Polo, Parties, and Good Deeds

When I ran the DJ company in LA in the ’80s, one of my regular gigs was DJing the post-game parties after the polo matches at the LA Equestrian Center in Burbank. It was a tony, money-and-horseys crowd that partied after the matches, with regulars including Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Neilsen, Stephanie Powers, Herve Villachez, and Juice Newton.

The Juicer was engaged to LA team captain Tom Goodspeed, who also ran the Equestrian Center. For being famous and horsey and whatnot, they were awfully nice and a lot of fun. I got to DJ their wedding – I was forbidden from playing any Juice Newton songs. We rocked.

That was long ago and far away. It’s nice to see Tom is still doing his thing, and so is Juice:

Grammy Award winning singer Juice Newton sang for an audience seated on hay bales to raise money for this quiet Sierra town ravaged by two wildfires last summer.

“I was asked if I would come to do a show to try to raise the awareness, to raise some money,” she said after Saturday’s concert. “Of course I’d come. Why not? … You’ve gotta help.”

Newton, fighting a cold, sang for more than an hour to a crowd of about 200 in a dusty field a few hundred yards from where an air tanker crashed while fighting a June blaze, killing all three men on board.

A second fire in July burned 9,866 acres and forced the evacuation of the Topaz Lodge, a hotel-casino and recreational vehicle park on the California-Nevada line.

Topaz Lodge owners Bob and Rob Cashell organized the weekend concert and craft fair to raise money for the local Chamber of Commerce (news – web sites) and to show that the fires had not wiped out the hamlet.

“We’re all part of California, and we all are sensitive as to what can happen with fires” said Newton.

I’m even more pleased to see they are still doing it together.