Thursday, March 27, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
"BAD LUCK. That's what you got."
This was the refrain to one of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' biggest songs off their 1975 album, "To Be True."
I hadn't thought about "Bad Luck" for a long time.
Not until earlier this week when I read that Melvin died at his Philadelphia home following a stroke at the age of 57.
I first heard "Bad Luck" more than 20 years ago on a cheap FM converter to the AM radio in my Chevy Vega, the worst performing and most dangerous automobile ever produced by General Motors.
Despite the primitive sound system, which had to carry the music over the creaking of the car's weak suspension and tapping of the overworked aluminum engine head, the song sounded great.
I, of course, had no idea that the sound was the result of the well-orchestrated performances of one of the greatest groups of all time.
Headed by Melvin, a Philadelphia native, and sparked by the tremendous vocal power of lead singer Teddy Pendergrass, this group could hold its own anywhere.
After I first heard "Bad Luck" in my Vega during my junior year at the University of Massachusetts, I mentioned it to my two best friends, Larry and Mike, when I got back to the dorm. They were pooling their money for a case of Piels Real Draft beer in the big-mouth bottles.
As beer connoisseurs, Larry and Mike weren't much, but they knew their literature and music.
Larry, a burned-out business major, would spend most of his late mornings and early afternoons cutting classes to read novels by Henry James, William Faulkner and George Meredith.
Mike, an engineering major who hated every professor in his department, preferred stranger works such as "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce -- a novel that I truly believe only the author and Mike completely understood.
And both my college friends were familiar with the "Philly sound," the distinctive smooth soul of the Philadelphia International Records label.
"Hey, Bob likes Harold Melvin," Mike said. "I guess that means he's joining us tonight."
Because it was Thursday, "tonight" started at 4 p.m.
We started our evening at the Blue Wall, the campus bar, taking advantage of happy-hour prices on a specialty drink called the Powerhouse, which contained a shot of nearly every liquor in the place.
Then, somehow, we made it to The Drake, a rathskeller not far from the campus. As I was at the bar attempting to purchase a $1.35 bucket of Reingold beer -- a house specialty that made Piels taste like the best beer in Germany -- Larry and Mike tried to convince two young college girls to play a song by Harold Melvin on the jukebox.
The girls, of course, wanted to play the Rolling Stones.
And the girls' boyfriends wanted to -- and tried to -- kill Larry and Mike.
"It's just bad luck," I said to my two friends as I carted them off to the school infirmary in my Vega -- all the while trying to get the damn FM converter to work properly.
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