There’s a Riot Going On
Courtesy of my older son Patrick, here’s an instrument every band needs, the Victory Siren, a monster 12 feet in length by 6 feet tall that runs on a 180HP V-8 engine and produces a 138dB sound 100 feet away.
Actually I knew a band that packed a siren (it was a smallish electronic box, I recall) just for the purpose of spicing up the Beach Boys song “Student Demonstration Time”. Back when I worked for the Oakland YMCA in Pittsburgh, a band I’d known from Wilmerding, Free Birth, held a free rock concert on the 2nd story balcony of the Y building. It blasted out to the basketball court in front of the building and well beyond. So far, in fact, that not long after the band started playing, up roared a police car and out popped a red-faced police officer cussing at everything in sight.
Kim Fellner, who worked at the Y, trotted out to confront the officer, Skip Butler, if I recall correctly. He was waving his baton around and threatening all and sundry, and I was about to come to her rescue when Officer Butler’s face drained of color and he hopped back in the car. I never did find out what Kim had said to him, but later on he was reprimanded. Kim, you see, knew everybody in Oakland.
The band moved off the balcony and held the rest of their concert inside. Their first song after they got all plugged in again was “Student Demonstration Time”, complete with siren, and we all gave a mental finger to the pigs, because that was what we were up to. Or what we talked like we were up to.
I dimly recall the leader of the band was Dave Gash, and while there’s a Dave Gash who’s a musician on the net, and he looks kind of familiar in the picture, I hesitate to say it was him. Still, since the human member of the famous Kiss Chihuahua’s pack wrote the other day, perhaps I’ll hear from Dave again too.