Sugarbush - LIMF 6/26/96

Below is a a great Sugarbush performance from the Long Island Music Festival, at the Cornerstone Pub & Grill in Copiague, NY – Dave S was writing for Good Times paper so he was the MC for the night. This significant show was to be Dave's last with the band. Jim was nice enough to add some commentary about this show when he sent it to me. Here's his two cents...

"So Dave had mentioned in the car ride to the place that he was leaving the band and this would be his last show – or maybe he would play again if we wound up advancing to the next round (yeah RIGHT!) so with that in mind, we all gave a very spirited performance.

Joey is hysterical on this one as Saldi (Dave S) is giving his intro, Joe yells "Hootie!" at him and totally throws him off his game – hilarious. He is amazingly vocal, and totally made Sugarbush better whenever he was there to shout out. All our friends who were there were really supportive. We needed the help too.

The Basals were on the bill and WBAB was there broadcasting live b/c the lead singer worked at the station – in other words, there was absolutely NO WAY they were gonna lose – but, we impressed Robbie Woliver enough to give us "Best local band of 1996" in his year end write-up in NEWSDAY, even though we hadn't played fer over 6 months at the time he wrote it! Of course, we quickly got our shit together and reformed with Rich after that – to try to cash in on the praise. His next revue wasn't as glowing – but he put us in the same write up as the Spice Girls, calling his article "Sugar and Spice", which I think RULES, since I do love the Spice Girls – GIRL POWER!


Anywho, this was the first and last time we played "1000 Thorns" in full, but had played it twice before, once as a jam, the next time ending abruptly in the middle section. When I say "first time" in reference to playing it, Deluca says.."ok, THIRD time";). I sing the intro to "I Want You" at the beginning, which I could never help myself from doing. I took those lyrics with me to Not Saved. I always liked those lyrics.

"Galoshes" has us breaking into Black Flag's "Jealous Again", which is something Dave couldn't help himself from doing.

I fuck up "'71" by starting the vocals too early, but we get through it relatively unscathed – Saldi was rushing towards us at the end of "Soul Kitchen" to get us off stage, so ya hear me yelling "now!...do it now!!" – to break into "Steel/Twisted" or else we were gonna hafta fight Dave fer the mic!

As it is, we played it and I beat myself in the head with the mic pretty good during it, opening a decent sized gash in my head – which always made fer a good show. This was the last time we ever played "Steel" since Dave wrote it and we dropped it with Rich – Dave wrote the main part of "'71" (it's Zombula's 'Misery'), but we changed that one enough to keep playing it with Rich – or I guess we thought we changed it enough – it's still "Misery", but different.

I always found Joey to be a truthful soul, and when he says at the ending, "if you guys don't win this, there is no justice in this world", I believe his words were accurate. We didn't win, and there is no justice in this world."

Thanks Jim.

[DOWNLOAD] Sugarbush - Long Island Music Festival • Cornerstone Pub & Grill, Copiague, NY • 6/26/96
01- >intro by Saldi<
02- >thanks<
03- Angels Are Burning
04- Heading Downtown
05- >shoutouts<
06- Take the Hill
07- '71
08- >thanks again<
09- Last Call
10- 1000 Thorns
11- Yer the Type of Girl that Needs a Pair of Galoshes
12- >thanks AGAIN<
13- Soul Kitchen
14- Steel//Twisted
15- >outro by Saldi<