Rave of the future at Purple House

Ian, Clay, Matt, and the rest of the Purple House residents were willing to let me promote one of their house parties, especially since I promised to import out-of-state talent (our crash pad pal from Boston, DJ Stony). I'm not sure what color purple crossed with pink makes, but that was this night's flavor. We were all comrades in arms when it came to livening up the off-campus party scene. Also when it came to catching scabies, but that's another story.


There were three versions of this poster, each featuring a different Rhode Island crew member who was going to make the trip. But despite my grand plans, none of the special guests hyped on the posters materialized, supposedly due to a broken-down car. I don't remember what Dana's excuse was, he was visiting from NYC and crashing at the Pink House two nights before:

"So that's how these kids are at the law school. They get on my nerves. Their philosophy is, 'I just want a job, I don't care who I sell out, I just want to work in the firm, I just want some money for my kids.' " - Dana, rap session with N'Gai and Erik, 3/17/93

but apparently his plans changed and he couldn't stay through the weekend. Regardless, the party went on as scheduled, a good time was had by all, and Dai's spirit certainly hung in the air, two weeks after his epic first visit to Chapel Hill.

Dai survived the Pink House

Dai on last day of his '93 visit to Chapel Hill

N'Gai was not a Young Republican in Love

N'Gai on last day of Dai's '93 visit to the Pink House

Television at the Cradle

Dana holds court at Columbia Street Bakery

Before Dana left town, his favorite place to hang on Franklin Street was at Columbia Street Bakery, right across the street from what was then the Hardback Cafe and later became the Lizard and Snake. It was a relatively new space, having only opened its doors in late 1987.

"New cafes serve up friendship, culture," Daily Tar Heel, 11/9/87

The Columbia Street Bakery and Coffeehouse, located on North Columbia Street behind Logos bookstore, should be open later this month, according to Josh Gurlitz of the cafe's board of directors. It is a non-profit enterprise designed to be responsive to the arts in Chapel Hill, Gurlitz said. "The space will be available for a young poet who wants to test an evolving poem or if a group wants to try out some jazz here; it's free," he said. Besides opening early to serve pastries for breakfast, Gurlitz said the cafe will keep late hours so the space can be used for discussions after movies or local events. "Say you just spent two hours at a town council meeting," he said. "You can come here to sit around and talk about what you’ve heard."

Local artists not represented by studios can display their art on the walls of the cafe. Play readings or performances by musical soloists are other ideas Gurlitz said the board has in mind. The Columbia Street Bakery and Coffeehouse will be serving food prepared by the Ninth Street Bakery of Durham. Gurlitz said he wants to attract a lot of middle-aged people as well as graduate and undergraduate students. "Maybe you could call it a teen center for adults," he said.

They had open mic nights every week, and I went to them once or twice to see people I knew play. It was also one of Joe Herzenberg's favorite hangouts. I grew to dig CSB, too, and was very sad when they closed their doors in the mid-90s. Knowing now that it was a non-profit, I realize more about what made it a special place.

"The Bakery was on the corner of Franklin St. & Columbia St. (Editor's note - the Bakery was actually a few doors down from the corner.) Today, the space is a hamburger restaurant. 18 years ago, it was the location of one of the more important venues of the Chapel Hill music scene. The Cradle was where the big bands played. 506, the Cave, and the Lizard & Snake were the minor league rock clubs. The Bakery & the Skylight Exchange were the songwriter clubs." - Mike Garrigan, 2012

During Dai's first visit to Chapel Hill, Dana came down to hang out for a couple days. And naturally we ended up Columbia Street before he left. Among other friends dropping by to say hi, Pedigo was there, and Rashmi. There was an Owari tournament. Dana must have brought his authentic Ghanaian board back to town with him.

PTA: Rave inside an Elementary School

(Click for larger image)

A People's Techno Association. An Institute of Higher Learning. A Paris party. A rave inside an elementary school. A legendary event that splashed down in an abandoned elementary school located six miles east of Fayetteville on a freezing winter night in 1993, featuring DJ's Brett and Sploo as the night's "Techno Professors." And the Pink House represented, with at least myself, Chris Pedigo, Dai, and Firas in attendance, during Dai's first visit to Chapel Hill. Our crew was undoubtedly bigger, but my memory is hazy.

Kung Fu Fighting at the Cradle

After Dada Veda broke up at the end of '92, Clint decided to explore his love for the drums, and shortly ended up drumming in two other bands - Kung Fu Fighting and Anubis Leisure Society. This was before he joined Zen Frisbee.

Right after Dai got to town for his legendary first visit to Chapel Hill, Jay and I took him to see Kung Fu Fighting at Cat's Cradle.

Within three months, the Cradle would close its doors at 206 West Franklin Street for good while it searched for what eventually became its new home in Carrboro.

Vigil at Internationalist Books in memory of Bob Sheldon

"Bob Sheldon's Legacy," Indy, 2/21/01

by JON ELLISTON

"There was no time the world needed Bob Sheldon more than the day he was killed. It was Feb. 21, 1991, a Thursday. The United States was pounding away at Iraq, 34 days into the Persian Gulf air war. Sheldon was spearheading Triangle-area peace protests from Chapel Hill's Internationalist Books, a hotbed of radical thought and action he had founded back in 1981. During the previous month, he had been shown on the evening news explaining why he had fought the draft during the Vietnam War and why he was contesting the Gulf War. As the ground war loomed, he was gearing up for more teach-ins, vigils and marches.

Sheldon spent the afternoon tending to tasks around the store, and made plans to go out with his friend Ken Kaye after closing at 9 p.m. When Kaye arrived at Internationalist, however, he discovered Sheldon's almost lifeless body on the bloodied floor beside the sales counter. Someone had fired a bullet into his head. About 24 hours after the shooting, Sheldon was pronounced dead at UNC Hospital.

"We lost an intellectual force," says Kathy Giuffre, a friend of Sheldon's who worked a block away at The Cave. "We lost someone who stood up for unpopular positions." Dennis Gavin, owner of the Skylight Exchange, then located across the street from the Internationalist, remembers Sheldon as "a voice of radical calmness" that rose above the din of heated political debates. "He had some radical ideas that he was always able to present in a fairly calm way, and he ran his business in a calm way.""

(Note from 2014 - On the second anniversary of Bob's death, Matt Stewart invited me to come join the vigil held from 7-8 pm in front of Internationalist Books' new Franklin Street store. I think Matt was the Internationalist co-manager at the time, or he might have recently stepped down from that position. It was a moving, somber occasion, and I felt a lot of love for Bob in the hearts of the folks who gathered on Franklin Street that evening.

It was the fall of '89 when I began swinging through Internationalist Books at its 408 West Rosemary location. My excellent freshman history professor Don Reid had instructed students in his HIST 140 - World History Since 1945 class (where Alvis Dunn was my TA and doing a great job helping Professor Reid awaken our young, naive minds to the hidden history of U.S. imperialism) to buy their textbooks from the store. So Internationalist Books was the whole reason I first set foot on Rosemary Street, two doors down from where in later years I would spend many a night tending shop myself at the Lost City.

I can't remember anything specific about my interactions with Bob during the year and a half before he was killed, except that he struck me as a super cool guy. The few times I saw him in the store, he was usually engrossed in lively conversation, either with another customer or talking on the phone. But he was always friendly and welcoming towards everyone, and I know we chatted from time to time.

According to a story I heard a few years ago, when Amiri Baraka came to UNC to speak sometime during this era, and a student was put in charge of chaperoning him around town, Internationalist was the only place Baraka wanted to visit. And FBI types in dark suits and sunglasses followed the two of them into the store and kept a close watch on every word Baraka exchanged with Bob Sheldon. If Internationalist Books hadn't been on the power structure's radar before then, it sure was thereafter.)

Chuck D at UNC

Frolic with friends at the Bamboo House

Lost in Brooklyn on our way to Revelation

The first year that Dana took the Big Apple by storm as a Columbia law student, he lived at the International House on Riverside Drive, in the heart of Morningside Heights. Hanging out with him over Xmas break is when N'Gai and myself first met Dai, who had become friends with Dana that fall. Dai was in New York to learn English, and also to learn more about music. So when we heard there was a big post-Christmas rave happening, we decided we had to go check it out.

Dai actually found another rave to go to that he was convinced would be even better than the one we were looking for, but he took the train downtown with us before we all split up. N'Gai, Dana and I headed for an underground record store in the Village where a bus was supposedly coming to give kids rides to the clandestine Brooklyn location where Revelation was about to go down - "a new gathering dedicated to exploration rather than exploitation."

There were at least a hundred kids waiting outside the store, also looking for the rave bus. Needless to say, that fucking bus never showed up. And then N'Gai bailed on us! But I asked some kids who had room in their car for a ride, and they were like, sure, hop in! So Dana and I set off looking for Revelation.

We spent the next two hours driving around Brooklyn and probably parts of the Bronx with these kids, very lost. But somehow, we finally made it to the rave.

"That night was really fun. It was my first introduction to that song Follow Me, you remember that one?" - Dana, 2014

I remember the music being off the chain, and one look at the flyer proves why. Frankie Bones, Keoki, Scott Henry, Micro, Scott Hardkiss, Debo, and Josh Wink were the biggest names among an all-star lineup of a dozen underground DJ's. We unexpectedly ran into my brother Jared there, who looked like John Travolta in a full-on 70s leisure suit. It was a legendary event, held exactly two weeks after Frankie Bones threw his final Storm Rave on December 12, and very representative of the underground NYC rave scene of the time.

Winter '92 semi-formal

Let me tell you again how psyched I am for you to be back in Chapel Hill and living with us all in...The Pink House! Just this past month we threw a semi-formal party for only our close friends, and it was a big success. There were about seventy-five guests all of us housemates knew really well, and another seventy-five or so who were friends of those friends. We were so scared that word had gotten out about the party and the whole town was going to show up, but they didn't!

The living room was the "cocktail" area, suitable for small talk and assorted deep conversations. The dining room and kitchen were converted into le area de discotheque, complete with flashing strobelights and other essential visual effects, plus booming stereo with lots of authentic techno and disco music for the masses to amuse themselves to. The bedrooms were private hideaways and cool chill-out rooms open only to a few, such as the infamous "Club Caroline," where Ms. C. Rivers Hall played hostess to a steady stream of elite guests. A party within a party, if you will.

Sorry I didn't find much time to write to you this fall while you were in Prague. Did I tell you I was taking this past semester off in order to work on voter registration? Ohmigod, and the last time we talked was probably before the election! Isn't it great that Clinton won? He narrowly lost North Carolina, by about 26,000 votes. But it didn't matter.

...

Today, Chris Pedigo and I were re-admitted to UNC-CH for the spring semester. He eventually returned home last month, after drinking most of his scholarship money over a period of several months, never leaving Paris, and eventually falling sick. He was living in a fucking chateau with all of these rich Parisians who he met somehow, hanging out with Russian poets and princes, formerly exiled types who saw no reason to go home even now that they could. Then he came down with some awful disease that you usually get from drinking feces-contaminated water, and spent the next three weeks in the American Hospital there, in Paris.

He's in Chapel Hill and over at the Pink House right now, in fact. He says he's really sorry he never made it to Prague, and is looking forward to working on our magazine for the sheesy set.

Guess who else will be hanging out for a week or so at the beginning of the semester? Dana Lumsden, the man, the myth, the legend! Did I tell you he was accepted at Columbia Law School? Well, he's still seeing Erika, and is coming down from the 9th til the 19th to see her and also to hang out with me, N'Gai, and other friends.

Speaking of Dana, I'm going to be driving him back to New York from Boston over the holidays, probably on December 26th. This is before we leave to come back to Chapel Hill the first week of January. He's got exams right around New Year's. Then, I'm going to be staying with him and going out clubbing a couple nights, maybe the 26th and 27th. If you'll be around, you have to come out with us!

(Note from 2009 - on one of those nights, we hung with Kyle at various spots around Manhattan, and ended up at Nell's in the early hours, where the ladies were almost as decadent-looking as the ornate, gilded decor and expensive antique furnishings.)

Also, I need to mail our landlord the rent check for January around the 1st of the month, so if you could send me $215.00 I can have it deposited before the rent check clears. Caroline and N'Gai have already paid me for January, but Jay and Lydia are both sending me money over break.

...

Can't wait to see you, chicky baby! Au revoir, and as the froggy disco patrons say, "Que tes chausseurs de "boogie" continue a dancer."

p.s...there was an article in the Times last week about how the seventies craze is over and now the rage is early 80s parties. And it's true, they are...but only among trendy buzzkills who are desperately looking for something new to do. The really hip set are into ultra nineties techno music right now. Just thought you'd like to know!

- Letter to Kyle

A famous landmark, and very pink

How's life with you at the University of Iowa? Is Iowa City treating you well? My old roommate Clint, who's from Iowa, no longer lives with me and my other housemates in our Pink House. (I did tell you about the house I stay in here in Chapel Hill, and how it's a famous landmark, and very pink, right...?) But he's still in town. I was trying to call him tonight so he could tell me about some cool places in Iowa City to let you know about, but he's not around. On the other hand, Iowa City is so small that you've probably found them all by now anyway. Clint's Dad is a professor at your school...his name is Tom Curtis, but I can't remember what department he teaches in.

Yeah, anyway, so you ran into Kyle in Prague, huh? She ended up working at the Prague Post not only throughout the summer, but also all this past semester. In fact, she's still there now, but definitely plans on returning to New York by Christmas time. Then she's coming back to Chapel Hill next semester to live with us. I really wish that I could have made it to Prague while we were over there, but there's always next time.

She wasn't the only one who ended up staying in Europe longer than planned, either. I guess she told you that Jared didn't come home with me when I left Paris! He essentially decided that because we'd spent three whole weeks there, he had been thoroughly gypped. So he figured he'd hang around and see more of Europe. I left on schedule, and one of his friends decided to fly there and travel around with him for awhile. They went to Amsterdam, then to Milan, and finally to London. I think it was just after you left that we met this really cool guy named John Hamilton Palmer, who worked for Vogue magazine. He took us out with him to all these clubs, including two amazing ones, Club D'Etoile and Le Bains (Douche). Anyway, John was also traveling with Jared and his friend for a while.

Jared finally returned home about a month after I did, to our parents' immense relief.

Get this...you remember our other friend Chris Pedigo? The one we went out to dinner with at Troy's restaurant on the last day you were in Paris? Well, his whole rationale for being in France was that he had won a scholarship to travel to the former Soviet Union all summer long. He originally planned to stop in Paris only on his way there, staying only for a couple of weeks. He ended up drinking all of his scholarship money and staying in Paris for six months, living outside of the city in a chateau. The closest he got to the former Soviet Union was being introduced by his wealthy hosts to the aristocracy of the exiled Russian community - poets, princes and princesses - going to balls with them and getting smashed, drinking coffee in cafes, that sort of thing.

Pedigo fell enormously into debt on his American Express account when he loaned these supposedly wealthy hosts of his an amazing $20,000...! This is money that as of today, they still aren't supposed to be sending him here in the U.S. "until next week." Pretty wild, crazy stuff. I feel like I'm the only one who missed out, though. Everybody else got to have fun in Paris and the rest of Europe for much longer than I did...you included!

If you have any desire to take a roadtrip next semester and come South, feel free to come and stay with me in Chapel Hill. It's a lot like both Iowa City and Champaign-Urbana, only better.

- Letter to Susan Campbell

Spike Lee's X was a necessary slap on the face for society

"Moviegoers give Spike Lee's epic film 'Malcolm X' two thumbs up," Daily Tar Heel, 11/20/92

By Leah A. Campbell
Staff Writer

Reaction to Spike Lee's epic film, "Malcolm X," was favorable from moviegoers who attended the film's premiere showing in Chapel Hill Wednesday. The movie opened in Chapel Hill at the Plaza Theater on Elliot Road. After seeing the film, Erik Ose, a senior from Providence, R.I., said it was important for everyone to see it. "You can't call yourself an American unless you make the effort to see this movie," he said. Caroline Philson, a senior from Charlotte, said she thought the movie earned an overwhelmingly positive message. "I really thought the movie was beyond words," she said. "It was a necessary slap on the face for society. I just think it is ridiculous that we still have a problem with racism in this day and age."

Carrboro resident Lisa Yonkers said she was pleased with the film. "I thought it was great," Yonkers said. "It really gave a good strong message about the need for brotherhood." Some viewers said they saw the film to compare it to the book. Regina Madison, a first-year UNC law student, said she had wanted to see the film ever since she had read the book. "I have already read the book, and now I want to see Lee's version of the story," she said, while waiting in line to see the film. Madison added that she thought Lee's request for people to skip work and school to see the movie on its opening day was inappropriate. "I think that was very unrealistic," she said. "He should have never asked people to take off from work in this economy."

Ante Gray, a Chapel Hill resident, said he was interested in seeing how Spike Lee would handle the assassination scene. "I'm very curious to find out who Lee is going to say killed Malcolm X," Gray said.

It was not clear whether either the 3:15 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. shows were sold out because the owner of the movie theater, Eastern Federal Corp., would not allow any of the theater's employees to comment. A spokeswoman for the company said the corporation wanted to keep a low profile while the film ran. "We in the film industry have come to the conclusion that the press has the tendency to blow things out of proportion," she said. "This film does not deserve any more press than any other film. This is a simple case of looking for trouble and finding it there."

Malcolm X debuts at the Plaza Theatre

What's up. It's Tuesday the 17th, and I'm sitting at home chillin'.

Tomorrow Malcolm X does the debut thing and I'm zeroing in on a 3:15 pm showing with Caroline Philson for a paltry matinee-bargain $3.50 at the plush Plaza Theatre in scenic outskirts Chapel Hill.

N'Gai says he's going to wait until Thanksgiving to see it with Erica.

...

It's now Friday, the 20th of November, and your letter isn't done yet.

...

Wednesday, I drove Pedigo back to Winston Salem, where we met up with his mother and brother. Then I busted ass to get to Chapel Hill in time to go see Malcolm X with C-line.

X was great, I think this is obviously Spike's opus, and he remained true to the story. I do think he could have made sure Malcolm was shown giving more excerpts from some of his last speeches, really hammering home the timelessness and inspiring nature of his words as he was progressing to more and more radical, non-racist, economic and political analyses of the plight of black people in this country. I hope people get a sense of that from the movie even as it stands, because that seems to me to be its only flaw.

- Letter to Dana, 11/20/92

Dada Veda's last show, Cat's Cradle

At 8 pm tonight I'm driving to Greensboro, pressed into service as a lackey once again. Sound familiar? This evening, my charge will be that globe trotting wunderkind who used his Russian scholarship money to take Paris by drunken storm...Chris Pedigo.


Chris in Paris, Spring 1992

He called me from Paris yesterday and said he was coming home because he'd gotten very ill. Three weeks in an American hospital with some awful sickness that begins with a "g," like goiter, or gehring's, or something. Actually, it was something more like "garria." I was told people usually contract this when drinking from feces-contaminated streams.

You get awful diarrhea for a long time, which comes out many strange colors. It's also known as the "rainbow shits."

Pedigo said he'd had an IV hooked up to his jugular and lost a total of fifteen kilos. Since he only weighed 125 lbs to begin with, it didn't sound fun.

Also tonight, Knucklehead Clint Curtis is playing to a potentially packed house at the Cat's Cradle in what's being billed as Dada Veda's very last ever show. Apparently Clint's guitarist Scott is leaving the band, and drummer John Bell is embarking on another project working with a disco cover band. I kid you not. Clint isn't particularly upset, though...I still see him kind of frequently these days, since he's paying us $25/month to park in our driveway.


Five times over the last few months, Clint has personally invited me to his shows, even putting me on the guest list. Every time, I've had to dis. I feel really bad...so I can't let him down tonight. I'm going to drive Pedigo back to Chapel Hill with me and take him to see the show, then drive him home to Winston Salem tomorrow.

...

By the way, Caroline Philson is now going out with David Biggs. Remember him? He lives in a prototypical slacker apartment with roommates Paul Giragos and Pete Corson.

Speaking of slackers, it's now Friday, the 20th of November, and your letter isn't done yet. Everything went basically as planned on Tuesday. When I got to Greensboro to pick up Pedigo, I found him sitting feebly in a wheelchair. He looked terrible. After finding out that he wasn't about to die right then, I convinced him to come back to Chapel Hill for the night. I was planning to wheel him around the Cradle in his wheelchair.

The Dada Veda show was very sad and poignant. They were much better technically than I remembered them being, and the individual band members were set up on stage as far away from each other as possible. This gave them each their own sphere of creativity, all bathed in eerie banks of lights. Clint was wearing a William Burroughs-type 1940's suit, an X cap, and whiteface. Left and right, he treated the audience to theatrical antics.


Designed by Clint Curtis.

And the place was packed! Not only that, it was a very intimate crowd, full of all the band's friends, every other imaginable denizen of the alternative Chapel Hill crowd, and all these really cute women! Anyway, looking at Clint up on the stage, I couldn't help thinking back to our roadtrip, and how Clint had essentially fulfilled his dream to become a bona fide Chapel Hill musical superstar. And then I realized the song they were playing at the moment was Zen Free Love Lunacy, and it all fit together.

Oh, and one bizarre footnote. Do you know that Fox TV show called "Parker Lewis Can't Lose"...? Well, one of the main actors is this huge dumb white guy who they call "Meat". And guess what happens. I'm talking with Josh Bradt, and all of a sudden, N'Gai comes up to me and says "Hey, hey, guess who's here. Yeah, it's that guy from Parker Lewis, right over there." So we go to check him out, real clandestinely, and there really is a dude who looks just like him. But then...he turns out to actually be THE GUY! His name was Abe. We talk with him and he tells us that he's appearing in a movie that's being filmed at Duke, and while over there he had heard that Dada Veda were a really cool band, so he came to see them! Mindblower.

- Letter to Dana, 11/20/92

Ren and Stimpy rock Chapel Hill

A couple Mondays ago, I had dinner with my housemate Jay, Caroline Philson, Eric Wagner, and a guy named Bob Camp, who is the new director and chief writer of the Ren and Stimpy show! Later that night, he spoke and screened four episodes on our campus, in this huge building called Memorial Hall which seats 1,800 and was completely full. There were people standing outside on the windowsills in forty degree weather watching the cartoons. There were two old episodes...and two totally new, never-before-seen ones!



The new ones featured this sick new character named George Liquor. If they eventually get broadcast, they're called "Dog Show" and "Man's Best Friend," and they're awesome!



UNC-CH was the first university Bob Camp has ever been asked to speak at, so he was really cool and laid back about the whole thing.


As CUAB chair, Eric Wagner was responsible for the whole setup, and invited me along to the dinner. I hooked Jay up, and Caroline found her own angle to scam him into letting her come, too. During dinner I got him to draw a cartoon and give me his autograph on one of the Ren and Stimpy flyers I'd created for Derek Shadid's student congress campaign. Caroline also took a picture of us together. Did I mention that Bob Camp is also an extremely patient man? He dealt with my fan antics surprisingly well. And the clincher of the night had to be that it was free food and drinks for all of us at Pyewacket, where the dinner was held, courtesy of student fees. What a deal.


Photo by C-line

And Bob Camp was such a twisted character! He told us all about the sorts of jokes they've tried to put into episodes of the show, only to have them vetoed by Nickelodeon. Apparently, now that John K. (the show's original creator) has been fired, the guy who does the voice of Stimpy (Billy West) is going to do the voice of Ren. Also, have you ever seen this one episode that came on at the beginning of this past (second) season, called "Powdered Toast Man"...?



Well, that episode has been banned altogether from ever being shown again, and all because of only three letters that Nickelodeon got about it from parents who were disturbed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights getting burned in a fireplace at the episode's end. Pretty fucked up.

- Letter to Robb Teer, 12/2/92