https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/18/montgomery-county-music/
The Steve Miller Band doesn’t seem like the sort of group to inspire violence, but on Nov. 24, 1973, eight people were arrested at the band’s performance in Gaithersburg, Md.
“It was the worst of a series of disturbances at rock concerts in the county,”
Clayton Ervine, director of Montgomery County’s Environmental Protection Department, told the Washington Evening Star.
Fans with tickets to Miller’s late show threw rocks and bottles when the early show ran long. Some stormed the doors. The melee was at the Shady Grove Music Fair, a venue that’s the subject of a presentation at the
Montgomery County History Conference, which runs online Friday through Jan. 29.
The Shady Grove Music Fair opened in 1962 off what is today Interstate 270. At first, the theater-in-the-round was in a tent, said
Ralph Buglass, who is presenting at the conference. That meant it operated only in the summer months, a setting mainly for Broadway road shows. It was the brainchild of Philadelphia promoters
Shelly Gross and
Lee Guber, who operated multiple Music Fairs, from Long Island to Baltimore.
In its fifth season, the tented structure was replaced by a 2,500-seat building.
“When it went to a permanent structure, it was year-round, so they had to fill the calendar,” Buglass said. That meant booking rock acts. Jefferson Airplane was among the first.
Buglass combed through old newspapers, play bills and concert websites to compile a list of every act to appear at Shady Grove. A highlight was the Jackson 5, who had a week-long residency in 1975. As they did in every town, the Jackson 5 challenged local DJs to a basketball game. They trounced the radio jocks, 57-41.
Competition eventually put Shady Grove Music Fair out of business. “In 1971, Wolf Trap opened. The Kennedy Center opened later that year,” Buglass said. In 1973, the much bigger Capital Centre opened.
“The first Capital Centre concert was the Allman Brothers, who had played at Shady Grove three years before,” Buglass said. In 1977, Shady Grove was closed, then torn down. A business park called Grove 270 sits where
Steve Miller once tarried too long onstage.
The same year Shady Grove Music Fair closed, a record store opened in Rockville.
Skip Groff’s Yesterday & Today Records would become a vital incubator for the area punk rock scene.
“I consider that store to be a real anchor or a hub during that important period,” said
John Davis whose history conference presentation, “Suburban Wasteland: Punk Culture in Montgomery County from 1977 to 2002,” is on Jan. 29.
Davis grew up in the county, played in such bands as Q and Not U and Title Tracks, and is now an archivist at the University of Maryland performing arts library, where he has assembled a collection of punk material.
Davis is intrigued by what he calls “the granular nature of punk,” how each region had its own scene, including bands, venues and zines.
There were some unlikely venues back then, including the Outside Inn, a spot in a Boiling Brook Parkway strip shopping center that hosted Government Issue and Black Market Baby.
From 1997 to 2002, Skip Groff operated Yesterday & Today Records on Rockville Pike. For Montgomery County punks, it was a place to listen and learn. Groff died in 2019. (Robert A. Reeder/The Washington Post)
One of the earliest zines was Vintage Violence, created in the spring of 1977 by
Mike Heath in his Silver Spring house. Bands of the era included Artificial Peace, Bloody Mannequin Orchestra and Gray Matter.
Said Davis: “The point is to highlight this sort of subterranean history of what went on in this place that isn't necessarily known for being countercultural.”
Tickets to the virtual Montgomery County History Conference range from $25 to $75. For information, visit
montgomeryhistory.org.
