One of the more memorable moments in my life was the time I went with my good friend John Pirnie to Summer Jam in June of 1979 in Kansas City, Missouri. It was held at Arrowhead Stadium where the Kansas City Chiefs play football.
John and I met in 9th grade Algebra class and bonded over our shared interest in the girl who sat in front of us. We would regularly have playful banter with her during class, but I recall one particular day, our normally mild-mannered Math teacher had had enough of our behavior. He immediately made us to come to the front of the class, where he proceeded to pull out this gigantic wooden paddle from his desk with all kinds of names on it. He had us bent over in front of the class while he gave us several good swats with that paddle and then had us return to our seats. I think the sheer embarrassment, was enough that we never talked during class again that whole semester.
I don’t recall how we decided to go or who got the tickets, but once summer hit that year we were going.
I had just turned 15 so my dad drove us up to the stadium and dropped us off for the day. I am not sure how I would feel now as a parent dropping off my teenage son at an all-day rock concert at a 70,000-seat stadium. When we got there I remember we found our “assigned seats” up in the nosebleed section, and then immediately proceeded to head to the field of the stadium. Once we got down there, I remember getting high from the fumes just walking around. I think you could have guessed, we never went back to our seats and spent the entire concert at the field level.
I don’t remember all the bands and the sets. But it’s available on the internet here if you are interested:
The ones I do remember were Heart (They had the longest set), the Cars (my favorite but only 4 songs), and of course Ted Nugent who was the last performer. His set was memorable only because he does all these crazy things like playing guitar from on top of a huge Marshall stack looking like Tarzan. I also remembered the band Missouri, since they were a local group and they had one radio hit called “Movin On”. My brother is in the plumbing business and a few years back he did some work for the lead singer of the band. They were talking about the event, and He told my brother that they met Ted Nugent that day, and he had asked the name of their band, and Ted said “Well you ain’t getting far with that name”. Guess he was right.
All in all, that was a pretty cool day in GenX land, everyone enjoyed the music and the atmosphere, and by the time Ted was done, we were exhausted from walking all over the place. I don’t remember how my dad knew to pick us up since we had no cell phones. I think we may have had an agreed-upon time for him to come back or maybe there was a payphone in the stadium. Oh well, we managed to get picked up.
John and I remained friends throughout high school, although he and I never went to another concert together. I would like to look him up sometime and see what he is up to these days.
Have any of my fellow Gen-Xers been to a Summer Jam-type concert back in the day? Would love to hear about your experience.
Well, catch ya later
Tim B.