Gusto Stories 1978

  On the 55th anniversary, here’s a look at it from just 10 years away. Aug. 3, 1979 Woodstock Ten Years Later I didn’t go to Woodstock. It wasn’t for lack of opportunities. The News proposed to dispatch me to the Catskills when the Aquarian Exposition began to look like a gargantuan catastrophe the morning of Friday, Aug. 15, 1969. Unfortunately, there was a conflict.          At that time, I was a reporter by day, but by night I was a bass player in a rock ‘n roll band. That Friday and Saturday we had a gig. Shell’s Lounge on Broadway – $85 for five sets a night. During our breaks those hot, humid nights, we sat on the concrete steps out front of the place, drinking beer and wondering what we were missing.          It turned out to be the high-water mark of the youthful counterculture of the ‘60s – a sprawling celebration of music, drugs and free-spiritedness in spite of the Vietnam War and ...

  In the midst of what seemed back then like the most depressing of times, here was the best of times.   Aug. 8, 1979  Kinks Rock with Oldies, New Tunes With a tattered backdrop and a couple of frowsy palm trees, the Kinks showed a frisky sellout crowd in Kleinhans Music Hall Tuesday night that even on a low budget it’s possible to have a high old time.          “Low Budget” is the latest theme to be taken up by this long-lived British band – first as an album, now as a tour – and it ranks with their best. They’ve grabbed onto the things that make modern times what they are: gas shortages, cash shortages and a general decline in the quality of life.          Does this make them downhearted? Not at all. Like the album, the stage show rocked, from its first blast of flash powder to its wild and woolly two-encore finale. It as if the Kinks had turned themselves back to their free-swingi...

  One of my favorite interviews. June 29, 1979  Buffalo Soap As we join Dr. Mary Cassata, she is coming from the kitchen of her home in a reconverted barn in the Town of Pendleton. Setting out coffee and muffins, she’s ready to talk about her favorite topic. Soap operas. Dr. Cassata is one of the world’s leading authorities on TV’s daytime serial dramas.         “The one thing you really have to understand about soap operas is that the audience involvement is so intense,” she begins. “Fans write, they send a birthday present and wedding presents, they mourn characters when they die. That involvement is a phenomenon itself. Soap operas have this power, this great power, and people haven’t looked at this the way it deserves to be looked at.”         The pull of that fateful line “Tune in tomorrow” reaches back to the serialized novels of the early 19th century. American followers of Charles Dickens’ ...

  Sometimes my imaginary friends pop up in real life. In the case, real life was moving me from my carefree bachelor pad, an attic apartment high above Auburn Avenue, into a well-grounded first-floor flat eight blocks away at Richmond. June 29, 1979  Jethro T. Megahertz lends a hand “You know something, Anderson,” the mellifluous school-of-broadcasting voice intoned from the driveway. “I never thought I’d see the day when you abandoned this overcrowded garret you call home. I really can’t believe you’re moving. After 11 years stuck in one spot, I figured that chronic inertia would be your fate. You want a hand with some of those boxes?”          It was Jethro T. Megahertz, the legendary media wizard, and for a change I was glad to set eyes on him – cowboy boots, black beard and all.          “I could use a hand, all right,” I conceded. “When I moved in here in 1968, I had about 1,000 albu...

  I continue to miss these guys. In their crazy way, they were genius. June 22, 1979  Could Be Wild turns one year old “You break an artist any way you can,” Brue Moser is saying rather emphatically to some executive strategist at Arista Records in New York City via the Mickey Mouse telephone. “You can break Graham Parker with ‘I Want You Back.’ You’ll sell a million.”          Moser’s beating this guy up on the phone because “I Want You Back” – the old Jackson Five hit – is on the neglected B side of Parker’s new single. Parker’s best bid yet for popular success and it’s relegated to the B side. Moser can’t stand it. He wants Arista to flip it over, make it the A side and go after the hit.          But Arista’s not so inclined to see it that way. After all, they’ve already printed up umpteen thousands singles with “I Want You Back” on the B side. The song isn’t even included on Parker’s ...