Newspaper Page Text
September 27,1989
Flagpole Magazine
Page 19
over his head, James Dean tee shirt and a
big black crucifix hanging down around his
neck, standin’ there tough smokin’ ciga
rettes, rather James Deanish in fact, striking
that exact pose, then leaning over to whis
per and laugh in his friends’ ears, a happy,
excited kid, knowing nothing, ready to hear
'rhti' band, he's heard the standard Byrds
“classic rock” radio fare, you know, and
maybe he has a few of the records at home.
And high school girls, beautiful, fresh,
dressed up a little too much, I mean, espe
cially for Camden Park! But they were just
learning, just becoming social, sexual...
and they also bright-eyed and anxious for
the show. And whole families in attendance,
middleaged couples who had perhaps
really seen the Byrds play once a long time
ago, and now had brought their children out
to get a glimpse, an echo. So what I mean
to say is that as far as the general Hunting-
ton area goes, this was fairly interesting,
fairly aware, so to speak, little gathering of
folks, with only a minimum of the typical
Camden mutants mixwd in...and everyone
was ready to go, West Virginny, Saturday
night! (“Boy, this is Huntington. Saturday
night, do you know what that means? You
are gonna have the hellraisin’, asskickin’
best time of your entire
life,” a guy actually said
that to me once.)
So NATURALLY, it
started to rain. A pretty
good downpour, but
most everybody stuck it
out for about 10 min
utes. All of us just sitting
there on those absurd,
rotten bleachers, wait
ing to see what was
bound to be a really
shitty show, and getting soaked to the bone.
Finally we all just kind of started to turn
heads around, all at once, and look at one
another as if to say, “Gee, we’re really stu
pid, aren’t we?” Then the crown began to
trickle away, looking for shelter.
But within a few minutes the rain had
stopped completely. Joe and Annette and
I were en route to the car, but now with the
rain letting up, we decided to head back to
the bleache r s..."Yeah, maybe they’ll still
play," Joe said. Of course, we all knew they
wouldn’t, but that really didn’t seem to mat
ter anymore. We were already wet, we had
nothing to lose.
This time the crowd was smaller. The
brave souls, the troopers. The RABID
BYRDS FANATICS. But the band never did
appear ,we never saw 'em. (They probably
weren’t within 100 miles of the place, they’d
probably been scared off much earlier that
day. In fact, they had probably NEVER
BEEN THERE! This thought crossed my
mind. It was all just a cheap Camden Park
hoax, advertise a Byrds show, rent out a
sound system and some drums and amps,
set the stage up to make things look some
what legitimate, then just mysteriously can
cel at the last minute after the gate receipts
have already been counted... and the bad
weather just helped things along, made the
whole scheme come off a lot more
smoothly.)
But this is what happened: the crowd
was beginning to whistle and stomp and
scream a little bit, “Let’s go! Rain’s gone!
Let’s see a show!” It was all crazy and
hopeless... a roadie appeared onstage,
walkie talkie at his ear, started goofing
around with some of the equipment... and at
that moment some of the most ominous
violent stormclouds I have ever seen I swear
in my life began to whip up over the hori
zon... lightning was beginning to strike very
close, giant earsplit thunderclaps... and
powerful winds... I mean there was a pretty
big tree behind the bleachers and now that
tree began to LEAN menacingly... then the
rain hit and this time it
was for real. Solid
sheets of cold, hard rain,
it was like the monsoon
season had come early,
there were mothers
clutching babies to their
breasts racing for shel
ter, faces stricken with
terror, people scream
ing, slipping in the mud,
almost a panic... like
some kind of grade B
disaster movie...
(I mean a serious storm. When we later
made it back downtown Huntington the
town was flooded, whole streets blocked
off, a few unfortunate cars stranded in sud
den muddy furious overflows)
We reached shelter, a concession
stand... guys in ballcaps were standing
there, spittin’ tobacco, “Sure is cornin’
down, ain’t she?" I knew instinctively this
had been the show, the piece of history, I’d
be telling my grandkids someday.
"The Byrds. Rained out. Camden Park
’89.Never be another one like that." Down
the hill behind us about 20 or 30 zealots
were still in the bleachers, chanting in uni
son now,"Eight miles high! Eight miles
high!"
I knew instinctively
this had been the
show, the piece of
history, Vd be
telling my grandkids
about
someday.
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