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State your name and your instrument that you played. Uh, Gary Francone, that's F R A N C I O N E, uh, drums and percussion if you wanna say so at that point, uh, original drummer from uh 1973. When we started in high school. So I

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was a junior, he was a senior at that time, and, uh, You know, it was just, uh, we started as a little bit of a gag thing. Shanna had just done their bit and, uh, you know, we did it as a spring, uh, music thing with

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our, you know, department there. And uh we did that. And then the next thing you know, it was such a hit. We went back into the concert the following year and then we started doing like little like church groups and meetings for people and then all

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of a sudden it was like, you know, we could play bars because bars were 18 years old at that point, you know, to come in. So then we started playing bars by summer of '74. And then we did that through '74 into 75. Most of the

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guys were in college. I was working and um we all got together and I said, you know, guys, we can do this full time and everybody's like, well, we're all going to college. So everybody said, look, we'll take a semester off and see how it goes.

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So they took a semester off and we went on the road in 1976 January to the Midwest and that was it. Nobody looked back for, you know, 35 to 40 years before he even thought about doing anything else. And what is your first memory of playing

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in Avalon? First memory of playing in Avalon. Pretty much exactly what Doug was saying, we walked into this little place with black lights on and that big statue behind me. I was the drummer. He was right behind me, the statue stage, very small, real tiny here,

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and people came in and they were, um, just looking at us. They really didn't know how to take us at first, you know, because we were, you know, quite different doing all these, you know, really slick oldies, and they, uh, but they accepted us week after

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week. They kept coming back. Sunday night, Sunday night, Sunday night they kept coming back. So it just, it really was, uh, quite, and then it just built and then he probably said to you that you built another whole stage in a room, you know, if we

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signed a longer contract, you build a big stage for us and it kept coming and coming and coming. It was just amazing. 11 summers of just absolute bedlam. Everybody was really nice here too. Uh, it wasn't like, you know, sometimes people would get a, a bad

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connotation about the Jersey Shore, especially like, you know, towards your northern seaside and, you know, you know, exactly, um, but, uh, the people were so nice here, everybody. It was respectful even if they were jammed into the room as much as possible. People were still nice.

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There was no fights. There was never any fights, never 1000 people, no fights. So I mean everybody was great. The people were nice. They applauded. They really enjoyed themselves and had a great time.