Big Apple Band On the Run

To be honest, I don't really remember the exact content or sequence of events. What I have are little vignettes, stand alones without context or fluidity. I can't really string everything together properly.

I know KoKoKu was booked for a gig at Folk City soon after our open mic. (Yes, of course we said, "Yes!") I know we played there more than once. On another occasion we opened for Peter Tork, of The Monkees. I remember hanging out in the basement "green room" with him. He was bitter about The Monkees. Not long after, they embarked on a reunion tour. I guess he managed to put his hard feelings aside. On another occasion we were part of a New Year's Eve show.

But you see, even as I write these things I wonder, "Did that really happen? Is that what happened?" 

Either at the open mic or at another show soon after, a classmate, Cathy, asked to be our manager. She had no experience but then, neither did we, so we said, "OK!" I have to say, she did pretty darn well. (She's now a successful filmmaker and professor-she was clearly up to the task.) In pretty short order she had us booked for several gigs around the city: fundraisers, a radio show, The Speakeasy, The Bitter End. We played gigs with the then up and coming Suzanne Vega and Lori Carson. We had a photo shoot by the East River. And Gio brought a producer on board, someone she had worked with on a previous project. He was keen to get us in the studio.

In other words, a whole lot happened very quickly. It seems hard to believe, but I think the whole thing only lasted about nine months, start to finish. Unfortunately for me, the emotional fallout of the band's break up lasted for many, many years.

So there we were, poised to go into the studio, making really good headway into the business. Rising stars. Gio had moved from upstate New York into the city in order to make everything easier. We all had girlfriends. Life was good!

And then we had a band meeting. I can remember us sitting around the table at Cathy's apartment on the Lower East Side. Delancey Street, I think. And Gio quitting, giving us some nonsense about her being more "professional" than we (Emily and I) were, knowing how to dress in a more commercially acceptable way.

You know, I guess she was saying we were coming across as too butch, which is kind of funny, given that all three of us were pretty butch.

I don't really know what happened. And you know how relationships are. It takes two and all that, only in this case it took three or more. I know that I was having a crisis of conscious about being a professional musician: was it really important? I think Gio was having a fear of success crisis. As for Emily, well, I don't know. I suppose in one way or another, we were all having our individual crises.

I think the bottom line was that it was a relationship crisis. We'd fallen in love, hard, and had many magical music moments together. Then, right on schedule (meaning, at about the six month mark), we all started having doubts. And as many relationships do once they reach this point, the make or break point, we broke.