I saw Bo Diddley once, the first time I went to City Stages, in 1990. I think it was Friday night, and I remember seeing Charles Barkley in the crowd packed into the park outside City Hall. If memory serves me right, Bo Diddley only played four songs, each of which took about 15 minutes and was full of all sorts of improvs and riffs and freestyle action that put every other rocker at the festival to shame, capping the whole thing with a burst of “The Star Spangled Banner” that made Hendrix look like a sophomore in the garage. And Bo Diddley was in his sixties at the time and still churning out an unmistakeable sound.
It’s not often that you and your dad were going to see the same artist at a similar age. The difference is, the old man was sneaking into Boutwell Auditorium for what was ostensibly a “race-only” show (i.e. decent white folks wouldn’t be caught dead) and I was crammed in a public park among 50,000 people of all ages and colors. So I guess that’s something.