Made-up eyes stare away from each other over superficial sights in the general emptiness. They're wearing lapel pins that say "unique." The starry-eyed press agent is admiring Peter from afar and stalking him with a Nikon. "This is a really big one for him," she said, "he's coming back to his home."

Johnson runs through a few of his vocals, flipping on his deck which plays--among sax and acoustic and electric guitars and bass--a mechanical percussion line. "Radiator," he says airily into the mike.

He's just testing.

THEN THE SERIOUS stuff begins, as the Boston rock press and assorted groupies from punks to spaceshots gather between the boxing ring and Peter, who starts, "Oh wow, man, look at this...looks like I'm back home...(wriggles back, sticks out his tongue and rolls his hollow eyeballs out from a thin, benny-worn face) spaced out again, huh..."

He started into "Snowblind," a cut off his new album.

"Elevator.........Ra---diator." The mannequins next to the stageset gazed lifelessly on a bunch of variously dissheveled rockies doing, en masse, their Keith Richards imitations, getting into it, encased by the cracked plaster of a boxing gym and the boxing posters (from Marciano to Frazier) which marked the time-honored Garden Gym. The "Snow...blind." The smoke drifted over from the grille, covering liquor breaths and camera clarity. Johnson led into some other songs behind his tapeband including "Catch a Fallen Star," the most impressive of the bunch. He spaced-out Lou Reed's "Pale Blue Eyes" (a testimonial to Hank Williams, also done by Patti Smith), leaving its tribute as poignant as novocaine.

Narcotic spaceshot put-ons in the memory of great rock'n'roll continued with "Sandman"--another song spaced into lost perception. And finally, oh finally, "Cat" Davis came jogging through the gym, stripped of her warm-up and donning her Everlast gloves. I was expecting, something like a roller derby queen, but the "Cat" was very real. She was beautiful, to begin with--in peak athletic condition with tight, firm skin and muscles; a cute, but tomboyish face under a flock of long, curly blonde hair. Her sparring partner was a short, pudgy guy--and they just goofed around for a few minutes until he plugged her good, perhaps by accident. Her smiles, those of an innocent outsider admiring the strangeness of it all, fled completely under the blow of Absolute Reality, the night's first genuine emotion. Crank time.

Her expression turned to one of total seriousness, her own pride stretching to its grittiest with the extension of her jab, and another, backing her sparring partner (who maintained the most tolerant of all smiles) into a corner, jab, jab, thump. "Beat the shit out of "em" a punk yelled. And she split before she could get too serious.

The crowd, shut up for the first time that evening by honest respect and interest, rolled back into chatter and some clowned on the mat for pictures, gorilla suits and numerous show-biz kids taking pictures of themselves.

The whole boatload of American suck'n'roll vanity and self-deprecation. "I'm a actress working as an ad receptionist." "I'm a poet working as a public relations man." Everybody on their way to being someone else somewhere else.

I followed "Cat" out the door for a breath of air--with her departure went quiet pride and confidence, a single fibre of integrity in a world of whitewash sales bargains. I have been following her since Ed Sullivan. Rock'n'Roll will just never be the same.