Under a Blood Red Rocks Sky

Summer weather along the front range of the Rocky Mountains can be very unsettled.  It’s not unusual for a violent afternoon thunderstorm to roll in from the West.  When the weather comes in from the East, things really get strange.

Heavy fog is one of the results of an Easterly storm that pushes up against the foothills.  Since the Red Rocks Amphitheater sits right on the foothills overlooking Denver, it is prone to much dramatic weather.  I remember waiting in the fog with my friend Ken Kohl on August 5, 1979 for a Joni Mitchell concert.  The fog was so thick, we couldn’t see the stage from our seats.  Ultimately, the concert was cancelled and rescheduled the following day indoors at the Denver Coliseum.

The most amazing night in the fog was June 5, 1983 when U2 was scheduled to play Red Rocks.

The concert was part of a star-studded summer of concerts sponsored by my radio station KBCO.  We had set up a live studio at Red Rocks where Doug Clifton would be broadcasting live, giving updates on traffic to the show, backstage interviews with the band, and a live broadcast of part of the show.

Around 4:30, Doug let us know that the show was being cancelled due to the fog.  The show would be rescheduled for an indoor show at the CU Events Center for the next day.

The problem was, however, that U2 had planned to film the Red Rocks concert for an upcoming film.  They had hired a full crew with video equipment and a sound truck.  Since they were all set to film, it was decided they would still go ahead with the project.

The entire bottom part of the Red Rocks Amphitheater was general admission and to get a good seat, ticket holders started showing up by noon.  At the time of the cancellation, there were already several thousand fans sitting in the seats.

At 5:00, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen walked out on stage and treated the audience to one of the most memorable U2 concerts ever.

The fog was thick, and the stage lights gave the stage a eerie glow.  U2 performed a short set of their tunes and the entire concert was captured on film.  The storm front that brought in the fog made the air cold enough that you could see Bono’s breath when he was singing.

The film was released as U2 Under a Blood Red Sky.  If it had been a typical beautiful summer night in Colorado, the film wouldn’t have been nearly as stunning as it is.  This one concert film is responsible for making many new fans for the fledgling band.  It gives new meaning to the term “Fogheads.”

Links to videos of that magical night:
Part 1
Part 2

The Hendrix Experience

I was 19 years old when I spent an hour with Jimi Hendrix.  It was during the Summer of Love 1967.  

At 3:00 in the afternoon, the limousine carrying Jimi Hendrix and the Experience rolled up to the WBAL-TV studios, over an hour before he was to appear on The Kerby Scott show to perform his latest hit, “Hey Joe.” 

I was one of Kerby’s assistants on the show.  Part of my responsibility was to take the guests into the green room and make sure they were comfortable while they waited for their time on the show.  Jimi and his band set up their equipment and did a quick soundcheck. With still an hour to showtime, I was asked to keep them entertained until then.

First, a little background:  The Kerby Scott TV show was created on WBAL-TV 11 in 1967 as the new Baltimore dance show.  The original dance show was The Buddy Deane Show on WJZ-TV 13.  As any Baltimore native knows, the film Hairspray is a true depiction of what happened on The Buddy Deane Show.  The names were changed to protect the innocent; thus Corny Collins was born. 

As we sat in the Green Room waiting for showtime, Jimi talked to me about experimentation.  He talked about how he strived to get a different guitar sound on every song he recorded.  “Purple Haze” had a completely different sound than “Foxey Lady” or “Hey Joe.”  He said that you could listen to Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley and always know who it was playing; he wanted to make every song sound different.

Jimi and his compatriots, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, talked to me about the recording of the album Are You Experienced?  Jimi said he wanted to get a completely dissident sound for the song “Purple Haze.”  He talked about using an interval of flattened fifth d5 tone.  This was just the part of the conversation that was way out of my league.  But I followed along as much as I could.

After talking about everything from flower-power to transcendental meditation to the embarrassment of being the opening band for the Monkees show in Florida just weeks earlier, we turned our talk to the upcoming appearance on The Kerby Scott TV show.  Typically, the show would open with staff announcer Royal Parker introducing the show and ending with, “And now, here’s Kerby Scott…”  The camera would show Kerby standing at the podium and he would do his opening talk letting people know who was on the show and introduce the first song for dancing.

Today, however, would be different.  When the show started, when Royal introduced Kerby, the camera would show Jimi standing behind the podium.  And so it was.  Jimi Hendrix stood there staring into the camera, which after a few uncomfortable moments widened the shot to show Kerby standing next to him and the show was off and running.

Twenty minutes into the show, Jimi and the Experience performed “Hey Joe” and then did an on-camera interview with Kerby.  When the segment was over, they grabbed their gear and I led the Jimi Hendrix Experience out of the building.  The limo whisked them away and the Kerby Scott Show continued on as if this moment of greatness never happened.  But all us knew that we had just witnessed true genius.

To see the Jimi Hendrix Experience perform "Hey Joe," click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUPifXX0foU  

Ebbets Field

It might seem that I’m going to write another baseball blog, but this entry is about one of Denver’s great downtown ‘70s nightspots, Ebbets Field at 15^th Street at Curtis.  Chuck Morris, a New York City transplant, was a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan and named his Denver nightclub after their famous ballpark. 

The club was not a field, but rather a small nightclub that could squeeze 238 people in for an intimate performance.  Surrounding the stage were three or four rows of bleacher type seats that were covered by black, orange and brown shag carpeting. Waitresses mingled in the crowd bringing drinks right to your seat.

In 1974 and 75, I was the music director and nighttime deejay at KTLK, a Top 40 station in Denver.  The KTLK studio was located downtown, so it was easy for me to head over to Ebbets Field and catch a show when I got off the air at 10:00.

I saw amazing performances there. Some favorite memories:  Tommy Bolin and friends, Little Feat, The Outlaws, Ry Cooder, Michael Murphy, John Stewart, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Spirit, and Muddy Waters with B.B. King.

And then, there was Emmylou Harris, a couple of shows with Tom Waits, Dan Fogelberg, Jerry Jeff Walker, Marshall Tucker Band, and Willie Nelson. There really wasn’t a bad seat in the place; every seat was close to the stage.  The state-of-the-art Listen Up sound system made the concert experience at Ebbets Field unsurpassed.

Probably the most bizarre show I saw there was Barry Manilow on March 11, 1975.  Barry was flying high with his first hit song “Mandy” and was booked for a six-night stand at Ebbets Field.  When Barry had come by to meet me at KTLK earlier in the day, I arranged for a block of tickets.  I gathered a group of my friends and told them to save a seat for me.  As soon as I got off the air, I would join them. 

I arrived at Ebbets Field just as Barry’s second set was about to begin.  My friends had saved a seat for me right in the second row.  I ordered a beer and settled in as Barry walked in from the dressing room on crutches.  He struggled to get up on the stage and proceeded to trip over the microphone cable and fell flat on his face.   He pulled himself up and situated himself on the piano stool in front of his band and made some humorous comments about being such a klutz.  I found his comments funny, but noticed that no one else was laughing.

After he sang his first song, he went into a monologue about the current events of the day.  It was a humorous rant, but I noticed that as he was talking, people in the audience weren’t laughing.  As a matter of fact, several people were putting on their coats and preparing to leave the club.  And when Barry went into his second song of his set, quite a few patrons closed out their tab and left the venue.

Barry did another comedy skit at the end of the second song.  It was like a vaudeville show: music and comedy.  I was amused, but I noticed that even more people were leaving the club.  Barry seemed oblivious to the cool response from the audience and pushed through his show.  I looked over to my friends who were cracking up. I asked my friend Steve what was going on.  Why is no one laughing at Barry’s skits?

Steve told me after the first set of the evening, the manager of Ebetts Field told the audience that a mistake had been made and no tickets for the second show had been sold, so everyone was welcomed to stay for the second show and get a complementary drink.  Obviously, no one told Barry, because he was doing the same exact shtick he did for the first show, song-for-song, word-for-word, including the comedy bits and even tripping over the microphone cord and the accompanying comments.

Oh Barry, you came and gave without taking, but we sent you away.

Knuckleball!

It was the Summer of 1958 in West Baltimore. We lived in an area of the city known as Hunting Ridge, although it had probably been many decades since actual hunting had happened.

Our street, Brookwood Road, did have a brook running in the woods at the end of the street, although the brook came out of a huge underground pipe that ran underneath the homes in our neighborhood.

My parents’ best friends were the Brouse Family. They lived only a few miles away in Catonsville, a western suburb of Baltimore. Summers were hot in the city and every year the Brouses would move to their summer home in Ocean City, Maryland. They would rent out their beautiful Catonsville home for the summer, and for the four summers beginning in 1958, it was to Hoyt Wilhelm, who had just signed to the pitching staff of the soon-to-be-legendary Baltimore Orioles.

We were huge Orioles fans in my household. I learned how to keep official score, and I would diligently keep track of every play as I listened to the games on WBAL radio 1190. When the games were televised, I would turn down the sound and be the 10-year old radio announcer for the games giving stats and color commentary referring to my scorecard.

It was one of the thrills of my childhood when my parents would let me tag along as they went over to the Brouse household to check up on the tenant and make sure everything was going well at the house. I knew all the ins-and-outs of the Brouse home. We would spend many days and evenings there playing out in their massive backyard, listening to their son Phillip play incredible classical pieces on the piano, and experiencing “air conditioning” for the first time in my life.

So, here we were, going to the Brouse house to visit their tenant, Hoyt Wilhelm. He was as kind and welcoming as could be. We talked about my Little League games, my love of the Orioles, my homemade broadcasts of the games, he asked me if I’d like to learn how to throw his famous “knuckleball.” I was floored. Hoyt Wilhelm invented the knuckleball. Batters would watch a ball heading straight for the strike zone and then suddenly the ball would veer off in an unpredictable direction. Orioles’ catcher Gus Triandos had to get fitted for a special oversized glove to handle Hoyt’s pitches.

Hoyt took me out into the backyard, the same one where I played with the Brouse boys, and showed me how to hold the ball. He told me to hold the ball between my thumb and my pinkie. I attempted this, but my 10-year old hand was much too small to handle the maneuver. He demonstrated how to hold the ball. He went on, “The real trick is how you release the ball. You don’t throw it, but rather, you wind up and the push it forward through the air.” He demonstrated the pitch and I was amazed at how he could hold the ball so comfortably in this odd configuration, wind up and the give it a twisting push as he released the ball sending it forward. No wonder the ball would go off in so many odd directions.

We became regular visitors to see Hoyt at the Brouse house. Their home became like a shrine to me. And although I never was able to master the Hoyt Wilhelm knuckleball, I learned how to recognize the various special pitches during my youthful self-broadcasts of Baltimore Oriole baseball games.