by Pat Meyers, Lititz, PA

I’ve been to numerous great concerts since I was a teenager, but I don’t think any group or music has had a more dramatic effect than the anonymous band playing “White Room” at my High School Talent Show. Growing up in the South in the 60’s, my friends and I lived on a diet of mostly Motown…..the Temptations, Four Tops, the Supremes….with a little Righteous Brothers thrown in. We were “good” kids…kids that our parents didn’t have anything to worry about.

It was in the spring of 1969 when our high school held its yearly talent show. I really have no memory of anything else that happened at the show; it probably included the usual variety of nerdy but talented (surely) acts. But then a group of guys…again, I don’t even remember who they were….played Cream’s “White Room”. Listening to this music, I felt like I was expanding! I’d never heard anything like this before and I loved it! It almost felt like I was levitating out of my seat. No….no drugs or alcohol were involved. Hearing this music was like opening a door that I hadn’t even known existed.

When I think back, the image in my mind is of a small room…white, of course…with the previously unknown door opening to reveal an endless outdoor space. Though I don’t know now if any of those guys in that high school band continued to play music, I do know that then, in the spring of ‘69, I HAD to hear more of that music and it was at this point that I also knew I was no longer my parents’ child.