No matter how the world was spinnin’, we always came back to the music.

    Woodstock was the hottest album around. 1970 saw the birth of a new British band called “Black Sabbath.” They were great! On the home front, America again released her militia of home-grown bands that went on to be metaphoric champions. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, James Gang, Canned Heat, The Band, and The Doors came back hard with “L.A. Woman”.  Carole King released her “Tapestry” album that blew the charts away. Carly Simon and James Taylor earmarked the seventies and their satanic majesties, The Rolling Stones, had found their decade.

    In 1971, I was severely comfronted by two of the best rock n’ roll-slam-it-down-heavy-as hell-rock-the-house records that I would ever hear in my life. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who  and “Brown Sugar.” By The Stones. The latter was probably the hottest rock and roll tune that I could think for the time. I wore that 45 out in record time (pun intended). Keith changed guitar chords like he was shifting gears on a freeway on ramp, while Mick caterwauled his memorable lyrics in typical rooster-in-the-henhouse style fashion.

 “Drums beating old English blood runs hot,

lady of the house wonderin’ where it’s gonna stop.

Houseboy knows that he’s doin’ alright,

Hear him whip the women just around midnight.”

    There was no more getting around it; The Stones were a force to be reckoned with. In 1971, I bought my first bootleg album from Music Millenium on Burnside. It was called “Liver Than You’ll Ever Be” on Lurch Records. Mick Taylor replaced Brian Jones on lead guitar. That bootleg features, in my opinion, the best version of “Love in Vain” to date.

     The next invasion of vast importance came with the bands from Germany. They went from piercing metal, psychedelic melancholy, to spacy strange. Some of the greats of the mid-70’s era include: Nektar, Tangerine Dream, Lucifer’s Friend, Guru Guru, Jane, andThe Scorpions. England pushed forward with the ultimate space-rock band Hawkwind who remain a legend today with as big a following as the Grateful Dead. UFO was one of the top metal bands with lead guitarist extraordinaire, Michael Schenker. Even Italy contributed with PFM, and from the communist world, an excellent band from Hungary calledOmega. Indeed, foreign bands were on the rise and worth rising for.

    Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the U.S.produced some rather talented bands on the cutting edge of the new metal empire. Ted Nugent was a lunatic picker, famous for turning stadiums on their heads. Kiss was a very tiresome band for me, but “Destroyer” had some tolerable tracks. Still, no one can dispute the originality of Kiss. Like Alice Cooper, acts like theirs only come around once a lifetime.

    From the depths of New Jersey emerged the strange and twisted serpent called Blue Oyster Cult. Formerly known as Soft White Underbelly, the cult had a new sound and albums more far out than any hard rock band at the time. I always felt that they weren’t nearly as “heavy” as some of their predecessors, but they had something that I couldn’t put my finger on. The lyrics were strange, sexually undertoned, garnished with a bit of barbed wire and thickened with  bullwhip. BOC had one more interesting commodity: all five members played guitar, and lined up on stage at least once for a 5-guitar jam out. Their lead guitarist Buck Dharma played his chops at light speed, and Blue Oyster Cult captivated me for nearly a decade.

      Journey, featuring two Santana-ites, burst onto the scene with their first, and very worthwhile intro album. Rush, from Canada, grabbed a hold of me with their album “Fly by Night.” Finally, from Boston, Aerosmith hit the streets and changed the face of rock music for the better.

There was no introduction. A few colored lights came on, and wham-bam, the boys were on stage performing “One of These Days.” It was great! We were finally watching our heroes on stage. Immediately after the song—which seemed a robust beginning, all of the house lights went out with the exception of a soft purple glow. This was freaky. Smoke and mist began to envelope the stage—freakier yet. A soft orange glow began to rise on a tower from behind. The sphere was very wide, and very large.  It was like a planet or something. We couldn’t make sense out of what was happening. Still, wierdness was going on. Towers like the ones at baseball stadiums rose, adorned with hundreds of lights. Just then, the Floyd began to vaporize, appearing out of the mist like apparitions. A soft, Roger Waters voice muttered the title of their next song into the microphone “This is called ‘Echoes’.”  And the rest, as they say, is history.

     For me, the aftermath of the sixties was a scattered array of relic feelings left over from childhood. I wasn't a kid and I wasn't an adult. I was in that quagmire of in-between, a status quo of adolescence that forever bound me to neither world. Yet, in the middle of all this confusion, I found new ways to grow. I had drifted on a psychedelic breeze to a state of nirvana where you could "let it all hang out".  The new generation was good to one another. People were pretty much accepted for who they were instead of who they should be.

    America seemed to be moving toward a softer, yet more empowering future. I watched as the “hippie era” came to full fruition at the dawn of the new decade. The world exploded with bright colors and love-tones. Peace signs flashed everywhere, and probably for the first time in my life, I had a sense of just where I was supposed to be.

    Still, making sense of this new world was a job in itself. Fashions went wild. I had jersey-type shirts with stars and stripes on them. “Wallace Beery” shirts were also very hot. I had those too. I wore those idiotic “O-ring” belts and the heavy leather watch bands. I also wore the Acme “Harness Boots”, square-toed boots with the straps that connected to gold ring buckles on the sides.

     Chokers and beads were big for the girls. Almost everyone wore love beads—me included. Tie dye was the way to go, and anyone could do it with about 6 boxes of Rit dye. Bell bottoms skirted almost everyone’s feet (except for mine). I had a sincere loathing for them. I always preferred Levis. I didn’t end up with them until they were just about all you could get. What I hated the most about bell bottoms was when they got wet and slapped against your legs due to the excess in material. After the bells came flare leg pants which were merely a mutation of bell bottoms, and equally disgusting.

The best you could ever hope for were colored lights and strobes. I’d seen many bands, and they used a series of colored lights to dress up their show. On September 28^th, 1972 in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, A group of friends and myself paid a monstrous sum of $4.50 to see Pink Floyd. Not sure of what to expect, we anticipated this concert with great enthusiasm. See the story below.