The Cavalier daily :: Friday, November 12, 1971 :: University of Virginia Library

Last week nostalgia attacked the
Charlottesville area with an
exuberance unheard of since the
demise of the twist. WELK dusted
off "Help Me Rhonda" and "So
You Want to Be a Rock and Roll
Star" and everywhere the kids were
talking about how much fun it was
to be in high school in 1965. We
wanted so bad to hear the high
boys wall that tickets were sold out
on Thursday.

On Time

The concert started on time. The
sound system was good. The Byrds
walked out onto the stage and
proceeded to play each and every
song I wanted to hear before I even
realized that was what I wanted.
When McGuinn sang "I Want to
Grow Up to Be a Politician" just
about everybody present was
willing to vote for him for
anything. After they had played all
the songs everyone knew, they
went into other amazing sounds
and ten seconds after they broke
into "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's
Arms" it seemed as if the roof
might cave in. The Byrds were
dancing in ecstasy and the audience
was doing back-flips. Everybody
was definitely
appreesh-preesh-preeshiating
everything.

Fancy Equipment

The break between shows lasted
an hour, but folks here at the
University are used to such minor
inconveniences, and after all those
boys sure were setting up a lot of
fancy equipment. The Byrds had
been great and things were looking
up.

The Beach Boys came out and
everybody was on their feet. They
finally got us calmed down and
started playing. But what were they
playing? How can they expect me
to listen to their beautiful sounds
while I'm frothing at the mouth to
hear about a Big Wave? Then a
Hollywood voice came over the
P.A. from somewhere and in words
that sounded for all the world like a
taped M.C., assured us that the
Beach Boys would give a two-part
show at the end of which they
would take requests from the
crowd. Well, OK. I'd much rather
have them do my thing first, but
Gee Whiz, I suppose I can handle it.

Things went well for about
fifteen minutes until someone high
on the west side of the hall
(uncomfortable seat section) yelled
something derogatory like "Play
Barbara Ann". For some reason
that stopped right in the middle of
Mike Love's head and he walked up
to a microphone and gave out some
very bad vibrations. My party
hadn't done anything to him and
we were somewhat discomforted
but were willing to let it go at that.
The Beach Boys were not.

For the remainder of the evening
they picked on themselves and the
crowd. They called themselves
"The Beach Bums"; they
introduced songs with long
awkward pauses and such
interesting comments as "My wife
left me two weeks ago" and "we
put my grandpa away last week"
and "This is a very special song. I'll
probably....fuck it up". It's not too
much fun listening to a song when
the Man says he's gonna fuck it up.
And what kind of anger was Mike
Love venting when he stopped a
song he was about to begin and
recited a poem about meditation
expressly because the crowd was
clamoring for big hits. I suppose the
Maharishi is really going to dig that.

First Part

After about an hour there was
an intermission and the realization
came down that this was the end of
the first, not the second, part of the
show. It became apparent that this
concert was going to last until
midnight and there would be very
little time for those much-promised
encores. It was starting to become
serious. Everyone wanted to hear at
least 100,000 songs about big
waves, fast cars and amazing girls,
and there just couldn't be enough
time.

At 12:05 I knew the Oldies
couldn't be far off and I made up
my mind to forget the outrage
within me and enjoy them when
they came. And then came the final
insult. The Beach Boys left the
stage. They left the stage and
forced us to beg them to come back
and do each of their three (or was it
four) Big Hits. I found myself in
the paradoxical position of clapping
insanely and screaming approval at
a bunch of people at whom I was
very pissed off. Ten thousand
screaming dentists were forced to
extract each encore from five men
who knew exactly what the
audience wanted and had for three
hours angrily refused to give. Drag
City, Daddy-o.