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You might as well be walkin' on the Common
By adamg on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 8:11pm
Vanessa Kuo is reliving high school at the Smash Mouth concert on Boston Common tonight. It's part of the Outside the Box festival.
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Comments
hey did you know?
HEY GUYS DID YOU KNOW SMASHMOUTH WAS SUCCESSFUL BEFORE SHREK?
(http://gawker.com/smash-mouths-desperate-endless-twitter-battle-1781910819)
And who knew ...
Guy Fieri had an earlier career as a singer? :-).
Concerts on the Common
Everything old is new again.
Not Smash Mouth. They are
Not Smash Mouth. They are still old and bad.
Whatevs, Eeyore
My 15 yo and several of her friends had lots of fun listening to a goofy summer pop concert.
I hope you enjoyed your evening hanging out in the damp bit of Forest down on the right which nobody wants.
I don't mean the band
I'm talking about the short lived summer concert series in the 80s where they had a tall fence surrounding an outdoor concert venue right on Boston Common. You could buy tickets but you could also just hang out on the grass or benches outside the fence and listen to the show (there were a couple of spots where you could see the stage from a distance outside). Bitching Beacon Hill neighbors killed it soon enough.
I did a quick search to see if I could find a link on the history but not much came up. This link is about the best description I could find.
Why they were canceled
Wasn't it due to objections from the residents of Tremont on the Common about all that ghastly noise coming from the park that was there long before their building?
I thought it was because the concerts charged admission
and that was possibly against laws governing the use of the Common. Outside the Box is free (as is Shakespeare on the Common).
Tree branch accident may have contributed to the decision
This Boston Globe editorial from 1987 mentions an accident where a tree branch broke in the concert area and injured 14 people.
Sunset Series on the Common
Back in the early 70s, long before Concerts on the Common, there was Sunset Series on the Common, part of the old Summerthing program. Tickets were $2 for bands like Fleetwood Mac (pre Buckingham Nicks), Beach Boys, Savoy Brown,Arlo Guthrie, Aretha Franklin, Allman Brothers (with Duane), J Geils Band, and many more. The shows started at 6 PM and ended by 9PM. I think it lasted through he summers of 1971 and 1972.
Saw that in my Google
That was before my time but when I searched there was a picture of Aretha from her Sunset Series concert. I don't recall hearing of them before.
You mention J Geils, I love blowing people away who know them only for Freeze Frame and Centerfold. I'll throw on Blow Your Face Out and every time people say they had no idea the band was like that (and that they were that good).
Sunset Series on the Common
I totally remember them! I saw BB King, Bonnie Rait and Butterfield Blues Band all in one night for $2.50 at the Sunset Series. Then Rod Stuart and Small Faces. Then the Boston Garden had so many concerts I couldn't name all the ones I went to. Saw huge name bands: Neil Young, the Moody Blues, Fleetwood Mac, Traffic,..... for short money and all in my hometown turf! Amazing times!
I used to love Concerts on
I used to love Concerts on The Common. We would go and listen outside of the fence b/c we couldn't afford the tickets...we were so young!
Concerts on the Common
I remember my mom taking me to see The Pointer Sisters there when I was a kid. Must have been summer of 85, maybe 86? I had to have been 10 or 11 or so. Fun times!
Smash Mouth
Going to see a Smash Mouth show in 2016 as a teenager must be similar to going to see Foghat or Supertramp as a teenager in the 1990s.
Or going to see a Roy Orbison show in the 1970s?
But wait ...
I was really hoping somebody
I was really hoping somebody would get their hands on some cheap loaves of bread and get Guy Fieri to lose his shit again.