The Quick were my favorite local band in the mid 70s; they had a party for their fan club members at which they played their final show. The set list was determined by fans' votes too.
They had played their first or second ever show in Mary's living room (her mom was away) two years earlier; this had been arranged by their manager, Kim Fowley and I had missed it as it was spring break and I was on a family vacation. But I had seen just about every Quick show since then, at least all the ones in So. Cal.
1 April 1978
I waited for Gary [Tonda, my latest flame] to call - he never did. So I went to the Quick's party with Ava and Cathy. Ava had been worried that I was going to go off and leave her on her own at the party - hardy har har!!! She went straight from Davy to Ian to Mark Hammill [Yes, Luke Skywalker had gone to school with some of the Quick], with some other dork in between!
The party was really boring at first. Then the Quick played - that was great! I couldn't believe how many of the winning songs I had voted for! It was good hearing the older songs but they sure didn't do them too well... Danny had to read the words! He joked: "This is the last time we're gonna play; we're breaking up after tonight..." and everyone was saying, "Oh sure..." Little did they (or Danny?) know it was no April Fool's joke but the TRUTH! [I wrote this account a few weeks later.]
They really hammed it up... Rolling on the floor and everything. Mark Hammill (what a geek) ran in in front of everyone like he's a hero or something. And I think it was the first and only time I ever saw the Quick NOT do Over the Rainbow!! (And it even came in top of the poll!)
Afterward it was pretty boring till I discovered all the food and free beer and Coke. The cookies Ian's mom had made were great. By now Ava was trying to pick up on Mark Hammill (barf!) who had a pretzel hanging from his nose and kept going, "Pretzel rock! Pretzel rock!" Yuk!
Ian was messing around on the piano playing cocktail music so I took a styrofoam cup and stuck a dollar in it... But I didn't really wanna give it to him [stingy bitch that I was!] so I took it back when he wasn't looking... Later he had a tizz: "Where's my dollar?! Karen put a dollar in there!!"
Then Cat told me to play something... So I began playing my latest song with the Todd-like progression and Danny said, "Who wrote that?!" He kept making me play it over and over then asked me to play something else, so I started to play "Too Late '68" but he stopped me cause it was time to go and he wanted to hear the first one again, though he said that both of them were good and he could tell I was influenced by Eno, just like him. He and Ian kept raving about the new song though and asked if they could use it. [But then the Quick broke up and Danny went on to co-write the Friends theme song...]
Mark Hammill still had a pretzel in his nose when he left.
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