Bands and Concerts and Musicians from 1968-1973

61 Concerts, events, musicians I "kind of" remember.

Pre- Woodstock:

1. Johnny Winter

2. Edgar Winter

3. The Band

4. Van Morrison

5. Sound outs, coffee houses, etc.

Woodstock (the acts remembered):

6. Santana

7. Canned Heat

8. Grateful Dead

9. Mountain

10. Creedence Clearwater Revival

11. Sly & The Family Stone

12. Janis Joplin [ of course]

13. The Who [the windmill arm was awesome]

14. Jefferson Airplane

15. Joe Cocker [love, love, love Joe.. saw him again a few years back 2008 or 09]

16. Country Joe & the Fish [got to see him later as well]

17. Ten Years After

18. The Band [had seen them locally too]

19. Blood Sweat and Tears [saw them several years later as well]

20. Johnny Winter [use to see him perform in coffee houses]

21. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

22. Paul Butterfield Blues Band

23. Sha-Na-Na [never liked them, but saw them twice]

24. Jimi Hendrix [best guitar player… saw several times before his death]

NYC – other

25. Janis Joplin [met on streets, saw in December 69 in concert]

26. Richie Havens [got to meet him backstage, friend of his opening act, was at Carnegie hall]

Met –outside of performance

27. Arlo Guthrie – Eugene Oregon

28. Tim Hardin – his house, Woodstock

29. Art Garfunkle – coffee shop, Woodstock

30. Janis Joplin – St. Mark’s place, NYC

31. Jimi Hendrix – coffee house in Woodstock

32. Richie Havens- back stage at Carnegie hall

Filmore East:

33. Jimi Hendrix

34. Grateful Dead

35. Blood, Sweat and Tears

36. Voices of East Harlem

37. Iron Butterfly

38. Canned Heat

39. Sly & the Family Stone

40. Ike & Tina Turner

41. Santana

42. Sha-Na-Na

43. Procal Harem

44. Edgar Winter

45. Allman Brothers

46. Isaac Hayes

47. Youngbloods

48. Chicago

49. Humble Pie

50. Joe Cocker

51. Big Brother & The Holding Company

52. Moody Blues

53. Credence

54. Jethro Tull

On Road:

55. Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Winterland:

56. 1972 June Rolling Stones

Berkeley Era:

57. 1973 June Led Zeppelin

58. B.B. King

59. Country Joe & Fish

60. Doobie Brothers

61. Asleep at the Wheel

The day they pointed the shotguns at the pregnant girl. © 2011 Dakini Verona

The day they pointed the shotguns at the pregnant girl © 2011 Dakini Verona

 “Hi, I'm Rebecca. Call me Rebecca, Becca, but never Becky." Funny how those little things stick out in my mind. When I was introduced to my “old man’s” friends that is what I remember. Her name was Rebecca. She had long shiny vibrant red hair, which fell just below her shoulders. She had soft full lips that when stretched into a bright radiant smile revealed teeth that were impeccable. She seemed more like a loving older sister than a hard assed drug dealer.  

I guess that was because she was always kind to me. 

Rebecca’s “old man”, Daniel, was a drug dealer. The typical kind. Not the happy go lucky pot smoking, acid dropping dealer. Oh, no. He was the hard edged, gun toting, tough son-of-a-bitch cocaine dealer.  His clothes were dirty and his long stringy hair was flat and greasy. You know the type, the ones you see in the movies.  I am sure that not many of you have come face to face with this type of a scenario, so I will try to give you as many details as I can, or want to remember.

Outlaw. Part 1. © 2011 Dakini Verona

Outlaw. Part 1. © 2011 Dakini Verona

The first time that I can recall any run-ins with the law was when the local police in the small Upstate New York town of Saugerties would tell us to move along. We weren’t doing anything wrong; we were just a bunch of local school kids hanging out. But the police did not want us to gather. Maybe they thought we would start some kind of trouble, maybe they thought we were conspiring against the local government or maybe they thought we would riot like the rebellious students from Berkeley that they heard about.

We were not that sophisticated, in fact, the people I hung out with barely had a thought bigger than themselves. Small towns tend to breed small thinkers. The only thing we were conspiring to do was to find a way to stay out after curfew. We would be looking for dark corners or alleys where we could just hang out and get high: smoking pot, dropping pills, eating acid. Just your “normal” illegal drug activity; that is, if you consider any drug use normal.  Oh, there was one other thing on the minds’ of the boys: they wanted to see if they could “cop a feel”. Big aspirations, right? Major outlaws? Never.

I found myself gravitating to the nearby Village of Woodstock. Not to break the law, but because the people there were more accepting of those that did not fit into the pigeon holes of the high school cliques. I was one of those that never seemed to fit in. I tried to, believe me. I did a lot of things that I later regretted, thinking it would help gain me acceptance in the tightly knit groups. But as you can probably gather by now, I never was able to really fit in, not in Saugerties. Woodstock was a whole new world that greeted me with open arms.

This was the Pre-Festival days, when the town was not on the map and was invaded on weekends by the successful and even not-so-successful artists and musicians. Woodstock was always a mecca for the hip. It was “The Place”. To the locals, it was known as an “Artist Colony”, which really was just a label to put on a place that had an usually high number of very talented artists and musicians.

Woodstock was known for its laid back atmosphere. Coffee houses were filled with the aroma of freshly brewed espresso. The kind that was so thick you had to dilute it with 8 spoons of sugar. The kind of coffee that “puts hair on your chest”, as my father would say. The coffee served in the commercial coffee houses of today does not for one second resemble that rich liquid.

 It got to a point that the local Woodstock cops all knew me by my first name. They would actually drive up and call to me: ‘“hello Valerie, I see you are ditching school again… you know we will have to call your parents to take you home. Get in the car and let’s go, NOW!”  In fact, it became a routine. Like the typical cat and mouse game. I was the kid, hiding and running from the cops (or pigs as we called them back then).  

~ continued in the book ~