Alaina Reed is Gone

Alaina Reed died yesterday, age 63. It put Plottie into a little bit of a funk -- you all probably knew her as Olivia, Gordon's wife on Sesame Street for all those years, but Alaina was a fantastic R&B singer in her own right, and one of the nicest people Plot and Duck ever met on the club circuit in NYC.

He was remembering playing on the same bill at a club called The Upstairs at the Downstairs with Alaina and Jay Leno, who was the comic opening act. Jay wasn't very funny but Alaina sang 'Grandma's Hands' by Bill Withers and Plotnik has never forgotten it. This is a long time ago, y'know?

The other thing memorable about that gig was that Plot's band got thrown out of the club due to the antics of Peter, the bass player. Peter was a chronic drunk, which was OK unless the band played in a bar. That last night Peter got into a fight from the stage with a heckling patron, and was playing out of tune all night on a fretless bass. If you've ever played a stringed instrument without frets, like a violin, you'll realize just how awful that can sound.

Plot and his co-band member Diane fired Peter the next day and he checked into Bellvue Hospital and that's the last Plottie ever saw or heard from him. A few days later Jonny walked in the door to replace Peter, and Jon and Plottie became best pals for a lot of years.

Some time later, Plot found out Peter and Diane had been sleeping together all the time the band was together, which probably explains why she was so anxious to fire him. That just made it weirder.

This morning, thinking about Alaina Reed, Plottie accessed Peter on Google, half-expecting to read an epitaph. Instead he found an old garage band site with Peter written up on it, talking about several of the songs his band called The Rites had recorded, songs Plottie remembers that Peter performed with Plottie's band too. Seeing as Plot once let Peter borrow Plot and Duck's car which Peter then attempted to drive off a cliff in the Palisades at 100mph, it's nice to know he's still alive.

There was a comment on this site from a B. Grobman, who has to be Bernard Grobman, a guitarist from Brooklyn who also had an experience with Plotnik's car -- he forgot to look when he was getting out of the car and opened the passenger door right into the path of a passing truck. The door was ripped off the car and Bernard was probably too stoned to realize he could have been killed. He was sorry about the car door and promised to pay for it, but he then disappeared. That was the last Plot and Duck saw B. Grobman.

But we're all still here, apparently, and Peter is now called Texas Pete...well, all of us except Alaina Reed who was the most talented of all. Sixty three years old, gone from cancer. Yikes.