WHAT'S Your Name? Teen Dances and 110-Decibel Bands

Saturday night is here and about 300 kids are crammed into the gym of a Catholic high school in Brooklyn. On a makeshift stage is Underground Railroad, one of the more popular bands on the local dance scene in the early Seventies, doing the Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones,” which everyone loves. The sound level is just short of the pain threshold, much louder than what you’d hear at many rock concerts, and communication is possible only by screaming into the other person’s ear. UR’s five musicians are all under 21, but they’re pretty accomplished, and they have good equipment. After “Casey” ends the organist takes out a flute and half the boys start to groan; they know what’s coming.

“And now, a lady’s request,” announces the vocalist. The guitarist starts to duplicate the simple piano riff at the beginning of Chicago’s “Color My World.” Girls start to squeal. Guys head for the Boy’s room for a sneak hit on the flask they’ve hidden.

As time go-oes on
I re-al-iiiiize
Just what yoooouuuu meeeeaaaaannnnnn
To-oo-oo meeeeeeeeeee……

Did we meet many girls at these dances? Of course not. The real reason for going was to hear the bands, typically consisting of local kids whom we often knew. Dances, as well as summer block parties and occasional concerts in local parks, were our “Young Artists’ Showcase.” UR was popular, not only because of its musicianship, but the variety of material they could perform. Your typical teen dance ran three to four hours and featured two or three bands, so it was important to have a large variety of material in your play list.

What did the bands perform? Just about everything was a cover, although once in a while you’d hear an original composition, or perhaps a loose jam based upon a standard 12-bar blues form. A few bands specialized in a certain style of music or the repertoire of certain groups. For example, we had one band with a horn section that, not surprisingly, did lots of Chicago material. And there was another whose vocalist was renowned for his ability to sound (somewhat) like Robert Plant, so you can guess whose material they covered. But most of the groups covered a variety of stuff, much of which you can still hear if you listen to a “Classic Rock” station. You almost always heard “Johnny B. Goode,” “Stairway to Heaven” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” at any dance anywhere. Could you really dance to “Stairway?” Like I said, dancing wasn’t the important thing for most of us – well, at lest for the males. A few of the other more popular covers were

• “Hymn 43”
• “The Weight” (a good slow one)
• “Southern Man” (the tune that later infuriated Lynyrd Skynyrd)
• “Evil Ways” (Lots of bands did at least one Santana tune – for a chance to attempt a Latin style)
• “Bitch”
• “Smoke on the Water”
• “Your Mama Don’t Dance” (Ironically, one of the few tunes we did that people could dance to).
• “School’s Out”
• “Be My Lover” (see my previous entry on Alice Cooper)
• “In Memory of Elizabeth Reid” (only the better bands attempted this one)
• “Play that Funky Music, White Boy” (When this tune came out we realized the End was near).

With the Disco era came a deep division amongst the kids who supported the garage bands. The very term “disco” meant a record, and that’s what you heard if you want to most of the places where it was played. A few bands tried doing some disco tunes, such as “Play that Funky Music,” but they weren’t very popular. For one thing, disco required instruments and technology foreign to most rock bands. And of course there was the ethnic factor – garage bands were pretty much all white, with a handful of Asian kids. Fortunately, though, serious rockers, many of whom could be seen wearing the familiar “Disco sucks” t-shirts, kept the garage band tradition alive.