The Tommy’s Original Music Festival
July 29, 1967, Los Angeles, California
At 9 a.m., the festival's opening act, The Nuclear Threat, arrived at their backstage trailer.
To the corporate organizers, the band was merely a “sound check for the audio technicians.”
Larry Kaye, manager and creep extraordinaire, opened the trailer door and told the boys to “warm up and be ready to be onstage at exactly 10.a.m. You only have fifteen minutes to play before the ‘real show’ starts. Good luck boys.”
“Thanks for your words of encouragement. When do we get paid, Larry?”
Though it was drizzling, the morning light had blinded the boys momentarily as they walked into the air conditioned darkness.
“Welcome” was all that they heard at first. Then they heard the smooth riffs and the unmistakable sound of a Fender Stratocaster.
Some “guy” had already invaded their trailer and was practicing on a small amp. The guitar riffs sounded familiar.
As the teen band filed into their dressing room each one of them said: “Oh,” followed by one-of-two very popular swear words.
Jimi Hendrix only laughed. He was humble, polite and incredibly sober. After offering each of the dumbfounded teens a place to sit, and a Coke, he continued to practice.
Jimi could make his guitar play anything that he could hear inside of his head. Taking notice of the stunned silence, he looked up at the boys and said: “The Goddess sang me that in a dream last night.”
The music that flowed through his fingers was unearthly.
__________
You would think that the members of The Nuclear Threat would have been inspired by his talent.
Instead, when the boys finally left the trailer on their way toward the stage, they walked as if they were going to a funeral. They simply wanted to go home.
The Nuclear Threat did not feel like a threat any longer. They might as well have been climbing a gallows, instead the honored stairway that led up to the stage of the most important rock festival in Los Angeles’ history.
Heads down, facing their amps, they slowly plugged in.
__________
“You’re on kids!”
The disappointment was immediate. Though it was raining steadily when they hooked up to their amps, there wasn’t a lethal electrical explosion. They were still alive ...
... And they would have to play.
After a disastrous opening number entitled “Who Wants to Go for Tacos?” they were already, embarrassingly, out of tune.
During their second song, “Double-Chili-Cheeseburger,”one by one, the amps started to sputter and blow their speakers.
The band then played a brief distorted instrumental number apparently titled “Annoying Feedback with Group Tourette’s Syndrome,” which nearly ended their disastrous set, until the Steve Miller, and his band quickly set them up with new amplifiers.
The Threat’s set was almost over.
Johnny started to sing his first original song “My Dirty Hairy Smelly Hippie Chick.” He dedicated the new tune to his girlfriend Pam, who was sitting in front of the stage.
After Johnny’s first performance of his new original song, the band was greeted by such silence that even the swarms of flies around the swarms of hippies stopped their buzzing.
A stunned silence.
Johnny and his group felt devastated, embarrassed in front of the crowd which now numbered over fifteen thousand. Convinced that they should have burned their guitars after hearing Jimi warm up in the trailer, they turned their backs to the audience.
Ready to end their pain, they began to unplug their “crappy guitars,” and the “shitty Farfisa organ.”
Now they could all go home and enlist in the army, before the Vietnam War ended.
More silence.
A fly buzzed.
Other flies joined in. The buzzing got louder.
After what seemed like decades, one person began to clap.
Then the clapping became thunder.
The band turned around to see the audience rising to it’s feet stomping and demanding an encore. Though it was still morning, cigarette lighters swayed. Underwear began to land at the band’s feet. Bloomers! Boxers! And briefs, Oh my!
There were “no bras allowed” at this hippie love-in in 1967.
As a rainbow of panties flooded the stage. Johnny’s eyes became misty. Memories of his childhood in his parent’s lingerie store came rushing back to him.
Pam, who at first, was ready to kill Johnny for the insulting song, was now screaming and applauding with the rest of the crowd.
Of course, THAT didn’t stop Johnny’s “Dirty, Hairy, Smelly, Hippie Chick” from running off with an even dirtier, hairier, smellier hippie guy, nicknamed Sasquatch, when the set was over.
“Go ahead, Pam.” Johnny thought. “You’ve got enough crab lice for the entire city ...
...bitch.”
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