ROCKERAMA – ’60s Rock Show benefits Aquarium’s hammerhead project

ROCKERAMA – ’60s Rock Show benefits Aquarium’s hammerhead project - Grace Slick looking at the camera - Grace Slick
American singer/songwriter Grace Slick with psychedelic rock group Jefferson Airplane at the Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 17th August 1969. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

On Saturday night, Dec. 1, Aquarium Encounters in Marathon will present its “Aquarium ’60s Rockerama” — a live rock and roll show featuring exclusively 1960s music on stage teamed with projected music videos of the original artists performing those very same songs up on the big screen. 

This audio-visual experience in 1960s rock music is a fundraiser to assist R3EACH & The Great Hammerhead Project – an Aquarium program studying the survival challenges of the great hammerhead shark, which has been disappearing over the years from the Keys waters. 

Rhythm guitarist Forrest Young, co-founder of the Aquarium, and his lead guitarist Richard Warner, have assembled for this concert/dance program, The “Aquarium Band,” with some of the foremost local rock performers in the Keys, such as John Bartus, Adrienne Z, Lesley Aaron, Bill “Harmonica Man” Heffernan and drummer Joe Moreira. The show also features Kelly Warner on the bass (formerly of the noted web rockers The LabRats), with Crissy Kafer on the congas (who was the lead singer for White Fox, which opened for KC and the Sunshine Band and other top-name performers back in the ’70s), and also JP Goldman (who is the lead singer of the famed “Womps”). 

Young describes the show as a sort of “College of 1960s Rock” for everyone who loves the high energy music from that great decade of pop. He said only the radio hits of the ’60s will be performed in the loud and boisterous dance hall style of that era — with no digital gimmicks, no programing, no pre-recording or even board balancing. It’s just plug and play amps and hope for the best.

Above the stage will be a large screen where the audience will view, as each song is performed, video clips of the original artists doing the very same song in the ’60s. This will include period music videos (some of the earliest ever made), film clips from the movies in which the performers appeared, TV shows where they performed, and other obscure visuals. Richard Warner, the film maker of “Wilma the Witch,” “Marathon After Midnight” and other Keys-based movies, is producing the visuals for this event. Warner said he has found many obscure visual scenes of these bands he never knew existed and seeing these great performers come alive on the big screen after all these years is a bit spooky, since so many of them are no longer alive. 

The program will range from the songs of the British Invasion, such as from the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Kinks, to the American “Summer Of Love” Bay Area bands like Jefferson Airplane and Creedence Clearwater Revival, to Motown superstars like The Supremes, Wilson Pickett and Ray Charles.

Caution: It will be a loud and intense audio-visual experience. Also, no one under the age of 21 will be admitted and ID is required. There will be a cash-only bar.

Saturday, Dec. 1
Doors open @ 7 p.m.
Florida Keys Aquarium Encounters
$25 tickets in advance floridakeysaquariumencounters.com or by callings 305-743-3262. Tickets expected to sell out, so buy early. Proceeds benefit Aquarium’s hammerhead project.