stage stunt fiasco

we’d become not close but friendly with the Talking Heads back in the mid-70’s. we actually took turns opening up for them and they for us in weird out-of-town gigs. they suggested their attorney when we were approached by Seymour Stein. this was Orchestra Luna 2, with Liz Gallagher and Karla deVito as the Lunettes and Steven Paul Perry taking over for Randy Roos on guitar. we watched at CBGB’s when Tina Weymouth leveled her unwavering eyes at Byrne’s back. the club wasn’t even full. he was singing Psycho Killer with that fierce twitch delivery that made him so unusual and effective. i wrote a song, Gabriel, that was meant to incorporate the Heads rhythmic assault as the song concluded. Gabriel, the Angel Gabriel as the lyrics read, wasn’t about The Gabe at all. it was about Icarus and his melting wings as he flew towards the sun. Icarus is not a word that sings, so i changed it to Gabe. dumb song. dumb idea. but the silliest part was my stage ‘moment’. during the instrumental coda i would mime (what was i thinking?!) poor Icarus’s burn trajectory. feeling the burn. jerking myself about, reaching towards the ceiling, flapping imaginary wings and then catapulting to earth. end of song. the first attempt was in a tiny bar in the South End. 50 people in the crowd, tops. a stage so small we had to be on tip-toe to fit. up comes Gabriel in the set. i transform into my death moment and come crashing to the stage floor, chest heaving with all-too-obvious effort. silence. then some guy in the front says something like ‘what the fuck was that?!’ titter in the crowd. the guy next to him point out: ‘his wings was on fiah’. i think i remember laughing to myself in the dead pose. still, the idea grew. we would make it work. we’d add a strobe light, kill the stage lights and place a trough filled with newsprint confetti above my head. at a key moment one of our roadies would yank a string attached to the precarious trough, it would tilt and spill the paper onto my head in magic strobe light flicker. it worked a few times and the stunt kinda caught on. the ‘theatrical Berlin’ is at it again. until one night, a showcase night for Cleveland International at the Paradise. we had everything set up. strobe and trough in place. i went into my act, the strobe did it’s job and the roadie pulled the string. then it all went wrong. one end of the trough broke, the confetti spilled in one fat dump and the trough hit me in the head. bonk! i was a joke. and i think, if i remember correctly, our friends, Face To Face opened for us that night and got signed. we did not. Icarus burned to a crisp.