This was a year before Bruce Springsteen's debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, and two years before his breakthrough The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Asbury Park, the Stone Pony, and the Jersey Shore weren't a "thing" yet and I wasn't a particular fan of Cactus, either. I just wanted to see a live rock band and there was nothing happening in my small home town.
Cactus aren't exactly memorable, but they were a blues-based, hard-rock supergroup along the lines of Blue Cheer and the MC5 that featured members of the Vanilla Fudge, Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels, and Ted Nugent's Amboy Dukes, although neither Ryder nor Nugent were in the band. I think they were aiming to sound like Cream but wound up somewhere closer to Grand Funk Railroad. I haven't heard them for literally decades at this point but I'm listening to their discography on Spotify right now, and I can tell you I probably won't be doing that again any time soon.
All I remember about the set was bassist Tim Bogert was unhappy with the sound system and kicked a hole in what I thought at the time was an amp but realize now was just his monitor. But that was the end of the set - they couldn't or wouldn't play with the busted monitor and walked off stage. The girlfriend and I drove back home fairly disappointed.
I hadn't yet turned 18, but this wasn't my first rock concert. I'd already seen the bands Mountain and Blood, Sweat & Tears at SUNY Stony Brook. I had managed to get my hands on a fake ID and got into Max's Kansas City in New York to see some band or another that unfortunately wasn't the Velvet Underground. But this was still an early, formative experience and I had been fairly excited before I was ultimately disappointed.
What many rock stars fail to realize is that what to them is just another gig in some shitty club during a seemingly endless tour is a major event to their fans. I bought tickets to the show weeks in advance (mail order in those pre-internet days), worked hard to convince the girlfriend's parents to let me take their daughter on an out-of-town road trip, bought a tankful of gasoline during the 1970s energy crisis, and drove an hour to the gig. All for Bogert to pitch a hissy fit on stage and end the show early.
I'm not a Taylor Swift fan but I have nothing against her either. But one thing I like about her is that from everything I've seen and heard, she understands the asymmetrical relationship between performer and audience. She gets it and genuinely seems to care about her fans and their experience at her shows. Can't say the same for Tim Bogert.
Old men have a million stories and no one to listen to them, including memories of rock 'n' roll shows from 52 years ago. Thanks for putting up with my reminiscence - I saw a segment on Morning Joe today about The Stone Pony and it brought back these memories and I didn't know what else to do with them.
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