Billy Strings, Willy, Led Zeppelin and Stereo Man

When I saw the video of Billy Strings, a favorite guitarist of mine, hit in the head with an object at a concert in Indiana, I was reminded of my own incident of be being hit in the head while on a stage in June, 1977

A quick replay: 

Led Zeppelin's last US tour, June 3, 1977...... The gig was at Tampa Stadium (the old stadium). 70,000 plus fans had been waiting for several hours in the hot Florida sun to hear one of their favorite bands. 15 minutes into the first set, a classic Summertime Florida thunder storm blew through, dumping many many gallons of water on the venue.

The awning over the stage was holding thousands of gallons of water over the stage where many thick cables handled massive amps and voltage of electricity. The local Fire marshall called the governor of Florida. The governor officially closed the concert down.

Upon hearing that the concert had been canceled, many of the fans had been waiting for hours, became an angry crowd. They tossed aside the "full proof security fence" and rushed the stage. By that time I had been volunteered to help the security guys defend what was now a mostly empty stage except for the stacks of speakers that were to be loaded on my trailer.

The scene was madness. 3,000 to 4,000 people were still hanging out near the stage. They were not happy. I looked out at them and their risng anger. It was obvious what was going to happen. The rest of the 70,000 fans had already left. Security guys in black Tee shirts, SHOWCO roadies and drivers stood nervously waiting for the crowd to breach that "Impregnable" wall. 

Over a thousand hands got busy and finally destroyed the integrity of the wall. Stoned and drunk fans climbed onto the stage. There were not many, maybe fifty or so. But, they were rabid. The loose crew of security types, myself included were expected to keep them back. Some of the crew were holding mic stands and were very enthusiastic with using them to keep the fans at bay. I carried no blunt instruments. I have thought about that day from time to time and today, I still don't know why I joined them onstage to defend an empty space. Young and still numb is all I can come up with.

Along with the breach, many glass bottles, parts of the wall , etc. ended up onstage. Something hit me in the back of the head. I got pissed I guess. I ran across the stage to help one of the drivers who had created his own fight by being too quick to use his mic stand on someone larger and obviouly out of it. The madness only lasted 5 minutes or so when suddenly it was over as Tampa cops poured into the field and took care of the out of control mob and the remaining hanger ons.. 

I cannot say for sure what hit me in the back of my head. It was thrown with enough force to draw blood and raise a good sized bump. I walked around the stage looking for what it might have been. I found the hash pipe you see in the image. While it may not have been what hit me in the head, it was on the stage when everything was over, so I grabbed it and have used it off and on since then. Next year will be 50 years since I picked up that pipe. I guess I should be grateful I found it. It has been a dependable go to cannabis consumption device when I was tired of rolling joints. And it was one of the few pipes I managed to not lose over the last 50 years.

I wrote about the incident more extensively here.

Morons throwing stuff at the stage is sadly, a time honored tradition. Negative responses by the artists are often the result. At a concert at the Wheaton Youth Center in Wheaton, Maryland in the early 1970's, Snake tossed a lit joint at Dr John. Dr John swung his micrphone and hit Snake right in the head and glared at me like I was who he was aiming at. Geez, I told Snake not to throw it; we'd never get it back and it was our last joint.

As always, please keep it 'tween the ditches ...........................

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I'm feeling like a Two Fer musical choice for this post. First up is Billy Strings in cahoots with Willy Nelson on a tune about geeting too old to party like they did back in their good ole days. Here is 'Claifornia Sober". Enjoy.

This next video is "Good Times, Bad Times". It is from Led Zeppelin's first album, ironically titled "Led Zeppelin". It was another one of my infamous record store van purchases at Clark's Tank n Tummy filling station in the foothills of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. That was the summer of 1969. The record store guy pulled it out of one of his boxes in the back of his van, handed it to me and said, "Here, you are gonna love this album."..................... He was right of course.

However, the biggest plus of this album was its impact on my father. My dad was quite the audiophile. He had started constructing his own sound systems starting the late 1950s. He built ociiloscopes to track the sound waves. He built huge speakers and the huge amps to power them. 

At the time everything going through those speakers was Mono (only one channel). He had read of stereo being the next big thing. He called Heathkit and latched onto one of their first stereo amp DYI kits. He put it together and was immediately disappointed in the music that amp delivered. He went back to his stupidly huge mono amp and that was that.

About 7 years later I had built up my own stereo system. It waas much smaller than what he had built, but it kicked ass. 20 amps per channel with some good quality 10 inch speakers i put in homemade barrel halves. When I pulugged in my headphones, it was just awesome. I figured out that the RocknRoll setero music world  was way ahead of the curve over the more classic audio world.

After I bought this album and had run through it umpteen times, I decided I had to get my dad into some headphones. I made him come up to my attic bedroom and put those headphones on. I did not want to scare him, so I started with the volume on low. I waited for him to respond. He gave me a thumb's up, "Louder". I cranked it. He started to yank the headphones off, but suddenly stopped and just listened. I watched the his lightbulb go off. He smiled. He had seen the light. From that day forward, he was a Stereo Man. 

Afterwards. his system building madness grow three or four fold. He started with those huge 20" inch woofers; added 8 or 10 smaller speakers and built a 200 watt stereo amplifier. When My mom wasn't home, he'd fired that system up and rattle every window in the house. I could hear it clear as a bell from Dunc's place about 100 yards down Sam Page Road; especially when he fired up his sound effects record; Trains, planes, whistles and artillery blasts.

Here is Led Zeppelin's, "Good Times, Bad Times"; the song that turned my father into the audiophile beast that was his destiny. Funny though, he would often play this song as a judge of how good the stereo recordings of his favorite music were.

Definitely best enjoyed with the volume turned up to WOW!