Amphion, a promotion group for several local rock bands, put on a couple of concerts in the parks in the fall. Fleming took a job with Design Research to last the winter, and then went to Amphion in the spring to organize free concerts.
His first concert was held on the last weekend in March. Fleming then met the Ill Wind, who became his most regular performers, and many other local groups with whom to stock his shows. He's gotten local groups (The Cloud, Quill, The Beacon St. Union, the Ill Wind), two Harvard groups (the Bead Game and Listening), and even visiting national recording groups (Clear Light and the Buddy Guy Blues Band) to play for periods of half an hour or longer --all for free.
"A group that's into making money won't do it," said Fleming; "but if they're into music, they'll play to make the best music they can for the people to hear."
"The crowds are much different from San Francisco. The people are quieter; and there are a lot of different kinds of people at the show. The bands have many different sounds, too. In San Francisco there was mostly one sound, the San Francisco sound.
"There are a lot of San Francisco people in Boston this summer. You run into them around. You'd be on the Common and you'd see a lot of people there you saw on the Pan-handle last summer."
Haight-Ashbury, Troy Fleming says, is an idea. People, he says, are trying to spread it all over the country. "Boston is the next place where people are coming together to form a community. From that community will come an idea." He sees the new Boston radio station WBCN and his concerts as two things that will help organize the hip community.
The hip people on Beacon Hill were organized by being pushed off Boston Common. But Fleming and his bands have had little conflict with Cambridge police. Fleming originally checked with City Hall to see if he needed permission for his productions. Law requires a permit to sell, build, or use city electricity on the Common. With a $10-a-weekend generator, he doesn't need a permit.
"The Common is for the common people. You can have a picnic on the Common. And you can graze cattle on the common," he said. The big amplifiers for the electric music are directed away from the Garden Street houses. They stop playing during marriage ceremonies in the church across the street and start in again and cheer as the couple comes out the church's doors.
FLEMING says several plainclothes policemen tried to stop his group from unloading their equipment by invoking a Blue Law that made it illegal to unload non-perishable goods from commercial vehicles on Sunday. He says they called Channel 5 News, and when the cameras arrived, the police left.
In spite of the mythical concept of the existence of a spirit known as the Boston Sound (a promotion idea by MGM records), Boston is a very hard town for groups to play. The Boston area doesn't have a very large population; and that population isn't used to paying money to be entertained at night. The city closes down very early.
David Friedman '69, manager of the Bead Game, says playing the Common is good exposure for his group, which doesn't have a record out. There are groups now in Boston that have good ablums out but haven't been able to sign to play for weeks.
Troy Fleming with his concerts is thus performing as much of a service for the musicians as for Cambridge's nascent community of free spirits. "Everybody's self-conscious," says John Leone, singer for the Bead Game, about the crowd on Cambridge Common; "they can't believe Boston's so cool that this could be really happening here."
It will be happenning here. And it will be happening every Sunday all summer long