JOHN PHILLIP LAW meets THE UBANGIS!

Actually, this should be called "John Phillip Law Upstages The Ubangis"! After the recent and unexpected passing of John Phillip Law, I had mentioned this video in a prior post ("Diabolik Says Goodbye") of Mr. Law goofing around during a Ubangis soundcheck. I then had many requests (well, at least one bloke asked for it!) to post the clip and, so, here it is! This was recorded live late one intoxicated Saturday night over Halloween weekend in 1998 at the Chiller Theatre horror convention in New Jersey. Things were very hectic and I was running around totally focused on getting the band gear setup and completely oblivious to the facts that 1. there was a man sitting right in front of me at the edge of the stage doing wacky things and 2. said man was John Phillip Law! And I especially should have noticed because I had just gotten his autograph that weekend! In fact I had no idea any of this was going on until I saw a videotape of the gig a week later. Not having seen the tape for many years until today it was a bit different then I had remembered when describing it in the previous JPL post. The giant plastic bones you see him messing with incidentally were prop drumticks that I played with at the start of the gig. Later on in the clip Law can be seen watching our act as we perform the instrumental number "Microphonic Nightmare". The band members at the time were myself, Saucy Randy Manos, Kevin "Sexual Chocolate" Hall (who played a handful of gigs on bass with us around that time), and Jill Grable Barnett who had left the band 5 years prior to start a family but returned for this special gig. Sadly, Jill too has also passed on. Back then, during those surreal and wonderful moments, I couldn't ever imagine those people ever leaving this place. I feel very lucky this was all caught on tape at least so I can look back on what seems now like some far-out dream. The cameras that night were operated by Stephen Blickenstaff, Eric Pugliese and Adam Strausner.

Wild times!