Larry “The Fluff” Audette was formerly a resident of New Paltz, New York in the 1960’s -when New Paltz was “the poor man’s Woodstock”( as the The Lower East Side was “the poor man’s Greenwich Village”) and the college in New Paltz was known as the State University of New York at Psychedelphia- but Larry is now, since a few decades, a resident of Taos, New Mexico where he helps run his wife Pam’s crystal emporium.  She and Larry have raised a guitar playing son named Max who is a nurse in the neuro intensive care unite at UNM hospital in Albuquerque. Larry is himself known by the locals up in Taos as that guy who walks his dog around the town every afternoon and that guy who played piano for Freddy Fender at the casino.

     But Larry back in the day, and I mean back in the psychedelic 60’s Day where if you were there you cannot remember being there, as they say - so back in That Day, in that incarnation, he was one of the projectionists at the Academy Theater which was owned by the notorious eccentric, the late Donald Bellinger, who regularly ran “King of Hearts”,in his movie theater, hoping to ensure that no one at the college or in the village of New Paltz  or the outlying districts of swamps and old style mountain resorts and apple farms could escape seeing this movie. 

      When Larry was not projecting “King of Hearts” at the Academy Theater for Donald Bellinger who had a slight faux English accent and a little clipped English style mustache, which gave him a certain unnerving air of alien, archaic, supercilious poise, he, Larry, was working as a bar tender serving Bellinger drinks across the bar at a place called St. Blaise and Co. where the literati used to gather in the afternoon after the lunch hour was over at the bar just up the street called P and G’s which stood for Pat and George’s if I’m not mistaken.  P&G’s was the preferred watering hole for early morning drinkers and the lunchtime crowd who wanted to go to a bar for lunch that was at the top of the hill, just at the edge of the slippery slope that led down into the real bar territory but not actually in the middle of the action, and P&G’s featured a lot of very old brown wood - the bar, the walls, the tables with initials carved in them, pitchers of dark bock beer, incredible hamburgers and an older, graying and  taciturn bar tender named Stormy Nickerson who was obviously not part of the hippy crew and one would think had relatives on the village governing board and/or in the fire department, and who, like old Judge Hay on the early Grand Old Opry, “kept things down to earth”.

     There were large, high windows on two sides which looked out on a bright scene of  passing pedestrians and car traffic on Main Street where it intersected with the street that led up to the university campus and Halls of Ivy or in this case the large exterior walls on some dormitories with large cracks running through them due to the building contractors watering down the cement.  

     But about halfway down the hill from P&G’s, deeper into Bohemian Shadow-land where the action really was, here, at St. Blaise & Co, as I say, the literati, the shamanically inclined, and every sort of bar room philosopher and the occasional garage mechanic on a long lunch would gather to chat the afternoons away till the after-work happy hour started and a fresh crew would gather and wait for the rock and roll band to set up for the evening’s show at which time Fat Jack Murphy the jolly Irish raconteur would take Larry’s place behind the bar.

     Sometimes Larry, or “The Fluff” as he was familiarly known,  would even go from  behind the bar and then be seen coming in later in the evening in white shoes with a guitar case in hand to join up with a bass player named Billy Troiani, the bass player of choice for rock and roll, blues and even country bands in the Golden Age of Live Music in the New Paltz /Rosendale area in the 1960’s and who these days runs a band in Norway that specializes in American soul and funk music, so i hear.  Anyway Trioani and Audette  would proceed to perform the evening’s entertainment as “Duke and Slick”, presenting a repertoire that leant heavily on early rhythm and blues and folk blues classics as I remember -probably incorrectly, since I was there, however, I do remember them playing at Ralph Kolseng’s Homestead Bar one afternoon, where Erik Iverson and Marley Jones(the two painters) and myself were the clean-up men - so, I’m talking further along down Slippery Slope Street, really in the middle of the action, and on this particular afternoon Duke and Slick got into doing songs by the Coasters like “Searchin’ (“and I’m like that Northwest Mounty-ey-ey! You know I’ll bring her in some day.”) and “Youngblood” (“I saw her standin’ on the corner, a yellow ribbon in her hair. I couldn’t keep myself from shoutin - Looka there, looka there, looka there!”), songs by Lieber and Stoller the great LA songwriting team that fueled so many of the 50’s R&B stars with their kooky/rockin compositions, and I remember being quite quite gassed by this afternoon performance at the Homestead.

     Well those were the good old days and I'm happy to report we actually used to say, “These Are the good old days.”  I ‘d like to claim that we knew it couldn’t last but I think we were adequately stunned when Nixon’s picture appeared on the cover of Life magazine on January first,1970, announcing the end of the 60’s and the beginning of the 70’s - the end of an era?  Whadaya mean?! We just got started!  It’s a brand new day, a brand new era, make love not war, turn on, tune in and drop out, end the immoral, unjust and illegal war, support the troops, bring our boys home now, you can’t trust anyone over 30, and you can’t just announce the end of an era on a magazine cover and expect it to Happen!  Oh, Yeah?  guess what - yes, we can.

     And we just did.  Uppers will be replaced by downers.  Marijuana and plant entheogens will now be replaced by alcohol, horse tranquilizers, human tranquilizers, cocaine and heroine addiction, and bands playing live music in bars will hereby be replaced by dj’s playing disco music by The Village People and Tony Orlando and Dawn for kids on Quaaludes with perms in flowery shirts, bellbottoms and platform shoes.  Welcome to the Seventies.  You are still incarnated.  Deal with it.

     Oh, did I mention that Larry the Fluff is also, it turns out, several decades later, a painter specializing in scenes remembered from his walks around Taos often after dark and under the moon and stars?.