HippieFest!

On August 6, we attended HippieFest!  Before you ask WTF is that, it was a show featuring groups from the 60's & 70's with most of their original members. Those were my high school/college years and this was a chance to relive those days. And to see, or better yet, hear, how these groups were after all these years.

  We went with a married couple from work who are also into music... big time... huge collection.... nonstop buying..  Like us.   Since we all worked during the day, we were short for time so instead of going to a restaurant before the 7:30 concert, we ordered Chinese food ahead of time for delivery upon their arrival and at our house which is about almost fifteen minutes from the theater. We've been to concerts with them and they brought a nice wine  to go with our stash so we were primed for the show. We chatted as they browsed through my collection.

     The theater holds about two thousand with a mezzanine. I looked online for tix but didn't like the seating choices. I went to the box office after work and schmoozed with the gal and got front row mezzanine seats.  No heads in front of us...  I've sat there before with another co-worker & his wife when we saw Santana and Los Lonely Boys.

      We arrived at 700 to buy tee shirts and settled down. The audience was mostly people our age but some brought their kids. I saw a lot of gray hair including some on pony-tailed guys.  lol 

   The unofficial host was Country Joe MacDonald but without his group The Fish. You might recall his anti-Vietnam song from the 'Woodstock' movie... "Gimme an 'F'.. a 'U'...  etc."  He's about 65 and still sounds the same. A co-worker who couldn't come with us gave me a recent DVD concert and he's still as good as ever.  And funny too. He brought down house saying: " Uh I don't remember the 60's too much... ya know..  all those drugs..."   You should have heard the laughter & applause.  He's still doing protest songs so he did a Bush-bashing one.

    Each act performed about a half hour, long enough to hear their hits which is all you wanted to hear. Badfinger opened the show. These guys had it rough: legal problems that kept them broke...   two members committed suicide. Read about them on Barnes &Noble's Biography section next to one of their CDs. Original member Joey Mollander was there and did well.

   Then The Turtles came out and got a huge laugh with: "Oh yeah.. there were a lot of drugs back then,,,  Now we're on different drugs..   .Lipitor...  Viagra..."   We saw them last year when they played a free concert in out town's park and got to talk to them after the show. The two original leads at 60 were still good too.

   Mitch Ryder (without the Detroit Wheels) rocked the place. He's 62 but doesn't bounce all over as before and didn't push his voice but had a good backing band. I've been to several stores to find his greatest hits without success so I'll probably get it online.

   Then The Zombie's from England..part of the' British Invasion'..original singer Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent on keyboards. The original bassist's son is now their drummer. These guys are about 62 but you would never know it. They opened with 'I Love You' and I was fearful about Colin hitting the high chorus... sometimes you hear old singers who lost their range due to age or years of screaming... Bur he hit it right and earned applause.  The Zombies split up for a while and Rod had his own group called Argent with a big hit, "Hold Your Head Up" which they performed with Colin singing. They rocked the place with that long one as well as 'Time of the Season'.  I recently bought their DVD concert filmed this year so it's a good memento of seeing them... same lineup but with more songs.

  Next up was Felix Cavaliere from The Rascals, a blue-eyed soul group with many hits. Felix was the keyboardist/singer and played a Hammond organ that was 40 years old. My wife thought he looked like an old Italian (yeah like me... lol) but he wowed the audience.

   We had fun trying to remember the lyrics to songs as we sang along. The average age of the performers was about 62 but they showed us age is only a number. The backdrop was an appropriate 60's light show with occasional film clips of the performers way back then. It was startling to see how they looked then & now. Sometimes we would gasp at the difference.

   The evening moved quickly with little time between acts. Then there was an announcement: "Ladies & Gentlemen...We're sorry to say... the soft music part of the show is over..   Get ready for... Mountain"  The crowd went wild as lots of big amps were wheeled out...   Leslie West &  original drummer Corky Laing came out and had the walls vibrating. West lost a lot a weight and wears glasses (diabetic I heard) but still can play and belt out those songs.  They ended the show with "Mississippi Queen.'  Forget Ozzy's overblown remake. This was the real deal. 

  What an evening!  It's was wonderful to hear your old favorites and hear how they still sound good. It's true: You're never too old to Rock & Roll....