pelican.
This was not the fun career I had signed up for.
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.
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