Music Magg

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Monday, September 1) my husband Charles and I went to the last concert in this year’s Summer Organ Festival Monday nights at 7:30 p.m. at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. As usual these days, the season closed with a rock tribute, and this year they chose The Beatles in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Fab Four’s one San Diego concert in the long-gone Balboa Stadium on the San Diego High School campus on August 28, 1965. (A smaller, more practicable Balboa Stadium has since replaced it.) There’s an interesting online article by Chuck Gunderson at https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/v55-1/pdf/v55-1gunderson.pdf about The Beatles’ San Diego concert, which among other things explains why the San Diego show was the only Beatles’ concert during their 1965 U.S. tour that did not sell out. It was a last-minute add-on to their schedule and also there was a feud between San Diego’s two bi...

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved On Thursday, August 28 I went to the last “Twilight in the Park” concert of the 2025 series to see and hear a band called the Ass Pocket Whiskey Fellas. At least that’s their name for themselves; for some reason the organizers of Twilight in the Park thought that was obscene and demanded that the band rename itself Back Pocket Whiskey Fellas, even though drummer Ric Lee’s bass drum contained not only the band’s true name but a logo featuring a drawing of a woman’s tightly clad blue-jeaned ass with a whiskey flask stuck in her back pocket. The band members themselves stumbled over the name at times, as if they had a hard time remembering the censored version they were supposed to use instead of their real one. I hadn’t been sure I wanted to go – the last time I’d seen them I’d been put off by the sexism of their logo, and also there was another event last night (a reception at the OBR gallery, or w...