George Thorogood - Gilly's 1980?
Tickets with pictures!
Tom drove to this show. For some reason I had no car. I had to ride my bike to Tom's house (which has been torn down for the Springfield Medical Center thingie) in the rain, so I took a change of clothes so as not to have to sit around in wet clothes all night. bah
Thorogood wasn't a household name & nobody expected that, with his twangy blues rock slide guitar, to become a household name. He was playing the bar circuit. Peach expected this would probably be our only chance to ever see the guy & I agreed. hence the bike ride on a rainy December evening.
Gilly's was a jazz bar. Maybe dancing occurred but not in front of the stage. They had tables set up all the way to the stage. This made for some awkwardness as Thorogood commenced to rockin' & the crowd started gettin off their duffs & shakin' their booties. Al & I were up front. The stage was only about knee high. After awhile we were made aware that some "too cool to move" biker lookin' guy was threatening to kill us if we didn't get out of his way. His old lady pleaded with us, telling us we really needed to think about our safety. We sat down on the edge of the stage. George Thorogood actually talked to us! He told us to get the hell off his stage. :D
Since he had christened us earlier (he held the head of his guitar to the heads of the folks in the front row) we figured we better do as he said. The mean man didn't bother us again because he was out cold by this time. When we left his old lady was desperately trying to wake him up.
When we got back to Tom's it had stopped raining - it was just cold. I didn't care, it had been a great show & I was still grooving on it, riding through the cold, dark, empty town to a solid boogie beat.