If you’re the type of person who keeps old concert ticket stubs, two new books will surely feed your nostalgia in different ways. In “Rock Concert: An Oral History as told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders and Fans Who Were There,” music journalist and author Marc Myers presents a lively oral history of the rock concert in America, from early R&B shows to Live Aid. In “Hello, Chattanooga! A History of Famous People Who Have Visited The Tennessee Valley,” veteran Chattanooga TV and radio personality David Carroll took on the herculean task of compiling a huge database of notables who’ve visited the area in the past century. While Carroll emphasizes his book is not solely about the many artists and bands who’ve appeared in the Chattanooga area, concerts – rock, soul, pop and country – dominate the big book of lists, mixed with history and memories from his long career. The national and local concert scenes are neatly bookended in the two worthy additions to your bookshelf.
'Rock Concert'
When Michael Lang, co-creator and the face of Woodstock, died in January, he still was scheming to revive the Woodstock brand for another anniversary show after plans for the 50th anniversary fell apart in 2019. Previous gatherings in 1994 and 1999 ended with mixed results, the latter the subject of a recent documentary detailing the worst travesties of the millennium-closing event.
Lang loomed large in the world of concert promotions, since Woodstock set the template for all marathon music festivals to follow. But he was not the first to orchestrate gatherings connecting young people to music, as Marc Myers and his interviewees recount in “Rock Concert,” an engaging oral history of concerts in the U.S.
By modern standards, the first concerts – mostly staged at nightclubs in the 1940s and ’50s, hosted by DJs and featuring multiple acts – were fairly small affairs, but were met with no less enthusiasm than larger-scale shows today.