In '77, Beach Boys headlined R.I.'s largest concert

PROVIDENCE — Forty years ago, on Sept. 2, 1977, a horde of Rhode Islanders descended on Narragansett Park Race Track in Pawtucket to see a concert by the Beach Boys.  The crowd was estimated at 40,000, believed to be the largest concert gathering in Rhode Island's history.

So what better place than a contemporary Beach Boys concert at a brand new venue to commemorate the event?

Just before the Beach Boys take the stage at Bold Point Park in East Providence Wednesday night, there will be a ceremony to honor the 1977 show. On hand will be Beach Boy Mike Love, Al Gomes and Connie Watrous of Big Noise, a music publicity, marketing and development company, producer Alan Boyd, Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien, East Providence Mayor James Briden, and representatives of Gov. Gina Raimondo and U.S. Sen. Jack Reed.

There will be a plaque, and a new street sign to rename the portion of Narragansett Park Drive where the track once stood, roughly where the Rand-Whitney Container LLC is now located, as "The Beach Boys Way."

All this started in August 2016, when Gomes and Watrous bought a Beach Boys concert sign at a store called POP: The Emporium of Pop Culture in Providence.  Their company, Big Noise, counts the Beach Boys among its clients, and they were on the lookout for memorabilia.

The sign turned out to be from the box office for the Narragansett Park show, and after doing some research Gomes and Watrous decided the event needed some recognition.  State and local officials agreed.

A front-page article in The Providence Journal-Bulletin on Sept. 3 certainly described the concert as memorable, but probably not the way it will be remembered Wednesday night.

The piece by Thomas J. Morgan and Glenda Buell described a traffic and logistical nightmare, with parking left to "the philosophy of anarchy." The headline read "Chaos Fails to Unravel 40,000 at Concert."

In the next day's newspaper, concert promoter Frank J. Russo called the story "an absolute sham."