Louisiana Dance Halls | Dance Halls Archive - Page 6 of 173 - Louisiana Dance Halls

Mentioned in Louisiana and Texas garage magazine Brown Paper Sack, issue #1, January, 1997 in the article “Toga A Go-Go″: Roamin’ Togas member Pete Adams: “(Roamin’ Togas manager Roger Cavaness) was crazy, but we knew that going in- that was a given! Quite a character, a good guy at heart, but sometimes he’d make a deal with somebody…(Cavaness) comes by and says ‘I got you guys a gig in Amite, Louisiana this Friday.” We said ‘Uh, what’s the name of the place?’ He said ‘Cave Tangy’s.’ And I said, ‘I dunno Roger, that sounds like kind of a rough place. If it’s in Tangipahoa Parish- they call it ‘Bloody Tangipahoa’ and I think there’s a reason for that.’ And Roger says ‘Oh, nah, nah- the place used to be rough, but it’s under new management.’ So we agreed to do the gig. Friday comes around, and we start on the drive to Amite…we’re going down all these back roads in Tangipahoa Parish…suddenly we see our equipment truck (pass us going the opposite direction). We turned around and caught up with them. And (roadies) George and Dean, who were pretty stout guys, said, ‘Look- we ain’t going n there!’…I talked them into it…We finally pull into this place, and I saw- this was the kind of place where they issue guns if you don’t have one and so forth. As we walked in we noticed that they had chicken wire around the stage to protect the bands that played there- it was one of those kind of places!” Roamin’ Togas member Ronnie Rauber: “You gotta understand, these were the days where, if you had long hair, you were a commie pinko fag or drug addict, or all of the above. The Cave Tangy’s was outside of Hammond- pulpwood country. And the place was like this restaurant that had a lounge below it, and to get to the lounge you had to walk through this restaurant. We walked in there, and the place went silent. Stone quiet. Raymond immediately said ‘I’m not playing here,’ turned around, and walked out. It took us an hour and a half to convince Raymond to play. And the guy from the club assured us that they never had fights there, ever! Nobobody ever got into a fight.” Roamin’ Togas member Pete Adams again: “I talked to the guy who ran the club, and he says ‘Oh yeah, we used to have a lot of fights here, but we don’t anymore.’ So we, like idiots, go ahead and set up, and we hadn’t been playing more than two minutes when these two guys come rolling down the steps, beating the hell out of each other.We knew it was gonna be bad from then on! We hadn’t even finished the first set and they were screaming at us, throwing beer bottles at us…it was horrible. We played two very short sets, and then I announced that this was gonna be our last song. Some guy walked up and said, ‘This is not gonna be the last song.’ Then he turned to Ronnie and said “PLAY ‘DIXIE!'” It got pretty bad then.” Roamin’ Togas member Ronnie Rauber: “I said something to this guy, he said something back, then he grabbed me and pulled me off the stage…we had a ruckus then. He grabbed me, and I was trying to fight him and hold onto my bass at the same time- I didn’t want my bass to get destroyed! Then Pete jumped on him, Daryl joined in…We finally managed to scramble out the back door. (Manager Roger booked us into situations like that) about a half dozen times!” ...