Yes and yes.
Short story. In summer ‘07 I was in the process of moving from Newton to Providence, and part of the quick and messy transition involved getting a storage space in Newton. A more depressing place you could not find, weighted down with the feeling of divorces, deaths, abandonment and peeling green concrete. The days of moving and working were exhausting, and going down there was usually a capper to a rough day. Anyway, on one of the trips, Seth Putnam and a rough looking young lady were moving stuff into the space. The way that they were doing this was to get one of the big, flat roller carts and piling stuff out of an old SUV on top of it. Clothes, tapes, records and sundry crap in a pile, no boxes. I wasn’t surprised to see him, because I had always known that Seth was from Newton, but his ignoble circumstance rendered me numb and not wanting to approach. I would rather had run up and said, “Seth Putnam, you are a f***ing god!”.
It wasn’t until later that I read about his insane drug overdose and coma, and seen photos of him preforming on stage in a walker. I suppose it says something about me that he represents the pinnacle of rock heroics. What that is you, my friend, shall never know.
