The Moody Blues In San Diego

I’ve been reminiscing about my college days spent in San Diego recently and I remembered a little story about the time I met John Lodge and Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues.

As a college student in San Diego I shared a house with some friends from high school back in L.A. On a holiday one of my roommates went home to Los Angeles but was going to return over the weekend because we had tickets to see the Moody Blues perform at the San Diego Sports Arena. He asked me to pick him up at the airport as he was flying back. At the appointed time I drove down to the airport and waited for his arrival. His flight came and all the passengers disembarked but he was nowhere to be found. I did however spot John Lodge and Mike Pinder, the bassist and keyboard player from the Moody Blues waiting at the gate for the arrival of Pinder’s wife.

I walked up and introduced myself as a long time fan and ticket holder to their upcoming concert. They were very nice and we talked about the 70s Prog Rock scene. I loved the King Crimson album, In The Court Of The Crimson King, and asked them how popular it was when released in England as it was virtually unknown in America at that time. They told me it was very successful in England. John Lodge said something I found funny when he said he was hungry and wanted either some ‘health food’ or a taco. I never thought of tacos as being particularly healthy cuisine.

When Mrs. Pinder arrived and they left the airport I also gave up waiting for my friend and went home. When I got there I found he had taken a car ride back from L.A. and didn’t bother to tell me. I fell for this a second time years later in L.A. when this same guy asked me to pick him up at LAX and although I searched the arrival area and the baggage claim I couldn’t find him. I had a date with me so we left, had dinner and when I returned home I found he had been in the airport bar and eventually called a friend to come get him. When I asked him why he was in the airport bar when he knew I was coming to get him he replied that was where he and his mother always picked up his father when he flew home. “That was because your dad was a drunk,” I told him, which was true. What a nimrod.

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Adam Yauch Of The Beastie Boys Died At 47

Adam Yauch of the trio, the Beastie Boys, died at age 47 from cancer. The Beastie Boys were among the first “white rappers” and incorporated rap vocals over hard rock music. As a Classic Rock fan I still tend to think of the Beasties Boys as, well, boys. I don’t know what’s more of a shock, that a Beastie Boy has died or that he was 47 years old.

I always felt the Beastie Boys were the ultimate “you can do this too” group. Punk Rock lowered (way down) the standard for musicianship and Rap broke the bar in half for singers so a punk band that rapped their lyrics was about as simple as you could get. And that was their charm. Even their Rap / Punk attitude of angry young men (young white men) was only used to express their need to vent their anger and frustration over.. what?... their right to PARTY?!!! Really? That’s what you’re pissed off about? Your parents won’t let you party?

When the Beastie Boys’ album, License To Ill came out in 1986 Adam Yauch was twenty-two years old.  If you don’t like your parents telling you what to do MOVE OUT AND GET YOUR OWN PLACE.

Of course I know the Beastie Boys were expressing the feelings of their fans and for the most part they were far younger than twenty-two. The Beastie Boys always seemed to have a sense of humor about them, or maybe I just couldn’t take them seriously, but that worked in their favor as I could never really not like them. It’s one thing for Classic Rockers to die off from age related causes (rather than from drugs, air crashes or violence) but now having Rappers and Punk Rockers dying of cancer (yes, I know, even children die of cancer) just makes it seem like time is going by faster than ever. So long, Adam.

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A San Diego Rock And Roll Success Story

As a young student at San Diego State University in the 1970s I had a class assignment where I was suppose to interview a local businessman about how he got his start. A girl I knew had a friend who was one of the bigger concert promoters in San Diego and she set up an interview for me.

The guy I interviewed was not much older than I was yet was very successful as a concert promoter who regularly brought some of the world’s biggest rock bands to play at the San Diego Sports Arena, the largest venue in the city.

He had been a simple working stiff who, along with a friend, saved up $5000.00 from their salaries (non entertainment related jobs) and decided to promote a rock concert. They hired the L.A. band, The Byrds, and rented out the San Diego Sports Arena. This was somewhat past The Byrds peak as a major hit making act but they were still popular. I can’t remember the details but I do recall he said he and his friend had $5000.00 and lost $4500.00 on the show.

With their remaining $500.00 they rented an American Legion Hall and hired a local dance band. Their first dance made them a modest profit so they did it again the next weekend. Their weekend dances became so popular they were eventually able to return to the San Diego Sports Arena with big name artists.

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San Diego’s Prog Rock Show

I was a big Prog Rock fan when I was a student at San Diego State back when Prog was just starting to hit the mainstream. I bought tickets to what I thought was a strange bill, Prog Rockers Yes with Country Rockers Poco. Come to think of it, there were a few strange bills I saw down there such as Frank Zappa and the Mothers with Linda Ronstadt.

As I was crossing the campus one day I overheard some student talking about the upcoming show.
    “Poco is good but I hate Yes, their music sucks,” he said.
    “You suck!” I shot back in an involuntary response that shocked me as well as the kid and his long haired friends. “I mean, you’re wrong, Yes is great,” I said as I kept walking.

I was a fan of Poco since I was a huge fan of Buffalo Springfield and followed Richie Furay and Jim Messina’s careers after Springfield broke up. I enjoyed Poco at the San Diego show although I was a bit put off by Rusty Young’s antics on the pedal steel guitar. He jumped on it and kicked it over and otherwise acted like he was Jerry Lee Lewis. Acting like a rock star when you’re playing a pedal steel just looks silly. Yes were, as I had predicted, great although I was surprised and disappointed to see that the San Diego Sports Arena had been divided in half for the show.

A year later I returned to the Sports Arena to see Yes again and this time the Sports Arena was not only full size but was also packed to capacity and the kids who said Yes sucked only a year before were now their biggest supporters. It’s fun to watch a band grow like that.

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Classic Rock Station KGB And Home Grown Rock And Roll

When I was a college student at San Diego State back in the 70s the local rock radio station, KGB, had a charity fund raiser project that was very interesting. It was called the Home Grown Album and the idea was musicians from San Diego would write and record songs about life in San Diego and the station would press up the best dozen of them and release it for sale at the local Tower Records store.

The Home Grown Album proved to be very popular and spawned at least several more annual releases that I know of. The songs were about the local communities, Mission Beach, National City, La Mesa, El Cajon, etc. and although the songs may have been somewhat insulting to rival communities, i.e.” Point Loma is great but National City sucks”, the songs were all very pro their home communities.

Bob Coburn was a disc jockey on KGB when I lived in San Diego and years later when I moved back to L.A. he started work on a L.A. rock station. Soon this L.A. station started its own version of the Home Grown Album and I always assumed Bob brought the idea with him. As far as I can recall there was only one edition of the L.A. version and it was easy to see why. Instead of the citizens praising their own communities and perhaps putting down neighboring communities in the spirit of friendly competition, the L.A. Home Grown version consisted of songs where the performers were complaining about their own communities. It was a whole album of musical bellyaching about what a drag living in Los Angeles County is. This vividly illustrated the difference between living in Los Angeles and living in San Diego for me.

The Beatles Fifty Year Anniversary

I bought a copy of Newsweek Magazine last week because it was a special Beatles 50 Year issue. Fifty years?!!!! When I was a kid fifty years was half a century. When the Beatles first made themselves known to me in 1964 fifty years ago meant 1914. That was the year World War One started, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa was waging war in Mexico, Charlie Chaplin made his film debut, President Woodrow Wilson signed a Mother's Day proclamation, future baseball legend Babe Ruth made his major league debut with the Red Sox and the last known passenger pigeon "Martha" died in the Cincinnati Zoo.

1914 was ancient history to me even though in 1964 there was still a lot of history still alive. There were still stars from the silent era of movies such as Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton still alive, and in the case of Keaton, still working in Beach Movies. There were people alive who had personally known Western heroes such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Wyatt Earp and World War Two heroes such as Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur were still alive. There was even a woman who married a Civil War veteran in 1920 still around (she died in 2004 at 97 years old).

But in 1914 the average person didn’t have a telephone, access to air travel or electric appliances such as washing machines or dish washers. Compared to 1964, 1914 was the Stone Age.

Although things have changes since the Beatles first arrived on the scene the changes have been subtle, mostly improvements. We already had an electric oven so a microwave oven was faster but not revolutionary. We had phones that used a rotary dial rather than push buttons but the concept stayed the same and cars, arguably, have declined in style since the days of Southern California Custom Car Culture but have become more reliable, cleaner and safer. It’s been an interesting ride since 1962 and it makes me glad I didn’t die before I got old.

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Rocktasia Lives In San Diego

Last week I visited the city where I attended college, San Diego. I love San Diego, it’s the only place I would say that about. Everywhere else I like because of the attractions located there or because of the people I know living there but I love San Diego simply for being what it is. Being there made me think of how my life would have turned out differently if I had stayed.

One thing I like about San Diego is it has a very Sixties Rock and Roll vibe to me. Ocean Beach has The Black, one of the biggest and oldest head shops in the country and beach communities in general have a bit of a bohemian (hippie) vibe to them. Radio station KGB started about a year before I started school at San Diego State and now is a Classic Rock station along the lines of KLOS in L.A. San Francisco has turned its history of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury and the Hippies into a tourist attraction along with its earthquake but San Diego’s rock heart is still alive, not celebrated as a bygone era.

An example of this is when I visited the Ruben H. Fleet Space Theater, an IMAX theater with a geodesic dome screen that surrounds the viewer. I always try to take in a show there when I’m in San Diego and this time they ran a promo for a new show starting in May on Saturday nights called Rock The Dome. It is a computer animated film that uses Classic rock hits for its soundtrack. Songs from bands like Pink Floyd, Rush, ACDC and Led Zeppelin are illustrated using computer graphics. They ran another promo after the main show which was about the Arctic that was Credence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising set to 3D graphics. This is essentially my concept of Rocktasia although the graphics were mainly abstract images and more along the lines of a light show than anything that truly illustrated the lyrics, but it comes the closest to anything I’ve yet to see. The fact that it is an IMAX show at the Ruben H. Fleet Space Theater which has always been a fantasy of mine makes one more reason why I have such a fond place in my heart for San Diego.

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