the journals of alan rhodes

December 9 Sunday
The Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert at the Forum. [I sat with Donna and Dave (?) (Loge 9, Range B, Siege 6). Ralph and Andy were around somewhere, as were Maggie, Mike and Michelle. Ralph took pictures. Donna had supplied mescaline. The first group 'Stray Dogs' were bad (and again Andy's wealth of detail)]

(Andy's) December 9, Sunday
I did a lot of mescaline and went over to Ralph's. Mike was there. It was a little cold but the streets were really slushy. Harry Banks and a friend turned up at the bus stop, on their way to the show as well. Mike snorted a hit at the stop.

Donna and Dave came over from where they had been waiting with Alan for the bus, a little ways down the highway. It had started to rain by this time.

Needless to say, the bus was crowded. Alan was way at the back. I snorted a bit on the bus. We tried to sing a few songs but no one was really interested. Two of my brother Peter's friends were also there.
Sue, Louise, Michele, Pat, Danny, Joan Osborne, Julie, John Leclare, Heather were all at Alexis Nihon. We bummed around there for awhile, watching the freaks and the pigs.

Michelle, Mike and Maggie

Inside, Alan, Ralph, Donna, Dave and me had red seats in the corner. The first group was pretty shitty so Ralph and I started to wander around. When I was sitting down I found I wasn't getting stoned but walking around I got to be pretty fucking ripped. We bought some beer and took it easy for awhile and when the break came we head up to see if we could find Danny and co. We found them eventually and Danny gave me two joints (I had given him a hit of mesc before). They were just what I needed to get bent. Maggie and Sue came back to our seats with us. I sat down for awhile, smoking with Alan and the people in front of us. I moved out, and couldn't get back in because Joan, Julie and John Laclare and Maggie moved in, whenever they could. Ralph and me went back behind the stage to see the group. We made it to our seats eventually. I watched the rest of the show with Sue on the steps of the aisle.

They had a quadraphonic set-up, which was pretty useless because where we were we got a slight echo. It was a really good show, pretty loud, and they played quite a few songs from their new album. Needless to say the moog blew our minds (there wasn't much of a light show) and Emerson ended the show by whipping around his organ, slamming it on the ground and all over, making a hell of a sound. The moog was set on a sort of pattern of electronic bleeps and so on, gradually getting faster and louder. It was about 8 feet high, and slowly swivelled till it was facing the audience. You could see that it was a maze of glowing dials, flashing lights, and so on, with a screen in the middle, showing a twisting band of light. The music got louder and faster and louder and faster until we just about couldn't take it, and the moog blew up. Really, it was just a flash near the bottom and a loud bang, but the effect was the same. A computer-moog going crazy and then blowing up-guaranteed to screw your head.

We had to yell pretty fucking hard and long to get them to do and encore, so loud and hard that no one really felt like doing it a second time.
They really did put on a good show-very enjoyable.

We trucked on over to Alexis Nihon afterwards and stayed there for a spell. Then we crammed onto the first bus home after waiting for about half-an-hour, going quite insane.
Heather, me and Michel had to stand all the way home.

"...Emerson looked like he was playing in the middle of an IBM showroom, but that's the synthesizer biz. The keyboard player was taking himself far too seriously these days, and he's picked up a bad habit: he let's go full blast on that monstrous thing at arbitrary times; it doesn't matter if the composition has to be held up for a moment.

If E, L & P's music is awesome in its grandeur, regal in its bearing, and impressive technically, it is also contrived. The group's music had been getting more and more that way since Tarkus, a rather contrived piece about a combination tank and armadillo (really!)..."

At about this time (I apologize for the lack of detail here but I was only recently reminded of these events by Ralph, May 1994) Dave was hanging around with a guy called Jean Laclaire (?). I remember meeting them at the Drop-In one night, arms around each other. Dave called him "Star". Ralph says Jean called Dave "Rex". I didn't think much of him then, other than he gave me the creeps.

In 1976(?) Jean picked up two girls, raped then stabbed to death one of them, dropped the other at home, telling her not to say anything. Of course she did and Jean was caught...