When the music played

There's an interesting blog where the author shares his memorabilia of 1970s rock concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He covers bands like Genesis and Manfred Mann, and artists like Alan Price and Peter Frampton. It's teaching me some things about bands I really knew little or nothing about. I'm a few years older than Dave Miller, who does David's Rock Scrapbook and co-authors Brit Rock By The Bay with friends. My musical tastes tended to run toward the 1960s style. I know Dave likes that era, too, but he branched out and I stayed stuck in the earlier era. C'mon, I never got over the Beatles splitting up...I guess I was in mourning for that for a long time.

I don't like to think of myself as stodgy, but I am. Dave and his friends intimidate me with their knowledge of the artists whose concerts they attended, the songs they heard, because I don't think I heard many of them. Around our parts, 750 miles east of San Francisco in little ol' Utah, we had a couple of AOR (album oriented rock) stations, and I did hear a lot of music when I tuned in, but those stations devolved into classic rock stations, which have a limited playlist of songs. I could have listened to one of those stations in 2005, and tune in right now and hear the exact same songs. So I guess maybe there are people who are stodgier than me when it comes to their musical tastes.

I went on YouTube without any real notions of what I was looking for, but I came up with four bands and four tunes I liked during the 1960s. The Easybeats was a band from Swingin' London, and their lead singer had some interesting dance moves I haven't seen before. Music Machine was a one-hit wonder (which is one more hit than I ever had), but the title of the song, "Talk Talk" became the name of an '80s band. Music Machine is also categorized as a garage band, and I've never been sure what that means. Their song sounds pre-punk to me. Except for the keyboardist they each wear one glove (pre-Michael Jackson), and their hairstyles (wigs?) look like how The Ramones patterned themselves a few years later.

Quicksilver Messenger Service and It's A Beautiful Day were both from the San Francisco area, and played the venues made famous during the hippie era. I never saw Quicksilver in person, but It's A Beautiful Day, with David LaFlamme on violin, appeared here in my home town (which is also David's home town and where, as far as I know, he still lives) and affected me deeply. I wore out two copies of the vinyl versions of their first album, and the song "White Bird" I consider classic.