Enjoying music in the great outdoors
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- July 22, 2023
- 2037
I used to have a friend who was in a band that was invited to play at an outdoor setting in one of those all-day summer events.
Sounded cool, so I said, “I’ll be there,” and agreed to help out with playing the part of a roadie/fan; after all, I loved the group’s music.
Not to drill down too deeply into the disturbing details of that day, but before it was over, I’d witnessed some of the most barbaric behavior I’d ever seen including brutal assaults on people who were there just to enjoy the festival but, because they looked a little different from most of the others, with their spiked hair, safety pin piercings, ripped clothing and overall appearance, became the innocent targets of mob violence, resulting in a lot of spilled blood.
Somewhere in my archival and disorganized collection of detritus I’ve accumulated over the years, there’s a poster advertising the event, and should I ever unearth it, I’m sure the date would coincide with the rise of punk, that time in the late ‘70s when the foundations of popular music were being shaken to their core.
Being the open-minded guy I was (and remain), I had dipped my toe into the new sound, having grown fatigued with the bloated excess and creative vacuity of the Eagles/Fleetwood Mac landscape and had welcomed the Ramones when they slashed and burned their way through the bicentennial summer.
Hey, ho, let’s go … gabba, gabba hey!
Their revolutionary and reductionist two-minute blasts of guitar-driven pile-driving glory helped set the stage for all the craziness that would follow, though they’d be the first to admit that, when pared to its primal essence, what they were attempting owed a lot more to the legacy of the Beach Boys than to Patti Smith’s anarchy.
But to quote the Rolling Stones, it was only rock ’n’ roll.
My first real experience at an outdoor rock concert was seeing the Stones on their 1975 tour. I say “real” because two summers before, a few weeks after I’d graduated from high school, some friends and I ventured to Blossom Music Center — more on that venerable venue a little later — to see a few of the marquee acts from the British Invasion in what amounted to a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
If memory serves — and that’s a very big “if” when you get to be my age — among the acts on the bill were the Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and Herman’s Hermits, who were headlining the concert. Keep in mind the original “Invasion” had occurred a scant decade before, yet this music seemed ancient, a slice of life preserved for the enjoyment of only a few.
When Mick and the boys came calling a couple of summers later, 80,000 fellow Stones freaks flocked to that old cavernous stadium on Lake Erie, filling the stands to the roof and rafters, leaving the field itself for the diehards — like me — who had camped out all night in order to get as close to the stage as humanly possible.
Trust me, I could write a book about what I went through that day.
After that high-water mark, though, outdoor concerts became rather routine, and though I enjoyed seeing the Doobie Brothers open for Chicago — or was it the other way around? — and having a good time on the lawn at Blossom dancing around as Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes played into the night, nothing really grabbed my attention in a way that the Rolling Stones had.
And then Bob Dylan arrived with the Grateful Dead riding shotgun, accompanied by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
This, friends and fellow outdoor concert aficionados, was a Fourth of July to remember in a place called the Rubber Bowl.
I had seen the Dead play once before and had bought a ticket to see Dylan — with the Band — perform at Notre Dame, only to have the concert canceled for, of all lame reasons, a hockey game, so I knew being in Akron was a non-optional rock-culture event.
“It’s going to be a long day,” I said to my girlfriend. “Are you absolutely sure you want to be involved in something like that?”
I thank God to this day that I didn’t have to go alone because that place was chaos incarnate, what with the Deadheads and the Dylanists mingling in an outdoor marketplace reminiscent of a bazaar in Morocco and the Ohio sun beating down mercilessly. Her presence helped calm me and gave us a chance to enjoy it all.
True, we missed the last shuttle bus back to the parking area, but with the help of a nice couple with room to spare, we made it OK.
But Blossom Music Center was the home of the greatest outdoor concert I ever attended. Being the entertainment editor of the paper, I got passes to most every show and saw Dylan (again), Neil Young with the Blue Notes (first and only tour), the Allman Brothers Band, with Dickie Betts, and Little Feat, among others.
And there was Santana.
I had seen the Woodstock movie a dozen times, including once at the drive-in on a screen the size of an ocean liner, but nothing prepared me for the intensity of being in the center of the fifth row when Carlos Santana decided to set sail on an evening of guitar virtuosity, a performance that, at the time, I thought might kill me.
I survived it, thanks to the woman who would become my wife, who tended to me lovingly as I writhed in the cool grass, just needing to get away from the heat, the power, the sonic onslaught of an artist who made fire jump from his fingertips, the creator of the most insane, glorious, magnificent gift I’d ever been given.
Eventually, my heart rate slowed and soon enough my ears stopped ringing, and once the crowd that had stormed the aisles to get closer to the flame had receded, I felt like myself once again.
It’s one thing to get beaten up by the sound … it’s entirely another to have it happen at the hands of savages who don’t like the way you look. Music, outdoors, can be beautiful or brutal, Woodstock or Altamont, but be prepared for the worst as you hope for the best.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page, where the stereo system needs repairs.