An Interesting Journey

Well as we fall into the holiday season things are slowing down a bit. Yeah, we are aiming to do a holiday podcasts, but the other stuff; things like chasing after venue owners and managers, and searching for investors for a Torme/ GMT USA Tour, are pretty quiet. There was one semi-relevant happening though this Saturday.

Saturday night, we went to a strip mall in central NJ. Actually, we had been invited to a Holiday Party for a vendor of mine, agroup that provides computer programers and others for my staffing projects = work stuff. This strip mall, though had so much history for me.

Amazing what can be found on the web, here it is from the air: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=85+Lafayette+Road,+Fords,+NJ

Interesting but for myself it does not reveal itself in the image, accept that it probably has not changed all that much since the seventies. Yeah back then the large store on the one end was an A&P which i was routinely dragged to as a kid. Waiting for mom to get the groceries.

Now today, and since the 80’s, there is Vintage Vinyl. If you are looking for an import, if you are looking for metal or punk CD, good chance they have it plus a range of other stuff. In February of 2003 I was there one cold night with a friend and wandered out with a White Trash Guitar. The CD was complete with a little flyer about a mailing list, and his website, www.bernietorme.com. The album impressed and the little flyer haunted me. Eventually it became the thought of a US Tour.

And now, three years later, almost four years now, I return to that same strip mall, now at the far end for a holiday event. t was the same strip mall, but three different times, and three very different events.

Bob Schaffer
bob@wildwestrocks.com