Summer of love

[missydog1]

Sounds fun!

wow, old concert memories ...

I have some good ones ...
The Beatles at Hollywood Bowl in '65, their last concert but one at Dodger Stadium, Byrds at the Troubador, the Stones with Buffalo Springfield opening in '66 at Hollywood Bowl, Dylan and the Band at Pasadena Civic in '66, Hendrix at the Shrine in '67, the Fillmore in Summer '67 (can't remember the band), John Mayall at the Whiskey in '69 ... Newport Rock Festival with Country Joe and everyone in '67, Santa Clara festival with the Airplane introducing brand new band Santana in May of '69, Mother Earth at the Cow Palace, Zappa and the Mothers at the Shrine in '68, Tim Buckley at the Longshoreman's Hall in '69, so many memories.

but the best was the Monterey Pop Festival ...
Janis (twice), Hendrix, the Dead, the Airplane, Who, Butterfield, Steve Miller, Otis Redding, Mamas and Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Country Joe, Wilson Pickett, Ravi Shankar ... and more. Never saw anything like that again!

I also went to Altamont and survived! but not Woodstock.
Then in the 80's and 90's saw so many shows at the Greek, Shoreline, Oakland Coliseum, Concord Pavilion, the Paramount, etc.., those were good times.

The three acts I tried never to miss were Dylan, Jackson Browne, and Van Morrison ... guess I'm just a hopeless junkie for singer-songwriters ... and must include Jimmy Buffett in the list of listened to all his tunes a million times.

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know where I'm a gonna go, when the volcano blows."

[Kelena]

Wow, Kathy! Monterey Pop! Beachboy is impressive with three Jimi Hendrix concerts. I never saw Jimi.

I am (or was) a Stones fan. Considered going to Altamont, but we would have had to hitchhike and decided against it. Have seen then in LA several times, San Diego once, and most memorably in New Orleans where they did a great "Brown Sugar". Neville Brothers and George Thorogood opened. Not to be too curmudgeonly, but Justin Timberlake and Clay Aiken don't quite compare.

[Beachboy]

I think being able to see Blind Faith with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, Stevie Winwood and Rick Gretch was beyond words. Back then Blind Faith was considered RnR's first super group, not to mention they only made one album and that really bummed me out back then!

As I write this, in my mind I can hear "Blind Faith's song 'In the presence of the Lord', one of my favorites. One of my other favorite things in life is youtube for these special occasions. May I give the PunaWeb Blind Faith!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSoLFrCS8M

[Beachboy]

quote:

---

I think being able to see Blind Faith with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, Stevie Winwood and Rick Gretch was beyond words. Back then Blind Faith was considered RnR's first super group, not to mention they only made one album and that really bummed me out back then!

As I write this, in my mind I can hear "Blind Faith's song 'In the presence of the Lord', one of my favorites. One of my other favorite things in life is youtube for these special occasions. May I give the PunaWeb Blind Faith!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSoLFrCS8M

Rainbow Bridge Know what's cool? I'm in this crowd!!
url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWaLmuF3AlI&mode=related&search=[/url]

---

[JerryCarr]

My favorite concert of all time was seeing Janis Joplin in Gregory Gym at the University of Texas in December 1969. Janis was a UT dropout, and started out singing folk music with a guitar on a bar stool at a place called Threadgill's Tavern on Lamar Blvd. in Austin around 1963. Janis did a few blues numbers one night, and somebody told her that she should switch to blues and move to California, so she did.

Anyway, Gregory Gym was built in the 1890's and looked like a Victorian railroad terminal with huge structural steel cantilevers holding up the roof. It had no air conditioning, negligible heating and held about 8,500. The night of the concert about 12,000 people showed up. The police and fire marshalls gave up trying to restrain the crowd when it became apparent that doing so would lead to yet another riot on the already battered campus. (We were very anti-war and regularly made our displeasure known.) They threw the gates open and left.

People were literally sitting and hanging among those enormous cantilever rafters to see Janis. My roommate and I were lucky enough to get seats because we had a late PE class in the gym annex and got in early. (We actually had tickets!)

Now anyone who went to UT-Austin in that era knew of the ritualized torture of Registration that was held in Gregory Gym every September. It was usually around 100 degrees and about 90% humidity outdoors in Austin that time of year and worse in the gym. They literally had paramedics on duty to handle all the people who passed out. Registration was not yet computerized, and some people spent days in that hell-hole trying to get a course they needed to graduate.

So when the show began, the band came out and took their positions, followed by Janis. The crowd went wild, and then instead of singing her first number, Janis said, "I've been in this s*&%-hole before! Do they still make y'all do registration here?" The crowd screamed "HELL, YES!" Then she said, "Yeah, I know what it's like to need to get into old Doc Bowman's American History class and have to wait in line for three days. It made me feel like everybody in the whole round world was . . ."

. . ."Down on Me." She and the band went seamlessly into that great radio hit. We went crazy. She poured her heart and soul out on that stage for the next three hours.

That girl from Port Arthur, Texas who was never pretty enough or refined enough for tea-sipping proper Texas society shone like a supernova that night. She took the ugliness and the pain she felt and turned it into something beautiful. SHE was beautiful. We all knew we had been there for something special, and less than a year later, she was gone.

Time passes. Now we have another crappy president and another war. But I will never forget that night or the girl from Port Arthur. Janis, you're beautiful. We all knew it. Why couldn't you?

Wistfully needing to hear "Ball and Chain,"
Jerry





Edited by - JerryCarr on 07/31/2007 14:06:02

[Beachboy]

quote:

---

My favorite concert of all time was seeing Janis Joplin in Gregory Gym at the University of Texas in December 1969. Janis was a UT dropout, and started out singing folk music with a guitar on a bar stool at a place called Threadgill's Tavern on Lamar Blvd. in Austin around 1963. Janis did a few blues numbers one night, and somebody told her that she should switch to blues and move to California, so she did.

Anyway, Gregory Gym was built in the 1890's and looked like a Victorian railroad terminal with huge structural steel cantilevers holding up the roof. It had no air conditioning, negligible heating and held about 8,500. The night of the concert about 12,000 people showed up. The police and fire marshalls gave up trying to restrain the crowd when it became apparent that doing so would lead to yet another riot on the already battered campus. (We were very anti-war and regularly made our displeasure known.) They threw the gates open and left.

People were literally sitting and hanging among those enormous cantilever rafters to see Janis. My roommate and I were lucky enough to get seats because we had a late PE class in the gym annex and got in early. (We actually had tickets!)

Now anyone who went to UT-Austin in that era knew of the ritualized torture of Registration that was held in Gregory Gym every September. It was usually around 100 degrees and about 90% humidity outdoors in Austin that time of year and worse in the gym. They literally had paramedics on duty to handle all the people who passed out. Registration was not yet computerized, and some people spent days in that hell-hole trying to get a course they needed to graduate.

So when the show began, the band came out and took their positions, followed by Janis. The crowd went wild, and then instead of singing her first number, Janis said, "I've been in this s*&%-hole before! Do they still make y'all do registration here?" The crowd screamed "HELL, YES!" Then she said, "Yeah, I know what it's like to need to get into old Doc Bowman's American History class and have to wait in line for three days. It made me feel like everybody in the whole round world was . . ."

. . ."Down on Me." She and the band went seamlessly into that great radio hit. We went crazy. She poured her heart and soul out on that stage for the next three hours.

That girl from Port Arthur, Texas who was never pretty enough or refined enough for tea-sipping proper Texas society shone like a supernova that night. She took the ugliness and the pain she felt and turned it into something beautiful. SHE was beautiful. We all knew we had been there for something special, and less than a year later, she was gone.

Time passes. Now we have another crappy president and another war. But I will never forget that night or the girl from Port Arthur. Janis, you're beautiful. We all knew it. Why couldn't you?

Wistfully needing to hear "Ball and Chain,"
Jerry





Edited by - JerryCarr on 07/31/2007 14:06:02

---

Wasn't "Cheap Thrills" one of the all-time best live LP's of it's era? Approved by the Oakland Chapter of the Hell's Angels", I remember seeing that in the right hand corner of the LP.
Hey Jerry, did you ever enjoy Lou Reed at all? Speaking of Live music ,Lou Reed's Rock N' Roll Animal was pretty awesome.
Of course I actually grew up with the Rolling Stones & Bob Dylan. Probably my all-time favorite Stone album 'Exile on Main Street', that buggar was awesome too!

[loffelkopffl]

went to the portland blues festival a couple of weeks ago, and the last two acts of the night were Savoy Brown on one stage and Eric Burdon and the Animals on the other, talk about a flash back, it was great. alot of the old dinosours are still out there sounding as good as ever. i heard about the event the other day the day of so i didn't go, sounds like it would have been fun.

[Rob Tucker]

As fine as Blind Faith's album was the tour was a moderate disaster. I caught the show in Santa Barbara and the warm up band, Bonnie and Delaney, blew Blind Faith off the stage. The tour ended early as I recall with both bands breaking up. Bonnie and Delaney's album, Accept No Substitute, is a classic blues rocker too. B&D had a fantastically tight band. Very interesting was the fact that Clapton took the whole Bonnie and Delaney band (except for B&D) down to Florida where they went on to do a really great album - Layla. Layla was the true culmination of that failed Blind Faith tour. The rest of the band continued to back up album after album over the years. Kind of a Missouri version of the Funk Brothers.

I caught Janis Joplin in 1965 in Haight Ashbury just as things were starting up. Big Brother was playing at the Straight Theater (Janis was just a band member then) and the show cost about a buck and included a plate of spagetti. I was fouteen and in that one night in the Haight found out about sex, drugs and rock and roll. Very, very memorable. I had plenty to tell my friends back at Ventura High.

Lots of memorable concerts over the years for sure.
Sure is more fun remembering all the R&R history than the Viet Nam and Civil Rights battles. Got run out of a town in Oregon by a pack of drunk lumberjacks. Got a bullet hole in my van in Kansas. It was the "love it or leave it" days.... I moved to London. I was then fortunate to catch Hendrix's last show at the Isle of Wight and was actually standing in front of the hospital in London a few days later when they brought his body in. Real sad day that.
Got a job in London working for a guy named Richard Branson. Branson was running a student magazine and preparing to launch a record company called Virgin. Their first recording was "Tubular Bells". Anybody have that on the shelf?

I would not trade those years for anything..... Geez, you guys and gals got me totally waxing nostalgic.

[JerryCarr]

Yes, Beachboy, the Bear and I have a well-used CD of Lou Reed's "Rock and Roll Animal." It is one of the best live albums ever. There is a re-issue of "Cheap Thrills" available now that has two live and two studio cuts that were not on the original album. I highly recommend it.

Rob, the political scene in Austin was really weird. It was a notorious island of liberalism and anti-war sentiment in a sea of Texas rednecks. There were violent people on both sides, but I can honestly say most of the riots were started by the police. On one occasion, I witnessed the Austin PD breaking up a vigil being held by the disabled Vets by kicking over their wheelchairs and then clubbing them on the ground. A bevy of prim sorority girls was passing by and tried to stop it and got beaten up, too. Some more sorority girls came along and pelted the cops with bricks from a nearby construction site. This sort of stuff went on for years.

A bunch of us got thrown in jail on a Saturday night in Killeen, Texas for demonstrating outside Fort Hood. It turns out that it was a legal demonstration and they had to let us go the next day without charging us. Sunday morning before we got let out, a bunch of church ladies came to the jail to sing hymns to the prisoners. The jailer pointed to us and said, "Watch out. They're Communisses." The church ladies recoiled in horror and scurried down the row of cell to serenade the drunks. We went back later with the ACLU to pursue a false arrest complaint and were told that we had never been arrested. Sure enough, they had no record of us ever being there.

What days those were!

Cheers,
Jerry

[Beachboy]

quote:

---

As fine as Blind Faith's album was the tour was a moderate disaster. I caught the show in Santa Barbara and the warm up band, Bonnie and Delaney, blew Blind Faith off the stage.

---

Rob, when you saw Blind Faith in SB was Ginger Baker puking while playing the drums? He was when I saw them, but he was great! Ventura High, hahahahaha!!! I use to live of of 'Seaward Ave',down by the beach early 70's for one or two years. In ending up meeting a bunch of ex Ventura High kids at Chico St. I'm trying to remember two of their names. Tim Theyes[sp], and Gary Elsier[sp] both nice guys in there own rights. Theyes was a "jock", and Gary was into beer & Commander Cody.