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Happy-go-lucky 'coincidence'

Got a friendly reminder two weekends ago, on vacation at the Cape, that there's no such thing as coincidence.
That Saturday, it rained as torrentially up there as it did here. And me without an umbrella. So down from Provincetown I drove, ostensibly to look for an umbrella. Somehow, an hour or so later, after a couple of stops, I meandered down to the south of the Cape, to a Benny's in Dennisport, and after being shuffled around from one department to another, I found a bin of $5 jobs behind some boxes in automotive.

Another guy found them at the same time as me. "Weird having the umbrellas buried in automotive," I said to him, not looking up.

"Hey … aren't you Fran?"

"Yeaaaaahhh ?…" This is weird.

"Pat O'Connell."

Of all the things. I hadn't seen him in years. And what were the chances of all these factors coming together at once?

Pat, a onetime New Haven attorney who lived here and in Waterbury, now resides in Eastham, above the elbow of the Cape, after a few years in North Carolina, where he had a band called The Flying Pigs.

He's a neighbor of Chandler Travis of cult favorites The Incredible Casuals these days, and Pat — who goes under the nom de disque P.J. O'Connell — had a little souvenir in the car for me to take home. It was his newly minted, second post-Pigs disc, "Happy Go Lucky," recorded with Travis and all four of the guys in NRBQ. And this album is just as good as the best of the Q albums; it has life and it has charm and it has hooks and it has a certain sweetness about it. And anyone who still wants rock'n'roll to be fun will love it to pieces.

Hopefully more with Pat the last weekend of the month, when he appears at NRBQ's Wild Weekend at Hartford's Hastings Hotel, along with the Q and The Chandler Travis Philharmonic. Meanwhile, if your curiosity is aroused, you can email Pat at pigboy@cape.com.

P.S.: By the time we left the store, the rain had stopped …

Fran Fried May 31, 2002