New Years Eve Concert at The Strand

We went to a New Year’s Eve concert last night starring one of our own (at one time) Billy Joe Royal at the Strand Theater.

The warm-up band was the PARADOCS which are six Marietta medical doctors and two of their daughters.

It is always interesting to see people you have known all your life. And then, as always, someone pops out of the woodwork that you don’t remember by looks or name, but all your life-long acquaintances know. Did these people zigged when I zagged all our lives?

Each get together more and more of these ziggers materialize. I am beginning to think I had my head in the clouds or in a hole when most of the social interactions were and is going on.

We carried with us a friend that has been in a nursing home eleven or twelve years. He loves to see his old cronies every chance he gets. He is partially paralyzed and depends on a wheelchair.

Because he was in a wheelchair he had to sit on the front row. An usher and I rolled him down. They had removed a seat to accommodate him and his wheelchair. I was concerned about leaving him alone there. But it worked out. At the end of the concert, one lady kept smooching him, telling him he was so good looking. She said, it was New Years Eve and she was going go kiss the only man she could see. I looked around.

Also, several people came up to him and told them they were glad they met him and they were going to visit him in the nursing home. He did OK for himself solo on the front row.

The PARADOCS were great. They had a good beat and a good replica sound of the hits they played. One of the doctors has a wife that in a real estate person that sold our son Rocky a house in west Marietta a couple years ago. It always is a small world.

Most of the audience I would say knew Billy Joe Royal in high school. I did too. One time he, his brother, and a few others went on a road trip that was between 2 and 3 weeks long. We ended up in Valdosta, at Billy Joe’s uncle and aunt’s house. That is another story.

These BJR fans are nearing their golden years, or old age. I think many came to see their old high school friends and desperately try to reboot their memory of when they were young; clinging to their youth.

Billy Joe’s seemed a little older than he was last year. He did his shuffle with what looked to be stiff bones. Like the rest of us he is not getting any younger.*

He said some of the same "one liners" as he did the year before. Also as last year, he made several cracks about his age - his way of saying he knows he is not fooling anybody.

His band was very good. A guitar player duplicated Roy Orbinson's song to the T, or I thought so anyway. Another guy did not have an instrument, I wasn't sure if he was a Go-Go Man, Yes Man, or a backup Man. Billy Joe said the guy was in the Atlanta Rhythm Section, which I have always admired their sound, so he must be pretty good.

*Although I remember in school and when I visited him and his brother in the Clay Homes he was a year older than me. Then, years later I heard him on a radio interview say his age, which was a year younger than me. He found a miracle substance that made him 2 years younger. I need some of that.