Sha-na-na: Remembrance of Things Present

WE AIN'T afraid of youse." A full beer can flew past the lead singer's head. "I said we ain't afraid of you, but the next cat who throws something up on the stage..." A shower of beer and cans bombarded the band. "Then we're walking off." And so he did.

Maybe they weren't afraid of the crowd, but I was. The several thousand who crammed the Suffolk downs infield to see Sha-na-na and the warm-up group, Aerosmith, were ugly and fearsome. The Suffolk Downs people and the promoters had run the concert about as badly as it is possible to run one; and after such treatment the crowd's ill will was excusable, if not justifiable. Most had survived a crush through eight small turnstiles at which there was no separation between people who had tickets and people who didn't--fences were torn down; cops were attacked, and finally the whole crowd shoved toothpaste tube-style past any foolish authority that might have attempted to control it. The mob psychology was amalgamated Woodstock in perversion: we are all one and no one is going to stand in our way. The music belongs to the people.

At the stage area the crush was worst. Aerosmith had just finished its set to a standing ovation from its teenaged following. People who brought coolers were standing on them, and people who brought tall friends were standing on them. Toes were crushed, ribs poked, necks craned, and sensibilities strained. People linked arms in human chains that trod and trampled anything and anyone in their, or its, way. This was the worst crowd I had ever seen, worse than at the Stones concert, worse than those at the Democratic Convention, worse even than much of Mayday.

AS IF the violent nature were not enough, the promoters took a Satanic hand in prompting it. The loudspeaker system blared the live version of "Sympathy for the Devil," the song that had provided the background music for the cinematic murder at Altamont, the song that Jagger described: "Something strange always seems to happen every time we play that song." They played this song, to a crowd that had been pushed, shoved, and compressed into a solid mass of seething tensions. Remember Woodstock? Remember Altamont. And get out of there.

*****

"Well, Cheryl, aren't you glad you came?"

"Oh, yeah, sure."

The disappointment of both girls was touched with the familiar cynicism that has crept increasingly into the language of youth. They would come back to the next concert, and I wouldn't. But why would they be back, to be overcharged and misused and ripped off again.

"Because it's something to do, and there are lots of kids here."

"But doesn't it bother you the way you're getting cheated, the way you don't really even get to hear the music?"

"Yeah, I guess so, but well, I don't know."

A novocaine high, tranquillized numbness.

SHA-NA-NA's appeal is based on the desire to recapture a time gone by, the germinal days of rock and roll when it was the song and not the singer that made the hit. Representing the fifties, they lay the camp trimmings on thick: the grease, the T-shirts, the rumbles, the lingo. Last year when Sha-na-na came to Boston, most of the crowd was dressed for occasion, resplendent in white sox, sweat shirts, saddle shoes, and Brylcreem. This year the leftovers of that crowd walked like ghosts among a younger crowd in halter tops, platform shoes, and wide bell-bottoms. Nostalgia didn't pack the concert, but neither did the music. It was the being there.

It made me, for the first time in my life, feel old. I sat with a few greaser friends near the back of the crowd as we lamented the end of an era. They talked of the kids at the concert as I had heard people who were thirty talk about us when we were sixteen. But my friends and I are only twenty-two. I was feeling a generation gap with people only five years my junior.

Time has literally changed. The generational changes have accelerated to the point where three years can mark off a generation. Disillustionment and cynicism didn't force me into dealing with the major issues of life until I was in college, well past the age when I had the problems of puberty, pimples, and failure to make the first string football team. But Nixon, Vietnam, Watergate, student revolt, the mass media and popular culture it creates--all this, coming uncontrolled and so fast, forces people to deal with this disillusionment younger and earlier. Now they grow up bombarded with issues, and this is a large, if not overwhelming, burden for any adolescent. I don't know if I could have dealt with drugs, an immoral war, a corrupt government, and puberty. But whether I could have or not, the fact that I didn't irrevocably removes me one generation from those who do.

*****

THE NOVACAINE high of a situation like the Sha-na-na concert is an understandable escape. If there is little safety, at least there is a common bond in numbers. In this mob exists a different spirit from the vein of Sha-na-na nostalgia, but it is of the same genre. Commercialized consumerism can create instant nostalgia, market a product, and sell to those who crave it. There is a record collection that comes on with "Remember the sounds of the Summer '73." We're already nostalgic about the present, a time scale compressed to the point of absurdity. It is humorous, but it carries desperation for those just a little younger than I am. Maybe Sam Ervin is right when he says we face the worst time of our history. Perhaps there will be nothing about this age to be nostalgic about, so the spirit of an age that has characterized past decades will have to be created artificially. Watkins Glen was a programmed attempt to recreate a Woodstock, but the atmosphere of Woodstock, the greatness of that celebration, was complete spontaneity. No one knew what to expect, and it is impossible to package and sell the unpredictable. Watkins Glen went like clockwork. It even rained on time. Because of the precision, there could be no spirit of Watkins Glen. Yet in the midst of the crush at the stage of Suffolk Downs last week, one young girl stood on her friend's shoulders to exhort the crowd:

"Come on people, let's be cool. Remember Watkins Glen!"

Remember the Maine, remember Woodstock, "re-mem-mem, re-mem-a-member..."

*****

WHEN THE CONCERT came to an end, the beleaguered members of Sha-na-na had every right to be pissed off. They had been pelted, showered, and greeted with cries of "bring back Aerosmith." As they wearily left the stage after an excellent, if for the most part unappreciated performance, the lead singer paused at the mike one last time:

"Now look, drive carefully home, and we don't want none of youse to get hurt or nothing, but we ten in the band up here are better than all of you put together."

Remember the Sha-na-na concert back in '73...