5/30/1976 Holiday Jam; REO Speedwagon, Head East, Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, UFO, Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush, Vigo County Fairgrounds, Terre Haute, IN

 45 years ago today...

May 30, 1976 - Terre Haute, IN

A day trip across state lines featured our introduction to one of the greatest live rock bands ever and included a brush with the law.

Driving to the Vigo County Fairgrounds for the Memorial Day Weekend "Holiday Jam" was an eventful road trip for teens in the summer before senior year.

Hometown heroes R.E.O. Speedwagon headlined this day-long rock festival that included southern Illinois favorites Head East, along with UFO, Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush and an unknown to us guy named Bob Seger.

With me driving, we left central Illinois headed toward the Hoosier State in the early morning, christening the trip with in-car beers. Allegedly apparently speeding through Tuscola, IL, a police car with lights flashing gets behind the Olds Cutlass to pull us over. The Einstein's riding along fired their partially-filled beer cans out the windows on to the sleepy streets of the small town in a ridiculous attempt to dump the evidence.

Now pulled over and exchanging pleasantries with the officer, we note his badge with the same last name as well-known Tucsola athletic brothers who we have competed with in baseball/football/basketball within-conference since junior high. We talk sports, etc. while sweating bullets as underage-drinking vehicle-speeding, high school jocks from the rival town.

First, the officer tells the passengers to get out and pick up all the beer cans and other trash to put in in a nearby dumpster. The boys moved fast.

Next, the officer instructs me to open the trunk and put our back-seat beer cooler in the truck and don't think about it "until we get there."

Finally he tells me the driver to slow it down, particularly through the small towns, as other officers may not show the same degree of leniency and understanding as he. With a sly-knowing grin, the officer says he won't issue a ticket, only a warning, because he, too, remembers the right of passage of well-intentioned farm kids attending the Indianapolis 500!

Huh? We're not headed to the Brickyard. We are degenerate youth going to the rock festival promoted in the flyer taped in a back window that the officer apparently doesn't see.

We gush with thanks and gratitude, promise to drive slowly and vow to not touch the cases of beer we brought until we arrive "in Indy."

We got to the fairgrounds to find the festival running late and way behind schedule as was common for rock shows of the 70s. We saw and appreciated both Mahogany Rush and UFO, but we are clearly there to see REO, and secondarily Head East. Our group was naively ignorant about Bob Seger, a regional star in Detroit but little-known elsewhere. We would be fine skipping this guy and shooting right to the headliners and getting us back home hopefully before the next morning.

As we griped about having to sit through another band before our favorites, another friend we met there, older and wiser than us, said he thought we would like Bob because "he's rock 'n' roll" in a soft, understated-way. It would be the understatement of the century.

Bob Seger & his Silver Bullet Band blew us away in one of the most high-energy audience-involved wild live shows we had ever been a part of. This unknown-to-us rock outfit had just released "Live Bullet," one of the top live albums ever, the month prior. Seger led the band through the entire Live Bullet record with an energy, likeability and everyman quality that grabbed us immediately. Bob even looked like us in a football jersey, Levi's and white tennis shoes while Alto Reed rotated saxophones and commanded his side of the stage.

This Seger performance is one of the most memorable in my years of attending concerts, the surprise aspect coupled with the show itself recreating one of the great albums ever putting it high on the list.

Still high on Bob Seger after being introduced to Live Bullet, I remember nothing about Head East. REO was solid and playing new songs like "Keep Pushin'" from the Cow Album that would be released the next month. REO was in good form, playing the songs leading up to the "Live: You Get What You Play For" album that would represent this time period, but they were still a distance second to Seger on this night.

From this day on, "Live Bullet" was the most-played 8-track in my car stereo system for the next several years. It's a classic.