The album cover for Pink Floyd’s epic masterpiece “The Wall” gave us a clue as to what the concerts might become. The 1980 “World Tour” consisted of dates in Los Angelos and at the Nassau Coliseum; that’s it. We somehow picked up tickets for two nights and while in the Coliseum parking lot for one of them we met a couple of guys who had traveled by train from Canada without tickets to the concert in hopes of somehow seeing the Pink Floyd show. While hanging out with them in the parking lot, someone had made a connection with a ticket taker at the Coliseum entrance who was letting people in for fifty bucks, so we sold our seats dead center in the upper deck to our new Canadian friends for a hundred dollars each, as there were no extra tickets to be had anywhere that night. The happy Canadians agreed to sneak our beers into the Coliseum in their backpack and off we went to slip the usher some cash and attend the show. Amazingly it was a flawless transaction, and since we now had no seats, we set off to track down our new friends to recover our beer. As luck would have it, there were two empty seats right next to them, where we were supposed to sit, and we then drank our beers and watched the show right next to our original spots with our new friends. “The Wall album and concerts are the stuff of legend, state of the art at the time, and one of the best shows of any kind that I have ever attended. Surround sound, air planes traveling above us from the ceiling and flying towards the stage, animation projected onto the white bricks that were constructed throughout the show eventually completely blocking the audience’s view of the band until the wall came down and became stage rubble. It was my first time seeing Pink Floyd and any hope for a “greatest hits” set were annihilated by the sight of the intentional debris onstage. It was brilliant and it was the next great theatrical progression after Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps” tour made the concert industry take notice on what would become possible in presenting rock and roll to mass audiences. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” has been presented in various forms, formats and with various lineups since then, but nothing will ever surpass the original concerts that were presented to a fortunate select few on this extremely limited American tour.

The Thin Ice

Rock on!

GQ

Now this concert is a bit of an oddball as I was so impressed with the venue, I decided to take a chance and see a band I had never heard of at the Bottom Line, namely the Fabulous Poodles. There would be a number of Bottom Line shows through the years to include Lou Reed, Joan Jett and an Andy Warhol sighting, but more on those another time.

Roll Your Own

Rock on!

GQ

The 1980’s began for me with a trek into New York City that brought us to West 4th Street in Manhattan and the legendary Bottom Line for the first time. The Bottom Line was an extremely cool and intimate venue with table seating and standing room at the bar. Guitar slinger Rick Derringer followed up a stint playing with Edgar Winter’s White Trash and embarked an a fairly successful solo career. Somewhat amazingly while playing around on YouTube I discovered a good quality audio recording of this very Derringer concert at the Bottom Line which is an interesting archival find and worth a listen.

Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo

Rick on!

GQ

The 1970’s concert run ended for me appropriately enough at the Nassau Coliseum with the Allman Brothers Band and Pure Prairie League.
The 50th anniversary of the Allman Brothers Band was commemorated in March, 2020 with an outstanding night of music performed at Madison Square Garden with the surviving members of the iconic band calling themselves The Brothers for what turned out to be a one-off. This was the last rock and roll concert in New York City before the pandemic shut down live music as we knew it and the last show that I have attended for what will be a year very soon. New York and New Jersey have begun to allow fans to attend arena and stadium events at a limited capacity so things may be looking up. What this will mean for the summer concert season and touring is anyone’s guess at this point but at least it would seem that we are finally headed in the right direction.

Stay well rock and rollers………..

The Road Goes on Forever

Whipping Post

Rock on!

GQ

Another Jorma show post Hot Tuna break up at the premier rock and roll theatre in Néw York City pre-Beacon Theatre; the Henry Paul Band opened.

Hollywood Paradise

Rock on!

GQ

Long before I realized it was Neil Young’s birthday and would later become my daughter’s birthday, on November 12, 1979 we went to the Colden Auditorium at Queens College, where I was in my second year at the Student Union building, to see New Wave sensations the Talking Heads. The original four person lineup hit the stage it the half filled auditorium and David Byrne was a little perturbed by the turn out. Byrne said something to the effect that the school should done some advertising in the city and the show would have been sold out instantly. In later tours, the band would flesh out their sound and add players, but for this night we were treated to a night with the original players playing so many great songs from the first three albums.

Fear of Music

Rock on!

GQ

Grateful Dead Halloween shows are supposed to be the stuff of legend; unfortunately I have no recollection of this trek to the Nassau Coliseum to see Captain Trips and Company.

Dead Ringers

Rock on!

GQ

I never missed an opportunity to attend a Jethro Tull concert in the late 1970’s but I particularly wish I recalled seeing the opening act on these two particular shows as it was the legendary British progressive rock act U.K. with John Wetton who years later played with yet another great progressive band, Asia, with Steve Howe and Carl Palmer.

In the Dead of Night

Rock on!

GQ

While not technically a concert, the No Nukes Rally held in Battery Park in New York City attracted a large crowd in no small part attributable to the rock and roll royalty, activists and celebrities in attendance. Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raite, John Hall, Pete Seaver, Carly Simon, Jane Fonda, Tom Haydn, and Ralph Nader joined together to protest nuclear power plants with a collective plea for “No Nukes”.

Takin’ It To The Streets

Rock on!

GQ

Seeing The Who in concert for the first times were huge events as the band was already iconic and the “The Kids Are Alright” move was a great midnight movie staple since it’s release that June, 1979. A few thoughts about my three nights at the Garden with The Who: first was the shock when the band hit the stage that Roger Daltrey had cut the golden locks we were accustomed to seeing and went with a short haircut but his skill at twirling the microphone were undiminished. Secondly was the addition of drummer Kenney Jones who replaced the irreplaceable Keith Moon. Third was seeing John Entwistle singing “Boris the Spider” always stuck in my head for some reason. And lastly, I had bought my parents tickets to see singer Duck Haymes at the Westbury Music Fair and my father got so mad that I was going to see The Who three nights at Madison Square Garden that he ate the tickets and refused to go. Now part of his motivation to skip the show was that he was resistant to making the trek from Oakland Gardens, Queens to Westbury for any reason, even though Haymes was a favorite singer of his. He just could not understand why I needed to see The Who, or any artist for that matter, more than once and that I was effectively wasting my money. Forty one years later, for better or worse, not much has changed in that regard with only a pandemic slowing down the furious pace of attending live music.

Who’s Next?

Rick on!

GQ