Page 37 - Been There… Done That!

Been There... Done That!
of guys from Missouri. I found us a place to rent from an old doctor in Sherman Oaks, basically his guest house in the back. It was hard to get things happening because everybody we talked to said how bad things were.
Things are tough any time you don’t have work for three weeks in L.A. and you are paying rent. We were doing demo sessions for $25 a song and anything we could get, but we kept after it and got our first gig within a few weeks of arriving in a club in Sherman Oaks called the Red Plume. We got in because I had met Vivian Duncan, one of the famous Duncan sisters and she got us the job.
Even though we were told the owner was gay, we didn’t know it was a gay club, but that didn’t take long to figure out. I remember her telling us that a lot of actors and movie stars came to the place. Sure enough, when we went on stage it was full of famous people who shall remain unnamed, but it was definitely a gay nightclub. All I can really say is that they paid us $200 a night and hell, that was good money. I walked out of there and my thought was that I had never seen so many homosexuals in one setting in my life. They were famous people and they liked the music and it didn’t personally bother me. No one hit on us, but I wanted out of there. The situation kind of threw off my concentration. Say whatever you want, but I like to look at girls when I’m playing, so I found us a deal on Santa Monica Boulevard at a club called Guys and Dolls, paying $200 a night as well, so we went there the following week. We had to drive farther, but at least we were in a more familiar atmosphere.
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