Boom! When Small Rock Bands First Roamed the Earth

The following is the first of a series from Colonel Possum’s Tall Tales from the Sixties now reposted to Tom Brokaw’s new group Boom!

Preface to a Multi-Part Series, "Weekend in San Francisco":

The Rolling Stones returned to Detroit for a gala Super Bowl halftime in 2006. I first saw these ole boys in the Motor City at the Cobo auditorium during their first visit there in 1975. Keith Richards and Ron Wood had youthful faces that barely showed a crevasse of recreational excess. Mick Jagger rode a giant inflating phallus during the show and sang "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". That's a song that came out in 1965. I remember it because my buddies and I ditched our senior Physics class to drink beer at Zuma beach. "Satisfaction" blasted out of the tube radio in my 1958 Chevrolet Bel Aire as we made damn-crazy-ass-kid turns down Malibu Canyon.

I don't know if Viagra was the energy source for the Stone's halftime show. Whatever inflates his balloon these days, Mick cranked out "Satisfaction" like an old pro. I remember him saying long ago that if he sang that song at age fifty, someone should shoot him. If they tried they must have missed because these sixty-somethings are still hopping and gyrating about. Isn't it funny how baby-boomers keep moving the goalposts of their generation? Remember "Don't trust anyone over thirty?" Now it is, "Don't trust anyone under fifty!"

After watching the Super Bowl show, I thought it might be cool to tell some tall tales from my experiences growing up on the West Coast in the 1960s at the so-called dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The "Weekend in San Francisco" series is a compilation of these tales for the years 1965 and 1966. For my younger audience, this is the Rock N' Roll Pleistocene Epoch when small rock bands first roamed the earth. Before the Big Rock concerts of later years, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother with Janis Joplin were playing small venues such as the Filmore Theater and Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. To the south in Los Angeles, Jim Morrison and the Doors, The Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds played clubs in West Los Angeles such as the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, Troubador and Gazzarri's. Most of these events and clubs were open to underage kids. A "California Learner's Permit" and you're in the door, many places didn’t even check. The coolest!

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles. As the Sixty's pop counter culture started to spread on the West Coast, teenagers like myself lived fairly simple lives orbiting about the dipole of surf and car cultures. On the Weekends it was the San Fernando Drag Strip or the beaches of Southern California. In the parlance of those times, my 1958 Chevrolet Bel Aire was just bitchen. It had a bored out 348 with Jahn's high compression pistons, a racing cam, three-two's and a four-fifty six rear end. Just bitchen! In the spring of 1965, my good friend, George, and I barreled down the Pacific Coast Highway sober as a judge. That wasn't by design but with only $0.75 between us there wasn't any budget for libations. In those days gasoline was $0.29 per gallon, and two gallons at the next stop would just get us home.

It started to rain as we flew past Point Mugu heading south. I had just outfitted my Chevy with 10-inch Inglewood slicks. These were rear tires that didn't have a trace of tread but really hooked up at the San Fernando Drag Strip on take off. By the way, in those days you were much more likely to see the Beach Boys there than at the beach. They had a super-bitchen Shelby Cobra that really hauled ass. San Fernando was a little goofy; the strip ran slightly uphill then downhill through the timing lights. This hurt elapsed time a bit, but top speed was awesome!

Anyway, my Inglewood slicks proved to have less than optimal traction on a rain slick highway. This didn't worry George and me because the Rolling Stones just came on the radio singing "Mona (I Need You Baby)"; radio volume up, adolescent gas pedal to the floor. Just below Point Mugu, there's a turn and then a long straight stretch by the sand dunes. My Bel Aire decided to do a tricky dance step to the music right in the middle of this turn. She flipped up on her right side and rocketed down the shoulder in a shower of Roman candle sparks, plowed into a sand berm and miraculously landed on her feet.

George and I somehow ended up mashed together on the shotgun-side in the floor well under the dash. The engine was dead but the Rolling Stone's sang on, "Oh Mona, I tell you what I want to do, I'll build a house next door to you." We unraveled and laughed the way teenagers do when the Supreme Being saves your butt after doing really dumb-ass stuff. We managed to restart the Dance Star and limp off to the Chevron by the old Trancas Restaurant. The engine was knocking pretty hard from a loss of oil so George and I bought two quarts of oil instead of two gallons of gas. I rolled into the driveway on fumes late that night. The next morning, my father failed to appreciate my battered, sand encrusted car's newfound talents. The slicks were replaced with "sensible" tires and I was grounded for eternity.

Unknown to my father or me at the time, this misfortune proved not to be the end but the beginning of larger adventures (and misadventures) as the Pop Counter Culture Comet would soon smash the dipole of my existence and change a whole generation forever. But I am getting ahead of my story; please enjoy "Weekend in San Francisco."

Next episode: click here

Cheers,

Colonel Possum

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