![P1080957
Boston Pops performing somewhere nearby
One thing I have never appreciated about Boston is its zeal for order in the form of multitudes of police; which manifested itself strangely at a totally innocent Boston Pops performance (technically a rehearsal) on the 3rd of July; my friend and I, trying to catch a glimpse from outside the fences, were again and again pushed along, despite once managing to find ourselves a good vantage point behind a Tilla Cordata (and how the small space in which one wedges oneself between a tree and a fence is part of an “emergency exit” is a mystery to me).
Perhaps there is still fear of a Green Day riot of 1994 repeat, when elated Hatch shell concert-goers began tearing up flowerbeds, followed by singer Billy Armstrong, who “jumped off the stage and tore up flowers himself, and the band was cut-off mid-song and the concert canceled.”
Is there a more cowardly, shameful act, than the ripping up of flowerbeds!? I don’t know.
There is at least one case of Boston using a concert to prevent disorder. This is a funny and revealing anecdote from J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground: the mayor of Boston in 1968, Kevin White, at the insistence of advisers, reverses the cancellation of a James Brown concert the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. (Although the mayor apparently had no idea who James Brown was, and “kept referring to him as ‘James Washington.’”) White and his council were justly afraid of more rioting in the city, and correctly thought the concert would help.
Brown demanded the city guarantee the concert — which was poorly attended — for $60,000. White agreed.
(That is — the mayor of Boston agreed to pay James Brown $60,000.)
The night of, White appeared with Brown on stage:
Dapper in a dark blue suit, button-down shirt, and rep tie, Kevin White ducked into the spotlight. The crowd’s response was—at best—subdued. It was the first time since King’s assassination that the Mayor had confronted a large group of blacks. […]
Sensing the Mayor’s anxiety and the crowd’s hostility, Brown took the microphone. “Just let me say,” he assured his constituency, “I had the pleasure of meetin’ him and I said, ‘Honorable Mayor,’ and he said, ‘Look man, just call me Kevin.’ And look, this is a swingin’ cat. Okay, yeh, give him a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. He’s a swingin’ cat.”
A definitive mayoral testimonial if ever there were one.](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnxz3jGjYf1qzyptno1_500.jpg)
P1080957
Boston Pops performing somewhere nearby
One thing I have never appreciated about Boston is its zeal for order in the form of multitudes of police; which manifested itself strangely at a totally innocent Boston Pops performance (technically a rehearsal) on the 3rd of July; my friend and I, trying to catch a glimpse from outside the fences, were again and again pushed along, despite once managing to find ourselves a good vantage point behind a Tilla Cordata (and how the small space in which one wedges oneself between a tree and a fence is part of an “emergency exit” is a mystery to me).
Perhaps there is still fear of a Green Day riot of 1994 repeat, when elated Hatch shell concert-goers began tearing up flowerbeds, followed by singer Billy Armstrong, who “jumped off the stage and tore up flowers himself, and the band was cut-off mid-song and the concert canceled.”
Is there a more cowardly, shameful act, than the ripping up of flowerbeds!? I don’t know.
There is at least one case of Boston using a concert to prevent disorder. This is a funny and revealing anecdote from J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground: the mayor of Boston in 1968, Kevin White, at the insistence of advisers, reverses the cancellation of a James Brown concert the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. (Although the mayor apparently had no idea who James Brown was, and “kept referring to him as ‘James Washington.’”) White and his council were justly afraid of more rioting in the city, and correctly thought the concert would help.
Brown demanded the city guarantee the concert — which was poorly attended — for $60,000. White agreed.
(That is — the mayor of Boston agreed to pay James Brown $60,000.)
The night of, White appeared with Brown on stage:
Dapper in a dark blue suit, button-down shirt, and rep tie, Kevin White ducked into the spotlight. The crowd’s response was—at best—subdued. It was the first time since King’s assassination that the Mayor had confronted a large group of blacks. […]
Sensing the Mayor’s anxiety and the crowd’s hostility, Brown took the microphone. “Just let me say,” he assured his constituency, “I had the pleasure of meetin’ him and I said, ‘Honorable Mayor,’ and he said, ‘Look man, just call me Kevin.’ And look, this is a swingin’ cat. Okay, yeh, give him a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. He’s a swingin’ cat.”
A definitive mayoral testimonial if ever there were one.
