Middle East Magic, part 1: Drew Discovers an Oasis in Central Square

It was early 1986, a damp winter evening in February or March when I literally stumbled upon The Middle East Restaurant. Like every newcomer to Boston, I found getting around town in a car to be sensationally confusing. (Later I learned that it’s totally OK to go the wrong way on a one-way street, as long as you’re driving the vehicle in reverse). So what I did in order to learn my way was to let myself get lost. This night, I was exploring the slick streets of Central Square Cambridge, on and off Mass ave. I had just departed my day job which was on Broadway in nearby Kendall Square (then an underdeveloped and unrefurbished zone). It was around 6pm, already dark, and I was famished. From Broadway I turned right on to Mass Ave, rolled north, and as I waited at the red-light, I spied an inviting sign down a little side-street (Brookline Ave.) to my left. Sticking out perpendicular from the building, to be readable from Mass Ave, was one of those classic old plastic signs that had both a white and a yellow bulb inside so it would blink the two colors alternately. It read: “Middle Easten Food”.

“Mmmm, falafel,” I thought to myself.

I must have been hell-bent on eating, because I don’t remember pahkin’ th’ cah, which is always difficult around there. I walked from Mass Ave down Brookline Ave about 60 feet to the entrance on the left. The façade was painted in a cheesey Arabic Motif, with like, mineret spires. As I enetered, two things blasted me in the face: The smell of falafel in hot oil, and the sound of amplified Arabic music. The place was a typical shoe-box, extremely dark, with dark-painted walls. To my left was a bar; to my right, dining tables with people eating. Straight ahead, like an oasis in the night desert, was the brightly lit stage. What I saw up there flash-printed on the front of my brain like a photo negative.

Belly Dancers!

Arabic musicians playing exotic drums, and…wow…

Belly Dancers!

All in full “I Dream of Genie” silk and bangles.

Sweet!

So, there I sat by-myself, chomping on Leb-bread with hummus and falafel rolled in pita, enjoying the show. I remember how bad the PA was. The sound was shril and distorted. But I didn’t care.

Like I said: Belly Dancers!

Sahar

Little did I know then that ten years later I would be rocking on the big stage of the Middle East “Downstars”, with the most famous of the club’s Belly Dancers, Sahar, shimmying right next to me. As I sat eating my hummus in ’86, there was a bowling-alley below me; one of those odd candle-pin joints you only find in the Boston area. Converting those lanes in to the famous “Downstairs” rock-club was still two or three years off.

I would by no means say that in the coming years I became a regular at The Middle East, but between the “Upstairs”, “The Bakery” (now called “The Corner”), and the “Downstairs”, I sure did a lot of playing, drinking, hanging out, and of course, eating! (When I lived in Brighton, Bern and I dined there about three times a month).

The last time I played there was “Upstairs” on a frigid night; a freaking arctic night, in late ’05. I was lead guitar with Mick Mondo and Streaker (as-always using the stage name Marshall Tullamore and this night wearing my kilt WITH long-johns underneath). It was a fun, well-attended show headlined by Bourbon Princess, with us in the middle, and a new band called Temper opening. I happened to be producing Temper in the studio at the time. Temper’s drummer, Nancy Delaney, was also my drummer in The Tullamores, and Temper’s bass-player, the incomparable Pete Sutton, was also in Streaker with us. To top it off, the Bourbon Princess herself, Monique Ortiz, suffering from a broken hand and whacked-out on painkillers, sat in with us, performing a duet with Mick. So it was a typical incestuous night in the Boston/Cambridge rock scene.

And there I was, on that very same stage that I had discovered simply by chance two decades earlier.

Did I mention there were Belly Dancers?

A Be-Kilted Marshall Tullamore Rocking Upstairs w/ Mondo in '05

PS: I just remembered: The last time I saw Mark Sandman was there. late one night in the front room. I had finished a gig and was eating. He was at the very last table at the back, his back to the wall, as if to survey the whole scene with his heavy-lidded eyes. He nodded to me. He was feeling no pain. No pain at all...