I Dig Music

The saga continues.

            Right at the end of the 1970-71 basketball season, I got the chance to attend my second ever concert. I can’t remember why I got so excited, but when I learned that Savoy Brown had booked a stop in Knoxville, I couldn’t wait to see the concert. The strange part is that I didn’t know anything about the music of SB, and was basing my excitement on a review of the band’s newest album and singer. There were to be two other bands, The Grease Band, who had been Joe Cocker’s band at Woodstock, and Faces (formally The Small Faces), who I had not heard anything from since Itchycoo Park in 1968, on the bill.

            I had scraped up enough money to buy tickets for Billy D, who would be doing the driving, my cousin, who was supposed to be BD’s date, a girl named Ruby, who was supposed to be my date but allegedly came down with some ailment and didn’t make it, and me. We went out to my cousin’s and ate with my aunt and uncle. My cousin allowed us to listen to her copy of Jimi Hendrix’s Monterey Pop album. We also listened to the Otis Redding side of the same disc. We left about an hour and a half before concert time.

            I bought three first balcony tickets at $3.50 a pop, and we waited outside The Knoxville Civic Auditorium until the doors opened. The crowd milling around near us was certainly groovier looking than the bunch I’d seen at my first concert the previous summer, but by the time we had found our seats I could see that the auditorium less than half full. I hoped like hell that the small size of the crowd wasn’t because the bands were going to be shitty. I read the rock press a lot and I didn’t know much about the bands and I figured no one else did either. I kept an open mind.

            Just like my first concert, an unannounced opening act warmed up the crowd. I don’t remember the guy’s name, and hence have no idea of his place in music, but he was in my eyes a fairly average folk singer, and probably a local act. I’m sure I watched him while listening intently, yet no lasting impression marked itself in my brain.

            Same’s true for The Grease Band. To be perfectly frank, they were terrible. I don’t mean that the members couldn’t play. Everybody had heard the band backing Joe Cocker in Woodstock (one of the highlights of the film), but whatever fire exhibited during the movie was absent in Knoxville. I could see a Hammond organ on stage and was excited about what might come from it, but nothing ever did, save for one song that sounded like Three Dog Night’s Out in the Country.