For a club that only had shows on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays the Phase III Lounge was doing all right. How's this for a three-week run of shows in 1978? The Dead Boys on Tuesday, Alternative T.V. the next Tuesday, and the Police on the following Tuesday! Friday and Saturday's fare included the Shades (from Philly), with the Real Kids playing the next weekend, and Toronto's B-Girls the following weekend.

Real Kids on tour, at Bookie's, with the "vators and Heroes Cult, 1978.

Alpo and Billy at Cantones.

A gig you hated to miss!.

Backstage at Cantones meant walking the twenty feet from the stage to the kitchen door, just behind the bar. They kept the old bread ends in a metal bowl over the fridge, for use in making bread crumbs, and I saw someone use that bowl as an ashtray more than once. Needless to say, although I thought Cantone's made pretty good Italian food, I avoided the breaded items. Here Billy Borgioli, wearing the Cirrhosis Lounge T-Shirt, poses with an unknown (to me at least) fan amidst the pots and pans (reader Jose Luis Villamarin Vazquez wrote from Spain to say: "I think that the guy in the kitchen is Handsome Dick Manitoba from the Dictators"...any other guesses?). Just under their feet is the trapdoor used to load supplies into the cellar; it was through the open trapdoor that DMZ/Lyres honcho Jeff "Mono Man" Connelly fell through to the basement floor; as horrified onlookers peered into the darkness, expecting the worst, a faint voice croaked out "anybody got a beer?".

The Real Kids LP advertisement, from 1977. The eponymous release on Marty Thau's Red Star label remains one of the seminal Boston rock classics.

The time of this Paradise show- around 1978 -may well have been the heyday period for the Real Kids. Manager Alan Rotberg was a hard working advocate for the group, and their appearance on CBS "30 Minutes" was an unusual coup for a local rock band, to say the least.

John and Alpo at the Rat, 1977

Billy and original drummer Kevin Glasheen as members of the Classic Ruins original line-up

. (R to L) Super Science magazine editor Nancy Finton, author/songwriter Jennifer Hixson, and Cathy Mars, Managing Editor of the erudite and intriguing Lapis magazine (published by the New York Open Center)...join yours truly at Coney Island High for the Real Kids 98/99 New Years Eve show. Cheez, after all these years they still bring in the best babes... Photo by some drunken lout in the audience.