Birth of the Blue Missile
Well Captain the only explosions that were part of that story were the way our heads felt the next day.
Back to the Duster:
The next road trip was to New York to visit my brother Bill with a stop in Atlanta to visit one of my roommates from the academy Ted Neugent. His real name was Terrance but we just called him Ted. No he is not the guitar player, but the IRS did send him the other Ted Neugents tax bill one year! Ted was a gas to hang with and well worth visiting, lots of very loud Southern Rock and partying. It was the Fourth of July weekend 1976 the bicentennial.
A small Ted flashback:
During the summer of my final year in the Academy 72 I had a chance to go to a concert with Ted. Since he lived near the academy in suburban Atlanta and his father could come pick us up, we got weekend passes to go to a concert at a venue called Lake Spivey just outside of Atlanta in Jonesborough. It would be a midday affair starting around eleven, and we took Teds 54 Chevy to the event. (I know its not a mopar but its still a good story) Once we got near the place the traffic became bumper to bumper. Ted was not a patient driver, and he had a fairly well built small block under the hood. So he would let the car in front of us get three or four spaces ahead and then he would smoke his tires, take off for a second, and then slam on the brakes just barely missing the car in front of us. After doing this a half a dozen times the people in front of us just got out of the way. I figure they were just plain scared of him, I certainly would have been. We then got to the event in more than enough time. We pitched our blanket on the grass and started to socialize with the other people there. While we were well adjusted, there were folks barely still attached to the planet, forget about reality. There was one guy who was tripping his brains out carrying his three or four old son on his shoulders. It got to the point that others there actually intervened and took the kid off his shoulders and sat the kid back on what they thought was his blanket. Needless to say it was quite a zoo.
We were there to see Chicago, with Ritchie Havens opening up. Ritchie and his band did their set for about an hour, and then the roadies did the teardown and set up. Because it was a beautiful day everything was done at a mellow pace. The guys from Chicago then came on stage and did their sound check. They went off stage for a few minutes and then came back on. With everybody plugged in the guitar player stepped up to the mic and greeted the audience. After his greeting he went and did some sort of a power chord to start the first song. During that chord there was a fairly large explosion behind the stage with an accompanying small mushroom cloud becoming visible after a few seconds. We all thought COOL. Well
not so much. The stage went silent what lights were on, went black and everyone left the stage. After a few minutes the guitar player came back on stage with a bullhorn, he proceeded to explain to all that the explosion was the main transformer for the venue blowing up. He then said that they were going to stick around and would not leave until they had played their full concert. He said that Georgia power and light was flying another transformer in by helicopter but it would take a few hours. He asked everybody to stick around and enjoy the beautiful day. This was around 1:00 in the afternoon. A little while after that Ritchie came back on stage with his acoustic guitar, a stool, and a single mic and proceeded to say well Ive done this before and did an acoustic set by himself. Of course he did an extended version of Freedom. I assume they found a small generator for the amp he was using. That particular part was really great. In my opinion he was much better with just his guitar than he was with his band. Around 3:00 a helicopter with a transformer hanging from it swooped in overhead and placed the transformer behind the stage. By 3:30 or 4:00 the transformer had been replaced. After that Chicago did their entire catalog of tunes until well after dark. What a concert. Afterwards we returned to Teds place and then back to the academy the next day.
More of that road trip next installment
Andrew