And the Band Played

4/24/73 Main Point Bryn Mawr, PA

This is a song... I lived 18 years of my life next door to a gas station in a small town in
New Jersey. And it was Ducky Slattery Sinclair station... that was the cat's name,
Ducky Slattery... he's an older cat, older guy and I lived next door. And you know how
in a small town the place that the people gather these days is down at the gas station.
Everybody comes in, sits around, guy comes in, somebody goes out, pumps the gas,
comes back in. And this Ducky Slattery and this cat Bill who was kinda alcoholic
-kinda, you know- this guy had a pink cadillac, it was a sight, it was a pink cadillac. He
got drunk and smashed it up. And there was this cat Danny, Danny was the weird cat in
town. There was two of them [audience laughs], right, one lived with us and the other
one was Danny. Danny was the cat, he was, uh, he was homosexual [some band member
whistles]. Did you say that these days? Saint Jesus! Danny's making a lot of bed right
now somewhere. He was ahead of his time, he was liberal. And there was crazy
George, who was just crazy,  rode a bicycle, older guy, he rode a bicycle, still rides
one, saved the money for it. True story, true story.

Ducky Slattery had this one line he ripped off the Marx Brothers and any time anybody
came in the gas station he'd always say, "You wanna buy a duck?" That was his big
line, you know, not too original but it worked, you know. You wanna buy a duck?
Wha'ya gonna do with a duck? What's anybody gonna do with a duck? Right... a duck.
My father killed a duck for Thanksgiving once. Helped me get out of the draft. Went
down to the army, and told them ever since I seen my father kill that duck, I go crazy
every time I see a duck. If I was out there on the battlefield in Vietnam and a duck
came walking by, I might go nutty -- I might shoot generals or something. I don't
know. I could do anything I don't know what I'd do when I see a duck. Anyway, I was
sitting outside one night and...

    The moon hung like a shadow on a rung over Shanghai...