REO Speedwagon (Sorry about that!)

Well, it’s been about 25 years or so since the glory days of the 1970s arena rock bands – today they’re mostly forgotten except for albums sitting in used record stores and the occasional summer show at a casino or an outdoor festival.  In Detroit, the Pine Knob venue seems to make an annual habit of bringing back many of these aging dinosaurs back for an annual show, but Detroit & the Midwestern USA always did seem to be stuck in a 1970s-ish time warp.  While New York and LA got frequent visits from the likes of the Clash and U2, we always seemed to get another multi-night visit from Foreigner or Boston.  The airwaves in Detroit and the concert halls (mostly Cobo Hall in those days) were filled with music from the likes of Styx, Journey, the Michael Stanley Band and, of course, REO Speedwagon.  Just hearing a song by any of these immediately propels me in the prehistoric days before the Internet or Ipods were even imagined and music in your car consisted an 8-track player or a cassette connected to (hopefully) at least 2 working speakers.  By this time, the Ramones, Sex Pistols and Clash had already made all of those arena bands totally irrelevant, but most of the USA was too slow to catch on – so arena rock would rumble on for a few years before Nirvana would finally close that era for good. 

Since I’m paying for using up all this disk space on some computer, you might wonder why I would waste my (and your) time writing about a band that I couldn’t stand listening to.  Well, it’s time for me to come clean and finally apologize to the fine musicians in REO Speedwagon .  I’m certainly not going to apologize for making fun of their music – it really doesn’t sound any better today than it did back then.  However, it’s time to go back to 1978 or so to downtown Detroit where REO Speedwagon was headlining along with UFO.  (UFO was a hard-rock band from Germany that also had a strong following in the Midwest).  By that time, I was into punk anyway, but I tagged along with a good friend of mine, who was a big fan of UFO. 

 The opening bands for arena shows usually got the short end of the stick. They were forced to play very early, the sound was usually pretty muddled and their set rarely lasted very long.  I don’t remember much of the UFFO show, except that we were actually on the floor right in front of the stage.  Since we paid a princely sum of $7.50 for the tickets, we just decided to stay there for REO, even though neither of us cared too mach for REO.  REO eventually came on and started into one of those insufferable “power ballads” that just sent the crowd into delirium.  On the other hand, I just started getting a headache – in those days, I also had a habit of going to buy a hot dog every time the music got too boring.  (My all-time record was wolfing down 6 dogs during a Led Zeppelin show at the Silverdome – great for my peace of mind, but terrible for my digestive system).

So, as REO Speedwagon was harmonizing on stage, I wandered off and bought myself a Ball Park frank. After piling on the mustard and relish I headed back over to the main floor.   As I was ready to bite into my hot dog, REO just burst into another radio-friendly rock anthem – I can’t remember what it was, but I finally snapped.  Without even thinking, I rolled up the hot dog and uncorked a perfect strike at the stage.  As the singer danced around on stage, my hot dog came flying up there and got him right in the head.  For a second, I thought the even Al Kaline would have been proud of that throw.  The results were mildly amusing – people started pointing toward my area, but there were too many people milling around for even Ron Artest to do much.  We soon left the concert and I never went to see REO again.

However, it’s time to finally confess – maybe REO wasn’t my type of band, but throwing anything at a musician that doing his job is just plain wrong.  I love rock & roll and musicians deserve better than that type of treatment – so, Kevin Cronin, wherever you are – I apologize for that silly episode.  May you and all your other arena rock brethren play as long as you and your fans want.