Back when the Bethlehem morning air smelled like rotten eggs and the Philadelphia Eagles wore Kelly green uniforms, a night out in the Lehigh Valley was quite different than it is today.
In the year 1985, it most often meant going to see a rock n’ roll cover band play whatever was on WZZO (95.1-FM), the region’s top rock radio station, in one of a dozen old roadhouse taverns or inns tucked in and around Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.
Like the sulfur-infused air created by the Bethlehem Steel coke plant, the places were gritty and a bit rugged, much like that era’s Reggie White and Ron Jaworski-led Philadelphia Eagles.
Mickey Kelly’s, the Green Pine Inn, the Sterling Hotel, Airport Music Hall, the Maingate, Bill Daniels Music Factory, DJ Bananas, Castle Garden. They were functional and cheap. The décor was basically whatever was there from before. Drink choices were a handful of domestic beers, Canadian whiskey, or shots of bad tequila that required a lick of salt and a suck of lemon to choke down. A cocktail was well liquor poured in Coca Cola or club soda.
No drink menu necessary. Shots and beers. This wasn’t the Tavern on the Green. Cosmopolitans, craft beer, and single barrel bourbon were still in the future.
It was a very working-class Lehigh Valley. The limited selection of restaurants were equally functional and cheap.
If you liked rock ‘n roll, the choices were extensive. It often took a full newspaper page to list the bands, DJs, and food or drink specials for the upcoming weekend. Daddy Licks, Gandalf, Magnum, Crisis, The Front, Steve Brosky and The BBC. It was hard to decide where to go and who to see.
I decided that I wanted to play guitar and sing in a cover band, which I still do 45 years later, after seeing Magnum one chilly December at the Green Pine Inn in Mountainville. People followed the local bands. I marveled at those musicians as much as I did those who I listened to on the radio or whose posters I hung on my dorm room wall.
From time to time, you could see a national artist at the Allentown Fairgrounds, in Agricultural Hall, a college gymnasium, or later, Stabler Arena at Lehigh University, typically brought here by local promoter, Makoul Productions. The first concert I saw was the band Rush at the Fairgrounds. I bought my $5 standing on the track paper ticket from the cashier at Record City music store at the Westgate Mall in Bethlehem. But the big acts were still in Philadelphia and New York.
It’s a different music, entertainment, and cultural arts landscape today in the Lehigh Valley, with sports and festivals becoming a large part of it. The national acts are bigger and more regular, and the options are much more diverse. The venues are slick and new, and the drinks are much fancier, but more expensive.
Sadly, most of the old, gritty venues are gone, and cover rock n roll bands are more nostalgia for those who’ve had at least their 40th high school reunion than the forefront of entertainment. But while there are fewer bars to play, the explosion of festivals throughout the Lehigh Valley have kept many of the local musicians of the ‘80s still playing.
The granddaddy of the festivals is Bethlehem’s Musikfest, which debuted in 1984. This year it was attended by 1.5 million people, making it the country’s largest free, 10-day music festival. Run by the nonprofit ArtsQuest, the festival mixes bookings of local and national acts, and this year hosted a reunion of Magnum.
On the former site of Bethlehem Steel, concert venues, cinemas, public plazas and more now comprise the SteelStacks arts and entertainment campus, operated by ArtsQuest. Its festivals and events draw additional hundreds of thousands of people each year. Just to the east of the campus is Wind Creek Casino, whose Event Center brings in national touring acts on a weekly basis. In Easton, the State Theater hosts a year-round schedule of shows featuring music, comedy, and Broadway touring theater.
City Center Group in Allentown has added the region’s latest concert venue, Archer Music Hall on Hamilton Street, run by the national booking agency Live Nation. It’s located just down the street from the new Da Vinci Science Center and PPL Center, which hosts both the Philadelphia Flyers affiliate Phantoms and major national touring acts. Coca Cola Park, also in the city, is home to the Philadelphia Phillies Triple A affiliate, the Iron Pigs. This summer the team drew more fans than any other team in minor league baseball.
Since 2001, employment in the arts, spectator sports and related industries in the Lehigh Valley has grown 138 percent, or about 2.5 times the national growth rate to more than 2,200 jobs. The arts and entertainment sector has become one of the Lehigh Valley’s most powerful engines for economic and population growth and quality of life.
It’s a long way from those shot and beer days. But that spirit of the old gritty rock n roll venues lives on — just in places with nicer bathrooms.
And I’ve gotten to live out the dreams of my younger days and play in bands and share a stage with some of my local heroes.
So, if you’re not doing anything Friday night, break out the jeans jacket: Cunningham & Associates will play tribute show of The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen in Musikfest Café in Bethlehem’s ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks.
This is a contributed opinion column. Don Cunningham is the president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. He can be reached at news@lehighvalley.org. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication.