STORIES

Sometime in the summer of 1981, Cold Sweat trashed a hotel room. it was the band’s first and only time they did this.

After spending some post-rehearsal time wandering the streets of lower midtown Manhattan posting upcoming band gig flyers, the lead vocalist surprised the rest of the band by announcing “Let’s go to my hotel room”.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the band, the lead vocalist had booked the hotel room when he decided he no longer wanted to live at home.

So, after picking up the usual case or two of beer, the band headed to the hotel.

After entering the room, and quickly consuming a large amount of beer, the band quickly grew bored with the usual discussions of how the rehearsal went, planned gigs, etc., and observing their surroundings, decided that the room could use a redesign.

Noticing the stack of unused flyers and container of wallpaper glue, one band member began to paste the flyers to the inside of a chest of drawers, while other band members tested the tensile strength of the bathroom door. Final score: Cold Sweat 1 – door 0.

By the time the room modifications were complete, the band left the hotel. The band then headed back to the Bronx with the exception of the lead vocalist, who would later return to the hotel to find himself locked out of his room, his belongings in the outside corridor, and confronted by an angry, threatening, hotel manager.

This hotel, which at the time was a dump, was redesigned years later, and became the first hotel in Manhattan to feature artist-designed rooms.

With that in mind, one wonders what influence Cold Sweat’s “artistic room design” had on the hotel owner’s future plans.

It was 1989. Cold Sweat had already done at least one very successful concert at CBGB’s in New York City. Probably at least several more but this was only my second year with CS.

We were booked to play CB’s immediately following their Hard Core Matinee and we had arrived early. What a scene when we showed up. Their Hard Core Matinee was apparently just beginning to let out and the bad vibes had spilled right out into the street along with fights that had been apparently in progress inside the venue and were now continuing out into the street. It was getting really violent as, for whatever reason, one guy was waiting to finish an altercation, with a patron still inside, while brandishing a bicycle chain. Meanwhile another malcontent was smashing his beer bottle to use as a weapon for his intended victim who was himself exiting the establishment with his own beer bottle which HE smashed to use as his own weapon. While this was going on, other skirmishes were breaking out, all while we were moving our equipment into the place to set up for our own show.

Once inside, no matter how organized we were in setting up the stage, a really dark pall pervaded everything. It certainly didn’t help that there were no patrons even wandering in by that point and the staff themselves seemed visibly uneasy.

But, troupers that we were, with decades of performing experience, we battened the hatches and made ready to set sail no matter what happened by showtime.

Just like our last time there in 1988, Warren Kitt was with us although he didn’t appear on stage. Would have loved it had he done that, at least for one song. I’m sure bassist Laura Manfredi wouldn’t have minded.

Then Cold Sweat were introduced and we kicked the audience right in the face with a deafening brick wall of high-powered rock and the crowd went nuts. It was only the first song and, by the end of it, we had clearly already won them over! It was great! Clearly, Jenny was very enthusiastically received and she handled the show with panache and a real enthusiastic sense of fun! I think that each of us on that stage pushed the envelope farther than that to which even WE were accustomed!

At the end of the show, we’d knocked ’em dead and we went out with them still roaring for more! After the show, as we were packing to load the van and leave, our house engineer, Ronnie Ardito, thanked us wholeheartedly and sincerely for having taken such a bad vibe and turned it all around into something fun and positive. We had really reversed all that bad energy and lit the place up!

To this day, I’m really proud of that night.

– Mike Fass

Was listening to the album, “Many Hats”, the next to final album release by Cold Sweat alumnus Jenny Amlen, when I was reminded of a moment that happened with her and CS.

We were at Big Fun Studios in Manhattan and in rehearsal for some upcoming live shows and, if you’re in show business, you generally know that you have your “material” rehearsal (wherein you learn to perform all the songs by heart), your “dress” rehearsal (in which you adjust to the execution of your stage moves and how comfortably they work with your intended wardrobe selection for the show as well as your performance (instrumentally and/or vocally), and then you have your “tech” rehearsal which takes you through all the aforementioned phases but during which you work on your polish and showmanship as an entertainer.

Jenny was that which you might call a “stage mistress” who knew the importance of how to pace the show before a live audience. Jenny left little to chance and that’s why she had such great command of the stage, something she had perfected by the times I’d seen her late in her life and career throughout her more recent concerts.

Well, here we were rehearsing the live show with Cold Sweat and, at the conclusion of each song, Jenny would run through her intended stage patter and, each time, Laura Manfredi (apparently taking note of Keith Haase’s growing impatience), would urge Jenny to curtail the stage monologue and just get to the next song. Jenny had no problem obliging but you could tell that she thought it was weird, especially since she was decked out in her intended stage wear and so was I.

It was then that I knew what a consummate entertainment professional she was. You don’t wait until the performance itself to craft your stage act because, let’s face it, when folks pay to see you on stage, they want a well-oiled show to accompany the music. If it was really all about the music, they could just stay home and listen to you on the stereo. It was this sort of deceptively premeditated polish that marked her solo concerts many years later and made the shows sparkle with spontaneity even though I knew that she’d covered all her ground in advance to make her shows as smoothly paced as they’d always turned out to be. I knew, even those years before, that she was on the right track.

– Mike Fass