In the early days of high school I went to my first concert, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. They filled the Coliseum. To me it was an Event with a capital E and I remember clearly what I wore. A white blouse of dotted Swiss with big full sleeves gathered at the wrist, a long red maxi skirt (they weren’t too common yet), and the for the big finish, a chocolate brown suede leather vest. It was just a little thing in a bolero cut, but front and back it had long leather fringe that started at the yoke and went down to my knees. Did I wear a headband or am I inventing that part of the memory?

Two brothers from New York had come to town and opened up a sort of hippie boutique. I met them when I took in my  hand beaded leather pouches, macrame jewelry and little painted cards with pen and ink poems to put on consignment. One of them was my date for the evening. It was assigned seating and he had gotten us really great seats very near the front. What a night, what a time. The only concert that came near to being as enjoyable to me was when Three Dog Night played a couple of years later. Stage craft, lighting and pyrotechnics, had come a long way in that short span of time and it was my first time seeing/hearing a Moog synthesizer. It must not have been quite as big a deal as I can’t remember what I wore.