Grand Finale Day - Two - Tido Mambo Performs a Riot

Grand Finale Day Two – Tido Mambo Performs a Riot

"Ole told me, I'm a fool
So I walked on down the road a mile
Went to the house that brings a smile
Sat upon my grandpa's knee
And what do you think he said to me?"

"When you awake you will remember everything."

The Band's “When You Awake”

As the sun rose over the open ocean horizon, two sisters sat on the top steps that led to the beach at the far north end of the boardwalk, staring at the sun as it rose and failing once again to detect or photo the “blue flash” that has been documented and seen at Cape May Point’s Diamond Beach and Key West’s Fisherman’s War at sunset. They were conducting a scientific experiment to see if the “blue flash” can also be seen and documented by photo at sunrise.

Looking around they could see early beach goers setting out their blankets, college kids from the Dunes and other after hour joints already asleep, birdwatchers, metal detecting treasure hunters and some new comers straggling in from a hard night out.

With the sun safely up the girls begin to walk down the boardwalk back to their blanket at 9th Street next to the jetty where they will have peanut gallery seats to the much anticipated appearance of Tide Mambo and the performance of miracles, as well as a free concert by the Messiahs’ of Soul, one of Bay Shores’ hottest bands.

People arrived constantly so by 10 AM it was wall to wall beach blanket bingo, with lifeguard whistles and loud boat air horns sounding constantly.

Tido’s band was set up on the Music Pier balcony that overlooks the 9th Street beach, right next to the KYWTV3 News crew, where Tom Snyder was doing the daily weather broadcasts three times daily all weekend. The KYW TV3 helicopter would also make a pass, hover above and film the scene for posterity. 

The authorities wouldn’t let the band play or even let them turn on the microphone until they had a permit, and they kept putting them off by saying that Tido had the permit and he would be arriving shortly, and shortly he did.

While everyone, including the band expected him to arrive in the coffin in the black hurst, when it arrived and they opened it Tido wasn’t there, but the noise from the crowd alerted them that he was coming in from somewhere, but practically everyone was surprised to see him waterskiing behind Chris’s Flying Cloud PT boat as it came into sight from behind the Music Pier – Tido in his Jesus Christ motif – waving with one had as he holds on to the speed boat with the other and then skiing close in to shore he lets go of the rope and glides in over one breaker and then rides another right into shore, without missing a beat.

As he walked in off the lapping surf he began to preach – “I am here to save you and to save rock and roll. I am here to save you from the bondage of commercialism and to save rock and roll from the greed and hypocrisy that has engulfed it.”

When people called out for the miracles, Tido said he will perform miracles, he will cool things off by making people feel like they’re in a freezer, and suddenly the crowd began to shiver, and then he said with a wave of his hand, “the water in these flasks are now wine.”

About two dozen brown leather flasks were being passed around and one was grabbed by a cop who opened it and tasted it – “water,” he said almost disappointed, passing the flask on to the hippie chick who took it from him.

“What kind of wine?” Someone yelled,

“Whatever wine you prefer,” he said.

And the hippie chick, taking a swig, said “Cherry wine!”

And someone taking a sip from the same flask said, “Tastes like peach to me.”

And so it went, as the water was passed around, a public address system announced that “If Tide Mambo does not possess a legal permit he will have to cease and desist from performing or face arrest,” and Tido’s band turned on the sound system and began playing and Tido waved both hands at the crowd and told them to stay peaceful no matter what happened, as the riot squad appeared on the boardwalk and began heading down the steps to the beach.

“Do not respond with violence,” Tido said, “the men should stay put and the women should use their most effective weapon, their fingers and tickle the riot squad through the edges of their bullet proof vests and under their arms and in their stomachs and don’t stop until every riot squad officer is laughing uncontrollably.” 

Tido then turned around and picking up a rope on the beach, waved to a small mahogany and teak Chris Craft, and was pulled over a short breaker and off water-skiing away, waving as he went, leaving a crowd of hypnotized and drugged college kids rolling in the sand with the twelve members of the specially trained riot squad who were succumbed by the tickling fingers of a bevy of teenagers and college coeds.

One of the girls unintentionally set off a canister of tear gas that sent beach goers scrambling, as the pile of heavily outfitted men and scantily clad girls made its way across the beach like tumbleweed in the wind. 

With all chaos breaking out on the beach and the image of Tido Mambo in his Jesus Christ mode waving as he water skied away, Pittsburgh Paul, on the Music Pier, picked up the open microphone as the band kept playing a solid rhythm and began reciting William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming.

“The Second Coming”:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
The darkness drops again; but now I know  
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Federal Barbarian Task Force, who witnessed the whole spectacle from their upper floor Command Post above Shriver’s Candy Store, filmed it too, and concluded in their report that Tido Mambo had apparently utilized some group hypnotic routines he learned from another Purple Dragon performer – who later became Kreskin the mentalist, and did spike the water with a special high potent liquid mixture of LSD25 that was not illegal in the state of New Jersey at the time, but has since been included among the dangerous and outlawed drugs like marijuana.

While they couldn’t arrest Tido Mambo for the LSD, they did issue a federal warrant for his arrest for inciting a riot under 18 U.S.C. &: US Code-Section 2101: Riots.

(1)   Whoever travels in interstate commerce or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including, but not limited to, the mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, with intent – (1) to incite a riot, or (2) to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot;…..” etc.

Lynda Van Devanter, on duty at the Shore Memorial Hospital Emergency Room was perplexed by the sudden influx of victims from the beach – mainly the young men of the Riot Squad who it seemed, had inhaled and got tear gas in their eyes, but couldn’t stop laughing.

One of the songs that came out of that summer of '65 was "When You Awake"

"When You Awake" - The Band

(Chorus)
When you awake you will remember everything
You will be hangin' on a string from your...
When you believe, you will relieve the only soul
That you were born with to grow old and never know

Ole showed me the fork in the road
You can take to the left or go straight to the right,
Use your days and save your nights
Be careful where you step, and watch what ya eat,
Sleep with a light and you got it be

Ole warned me, it's a mean old world,
The street don't greet ya, yes, it's true
But what am I supposed to do
Read the writing on the wall
I heard it when I was very small

Wash my hands in lye water
I got a date with the Captain's daughter
You can go and tell your brother
We sure gonna love one another all night
You may be right and you might be wrong
I ain't gonna worry all day long
Snow's gonna come and the frost gonna bite
My old car froze up last night
Ain't no reason to hang my head
I could wake up in the mornin' dead