Before Jimi

Do you remember who played at your first rock concert? Where it was? Why you were there?

In the spring of 1963 my train pulled into Norfolk, Virginia. That gives the time place and why. Anything you could do to get off the base was better than listening to real yardbirds with drills and the absolute stench of fire retardant blowing through the non working air conditioning. 

I went to see an Alan Freed type concert where the "Star" goes on stage, plays the hit, the flip side and whatever other song they might know and leaves for the next performer. I remember only one performer. Her story was longer than her career. With only one big hit it isn't that hard to understand. The girl was discovered by a much more well known performer, Carole King. Little Eva, stage name, was heard singing as she mopped the floor for Carole King and now she was on stage. Whatever happened to her? She was truly a dynamic little force on the stage, maybe 5' tall, holding an upside down guitar and strumming away, long before Hendrix entered the scene. "Everybody knows the locomotion..."and covered it as well!

It was many years, two daughters and a whole new life before my next concert and everything had changed. It wasn't a high school auditorium anymore. The girl I was with spent the entire concert standing on the back of the chair she was supposed to be sitting in. Wouldn't have seen a thing if she had obeyed that one. The Centrum in Worcester, new, clean, loud and it was New Years Eve. Some one opened, then ended. A wait and all hell broke loose as the"House Party" started. Three hours of Peter Wolf, Magic Dick and J. Geils and a presentation of the city keys later we drove the hour plus back home. Three days later I could hear again!

The old Boston Garden and several Cambridge venues pretty much ended my concert days. There are only so many performers out there now that I would pay to see/hear. And, almost all of them play the guitar. Clapton, Beck, Page, Keith and Mick with any blues player of note, Joe Bonamassa for one might make the list. But, big but...it costs so damned much! Little Eva was under $10, Geils around $25 on New Years, wonder what Keith and Mick get now...not $10.00! 

Ah, the good old days!