Last night, Nicole and I went to Brown’s Brewing and had a fantastic meal together. We talked about many things during our dinner – music and family and what makes us both happy.
“Do you like going to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“Amphitheater or lawn seats?”
“I’ve been to both,” she smiled.
We both discussed the benefits of seeing a show at SPAC – me, I prefer being in the amphitheater rather than on the lawn, in that I’d actually like to SEE the artist rather than to just HEAR the artist perform. Be that as it may, there’s really something special about seeing a concert at SPAC.
And I remember the first concert I ever attended there.
It would have been around the summer of 1983. I was home from college for the summer, and because of my work with college radio station WHCL, I was able to score a ticket for an upcoming concert at SPAC from the college radio rep from Columbia Records. The place was packed, and I was going to see Men At Work, with opening act Red Rockers.
At that time, Men At Work’s first two albums Business as Usual and Cargo had topped the Billboard album charts for months, and the group was enjoying a string of Top 10 hits like “Who Can It Be Now?” and “Down Under” and “It’s A Mistake” and “Overkill.”
Meanwhile, the Red Rockers were an up-and-coming-but-never-made-it pop-rock band whose reputation as sounding more like The Clash than The Clash itself was belied by their infective college radio hit “China.”
The Columbia rep got me some good seats for the event, and even got me an aftershow pass to meet the Red Rockers. He could have gotten me a pass to meet Men At Work – which I would have enjoyed tremendously – but I understood that the record company was trying to promote Red Rockers through their network of college radio stations, and there wasn’t a need to have college radio promote the other band that just spent about 47 weeks at number 1 with their back-to-back albums.
The concert itself was amazing – Red Rockers played their heart out in the opening act, and then Men At Work had the crowd singing along with every hit; they did a “call and response” with their songs “It’s A Mistake” and “Be Good Johnny,” and they did a version of “Down Under” that was so entertaining, I almost expected them to distribute free Victoria Bitters to the audience for a true Australian pub crawl singalong.
I’ve been at SPAC for concerts several times after that – The Pretenders (with Simple Minds opening), Boston, two Freihofer’s Jazz Fests, an “I Love The 80’s” package tour, all of those.
But when I first saw a concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, it involved an Australian quintet with a string of pop hits, with a California power-pop band as their very capable opening act.
I’m sure you remember your first time at a SPAC concert. Maybe it involved Bruce Springsteen or the Grateful Dead; perhaps it was a group or singer whose popularity back then has been reduced to “who was that” today.
That’s what the blog comments section is for. Tell me your first time at SPAC. And what made that first time so special for you.
Chuck The Writer 
I THINK, it was Phil Collins in 85…the girl I was dating’s parents were members so we got 1st row balcony…itwas the no jacket required tour..great show..I saw a ton of shows in the mid to late 80’s…then we broke up ;{)}
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Summer of ’68…The Doors and Janis Joplin…not sure which show was first but both shows were. literally at this point, legendary.
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There’s backstage video footage of the Doors show at SPAC on You Tube, I did some digging and found this:
“September 1, 1968. Jim and his Feast of Friends film crew get on a plane today to New York prior to the show. This is The Doors final appearance before their big upcoming European Tour and, for more important documentative aspects, the last performance taped for Feast Of Friends. Tonight Jim swaggers out slow and serene and what appears to be an upcoming mellow Morrison evening until the band abruptly jumps into ‘Back Door Man’ to start an upbeat, fierce, and intense evening of driving music an electrifying vocals. Morrison comes out for a standing ovation after the show, bows, and then abruptly leaps into the audience where police and security move in freeing him and directing him back onto the stage. The crowd is livid and pleads for more – but The Doors must be on their way for tomorrow they fly off to London. On the way to New York however, The Doors stop at The Aerodome in Schenectady, NY where Jim sits in with an undetermined blues band for more than a few numbers and drinks!”
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I attended the opening concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra, August 4, 1966. I’ll never forget it because, as a boy aged 8, my hero was Eugene Ormandy. My aunt and uncle took me, and we all cheered at the end of the concert. I also attended the final Sunday matinee of the Orchestra, in which Ormandy spoke to the crowd, and we sat on the lawn for that one. I was too shy to talk to the newspeople from WTEN, who had a crew there filming the event for their newscasts.
Even at that age we all marveled at the beauty of the place, and the fact that they stopped the waterfall by building an “Ormandy Dam” at the behest of the conductor, who understood that the constant roar of Geyser Creek would blanket the quietest music. We all thought that the place would prove to be fully the equal of Tanglewood, just 70 miles away.
How wrong we were! The Dam was allowed to fall apart in the late 1980s, the concerts of the Orchestra were stale and repetitive, and in 1981 I finally attended Tanglewood for the first time and saw that it was an even more glorious and spectacular venue for the marriage of music and nature. And, of course, SPAC became the home of managerical corruption and anti-artistic ignorance.
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Not even really sure when my first show there was. Probably 1976. Might have been James Taylor or Neil Sedaka. Saw quite a few shows there back then. The main point to being on the lawn as a teenager was for necking potential. She was never going to kiss you in the seats, but there was something magical about a warm summer night, the stars, and a musty blanket.
I have a Flickr set posting the 1976 SPAC program here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlsoldphotos/sets/72157606634098932/with/2748093858/
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1982 doobie bros. it was 95 degrees and a huge marshmallow fight broke out on the lawn. The lawn was also great for partaking in unlawful substances even if I never inhaled! Lawn seats were cheap back then too, as a high school kid we saw several bands we may never have for $10
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I don’t remember. One of the firsts was Joni Mitchell in Aug 1974.
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Chicago, 1971… Sold out concert, I went up with friends and without a ticket of my own… I somehow got pushed along and got in.. Much to my amazement. That would not happen today!
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I’ve never been to SPAC. Is that weird?
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My mom took my sister and I to see her favorite at the time, Barry Manilow, mid-80s. I was about 8 or 9, and it had such an effect on me! I remember running up and down the stairs on the inside and stopping to take in the view, the sound, the crowd and the electricity in the air from the interaction between Barry and his fans. I’ve loved going to SPAC every year since then, and still get the same feeling of excitment before every show I see!
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I think Doobie Brothers might have been my first concert up there, but I saw REO several times, David Bowie, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Journey, so many in the 80’s I can’t even remember all the names. So much fun!
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Darren Hill (bass player for Red Rockers) was with Paul Westerberg on his first solo tour. They were a killer band.
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