3 Car Garage Play Infectious Rock Covers at the Organ Pavilion July 24

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Thursday, July 24), my husband Charles and I went to the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park for a “Twilight in the Park” concert featuring 3 Car Garage (the second group in the season, after 8 Track Highway, whose name begins with a number), a quite entertaining cover band even though when I wrote yesterday’s journal entry I copied the paragraph from their Web site listing the wide variety of acts they covered. Charles read it and wondered how they could put together a credible set list from songs by bands so diverse, but they managed it. We got there early enough to hear their sound check, doing the song “Amie” (pronounced “Amy”) by Pure Prairie League, a band I remember seeing ads for “in the day” but never actually listening to. The actual set began with a song called “How Long” by Ace, followed by Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman,” Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309 (Jenny)” – an interesting souvenir of the day when phone numbers still had only seven digits and you didn’t necessarily need to know the area code for a local call – and The Beatles’ “All My Loving.” (I was a bit surprised they did a song from so early in The Beatles’ career, but it was nice.) Then they played a rather elliptically introduced song that turned out to be “I’m a Believer,” composed by Neil Diamond and first performed by The Monkees (though in 1976 my mother took my brother and I to see Neil Diamond in concert; he sang “I’m a Believer” and, totally unsurprisingly, sang it a lot more intensely and powerfully than whichever Monkee sang lead on it had). After that they escaped to the 1980’s with “Just What I Needed” by The Cars (though that couldn’t help but remind me of the San Francisco Chronicle critic who reviewed a concert in which Nick Lowe opened for The Cars and said in a just world it would have been the other way around – hear, hear!).

Then they did a song called “Jet Airliner” by the Steve Miller Band, which I probably heard at the time but didn’t remember. Then they did a Steely Dan tribute with “Reelin’ in the Years” – it was their first single and their star-making hit but, as with “All My Loving,” I was thinking the band had done some much more interesting and sophisticated songs later in their career. After that they did “Roll with the Changes” by REO Speedwagon (I remember a friend of mine in the early 1980’s referring to them as “RIP Deathwagon,” which was more than a little unfair) and a three-song Doobie Brothers medley – “Long Train Runnin’,” “Listen to the Music,” and “China Grove” – which was one of the best things they did all night. After that they did Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes” – though I still think the best version of that song ever was by the Jackson 5, with Michael Jackson’s searing vocal. (I remember playing that for a friend, and he just couldn’t relate to a voice that young singing that type of song.) Then the band did Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right (I May Be Crazy),” the lead song from the Glass Houses album which I remember for a surprisingly sexy cover photo of Joel. They closed with Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and an O.K. song by The Eagles called “Already Gone,” co-written by Jack Tempchin (the “Peaceful Easy Feeling” guy) and Robb Strandlund, which The Eagles recorded in 1974 (pre-“Hotel California”), though their encore was another rouser: a Stevie Wonder medley containing “I Wish,” “Sir Duke” (a particular favorite of mine; “Duke” was Duke Ellington and the song is a tribute one African-American musical genius paid to another), and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours).” The members of 3 Car Garage joked about their, uh, advanced ages – at least some of them were probably old enough to remember some of those songs when they were new – but the show was fun and Charles blessedly sat next to me, though he wore earplugs just in case the volume was too loud for him (his problem with the previous night’s Twilight in the Park concert featuring the infectious zydeco music of The Bayou Brothers).