Little Richard, R.I.P.

The first concert I remember attending was a Little Richard Concert at Memorial Arena in Victoria, BC, late 1956 or early 1957. The next one I remember is Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplanes in Denver in the mid sixties. The psycho-social acreage between those two events is best represented by the fact that I can still remember the rough location of my seat at the Little Richard concert and cannot remember where the Airplane concert was held, other than that it was in Denver. Some of us were high on pot, others were stoned on acid. The driver mercifully was only drinking. Very different days. But I digress.

In the mid fifties we were going through our gang stage, not juvenile delinquent gang but rather “the gang”. We were not paired off, there was just some guys and some girls and we tended to hang out sorta. For the little Richard concert the girls were completely wild and outta control. Well at least, outta control for Victoria girls. They shrieked, jumped, swooned and rushed the stage to try and get bits of his clothing. We boys did not get it. We had heard he was giving this up to become a minister. We boys definitely did not get that.

As the years passed most of us learned how out to lunch we had been. The girls were always ahead of us.