UNCLE LOU'S LMGA -- THE CBGB OF ORLANDO

It was late 2007. I'd finally settled into Orlando permanently after two years of back-and-forthing between there and my native NJ/NY. My favorite local band of the time, Dodger, had just disbanded and I was heartbroken. In their wake, though, were multiple projects on the parts of the ex-members. The most insane of these for sure was Necros of the Gods, a duo formed by ex-bassist Phil McCombs and a drummer named Mark Johnson. And one fine Saturday night I got the word that they were playing somewhere or other on Mills 50, Orlando's alternative to downtown (at least it was back then, anyway). I got the address and headed out to Colonial Drive, and I remember circling the main drag at least twice trying to find the place. I finally had to call the number provided with the address to find out exactly where it was. I finally found it, parked out front and headed inside... into a smoky pool hall with Necros of the Gods onstage playing an unhinged set to a similarly unhinged and enthusiastic crowd.

It was a strange and wonderful scene to wander into, to be sure, but the strangest thing about it was the presence behind the bar of one single solitary figure who stood out from all the rest. He was a big black dude with a BIG set of headphones through which he was listening to some sports program or other, while watching ESPN on the bar's big-screen TV at the same time. To say this man seemed COMPLETELY oblivious to the chaotic scene taking place in the same room is an understatement. He was in his own world to the point where nothing short of a full-on riot could bring him out of it. Meanwhile, Phil and Mark played their indescribable bass-and-drums funky noise racket and the crowd went wild. There was no trouble, the man at the bar took off his headphones and served up everyone when it was all over, and I went home in a delirious state feeling just how surreal the whole experience was. 

And that was my very first visit to Uncle Lou's LMGA (Live Music, Gaming & Alcohol) in Orlando, Florida, named for the very character at the bar who'd hid behind his headphones all night. I didn't know it then... but I'd just found a place that was gonna change my world forever. 

On July 5, 2008, I played my very first gig at Uncle Lou's as part of the All-Fucking-Right Fest at the invitation of ex-Dodger frontman Matt Kamm, now calling himself Tele V. Cheeseburger. It was more of an initiation rite than anything else, as I was shoved on first in the middle of the afternoon to play to less than ten people, one of whom was some old raging drunk who wouldn't shut the fuck up the whole time and clearly didn't belong there. I hadn't played out live in years and had nothing but a beat-up acoustic to play. But I did my best, and just by showing up I was officially in on the ever-growing scene at Lou's. The All Fucking Good Fest had been preceded by the All-Fucking Right Fest and the Good-Fucking-Bye Fest (both organized by Mark Johnson of Necros, the second to mark his move up north) and all three fests were all-day-and-night affairs, again with Uncle Lou behind his headphones ignoring most of it. At these fests I first made the acquaintance of one Joshua Rogers, whom I would go on to work with quite extensively years later. 

I have some old flyers for the abovementioned fests, with lists of acts that are now a true time capsule of the earliest days at Uncle Lou's. I also own the official Good-Fucking-Bye Fest CD compilation, sold exclusively at that fest -- talk about your "collector's items," this is a TRUE collectible. Its notes date the fest as having taken place on January 19, 2008, a time surely before some of the more recent bands were even old enough to go to Lou's. Everything from soup to nuts is represented on it, from the introspective folk of Sean Moore (another ex-Dodger) to the electronic pulse of D00EY D3CIMAL and Discovery of Magnetic North to the hip-hop of Paul Wall's Teeth and Diplodocus and the flat-out noise of Sleep On Alligator and This Is Reggae. There's even a track by the Triscults, a two-girl performance art duo whose vintage live videos say more about them than I ever could. They would actually make Lou's the location of a short film they made called "Chances," and the Sunday morning I spent at Lou's as an extra in that short certainly stands as my most unusual day spent there. 

By 2010 I'd snagged me a new electric axe I was eager to show off, and naturally, my Brazen guitar got its first official showing at Lou's in July of that year. Unbeknownst to me at the time, in the audience that night was a writer from the Orlando Weekly. A week later, much to my surprise, a review of my performance appeared in their music column, This Little Underground. Bao Le-Huu didn't quite get me at first, but over time he became a Brazen believer. He was much kinder to me in his review of the second time he saw me at Lou's in 2015, graciously acknowledging that I was like no other singer-songwriter playing in town at the time. By this time Joshua Rogers and I were doing shows together at Lou's with me playing alongside his Broken Machine Films light show, and we'd end up doing quite a few of these over the course of a decade. 

By the mid-to-late '10s I was playing out more regularly and the majority of these shows were at Uncle Lou's. And as time went on, there had been a big change in our Uncle. At some point he'd opted to ditch those big headphones and pay more attention in whatever insanity went on -- and soon he was saying how much he dug what he saw. The Weekly and other local 'zines took note of this shift in his behavior and soon, Uncle Lou was giving interviews. He admitted he didn't know what he was getting himself into when he opened the place, and the whole hardcore thing scared him a little bit at first, but he had come to appreciate the energy which flowed through his little dive bar. In one interview, he even shouted-out his favorite band -- the all-girl punk band Wet Nurse, led by super-talented twins Nina and Susana Chaplin.  

"Music is love," Lou would say in his Jamaican accent, spouting true reggae philosophy. And everyone loved Lou. Even in those early days the man was never rude. And as he came around to what everyone was doing, he put into place a no-frills booking policy in which most any band who played original music and didn't bring trouble could play Uncle Lou's with no questions asked and no profit sharing involved. This policy never changed. He'd post available dates on social media and watch as the bands (including mine) would book  'em up. You'd just snag a date on his calendar, invite whatever acts you wanted to share the night with, then show up and do your thing and it was all (fucking) good. You could have five or fifty people show up and he'd have you back either way. There are very few other places, especially in Orlando, who will give you a free gig that easy. So of course we came back again. And again. And again. And Lou was happy to have us back each and every time. 

I've had so many great times and great adventures at Uncle Lou's throughout almost its entire two-decade existence, and the great folks I've met and hung out with and the live performances I've both seen and played there have made it one of the greatest live music scenes I've ever been a part of. But Lou's will forever mean the most to me as the place where I met both Joshua Rogers and my drummer in my band Los Jarritos, Cesar Marquez, and the place where he and I first played together as members of Bobby Clock & the Soda Pops. Bobby loved Uncle Lou and was a big, smiling presence there for a short time, until he sadly passed away in the summer of 2019. That first gig I did with with Bobby and Cesar is my all-tme favorite memory of performing there, though of course I played many other shows there that were just as memorable. 

When Cesar and I began playing out again as Los Jarritos, we immediately made Lou's our first stop and decided to play there exclusively. It made for a very memorable series of shows and we made ourselves some new fans such as Jim Leatherman, photographer for the Weekly, who took great shots of us playing at Lou's on numerous occasions (such as the one above). Every night at Lou's has been a new adventure, and I seldom left the place without another crazy memory. 

Sadly, it looks like Uncle Lou's time in Orlando is coming to an end. An arrest on a total bullshit-charge of illegal hard-booze sales led to Lou being transferred to ICE custody on an expired visa and as I write this, he is in the process of returning to his native Jamaica. He leaves behind one seedy little pool room with an uncertain future, a space hundreds of bands passed through in the space of 20 years. To say this would be the end of an era is an extreme understatement. Having a space where we could do anything we wanted, whenever we wanted... I must confess, the underground music and arts scene in Orlando has been spoiled. 

I can't just conclude that Lou's deportation is simply due to the current wretched fascist political administration in America and leave it at that, though. Mills 50 is a very different landscape now than it was when Lou found what was then a nice quiet strip to open his bar on. Just like Williamsburg, Brooklyn before it, the place is being turned into another gentrified madhouse, and (coincidentally?) there have been recent attempts to drive Lou out of town. With notorious real estate thugs like Team Market Group buying up once-quiet spaces on Colonial Drive and turning them into trendy-ass food joints, I've long feared that Lou might not survive such an extreme transition. As such, I suspect that there were forces in cooperation with ICE here. Someone who doesn't think all these snooty influencers going to these new places would mix well with punks partying at a dive bar. Surely this isn't something that could've just happened as it did, and a lot of us here in O-Town want answers.

If this is indeed the end of Uncle Lou's, I can only hope its raw DIY, do-what-you-want aesthetic still remains somehow. All we would need now is for someone else to step up to the plate and create a new space with the same open-door policy and sense of adventure as that which prevailed at Lou's. A new thing which would both honor Lou and rage on with what he started. I would hope the whole spirit of Uncle Lou's is not only never forgotten but never allowed to disappear. Heaven knows we need it now more than ever. We will never forget Uncle Lou, and surely he will never forget us. I can only wish him all the best in wherever he winds up next, and that we haven't seen or heard the last of him. He has made all of us underground Orlando-based artists feel forever proud that we've done our thing here for sure. For that, and so much more, all the glory goes to Lou, our favorite uncle. And if you're reading this, Lou, I give a zillion thanks to you for everything and more... and I'm not just speaking for myself.

UNCLE FLOYD: A TRUE PUNK

And so 2026 has arrived after a year's worth of some of the most devastating losses in music and culture we've seen yet, and already it's proving to be more of the same shit, and once again, this time the tragedy has REALLY hit me hard. Floyd Vivino passed away on January 22nd at the age of 74 from a series of very recent health issues including cancer and a stroke. Of course, if you're reading this, you know who he was and what he's famous for, especially if you're a Jersey boy. So I'll just cut right to the chase and add my own stories of growing up a major Floyd fan to the growing list of other fans' personal memories of the man. His is a devastating loss to all of us.

I first encountered Uncle Floyd one fine cold December morning in 1978, in the small auditorium of Gilbert Avenue Elementary School in my hometown of Elmwood Park, New Jersey. The school had booked him to do a special performance for the kids for Christmas, and we all packed ourselves into the room for his show. I'd seen the name "Uncle Floyd" before, several times in the listings of my local TV Guide. But there was never any description of the show except the word "Children" next to its name, which made me think that it was something my newly teenage self (I'd just turned 13) was too old for by that point, and so I had never bothered to investigate further 'til then. 

Boy, was I wrong. Out came this crazy nerdy guy with this crazy wooden puppet named Oogie, and for the next half hour or so I laughed my ass off. He was wild, and he was zany, and he was pure New Jersey on top of it all, and I totally, completely dug it straight off the bat. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only kid who walked out of his performance a fresh new Uncle Floyd fan. And that very same day, when I got home from school, I knew what I had to do. I finally watched The Uncle Floyd Show for the very first time, and that's when I fully got it, in the course of another half hour of laughing my ass off -- a bonafide PUNK ROCK TV show! 

I'm not just talking about the musical talent featured on his show, which I'll get to in a second. I'm talking about the full, top-to-bottom presentation of the show itself, low-budget, DIY, raw and with a wide margin for error... just like punk rock itself. Those once-mysterious TV Guide listings were now the most important part of every issue to me as I scrambled to keep up with the show's schedule, which for awhile seemed to change every month. They even had him on at 8 in the morning for awhile, which would be typical for a "children's" show, but this was no kid show even if its host was playing school auditoriums. Unless, of course, you expanded the definition of it to include folks who weren't exactly "kids," but you get the picture, I'm sure...

Now, again, as a punk I instantly related to Uncle Floyd's brand of off-the-wall TV. I also happened to be a huge Ramones fan. So when I tuned one night into my then-favorite radio station WPIX (which for one glorious year and a half championed punk and new wave like no other commercial station had before) to hear the Ramones proclaim themselves Floyd fans and plug upcoming appearances on the show, my jaw dropped to the floor. What a coincidence, my favorite band on my new favorite show! It all made perfect sense to me, and as it turned out, so many other punks both local and national were seeing the big picture as I did, including the other punks in my high school! So of course I caught all the Ramones' appearances and made a cassette tape from my little TV speaker of them, which I still have along with a few of Floyd's comedy bits (including Joe Frankfutter and Cowboy Charlie, my two favorite characters) which surely would be lost to time otherwise.

For awhile I had to watch the show on my tiny black and white Sanyo TV in my bedroom, because it had far better UHF reception than my ancient and woefully inadequate color TV in the living room. But then the miracle of cable TV arrived and at last I was able to see Floyd in color with a clear signal through the cable transmitter. It all came just in time for me to catch what many consider to be the Uncle Floyd Show's peak period on WTVG (later WWHT) channel 68 out of Newark, a truly punk TV station if ever there was one with its eclectic mix of local ethnic programs (all produced in the same studio as Floyd's) and national syndicated shows. I adored his "Voice of the Viewers" segment, which spotlighted artwork sent in by the show's fans, and was ecstatic when my very first contribution, a salute to the New York Yankees I'd worked up in my art class, made it onto the show! I met Netto at my hometown's annual 4th of July picnic and freely admit to camping out in front of his house hoping to hang out with him again when I found out he lived (and still lives) right next to the Elmwood Park Library. 

I also caught several more of Uncle Floyd's personal appearances during this period. I saw him perform at Ken's Magic Shop, the show's primary sponsor, which was also Floyd's bearded sidekick Scott Gordon's day job. I went to an autograph session at Looney Tunez Records, another sponsor which was run by future members of Dramarama, and still have my signed photo of Floyd and Oogie from that day. And I saw him with the full cast twice at Clifton High School's auditorium, two fantastic Friday night shows in '79 and '80 which only years later I learned future Adrenalin OD drummer Dave Schwartzman helped organize. (I would go on to damn near get killed on that same stage in a stunt gone wrong during AOD's very first live performance there a year or two later... but that's another story.)

But of course, all of what I've told here so far merely scratches the surface of what a distinctly Jersey phenomenon the Uncle Floyd Show was. And as for punk rock, he was keenly aware of the aesthetic similarities between what he and the new bands were doing and he dug it. No further proof of this is needed than the fact that the Ramones were just one of literally hundreds of bands who appeared on the show as musical guests. It was a time when so much great new music was happening and I was absorbing it all like a sponge. There's a list circulating on Floyd's Facebook fan site which is striving to list EVERY band which ever played, which may never turn out to be complete, and it's far more convenient for me to refer you to said list than make a big list of my own here. Suffice it to say that the show was every local band's dream gig, and I made a few wonderful discoveries through Floyd's exposure of them, and TV Toy, WKGB and Fats Deacon & the Dumbwaiters remain personal favorites of mine. 

But my favorite Uncle Floyd Show memory of all time has to be the Misfits' appearance on Halloween night in 1980, which was perhaps even more incredible than any of the Ramones' appearances and a moment my local punk crew regarded as our equivalent of the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. I'd heard rumors that they'd be on the show that night but didn't believe them and so didn't tell my pals. Afterwards, I felt bad about having kept my mouth shut about it... until I met up with the gang shortly afterward to find they'd all seen it themselves anyway and couldn't stop bouncing off the walls about it! This defining moment, like most episodes of the show, only aired once and was never repeated, and you either saw it or you didn't. 

Floyd himself was also a recording artist, releasing a slew of 45s on the BIOYA label, whose odd name was an acronym for "Blow it out your ass!" These were mostly novelty tunes geared to some of the show's characters like Oogie, Bones Boy, Looney Skip Rooney, Don Ho-Hum, and Cowboy Charlie, whose "Deep in the Heart of Jersey" remains Floyd's all-time greatest hit. Floyd would also play it straight from time to time, banging out old standards like "It's A Sin To Tell A Lie" on his upright piano. All of these singles have his brothers Jimmy and Jerry Vivino's band backing him up, and they still don't cost a fortune to own! Later on, he released an album on Mercury, and a few CDs as well, one of them a most fittingly punk-themed collaboration with Dr. Demento. And not to be outdone, multi-instrumentalist cast member Netto put out a fine version of Django Reinhardt's "Minor Swing," which the Looney Tunez record shop financed. I should also mention the late, great Mugsy, the show's resident songwriter, whose parodies of everyone from Springsteen to the Beatles sometimes provided the musical entertainment, and who did a split 7-inch with Floyd called "Public Enemy" under the name of... Peter Punk!

Now, If you knew Uncle Floyd, you know that he was an absolutely PHENOMENAL piano player. To my ears quite possibly the best I've ever heard, ever. Even my father, who didn't care for most anything else about the show, had to admit that Floyd sure could play the hell out of that upright in the corner of the studio when he overheard him jamming out on the TV one evening. In fact, the last time I saw Floyd perform live was one of his evening lounge piano gigs at the now-defunct Colucci's Italian Restaurant in Haledon for my 30th birthday. He dazzled me with astonishing playing the entire time and made it look as easy as riding a bike. I passed him a note that it was my birthday and got him singing "Happy Birthday" and a photo opportunity with him for the privilege. As I recall, he went into "Volare" and I sang a few bars of it (much though I hardly know any of the words!) as my mother snapped the shot. Uncle Floyd was always a class act to his fans, always happy to sign autographs and smile for the camera no matter where he was or what he was doing.

For a very short time it looked like Floyd could've become the next big thing nationally. TV Guide profiled the show in a story which ran nationwide, Paul Simon called (IYKYK) and cast him in a small role in his movie "One Trick Pony," and NBC eventually signed him up. But alas, his part was cut from the final edit of Paul's movie (which flopped anyway), and he was given the truly unenviable task of following SNL (which, tellingly, stole a lot from Floyd) at one AM. Indeed, he had his share of famous fans who boosted his good name out there, like the Ramones and David Bowie. But in the end, the man was Jerseyan to the core, and Jersey was part of his thing to such a degree that I don't think too many folks outside of Jersey would've fully caught on to it (and they certainly didn't during his ill-fated national stint for sure). Sure, Bruce and Bon Jovi and Frankie Valli may have that Jersey thing going for them too, but not to such a degree that the world at large wouldn't understand. And that, I think, was what made Uncle Floyd cooler than all of them, that commitment to his local fans which never wavered. He may have tried to capitalize on his success, but in the end he never sold out, and I honestly don't think selling out would've suited him anyway. 

When news of Floyd's recent stroke reached me, I knew it was the beginning of the end and that he would sadly never be rockin' that piano again. Much effort was made to try to bring him back, including extensive (and, I'm told, grueling) rehabilitation, but it was a lost cause. Floyd made his last appearance on his own podcast just five days before Christmas. He spoke only for a few minutes and sounded like he was talking in his sleep. As soon as I heard it, I knew it was only a matter of time. And now yet another great legend is gone, in a world where I seem to wake up to the news of another dead cultural icon every goddamn day. 

Floyd Vivino was a truly unique and special talent, a bonafide eccentric who somehow figured out how to make a career out of just being his crazy self, and isn't that what all eccentrics aspire to? The Uncle Floyd Show deeply defined my culture as a punk and as a New Jerseyan both at once. There will never be another like him, nor another crew like his cast of characters (nor will we ever see another presidential candidate like Artie Delmar!). You didn't have to grow up or live in NJ to appreciate Floyd, but it surely went a long way towards fully understanding him. 

When I posted the simple words "Goodbye, Uncle Floyd" on Facebook upon hearing of his passing, a friend of mine who grew up far from Jersey told me "Hey, sorry to hear about your uncle." I gently corrected him at the moment, explaining who he was. But looking back, I should've just accepted his condolences and left it at that. Because with all now said and done, Floyd not only WAS my actual Uncle, but the very best one I ever had. Farewell, Floyd, and thanks for the memories, music, and laughter.