I firmly believe that the middle school years (Junior High here in California) are extremely important in a person’s development. The jump from grammar school to Jr. High is much more traumatic than Jr. High to High School or High School to College for the simple reason that it is accompanied by the transition into puberty. Whatever your interests were they are now influenced by the fact that sex has become a very important factor. And as we all know, SEX changes everything!
In 1968 I was in Jr. High and one Friday night my friends and I attended our first professional rock concert. Had it been only a few months earlier or a couple of years later I believe it would not have had the tremendous influence upon me that it had. The venue was also important as it was The Valley Music Theater, a building made a few years earlier specifically for presenting musical theater in the round. The whole building was round with a smooth, white domed ceiling and seating running from ground level down into a large circular indentation with the round revolving stage at the center. This configuration was influential because being smack in the middle of the psychedelic era, there was a psychedelic light show being projected onto the ceiling from four stations located around the dome and completely covering the ceiling.
The sound was supplied by the hall’s P.A. system and four Vox Super Beatles Amplifiers which gave such a pristine sound I initially thought the bands were lip syncing to their records. Between the music, the great, all enveloping sound, the all encompassing light show effects, the smell of incense and perhaps the contact high I may have gotten from some of the other smells I was too young to be able to identify at the time, my little mind was blown.
In 1968 I was in Jr. High and one Friday night my friends and I attended our first professional rock concert. Had it been only a few months earlier or a couple of years later I believe it would not have had the tremendous influence upon me that it had. The venue was also important as it was The Valley Music Theater, a building made a few years earlier specifically for presenting musical theater in the round. The whole building was round with a smooth, white domed ceiling and seating running from ground level down into a large circular indentation with the round revolving stage at the center. This configuration was influential because being smack in the middle of the psychedelic era, there was a psychedelic light show being projected onto the ceiling from four stations located around the dome and completely covering the ceiling.
The sound was supplied by the hall’s P.A. system and four Vox Super Beatles Amplifiers which gave such a pristine sound I initially thought the bands were lip syncing to their records. Between the music, the great, all enveloping sound, the all encompassing light show effects, the smell of incense and perhaps the contact high I may have gotten from some of the other smells I was too young to be able to identify at the time, my little mind was blown.
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