***Tales
From The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood- The
Rock Of The Generation Of ’68
My
old running buddy, Brad Badger, running as members of the North Adamsville cross
country and track teams all through high school mercifully completed, just
completed that sweet ass liberation June of 1964 were primed for something to
do that one hot, humid July night. Ready to jump, ready to go steady teddy,
ready, well, jump ready to take our first freedom breath after completing a big
rite of passage and dance the night away to the tunes that we had grown up with
and the music that we were beginning to dig that was coming like some wicked
ocean sea breeze blowing in from Adamsville Bay coming out some sire song to
us. (That “dig” sweet water word a left-over from the tip of the “beat” boys
era, you know Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady, Burroughs and the boys, era that we
had gotten a tail-end whiff of and liked, so yeah, dig). Hell, we were ready to
get the dust of the old town off our shoes if not ready to take that hitchhike
road that we spent many a sultry sweaty summer night, no money in our pockets,
no girls to ease the sultry sweaty night away, worse, no prospect of girls to
ease that condition, worse still no car to blow that dust off our shoes even as a trial run, talking about in front of
the grey granite step of the old high school in order to search for the great
blue-pink American night that we thought would cure what ailed us. When we went
it would, would cure our hungers, for a while but that was music for the
future.
(Hitchhiking
for those who are clueless, which could be quite a few since that art has not
been fashionable and rightly so since the mid-1970s as the dangerous world out
there on the roads got noticeably more dangerous, especially for young women
and guys who did not look like football players, was merely sticking out your
thumb on some woe begotten road and hope for the best. On certain roads you
could wait minutes and some friendly van full of hippies would add you as one
more to the crowd in the back, on others like one night in Winnemucca out in
the Nevadas it was eight hours and sleeping on a desert roadside waiting.)
I
should also say that that running around, part one, the sports running as
opposed to the running around town stuff I will get to in a minute was really
not exactly right. We ran on those sports teams mentioned above but as far as
running went Brad was a whizz, was a kid who if it had been maybe ten years
later when running for fun, running to stay in shape and top runners were treated like kings and
queens, maybe better, really took off would have gotten a scholarship to some
college in track. (As it was Brad was so desperate to shake that old town off,
desperate to get the hell away from his family life that not long after the
time of this tale he joined the Navy.) I, on the other hand, when it came to
the meets would run out of gas, had what Brad said one time was the “slows,”
and he was right. But enough of that because the other running around is what
was driving us that night.
Yeah,
the running around town as fellow corner boys up at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor
where our leader Frankie Riley held forth nightly, was what was driving us that
night. See Brad and I had first met in elementary school down at the Adamsville
“projects” where his family moved away from to Gloversville in the fifth grade
and then came back to North Adamsville in the ninth grade. I had moved to North
Adamsville in the seventh grade where I, a socially awkward kid, was taken under
the wing by Frankie, the reigning prince of the junior high corner boys who met
in front of Doc’s Drugstore across the street from North Adamsville Junior
High. When Brad and I reconnected in ninth grade I, naturally, had brought him into
the corner boy society, the high school corner boy society that held forth at
the pizza parlor a sign of coming of age in the North Adamsville corner boy
night.
I,
if I had time, could tell you a million Frankie Riley-invested corner boy stories
but this one is about Brad and me and our musical awakenings so I only need to
stop here to say that Frankie’s part in this particular story is only that he
lent us his boss ’59 two-tone Chevy (cherry red and white, the cherry red
according to Frankie-speak meaning you know what for any young woman brave
enough to get in that front passenger seat with our boy) to get to the Surf
Ballroom weekly dance (Friday and Saturday night) down in Hullsville about
twenty miles south of our town, also along the shore.
See,
and no disrespect to Frankie, or his sovereignty, but Brad and I were crazy to crazy
to get down to the Surf Ballroom, like I said the one down in Hull on the South
Shore, the one right next to the beach, not the one on the other side of
Boston, in the north near the subway station in Revere where they, old-timers I
guess, really did waltz/foxtrot/rhumba/swing ballroom dancing to while their
time away. Forget all that parent music stuff what we were craving was to hear
the latest sounds, the latest rock sounds that we had been craving to hear for
about four years. We sensed, hell we talked about it enough on those sultry
sweaty summer night high school steps earlier in the summer that a new
dispensation in rock music was coming through the wilderness and we wanted in.
Even
though Brad had moved away in elementary school before we could compare notes
both of us agreed that we had been washed clean, had gotten that old time
be-bop swing stuff that our parents listened to (and by control of the radio
and record player force-fed us to listen to until we got our very own
transistor radios to drown out that awful noise up in our respective bedrooms).
You know that Frank Sinatra, Vaughn Monroe, Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page stuff
that drove us up a wall with its mewing. Then came some whirlwind out of the
south mainly, came like a hell-wind to hear our parents talk about it, came out
of small record companies in Memphis, came all rocking and rolling there was no
other word for it, came with swirling hips, came with sneers, came with guys
playing guitar like their souls were on fire just to please, well, you know
damn well, to please the young girls who were crowding the stages and thinking
who knows what thoughts (we know now what thoughts and what they were willing
to do to get some rocker’s attention). All we knew was that whatever air was
left after guys like Elvis, Warren Smith, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Bo
Diddley, the Big Bopper, Eddie Corcoran, maybe a little Wanda Jackson, Jerry
Lee, maybe Jerry Lee above all since he came roaring at us as we hit puberty,
left the girls panting was we had better get on that train if we wanted to go
anywhere with the girls, when we figured out we wanted to go with them. And so
we did, did maybe by osmosis, or more likely after that eternally sprint home
to watch the latest from American
Bandstand to see what and who was hot.
Then,
I don’t know, the music died, or something about say 1959 or 1960 (yeah, maybe
1960 because then that four year wait makes sense). Well let me give you the obituary
on the thing, although maybe you know it already, know what it was like when
the parents or some parents anyway because it wasn’t us, pulled the hammer
down. First Elvis died (or something like that since after he went into the
Army he was never heard from again, not making serious rock and roll music but
mainly odd-ball movies with improbable or non-existent plots where he was like
some wooden Indian singing songs that our mothers could croon over, the kiss of
death) Jerry Lee swooned (got waylaid really by some silliness about kissing
cousins or something), and Chuck got caught with Mister’s women (a no-no then
and barely tolerated now despite all the post-racial noise). I won’t even speak
about the attritions through death, young death like Buddy Holly, Richie Valens
and the Big Bopper and other untoward things that happened when the music died.
Hell we were not sociologists or musicologists we just knew the music died,
knew it was beginning to creak like our parent’s music.
Yeah,
we had been in a trough, had been sing-songing some lame slow beat love song
heartache stuff, although we were no strangers either of us to that heartache
stuff we were not going to let that get us down, not let our music be
determined by some Brenda Lee/Patsy Kline/Lesle Gore/Fabian/Bobby Vee
conspiracy to rob us of real rock. Jesus it was awful. Guys singing about their
own true loves holding chaste hands in the movies and falling asleep, probably
because it was some boring Elvis movie and worrying, Jesus, get this, worrying
about their reputations like those chaste hands were what every guy, or every
girl come Monday morning before school “lav” talkfest was trying to emulate.
Jesus, or did I say that already. Worrying about some reputation instead of
finding some righteous rock and roll Ruby who would dance on the tables until
dawn. Yeah, you know you have gone back to the Stone Age, maybe before, when
songs start sounding like good advice from your parents about the virtues of
the straight and narrow.
How
about this one, this song if it can bear the name, from out of necrophilia land
about some bimbo (sorry there is no other way to describe her) after her guy
got her out of his stalled car on some back road railroad track who goes back
to the car with the train whistle blowing up yonder looking for some two-bit
class ring. Yeah, sorry teen angel, sorry but I think he bought the thing at
Woolworth’s, besides he had already given it to some Susie a few weeks before,
asked for it back when he met you, when you broke them up. So yeah, two bit
class ring. Get this next song though, one night some young thing had a fight
with her guy (who knows what reason but probably sex, or really, no sex) and went
off the deep end, went down to the perfectly harmless sea and threw herself in.
But that is not the worst of it she wanted her guy to join her in this suicide
pact, communicating through some siren song that has lured men for ages.
Christ. It was only his good sense, but maybe that is giving him too much
credit after what she put him through, he pulled her away from our mother, the
sea.
Put
that noise against the prospect of one night of sin (even if the damn record
companies sanitized the thing as the “purer” “one night with you” every guy got
the picture) or some hot girl leaving you breathless or you checking out some
sweet little sixteen. Yeah, so there was definitely a trough, a depression in
music land, teen section. Hell, it was only many, many years later when it did
not really matter that we found out that it was really a musical
counter-revolution but what did we know then we were not sociologists all we
knew what the music on the transistors did not “speak to us,” ah, sucked.
Like
I said we started hearing some stuff, some stuff guys were singing over in England
and places like that, singing stuff that we had had heard when we were kids,
Chuck, Bo, Arthur Alexander stuff, stuff too that we were not that familiar
with, serious black-etched blues stuff from guys like Muddy Waters, Howlin’
Wolf, Willie Dixon. Stuff that got our juices flowing again, made us want to
turn those transistor radios up louder. And that is why that sultry sweaty
summer night with borrowed Frankie car under our seats we were heading down to
the Surf Ballroom to hear some local guys who were connected to the next big
wave coming through. So sweaty from the drive down on this warm humid night we
were ready for the next break-out that was just beginning to form with a bunch
of guys from England pushing the envelope as the Surf came into view. Praise
be.
And
so Brad and me, courtesy of that savior Frankie’s lent car, headed down on
Route 3 to Hullsville looking, looking for our lost musical roots found (oh
yeah, and girls too don’t forget that and don’t worry we were not pure “philosopher-kings,
would not have known the intellectual concept behind the term but that girl
part will come later, and not much later at that). Hungry, damn hungry for a
sound that two guys who were not the most social guys (you know into every
dance committee, every prom thing, school newspaper, civic improvement program,
or Great Books Club aficionados), certainly not the best dressed (black chino
pants, sneakers, off-fashion plaid shirts bought at the “Bargie” by
penny-saving mothers, so no to that best dressed thing), or had much success
with girls, girls from school anyway although more so with unknown girls on
those nights over in Harvard Square where our not best dressed kind of fit in
with the folk minute that the place would become famous for along with the
Village and North Beach out in Frisco or down at the Surf where our line of
patter about the new breeze in music coming in to wash us clean got us a
hearing from kindred girls who like I said got tired of music their mothers
could “dig.”
Looking
for that sound that drove our younger years when even if we did not get all the
lyrics knew that that be-bopping sound of those guitars (think of those guitars
flailing on Be-Bop-A-Lula and those
wailing sexy saxes on Bill Haley’s stuff like Rock Around The Clock) and which we heard could be found at the
Surf Ballroom with a local group that was doing covers of those very same
English groups (who remember were covering the American classics from the
mid-1950s that they were just discovering, for example, that Little Red Rooster of Howlin’ Wolf that
the Stones had just covered or the Beatles’ covering Sweet Little Sixteen).
As
we hit the strategic beach parking lot across the street from the entrance to
the ballroom we noticed the lines already fully-formed waiting to get in and
noticed as well that as usual those lines had many more girls, usually in
groups of three or four, that guys who tended to show later after they had
struck out elsewhere, or were getting up their “liquid” courage in cars parked
in that same lot we were parked in. (These guys were clueless that the gals in
line would already be “picked up” well before their courage kicked in by guys
like Brad and me who would confront them early and not smell like a distillery
even if we had been drinking but keep that tip to yourselves.) See the parking
lot was very strategic in a lot of ways. Underage guys and gals, including those
late crashers who will also strike out here, sorry guys, could sit in their
cars and drink some ill-bought liquor. Ill-bought by some wino down the road
who would get whatever you wanted as long as he got his bottle of Thunderbird wine
as his “tip” or on some nights local guys over twenty-one would hang around
ready to take orders but they usually catered to the girls who wouldn’t deal
with a wino but who might tumble to a guy who could buy liquor, and have a “boss”
car. Mostly the booze was not beer which you would be hard –pressed to get by
the bouncers with on your breath but cheapjack Southern Comfort that you could
drink straight up without any added stuff and could drink without ice in a
pinch or some vodka for those who were worried about some mother breathalyzer
test when they got home.
The
Surf Ballroom was that night, as it had been all summer every Friday and
Saturday night, packed, packed with a sweaty, sulky, steaming mass of
aficionados to hear the old time religion, to hear the Rockin’ Ramrods split
the universe, split the universe into “the squares” (no explanation necessary
almost from time immemorial just look at you parents) and “the hip” (not short
for hippie, not then, not in July 1964, that longer term would come a few years
later when the acid-edged summer of love and its aftermath brought yet another
new breeze through the land and we thought we could change the world through the
agency of music that opened up our brains to new experiences. Then it was just
a beat word signifying, signifying what-cool, okay, signifying ding-dong daddy,
signifying be-bop baby). There was no room for squares that night. That sweaty
night filled with bad booze (since the Surf catered to teenagers who could not
drink in twenty-one year old Massachusetts the drinking as I said was done
outside in the beach parking lots). But that bad booze stuff can be passed by because
this night day we are talking about rock and roll not what liquor got one into
the mood) and low-slung drugs (maybe pot, tea or whatever you called it in your
neighborhood just starting to rear its head in the teenage crowd even out in
the suburbs but then the drug of the month more probably bennies, diet pills, you
know speed easy enough to get from some friendly doctor to help solve your
weight problem, if you had one, or had a friend who had one). Yeah so any
squares who might have slipped through the cracks, didn’t know what they were
getting into, if they were present then
they were hugging the walls, doing that wall-flower thing that have done since
they invented dance hall walls or just as likely, seeing as they were teenagers
and maybe inventive going undercover a little as hip.
A
huge cry, a howl almost came up when the Ramrods came on stage blaring out
Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven at
one time almost an anthem of teen nation telling the old fogies that yeah sure
we love your classical music-in music class- but on ocean-drenched sultry
steamy Friday nights we crave rock and roll, Mr. Chuck, thank you. Naturally
they followed up along that line with other classics like Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock but get this they
interspersed this stuff with old time serious blues, electric blues that I
learned more about later but which just then was new and strange sound. Somehow
the Stones and Beatles who were becoming everyday names in music seemed like
they had crashed some Maxwell Street, Chicago record store and grabbed every
blues platter in sight and so the Ramrods had picked up on that movement. So
when they did Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red
Rooster picked up via the Stones (a song that at that time was banned in
Boston, banned on the radio stations for its too close sexual innuendos which
might get some besotted teen all stirred up, Jesus. Like even the lowliest
square knew this barnyard metaphor sex stuff from that whether they were going
to anything about it or not). They closed the first set with Bo Diddley’s,
well, Bo Diddley a song that had special meaning to me
from “projects” days when my old friend Billy Curran tried to cover the thing
and almost got run out of the hall he was singing the song in because Billy was
white and Bo, well, Bo was black as night. Yeah, that was the way it was in those
projects, and not just there either.
So
that Surf night we had plenty of old and new stuff to listen to in the world of
rock and roll, and nothing about teen angels, earth angels, johnny angels or
dippy girls running into the sea but I don’t want to go on and go about the
playlist as that was only once aspect of why we were down there that night. See
we heard that there were plenty of girls there that had also gotten weary of
angels, dippy girls doing dippy things, guys bleeding their hearts out in song
to a bestirred world and were looking for the same break-out that was driving
us crazy. Girls who danced all rock and roll wild like they were direct
descendants of old Warren Smith’s Rock and Roll Ruby back in the day. And they
were there, and they had had their drinks out in the parking lot before the
doors opened (and at intermission went out, ink-stamped to get back in again,
and drank that Southern Comfort or vodka to keep the flames going).
So
Brad and I had our dancing shoes on and danced with quite a few young women who
seemed to be there to dance and not necessarily looking to be picked up. They
were easy to talk to, loved when I talked about the new breeze blowing and
about how we were all heartily fed up with the old music that was putting us to
sleep but every other young woman seemed to be “slumming,” Friday night
slumming with girlfriends while their boyfriends were, I don’t know, doing some
silly thing so I know I was not getting to first base with any of them. Not an
unusual situation then, or now maybe. Some nights I would wind up with five telephone
numbers and sometimes none. This looked like a none night.
Except for one young gal, Rosalind, whom I noticed during the second set and who seemed to be out of place there. Seemed like Harvard Square, maybe Cambridge Common which was even then starting to pile up with guys with beards and girls with pale blue- eyed dreams, would be her hang-out spot. She had a wreath of flowers and multi-colored ribbons in her hair, not unusual and in some quarters on a Saturday night say at the Fillmore in Frisco almost required on young women who wanted to be “hip,” or even get a guy to look at them later in the decade but not in style around our way then, and was wearing a very short dress showing off her long thin legs to good effect.
Most young women that night would have been wearing a starched blouse and some kind of dress maybe just slightly above the knees which was considered daring then and there. That outfit representing a certain probity but also reflecting without making a big deal absolute about it the Catholic modest girl thing since most of the young women there were from Catholic heavy places like North Adamsville and the church via parents dictated proper dress. By the way Brad and I went out of our ways to avoid the NA girls we saw at the dance, and there were plenty of them just like us trying to break out of the old town’s grip and not wanting more than to tacitly recognize fellow townies, except to give the NA wave of recognition. (Not the “nod” that was reserved for guys you knew a little but were not your corner boys but maybe you had seen them around, okay guys, for sure.) Like I said we were tired of that old town and were ready to break-out. Rosalind also had a kind of carefree sway about her, what I would come to recognize as that California laid-back style that would drive a lot of activity later in the decade as we picked up the musical vibes coming from the West Coast. For me though that sway spoke of come hither moments (and as I would later find out the sway was aided by having just done a few tokes outside before the dance started).
Naturally I asked her to dance, she agreed, and we seemed to connect after that dance was over once I started talking my talk about the new breeze and about how I thought she looked like some Botticelli angel (yeah, I had my lines down then even when the woman as here confessed that she did not know who Botticelli was). I asked for another dance and we kind of jitterbugged to Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally.
After
the song was over we went to a side table to talk. She told me her name, that
she was from California, had come East to go to Boston University to major in
English Lit (always a good selling point for me) and had heard the Ramrods play
in Boston one night and came down to dance the night away (and while talking gave
off that knowing look that she was drug high I had begun to be able to
recognize as different from the glassier alcohol look that I got from most
girls then. Also gave that come hither look like she didn’t mind if she didn’t
go back to her apartment in Boston alone, although that could have been my
desire stretching things out a bit). She also told me that there were lots of
guys (not too many woman except as vocalists, one especially who was tearing up
things, Grace Slick) who were putting bands together with a new sound, a sound
based on the old time rock and roll (which she said she loved), a sound in tune
with the increasingly obvious drug scene out there in California where the
music had to connect with whatever drug was percolating in your head. We talked
for a while like that about musical trends but I kind of put it in the back of
my mind then (not to return until a few years later when I first heard the
Jefferson Airplane and went crazy, filled with drugs percolating in my head
crazy). What I was interested then for openers was figuring out how to get her
out into Frankie’s car that night for a few drinks and then take her home (to
her apartment) if things worked out that way.
Then
up steps on Brad Badger who seemed to know her and said hello to her ignoring
me which I should have recognized as a telltale sign that he was on the move.
It seems that Brad had danced with her earlier in the evening, had afterward gotten
involved with talking to a couple of guys he knew, had gone out to the car and
had a few drinks, vodka so mother would not smell it on his breath if he struck
out that night after he headed home head hanging down, and had had a lot of the
same conversations as she and I had (we would compare notes later. Brad however
never got into the drug scene, never got into the Airplane and other such
groups but that is a different story). So Rosalind sat there and alternatively
danced with us for the rest of the second and the last set. I wound up getting
the very last dance, the Kingsmen’s Louie,
Louie just then the dance anthem of the month. Off of that sweaty dance I
asked her if I could take her home. She said no that she had agreed to go home
(her apartment, okay) with Brad. Damn, that meant that I would not only not get
her where I wanted her but I would have to hustle a ride home with somebody
heading toward North Adamsville since the buses were no longer running at that
midnight hour. And since our old corner boy ethos dictated that “three was
company,” too much company when one guy “scored,” that was that. And so
Brad and Rosalind had an affair for most of the rest of the summer, a few weeks
anyway. Mainly I did not see him during that time, although he always had
a big grin on his face when he stopped by the pizza parlor to see his corner
boys in passing.
Of
course that was not the end of the story. Apparently Brad’s charms only lasted
so long with Rosalind and her West Coast “cool” manner. (Brad was not a college
guy, not going to college and was not a literary type like her and so they
probably wound up not having much to talk about whatever that big grin meant.
What the hell you know what it meant.) Toward the end of August she
dumped Brad, reasons unknown. Not a hard thump but clearly Brad was hanging around
the pizza parlor more around Labor Day so we all knew something was up. A
couple of weeks later he joined the Navy which he was going to do anyway
although I had thought not so soon. We never did talk about whether Rosalind
hurried up the “getting out of town” process, ever.
One
Friday night about the first part of October I went down to the Surf with
Frankie (in Frankie’s car of course) after Brad had gone to basic training out in
the Great Lakes someplace and was sitting at one of the tables checking out the
scene before the Ramrods went on for their first set. Somebody tapped me from
behind and it was Rosalind with a big smile, a big dope-invested smile and
asked me if she could sit down. I said sure and we talked for a while (she
never mentioned Brad for whatever breeze reason she had and I never mentioned
him either as I was trying to “score” with her. That “disappearing a guy” too
was part of our corner boy ethos).
One
Friday night about the first part of October I went down to the Surf one Friday
night with Frankie (in Frankie’s car of course) and was sitting at one of the
tables checking out the scene before the Ramrods went on for their first set.
Somebody tapped me from behind and it was Rosalind with a big smile, a big
dope-invested smile and asked me if she could sit down. I said sure and we
talked for a while (she never mentioned Brad and I never mentioned him either
as I was trying to “score” with her. That too was part of our corner boy
ethos).
The
long and short of it was that I wound up taking her home (to her apartment) in
Frankie’s car naturally. (Frankie as king hell king of the pizza parlor corner
boys had made up most of the rules that we lived by and so had to live with that.
Frankie wound up getting a ride home from his on and off girlfriend, Joanna, so
things were cool.) We had an affair for a couple of months, walking and talking
about literature a lot, going to Harvard Square, the beach, places like that, I
was having a great time once I got used that California cool, until just before
Christmas break when she said would be going back to California. That cool by
the way included a desire, a strong desire to not make commitments and not get
serious which was kind of okay with me. Kind of. That is when she told me she
had a boyfriend back there, a UCLA guy, whom she might want to get back
together with and so she broke off our thing. I never saw her again, although I
called a couple of time after break. I wondered what happened to her for a
while then moved on. What I, we, don’t have to wonder about was how right, how
in tune with the music of the generation of ’68 she had been. The Airplane, the
Byrds, the Doors, switched up acid-drenched Stones and Beatles, and a million
other drug-induced bands proved her point. I picked up on it too. I wonder if
she ever mentioned me to that guy she went back to or to whoever the next guy
was. Nah, forget I said that.
