1972 - The Dance That Thought It Was A Concert

Some events in life are more memorable than others. Although I played bigger crowds then this 150 - 200 the unexpected joy we got from this experience was one to never forget. An unexpected downturn can turn into an unexpected bonus. Stuff like this can sure put stars in a young man's eyes.


1972 – The Dance That Thought It Was A Concert

“No, I’m sorry, we don’t play any of those songs.” It was the third time I had repeated that message. The look of surprise and disappointment on the young lady’s face was obvious. This time I added, “All of these songs are originals.”

The room had been emptying for the last 15 minutes. From our vantage point on a fairly good-sized stage, it was obvious we were not playing their type of music. Unfortunately for them they had hired us from our reputation. We had offered to audition, as we were very aware we did not play typical “dance” music. The girl on the other end of the line had said we were well recommended and they trusted we would fit the bill. Evidently we had not.

The young lady standing in front of me started to walk away but stopped after only a couple of steps and turned back around, “Did you mean all of these songs are written by the band?”

“Yeah, so far” I replied, “You’ve never heard any of these unless you’ve been to one of our other gigs.” I was pretty sure she had not as we had only performed a couple of times before this job showed up. We only covered a couple of rock tunes from other groups although the entire second set was acoustic renditions of popular songs.

“Wow! That’s pretty cool! You mean you guys wrote all of these songs on your own?”

“Yep.”

She repeated, “Wow!” and walked back towards the little table where she sat with half-a-dozen other girls pausing, with her back to us, and leaning forward on the table. She looked very animated but from the rear it was impossible to tell what she was saying. The first beat of “Old Blue” started and we launched into one of John’s favorite songs about Old Blue, his dog. As I played I could see the girls at the table heading quickly for the door. They looked desperate to leave. Oh, well. Kevin and I looked at each other, a silent communication passing between us acknowledging the rapidly thinning crowd. The tempo of the song was about to change building rapidly to a driving shuffle from the vaguely country-sounding introduction and first chorus which were somewhat slower and plaintive verse about the passing of Old Blue. The body of the song celebrated Blue’s life and adventures but wrapped with the chorus’ realization that Old Blue was gone.

Just as we finished “Old Blue” the girl that had spoken to me walked in the door with 8-people in tow. A few minutes later one of the other girls showed up alone but within 2-minutes a dozen or more girls walked in and strode over to her table where they had a short conversation and found their own table. We launched into our next number hoping the crowd had stabilized, as we really didn’t want to play to an empty room. Another girl entered with a couple of guys in tow…I looked at Kevin…with a “What’s going on?” in my eyes. He shrugged. Over the next 15 minutes the room filled to capacity with the crowd spilling out onto the dance floor. That was just fine as our music wasn’t really “dance” music. Our songs contained a lot of tempo changes as well as an occasional change of key or transitions. I understand we were, supposedly, “cutting-edge.” Some of the tempo and key changes were accompanied with sometimes subtitle & sometimes-abrupt switches from high volume to low volume or vice versa. A big part of our sound was about this ability, which we carefully practiced, to keep the excitement and the “drive” of the song as strong after an abrupt change in volume as it had been before the change. Tight vocal harmonies topped off our two-guitars, a bass and drum kit.

We wrapped our set with our newest version of “Go For It” a song that seemed to be continually evolving. Upon leaving the stage we were surrounded by attendees all of whom seemed fascinated by the fact we had performed all originals. The guys and girls alike were interested and we barely had time to get a cold drink. We sat for a couple minutes with the girl that had originally shown so much interest in our play-list and headed back to the stage. She revealed she had pulled several people out of her sorority house and many of them called other friends who called other friends. We found a small part of our crowd came from the nearby town and were not affiliated with the college except for the friends they had on the inside.

Our second set was completely acoustic. We announced this fact, which we had already revealed to many of the patrons that had inquired as to why we didn’t perform other group’s songs. We replied we did, indeed, cover a few other songs but they were mostly during our second set. For this set both guitarists played acoustic guitars, I played congas and the drummer/purcussionist sat in-and-out depending upon the song and our arrangement. We started with Steven Stills “Love The One You’re With” which is a lively song even when played acoustically. We proceeded to a slightly modified version of “59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Paul Simon. As we started our version of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “4 and 20” Kevin and I quickly commented on the growing crowd. There was no dance floor left as was covered by students sitting cross-legged gazing at the 3’-tall stage and moving in place to the music. By the time we finished the set we had a standing room only crowd with several groups of people sitting on the grass lawn outside the Student Union. We headed off for our second, and last, break but as the only exit off-stage was directly into the crowd, due to crowd interest, we never made it to the back of the room for drinks or snacks before it was time to start our 3rd set.

As we started our 3rd set, I performed a short bass-solo, which ended with a few clearly recognizable lines from the Blue Danube, one of my favorite waltzes. As I struck the last note I held it humming in the air as a series of subtitle paradiddles arose in the background. The rhythm had the sound of a distant driving train, which I latched on to after the 3rd bar, my bass echoing the same driving beat put out by the drummer. As volume increased John’s guitar broke into the underground with notes that duplicated my own. The guitar laid on top of my bass line gave the tune more drive and increased the excitement level. 3-Bars later Kevin joined in with his guitar playing the exact notes John had been playing. 3-Bars later John’s guitar sang out with a single E-note that held for a bar twisting itself upward as John stretched the string. He came down with a 5-bar screaming lead that, upon ending, brought us all to a chug-chug-chug-brang, cha-cha cha-cha cha-cha cha-cha, chug-chug-chug-brang, cha-cha cha-cha cha-cha cha-cha, doodoo-dup-da (dadadadadadada), doodoo-dup-da (dadadadadadada), doodoo-dup-da (dadadadadadada), da-da-dup-dup, da-da-dup-dup, da-da-dup-dup, da-da-dup-dup, dooda-rang…rang rang dooda-rang…rang rang dooda-rang. We dropped into Chicago’s “I’m A Man” one of the few rock songs we did cover and the only song which I sang lead. At the end, the song ended abruptly with the final note ringing across the crowd.

The place erupted into wild applause that surprised me with a level of excitement and noise that almost scared me for a split-second. As the arranger on most of our songs, and the vocalist on this particular tune, I was understandably proud of how well the song was received. I had arranged the number so the core-song would not be recognizable until we were well into the tune and the excitement level would stay high until we launched back into a finish the recalled some of the same rhythms that had introduced the tune. The song ended abruptly with a lot of energy hanging in the air. It was a good number to start the set with as we hoped to change the subdued energy from the acoustic set and break back to rock n’roll.

We grinned to each other and launched into our next tune…another original. Upon completion we were greeted by another round of rousing applause that drew us together in front if Donny’s drum kit. We conferred for a moment wondering what was going on but eventually decided not to question what was turning into an incredible experience.

At the end of the set we had completed all of our songs approximately 10 minutes after what was supposed to be our completion time. Our student contact walked up to the stage and spoke to John. The noise level was too loud to hear the conversation so when John arose from the crouch he had held while speaking to the student-rep he announced to us we had been asked to complete the hour which left us an additional 20 minutes more to kill. As we had played our whole repertoire we put our heads together to decide how we would complete the dance/now concert. After a short conversation, and agreement by the student rep, John announced our next number would be our last. It was a repeat of our third song played, safe, as most of those in attendance had not heard it. It was an energetic number after which, we assumed would transition to a demand for an encore to fill the last few minutes. We called this correctly and, when we finished the song, we were met with a standing ovation, which simply didn’t stop as we took our bows. When Kevin and I took our axes off our shoulders and placed them in their stands the applause grew louder. Kevin turned toward the crowd and, smiling his Kevin smile held his hand to his ear as if to say, “What?” The applause grew even louder as we picked our instruments back up.

We played our first 2 songs again as most there had not heard these numbers either. With the applause still ringing we noticed we only had a couple of minutes left to kill and decided to calm the crowd. We picked up our instruments used during our acoustic set and launched, once again, into “4 and 20” which ended with a quiet single acoustic note hanging in the air. The applause was loud but somewhat more subdued as we had intended. We wrapped up our encore and stepped to the front of the stage to talk to the students crowding the front lip while, friends and roadies, Ray and Jim started to disconnect equipment and wrap it up for transport. After a few short minutes of conversation we put our guitars away and stepped off the stage for a cool drink. At this point most of the crowd had left and those still present were preoccupied with personal concerns. We sat for a minute at a table talking to each other, shaking our heads in disbelief at the crowd response.

We, of course, had big dreams of success after this performance and had a few more gigs, some on the bill with memorable names, but we unfortunately broke up after several months, each of us going their own way. To our great disappointment the phenomena was not repeated to this level while we remained together.

(Sigh)