Come Together: Talking 'Bout the Music of the Woodstock Generation (1964-1985)

                            In 1978, I was playing in a South Jersey band called Time Peace. We were performing classic rock songs, as well as some radio hits of the time. One song that was always well received was “My Angel Baby,” a No. 1 hit by a band called Toby Beau. Now I hadn’t thought about “My Angel Baby” or Toby Beau for 40 years. But that changed earlier this month when my wife and I boarded The Pride of America for a cruise around the Hawaiian Islands and discovered that Toby Beau was going to be performing two shows on the ship.  In its original format, Toby Beau was a five-piece band out of southern Texas. Today, it’s a duo consisting of Balde Silva, the original singer and co-writer of “My Angel Baby,” and his wife Rennetta Dennet Silva, who has been with Silva since the ‘70s. During about five hours of informal chatting and formal interviewing over three days, Balde, sometimes joined by the striking and incredibly friendly Rennetta, told me the 40-year story of Toby Beau

  Maybe there is something lucky about the number 3, at least for us. Last night, in the finals of 2007 Classic Rock radio station WMGK's House Band competition, our drummer John, again drew 3rd spot for us and, at the end of the night, the judges had named us MGK's House Band for the year, which will culminate in our playing the station's annual July 4th Freedom Festival which draws up to 70,000 fans. Our winning set consisted of 4 songs:  Stone Free  by Jimi Hendrix, the required of all four bands  You Really Got Me  (versions by The Kinks, which we chose, and Van Halen), our reworked version of Led Zeppelin's  The Lemon Song  and our finale, Spirit's  I Got a Line on You  (with a touch of The Yardbirds  For Your Love  tossed in near the end). Although we'll never know for sure, many of those present our performance of  The Lemon Song  at Cavanaugh's River Deck sealed the win for us. I just know we were fortunate to be one of 16 bands chosen 0n the basis o