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As they say, " If you
can remember the 60s, you weren't really there." The old brain has been
struggling to put theses pieces together... anyone with more detailed
memories of the era please send me an e-mail.... duck at maryjanebannd
dot com. I ran into a newspaper guy a few years ago after
finishing the final cuts on the Heart Infiltrator video, and he told me
about being a teenager and hitch-hiking all over the state to follow
Mary Jane... That chance meeting resulted in a great interview in a 1989
article in the Rocky Mountain News, revisiting 1969.
duck |
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nightclubs, bars |
Mary Jane did
very little club work, we were underage, and at the time, nightclubs
strictly wanted top-whatever cover music, and we played a lot of
strange, original material. The Honeybucket in Boulder was one of
the few, perhaps half a dozen other places in Denver, Boulder and Castle
Rock, along with a nameless bar in Craig. The Tule and the Sink,
probably, but I just don't remember anymore ;-). |
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The Kingdom of Endor |
Owned by a
couple of former RKO records guys, this club was open for about 18
months on the second floor of a building at 9th and Pearl in Boulder.
Mary Jane was house band (meaning we didn't get paid much, but got to
play a lot and didn't have to move equipment) for much of that time.
Alan and Butcher brought in several well known national acts, providing
us some great opening opportunities. |
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outdoor concerts and mega concerts |
The
Boulder/Denver area from 69-70 had dozens of outdoor concerts, and it
seemed that we played two or three of them a month. Some memorable
ones: Eldorado Springs (Black Pearl and some San Francisco bands),
Downtown Boulder on Pearl Street (Leopold Fuchs and others), the steps
of Norlin Library on the CU campus (we played for nearly eight hours),
the very first Earth Day
concert at the west side of the Denver Museum of National History on
April 22, 1970. Other outdoor
venues included Sugarloaf Mountain, the Flatirons Amphitheater, Left
Hand Canyon... at one, East of Boulder on Valmont Road, the wind was
just right and we got a noise complaint from nearly nine MILES away. |
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the Boulder Band Shell |
oh yeah.... |
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Boulder UMC and Mackey Auditorium |
The University
Memorial Center was a favorite venue... I don't think they named it the
Glen Miller Ballroom until later, but I could, of course, be mistaken.
The acoustics in Mackey were incredible. |
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St. Vrain Memorial Building in Longmont |
Two of us, Duck
and Pete, went to high school in Longmont. Playing the Memorial
Building was always a kick. We once had our main road guy, Monte,
crawl into the rafters to drop several pounds of confetti onto a
strobe-lit stage. Quite an effect, and he didn't fall... The
strobe was 2 million candle power... it's a wonder we can still see. |
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Boulder YMCA |
Our very FIRST
show as Mary Jane Bannd was at the Boulder Y... I think we did something
there at least twice a year. |
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Battles of the Bands |
A Battle of the
Bands was an immensely popular event in the middle and late 1960s, and
we played many, many of them... kickin' a little ass whenever we
could. Memorable ones: a massive wall of Fender Dual Showman
amplifiers... we freaked out the promoters by chaining all the amps
together and using somewhere between 16 and 20 100 watt amps for TWO
guitars (Pete's Esquire and Stubber's Jazz Bass); freaking out the
judges by wearing a necklace containing a HORSE syringe while singing
the Velvet Underground's "Heroin"; and losing by a couple of lousy
points to a nameless Boulder band because they wore such cute
uniforms... we had the crowd behind us and it got interesting when they
announce the winners.. oh, well. |
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Have Fun Trying to Remember More!!!
if you do remember something to share,
please put up a posting on the
discussion board |
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last update:
21 Jun 2009 08:42 |
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