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Second Avenue and Fourth Street tended to be quiet at four a.m. With the exception of the ninety-year-old Ukrainian couple sitting on the stoop of their brownstone to escape their stuffy apartment, most of the late crowd were up towards St. Mark's Place.
Caffrey's heart felt warm. There was an air of honesty about this place. Although it had none of the techno-sparkle or the perfected cleanliness of his home-born time and space, there was something about the dirt and grease of the streets, the dusty and broken buildings and the imperfect people that made him smile. He no longer held regrets for having left his past behind to live on the original Earth in a time when its future still held great potential.
All the trepidation and sick twinges in his gut at having sold The Moby
Dick—along with the spurned and heartbroken Angie—to a pair of Marweegian Crebbledogs were gone. He'd paid a small fortune to hire a transport ship with a Temporal Twist engine to take him to the Sol System circa 1965.
He settled into a railroad apartment on the fifth floor of an East Fourth Street walk-up and found his bliss with a cherry-red Fender Stratocaster and a procession of artistic and sexually adventurous farm girls seeking fame and fortune in the big city.
And Caffrey Quark soaked the music in. He saw Hendrix live at Café Wha?, the Beatles play Shea Stadium, Bo Diddly the Blue Note, countless other bands in Central Park, CBGBs and, of course, Led Zeppelin's famed
The Song Remains the Same show at Madison Square Garden. He was among the few who cheered when Dylan went electric, among the handful who remembered Pink Floyd had a missing member and among the many who camped on the fields of Yasger's farm when anybody who was somebody played Woodstock.
His record collection grew to four digits as the diversity of the genre astounded him. His imagination was tickled by the wondrous complexity of Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer and Yes. His very guts felt warm at the cross-culture results of British kids who, obsessed with American blues masters, interpreted the genre with their own special touches. And he felt hope as many musicians went beyond mere fame and fortune and used their music to aid in the social changes that were exploding around him.
Caffrey cursed when the reactionary halfwits burned Beatles albums over a misunderstood comment. He laughed when Jim Morrison stuck it to the man on
The Ed Sullivan Show and cried when Jimi and Janice died. And he made friends. Four very good friends, who were each hungry for Rock 'n' Roll heaven. They formed the Rock band Marmalade Skies and would wow the locals every Thursday night in the basement of the Crimson Court Pub on East Seventh street.
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