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| From | markeichelberger@comcast.net |
| Subject | Another Tale of Disillusionment |
| Date | Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:02:52 +0000 |
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Michael's great tale on the Sly debacle reminded me of my own first taste of musical disillusionment. I actually attempted to create a short story from this incident, but never got around to finishing it...but I digress. Sorry in advance for the length of this post.
It is 1972 and I am a sophomore at Great Valley High School in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. Each year, the senior class at my High School sponsored a class concert. In years past, most of the acts that performed consisted of local acts or national pop acts that had a few hits in the mid to late sixties, but were now on the downside of their career. I remember seeing the Classics IV at the 1971 concert. They had a pretty big hit in 1966 with "Spooky". (Actually, they were pretty good in a Mitch Ryder-Blue Eyed Soul kind of vein)
Anyway, you can imagine the shock that went through the school when it was announced that the 1972 concert would feature.....BLUE OYSTER CULT. Now this was about 4 years before they hit it big with "Don't Fear the Reaper", but our local rock station WMMR was playing cuts from their 1972 debut, particularly the incendiary "Cities On Flame With Rock and Roll". This was an Honest-to-God RAWK group and they were coming to our High School! You can imagine the excitement that swept through the school.
One of the duties of the High School Radio Club, of which I was a proud member, was to put on the morning announcements over the school PA system. We plugged the concert tirelessly and heightened the excitement by playing more songs from the album before the start of classes (much to the disgust of most of the teachers...who absolutely hated hard rock music of any kind).
The night of the concert finally arrived. The opening act was an unknown local quartet that went by the name "Sick Man of Europe". Of course, it was years later that I found out that this group of unknowns was actually 3/4 of Cheap Trick fronted by Stewkey of the Nazz. It turns out the members were living in the Philadelphia area at that time before their eventual departure to Illinois a year or so later. I distinctly remember Rick Nielson playing a double neck Gibson and jumping around on stage much like he would later do in Cheap Trick. Oh, and he also pointed out that the sound system "really sucked".
After SMOE's short set, the stage was quickly set up for Blue Oyster Cult. What appeared to be a bed sheet with the band's name in hastily scrawled script was placed over the front of a Hammond B-3 organ. Someone made an introduction...and 5 middle aged guys took to the stage. To everyone's disbelief, they appeared to play some sort of jazzy prog rock numbers, sans vocals, much like Spinal Tap Mark II. After 3 of these types of numbers (still no vocals), it became quite apparent to everyone that this was not Blue Oyster Cult. That is when the booing started. Knowing that their cover was blown, the faux BOC made a quick exit off the stage and were chased down by senior class members and school officials as they attempted to leave via an exit in the gymnasium.
It turns out a sleazy promoter was duping unsuspecting and naive parties into booking the BOC at an unbelievably cheap price....too cheap, as it turned out.
The senior class never did get its money back and the tradition of Senior Class concerts ended with this debacle. This ends my sad tale.
Mark Eichelberger
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