La ExperienZIHa Tropical

That Canned Heat song sure brought a lot of (almost forgotten) memories for me of seeing them live at a small-venue concert in Austin TX in 1967 or 1968. It may have contributed to my (thankfully mild) hearing loss.

Ha! Must've been a good concert. They were in their groove back then.

They were the last concert I went to at Louisville Downs (a now defunct horse-racing track) in Louisville, Kentucky before I moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands and began a totally new life. I went with two of the members of my band. As the joints floated by I noticed we kept getting skipped, so I boldly announced out loud that I was the National Reefer Tester. It worked! Got a few laughs, too. At the end of the concert some friends who were going to give us a ride home said to follow them. Next thing we knew we were sitting backstage with the band passing fruits and joints and bottles. My lead guitar player and their lead guitar player traded hats and really hit it off. They were very nice down to earth people. It didn't seem that their fame had ruined them, and I found that surprising and refreshing.

My next concert after that was the Mar Y Sol Festival in Puerto Rico. Our Caribbean Woodstock.