I went to Joe's memorial service with Linda Topper Busch, Lynn Roebuck and Ken Palmer and others. Joe was a good friend of mine. He worked in game tables at Las Vegas. He and I and Ken enjoyed an experience in the first week of Sept, '65 that remains in my mind to this day. While sitting in my assigned off-campus dorm room on a hot, early Sept, '65 evening in Austin, I was thinking about a dollar steak on Guadalupe as Joe and Ken Palmer walked into the room. I was surprised that they found my room. We left immediately for the Bob Dylan concert at the Auditorium along the Colorado River. We got there about two hours early and took seats in the middle of the third row. The auditorium filled up but no one came to the seats that we had commandeered. As the curtain rose, a constable moved toward me down the long row from my right. When the constable and the rightful owners of the seats got to my seat, Joe said "don't move" and I didn't. The constable and the rightful owners of our three seats gave up. The music started. Initially, Dylan sat on a stool and played a variety of string guitars. Joe knew all of the words to the songs, words that Dylan had earlier claimed beforehand in NYC had no particular meaning and that he wasn't a poet, only a songwriter. Dylan and Joe conducted a running conversation during the first half of the concert. There was a brief intermission for everyone to smoke and mix. When the curtain rose for the second half of the concert, Dylan cranked up with The Band. In the spring of '66, Dylan was criticized in England as becoming too commercial. But, on that early September night in '65, he and the members of The Band displayed extreme guitar skills. He probably wanted to be more than a 'folk singer' due to these skills. Later, Joe and Palmer left to go bird hunting and I started college the next day. mjd, 8.29.11
Mike Donahue (1965)
I went to Joe's memorial service with Linda Topper Busch, Lynn Roebuck and Ken Palmer and others. Joe was a good friend of mine. He worked in game tables at Las Vegas. He and I and Ken enjoyed an experience in the first week of Sept, '65 that remains in my mind to this day. While sitting in my assigned off-campus dorm room on a hot, early Sept, '65 evening in Austin, I was thinking about a dollar steak on Guadalupe as Joe and Ken Palmer walked into the room. I was surprised that they found my room. We left immediately for the Bob Dylan concert at the Auditorium along the Colorado River. We got there about two hours early and took seats in the middle of the third row. The auditorium filled up but no one came to the seats that we had commandeered. As the curtain rose, a constable moved toward me down the long row from my right. When the constable and the rightful owners of the seats got to my seat, Joe said "don't move" and I didn't. The constable and the rightful owners of our three seats gave up. The music started. Initially, Dylan sat on a stool and played a variety of string guitars. Joe knew all of the words to the songs, words that Dylan had earlier claimed beforehand in NYC had no particular meaning and that he wasn't a poet, only a songwriter. Dylan and Joe conducted a running conversation during the first half of the concert. There was a brief intermission for everyone to smoke and mix. When the curtain rose for the second half of the concert, Dylan cranked up with The Band. In the spring of '66, Dylan was criticized in England as becoming too commercial. But, on that early September night in '65, he and the members of The Band displayed extreme guitar skills. He probably wanted to be more than a 'folk singer' due to these skills. Later, Joe and Palmer left to go bird hunting and I started college the next day. mjd, 8.29.11