| 04/14/09 04:25 PM |
#54
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Jon Kriegel
Lane, you were certainly fortunate to have such a plush mode of transport to that particular 1977 KISS show. After having been driven by Phil Shipley's mother to the 1976 KISS show the previous year, I was certainly not going to be driven to another concert by somebody's parents by the time my 16th year rolled around in 1977. So, five of us piled into my 1963 Dodge Polara (yes, with the push-button transmission), and headed down hwy 30 towards Des Moines that same fateful night in 1977. I belive it was Mike Pruckler, Pat Filer, Steve Frye, Mike Koll, and myself onboard. Just east of the hwy 330 turnoff, I decided to pass a slow moving 18-wheeler in front of us. Half way thru the pass, one of the tires blew out on my Dodge, sending us spinning 180 degrees and cutting across the path of the truck we were passing, finally sliding sideways into the north side ditch, colliding gently with a fencepost on my driver side door, coming to a rest facing east towards Mtown (the opposite direction we had been moving). All the while, for what seemed like minutes while it was happening, but what had taken probably only 15 seconds total, the 8-track tape player in my glovebox was blasting out "Rocket Ride" by KISS. We sat there stunned in silence, save for Ace Frehleys guitar solo, for several seconds reflecting on our misspent youth. Finally the silence was broken by Steve Frye crying out the verbal realization we were all thinking: "F*&k!! I MISSED THE CONCERT!!!" We all swiveled our eyes towards him and seemed to act in unison shouting "Shut the f*&k up man! You're lucky to be alive!!" After some quick ditching of the bottles of beer and cherry vodka hand-grenade style, a couple of us decided to hitch-hike back to Mtown. A few minutes later we were in the back bed of a pickup truck riding back to Mike Pruckler's house. Now aboard his VW microbus, we stopped the pick up the rest of our stranded crew along hwy 30, and proceeded to the concert. Somehow we made it before KISS started, we were finally standing on the floor in the GA moshpit in front of the stage. I still have the 8x10 photos of the blood-covered Gene Simmons and Ace Frehley on the "Love Gun" hydraulic risers taken by either Koll or Frye on the disposable camera they had smuggled into the show. Oh what a night.
And then, of course, there's the 1979 Foghat show at the UNI dome when some other types of fun ensued on the roadtrip to Cedar Falls...but that's a story for another time.
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