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Back in September 1969, some friends and I convened from various East Coast locations to go to a concert at the Fillmore East in New York City. We had missed the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" tour and, as members of the counterculture, felt we were duty-bound. So we chose a performance by some serious heavy-hitters of the time: Country Joe and the Fish and the Grateful Dead.

Our friend in the city added, "Something I've never heard of, Sha Na Na, is opening for them."

We'd never heard of these guys either. They were barely a regional outfit, comprising a gang of Columbia U. students, and had found themselves on stage at the original Woodstock only the month before.

So we show up, waiting for some acid rock or pyschedelia or whatever, and here comes Sha Na Na like deja vu all over again, the stage was suddenly occupied by the 1950s. Some were in glaring gold lame outfits (from a long-ago production of "Bye Bye Birdie"), some as juvenile delinquents (J.D.'s or "rocks") with rolled-up blue jeans and white T-shirts and D.A.'s, and they were so unexpectedly hysterical, we were laughing so hard it hurt.

Here we were in the era of Woodstock and Altamont and the White Album, and these guys were fracturing us with "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" and "Get a Job" and "Who Wrote the Book of Love?" And despite their camp, they were also thoroughly demanding about getting everything in the music just right. They were dead serious about the fifties and the early sixties. They were raucus and loud and active and all over the stage.

And they blew Country Joe and the Grateful Dead out the door, and not too many bands can say that.

And earlier this week, I enjoyed a phone chat with Jocko Marcellino, the original Sha Na Na drummer, and still drumming.

They made $350 for playing at Woodstock, Jocko recalled, and netted about 8 cents each for their section of the great documentary that was produced from it.

Jocko had knocked us out at the concert with his over-the-top take on the Surfaris' "Wipe Out," which had me laughing so hard it almost hurt, he was so over the top, arching his back and thundering on the tom-toms.

He's from Milton, Mass. -- dig it, two of his first bands were the Pilgrims and the Mil-tones, and how cool is that? -- and he was familiar with the high school (Archbishop Williams, or "Archie Bill") attended by a long-ago girlfriend of mine. He went to Columbia on a football scholarship and ended up earning both a bachelor's and a master's degree.

But whatever his expertise in different fields, the music was the thing. He said it was hard to ever consider altering careers when Sha Na Na was, first, in the prototype mass music festival, then in the greatest rock documentary ever, then had its own internationally distributed television show, and were the lounge band in what may be the ultimate rock movie musical, "Grease."

Since then, Jocko recalled, they played with James Brown, whose choreography was the basis for many of their routines, and even shared a gig with Alice Cooper, who stood by one of their amps and watched them through their whole act.

What do you do for an encore?

Well, Sha Na Na is coming to Pahrump for a benefit concert sponsored by the Pahrump Valley Times at the Nugget on Monday, Aug. 27, to help the Melanoma Education Foundation's Nevada Chapter. Tickets remain available at the casino cage, and attendees will enjoy a performance by an authentic American classic.

For myself, I hope to meet Jocko and local member Michael Brown and some of the others, and nearly 40 years on another of those vague circles that help define a life will have been brought 'round.

See you there.