About the Party
From the Pen of Glenn — Peter Birss Party July 9, 1983
I would like to relate the events of July 9th, Saturday night. Sometime before this date Peter Birss had asked me if I might provide some music for a private party he was having. I promised to do what I could in this matter and in a frantic effort to collect musicians at the last moment three familiar names filled the bill. Corinne played the keyboards, Lester played drums and Clint bass guitar…
Earlier during that afternoon a friend of Peter’s and to some extent a friend of mine, Kim Hamilton commonly called simply “Bone” brought over his truck and the three of us set to moving the necessary equipment over to Peter’s. When once we had carried the equipment down into Peter’s basement it was left to me to set things up. After a couple of hours of arranging and setting up keyboards, P.A., amplifiers, and running and taping cords from one thing to another I at last had things ready to roll. With things at last prepared I departed from Peter’s place for a couple of hours to have supper.
Later that evening, about 7:30 p.m. or so, Clint and Larry dropped in and approximately 8:00 we got the music underway. Not having rehearsed together for over six months we played solely from memory, though admittedly I was astonished by how well we managed to recall some of our original tunes. The biggest problem with the party in general was the lack of space provided by Peter’s basement. Once things got going it was literally a situation of wall-to-wall people. In fact, Chris related to me how at one point it took him half an hour to make his way upstairs to get a beer from the fridge. Apparently the entire staircase was loaded with people most of whom were making effort to go either up or down. This one can imagine the difficulty for anyone actually wishing to use the stairs.
Unfortunately I could not witness this as every time we took a break people would migrate upstairs. The breaks were few and far between, the effect of so many people in such a small area working to produce an intensely warm environment. I can remember sweating profusely from the heat, my whole shirt finally becoming damp. In my mind’s eye I can see the sweat dripping off the end of Clint’s nose while his hair clung to his cheeks form the moisture. To make matters worse the smoke visibly hung in the air, swirling and shifting like some mystical fog.
The people present enjoyed us thoroughly, some even coming up to sing on some song they recognized. This got a little out of hand as the evening progressed until we at last had to shut down completely. This was at three in the morning, however, and we were all anxious to quit by that time anyhow. Whenever people are heavily compacted into one small area things soon tend to get a little chaotic. Like any gregarious species, man included, the more individuals there are in ratio to the size of a given environment the more erratic and unpredictable behaviour becomes. The latter term calls for qualification here. In experiments done with rats, notably by biologist Konrad Lorenz it was shown that rats will live in peaceful cohabitation only so long as there are an acceptable number per square foot. Unfortunately the actual number evades me. However, once that number is exceeded the rats will unsympathetically slaughter the weaker or injured members until the acceptable limit is once again achieved. If I may be permitted to draw a rather loose analogy at this point I believe I witnessed the same phenomenon on the human level as the party came to an end. Of course, there weren’t people unsympathetically slaughtering one another because the number of people within the room had exceeded the acceptable limits. This would be absurd. In some of the larger rock concerts, thought, people have in fact, been crushed or trampled to death by a mob of people rushing the stage. If I am correct, a few years ago during a concert of “The Who” eleven people were trampled when some zealous fans crashed the gate and made for the front of the stage. In short, once one person had come up to sing with us numerous people had the same desire, a sort of “microphonophilia”, to coin a rather nonsensical word. When this started and the fever caught on people lost practically all respect for the equipment, one drunken imbecile after another managing to pull a cord from my effects pedals causing my guitar to fall silent immediately. One can imagine the confusion created by far too many people in one small room, most of them stoned and drunk with relatively loud music playing almost continually. In retrospect it was good fortune alone that prevented any piece of equipment from being damaged by the enthusiastic inebriates.
The party itself was a thorough success, despite some of the mayhem that beset it. Most importantly my word to Peter was fulfilled to the last detail, in fact far beyond his expectations.
