The Pug-a-Nut became the center of Monroe County’s musical universe. Within three weeks of its opening it had destroyed The Heroes. Saturday night crowds packed both parking lot and dance floor. Quite a few people from Tellico Plains had drifted into the scene. More than half of The Heroes’ patrons skipped out, and the rest just stopped going to dances altogether.
In some ways The Heroes’ public image had begun to work against them. For one thing, the members still wore matching suits. I don’t see anything wrong with doing that, and The Heroes had some great band suits, but hippie fashion, which was just coming to Madisonville, cast a dim light on the appearance of the conformity that matching suits screamed. After the trip through the Battle of the Bands competition, The Heroes got a one-off record deal, but the anti-marijuana song they recorded sounded a thud, released, as it was, when pot started to gain a local market share. That’s a shame because the song had an honest to goodness hardcore psychedelic sound. The song was kind of tricky to play as well, and I’d have to label it a tour de force of a do it yourself ethos. I wish I owned a copy.
The Thumbers were cut from a different cloth. There was nothing slick about the band or its members. The Heroes sported well kept short haircuts, whereas Thumbers members’ hair had the length and look of the early Beatles’ styles, down to these hats (like I’d seen The Beatles wear) worn by the guitarist and bass player. Band members dressed sort of like The Stones, and sounded a bit like them as well.
Also like The Stones, The Thumbers weren’t very good at psychedelic music. I guess they just never really had an ear for it. Not that they didn’t try, because any band who had a playlist derived from radio (all of the bands did) couldn’t avoid a few far-out numbers, and The Thumbers did successfully execute some types of those songs, but for whatever reason the guitarist (who was and is a gifted musician) could never manage that big, fat, smoothly dirty fuzztone sound. I don’t remember if the guy owned a wah wah pedal.
With the new power that came with capturing the entire local music market, The Thumbers could have hogged up the scene to themselves, but that’s not what happened. In fact, The Thumbers went out of town a lot and really didn’t play The Pug-a-Nut that often, so a steady stream of new bands came into Madisonville as result of the club. Although this was bad news for The Heroes, overall I thought it was good to bring new blood into town. I don’t know if The Heroes were ever offered a spot at The Pug-a-Nut, but I don’t believe they ever played there. To them the war was on.
The Heroes had an important ally in the editor of the local paper who lived up the hill from The Pug-a-Nut (and right across a couple of streets from The Heroes’ lead guitarist) and began a one man crusade against the club, its employees, its owners, its patrons, and even the highway it resided on. He hinted that alcohol was being illegally sold there (and had pictures of piles of empty beer cans swept up behind the Pug), and that the club was a smaller portion of a larger organized crime syndicate that operated along Highway 411 North which he dubbed “Sin Strip.” His stories mostly scared off many patrons and put doubt into parents’ minds all over town. Neither my parents nor CEP’s wanted us to go there. I know we weren’t the only ones.
After a long absence, Billy D came around to see me. I asked him about the stuff in the paper. He said it was all bullshit, as I had figured in the first place, and that The Pug-a-Nut was a safe and fun place to be. I recall that he also talked to my parents, and before long I had permission to catch an act there.
I went one Saturday night shortly after school had ended for the summer. I was impressed with the place, and I could instantly see how it had beaten out the digs for The Heroes, even though The Nut had only shortly before been an auto body shop. The place really looked and functioned like a teen club, and one thing that stood out was the gaming section. I remember a pinball machine, and maybe there were other machines, too. In fact, the first thing I did there was play pinball. For one of the few times in my life I hit for about 30 games. Don’t get the wrong idea: it wasn’t one of the gambling machines that paid off (like the ones I had seen in the poolroom and at truck stops). No, the game at The Nut was purely for entertainment.
The band booked for that evening, a fairly interesting group from Athens, Tennessee, ran through an entire set while I was trying to play off the games I’d won at pinball. Every time I played them down, the machine would hit again and I’d have another 10 or more games to burn. I finally lost count of the number, but I’d won the lot on just two quarter I pumped into the slot. I think I got bored and eventually left games for whomever to enjoy.
Billy D’s Farfisa was on stage that night, even though the band playing had no keyboard player. After watching for a set, I asked the band if I could sit-in for a number. They agreed. Near the end of the night I took the stage for a tune. The song I attempted with the band was a cover of The Grass Roots’ Midnight Confessions, which had a perfect organ part to show off on, but unfortunately for me, I didn’t know either song or organ part. It was, simply, a disaster. The band hated me, the crowd hated me, and I felt like a dumbass. Well, such is life. At least I had fun a pinball.
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