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He Worked for Blanche Zeller Or Success Has a Thousand Fathers

Of all the cast of interesting characters scattered throughout When Stars Were in Reach (WSWIR) there was no more colorful character than Blanche Zeller.  Blanche, you probably recall, was the owner of The Blanche Zeller Agency out of Verona, New Jersey, the company that booked The Who to play at Union Catholic High School in the fall of 1967.   She was well into her ‘90s when I spoke with Blanche in October of 2009.

Last month, after an exchange of emails, I spoke at length with Richard Goldberg who worked for Blanche Zeller for a good three plus years beginning at age 14 or 15.  That would be from 1967 through 1970.  Richard was working for Blanche when she booked The Who to play at U.C.  

Until the fall of 1967, Blanche Zeller had never booked a rock act.  Her staple was Catskills-type entertainers – picture Nipsey Russell or Alan King.  At some point she realized that she was missing out on a potentially lucrative revenue stream – rock concerts.  She figured why not hire a young person who could help her out in this area.  Enter Richard Goldberg.  What credentials could Richard Goldberg, all of 15 years old, have burnished that would not only have landed him a job with Blanche Zeller but would have caused Blanche to seek out Richard and not vice versa? Here begins the unusual story of Richard Goldberg.                     

As a young teen, Richard was an avid rock music fan.  He still is today.  He used to enjoy reading a rock music column in the Newark Evening News called “On The Record,” which reviewed rock bands and their new album releases.  Richard took umbrage at one particular column in which he thought a favorite band of his was unfairly criticized.  Richard put pen to paper and let his feelings be known in a letter to the editor.  The Arts Editor responded to Richard and invited him to the paper’s offices in Newark for a face-to-face chat.  Richard remembers being driven by his father to the bus stop to take the bus to Newark to meet with the Arts Editor.  When they met, Richard spoke his mind.  Richard must have made a favorable impression because although not yet 15, the Arts Editor offered him the chance to write that same column on rock music for the newspaper.  The Arts Editor said to Richard:  Why don’t you write the column?  At first Richard was dumbfounded but then he accepted the offer.  He eventually would be paid the princely sum of $75 for each column, which for a 15-year old was a lot of money.

Soon the column was his and he ran with it.  In addition to reviewing new rock album releases, the paper wanted to send him to rock concerts to review for his column.  When he explained to his boss that he was too young to drive, his boss told him not to worry; he would be driven to and from each concert.  Heady stuff indeed for a 15-year-old.  Richard remembers being driven on five or six occasions to the Asbury Park Convention Center for memorable concerts, specifically The Doors (August 31, 1968), the Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker (Mad Dogs and Englishmen) and also The Birds (shortly before the band and David Crosby went their separate ways and David went to greener pastures with Crosby Stills and Nash).

Blanche used to read and enjoy Richard’s column in the Newark Evening News.   She contacted the newspaper and asked if the newspaper would provide her with Richard’s contact information.  She wanted to hire him to help her book rock acts.  She contacted Richard and asked if he’d like to work for her.  Still a student in Scotch Plains High School, Richard accepted Blanche’s offer. 

Despite Richard’s youth at the time, almost 55 years later, one can understand why Blanche took a chance on hiring the young man.  After all they were kindred spirits of a sort – two over-achieving individuals, both possessing a healthy dose of “hutzpah” in their makeup.

It is not without good reason that the opening words to When Stars Were in Reach are:  “Success has a thousand fathers.  Failure is an orphan,” a quotation anonymously authored.  You see, there wasn’t one specific individual more than other who was responsible for the successful foray of Union Catholic into the rock concert business by staging The Who.  To name a few, there were the Principal Brother Vincent Damian, the booking agent Blanche Zeller, Senior Class President Rob Mathers and his fellow students on the concert committee, Decoys bass guitarist Bob Gilligan and I can go on.  Now we can add one more – Richard Goldberg.

A good portion of the Epilogue of When Stars Were in Reach deals with the challenge I faced of writing a cohesive and logical narrative of how The Who concert at Union Catholic High School came to be.  I say “challenge” because accounts sometimes conflicted with other accounts, depending on who was telling the story.  Two major point of contention centered around whose idea it was to book The Who over other bands and how the connection was made with Blanche Zeller.

Until I spoke with Richard Goldberg there were two main narratives.  There were those who attributed the idea of booking The Who to Bob Gilligan who had seen The Who play at the aforementioned Asbury Park Convention Center in August of 1967.   Then there were others who gave no credit to Bob Gilligan at all.  But along comes Richard Goldberg with his own unique perspective. 

According to Richard, once Blanche hired him, Richard’s job was to help open this new potentially lucrative revenue stream for the Blanche Zeller Agency.  Richard would fill the marketing role of reaching out to high schools with the idea of booking a rock band to play in their school.  He would also make sure that any quirky demands a band had, such as having a special beverage on hand or a certain stage set-up would be written into the contract.

Richard had seen The Who play at the legendary Murray the K shows in March of 1967, the Who’s first visit to the States.  It was Richard who told Blanche that this was the band to hire for the event.  It was also Richard who sold the idea to the school.  He remembers meeting with one of the Brothers and selling him on the idea of the school staging a rock concert.  This was after his own school Scotch Plains High School turned him down when he broached the idea with them.

When I heard Richard tell his story it reminded me of the story of how a number of people were blindfolded and got to touch one part of an elephant and were then asked to describe what they thought the whole animal looked like.  One touched its ear. Another its trunk. Another one of its thick legs.  When each described what they thought the entire animal looked like, they each described the animal from their own unique, slanted perspective of what part of the animal’s anatomy they had touched. 

The story about the elephant is similar to The Who concert at Union Catholic High School.  Each important player recalls a different narrative depending on his role in the process.  The class President remembers that he and his mates were the individuals behind the idea.  Others remember that Bob Gilligan played a major role in obtaining Blanche Zeller’s contact information and in recommending The Who.  Richard Goldberg tells the story from his own perspective, that of a person, uniquely positioned to market rock concerts to local high schools for The Blanche Zeller Agency and to recommend The Who after seeing them perform in March of 1967.

After The Who concert, needless to say Blanche was pleased.  According to Richard, Blanche was impressed that so many people would come to a high school to see a rock band perform.  But make no mistake about it, the dam had finally burst and the rock concert era had officially begun for The Blanche Zeller Agency, every bit as much as for Union Catholic High School.   Four months after The Who show, in March of 1968, Cream played at Union Catholic, also booked by Blanche.  After Cream’s second album Disraeli Gears being in the top 10 in the Billboard album charts from January of 1968 through the month of the concert, naturally the concert was sold out and was a big deal.  Richard remembers the concert vividly.  He even remembers his father trying with little success to interact with Ginger Baker before the show.

Another concert that Blanche booked that Richard has fond memories of was The Small Faces featuring Rod Stewart at Scotch Plains High School in May of 1970.  This was shortly after Rod joined the band together with Ronnie Wood.  Shortly after, they changed the band’s name to The Faces.  Richard met the band that night and has some photos of the occasion (see below).  The Small Faces with Rod were actually the opening band that night for Country Joe and The Fish. 

Richard was gracious enough to allow us to share with us the photos below from his collection.  I always wanted to see what Blanche Zeller looked like in her heyday.  Luckily Richard had a photo of himself greeting Rod Stewart and The Small Faces with Blanche Zeller in the photo as well.  Rod Stewart has his back to camera but you can make him out by his haircut.

Another photo shows the concert poster for The Small Faces concert at Scotch Plains HS.  Next to it is a poster of The Who concert at Union Catholic, but one which never saw the light of day.  Richard, who was kind of a jack-of-all-trades had some experience in sign-painting so he took a crack at designing the poster for The Who concert.  He tried to design a poster in the same spirit as the posters advertising shows for the Fillmore East and West.  Trouble is when he showed it to Blanche, she didn’t give her stamp of approval.  She said it was too difficult to understand.

By now, you may have wondered why Richard arrived at the party so late.  After all, When Stars Were in Reach was published eight years ago, in February of 2013.  Richard, an attorney by trade, is still extremely busy.  The only reason he stumbled on the book and contacted me was that he was recently watching a documentary on David Crosby and was immediately reminded of the time he was sent by the Newark Evening News to see The Byrds perform at Asbury Park.  While in Asbury Park, he went on one of the rides.  It was one of those rides that goes up and down and was not for the faint-hearted.  He spotted David Crosby opposite but far away from him.  Lucky for Richard, he wasn’t close to David, who was in the midst of puking his guts out on the ride with vomit flying in all directions.  That was the catalyst for taking a breath and realizing he had some unique memories to recall.  He then googled Blanche Zeller, found references to When Stars Were in Reach and sent me an email.  We then started corresponding until we finally found time to talk last month.

I can’t wait for the next person to contact me, who played a role in The Who concert at Union Catholic.  That’s why I’ve started to call this story – the gift that keeps giving.

Richard Goldberg in foreground with outstretched hand, Blanche Zeller in background, Rod Stewart with back to camera

Photo courtesy of Richard Goldberg

Poster of concert at Scotch Plains High School featuring Country Joe and the Fish and The Small Faces featuring Rod Stewart

On left poster of Who concert at Union Catholic High School which never saw the light of day

Photo courtesy of Richard Goldberg
Ron Wood and Ian McLagan of The Small Faces (top)
Ron Wood and Ronnie Lane (bottom)
Photos courtesy of Richard Goldberg

New Photos from Who Concert at Union Catholic Uncovered!!

Since the publication of When Stars Were in Reach in February of 2013, there have been two occasions when the blood in my veins flowed with extra Adrenalin. The first was when I received an email from Frank Diego on December 23, 2014, showing me a contract Union Catholic High School signed with Sly and The Family Stone (see Facebook post from January 5, 2015), have I been so revved up.

The second happened in the last two months. A little over a year ago I received a Facebook message from a gentleman named Todd McCartney saying that his mother, who passed away in 2016, had attended the Who concert at Union Catholic High School in 1967 and even saved photos from the show she herself had photographed.  We exchanged some messages back and forth.  Todd was going to rummage around to look for the photographs.  About a month later, I received a message from Todd saying that he went through some of his mother’s boxes where the album (with the photos) was supposed to be, but couldn’t find anything.  I thought this lead was closed. Oh how wrong I was.  

Fast forward to September of this year, I received another message from Todd notifying me that he found the photos.  Todd was gracious enough to send me copies of eleven color photos of The Who from November 29, 1967 at Union Catholic High School and to allow me to share them with my readers.  Ten of the eleven were taken backstage in the teachers’ lounge and one on the UC stage.  There was also a photo of a piece of paper with three autographs – Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle.  Backstage?  Autographs?  What?  There had to be a story here.  I spoke with Todd recently to get the background behind the photos and autographs.  Who was Todd’s mother and why and how did she get backstage?  Todd’s mother was Joan McCartney. On November 29, 1967 she was known as Joan Hadley.  She was a UC alumnus having graduated the previous June, i.e. June of 1967.  But how did she get backstage? 

After graduating Union Catholic, Joan entered Union College in the fall of 1967.  She was an avid writer and landed a job on the Union College newspaper.  She obtained press credentials to cover the Who concert for the paper.  Imagine what a charge Joan must have felt visiting her alma mater several months after graduating, with press credentials and a backstage pass to boot.  Picture Joan triumphantly returning to Union Catholic, meeting old teachers, former schoolmates and then going backstage to meet The Who                                                                                                                                          Chapter 22 of When Stars Were in Reach details the goings-on backstage while the opening act, The Decoys, were performing.  The book mentions The Who being interviewed by the girls’ and boys’ respective UC newspapers.  However, also in the dressing room, although not mentioned in WSWIR was Joan Hadley, who also interviewed them for the Union College newspaper.  Joan relayed to Todd that The Who behaved like immature jerks that night.  At one point during the interview, Keith Moon took the microphone out of Joan’s hands and put it in is mouth.  Remember three months prior Keith Moon had celebrated his 21st birthday. Boys will be boys.

The photos themselves are a thing of beauty, capturing the band in the most informal of settings, relaxing backstage in the teachers’ lounge.  These are the only color photos I’m aware of that were taken in the dressing room.  All the other color photos that I’ve seen from the evening, those of Angelo Del Monte and Nancy Scalera Mackow, were of the Tho Who on the UC stage.  So it’s interesting to see the Who in their mod garb and see the colors they were wearing.  Like a true fan, Joan was able to get the boys to pose together for a spontaneous, informal group photo.  Another photo of interest shows John Entwistle signing the concert poster.  Todd has confirmed that the concert photo was not his mom’s.  I wonder if that concert poster still exists today, 53 years later.  Another of the photos shows Pete Townshend practicing his newly acquired Coral Hornet Guitar, similar to the photo in WSWIR.

The sole photo of The Who on stage deserves some commentary. The photo of the band on the UC stage was taken from a unique angle – behind the stage. That Joan photographed the band from behind the stage is understandable, given that she had press credentials and was allowed to watch the show from behind the stage. I asked Todd to try and sharpen the photo to see the bleachers in the background. That’s the same behind-stage photo but cut-off at the bottom.

All photos which were photographed by Joan McCartney are courtesy of Todd McCartney.






The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and When Stars Were in Reach

On January 8, 2018, The University of Alabama was crowned NCAA football champions when they beat the University of Georgia 26-23. This was the 5th time since 2009 that Alabama won the championship in continuing a long and illustrious tradition for the university.

You’re not going to believe this but did you know that there is an indirect link between The University of Alabama and the book When Stars Were in Reach?

It all goes back to the fall of 1971. As a sophomore in college, a group of friends and I decided we would follow The Who at the beginning of their American tour. We decided we would travel to see The Who in Charlotte, North Carolina, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and in Atlanta Georgia, the first three stops on their American tour. Earlier in the year The Who had released “Who’s Next” so the middle portion of these shows was devoted to the album; songs that would in time be considered rock classics; songs such as Baba O’Reilly, Won’t Get Fooled Again, My Wife, Behind Blue Eyes and Bargain. The friends with whom I traveled had worked with the Who’s roadies the previous summer in a number of Who concerts in England so they were convinced that the roadies would recognize them and allow them to work with them again, thereby enabling us to get backstage.

The plan worked like a charm. We met up with The Who in Charlotte and helped the roadies with The Who’s equipment and followed them to Tuscaloosa Alabama for the next show. The University of Alabama was the most beautiful college campus I’d ever seen in my life. The show itself was not one of The Who’s best. They were having sound problems for the second consecutive show and Pete Townshend was furious with the band’s road manager Bob Pridden, whom he blamed for the equipment problems.

Following is a quote from my diary entry from the show at the University of Alabama – November 22, 1971: “They just weren’t on tonight. The sound system went again and Townshend is getting incredibly pissed at Bob Pridden. After the show Townshend had a big argument with Plum (Bob Pridden) which is why Daltrey and Entwistle were by the stage rather than in the dressing room.”

As a pimply-faced eighteen year old, to be backstage and see The Who, up close behind the scenes was an experience I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Because Pete Townshend was in such a foul mood due to the equipment malfunction, I remember the atmosphere backstage being tense and intimidating. I did what I was told my grandfather had done in the sweatshops of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during The Great Depression in order to ingratiate himself to his boss and keep his job. He acted busy and so did I. I wouldn’t make eye contact with Pete Townshend for fear of him saying: Who the f— are you anyway? What are you doing here. Get lost!” Luckily that never took place. The road crew was a bunch of characters. Everybody had a nickname. As I mentioned above, The Who’s road manager Bob Pridden was called Plum. One of the roadies was called Bumper. In retrospect it could have been a scene from the movie “Almost Famous.”

We left the Who’s tour after the show in Atlanta, while The Who continued on to Miami, Memphis, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas and then to the western United States.

Fast forward thirty seven years to 2008. I had started to sell duplicate Fillmore East programs on ebay and enjoyed the experience of writing about each particular show’s significance and witnessing the bidding process. It was a tremendous rush to see my item bid up as the auction was coming to a close. Enjoying the experience, I rummaged through my basement for more memorabilia to sell. In a bin buried beneath other bins, I stumbled upon a rolled-up poster. I unfurled it and low and behold it was a poster from The Who concert at the University of Alabama (see below). The poster was in very good condition, as if it hadn’t been touched since November of 1971. I felt like I had made a valuable archeological find. I had forgotten the existence of that poster from the Tuscaloosa Alabama concert. But yeah, come to think of it, I had brought it back with me to New York. I immediately flashed back 37 years to that once-in-a-lifetime road trip with The Who.

I decided I was going to auction the poster on ebay. As was the case with ebay auctions, there was little bidding in the days leading up to the auction. 98% of the action occurred on the last day of the auction, in fact in the closing minutes of the auction. In the case of The Who at Tuscaloosa Alabama poster, the bidding was fast and furious in the closing minutes of the auction and I was both stunned and pleased to see the final sale price of the poster.

Later, the person who purchased the poster contacted me because he did not want me to mail the poster for fear of it being damaged in the process. Besides he wanted to meet me in the flesh, to question me and examine the poster to determine the poster’s authenticity and finally to determine if I had any other valuable posters which he could buy from me and bypass the auction process. (The answer was yes, but that’s a story for another day.) The man was a collector of rock posters and informed me that he already had a copy of the Tuscaloosa poster. However unlike mine, his had been mounted on some hard material, like poster-board. He therefore wasn’t sure my poster was authentic. I explained how the poster came into my hands, that I had been at the show and that original posters of the show were not mounted on anything. They had simply been posted on bulletin walls with thumb tacks to advertise the show or display cases; that in fact mine was the authentic form of the poster. He also gave me a short lesson about collecting rock posters. The bottom line was that the most valuable posters on the open market were concert posters. Posters with beautiful pictures of band members were of little or no value. But posters advertising actual concerts, that placed the band at a specific place and time were the posters with the most value.

Quickly enough he became convinced that the poster was authentic. Several days later he sent me an email with photos of several rare posters of Who concerts that took place in the New York metropolitan area that were from his collection. Among them was an incredibly beautiful poster of The Who at a Catholic high school in Scotch Plains New Jersey, named Union Catholic High School from November of 1967.

Seeing that beautiful poster of The Who at Union Catholic immediately transported me to a time when I was a collector of Who memorabilia and a time when I was crazy enough to travel thousands of miles to see The Who and get backstage with them. I immediately realized I had some unfinished business to attend to; to place my years of Who fandom in some meaningful context.

Across from me was this beautiful photo of The Who playing at a Catholic High School in New Jersey. But wait! The Who playing at a high school in the New York metropolitan area? And I thought I was such a big Who fan that I would have heard about such a concert at a high school. Knowing intimately The Who’s history and the band’s struggle in the U.S. to make it big, I sensed there was story behind this concert. I also figured that given that the concert took place in the New York City metropolitan area, some of the people instrumental in putting on this unusual concert may still be in the New York area and may still be alive and would be relatively accessible to meet and interview. I wasn’t far off in my hunches. And so I began my research into what would eventually result in the book When Stars Were in Reach.

And now you know the connection between the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and When Stars Were in Reach.

tuscaloosauchs poster in jpeg

KEITH MOONS SNARE DRUM – PART 2

Which Doesn’t Belong and Why?

Part I of this post detailed how Decoys’ drummer Mike Mazzarisi used Chris Salman’s snare drum for the Decoys’ Union Catholic show and how Keith Moon ended up using it during The Who’s performance.  Remember the famous Zapruder film from the JFK assassination.  Well, check this out.  We now have incontrovertible evidence of Mike Mazzarisi’s story.

Below are two photos.  The first is a photo from the previous post of (from left to right) of Chris Salman, author Michael Rosenbloom with the famous snare drum and Jim McClurken, lead guitarist for The Decoys.  Take a look at that snare drum in the photo.  The second photo is of Keith Moon’s Pictures of Lily drum kit taken by then Freshman Nancy Scalera Mackow, a few minutes after the Union Catholic show.  A beautiful photo isn’t?  You may correctly recognize the photo from the back cover of “When Stars Were in Reach.”  See the cymbal strewn across the drum kit after the smash up.  See also John Entwistle’s bass guitar.  I consider this photo to be a tip of the hat to the two deceased members of The Who – Keith Moon and John Entwistle.

But now take a closer look at the various drums that make up Keith Moon’s drum kit.  See something that doesn’t belong?  Look at the snare drum.  It’s the only drum that doesn’t have the Pictures of Lily design on it.  Why is it different?  Because it was Chris Salman’s snare drum. That’s why!

Not sure why no one ever noticed this, especially not this writer.  It’s amazing the discoveries one can make by examining old photographs with a critical eye.

snare drum 11967,_Nov_29_Union_Catholic_HS_The_WHO_concert_Keith_Moon's_drumset

KEITH MOON’S SNARE DRUM PART 1

snare drum 1Keith Moon’s DNA is on this Snare Drum

In the interview process for the writing of “When Stars Were in Reach, The Who at Union Catholic High School, November 29, 1967,” Mike Mazzarisi, drummer for The Decoys, the band which opened for The Who at Union Catholic, related how Keith Moon’s snare drumhead broke during The Who’s performance.  Having no alternative, and with The Decoys’ equipment directly behind the stage and ready to be taken apart and packed after The Decoys’ performance, Bob Pridden, road manager for The Who, ran to Mike’s snare drum and started to dislodge it from its kit.

Seeing what was happening, Mike Mazzarisi ran to protect his equipment.  But Mr. Pridden explained that Keith Moon had broken his drumhead and had no choice but to use Mike’s snare drum for the remainder of the show.  Mike at first protested but In the end he relented and the rest is history, as they say.

That much was recounted in “When Stars Were in Reach.”  But what was learned on Saturday night November 18th 1967, at The Decoys’ 50th anniversary reunion concert, is that the drum didn’t belong to Mike at all.  Mike had borrowed the snare drum for the show from a friend named Chris Salman (pronounced Salemin).  That could be one reason why Mike was especially reluctant to let Keith Moon use his snare drum.  Chris has remained Mike’s friend until today.

While Mike’s or more exactly Chris’ snare drum was being used by Keith Moon, Keith bloodied one of his hands on a cymbal when he hit it awkwardly.  When the show was over Mike took back the snare drum Keith had been using and it had blood stains all over it.

Fast forward 50 years to The Decoys’ reunion concert from November 18, 2017 when Chris Salman and his snare drum from the Union Catholic show made an appearance.  Below is a photo (from left to right) of Chris Salman, author Michael Rosenbloom with the famous snare drum and Jim McClurken, lead guitarist for The Decoys.

Mike Mazzarisi jokes till this day that Keith Moon’s DNA is embedded in that snare drum.  If one day, mad scientists will look for a way to clone Keith Moon, we can now direct them to Chris Salman.

The Decoys Step Up to the Plate…Bigtime!

As the 50th anniversary of the historic Who concert at Union Catholic High School has been approaching, it was widely conjectured what if anything would be done to mark the occasion. Perhaps the school would contact The Who to appear in some form or another? Instead The Decoys, the band that opened for The Who on November 29, 1967, stepped up to the plate and arranged a concert/charity event at the gymnasium at Our Lady of Peace in New Providence, New Jersey, on Saturday night, November 18, 1967. The program, the brain child of Ed Cadmus, Decoys’ longtime manager consisted of three segments. The first and last act was music. The opening act was the band Interior Steel. The Decoys closed the show. Between their acts Michael Rosenbloom, author of When Stars Were in Reach gave a Power Point presentation about The Decoys’ career with a special emphasis on the Union Catholic High School show, when The Decoys opened for The Who.

The five Decoys who stayed together all through high school and college and who opened for The Who in November of 1967 consist of Mike Mazzarisi on drums, Jim McClurken on lead guitar, Michael Testa on rhythm guitar and harmonica, Jon Kenseth on lead vocals and Bob Gilligan on bass guitar. For the show, Mike Mazzarisi’s brother Ernie Mazzarisi filled out the band on keyboards. All of The Decoys except Jon Kenseth grew up in New Providence. Jon Kenseth grew up in nearby Chatham Township. Bob Gilligan went to high school at Union Catholic in Scotch Plains. Jon Kenseth went to Chatham High School. The other three Decoys graduated from New Providence High School.

The Decoys were in a buoyant mood on stage, rejuvenated to discover that they still sounded great. They found their groove from the start and wowed the audience with a set of mostly ‘60s covers and two Decoys’ original tunes from the early 1970s. They were also quite ambitious in their song selection, tackling such numbers as “Crossroads,” the Robert Johnson blues number made famous by Cream, “Mr. Soul” the Buffalo Springfield classic and “Red House” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Jim McClurken, who in his youth was known as the best guitarist around the New Providence area appears not have lost a step, excelling on a host of guitars he brought to the show.

As this concert was a reunion celebrating the show at Union Catholic High School when The Decoys opened for The Who, The Decoys played two Who songs – “Substitute” and “Summertime Blues.” Jon Kenseth was the sole Decoy who did not continue singing or appearing with other bands after the demise of The Decoys in the early 1970s. That said, his voice was in fine shape and did not he disappoint although Mike Testa and Jim McClurken took over lead vocals on a few of the songs .

Jon Kenseth made the trip from Boston and Bob Gilligan from Arizona. The band practiced several times before the show and sent each other MP3s of songs they were intending to play at the show. This way, The Decoys could practice songs from remote locations before reuniting for the few practices they did hold prior to the show.

I learned a few new factoids at the concert. One is that about 15 years ago, Jim McClurken spent a period of time at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts in Liverpool, England studying under Paul McCartney. Jim had to win a songwriting competition in order to be awarded this position. This was related to me by Barbara McClurken, Jim’s wife.

The second fact I learned was related to me by Chris Salman (pronounced Salemin). He told me that the snare drum that Mike Mazzarisi used at the concert at Union Catholic was not Mike’s snare drum. It was Chris’ snare drum. This may explain further, the reluctance on Mike’s part to let Keith Moon use his snare drum when Keith busted his own snare drum at the show.

A wonderful time was had by all. There were in excess of 300 people packed into the gym. There was a dance area in front of the stage which some in the audience used. Behind the dance area was about 10 rows of concert seating. Behind the concert seats were about 30 round tables spread round the gym where friends and family could sit as a group and enjoy the show. The show was not just a reunion for The Decoys. It was evident that the show served to reunite a host of people who hadn’t seen each other for years. That plus the fact that the proceeds of the event went towards two charities and that The Decoys were local lads who came back to give something back to the community in which they grew up enhanced the good vibes felt throughout the gym.

A truly memorable evening!Grotto ad Myddle Class Decoys ad bernardsville ad

Song List From Decoys’ Union Catholic Concert Found After 50 Years

decoys song list croppedIn preparation for the upcoming Decoys reunion concert, scheduled to take place on Saturday night November 18, 2017, the various members of The Decoys have been looking through old files and drawers for memorabilia from their history.  In doing so, Jon Kenseth made a remarkable discovery.  He discovered the song list from the Union Catholic show, the show in which they opened for The Who on November 29,1967.

The washed out and barely legible list is revealing to say the least.  The list checks out in that none of the songs were released by their original artists after November of 1967.  Noteworthy is that the band played two songs recorded by the hugely popular but star-crossed local band The Myddle Class – Free as The Wind and Don’t Let Me Sleep Too Long, which also was recorded by the Blues Project as “Wake Me Shake Me.”

At the time of the Union Catholic show, The Decoys were a cover band and indeed all the songs were covers.  The band covered the most that night by The Decoys was The Byrds, with three songs.

The list as best can be deciphered is as follows

  • 1) Don’t Doubt Yourself Babe (Byrds)
  • 2) It’s My Life (Animals)
  • 3) She Don’t Care About Time (Byrds)
  • 4) Hey Joe (Hendrix and others)
  • 5) No Time Like the Right Time (Blues Project)
  • 6) Come On Let’s Go (The McCoys)
  • 7) 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds – (Jefferson Airplane)
  • 8) Have you Seen Her Face (The Byrds)
  • 9) Crossed out???
  • 10) Sock It To Me (Mitch Ryder)
  • 11) Things I Should Have Said (The Grass Roots)
  • 12) Free as The Wind (Myddle Class)
  • 13) She is Still A Mystery to Me (Lovin’ Spoonful)
  • 14) Gimme Some Lovin’ (Spencer Davis Group)
  • 15) Omaha (Moby Grape)
  • 16) Don’t Let Me Sleep Too Long (Myddle Class, Blues Project)

One large question to be asked is: As a tribute to the band’s history and that historic evening, will The Decoys play any of the songs on the list? I guess we’ll have to be there to find out.

 

 

DECOYS 50th ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

The Decoys, the band that opened for The Who at Union Catholic High School in November of 1967 will be reuniting and performing in concert to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic concert on November 18, 2017.

There had been much talk about whether Union Catholic High School, The Who or anyone for that matter would mark the event during which The Decoys and The Who appeared on the Union Catholic stage in a groundbreaking concert.

It appears that The Decoys have seized the initiative and leapt into action. Fifty years ago, The Decoys were five high school students.  Three of them, Jim McClurken (lead guitar),  Mike Testa (rhythm guitar) and Mike Mazzarisi (drums) were students at New Providence High School.  Bob Gilligan (bass guitar) was a student at Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains and Jon Kenseth (lead vocals) a student at Chatham Township High School.  Now they have reunited for the event. Bob Gilligan and Jon Kenseth will be coming from out of state to play with their ex-bandmates.

The concert will take place at Our Lady of Peace Gymnasium in New Providence, New Jersey on November 18, 2017. General admission tickets will be sold at $25 per ticket and the proceeds will go to Catholic School education.

More details to follow as the event nears. In the meantime, mark this on your calendars! Sounds like a can’t miss event.

Decoys reunion poster 001

Per The Who – THE VERDICT IS IN: Who show at Union Catholic – Historic!

At last some recognition from The Who or from those who represent The Who on the band’s official website that they too agree that The Who’s appearance at Union Catholic High School on November 29, 1967 was truly historic and unusual. Historic enough in fact to include a copy of the ticket stub and the page from school’s 1967-1968 yearbook devoted to the concert among a select few photos of The Who from the 1960s. Not only that but on the top row, smack dab in the middle.  Wow! Pretty impressive especially when you consider that the ticket stub is the only live performance flier, poster or ticket among all the photos on the page from the ’60s.  That’s right.  No Marquee Club poster or Fillmore East ticket stub.  Just Union Catholic High School.

Although the credit for posting the ticket stub is given to a Tim W, the ticket stub actually belongs to Nancy Mackow Scalera a freshman at the time who submitted the ticket stub to a Who memorabilia competition earlier in 2015 run through the Who’s website celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary.  Nancy contributed mightily to the finished product of When Stars Were in Reach in many different ways – with photos and tracking down others who eventually were interviewed for the book to name just two.  She checked her copy of the stub and sure enough those stains in the upper left hand corner of the stub are identical to those on her stub. During this internet and social media era, where photos are posted and re-circulated countless times, it’s not surprising that the attribution is incorrect.

The yearbook page has been circulating on the internet for years in various places. Several of the photos from the yearbook appear in “When Stars Were in Reach” with greater resolution (especially in the color, Kindle and Nook version of the book).

It is reassuring though to know that after decades have passed and context has become more obvious, that those who viewed the concert at Union Catholic as highly unusual, so unusual as to warrant a book about it, were not off base in the least.

WESTFIELD HISTORICAL SOCIETY FLIER

The time has been set for the presentation of When Stars Were in Reach and the live performance by Boonescuttle5 on Sunday, June 7, 2015. The scheduled time for the presentation is 2PM. The live concert will follow the Q&A, which follows the presentation. Festivities are estimated to go on until 4PM.  Our guess is they will go a bit past the 4PM estimated ending time.

You’ve got to love the art work by a member of the event committee at the Westfield Historical Society named Kerrie. We will work tirelessly until her last name is uncovered so that she receives the accolades due her. Kerrie has not only created a collectable in her own right but she has done so by tipping her cap, so to speak, to the artist of the original Union Catholic Who concert poster. The Westfield event is announced alongside the original poster by replicating the look and style of the original, which has always been so unique and so eye-capturing.

Kudos to Kerri!!

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