Last week, lovely wife Brenda and I traveled to New York City for an in-store appearance at Generation Records to hype my book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones.
That part of the trip did not go as planned.
When we checked in at Generation on Wednesday, the day before the event, we discovered that the store had not received any copies of the book. I blame the supply chain. Plus Don Kirshner, because why not blame him? I made a frantic call to the publisher, but it was too late to fix the problem in time for Thursday night's event. Interested parties who attended this evening with Gabba Gabba Hey! author Carl Cafarelli could place orders for the book and have it shipped at no charge, but they would not be able to take books home with them.
My thanks to Generation staffers Riley and Kyle (as well as two other Gen reps whose names I never got), because they did the best they could with the situation. Alas, the event received no advertising beyond me poundin' on the console of my meager social media platforms, so only five people showed up: a friend of mine from Jersey, three of my cousins (also from Jersey), and an unidentified man sporting a Ramones t-shirt.
I am very, very grateful to the fantastic five who attended, and further grateful that four of the five--I think the t-shirt guy left early--bought a bunch of books, even though they couldn't take possession of the books just yet. Thank you, friends.
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| Photo by Michael Mitsch |
My musician pals tell me of the familiar frustration of playing sparsely-attended gigs. Some years ago, I saw Louisville's Phenomenal Pop Combo Digby put on a show in Syracuse for a grand total of three attendees. They played like they were at friggin' Budokan. At Generation, I tried to be like Digby; I told my Ramones stories, played a ten-minute teaser of snippets from my 1994 telephone interviews with the group, read from the book, and answered questions. I hope the members of Digby would have approved.
But this was humbling, demoralizing, and it cast a shadow over what was otherwise mostly a lovely time in the Big Apple. The capital of the world! Let's consider today's post an attempt at catharsis, and we'll come back later to talk about the good stuff. I love New York. New York City really has it all!
I guess that explains why New York City didn't really need me at all. I'm still trying to get over that. But I still love New York. We'll shake off the downers and trip the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York in another post later this week.
IN PART 2: BACK IN THE NEW YORK GROOVE (or: The Good Stuff!)
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
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