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Lance was always jamming with people at the Rialto. He had had that big night on Halloween with Quigley, Juan, Dave and Ed Id, and, oh, I forgot, Nick D was on stage too, doing the industrial stuff. The Rialto was on downtown Central Street, across from the Copper Kettle. Downstairs was a bowling alley. The building was owned by a guy named Dominic -- at least he ran the bowling alley and collected the rent for the rehearsal rooms that were upstairs.

Next to the first floor entrance, a locked door leading into the hallway of the rehearsal area was another another door that went to the massage parlor. Yeah, Lowell still had them. The door would be open, and you'd walk by, and it smelled like a combination of sweat, perfume, maybe a little semen, and who knows what else coming out of that door. None of the musicians who played in the rehearsal rooms ever went downstairs. But during breaks guys would be looking out the side window in the hallway, seeing the young women going to work.

Who knows what the lives of those girls were? Who knows how long they had been doing it? Who knows they would be doing it? Soon, in a couple of months the massage parlors were gonna close. The chicks were too classy to go on the street. Would they become exotic dancers? Would they meet a guy with enough money and understanding, and maybe a little pizazz? Probably not. There's too many losers out there looking for women that don't have any real dreams. When you're involved in that life, somehow you go inside a shameful place. 'Cause after all, you ain't gonna tell your family or people who may respect you that you work in a massage parlor. Maybe they'd be in porno books, maybe some of them already are. Maye they'd go in porno films. But most likely they're gonna end up hooked up with some loser that doesn't feel nothin'. And if they think they find religion, then they really become a zombie. Especially if they're the type who couldn't be an Amway salesperson, so they get involved with New Age bullshit. Okay, okay, maybe some of them meet a decent guy out there. But the rest of 'em just become a different type of zombie.

So anyways, let's talk about the bands and the happenings up there in the practice rooms. In the beginning, Lance shared a room with Riff Graft. The rent was like $89 a month, and you could go there any time you wanted, and fucking jam. Dave the drummer shared a room across the hall with Danny. Funky Dave was the best drummer Lance had ever played with. We'll call him Funky Dave, because he played in a funk band at one time. Actually, it was disco, but for the record, let's say it was funk.

Lance used to have jams once a week. It would be Funky Dave on drums, and Johnny B on guitar or bass, oh, and of course, Lance Gargoyle, guitar, maybe a little bass, and a little keyboard thrown in for good measure on the side. You could start a rhythm, and Funky Dave would pick it up and groove with it, and throw small embellishments in almost like a sixth sense. Sometimes it was John on bass and Lance on guitar. Sometimes Lance did some vocals, and sometimes Johnny B did some vocals too. They'd get together around 7 o'clock on a Tuesday night. Johnny B would arrive with a bottle of wine, a wine glass, and his guitar and amp. Dave would bring his drum set over from his room into Lance's.

Lance could always think of something simple, but interesting to play, that both of the guys could follow along with easily to explore and improvise through. Lance used to record all the jams and practically everything that he ever did, live or at the Rialto with whoever he'd be jamming with at the time. They used to have a great time.

Across the hall in one of the big front rooms, was a heavy metal band. Not so much heavy metal -- kind of like Rush. Lance had been jamming with a couple of years with two young musicians, Jamie Walsh and Dave Glasswetter. Jamie played guitar and Dave G played bass. At one time before the Rialto, Lance had jammed with them and another young drummer named Wayne. They even played out at this high school musical exhibition with a large audience. That was weird for Lance, who was older at that time than the other guys. They jammed for a while, but drifted apart, when Porky -- I mean, Wayne, that was his nickname -- went into the service, and they didn't have a drummer. Lance showed Jamie some simple blues chord structures, and some other standard four- or five-chord wonders. Lance could play lead.

So anyways, after Lance had had the rehearsal rooms for a while, he changed over to a big front room facing Central Street, and Dave and Jamie got a room together beside his. You could have the window open on the Friday night in the summertime, and be jamming at 11 o'clock or later, or even just playing alone or practicing.

At this time in the history of the Rialto, Funky Dave would jam with Lance inside the practice room. Funky Dave was always a humble guy -- one thing that Lance always looked for. He always wanted to get in a band that played out and made money, as he had done in the past.

The band across the hall was a real friggin heavy metal band -- two brothers. Now this is back around '82 or '83 that I'm talking about, and these guys had the big hair, the Marshall amps cranked up so that you couldn't even hear yourself across the hall. They were always doing coke, and had coke whores up in the practice room. Those guys were a trip.

Dominic, the owner, even actually let a relative live in one of the rooms. You got to remember, these rooms didn't have any sink or nothin'. The bathrooms were down the hall, and believe me, sometimes they could get real roguey, especially when a toilet wasn't working, or somebody got sick in the bathroom. Lance took it upon himself to clean the toilets for Dominic for free -- at least he could have a clean shit when he wanted it.

Eventually the Rialto closed and Lance had to go back to rehearsing in his patio studio at 231 Appleton Street, on the third floor. The hallway bathrooms in the building were never really very clean, and Lance offered to clean them. Wait a minute, let's back up a little bit. This building used to be owned by a little old lady -- yeah, I said a little old lady. A guy at the City approached her when she was behind on her taxes. A guy named Bub. He told the lady that he'd have someone that would buy it from her, and she wouldn't lose the house. It was his common law wife. They got the building friggin dirt cheap. At that time, in the late 70's, for maybe not even $20,000.

When Lance moved into the building in '78, Bub and his common law wife Carol lived downstairs in the three-room apartment that had its own side entrance. They used to fight like wild. Carol would be screaming at the top of her lungs, "Bub, I want to go!" Carol would probably have a little buzz, but Bub would be cocked, and say in a quiet sinister voice, "Where you gonna go, Carol?" Carol would be whining and say, "I just want to leave, Bub."

At that time, Carol would enter the rooms once a week to clean them and change the linen. They always knew the appearance of their building and the tenants' rooms. No one could live with anybody in the single rooms that were there. A number of times Bub found out someone was living with somebody, and actually threw their clothes out on the sidewalk and locked them out. Once his wife had changed the sheets and found some panties there. Bub went bananas. Sometimes at night he'd bang on Lance's door, because Lance played his TV too loud.

Eventually Bub and Carol moved to another place that they had, and Bub's daughter and son-in-law moved into the old place and collected the rent. They used to fight like hell too, and scream and holler and have the cops come down, but things were a little looser in the building. Eventually Bub sold the building to a guy named Vinnie who owned a lot of property in Lowell at once time. Vinnie was a good guy, and renovated the hallway and all the rooms the best he could. They had panelling, everyone had a sink and a little refrigerator and a stove. Eventually the building got sold to another property owner named George H. This guy was an alright guy. His sons Geoff and Glen also did repairs and renovations on the building.

This is the time when Lance started to take care of the building for George. He vacuumed the hallway twice a week, and cleaned the two common bathrooms. George took five dollars off his rent. Lance always did a good job, as he did with everything he took on. After four months, he asked for a five dollar raise. George said, "Nope, but I'll give you two dollars more a week." After maybe another six months to a year, Lance got tired of tenants that were such slobs that he hold George he didn't want to go the bathrooms anymore. One guy named Kenny was shitting in the upstairs bathtub.

George made Lance the manager. Now Lance's job was interviewing applicants and showing the vacant rooms, and collecting the rent -- besides keeping the place in good order. Lance began to learn about people's character and behavior. It isn't easy to be a good judge of character or behavior. Basically you look for someone who'se gonna be able to pay the rent, that don't mind living in one room. Even at $40 - $50 a week -- which were the rents back then, in the mid-80's.

George was a good guy, and so was the rest of his family, including his wife, Barbara, who Lance talked to on the phone sometimes when he had problems. Things were going pretty good for Lance. He worked at the hospital downstairs as a materials handler. He had started off as a pot washer at Saint Joe's Hospital, and after eight months had become a stock clerk for the kitchen. After four years he transferred to central stores and became the supply clerk. Eventually he would transfer to the receiving area, and remain there for many years.

One day Lance got home and he found out that George had sold the building to three police officers He found this out because they turned off the gas to transfer the meter to the new owners, but the new owners hadn't hooked it up yet. Lance called George, and found out that the building had been sold. The three police officers came over the next day to meet Lance, the manager of the building. One of them named Tom asked Lance how long he had lived in the buildling, and Lance told him, twelve years. Tom said, "You're the manager."

Lance rarely saw the other two police officers and mainly dealt with Tom, who was an alright cop. It was good having three cops own the building, because Tom would knock on the tenants' doors when they got behind on their rent, or a drug addict had slipped through, and Tom would tell them to get out.

The three cops also bought a building in Centerville from George, which had thirty-one units. The offered Lance to manage it. Lance refused, because he didn't want the extra work, and because he didn't want to leave -- believe it or not, the neighborhood, or the building. After a couple of years, the old die downstairs in the two-room apartment called Whitey went to a nursing home, and Lance got that apartment. Now he had his own bathroom. All nine other tenants had to share the bathrooms that were in the hallway.

They got some crooked bizzbong named Jerry to manage the bigger building in Centerville on Christian Hill. He was found out, and Tom got rid of him, and brought in Lance to manage that building also. Lance didn't want to do it, believe me -- the traffic crossing that bridge all the time. That building became a trip for Lance. They all had their own bathrooms, and it was a higher, yet someone seedier type of character that applied for the vacancies. The rents were higher over there. Lance had a little bit of interviewing savvy under his belt from his experiences at Appleton Street, but this would become a whole other level of judgment and acceptance according to social ability. Two things Lance used to think to himself when interviewing prospective tenants: Are they going to be able to pay the rent? and Will they vacate easily if they do get behind on their rent?

Those three guys got suckered on that friggin building, and they could never make the payments or the utilities. After Lance had been managing the place, Tom came and told Lance that they were gonna go bankrupt. A sly tenant named Frankie who had been the on-site manager at 11th Street was there when Tom told Lance the news. It would be a couple of months before the bank would take it over. Frankie had been doing a lot of coke, and was getting sloppy and using rent money which Lance had to finagle or pay himself. Lance decided this was the time to move into the building and become the manager. He left 231 Appleton Street after 18 years. Spazz Gasket became the on-site manager at Appleton Street when Lance moved into the Christian Hill building, into the largest studio apartment there.

The bank had the building and let it go to shit -- they never fixed nothing. Lance had always been buying new equipment. He had a bass. At one time he had an authentic B C Rich Flying Eagle, a good Les Paul copy which he still has today, and a copy of a son of a Rich. In the 80's he started to use a Casio keyboard which a good friend of his named Jimmy the Roadie had loaned him. It was the size of a computer keyboard. This keyboard had auto-accompaniment. It played the drums, the bass, and played a chord when you pressed a key. After a couple of years, he got a Lowry keyboard that had the same features, but was better. He picked up a full-size keyboard from Nick D, and when he moved into the Christian Hill building, he purchased another keyboard, a Korg 01WFD. It cost over $2000, and Lance financed it for two years. It had a disk drive, and Lance could save all his music on disk now. He created multi-layered, textural arrangements and multi-track sequences with this keyboard.

George, the original owner that Lance had worked for, bought the building back, and he and his son Geoff did a total renovation and upgraded everything in the building -- new roofs, all the studios were expanded and totally renovated. All the people who applied for studios had a credit check done. Lance had learned that interviewing, scrutinizing, inner-sensing capability of knowing people's behaviors. That, and the credit check, and George and Geoff's sensibility in choosing tenants for the building made it a haven for Lance. They did all the repairs -- all he had to do was collect the rent, take care of the grounds and the carpet inside the building, and interview prospective tenants during the week.

Things were going great in Lance's life now. He had a suitable life situation -- a good job that left him the weekends off, a home that was quiet and safe, he had begun learning acting from a famous acting teacher in Newton, and had recently purchased another music workstation called a Korg I-3. This also had a floppy disk, and had superb auto-accompaniment that Lance utilized to make his music go farther than it had ever gone before. Recently Lance purchased another Korg keyboard music workstation (an upgrade of the I-3 series) called an I-30, which Lance uses primarily to create his music today. Sometimes he still plays guitar, once in a rare while. He used to like that wild feedback crunchy sound that you got from guitar. Now he gets it from his keyboards. He's done a lot of vocal things and a lot of vocal songs as people know, and is always creating more musical designs with his keyboards and his voice and his imagination. He's been acting a couple of years now, and has been in three or four student plays at Southwick Studio. He's studied improvisation styles from Keith Johnstone, Marjorie Burren, other improvisionational techniques, and currently is seriously involved in Action Theater and improvisionational techniques developed by Ruth Zaporah which he studies with her and other people whenever she comes to town. He's been doing it for a couple of years, and he plans on developing an improvisionational group called the "Orchestra of Life" based on a sound Stomp-like movement and sound and the principles of Action Theater and utlizing his Korg keyboards. He's in the process of developing a website with his newly discovered friend Sidney Hipple, another performance artist who makes sculptures from sea weed and sea objects and currently does online painting.