When people think of the great bands of the 1960s, there are a few that nearly always come to mind.
The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Beach boys …
And there are others remembered mostly for a few catchy hit records.
The Four Seasons, Jan and Dean, Gary Lewis and the Playboys …
Forgive me if I left out some of your favorites. I’m just using a few names to make a point.
You’d have to think that one qualifying fact that would make a band special would be performing at one of the great festivals like Woodstock, of the festival that was Woodstock two years before Woodstock.
Monterey Pop.
An amazing number of A-list acts played during the three days of Monterey, and many of them were dead within five years after. Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Cass Elliott. But it was a weekend to hear the Who, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and at least a dozen more acts now in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
And who opened the festival?
One of those bands with a few catchy hit records.
The Association.
Yep, the band the performed two of the more syrupy songs of the time — “Cherish” and “Never My Love.”
Neither song really holds up all that well, although surprisingly, David Cassidy did a better version of “Cherish” a few years later. But they weren’t the reason the band opened the Monterey festival.
A year earlier, as their first single, the band released a song that might just have been the coolest song of 1966 — “Along Comes Mary.”
It was clearly a song about marijuana, and 1966 was the first some parts of America were learning of the recreational drug. It was just veiled enough to get on the air, and just edgy enough to be hip.
They didn’t have a long career. Three years and a few months after Monterey, I paid to see them perform at a high school gym in Alexandria, Virginia. It wasn’t a big crowd.
But they were a pretty good band. They didn’t shy away from trying different things, and much of their work holds up well 50 years later.
They weren’t the only odd thing about Monterey, either. There was a performer who never appeared on the stage, but performed in the Green Room for acts waiting to go on.
Wait for it …
Tiny Tim.