Happy Thanksgiving

Thanks for reading The Happy Banana.

            At that point I figured we’d really be in for big doings with Savoy Brown. Of course, being average and only 16 years old, I didn’t know the ways of the world. I didn’t know that the bands on a bill were lined up as much by seniority as talent (which is why Led Zeppelin opened for Iron Butterfly and later Vanilla Fudge on its first trip to the states). I thought the best band took the top spot, but I was wrong.

            Not to be unfair, Savoy Brown was very good. The band members were good players and the musical direction was that of a progressive rock n roll group. The band’s leader and lead guitarist was named Kim, and that caught my interest, too. The musicians came on full of fire (they had to after The Faces) and warmed up on two pretty decent numbers. The third song was very dramatic with a longish section of excellent scat singing. But just when I was about to be won over, Kim Simmons bid the auditorium farewell and the band left the stage. The crowd, small as it was, got rowdy, felt, as did I, cheated. Some official looking gentleman took the stage and announced that we had to leave. A chant of “Hell no, we won’t go,” filled the room. After several warnings of dire consequences by the poor fellow charged with verbal crowd control, Savoy Brown took the stage again. It was easy to see that the band wanted to go home, and the song it played was nothing more than an instrumental three chord shuffle that was half-heartedly executed, but enough to dupe the crowd into standing down and heading for the exits when completed.

            We dropped my cousin off in Strawberry Plains and headed toward home. Billy D had an eight track player in his car and we were able to listen to Santana on the way back. As we sailed through Greenback, I went nuts when Soul Sacrifice came on. Anyone following the car might have thought that I was having some sort of fit with my bobbing, weaving, and spasms. A lot of it was an exaggeration on my part designed to get some reaction from Billy D, but partly because good music has the power to pitch one outside the usual boundaries of normal existence. I got home around 1:00 a.m.