The Year Was 1968...
The year was 1968. I was a junior in high school in a small suburban town in Southern New Jersey. WDAS-FM in Philly was our sacred link to the excitement of Underground radio, as it were. My 15-year-old brother Tom and i would sit on the floor of my parent’s living room, along w our small posse of likeminded friends…. listening intently to My Father’s Son, our fav local DJ. It was a magical time both for us, and the culture. None of our band of musical adventurers had traveled anywhere outside the tri-state area yet, but these programs that deliciously scrambled our auditory senses took us on our own personal magical mystery tours. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown??? Blood curdling screams and pounding beats mixed with his {and our} hair on fire! Led Zeppelin one! We had never heard anything quite like it. Other worldly and thrilling…One of our fav new bands though were a mysterious group of fellows who named themselves…THE DOORS. At that point in our young lives, we had not experimented with hallucinogens, we had barely even smoked weed yet. Despite that our virgin minds were expanded in ways we had never experienced. We had read copies of Rolling Stone and some underground rags, so we were aware of the revolution exploding beyond our four walls. These radio shows were our passport into those exotic happenings.
Trips to Philadelphia’s small vibrant hippie scene downtown via the High-Speed Line were like expeditions into a tiny part of that scene. The Record Rendezvous, Jerry’s Records, Ward's Folly, and the Apple “Department store.” Feeling like outsiders desperate to fit in, we sought out our first bell bottom jeans at I Goldberg Army Navy store. Most of us were desperately trying to wish our hair longer but were in an intense struggle with parents who did NOT understand. Ater boorish and tedious weekdays at school, being force feed geometry… the time on weekends to explore these new cultural discoveries were titillating.
Then one day we heard about an up-and-coming concert in Philadelphia by our fav high priests of psychedelia, The Doors. None of us at that moment had ever seen live rock music, outside of The Smothers Brothers show or Steve Allen on the tv. Would our parents let us venture into this exciting new world? We decided it was time to try.
Now although our dad was conservative, he was a big music fan himself. Of course, his brand was big bands and jazz. Herb Alpert and Dean Martin. Though it is exceedingly difficult to remember how that first conversation about attending a ROCK CONCERT, in the city transpired…..I'm thinking that his own love of music helped soften him up to the risky proposition. That and the fact that incredibly the Doors were having a big hit …Light My Fire played even on AM radio, so how dangerous could it be?
Well, armed with our allowance and a sense of adventure, off we went into the center city one sweltering NJ summer day. There was a Dept. store downtown that had a ticket sales counter where we heard we could purchase our passports for our first rock and roll live experience. $5. was all this amazing journey cost, but remember it was 1968! {equal to $45. today so nothing to sneeze at by teenagers} Holding our new tickets to ride in hand we were out of our minds with excitement!
Well, the big day finally arrived accompanied by typical August heat. Mr. Egan, our friends the Egan boy’s dad volunteered to drive the 4 of us over to Market St. in Philadelphia. The venue was a seedy old boxing venue named The Phil. Arena. It was August 4th, 1968.
Funny the tiny things that break through the fog of memory after so many years {57 to be exact. yikes.] I still hear Steppenwolf’s big current hit, Born to Be Wild on the station wagon’s radio during that historic ride. It was a strange time on AM radio about then, because between the Beach Boys, The Supremes and Frankie Valle you could occasionally catch Light My Fire, Born to Be Wild or Itchy Goo Park sneak out of the speakers. The times…they were indeed a changing.
Traveling down seedy Market St. we were nervously anxious.
When Mr. Egan pulled his woody wagon up to the curb in front of the Arena, i can only imagine our mouths were a gape with wonder. Standing and sitting cross legged in front was a hundred of the hairiest people we had ever seen in person. This was not a tv show or Life magazine photos of The Haight, these were REAL long-haired freaks! Suddenly we collectively felt like …dorks.
Anyway, we all fell out of the car and tried desperately to at least…. saunter over without tripping. Exotic smells and sights danced around this meek group of interlopers. Tie dye, beads…...incense, patchouli, and pot abounded.
When we finally trooped through the front doors, we found ourselves in a dark, smoky, and sultry large room, the size of a big HS gym with bleachers. The stage stood directly in front of us, and by some grace of God we had unbelievably scored 5th row seats, directly in front of the stage! That realization put our excitement level though the roof. Sitting in our seats at last, we all were gazing rapidly all about, taking in a genuine circus of sights.
I swear {and will} that glancing down our row i spotted …. Could it be? No. It was Mark Stein of the then famous Vanilla Fudge! Owning a couple of their first records I knew him by sight, especially in his fine hippie regalia.
The fashion of the day was a fantastic explosion of color, flowing fabric, long hair and crazy hats of all variety.
We then read the programs and discovered that there were 2 opening acts before the Doors. The first, we heard from NYC was introduced as All That the Name Implies. Well, their name should have been boring. I would be sorry to say but my impression was backed up by quite a bit of booing. I assume the trip back up the Turnpike was not a joyous one.
The second act was a Philly local fav…Mandrake Memorial. I was to learn that they had a very cool new album out all ready. One of the standout aspects of these guys was a very new instrument, an electric harpsichord. On top of that intriguing new sound was added the strains of a sitar. Clouds of pot smoke filled the air, and looking back on it we could have had a contact high.
The now sweaty crowd clearly loved Mandrake, as did we. It was magical music for a magical moment. {i later got to contribute a nice sidebar piece to a hot new UK music mag about the band. More on that later}
Then the stage was set, as they say for the heroes of the evening…THE DOORS. Out onto the stage bounded a leather pant wearing Jim Morrison and the other 3 great players we would get to know much better. Jim was the thing though. The visual explosion for the eyes to match the group’s great sounds. He slithered and crawled about like some possessed demon-poet.
They played most of the great tunes from that mind blowing first vinyl record, and the audience was consumed by its primal energy. To make the experience even more impossibly unforgettable, at one point Jim leapt into the audience, only feet away from us. That sort of thing would be unheard of, and in fact suicidal today. Back then, there were not even ushers or barricades in front of the stage.
I wish I had an early vision of my future journalistic efforts back then, enough to take notes of some kind, or more likely at home later. I mostly remember the buzz. We had been psychedelicized. How are you going to keep me down on the farm…. now. We had lost our live musical virginity that Nite, and we were destined to be avid explorers of rock and roll for a long time.
The year was 1968. I was a junior in high school in a small suburban town in Southern New Jersey. WDAS-FM in Philly was our sacred link to the excitement of Underground radio, as it were. My 15-year-old brother Tom and i would sit on the floor of my parent’s living room, along w our small posse of likeminded friends…. listening intently to My Father’s Son, our fav local DJ. It was a magical time both for us, and the culture. None of our band of musical adventurers had traveled anywhere outside the tri-state area yet, but these programs that deliciously scrambled our auditory senses took us on our own personal magical mystery tours. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown??? Blood curdling screams and pounding beats mixed with his {and our} hair on fire! Led Zeppelin one! We had never heard anything quite like it. Other worldly and thrilling…One of our fav new bands though were a mysterious group of fellows who named themselves…THE DOORS. At that point in our young lives, we had not experimented with hallucinogens, we had barely even smoked weed yet. Despite that our virgin minds were expanded in ways we had never experienced. We had read copies of Rolling Stone and some underground rags, so we were aware of the revolution exploding beyond our four walls. These radio shows were our passport into those exotic happenings.
Trips to Philadelphia’s small vibrant hippie scene downtown via the High-Speed Line were like expeditions into a tiny part of that scene. The Record Rendezvous, Jerry’s Records, Ward's Folly, and the Apple “Department store.” Feeling like outsiders desperate to fit in, we sought out our first bell bottom jeans at I Goldberg Army Navy store. Most of us were desperately trying to wish our hair longer but were in an intense struggle with parents who did NOT understand. Ater boorish and tedious weekdays at school, being force feed geometry… the time on weekends to explore these new cultural discoveries were titillating.
Then one day we heard about an up-and-coming concert in Philadelphia by our fav high priests of psychedelia, The Doors. None of us at that moment had ever seen live rock music, outside of The Smothers Brothers show or Steve Allen on the tv. Would our parents let us venture into this exciting new world? We decided it was time to try.
Now although our dad was conservative, he was a big music fan himself. Of course, his brand was big bands and jazz. Herb Alpert and Dean Martin. Though it is exceedingly difficult to remember how that first conversation about attending a ROCK CONCERT, in the city transpired…..I'm thinking that his own love of music helped soften him up to the risky proposition. That and the fact that incredibly the Doors were having a big hit …Light My Fire played even on AM radio, so how dangerous could it be?
Well, armed with our allowance and a sense of adventure, off we went into the center city one sweltering NJ summer day. There was a Dept. store downtown that had a ticket sales counter where we heard we could purchase our passports for our first rock and roll live experience. $5. was all this amazing journey cost, but remember it was 1968! {equal to $45. today so nothing to sneeze at by teenagers} Holding our new tickets to ride in hand we were out of our minds with excitement!
Well, the big day finally arrived accompanied by typical August heat. Mr. Egan, our friends the Egan boy’s dad volunteered to drive the 4 of us over to Market St. in Philadelphia. The venue was a seedy old boxing venue named The Phil. Arena. It was August 4th, 1968.
Funny the tiny things that break through the fog of memory after so many years {57 to be exact. yikes.] I still hear Steppenwolf’s big current hit, Born to Be Wild on the station wagon’s radio during that historic ride. It was a strange time on AM radio about then, because between the Beach Boys, The Supremes and Frankie Valle you could occasionally catch Light My Fire, Born to Be Wild or Itchy Goo Park sneak out of the speakers. The times…they were indeed a changing.
Traveling down seedy Market St. we were nervously anxious.
When Mr. Egan pulled his woody wagon up to the curb in front of the Arena, i can only imagine our mouths were a gape with wonder. Standing and sitting cross legged in front was a hundred of the hairiest people we had ever seen in person. This was not a tv show or Life magazine photos of The Haight, these were REAL long-haired freaks! Suddenly we collectively felt like …dorks.
Anyway, we all fell out of the car and tried desperately to at least…. saunter over without tripping. Exotic smells and sights danced around this meek group of interlopers. Tie dye, beads…...incense, patchouli, and pot abounded.
When we finally trooped through the front doors, we found ourselves in a dark, smoky, and sultry large room, the size of a big HS gym with bleachers. The stage stood directly in front of us, and by some grace of God we had unbelievably scored 5th row seats, directly in front of the stage! That realization put our excitement level though the roof. Sitting in our seats at last, we all were gazing rapidly all about, taking in a genuine circus of sights.
I swear {and will} that glancing down our row i spotted …. Could it be? No. It was Mark Stein of the then famous Vanilla Fudge! Owning a couple of their first records I knew him by sight, especially in his fine hippie regalia.
The fashion of the day was a fantastic explosion of color, flowing fabric, long hair and crazy hats of all variety.
We then read the programs and discovered that there were 2 opening acts before the Doors. The first, we heard from NYC was introduced as All That the Name Implies. Well, their name should have been boring. I would be sorry to say but my impression was backed up by quite a bit of booing. I assume the trip back up the Turnpike was not a joyous one.
The second act was a Philly local fav…Mandrake Memorial. I was to learn that they had a very cool new album out all ready. One of the standout aspects of these guys was a very new instrument, an electric harpsichord. On top of that intriguing new sound was added the strains of a sitar. Clouds of pot smoke filled the air, and looking back on it we could have had a contact high.
The now sweaty crowd clearly loved Mandrake, as did we. It was magical music for a magical moment. {i later got to contribute a nice sidebar piece to a hot new UK music mag about the band. More on that later}
Then the stage was set, as they say for the heroes of the evening…THE DOORS. Out onto the stage bounded a leather pant wearing Jim Morrison and the other 3 great players we would get to know much better. Jim was the thing though. The visual explosion for the eyes to match the group’s great sounds. He slithered and crawled about like some possessed demon-poet.
They played most of the great tunes from that mind blowing first vinyl record, and the audience was consumed by its primal energy. To make the experience even more impossibly unforgettable, at one point Jim leapt into the audience, only feet away from us. That sort of thing would be unheard of, and in fact suicidal today. Back then, there were not even ushers or barricades in front of the stage.
I wish I had an early vision of my future journalistic efforts back then, enough to take notes of some kind, or more likely at home later. I mostly remember the buzz. We had been psychedelicized. How are you going to keep me down on the farm…. now. We had lost our live musical virginity that Nite, and we were destined to be avid explorers of rock and roll for a long time.
Looking forward to more !!!