Bill Mair Dec 05, 2024

If outdoor rock concerts are made for boogying, Johnny Winter was made for outdoor rock concerts. He loves to play and have a good time! He is one of the few performers who can take energy from the audience and give it right back, over and over again. The music and the audience become one. From the cowboy hat atop his long white locks right down to the hole in his jeans on his ass, Winter is physically all over the place. He lets you know he's having a good time simply by the way he struts and shouts through every number. Generally, long blues jams tend to put an audience to sleep, but Winter's set has to be an exception in this case. He delicately intertwines blues and rock throughout all his solos that are unmistakably unique to each song.
The J. Geils Band succeeded in topping Winter with what proved to be the hottest set all day. J. Geils plays super macho, basic, primitive rock, the kind of stuff that gets people on their feet and keeps them there. Lead·-singer Peter Wolf challenged the audience to get crazier than he was, setting up the crunching guitar of J. Geils and the wailing harmonica of Magic Dick. Music to throw parties by. It was apparent that most of the people in attendance came to see the J. Geils Band. They weren't let down, although the set lasted for only an hour They left the stage amidst cries for much more. They encored with "Give it to Me," and introduced the mystery guest, a tall blonde man who wasn't recognized immediately. But when he sat down at the keyboards, Wolf introduced his friend Gregg Allman, much to the delight of the crowd. He looks none the worse despite his divorce from you know who, and accompanied the band on two final numbers.
Yes was a bit of a disappointment. With such a vast repertoire of successful music to draw upon, one wonders why Yes failed to produce a completely satisfying set. The loss of Rick Wakeman seems to have the greatest bearing on this. His replacement, Patrick Moraz, the musical genius (?) behind the now defunct electric group Refugee, is adequate, but just barely. Like a fish out ot water, he was continually lost on numbers recorded before he joined the group, "And You And I" and “Close to the Edge." Two numbers from the Relayer album, on which he appeared, were of little salvation. Moraz was stuck playing the same theme over and over again simply because he wasn't capable of playing anything else.
Howe, Squire, and drummer Alan White were required to carry the group through what became tedious instrumentals, with Moraz throwing every sound possible at the audience, but still failing to supply an adequate background. Anderson temporarily rescued the evening with- the opening strains of an old Yes favorite, "Your Move," followed by acoustic work from Howe and "Long Distance Runaround." The crowd sensed something of a comeback but were let down by "Ritual" from Topographic Oceans, a lengthy piece with no real direction.
As the set closed, the audience gave an appreciative hand hoping that Yes would rise from the dead and put on a good encore. The crowd was finally brought unanimously to its feet with Roundabout a classic hand-clapping live number. The night closed with Sweet Dreams from the new Yesterday’s album. The crowd was ready for another encore, but there would be none due to curfew regulations. The thirty thousand who had stayed to the end dispersed after a grueling but satisfying eight and a half hours of music with promises of more to come in the near future. Promoters plan at least three more similar concerts before the summer is over, enough to keep the area's young people hopping for quite a while. Not bad for eight bucks.