Those Wednesday night concerts were so great, & Dar opened the inaugural season. There's even a video of that particular evening out there somewhere. Anybody have a clue?

-s.

I think it was 1997 when we saw La Bamba & The Hubcaps as part of the Wednesday Floods concerts. My then toddler son was parading around with a trombone kazoo, imitating La Bamba!

‘Those Wednesday night concerts were so great, & Dar opened the inaugural season.”

Not Richie Havens, as late replacement for Lionel Hampton, who had a serious fire in his Manhattan apartment earlier that year and had not sufficiently recovered by that July?

That hill used to be packed with people. One of the things that slipped away without me noticing it… great memories.

The timeline doesn’t add up regarding my recollection of the Richie Havens Floods Hill performance I mentioned above. I see now that Lionel Hampton’s apartment fire was in January 1997, and Dar Williams was there (as per soda’s post) in July 1996. 

A note: it was just him and his guitar on Floods Hill. I didn’t realize what a great instrumentalist he was before that night.

From the NYT:

MUSIC; Going Beyond Patriotic American Songs

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By Rena Fruchter

July 3, 1994

MUSICAL programs surrounding the Fourth of July tend to have an American patriotic flavor. The singer and guitarist Richie Havens is a well-known performer in the American folk-pop tradition, but states firmly that his music is "human first and American second."

"I'm a song-singer -- my songs come from everywhere," said Mr. Havens, who will perform on Wednesday night for the opening concert of the Arts in the Park series in South Orange. His music is acoustic, he said, adding that the lyrics will take the audience back to the early 1960's.

The free four-concert series will be held on Wednesdays in July at 7:30 P.M. on Flood's Hill in Meadowland Park, which is between Ridgewood Road and Meadowbrook Lane in South Orange.

Mr. Havens's group includes Louis Small, keyboard player; Bill Perry, guitarist; Jimmy Mack, bassist, and Ed Barretini, drummer. Mr. Havens tours every weekend with the group, he said, sometimes performing at three sites in three days before returning to his home in New York City.

Google AI hallucinates on a number of things, but I believe it’s right on this:

Lionel Hampton was scheduled for July 30, 1997, but expected recovery was delayed, so Vanguard Jazz Orchestra performed in that slot on relatively short notice.

And it mentioned that the week before,  Jon Lucien was there.
I remember he drew a huge crowd with many many out of state vehicles.