>Working at KMart in Grand Junction, CO. I remember a coworker crying and I thought 'how ridiculous' to be crying over Elvis. I was in high school and about to turn 17. I was listening to Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, Boston, Pablo Cruise, Led Zeppelin, Pure Praire League, Poco, Foreigner...
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>Things were going along great in the music world until Saturday Night Fever was released... yikes... That was absoluting amazing the effect it had in the music industry...
By that time I was already considering the heroic era of rock over. When I saw Chicago (who have already lost all their transitional authority by then) all smoothly combed and looking sweet, singing "If you leave me now" for the New Year '76, it was already past redemption. But the actual "day the music died" for me was late august 1974, when George Baker Selection churned out "Una paloma blanca", and they played that in the same place where we used to dance to Uriah Heep, Zeppelin, Focus, Cream, Santana, where the DJ proudly showed the inner sleeve of Alice Cooper's "School's out"... it was finished.
We weren't visiting bars until then. But then all of a sudden there was no other place to go. Queen, Boston, Knopfler, few oldies like Floyd or Tull... OK, they kept the flame somewhat, but the dance floor was lost. And I also totally missed out on the New Wave - I skipped the whole 1977-1981 wave; I heard them tearing down the old building (with a good reason) but didn't see them building anything new. Then 1981/2, during my army stint, a younger pal just told me which records to buy - and a few days later he came up with the stuff on cassettes, so I understood what he was talking about. Yep, there was some great new Yu rock music - Kazalište, Film, Idoli, Azra, Haustor, Električni Orgazam, Šarlo Akrobata... The whole seven years have gone by without anything much, and then the whole wave hit at once. But we had the previous decade... 64-74 was a great time.
And, btw, if you ever get to read the history of Yugoslav rock, Đorđe Marjanović was NOT a rocker. He was a fake. He imitated tricks from Elvis, Celentano, Aznavour, Becaud and probably Rocco Granata (but though this last guy had a concert just three blocks from where I lived, I don't remember much of his scene manners to be able to compare), but he studied them all to the last detail and practiced, practiced... He knew exactly on which note to throw his jacket into the audience. He was big in USSR, too, sold millions... but he wasn't a rocker. And likewise, I think Elvis wasn't either. Maybe a bit in the beginning, until money hit him. But he didn't have Syd Barrett to write a blues about him.
