How awsome to have seen those bands back then!.................I would have loved to have been there but who would want to take a 7 year old to a rock venue, I believe Alice Cooper was with the Spiders at that time yet................................Tom.
Tom, you're right, it might've been 1970-hey, it was 'that kind of time,' I was in college before that, it was a long time ago, ....what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Alice and the other early 1970's MI locals performing.
There were a bunch of them, SRC was Scott-Richard-Case, there was The Quick, The UP, and of course the hardest-rockin' band with a political bent in the Ann Arbor-Detroit area, the MC5. Also saw the Sunday Funnies, Brownsville Station, and I'll never forget the first time I heard a new band from Lansing, playing a cover of The Impressions'
Get Ready, while listening to the FM album-rock East Lansing radio station one night sitting in the dorm. They were released on a record label named the same as their name, and were the first white band hired by Motown who brought-out the record label,
Rare Earth. At the same time, Motown also released a British Invasion group which never got much exposure stateside, but they are credited with the first rock opera,
SF Sorrow, by
Pretty Things. Both
SF Sorrow and
Rare Earth had die-cut album covers which had glued-in polyethylene record sleeves and the top of the album cardboard was cut into a semicircular shape, which was the open side of the album instead of the right-side being the open side. Later issues of the albums had a traditional side-opening, so if you ever see one of those round-top album's, that sucker is from the first release.
Yeah, a great time to be young and able to attend the area's music venues. Ask someone who was old-enough to go about Goose Lake Music Festival. Be prepared to get an earful, it was quite an event & with many big bands. They put it on not too-far from your
Ride to Hell. Once the locals saw what was in-store for them, they quickly moved to shut-down the site from hosting any further multi-day festivals.
The cool thing about Alice Cooper is that he still plays, and is a favorite of bikers, like Steppenwolf or ZZ Top.