Music Appreciation

There was a Montgomery AM radio station that promoted rock concerts they called "The Big Bam" concert. (The radio station was WBAM.) I was 15 and a friend's older brother took us. They performed "Glad All Over" and I don't remember what else. It was almost 60 years ago. There was also a well-known pop duo there, either Chad and Jeremy or Peter and Gordon, not sure which. And a female British Invasion singer, she might have been Marianne Faithful. The Dave Clark 5 were big then, but not nearly as big as the Beatles, of course. I never got to see the Beatles live. If Satan appeared to me now and told me if I would sell him my soul, he would put me at a Beatles concert, I would not do it, but I would be powerfully tempted. The most powerful temptation would be the famous rooftop concert in January 1969, among those few people who were on the rooftop of the adjacent building, but I wouldn't do it even then, as powerful as the temptation would be. Or those Liverpool or Hamburg pubs in the early 1960s when the Beatles were just beginning to become famous might have been equally tempting. Now almost nobody even remembers the Dave Clark 5, but everybody knows who the Beatles are. Notice I used the present-tense verb there. The Dave Clark 5 were, but the Beatles still are.

— Ron