Bohemia: Carla Evonne and the Spaghetti People
I've been taking pictures of my Christmas tree. The only thing I don't like about my little camera is that the flash is SO bright and of course without it doesn't always work either. ANYway so I took some like this----I love the ones that are supposed to look like they have snow on them but to me it's always looked like they're wearing little turtlenecks....
and then I came across this:
Yup, it's our Bohemia ornament which we've been putting on our tree for uh, I don't know, 25 years or something. Why? I don't know...we also have a White Castle hamburger box from the same era.... Anyway....I had done a couple of youtube searches etc. for Bohemia stuff and never come across much more than a reference here or there. However to my great delight Fast Frank or Frank Raven or whoever now has several up on youtube..... THANK YOU FRANK!
I saw Bohemia at Mabel's a couple of times my freshman year. The next year I was sharing an apartment with Eileen and another friend and my sister Judi was visiting. This would have been 1981. We told her the plan for the evening was to have dinner---she said she'd make spaghetti--and then go see Bohemia at Mabel's. With typical Judi enthusiasm she said, "oh, we should invite the band for dinner." I didn't really take her seriously but later when the band came into Record Service, our friend David Conroyd DID invite them. We threw together an additional vegetarian spaghetti sauce, pooled our money and sent a couple of friends to the liquor store. They ended coming back with a motley collection from the 7-11....that's how young we were....
The band came and was charming. If they thought it was odd that we had invited them for spaghetti in a ragtag old house they gave no indication and from then on Carla always called us the Spaghetti People. Carla Evonne was the singer and an absolutely lovely person. We saw them over and over and over----here in Champaign, then in Chicago and Indianapolis as well. Judi lived in Rogers Park at the time---as did the band---and she hasfond memories of Frank zooming by on a bicyle loaded down with musicalinstruments and waving at her....
I still love their album. Later they moved to LA and somewhere I have some wonderful postcards from Carla. We were at the 1991 reunion and they sounded great---wish they'd have another one....
So I have been happily playing these youtube clips over and over and realizing that our Bohemia ornament has a place on our tree for several more decades....