"One Two Three Fo'!"

On this day in rock history in 1965 the Beatles performed at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, MN to an estimated crowd of 4,000 teenagers, mostly girls, turning the event into what one writer described as "Shrieksville, U.S.A." With the continued popularity of Beatles’ recordings long after their breakup in 1970, the irony of early panning is shown in sharp relief by a Pioneer Press comment on the performance: "The Twin Cities was visited Saturday by some strange citizens from another world. They wore long hair and wide grins and were easily identified as Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney. They were the Beatles—alleged musicians." You wonder if those reporters – probably older men (real squares, most likely) who got the short straw for that assignment – ever regretted making fun of the four lovable lads from Liverpool? I would have been about 14 at the time. I never really got into the Beatles too much when I was a teenager; my awareness of them came much later, during my college days, with my consciousness and hipness quotient suitably raised. I do remember, though, that when I was about 12 or 13 the Methodist church across the street from my junior high school used to have noon-time “sock hops” with punch and cookies, probably to keep the local truants from skipping school and heading down to Carl’s Hamburgers (burgers were only 15 cents in those days!) and plugging the pinball machine. At any rate, a popular song that was usually blasting from the record machine was “I Saw Her Standing There”. This was my first exposure to the Fab Four and I
remember thinking (as I looked across the church basement at all those 7th and 8th grade girls swooning as Paul McCartney made the impassioned promise that he'd “…never dance with another…”), “Hey – this stuff is pretty cool!” Now if I could only have summoned up the courage to ask one of those girls to dance – but no, that would come later (much later, in my case!). I was content to listen, and wonder what all the fuss was about…
P. S. - Confidential to "Who Am Us Anyway" - it was J. Frank Wilson, and we played that one too!

Thanks to http://www.buzz.mn and http://events.mnhs.org/bookofdays for the trivia, and, as always, keep on rockin’!