“It's sad to grow old but it's nice to ripen.”
- Brigette Bardot
Growing up, I was no kinda basketball player. I loved baseball and football, but basketball, not so much. I had no gift for it and I never worked to improve. Mr. Miley was our ninth-grade coach. He was a math teacher. He had little use or enthusiasm for me. By the middle of the season, freshman year, the air had pretty well leaked out of my basketball career.
Music, on the other hand, had become my second language. It consumed me. The buzz was going around our junior high that the band REO Speedwagon was coming to our little town to play a show at the local armory. Now, this was not the schmaltzy REO that they would become in the 80s. This was a hard-working, hard-rocking midwestern bunch of kids trying to make a name for themselves. They'd released one album (I had it) but they were little known outside of a four-state region. I was hell-bent on going.
The ninth-grade Comets had an out-of-town game the night of the show. They were to travel to Trenton, MO to play the mighty Bulldogs. A decision had to be made. Did I want to ride a school bus an hour and a half both ways to a basketball game I probably wouldn't play in, or go to my first rock “concert?” I don't remember telling my parents that I was quitting. Quitting things was not something that was encouraged, but they knew I didn't give a flip, and besides, Mom wouldn't have to drive to town to get me after practices so I'm sure it didn't break her heart. I turned in my uniform to Coach Miley. He was not crushed.
How did I get to the show on the big night? Who did I go with? I have no idea, but there I was, smack dab in the middle of the big concrete room that was the Reiger Armory. It was jammed to the gills with junior high and high school kids, students from our local college and an assortment of townies and area hippies. The place was buzzing like an electric razor and house music blasted from speakers up near the stage. I don't remember anything that was playing, but if you can imagine “In A Gadda Da Vida” on an endless loop, that would capture the vibe. Smoke, cigarette and otherwise, was dense to the ceiling. To that point in my young life, I'd never been in such an environment. It felt like I was in one of those transition scenes from That 70s Show, only it lasted the whole night long.
Those were the days when a scheduled time for a performance was just a vague concept. Things began and ended when they did. Well into the evening, probably around 10:00, the support act that no one knew or cared to hear or see came on. They played a handful of unrecognizable songs at a confession-inducing decibel level and then exited the stage to anemic applause. The house lights came back up and an hour's worth of equipment tear down and replace went on while the crowd milled around waiting for the headliners.
In that bygone era of general admission only, what spot you witnessed a concert from was a Darwinian affair, determined solely by your grit and tenacity as to where you wanted to be and what kind of confrontation you were willing to risk. The threat of a shoving match or fistfight for encroaching on someone else's staked out space was ever present. I was resolute, though, in my desire to be up close, and I slowly wormed my way up front without incident. REO's wall of gigantic Marshall amps, I noticed, were being erected on both sides of the stage onto what looked to be the kind of tables we used in the lunchroom at Greenwood Elementary. The kind manufactured to hold a dozen fourth-grader's lunch trays but not to support 500 pounds of rock and roll wattage. The roadies assembling the fortress seemed nonchalant about it, though. What did I know?
Eventually it was show time! The lights went down and the shadowy figures of the band filed onto the stage. Some guy stepped to the center mic and screamed an unintelligible introduction and purple and yellow lights burst on and illuminated the scene. There before me was a real rock band, one that I'd actually seen on an album cover, kicking into what I could almost discern as “Gypsy Woman's Passion.” I knew that song! It was a great opener and it ended in a huge crowd roar. Immediately they kicked into another song.
I happened to glance over and notice that there, stage right, a stoner dude was sitting on the edge of one of the lunchroom tables supporting the huge amps. He was big time into the music, doing his best head-banging routine that long predated Wayne and Garth. As the song rocked on, so did he, gaining forward and backward momentum.
I directed my focus back to the action onstage, so I didn't see the moment it happened…Somewhere in the middle of that second song, stoner dude rocked so hard that he set off an avalanche of Marshall amps. It sent the entire wall of them cascading forward into the audience members unfortunate enough to be standing up front on that side. There was much confusion and screaming. The band stopped playing. Then there was a moment of near silence with only the hum and squawk of instruments and amps, and then, as if on cue, a return of yelling and bedlam. The band unplugged and walked off, never to return. The house lights came on and all was chaos and confusion.
There was no point in sticking around so I made a hasty exit out of there. I don't recall hearing if anyone was hurt. I don't know if the stoner dude got the beat down he had coming. I don't know how I got home. I do know that my first rock show only lasted a song and a half. I also know that nothing that happened at the junior high basketball game in Trenton, MO that night would have been worth writing about 50-years later.
RP