Rod McKuen appeared at the Minneapolis Auditorium on April 17, 1970, before a crowd of 5,000.  Bonnie Usan, journalist for the St. Louis Park Echo, found McKuen’s work “melancholy, dejected, and lonely,” good for business, and just a little boring and repetitive.  His basic themes were “his aborted attempts at love, memories of lost animal pets, and the bittersweet pain of being lonely.”  She offered up “my mother or two affectionate goldfish.”