Sidetracked
I'm sidetracked again, and I blame romance novelist Sandra Marton, as an e-mail mention of hers about the Rolling Stones got me to looking for the tale of my first two concerts. The first concert was probably in 1965, when the Stones first hit San Bernardino, California. I was 11. I asked Dad to take me there, and when he didn't take the bait, I cried, always a good move. Yeah, we went to that concert. In 1966, my mother agreed to let me see a Stones concert in Cambridge, England. She mortified me by insisting that I wear ankle socks instead of the regulation knee socks. This was a formal occasion, she told me.
It's hard to remember my next few concerts. Who can remember the sixties? I can recall Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Procol Harum. Procol Harum came probably in 1971. Then college and grad school intervened, as well as poverty. Only in the 1990s did I go to a few concerts again: two famous modern jazz bands, and one Bob Dylan thing. Bob Dylan was in his metal phase, and the acoustics at the hall weren't good for those of us in the cheap seats. One song sounded awfully familiar, but I just couldn't make it out until near the end. "All Along the Watchtower." I'd loved Dylan's and Hendrix's recorded versions.
In my computer search, I found an old column of mine, from the year 2000. The piece about the delightful Metallica fan mentioned in a post below was unfortunate, as I exposed this young co-worker to his parents. I had his permission to use his anecdote in my pathetic food column (which ran on Sundays on the first page of the Home section), but the poor fellow had no idea that his parents ever read such a thing.
The former co-worker is a brilliant storyteller, and he had used his stuff about swatting a swarm of yellow jackets outside his apartment, to great effect, but when telling it to his parents, he'd left out the fact that the magazine he employed for the killing was Playboy (the Darva Conger edition).
His mother called him up: "You read Playboy?" His dad, however, was understanding. "At least it wasn't Juggs."
Innocent that I was, I had never heard of Juggs.
It's hard to remember my next few concerts. Who can remember the sixties? I can recall Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Procol Harum. Procol Harum came probably in 1971. Then college and grad school intervened, as well as poverty. Only in the 1990s did I go to a few concerts again: two famous modern jazz bands, and one Bob Dylan thing. Bob Dylan was in his metal phase, and the acoustics at the hall weren't good for those of us in the cheap seats. One song sounded awfully familiar, but I just couldn't make it out until near the end. "All Along the Watchtower." I'd loved Dylan's and Hendrix's recorded versions.
In my computer search, I found an old column of mine, from the year 2000. The piece about the delightful Metallica fan mentioned in a post below was unfortunate, as I exposed this young co-worker to his parents. I had his permission to use his anecdote in my pathetic food column (which ran on Sundays on the first page of the Home section), but the poor fellow had no idea that his parents ever read such a thing.
The former co-worker is a brilliant storyteller, and he had used his stuff about swatting a swarm of yellow jackets outside his apartment, to great effect, but when telling it to his parents, he'd left out the fact that the magazine he employed for the killing was Playboy (the Darva Conger edition).
His mother called him up: "You read Playboy?" His dad, however, was understanding. "At least it wasn't Juggs."
Innocent that I was, I had never heard of Juggs.
posted by aparker54 at 4:03 AM
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