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In reply to the discussion: Best concert you ever saw? [View all]SeattleVet
(5,477 posts)The performers on the bill were Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Bobby Rydell, The Coasters, The Shirelles, Gary "U.S." Bonds, Bobby Comstock and his All-Star band, and (billed as 'special added attraction') Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band.
Yep - it was the infamous 'Garden Party' concert.
Tickets were $5, $6, and $7. I had the cheap seats in the upper level. Good view of the stage, though.
Everything started out OK, and everyone was having a good time listening to this concert, which was Volume VII in a series of 'Rock 'n' Roll Revival' shows. Things went rapidly downhill when Nelson and his new band took the stage.
They played a couple of his older songs, and people liked it, but then he put down the guitar and moved to the piano and they started a very country-like version of Honky Tonk Woman from their new album. People started booing...not because it was bad or anything, but because it wasn't what everyone was there to hear, and it was way out of the realm of what that whole series of concerts had been about. All the other performers were doing what they had been famous for - it was a sort of concert of their hits, and nothing but their hits.
Something may or may not have been thrown at the stage. If it was it was super minor. Nelson finished that song, then got up and got his guitar and the booing got a lot louder and the audience was beginning to get a little rowdy. He and the band walked off the stage at that point (with police escort). He watched the rest of the show from the wings and did not return to the stage, even when ALL of the other musicians that had performed that night gathered for a concert-ending major jam-session finale that brought down the house.
(He later said that he didn't want to be 'a nostalgia act', which was all well and good, but this whole series of concerts was nothing but a huge nostalgia act, and he people felt that he should have either played what we had all come to hear or declined to take part in it to begin with.)
I definitely got my money's worth that night!