The four of us headed down the highway in my 1963 sky-blue Chevy Bel Air sedan. I had just got my license a week or two before, and it was the first time I had passengers in the car other than my dad or my driving instructor. It was also the first time I had driven on the highway for any significant time or distance. I was nervous as hell. The temptation to socialize with my new high school friends was an annoying distraction that made it difficult for me to pay attention to where we were going. We were going to see Grand Funk Railroad in concert.

Bill sat in front to my right. He was tall, pleasantly friendly, a basketball player on the school team, and an avid tennis enthusiast. Not that we were close friends, but I got along with Bill more than the other two guys. They were a close-knit trio and lived in a different neighborhood from mine. Whenever I ventured into their part of town, which was not very often, I always felt like a foreigner or an outsider. I was unaccustomed to their ways. They read different comic books than I did, and they all liked The Who... a lot. I quickly learned to appreciate, no... love The Who, but I was reluctant to change my reading habits.

Arthur and Robert sat in the back. Artie was not as tall as me and, he was a lot shorter than Bill. Art had thick dark hair and wore thick glasses with black frames held together with a Band-Aid. Like Bill, Art was friendly. But he was what some people would call a "close talker," which was a bit annoying. Robert was the quiet intellectual type. I wasn't exactly friends with him, but he joined our excursion through his association with Bill. They were on the tennis team.

Because I was the oldest in the group, I was the only one with a license AND a car. So, they eagerly accepted me into their little club. For now, our club activity was going to a series of outdoor summer concerts, Grand Funk Railroad being the first of three. The opening act for them was Yes. They had just released their first and eponymous album. They were great and as good if not better than GFR. Their popularity took off around that time, just as Grand Funk's began to decline.

The following weekend we would see The Grateful Dead, also an excellent concert. The third and final rock concert scheduled in the series was The Who, our favorite rock band. We couldn't wait to see them. It was to be the grand finale of the summer concert series – the icing on the cake. The Who's Next album had just come out. It was, and still is, my favorite Who album. Unfortunately, to our great dismay, we never did get to see The Who due to a cancellation. But we still had a great summer that year.

Story and Cover Illustration Copyright © 2021 by Michael DeFrancesco