It starts with a violent episode of projectile vomit. In the beginning of Escape From Bellevue (A Dive Bar Odyssey), Chris Campion takes readers back to his first holy communion—where his body physically rejects the blood and body of Christ, and for the next couple of decades, opts for the sweet nectar of booze (among other toxins) instead.
The book continues with an honest look into his big Irish Catholic family—or “livers with feet” as he refers to them—and his life growing up in Huntington, LI. From the very outset, we gather that Campion is just your average kid from the ’burbs who breaks out of the mold with the usual I’m-a-rebel-in-high-school asshole behavior and a band to boot. He remembers his uncool teenage self as, “a loud and unself-conscious jackass who partied heavily on the weekends and would do anything for a laugh.”
This sort of dialogue pretty much sums up the style of most of his memoir—comical enough to let out a snicker, but nothing uproarious. His unforced humor adds relief to some of the darker moments that rise in his conflicts with his family, his frustrations with his own shortcomings as a musician and his bottle-hitting habits.
And while the experiences of a hedonist lead singer of a band aren’t always so relatable, Campion’s accounts don’t lack in the occasional sentimental leaks. He sobers up once in a while and reminisces about his first love or his homesickness in college—familiar pangs we’ve all experienced at some point or another.
All of this—his family, his hometown, his dropping out of college and his inability to hold a steady job—provides fertile ground for a budding career as a musician. Intermittently, he drops some of his song lyrics as they relate to the specific events that happen in his life. It all slews together like a stream of nostalgia.
Then halfway in, things start to happen—the whirlwind of life in a band on the rise. The reader can sense the fast progression of Knockout Drops as story after story unveils new venues and the members’ progression as musicians (without a record deal). The band travels up and down the East Coast from South Carolina to Connecticut. They play at dive bars and clubs of all sorts; Campion drinks it all down as he tries to make it to the top.
Among the most memorable scenes is the time Campion ends up in Charleston, South Carolina performing for rodeo clowns and carnival folk. Another time, he sneaks into a club where he was performing because he had gotten busted for doing coke in the bathroom a month prior. These are just a few episodes among many which Campion endures as he quests for fame and fortune, neither of which he finds.
What he does find from time to time is a shortage of luck and housing. He crashes with lovers. He puts out classified ads looking for someone to house and stabilize the lead singer of a band. He transforms his girlfriend’s place into an opium den and manufactures slews of lies to cover up the ensuing chaos—his rowdy friends, his own habits and the circumstantial messes in which he finds himself.
Finally, he comes to grips with the entropy. There’s the coming down after the high. The story of his fizzled band and uncontrollable alcoholism can go no further without resolution. He faces intervention from friends. He goes full circle and, like any good Catholic boy, calls on the Holy Spirit in his complete state of guilt and despair.
Occasionally, Campion’s humor sufficiently held my interest, but the story as a whole, like his band, was just another almost hit. The bouts of alcoholism jumbled with the sparing moments on stage never really led to more than just a series of encounters from your average guy from Huntington who was the leader of the what’s-it-called band. And so, to be fair, Escape from Bellevue only almost made the cut.
