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plane. A third SF bunch, Big Brother and the Holding Company, copped out due to a conflict of dates with the Monterey Jazz Festival. It began like a drab night though the fantastic light show was an eyeful. The crowd was quiet, Jerry Garcia, lead singer-shouter, Grateful Dead, sensed a downer. Grabbing the mike, he yelled: “Hey, there’s 16,000 of you out there and only six up here. Come on up on the stage and dance for us.”
About 50 Dead addicts made it before the security could stop up the aisles and halt the mass movement. That did it. Now the show swung, the action was outasite and the audience turned on like a lamp. At intermission the guards tried to disperse the kids who, however, weren’t about to be budged.
In the second half, with the Jefferson Plane spurting their rock into the cool night, slick chick Gracie Slick rapped another invite: “There’s still nearly 16,000 of you out there and only a few on stage. All of you come up and do your thing!”
The Plane played on as fences fell, ropes split and the stampede overwhelmed the guards and ushers. Then the boards covering the pool began to bend and crack under the weight of the dancing demons. Disaster threatened. Cops chased many off the stage and made others stop dancing and sit down, forming a ring in front of the J.A. By now the audience was screaming. Eventually the concert ended with a roaring, flashing, crashing blast that broke the sound barrier. The dear old dignified Hollywood Bowl may never be the same again.
A year ago we predicted the pop people would have to jazz up their stage acts or fade out. It’s what’s happening now. The day of the stand-up, yodel and twiddle musician is passe.
Of course we’ll always have the quiet artists, folk singers and poetic song spinners who command enraptured silence from listeners.
Ravi Shankar, idol of the tuned-in set, doesn’t permit smoking, talking, camera clicking and restless roaming while he evokes Oriental magic on his sitar. The amazing Donovan’s popularity has been rising consistently despite a long absence from these shores and too few new record releases. Don’s U.S. fall tour colored him with box-office green.
Another quiet type is brown-eyed, dark-haired Mississippian Bobbie Gentry, 22. The story of Bobbie’s long years of preparing herself for the fame that was ahead is an example to other entertainers to follow her footsteps. She concentrated her attention on people who could teach her something about singing, dancing, instrumenting, songwriting, songselling, arranging, engineering records and like that. It paid off, as you know.
This Chickasha charmer could be one of the great long-lasting song and stage stars of the Swinging Sixties. Even without a string of new hits, Bobbie could carry a club show, a New Juliet Prowse. Few Southern belles come to L.A. and try for the Big Time but there are, our spies tell us, a few zillion other girls down there who are also beautiful and talented—and that’s what I like about the South,
The Monkees aren’t movie stars yet although Columbia Pictures started planting stories last spring of a Monkee movie for release last summer. It hasn’t happened. So far no time, no script, no flick. Movies announced by various producers for the Beatles and Stones are likewise stalled. Herman, however, finished his film, Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.
It’s a good question, says Dean Martin. With educators turning to taped TV instruction programs, shouldn’t former bookworms now be called tapeworms?
It was the end of an era when David McCallum married society sweetie, Katherine Carpenter. Unmarried, unattached TV and movie stars are getting few and far between. David once had a powerful zingie-zow-wow for romantic-minded maidens. He’ll be happier now doing his hi-society thing which is his own personal turn-on.
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