‘Kicks’ aren’t hard to find with this show
Mark Lindsay still remembers the first time he met Mark Volman of the Turtles. The two were on set to film the television variety show “Where the Action Is,” and Volman, during a break, expressed astonishment that the action in question involved trips to the bank.
“He turned over and looked at me and said, ‘Isn’t it amazing? We get paid for doing this,’” said Lindsay, the longtime lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders. “And I laughed and said, ‘Yeah.’ And it still is amazing when you get paid to do this.”
In that case, the name of Lindsay’s current gig may take on an added layer of meaning. The Happy Together Tour, which groups Lindsay and the Turtles with a lineup of other 1960s acts — the Cowsills, the Association, the Buckinghams and the Grass Roots — will make its latest stop Sunday at the OC Fair’s Toyota Summer Concert Series.
Twice before, the annual tour has stopped at the fair’s Pacific Amphitheatre with different lineups (Peter Noone, also known as “Herman” of Herman’s Hermits, was on the bill last summer). Each time, it offers the same basic package: two or more hours of constant hits from pop music’s most mythologized decade.
According to Dan Gaines, the fair’s entertainment director, a chance to see those hit makers in person amounts to generational bonding.
“You would be surprised with the age diversity of a show like that,” he said. “Pop music is pop music. My daughter is 11, and she’s nuts for the Beatles.”
At this year’s fair, it’s pretty much the only offering of its kind. Several other performers on the schedule — Three Dog Night, the Steve Miller Band, Deep Purple — trace their roots to the late ‘60s, and the Beatles tribute band the Fab Four is set to perform Aug. 1.
But with the summer’s lineup heavy on acts that launched in the 1970s and later, the Happy Together Tour provides a rare extended dose of the era that recently turned half a century old. In Lindsay’s case, that passage of time evokes something sadder than nostalgia: Paul Revere, who formed the Raiders in the 1950s and maintained the band as a touring act for decades, died last year at age 76.
In a decade that spawned such innovators as Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, Paul Revere and the Raiders, who performed in Revolutionary War garb, often appeared lightweight by comparison. (The Los Angeles Times’ obituary of Revere referred to his combo as a “campy rock ‘n’ roll band.”) Still, Lindsay proudly recalls at least one occasion when the group defied pop standards.
That was with “Kicks,” the 1966 hit often referred to as the first anti-drug rock song. Its lyrics — “Kicks just keep gettin’ harder to find / And all your kicks ain’t bringin’ you peace of mind” — stood out in a year when Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and its chorus, “Everybody must get stoned,” soared to the top 10. (There is wide disagreement about whether that song was actually about marijuana.)
How did Lindsay feel about adopting a more concerned stance in a pop hit? In 1966, he didn’t even realize it.
“I was so naïve at that time, I didn’t realize the implied message in the song,” he said. “I thought it was about how it’s not as easy to have fun as it used to be.”
Now, with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll viewed less commonly as a package, “Kicks” remains a staple of Lindsay’s live shows. At the Pacific Amphitheatre, he may mix it in with “Good Thing,” “Just Like Me” and other hits that he and the Raiders pounded out during their heyday.
That was the era, sure enough, when the Who sang, “Hope I die before I get old.” That’s another bit of hippie-era philosophy that Lindsay now takes with a smile.
“I remember being in my late teens, early 20s, and thinking, ‘Well, why would anyone want to be 30, or older than 30?’” he said. “Thirty, for me, was like the end of the road. And, of course, it isn’t.”
If You Go
What: The Happy Together Tour
Where: Pacific Amphitheatre, OC Fair & Event Center, 100 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $19.73 to $33.01
Information: (714) 708-1500 or www.pacamp.com/pa