CD Review
The Rock and Roll Era: 1964,
various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987
The summer of 1964 we freshly-
minted high school graduates ready to face the big bright sun new world that
had been laid out for us, and that we felt we could shuffle around at will if
things didn’t work out the way we wanted them to, were, as old Worthworth’s
poem proclaimed, those who could claim “to be young was very heaven “. More
importantly we were summer of 1964 and freshly-minted eighteen years old and
therefore permitted, legally permitted (although “unofficially” we had entered
several months earlier), to enter the “hot spot” teen night club, The Surf .
Most importantly summer of 1964 and soon to be freshly- minted college freshmen
gave us cachet with, well, who else, the girls who flocked to the club in
droves looking, well who else, looking for guys and maybe a bright prospect
college freshman guy.
As with all such teen things
though, college guys, hamburger flippers, gas station grease monkeys or
low-rider bikers, this one summer of 1964 Saturday evening, a July night, that
put things in perspective, started off slowly. Slowly meaning the girls were
not flocking into the club in droves, those that had did not look like they
were looking for soon to be freshly-minted college freshmen but rather solid
gas station grease monkeys (who at least had the advantage of being able to
help fix that old 1957 DeSoto that was always dripping oil). A little later
though thing s did pick up once the local legend cover band , The Rockin’
Ramrods, started to warm up for their first set and suddenly the place was
filled with girls (and guys too, not with the girls, it was that kind of place,
strictly a meet and match place.)
Now part of the reason that
things had started slowly was that everybody with any dough and a few
connections had brought “the fixings” with them. In twenty- one legal age Maine
the Surf Club was strictly, very strictly “no alcohol allowed.” So “the fixings,”
meaning alcohol in those days, meant that one and all had spent the early
evening out along the seashore boulevard parking lot that stretched from the
Surf Club to Seal Rock down at the far end of Olde Saco Beach drinking and
getting themselves “rum” brave enough to face the evening. We (my corner boys
from Mama’s Pizza Parlor and me) had done our share as well but being rookies
at this business had come early and had finished up our portions already so we
slipped inside the club.
Once the band started up
though I was rum brave enough to corner a girl
I had been eyeing for a few
minutes, and she, I thought, had been eyeing me. (I told you it was that kind of place, with guys eyeing and girls eyeing in order to live up to that meet and match reputation.) What caught my fuzzy, bleared eye was that she was wearing high-heel sneakers, light blue, that were the minute rage among young women that summer. And that meant that she was hip, hip in a way that guy could think about, or dream think about.
Wouldn’t you know it just
that minute when I asked her for a dance the band started to play “Louie, Louie”
by the Kingsmen, a song that had practically become the national anthem of the
Surf Club (and maybe the national anthem of party hungry, boy and girl hungry,
youth everywhere). Now I didn’t (and don’t’) dance particular well but my moves
on that song must have impressed Betty enough because after that dance was over
and I had said thank you she asked me to come back to her wall (when the music
started the walls were where you wanted to be not caught at some hunker down no
eyeing table) to talk to her and later, after some feeling out talk to see if
we did match, asked me, if you can believe this, if at intermission I might not
like to go with her to her car and have a drink or two to cool off. Yes, that
summer of 1964.
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