7/16/1977 Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, Bradley Fieldhouse, Peoria, IL


 44 years ago today...

July 16, 1977 - Peoria, IL

Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band scheduled a concert at Glen Oak Park Amphitheatre, but pouring rain moved it to the sweltering Bradley Fieldhouse.
Regular readers of TSTT will recall our discovery of Seger at a festival in Indiana the year prior where he introduced and played the "Live Bullet" album in its entirety. Now just over a year later, Seger has reached major popularity thanks to the live album and his new release, "Night Moves," immediately a rock radio classic.
Both "Live Bullet" and "Night Moves" got many hours of airplay on 8-track tape in my Olds Cutlass. We drove to Peoria with high expectations of the pending show at a beautiful outdoor stage in a city park where we saw Atlanta Rhythm Section and Heartsfield a few weeks earlier. Mother Nature had other plans, and torrential rains moved the outdoor show to the Bradley Fieldhouse, an aging basketball arena for the local university built inside of two vacant World War II airplane hangars.
Typical Midwest July weather meant post-rain temps in the 90s with 100% humidity. Patrons standing in long lines to enter the Fieldhouse were dropping like flies, keeping the local security and safety personnel buzzing assisting the buzzed. Once inside, it seemed as if the air conditioning was out and the sweat shop conditions remained.
Memorable moments continued as I was hassled by cops and nearly arrested for empty liquor bottles under my seat. And they weren't even mine. Really.
The lousy conditions didn't damper the spirit of the Silver Bullet Band, as they rocked on while we sang along to most every tune from a band that we didn't even know a little more than a year earlier. Seger in his prime remains one of the greatest live rockers that I've had the pleasure to see. Bradley Fieldhouse was a dump and finally demolished in 2008.

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