Live at the Long Branch Saloon

San Francisco and its environs have never been hospitable to rock and roll. The fabled acid-rockers were folkies at heart, and so were their fans. John Fogerty-- who had to swallow that truth harder than anyone-- recalls that in 1967 many local freaks were convinced that if the new bands were going to fulfill their destiny and transform the world they had better shed the label "rock," with all its, ah, bad associations; "head music" was one of the substitutes proposed. I see no evidence that the general attitude has changed since then. Still, the Bay Area does have its unregenerate rock-and-roll loyalists, most of whom (in my fantasy, anyway) are teen-age denizens of darkest Oakland who come out at night like the rats near the waterfront. There was a fair-sized contingent at the Long Branch Saloon in Berkeley the night I went to see the Modern Lovers, a neo-Velvet Underground band from Boston. The Lovers (who seem to have acquired the beginnings of a national following; a lot of kids in the audience were shouting out requests) have inevitably been compared to the Dolls, but in some ways they are more like an American version of the pre-Meher-Baba Who with John Entwistle singing lead instead of Roger Daltrey. to be continued

Andrew Porter? from The New Yorker Aug 27 1973