I Remember Scorgies

Peggi and Bernie from Personal Effects at the Community Playhouse for "This Is IT" show.

I’m sure Bernie has a lot more to tell; he was a crucial member of both Personal Effects and Colorblind James. Before I started working with Chas in Invisible Party, I hung out with Bernie and wrote a song with him. Bernie is a great songwriter and performer as well; his performance of “The Great Northwest” for WXXI’s “On Stage” Colorblind James Experience tribute was spot-on.

Nevertheless, here’s a sampling of Bernie’s recollections. I’m sure I can get him to expand on this in subsequent posts:

“I was struck by Peggi and Paul the first time I met them at Dwight Glodell’s house – they were “walking art.” Dwight was doing some recording for them and I was in a studio project band with Dwight producing, writing, singing, and playing keyboards, Ethan Porter writing, singing and playing guitars, Kevin Vicalvi doing most of the writing and playing guitar, keyboard and singing, and Jay Porter on drums later replaced by Joe Opipari. I played bass mostly. Atlantic records financed a demo recording of this group called “Claylinks” but when it was shopped around lots of producers including Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire, said it sounded “jazzy.” That had a ring of death to an eighties producer who was trying for more of a Philadelphia Soul/Lionel Richie sound. Joe “O” and I were relieved of our duties to be replaced by a more rockin’ bass and drum section to our dismay. The education I got from working with all of these guys was priceless and indelible.

Back to Peggi and Paul. Sometime in the spring of ’81 Martin Edic left Personal Effects and when Peggi and Paul and Bob Martin needed a bass player to replace him they asked Dwight and Kevin and Ethan who recommended me. I was thrilled to get a call having heard them as the Hi-Techs, intrigued by their unique posters about town, and the memory of meeting them at Dwight’s. What followed was somewhat of a blur. They had done so much work to get PE established and defined as an artistic, New Wave, fun loving, groove oriented, “quirky,” moody, trend-setting, ambiance-shifting, Rochester band. I was a bit skeptical about how I would fit in, but P & P had a way of getting at the essence of a personality and bringing it out in clothing style, hair (yes, we cut each other’s hair), and playing.

We practiced a lot. Paul, Peggi, and Bob all wrote and they considered their songs to be “slices of life,” like polaroid pictures almost, not precious little essays to guard and protect. They encouraged me to contribute. Like many other good bands they collaborated with other writers, spawned lots of wannabe bands, had the coolest parties (a standalone record player in their backyard with a cache of great ’45’s), and put everything they made at Scorgies back into recordings and promotion – highly disciplined folks. PE was a huge part of the landscape of Scorgies. “

Tell us about your first time at Scorgies.

Hipsterdufus says: “The first band I saw was King Juke. However, after that I was a regular both upstairs and down stairs. Thru the years i saw The Hi-Techs (Personal Effects), New Math, The Cliches, Hummer and The Machine (very funny), Meat Cleaver and the New Toys, B-Girls, Romeo Void,I can go on all night…….”

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New Math at Orange Monkey in 1977. Gary Trainer on rhythm guitar, Robert Marsalla on bass, Paul Dodd on drums, Kevin Patrick on vocals and Dale Mincey on lead guitar.

Don Scorgie is obviously the key figure in this whole story but probably not in the way you might think. I don’t think he was much of a music fan at least not like I am or most of you are. When I first met him he was behind the bar at street level on Andrews Street. And that fact that he was on that side of the bar had nothing to do with who was doing the drinking.

I was playing drums with New Math at the time and we rehearsed around the corner in the Cox Building on Saint Paul. I think our rent was 100 bucks a month. Geoff Wilson from the Bowery Boys was the elevator operator in this building in later years but it was pretty much deserted when we moved in. We got in the habit of stopping in Don’s place after practice for beer. I tried not to drink too many because I had to ride my bike back home.

Don was sort of an old salt like Popeye the Sailor man. He had nautical theme going with rope railings and he had a fish net hanging from the ceiling that was just beginning to collect the Spanish moss style dust clusters that became such a fixture here. The guy who rented him the juke box when he opened this place was probably the one who picked out the 45s. It was just generic mid seventies crap. I think Kevin Patrick, who was working as record promo guy at the time, talked Don into stocking the juke box with the good stuff. In later years, it seems Danny Deutsch, who now runs Abilene, was in charge of the tunes and at some point it seemed like every time you walked into that place you heard Bobby Darin’s “Mack The Knife”. But it wasn’t Don calling the musical shots.

One night after rehearsal Don took us down to the basement at Scorgies where he had just installed the first section of green indoor outdoor carpeting on the step up section next to the bar. It was the first time we had set foot in what people think of as Scorgies. He had a few picnic benches down there and he told us he was planning on setting up an indoor putting green. This was going to get people down in the basement of a century old building? We laughed at the idea.

I remember us, and it was probably Kevin doing most of the talking, trying to convince Don that what he had here, an empty room with no chairs or tables, was the perfect rock and roll club. All he needed was a stage and a sound system. So Don built the plywood stage and he eventually rented a sound system from Mark Theobald. Mark mixed the bands if they didn’t have their own guy. New Math was the first band to play here but I had already left the band at that point and was playing with the Hi-Techs.