all over their hair. The entire group departed in four carloads for Sunset Boulevard, to dance onstage in the After Hours at the Hullabaloo.
At 2 A.M. on Saturday, January 14th, the Hullabaloo, which holds about two thousand people, and which lies directly across the boulevard from the Hollywood Palladium (where, earlier that evening, Lawrence Welk had played for the National Smooth Dancer’s Association Ball), was so full that the longhairs waiting outside occupied the entire block, not in any sort of line but extending radially over the area. A parking lot beside the Hullabaloo was full of cars, nearly all with their radios on, so a kind of concert of Donovan, the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, and Buffalo Springfield (“Fly trans-love airways / Getcha there on time . . . . Gotta keep those a’lovin’ vibrations a’happenin’ with her . . . . The beat goes on . . . . Paranoia strikes deep / Into your life it will creep”) was rising from the asphalt. Vito led his group in among the cars and around to the back of the building, where, after being questioned only briefly at the entrance, he smuggled them as “performers” up a ramp, and onto the back of the stage. Since the hours before morning had been Friday the thirteenth, thirteen groups were scheduled to play: the Sound Machine, the Mandala, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, the Smokestack Lightning, the Factory, the Electric Prune, the Yellow Payges, the Sons of Adam, the Coloring Book, the Wild Ones, Iron Butterfly, the Seeds, and Love. The stage floor was a rotating platform divided in two by a backdrop curtain, so that while one group was playing the next could be warming up. (This arrangement created a sound backstage not unlike the one intentionally produced by some of the groups in the course of their normal engagements. Love, for example, often plays with someone else’s record of another song as background music.) The area backstage was full of people in costumes of one sort or another—denims, satins, burlaps, suedes, and one tutu. A lonely troubadour wearing knickers and a ruffled shirt walked around throughout the performances strumming a guitar. No one seemed to know him, and he was not a member of any group.
When the Sound Machine started to play, with a beat so deeply resonant that many members of the audience began to cough, Vito sent some of his group onstage. These included Meg, Dot, the barefoot boy, Vito’s pregnant wife, and six others, and from the reaction of the audience—a polite but unsurprised attentiveness—it was obvious that they had seen the group before. Meg raised her arms and began to run quite gracefully about the stage, Dot began to bend at the waist and straighten up with regularity, as though she were keening, Sue began to wave her arms about in the air, pivot, and droop from side to side, and the barefoot boy began to sway quietly in place. The others frugged or improvised. The members of Vito’s troupe who had remained backstage soon grew restless, and Vito kept promising them that they could go on at any moment. But the girl in the tutu could bear it no longer; she ran out onstage. A few seconds later, Meg’s pants began to split again, and some of the audience started to laugh—though not unkindly—and applaud. Meg, looking rather frantic about the eyes, arrived backstage.
“Fix your pants, baby,” Vito said quite calmly, producing what he called a “fraternity button,” designed by him. “Just relax.” Meg took the button, pinned her pants, and returned onstage.
By 5 A.M., six groups had played, and the Monkees, the Miracles, and the Mamas and the Papas had joined the audience. Vito’s group had been taken offstage earlier when it was announced that all further dancing would be done by two union dancers, in red spangles, on the balconies of the dance hall. Within moments, however, the two union dancers had been supplemented by a dancer in a silver costume and silver boots, who materialized
At 2 A.M. on Saturday, January 14th, the Hullabaloo, which holds about two thousand people, and which lies directly across the boulevard from the Hollywood Palladium (where, earlier that evening, Lawrence Welk had played for the National Smooth Dancer’s Association Ball), was so full that the longhairs waiting outside occupied the entire block, not in any sort of line but extending radially over the area. A parking lot beside the Hullabaloo was full of cars, nearly all with their radios on, so a kind of concert of Donovan, the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, and Buffalo Springfield (“Fly trans-love airways / Getcha there on time . . . . Gotta keep those a’lovin’ vibrations a’happenin’ with her . . . . The beat goes on . . . . Paranoia strikes deep / Into your life it will creep”) was rising from the asphalt. Vito led his group in among the cars and around to the back of the building, where, after being questioned only briefly at the entrance, he smuggled them as “performers” up a ramp, and onto the back of the stage. Since the hours before morning had been Friday the thirteenth, thirteen groups were scheduled to play: the Sound Machine, the Mandala, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, the Smokestack Lightning, the Factory, the Electric Prune, the Yellow Payges, the Sons of Adam, the Coloring Book, the Wild Ones, Iron Butterfly, the Seeds, and Love. The stage floor was a rotating platform divided in two by a backdrop curtain, so that while one group was playing the next could be warming up. (This arrangement created a sound backstage not unlike the one intentionally produced by some of the groups in the course of their normal engagements. Love, for example, often plays with someone else’s record of another song as background music.) The area backstage was full of people in costumes of one sort or another—denims, satins, burlaps, suedes, and one tutu. A lonely troubadour wearing knickers and a ruffled shirt walked around throughout the performances strumming a guitar. No one seemed to know him, and he was not a member of any group.
When the Sound Machine started to play, with a beat so deeply resonant that many members of the audience began to cough, Vito sent some of his group onstage. These included Meg, Dot, the barefoot boy, Vito’s pregnant wife, and six others, and from the reaction of the audience—a polite but unsurprised attentiveness—it was obvious that they had seen the group before. Meg raised her arms and began to run quite gracefully about the stage, Dot began to bend at the waist and straighten up with regularity, as though she were keening, Sue began to wave her arms about in the air, pivot, and droop from side to side, and the barefoot boy began to sway quietly in place. The others frugged or improvised. The members of Vito’s troupe who had remained backstage soon grew restless, and Vito kept promising them that they could go on at any moment. But the girl in the tutu could bear it no longer; she ran out onstage. A few seconds later, Meg’s pants began to split again, and some of the audience started to laugh—though not unkindly—and applaud. Meg, looking rather frantic about the eyes, arrived backstage.
“Fix your pants, baby,” Vito said quite calmly, producing what he called a “fraternity button,” designed by him. “Just relax.” Meg took the button, pinned her pants, and returned onstage.
By 5 A.M., six groups had played, and the Monkees, the Miracles, and the Mamas and the Papas had joined the audience. Vito’s group had been taken offstage earlier when it was announced that all further dancing would be done by two union dancers, in red spangles, on the balconies of the dance hall. Within moments, however, the two union dancers had been supplemented by a dancer in a silver costume and silver boots, who materialized
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