Carl Olson was a history teacher at Nipmuc at the time as well as the adviser for the sophomore class, which organized the Aerosmith concert.
"It was a hard battle to actually get them there," Olson recalls. "Most dances back then were record hops. Having live bands was kind of an unusual thing to do. Still, a group of students convinced me to hire the group. Joe Perry (Aerosmith's guitarist) is from nearby Hopedale and the kids were friendly with him so we convinced the principal to allow us to take 50 bucks out of the class treasury in order to pay them for the night."
The principal at the time was Wilho Frigard. "He wasn't too enthralled with the idea, but we worked on him long enough to convince him," said Olson "He was kind of hesitant to spend 50 bucks."
While $50 may seem like chump change now for one of rock 'n' roll's premier bands, that money was put to good use by the group, according to Olson. "If you look in their autobiography, they said that $50 paid the rent for the apartment in Boston where they were staying back then," he says.
The concert was organized as a fund-raiser with admission either 50 or 75 cents, according to Olson. "I'm not sure if we covered all the costs," he says.
According to an Aerosmith Web site -- and there are a lot of them -- the playlist for that first concert included 11 songs: "Route 66," "Rattlesnake Shake," "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," "Movin' Out," "Somebody," "Think About It," "Walkin' the Dog," "Live with Me," "Great Balls of Fire," "Good Times Bad Times" and "Train Kept A Rollin'."
"They didn't play many songs but it was loud," Olson recalls. "And the kids loved it, though the adults were a little taken back."