Oh! I forgot about the music halls -- Fillmore West, Avalon Ballroom, Winterland, and Longshoreman's Hall, all in the San Francisco area. I don't even remember who all I saw except Joplin and Jefferson Airplane, but I wish I had kept some of those flyers. They used to pass them out on streetcorners. I had one entire bedroom wall papered with them at one point. Chick magnet!

[quote=tomwed;918221]You need to come to some meetings of my Beatles Club. We had a big celebration on Feb 9 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. We had my friend Chris Huston as a guest speaker. Chris was in a Liverpool band called the Undertakers. He was a classmate of John Lennon at Liverpool Art College and he was very good friends with all the Beatles. He played on the same bill with them several times. He was also in playing The Star Club in Hamburg at the same time as The Beatles.

Chris went on to become a world class engineer and producer having produced bands such as the Rascals, Eric Burdon and War, Led Zepplin, The Who and James Brown.

We meet every Friday morning at 10:00 at the O'Dell Rec Center.

This Friday marks our second anniversary as a club.

Thanks, Chi. I couldn't believe it when I watched this. Look at the picture where they are standing in line to use the phone. The fourth guy in line with the bell bottoms and jacket is my brother :a20:

I don't remember.:shrug:

Well, they say if you remember the 60s, you weren't there.

I was lucky to live in Cleveland where all the rock bands visited. It is also home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame so we still get the old timers coming! Jane Scott (the rock band reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer ) was my condo neighbor. She was always getting " thank you gifts and flowers" from the band that she shared with me... I have had treats from too many bands if the 60's and 70's to count!!

Saw The Doors at the Allen theater in downtown Cleveland for $6.00....still have the ticket stub. Have also seen Blood, Sweat & Tears, Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly, Carly Simon, Peter Frampton, Styx, Heart, Donovan, Player and a few others that I can't recall right now.

Eric Clapton July 18, 1974 Tempe, AZ.
 

18 July 1974 - Eric Clapton & His Band

I went with my cousin Tom and older brother Robert to this Eric Clapton concert. It was probably under $10 a piece. We were sitting on the grass in the stadium.

I have seen Styx, Yes, Billy Joel, Joe Jackson, and Bette Midler too. All of these were in Denver or near Denver with University of Denver graduate students. The tickets were probably around $25.00 or so. These were between 1983 and 1984.

BB King at a Reno, NV., casino for the price of two drinks. These were Coca-Colas. I was underage if I remember correctly.

I wished I could have hung out with you back in the day. Nice band resume.:BigApplause:

I was more Grand Funk Railroad, early Rush (2112 days) Deep Purple, Sammy Hagar when he was 18 and played with Montrose and Van Halen with David Lee Roth. Chicago Transit Authority and REO Speedwagon played at my high school.

Ticket prices for my three favorite concerts -

Sir Paul 10/05 $225.00
Elvis 7/76 12.50
John Sebastian 5/70 6.00

Aerosmith are gods, but their tickets are face value $300, scalper value $1000 (and I'm all for open markets for getting what one can for their own ticket in the resale market). So how much did it cost for me to see them live, the complete show? Nothing!

Their 2013 full concert is free on youtube in high-def, I can google Chromecast it to my 70-inch HDTV; sit five feet away from the screen so that I can see if Steven Tyler's had a tonsillectomy; crank it through my 125-watt, 5.1 home stereo until my ears ring like church bells; drink Pabst Blue Ribbon for which I pay 50-cents a can; my truck parks free in my garage and I'll never find a half dozen juveniles smoking reefer and treating my bumper like a saloon stool; I can wear my faded Aerosmith t-shirt from 1970, the one that reeks of mothballs and Aqua Velva, without someone begging me to buy a new one with a naked lady on it for fifty bucks; and I don't have to pee in the blue-waters of a filthy, portable, plastic outhouse.

At home, I just pass out in my own excrement, drunk and safe, in the beanbag chair in front of the television until daybreak.

Thank you, modern technology!

Aerosmith fans, here's the link!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0dXk5qUdiE

[quote=Dr Winston O Boogie jr;918365]Thank you for inviting me. I am looking forward to it.

I forgot that the last festival I attended was amazing and free. It was 2011 in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Warren Hellman picks up the tab and played in the some of the bands when he could. Please read his obituary, it is inspirational. click here

This was the lineup.http://www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.c...1_Schedule.pdf

I saw the BEACH BOYS, The TURTLES and The ASSOCIATION back in the late 60's. Cost about $10. In the 80's we saw FOREIGNER, CHICAGO, REO SPEEDWAGON, The Highwaymen( Cash, Nelson, Kristofferson and Jennings) and TOM JONES. All cost under $30 dollars. Recently, Eric Clapton in London and The Eagles in Amsterdam for between 250 -300 Euros.
PS If anyone would like to organize trips to rock concerts let me know.

In defense of the higher "face value" of concert tickets today, I have to point out that the experience today is enhance by all of the high tech equipment that today's bands have.

I played in a band back in the 60s and early 70s that opened for several big name touring acts. These bands mostly just plugged into huge amplifiers and the sound went directly out the the audience. There were no mixing boards. Occasionally, if the venue was big enough, the drums would be miked, often with one bass drum mic and an overhead. Guitar amps were seldom run through the board as there was often no board. Often times, the performers didn't even have monitors.

These days, Paul McCartney travels with twelve 18 wheelers full of equipment. A twenty five foot high HD video show goes on behind him during his performance. He travels with his own stage. There are pyrotechnics involved in most shows. The bands have state of the art monitoring systems including wedges or in-ear and sometimes a combination of both. Performers have can look at television screens on which the the lyrics to their songs scroll in time with the music so that they don't forget a line. Amps are all run directly through the board and all of the drums are closely miked so that all of the sound is coming through the board and can be precisely controlled. It is amazing how they can EQ a board today to get them to sound so good in venues that in the past were considered impossible in which to get a good sound. Instruments are exchanged seamlessly. Pianos come up from holes that open in the stage. And these days, most of this is done without cords through remote controls.

And all of this is set up and run by a staff numbering in the hundreds that travels from venue to venue.

Then think about the venues that you sit in to watch these concerts today. I've been to concerts at the Amway Center and Orlando and the Banknorth Garden in Boston. These places are amazingly comfortable with wide padded seats. It's a far cry from sitting in the mud for hours waiting until 4:00am or the old standing on floor of the no seating concerts that we had back in the day.

If you wonder why concert tickets that were $20 forty years ago, are $250 now. That is the answer. It's a much better show and a much better experience. And that is without factoring in inflation.

Now as to why you have to pay $1,000 for a $250 ticket, that is another question and one that has me really ****ed off.