Freque Factory - Alabama Interlude

Freque Factory

Alabama Interlude

This blog is dedicated, in gratitude to the band, Little Feat.  That story is below.

   So I left the cold, gray, wet of Minnesota and flew south to warmth and green.  And what I thought was love.  Looking back, I think I was in love with love.  Everything was happy and rainbows.  Love could happen and not be the unhappy I had left behind in Los Angeles as my parents were working through their divorce.

   It was a rough set of flights.  Flying from Minnesota to St. Louis my seat mate was a young woman who was flying home after the tragic death of her love (I think husband).  So depressing!  And we flew right into a thunderstorm.  Leaving St. Louis (and my grieving seat mate) I had one of the scariest flights I've ever had. I wanted to kiss the ground.  Even the flight attendants were strapped into their seats.

   My "first love", I'll call him Dave, met me.  I stayed with his family for a while.  I'll talk more about them later.

   That first night Dave took me over to the University for a concert-part of the Spring Concert series.  Dave told me that the word was out-the local police would be looking for drugs.  So everyone he knew was getting stoned before going in and leaving all evidence home.  Dave and I were especially careful.  He had been a pain in the ass of the local police for several years now (including writing especially witty dogerral about them).  I was just an outsider from Southern California.

   We were searched going in, but not too thoroughly.  It was a good crowd and pretty much filled the auditorium.  The opening act was a local band.  Their claim to fame was a band member who had briefly played with Iron butterfly.  Nothing exciting, but ok to move around to.  Mostly covers.

   I don't even remember who the second band was.  Another local band, this one had a better reputation and played original music.  However, in the middle of their set, the band suddenly stopped playing.  A somewhat portly Southern police officer strode onto the stage and over to the microphone.  He said something-the microphone was too garbled, though it had been clear for the band.  I suspect that he was telling us that the concert was over and we had to leave.

   All I knew was that suddenly the house lights came on.  The main exit door was open (lit).  There was dead silence.  And then I heard the howling of the police dogs.

   That was one of the scariest moments of my life.  The police were trying to herd all of us to the main entrance/exit.  Dave and I circled around, always keeping groups of people between us and the police.

   And then came the moment that I will always be grateful to Little Fear for.  That band was the headliner for the show that night.  I found out later they had approached the police asking to be able to play a few gentle songs to get us to leave-and to avoid a riot.

   The band came on.  For them the microphones were clear.  They told us that they were going to play a few songs.  When they were done, all of us should leave at once.  That way the police couldn't stop all of us.

   And they were right.  After about 20 minutes they stopped and we all started walking out.  We reached the safety of our car and went home.  We explained to Dave's dad what had happened.  Dad was so incensed about the police heavy handedness that he wrote a letter to the Editor of the local paper.  I always appreciated that he did that.

  In the weeks to come I met several young adults who weren't as lucky as we were.  The people who left when the concert was first shut down had to deal with police brutality.  I met folks with bruises, broken bones, etc.  But the worst was a young lady with heavy bandaging on her leg.  That was where a police dog had taken a bit out of her.

Thank you Little Feat!  Your concern for your audience that night probably saved a whole lot of us from serious injury.