My wife's 40-year high school reunion and Aerosmith

Very cool and brings back memories of the first time I saw them at the Baltimore Civic Center as it was called then. The event was sponsored by a local FM rock station, but not in the main hall. They played on a mezzanine just outside the main hall to about 100 people. My ears rang for days.

Cactus in the line up, what a blazing band right there!! Goodness!

I went to see them w/ the Black Crowes opening for them on thier first tour. We partied too long in the parking lot and heard the Crowes taking the stage, so we scampered in as fast as we could. On our way in we RUN INTO Aerosmith (literally) as they are exiting their van to go into the venue. Their bodyguards were 4 ft wide & thought we we a threat and I got tossed. I just remember spinning in the air, then I turned to watch my friends girlfriend jump up & kiss S. Tyler on his cheek while he was in fulllll makeup in a tiger print jumpsuit. He laughed and they went in backstage. Was a fantastic concert, both bands killed it and we had a great laugh over the whole thing.

dromunds wrote: »

Yes, Cactus was a really good band, in fact the live songs on their album "Hot & Sweaty"'s showed a bit of it later in the band's career. I saw them with their original singer Rusty Day and they kicked tons of azz with that line-up, which I thought was their best. I was fortunate enough to then see Rusty's subsequent band, Mad John Fever in a small bar, but they never really caught on. Of course, Jeff Beck formed Beck, Bogart & Appice. Tim Bogart and Carmen Appice were in Vanilla Fudge initially and left to form Cactus. Quite the pedigree. Cactus was an underappreciated band in many respects.

Lucky! :O I wish I could've seen them perform, but I woukldn't be born yet until the mid 90's.

That's the first time I've ever heard of a post-Cactus project of Rusty Day's called "Mad John Fever". Who else was in it? I did some research and found a song by a band that called themselves that. The song's called "Breath & Thunder": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHqiyzlbVs
The singer does sound kinda like Rusty as he sounded on the Amboy Dukes' 1969 "Migrations" album. Do you think i might the same band?

I heard of Rusty through Lynyrd Skynyrd actually. He was mentioned in their history twice:
1. Was bandmates with a pre-Skynyrd guitarist named Steve Gaines from 1973-1974. The band was called Detroit, originally an offshoot of The Detroit Wheels. A recording of them surfaced in 1998 called "The Driftwood Tape".
2. Was originally sought out by the Rossington-Collions band to replace Ronnie VanZant. Rusty turned it down out of respect for Ronnie, but did support the band by travelling with them during their first tour. It's possible that he and whatever band he had at the time might have been the opening performer as well.

hetainvader: I found several of the underground newspaper ads and will be getting photos soon. Maybe tonight or this weekend. Stay tuned. Turns out I saw Mad John Fever several times, but can only swear Rusty Day was in the band the first time, I just can't remember if he was in the band the other times. Also, there is an ad for StarCastle, shown as "formerly Mad John Fever."

"Was originally sought out by the Rossington-Collions band to replace Ronnie VanZant. Rusty turned it down out of respect for Ronnie, but did support the band by travelling with them during their first tour. It's possible that he and whatever band he had at the time might have been the opening performer as well."

I took a date to that RC show at Cleveland's music hall.

Let's see if these show up okay

Still hard to believe that I saw Fleetwood Mac (with Bob Welch) for $3.00! I wrote the review of J. Geils Band that's partially visible above the Fleetwood Mac ad, and that concert was also about the same price. The bands probably made a couple grand. Lol.

I'm back. Have been gone for a while.
Great stuff, dromunds! Thanks for posting them.

Certainly no disrespect meant to Rusty Day. My comments above concerning Rusty being in Mad John Fever were based on my personal observation. I saw Cactus when Rusty was their singer. I saw Mad John Fever not that much later in a small bar called The Roost in a town 20 miles away from where I saw Cactus. One of the reasons I went to see Mad John Fever is that I was so impressed with Rusty when I saw Cactus that I went to see Mad John Fever specifically to see him, as I'd heard he had left Cactus and was in this new band. My recollection is that I was standing very close to the band as this was a very small bar with no stage at all the band just set up at one end, plus it was a modest crowd as the band was new. But as I mentioned, my recollection was also that he was in Mad John Fever for a very short time period. I saw Mad John Fever several times and I don't have any memory of Rusty Day being in the band after that first show at The Roost. I saw Mad John Fever again just four months later in June 1974 at The Rafters and I have no recollection of Rusty being in the band anymore and in the back of my mind I seem to recall something about him not being in the band very long. Per hetainvader's request in this thread, I recently went back and actually found the advertisements for the shows that I had kept, including that first Mad John Fever show I saw at The Roost on February 2, 1974. Could my memory about Rusty being in Mad John Fever be mistaken? Of course. And I am in no way trying to start anything, but those two shows had distinct impressions on me and I sincerely believe based on my own personal observations and memory that Rusty was in Mad John Fever for a very short period at their inception. I was there, and that's just something that stuck in my brain. I was also a record and concert reviewer at the time and those type of details were important to me. In any event, if I'm wrong my apologies. There was no disrespect intended in my comments in this thread about Rusty and I'm not sure how it could be taken as disrespect. Quite the opposite, I had all the respect in the world for the man.