The Castaways
Now sadly defunct, The Castaways in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was the hippest rock bar on the Grand Strand. It was so hip, that when The Rolling Stones (yes, we freely admit it. We are name dropping.) were in the area for two weeks rehearsing for a tour, they were given Castaways t-shirts—and Mick was seen walking down the beach with his on. And, yes, it was a red Cirkus shirt. (Castaways had t-shirts made up each year with each band's name on the front and the fabulous stained glass logo of "The Home Church of Rock and Roll" on back and sold them while that band was playing there.) It was also rumored that Bill Wyman was in the back of the club one night, but no one we trust ever confirmed it to the band. (When we name drop, we name drop. Nigel Olsson, former drummer for Elton John, used to come see us fairly regularly for a while when we played in Raleigh, but that's a whole 'nuther story. See, name dropping again!)
The Castaways was, by a LOOOONG shot, our favorite place to play, bar none (pun fully intended!). It was also one of the hottest, even with the AC going full blast. You could go into the club during the day to rehearse and freeze your cojones off, but pack 1,000 or so people in there and you would sweat off 10 pounds, easy. Found in the heart of the Pavilion area of Myrtle Beach and located just around the corner from The Bowery, the one-time home of the legendary country band Alabama, The Castaways was always filled to the brim on any given night with crazed, drunken vacationers who were there for one reason and one reason only: get loud, get drunk, get crazy!
We would usually spend a week at a time at Myrtle Beach—which was always somewhat dangerous. Somebody was always getting into various sorts of trouble, which we won't go into here, (but trust me, it wasn't that bad…nobody went to jail or anything; it was just, er, very uncomfortable. Yeah, that's a good term.) and none of us were immune. There was always a party or an after-hours bar to go to after the show, as if the show itself wasn't enough to wear us out, and we damaged many a brain cell at those parties and after-hours bars. We retain many, many warm though somewhat fuzzy memories of being at The Beach. All of the folks—Joe and Harry and Panama and Diane and Jimmy Griffith and Flash and we know there's more of them but we figure we did pretty good to pull all of those out of the recesses of the brain—who worked at Castaways were good people and good friends who went out of their way to make sure that we had a great time. In return, we seemed to play our best within the hot, sweaty confines of "The Home Church".
The Castaways was a solid choice for recording the band straight from the mixing board. In most rooms, the stage volume was such that there would be little needed in the way of adding guitars and bass to the overall mix, so the mix coming from the PA system would be lacking in guitar or bass or both. This was not true of The Castaways, due to the room being so dead that no matter how loud your stage volume was (and ours was LOUD), the room required a complete mix in the PA system…and Mark Grossman did us proud this night…too bad we didn't have a good tapedeck.
May 7, 1981 and then August 14, 1981 — After considerable debate, we've decided that the second of these performance was done on that August date, mainly because reference is made on the recording to it being Sean's birthday and that's the date. Trivia note: if you listen closely, you can hear Sean's sister whistling after several songs; she having decided to come to the beach and spend his birthday with him and his future wife. (The whistling usually provoked a Pavlovian response in Sean, since that's how she let him know that it was time to come home when they were kids. You could hear that whistle from several blocks away!) We feel that this recording showcases Cirkus in all their fire-breathing power, which, with this lineup, was considerable.
If any of The Castaways folks happen to be reading this, we extend a heartfelt thank you—and we sure do miss not having The Castaways at the beach any more. We loved playing there….shucks, we'd have played there for freebies!
Personnel
- Steve Quinney
- Rodger Bennett
- Eric Bennett
- Sean Carmichael
- Kelly Craven