Return of the Bongo Room: The Fabulous Greaseband Relives the Old Days, with Surfside Park Standing in for Their Legendary Venue
The Legendary Bongo Room in the Avalon Hotel September 1986.
According to Harry Pasquito, founding member of The Fabulous Greaseband, the venue does matter to a band. “Playing in Avalon certainly feels differently,” he says. “I’d compare it to going back to your alma mater or an old neighborhood where you grew up. There’s a flood of special memories because the experience is personally archived.”
For The Greaseband, that flood just might turn out to be a tsunami when the band comes back to Avalon in July. After all, although the band has played thousands of locales over the years, The Greaseband created magic on Sunday nights in Avalon beginning back in the summer of 1976 at the legendary Phil’s Bongo Room, followed by an even longer residency at Jack’s Place after the Bongo Room’s demise.
The Avalon History Center invites you out to Surfside Park on Sunday, July 9, to join The Greaseband in “Bringing Back the Bongo Room.” This is a free event and starts at 7pm. Bring along your dancing shoes, beach chairs and settle in for the ultimate trip down memory lane. This is an all-weather event that will move inside the Community Hall in the event of inclement weather.
The band credits Avalon for providing a launch pad for their legendary career and includes more than 250 shows a year. Amazingly, they recently celebrated their 50th anniversary as a band. Over that half-century, literally tens of thousands of bands have formed and performed in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania/New York footprint that The Greaseband considers home. Few, if any, can match the Greaseband’ s longevity.
We asked the driving force behind the band, what’s their secret?
“We recognized a phenomenon a long time ago,” Pasquito explains. “You see, as we get older, the oldies get newer. That, plus we’ve always been blessed with being able to find talented and charismatic performers to carry the show forward. Then, as each decade advanced, we did the same with our repertoire to the point where we can now cover as much as six decades of material during any given show.” The band members believe that they remain “tastefully 10 years behind the times.”
Some may wonder, what should attendees who have never seen the band be expecting? For starters, a glance at what kept people lined up around the corner at Phil’s Bongo Room for hours to get in the door in the 1970s and ’80s. “Although it’s a much different world today,” Pasquito says, “they’ll get an idea what encouraged people to pack the Bongo Room to the rafters on Sunday evenings.” There’s no question that The Greaseband created an environment like no other on Sunday nights in Avalon. The band created legendary experiences that people still reminisce about to this day.
Everyone has their own special memories. One that Pasquito won’t soon forget and we’re sure will not be duplicated on July 9 is when the Stone Harbor Beach Patrol was in attendance and encouraged band members to stage dive into their lifesaving arms. “They even caught 350-pound member Jody Giabelluca,” Pasquito recalls. “And then they placed him safely back on the stage. All untethered!” Pasquito is still amazed, so many years later.
So, thanks to the Avalon History Center, at least for one more Sunday evening, you’ll have the opportunity to Bring Back the Bongo Room to relive your memories. And for some, it will be an opportunity to create some new memories. Grab you dancing shoes. We’ll see you July 9.