Rory Gallagher makes a comeback...

Longhair · Jun 20, 2020

DIGGER27 said:
For a whole season my brother got a job at the Palace taking tickets at the door.
No assigned seating there, first come first serve, and if I remember correctly most bands were only $6 a ticket but I went to every concert with two other buddies because we never paid, my brother just pretended to take tickets from us.
Every week we went no matter who was playing...two live bands and free is free, right?

Once I remember in between sets at one concert I went to the bathroom there was a big buzz going on in the lobby because police were called and they locked the place down...Nobody could come in or out and everyone was getting antsy.
Coop up a few thousand long hair hippies that were totally stoned to the bone and don't tell them a reason why and they tend to get confused.
Later I asked my brother what happened and he said there was some kind of fight or something, some guy was chased up to the third floor and ended up either jumping or was pushed off and fell to the street, or a gun was pulled and shot...or something.
The cops had shut the place down while they looked for the guys that were involved but eventually they opened it up again so you could come or go.

Another time, at a Kiss concert early in their career, after being the opening band for many now they were now all of a sudden the headliners and there was an opening band which might have been Wizzard, headed up by Roy Wood that later went on to co-found EL0 or, now don't hate me, it might have been the one that a little three piece band called Rush was brought in to play that first set.
Can't remember, so much is still fuzzy because of all the self medication going on in those years.
Somebody had printed up a slew of fake tickets that I guess looked pretty good and sold a ton of them on the street to people that had parked a block or two away as they walked up to the door.
The ticket guys couldn't tell the difference and then the box office completely sold out of their tickets so that place was overloaded to the tune of a few hundred extra that had no place to sit if you got there later on.
People were standing everywhere, sitting in the isles blocking everything up.
This was bad enough but for those of you that never went to this fine venue the Michigan Palace was a very old opera house built in 1926 and originally had about 4000 seats, I think, a large 3 story building that cost a relatively small sum of about $5 million to build probably because wood was the main building component.
Beautiful at one time but old by the 70's and by the time the promoter rented this place out for three seasons it was a crumbling mess, basically made from a ton of plaster and old dried out wood that was a close relative to kindling by that point.
I don't think there was any fire suppression tech in there at all except for maybe a few handheld fire extinguishers.
Then Kiss showed up with their show which had more than just a little bit of smoke generators, fire cannons and explosions involved in it.
Plus, many of the very intelligent patrons had fun lighting and tossing out sparklers out everywhere whenever Kiss played and I believe the explosions weren't enough for them so they brought lots of firecrackers and set those off, too.
An old wood building, way too much fire, hundreds of extra people jamming up the isles...a recipe for disaster.
I remember after the first band played we saw fire department officials walking around up and down the crowded isles and they weren't happy.
I guess they threatened to close down the place before Kiss came on but didn't for some reason...I have no idea why or exactly what transpired that convinced them to let the show go on but somehow the aisles were cleared out a bit and the show continued.
Maybe they were more afraid of rioting which probably would have happened if they canceled the concert 30 minutes before Kiss was due to hit the stage.
Probably would have, too...early Kiss fans weren't exactly the mellow, laid back types like Beach Boys fans tended to be.

Hard to believe I survived that one, I got hit in the head by a flying, lit sparkler
while Kiss was playing, luckily I was wearing a hat.
The concert ended, the place didn't burn down, everyone went home happy and alive but to this day I have no idea how that happened.

Actually, it wasn't an opera house. It was an old dinner theater, very similar to the recently renovated Fox.

The ruckus with the police that you mentioned......I could tell you what happened, but then I'd have to kill you. I'll just tell you that it directly involved the guy I rode there with.

And yes, it was Roy Wood. As a matter of fact they didn't even finish their set. The KISS fans were throwing so much !!!! and being so rude that they just stopped playing and he said, "Maybe we'll come back some day when you're old enough to appreciate us.", and they walked off stage. It was a real shame too, 'cause he was really kicking it with that Mandolin!

Probably the most laid back well behaved crowd we ever had there was the Sly Stone bunch. That was without doubt the easiest night I ever worked there. There were some nights that we knew going in were going to be crazy, like every time Iggy was in the house.

I could tell you funny stories about lining up passed out Barbiturate ODs on the floor in the kitchen in rows, or being on stage drinking Tequila with Johnny Thunder (New York Dolls lead guitarist) during the show, but I've got so many that I'd have to write a book to convey them all.

Those were the days.

DIGGER27 · Jun 20, 2020

Yea those rowdy Kiss fans, can't remember too many other concerts I went to that were as obnoxious as that bunch.
Didn't even remember Wizard walking off early but if you say they did...they did.
I seem to remember I was enjoying them but I don't blame them...throwing stuff at the band onstage ain't cool.

I did see Rush at a concert there, also ZZ Top at another concert.
Both bands had more sound coming out of their speakers at a higher volume than any three piece band had a right to...pretty amazing, sonically.
Gave Nugent, who generally had a mountain of speakers that filled the stage, a run for his money.

Hey Longhair, do you remember the Fleetwood Mac concert?
We're you there for that one?
I believe it was one of the first tours with Lindsey Buckingham and his girlfriend.
I was a little disappointed because without the internet I heard no news about the personnel changes.
I was expecting the previous more blues oriented lineup but they were great, of course.
I remember right in the middle of their set right in the middle of a song the whole building lost power, everything went to black onstage and in the entire theatre and no electric instruments worked.
Mick kept drumming though, never missed a beat and we all sat there in the dark while he kept going for several minutes heavily pounding away.
I don't know how much time passed but it was not short and eventually we saw the little red lights on the speakers light up and then it took a bit more time but then the lights onstage all came on at once and the electric instruments came alive at the same time.
The entire band went right back into their song where they left off like nothing had ever happened...like it was planned that way.
One of the greatest things I ever witnessed at a live concert.

Write a book...I'll buy it and read it.
Maybe it will fill in the blanks I still have in my memory from back then.

Longhair · Jun 20, 2020

I do remember that show, and it was pretty amazing.
I also remember the last show(s) that I worked....seven consecutive nights of David Bowie. It was right when he made his shift to "rock drama", and there was a whole crowd there that were seriously out of place in their Ziggy Stardust garb. Oops! :laughing:

The problem with writing a book, is that it would require naming names of folks that I wouldn't do that to out of respect.

Do you by any chance remember "The Motor City Queens"? They were the fishnet body suit wearing floozies that camped out at the backstage door hoping to score with band members. :shock:

Those girls were a hoot! Nothing that you'd want to take home to Mom, but a riot to hang out with. :yes:

DIGGER27 · Jun 20, 2020

I was, and always will be a huge Bowie fan..still got all his albums from Hunky Dory through Station to Station.
I was at his concert on night four of that run...he wasn't Ziggy anymore but had morphed into the Thin White Duke.
I paid for those tickets and took a date.
Great concert, great entertainer!

Didn't know about the Queens.
I did have to admonish some queens that I found sitting on my car when we took a trip to the downtown Coney Island after the bars closed at about three in the morning, once.
Three or four of them were sitting on my fenders and hood scuffing everything up.
They were actually funny and fun to deal with, but had no respect for others property.

Franz · Jun 22, 2020

You two sound like old hippies reminiscing dead shows (one of my favorites). I swear I lost most of my hearing to the tiny 4x6 speakers in my x1/9 and the tape hiss that came through them. I love love love jams.. not so much the stuff like space and drums people think of when they hear "Grateful Dead" but the gradual creation of one over subsequent shows. Then they aren't really a jam, but a 20 minute song cause the clausing and phrasing is so stretched out, but it's there none the less. Phish is good for that. Also like Fusion, like Mahavishnu and Larry Coryell's band, whose name I can't remember. If you all like Jaco Pastorious, find a copy of volume two of Trio. It was him, Hiram Bullock and Kenwood Denard. They did some shows and I think three of them were put out on albums. Really good stuff.

I have a friend who I introduced to Rory's music. He and his (ex)wife had gone out of town to see an Anthrax show (not my cup of tea). The next day, they were walking down the street, and his ex said "hey honey, isn't that the guy from the band?" sure enough, it was (I don't remember who exactly it was, so i'm not going to say scott ian). Anyhow, they ended up drinking at a bar together talking on and on about Rory.

I got the Check Shirt Wizard cds. Haven't finished listening to them both yet, but great sound quality and lots of songs I haven't heard in a while, like Edged in Blue. Wish he would have jammed that song. Jack-Knife Beat is next, it just started, but won't get to continue it until I do more driving.

DIGGER27 · Jun 23, 2020

It was a fun and historic time, I wonder if decades from now music fans can say they the same about the music we have today.

Luckily for me I was a fan of all kinds of music, if you look at my hundreds of albums you can tell I have some pretty eclectic tastes.
You mentioned Larry Coryell, I own this album, bought sometime in the early 70's.
Some think it was the beginnings of jazz fusion.

He had John McLaughlin on guitar, Chick Corea on electric piano, Miroslav Vitouš on bass, and Billy Cobham on drums.
Pretty cool and talented band I would say.

I also have at least one Dave Brubeck album in there, somewhere.

Rory Gallagher makes a comeback...

Longhair

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DIGGER27

In Memory Of

Longhair

Elite Member

DIGGER27

In Memory Of

Franz

DIGGER27

In Memory Of

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