Taking Care of the Final Details

In the last six weeks before our first gig, I was putting in 18 hour days..every day. On top of all the last-minute equipment additions, and the daily rehearsals, I still had to take care of my customers and my business...that money had to keep coming in. The business never slowed down. And as the record got more airplay, and the success of the band seemed more and more likely... it seemed like all the women involved with the band were "jockeying" for position, too. Trying to keep it all together was definetely a challenge. We now had set the date for our first gig..it was going to be at a huge annual bandfest and party...that had gotten bigger and better...each successive year it had been held. It was put on by one of my friends who worked at the club, and was also a business contact. And we were going to be the "headliner"...the final band to hit the stage. We printed up a new batch of posters, but this time in addition to the words AVALANCHE IS COMING!...we also added the time, date, and location of this party. It was a Fourth of July event every year, and this year, it was falling on Saturday July 2,1979. We distributed the posters pretty much the same way we had with the first batch, but we had the added benefit of a record on the air, the public awareness of what "Avalanche" was...and a whole lot of word of mouth anticipation of the debut. Even the most die-hard skeptics who earlier on had said I was dreaming...had changed their tune. As I had said earlier, the record had changed the public's perception of us, as I had always known it would. We had always been motivated...but we were totally committed now. The date had been set...all the wheels were in motion...and we knew what we had to do.