ARNOLD & FLY STANG MUSIC

Good Day Everyone !!! I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, and I hope it will be an enriching day with family and/or friends.

I last left you with some very memorable shows in the months of August and September that Fly, Jim, and I attended in the early to mid 1970’s.I would like to continue in this vein and talk about one show from 1980 and one from 1981 that happened to be in October and November. 

The show from 1980 was the very first punk show that I ever attended. Once again, this particular show was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. As those of you who read this column regularly, that some of our most memorable shows were at this venue, with many more to talk about in later writings. The date was Oct 11, 1980. The bands playing that night were 3 of the best SoCal bands during this time period. X was the headliner, with support that night from the Blasters, who hailed from Downey California and the Gears who called Huntington Beach home. Now, many many years later, X could be considered cultural  icons, while the Blasters are still out there playing the own brand of rockabilly, combined with a little hoochie coochie music, and a twinge of country thrown in. I think the term for their style is now called Americana. The Gears are no longer around which is a shame because they were a real kick ass band. 

I was still kind of new to the punk rock scene and my fellow concert goers seemed very different than the crowds that I was used to seeing and mingling with. There was a sense of danger in the air that I had never felt before. The dress mode was also 180* different than almost every show that I’d been to at that point. That being said, the crowd was there for the bands, same as I, and the show was exhilarating !!!!!

I was familiar with both X and the Blasters music on record, but when seen live, the music just seemed to explode from the stage. No extended guitar solo’s, no 20 minute drum solo’s, and no lead singer telling the crowd how wonderful it was to be there.Just loud, fast, in your face music that very much appealed to my early 20’s sensibilities. As I’ve said before, life changing !!! For the next two years I pretty much stopped listening to what I had previously, except for Bruce, and immersed myself in this new music that was just so damn exciting.

The second show that I want to talk about was in November of 1981. To me, this show is along the lines of the 1976 Springsteen show. It is reverently remembered every year on the day before Thanksgiving. By now I had been to enough punk shows, and while the crowd was filled with angst, the crowd and their dress was no longer scary to me. In fact, by this time, I was seeing familiar faces at every show that I attended. Now, I also want to mention the two girls that I would accompany to many shows in the future. One was Renay, who I still am in contact with, in fact we had dinner about a month or so ago. The other was Debbie, who was a really nice person, but came across as a bit of a social misfit. Come to think of it, Fly might have gone out a few times with Debbie, while Jim and Renay definitely had a relationship for a time. Damn, what happened to me(haha) ????

Meanwhile, getting back to the show, which had 999 headlining, and local bands the Circle Jerks and Wasted Youth supporting. 

What a wonderful evening !!! The two local bands were the perfect warmup for 999. They were touring behind their latest album “Concrete” which included two killer covers in “Little Red Riding Hood” and the song “Fortune Teller” which was covered by both The Rolling Stones and the Who in the 1960’s. 

One other difference that was very obvious to me early on was that the punk fans were there from the git go. I remember some of the shows that I had seen in the years previously, such as Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull, and Ten Years After, just to name a few , that the crowd was never filled out until right before the headliner came out for their set. Not like that at all for the punk shows. The  crowds were loud and boisterous from the first band hitting the stage thru the end of the headliners set. 

Well, there you have it for this month. I thought that I had one more November show to talk about, but as the NFL refs like to say, “ upon further review”, that particular show turned out to be in December, so maybe we will touch on that next time.

Again, Happy Thanksgiving to one and all !!! And once more, any of you that take the time to read what I write, please leave your thoughts in the comments section, whether they be good, bad, or ugly. 

Johnny 99 is OVER and OUT !!!!!