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Showing posts with the label Rock and Roll

Arena Rock and Me

Yes  15 August 1977  Providence RI Starship Trooper -- Yes -- 15 Aug1977 -- Providence RI Mid to late 1970's -- the height of the Rock and Roll era. If you lived in a decent-sized market, it seemed like there was a big show every week. If your favorite band was touring, chances were good they'd be coming to your town. By now, Rock (as the genre had come to called) had wide appeal, with a broad audience from the 12-year-olds to the young adults of the Baby Boom generation. There was enough cash burning holes in the pockets of all those Levi's to move the big shows out of the theaters and into the arenas. Into halls built for basketball ... Shitty seats, horrible sound, parking hassles, hearing damage ... although the last was part of the appeal. But it was the BUZZ that made it all worthwhile ... the indescribable feeling you'd get from a surging, converging crowd of 10,000 fellow travelers gathering to get drunk, get high, and soak in some mega-decibels. I was born a...

S.T.P -- Robert Greenfield -- 1974

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  A Journey Through America With the Rolling Stones   Robert Greenfield lived and traveled with the Rolling Stones as they prepared for and executed their 1972 tour of the U.S. and Canada. S.T.P. was an acronym for "Stones Touring Party", which consisted of the band, crew, handlers, PR flacks, security, photographers, film crew, celebrities, groupies, hangers-on ... and Greenfield, pet journalist. Considered to be the first in-depth account of the 1970's traveling circus Rock-and-Roll tour, it was well-regarded at the time, but fell flat with the public. Only 5000 copies were printed. The book is a product of an interesting moment in time. Rock and Roll had survived its teenage Fad period before morphing into a viable artistic vehicle for young adults by the mid-sixties. After that second, short-lived interval (certainly over by Altamont, if not already by 1968) Rock and Roll transformed into a mass-market commercial product performed in 10,000 seat arenas. There's no...