Sanguine Tenacious Tidings

Music Never Ages

Fun Fact Friday! On this day in 1973, musician Lou Reed was bitten on his rear end by a fan during a concert in Buffalo, NY....the male fan was ejected from the show. Do you have any fun or interesting concert stories involving bands you've seen that you'd like to share with us? Alternately, you can share any fun concert story you've heard if you don't have one from experience.

A few years ago some relatives were running a bowling alley with a fairly large restaurant attached. Once a month they set up a corner for local bands to come in and play. Other than high school chorus this is the only live band I seem to have stored in memory. It was all country western music. I don't know the name of the band. There were four musicians. They took requests and played a long time. I'm not a fan of country western music, but they were pretty good. The room seemed small because the tables were packed. A couple people who knew the band got up and sang some music that was requested. I liked the atmosphere of listening to a band in a place where you could sit at a table and just tap your feet.

When I was a young teenager some friends of my Dad had just got a small black and white TV. They stopped by and asked our family to come over to view a concert that Elvis was doing for Ed Sullivan. My step mother and the lady of the house were talking just before the program started. This lady was exclaiming about how teens were being influenced by Elvis's music. She was fairly outraged by the fact that news papers were proclaiming the effects of the music were causing teen girls to scream when Elvis played. I spoke up and said, "Well I won't be screaming."

The concert was pretty fun to watch. I was sitting in the back of the room. I'm not sure which songs he was singing but he was swinging his guitar and his body all over the stage as he sang. The camera panned the screaming crowd and back to Elvis. All of a sudden I let out a high pitched screech to join in with the sounds coming from the little black and white TV. All the adults in the room lept up out of their chairs. The hostess turned on me and was yelling, "I thought you said you wouldn't scream?" I was as startled as the other people there and I had no answer. Somehow I was not particularly bothered by the outrage directed at me by the adults.

In the 70's I watched a PBS special about Elvis's rise to fame. It was a really interesting show and clips from the three Ed Sullivan appearances were shown. Elvis had a charisma that was different. I've watched other performers on TV and now on Youtube. I've listened to really special music from lots of performers. We have had some really excellent musicians in this country but Elvis really was the only king of rock and roll because of his charisma and his outstanding personality, that was always taking over when he played.

Garth Brooks displayed some of this draw when he took country music for a ride.